I’ve become just slightly hedonistic - I really enjoy things like tasty food/chocolate. On the other hand, I’ve stopped having too many expectations about my life; sometimes crappy things have to be dealt with or there’s more on my plate than is fair, but that’s just life so I roll with it and do what I need to do without agonizing over it.
I guess bottom line: I don’t sweat the inevitable crummy stuff and I try to really enjoy the rest.
My wife and my dogs. Would do anything for them. I pried a large dog’s mouth off of my dog’s throat earlier this year. I knew I was going to get bit, I know I’m dumb, and I’d do it again in a second for him.
At first, all my might couldn’t overpwer him. Once my hands got crunched, that’s when I went into fight or flight and pried it’s mouth open like it was nothing. He had at least a 500+ pound bite force, given his size. I couldn’t believe the strength that surge of adrenaline gave me…
Once I pried the dog’s mouth open, I shouted to my dog to release the other dog’s lip (which he peirced) and he did release, then I sort of suplexed this big dog to get them separated.
My hands had decentinjuries and I had a lot of superficialgouges from claws/teeth or whatever. It happened so fast it was hard to tell what really got me. It felt like jumping into a cartoon dust cloud brawl…
Most painful part was them rinsing out my middle finger that got caught between the canines and fractured and torn up. When that cold saline shot out of a turkey baster-sized syringe into my wounds reached the bone, it felt like a toothache in my finger…
When I was in the ER, I asked the doctor stitching up my wounds (only one stitch in each because they were dog bites) how often they get dog bites, and then immediately followed up asking about human bites. He paused for a second and then said “We get at least one dog bite a day, one human bite a week.” That is at just one of 3 major hospitals in this Midwest city!
Man I’m too stoned and I’ve gone on such a tangent… My wife and my dogs are just always there when I’ve been at my lowest. The unconditional love of a dog has gotten me thru some of the darkest periods in my life. I love my dogs as much as a human family member.
Yep, he’s doing great! I intervened quick enough that his injuries were just superficial. I was the only one in the mix who really got injured. Tho we’ve all got some new scars now. My dog and I both ended up with scars near our right eye, which is darkly amusing to me. The whole ordeal was hardest for my wife. I’m not fazed much by situations like that, and my dog didn’t seem too bothered by it either.
Every morning, without exception, I get up, I make myself a cup of coffee, and I go for a walk nice and early. If it’s sunny and beautiful, I go for a walk. If it’s cloudy and gray, I go for a walk. If it’s pouring out, I grab my jacket and an umbrella, and I go for a walk. I usually walk over to the park nearby. It has a jogging trail on it, and there is a spot with pullup bars. Every time I pass the bars, I do a few pullups.
I started doing all this for physical health, just to ensure I don’t get sedentary. But I kept doing it because it’s time in my own head with nothing from home or work to distract me. I sometimes have headphones in to listen to music, but usually not. Usually, it’s just me and the outdoors, and an opportunity to really, really think. It’s good for my mental health.
Other things that help:
I check in with my loved ones, just so they know how I’m doing and I know how they’re doing. And if something is wrong, I tell them.
Every time I go into the kitchen, for any reason, I try to leave it more clean than when I started. If I’m grabbing a snack, and there’s a dirty dish in the sink, I rinse it and put it in the dishwasher. It’s amazing how much just having a clean kitchen improves my sense of well-being.
Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes it’s enough that I cry. That’s okay.
A lot of this sounds like things to do just to not be depressed, but it’s really much more than that! Taking care of these aspects of my mental health ensures that when fun and joy and entertainment and laughter present themselves, I’m in a good frame of mind to accept them.
Take care of yourself. Happiness isn’t something you can force, but it is something you can make room for.
I recently started going for walks again after dark. There's something about the residual summer heat, the darkness, and the quiet that just connects with me. On occasion I'll even go bare foot and it can really intensify that feeling of being connected to the world around me.
