How to not lose your mind, in 10 days
Combining two proven facts, one, that habits can be unlearned and formed by repeating behaviours regularly, and two, that positive thinking is an attitude and not an upon-convenience action, here is how the next 10 days of your life should look to make you understand how your mental health works.
1. Get your perspective back. If you’re working from home (as you should be — a moment of silence to acknowledge our privilege), stay in touch with the “outside world”. You might think that you’ve lost a lot in this lockdown but what you’ve really lost is perspective. As much as it may make you cringe to video call someone after all those update calls during the day, pick up that phone and call that friend you’ve been avoiding because those conversations get “too real”. Share your experience as openly as you can, and learn from theirs.
(Source - Unsplash)
2. Don't shy away from those ‘free mental health consultation’ ads. Here’s the only rule about therapy — if you’ve had a childhood, you need some of it. The extent, school of thought, and prescriptions would differ largely for each of us, but we could all use it. Think about it, someone spent their entire education trying to get good at listening to you, and gets paid to give you good, sound advice, and you’re just going to tap that story without even reading? Consultations are one-time sessions, and barely 50 minutes long. That’s one episode of The Joe Rogan Podcast. You could just watch that, too (we recommend the one where Elon got musky, if you know you know). Okay but on a serious note, “you need help”. We all do.
3. Sometimes, bad things go good. This isn’t just our favourite form of fitness (because it’s the easiest, we’re not gonna lie to you), it’s a way of life (cringe.) You take one “bad” habit of yours (or demoralising, one that makes you guilty after), let’s say midnight snacking, and you replace it with a “good” habit (or uplifting, one that makes you feel accomplished), let’s say 10 burpees. Apart from the fact that your craving for snacks will disappear, you would also have replaced an external cause of happiness, to an internal one. Best part is, you can apply this to anything - quitting smoking cigarettes, binge-watching late into the night, scrolling through bad news). 4. Get your hands dirty.
We’re just going to leave this here, take from it what you want. