I was feeling depressed for several days in a row now. Not like real depression, just kind of down. One of the rough patches you get every now and then.
I was thinking, fuuuuuck, I’m gonna have to make a change.
Move somewhere else. Find a new job.
I had put in a good week of work.
Then I went out way too late Friday night.
I slept all day Saturday, woke up that evening, ate a pizza and watched a movie.
On Sunday I went to the coffee shop and tried to get some stuff done. I sat there for about 3 hours and fumbled around between facebook, email, some blog posts, and writing.
After I realized nothing was getting done, I went to meet some friends at a restaurant where they were drinking mimosas while I ate an omelette and sipped some water, still trying to cure my 2 day hangover.
Then I went home, took a nap, and watched the SNL 40th anniversary.
I had no motivation to do anything.
Then I saw this tweet.
You think you’re fatigued, therefore you can’t exercise. In fact, you choose not to move, therefore you feel fatigued.
-@tferriss
I’ve known this before but sometimes I need a little reminder. Sometimes it’s through a phone call, other times a friend invites me to do stuff and I just snap out of it.
This time, it was a tweet from Tim Ferriss.
It was so clear it was stupid.
Depression doesn’t cause you to eat entire pizzas and be lazy as fuck.
In fact, the opposite is true. Eating entire pizzas and being lazy as fuck causes depression[1].
Of course it was easy to snap out of this funk once I realized this.
The next day, I ate salmon and a salad instead of a whole pizza.
I went on a walk along the river instead of sitting inside all day.
I met some strangers at a meetup instead of taking a nap.
I didn’t need to move, or change careers, or buy a new whatever to get out of it. Happiness is created not found remember?
I just did stuff I thought might be interesting. Then I felt a lot better.
Usually thats all it takes.
- Even though I wasn’t really “depressed,” I think this applies to all levels of depressions, mild to sever. Recognizing when one is severely depressed it’s much more difficult to apply this solution. The resistance is stronger.