I have aphantasia so one of my techniques for generating happiness while sad might be more effective for you than me… but if I’m feeling really sad, I try to imagine a kitten, riding a puppy, riding a baby goat, riding a baby hippo, riding a baby elephant. Baby animals are always cute and funny, the idea of them all balancing atop each other is ridiculous enough to make me at least crack a smile.
Usually the first step out of sadness or depression is like cracking a door open to reveal a shard of light. We have muscle memory linked to our smile muscles, so whether we feel like smiling or not, finding a way to crack one releases feelgood endorphins.
Then we can take another step towards being happier; exercise, tidying / cleaning our home, going for a walk, getting a task out of the way which we’ve been avoiding.
If you’ve never used Audible before, you can sign up for a free trial and keep one book forever; I highly recommend anyone struggling atm use this to get ‘Derren Brown - Happy’. The guy is almost literally a mind wizard, the first few chapters explain common self-help fallacies and why they’re not effective… iirc chapter 6 / 7 is when he starts introducing a toolkit to increase happiness. It changed my brain though, and I’ve listened to it several times now. Lots of very useful mental strategies and philosophical tools.
I like to create things. For me, its a nice feedback loop of positive feeling throughout the process.
I get to learn new skills in order to complete the thing I’m trying to make. At the end of the day, I get to feel good that I learned something new.
I get to work with my hands and throughout the process, I get to see the progress I have made. At the end of the week, I get to hold the thing as its coming along and feel good about the progress I’m making.
At the end of the month / few months when I’m done with the build, I get to feel accomplished as I have overcome the challenges along the way, and I have a finished “thing”
For the foreseeable time after, each time I use the thing I made, I get a little boost of positivity, because I get to think to myself “yeah! I made this!”
It also allows me to be social by sharing the thing I have made with other makers online, or I can help them with their projects by sharing knowledge I have accumulated.
I’ve found that it’s easier to avoid misery than it is to find joy. Some tips given here reflect that as well. Cut off toxic people from your life. Don’t dwell on tiny things for the full day.
I have an example. I went to get some coffee yesterday. There was a man in front of barista counter. The barista asked me for my order, and my instinct was to ask if the man next to me had been served. I didn’t think twice about it. She got visibly upset at me for having the audacity to ask him. She took my order but she continued to mumble audibly about how she gave eye contact, and she knew how to do her job, etc. As if my remark towards the man belittled her experience and skills.
She had no idea what my intent was, but she assumed the worst. For doing so, she ruined her own day with it. It’s all about perspective.
She also ruined my coffee but I didn’t let that ruin my day either haha.
Celebrate the small things and small wins. Tomorrow I’m getting back my widescreen monitor that I sent in for warranty repairs. Just by that I’m excited for the next day. We have leftover cake in the fridge. After cooking and eating a meal we’re excited to get to dessert. Watching something on netflix in the evening; we’re excited for some microwaved popcorn and the white cheddar flavor powder we bought. I discovered a beautiful front end interface for lemmy yesterday (alexandrite.app) and now I’ve finally weaned off reddit and have a fun new “toy” to waste time on the internet. You don’t have to go out of your way to do anything new to make things happier.
I try to learn a little something each day, even if it’s as “simple” as how to pronounce a word or name. It’s a good way to try to get out of my head (as mentioned in another comment) and a means to keep myself humble.
There’s just so much I don’t know, and each little thing I try to learn is a good reminder of that and how much more there is to learn.
Bake muffins. Or bread. Or anything. Cooking distracts me and the result is tasty and sometimes I can give it away. Then people say nice things to me and for half a minute, I can convince myself I’m not a worthless ugly bag of mostly water. Don’t worry, the negative thoughts come right back, and the baking cycle begins again.
Gardening has been fun. Listening to the birds in my garden, hiking, taking walks.
I’m trying to focus on the journey of life more as I used to be a weekend warrior. But so much life happens between the weekends and focusing more on that had been helping me mentally.
As for finding meaning, I can’t answer that. I am in my 40s and have never found meaning. But there are things I enjoy, so I try to focus on the thing I find joy in.
Add comment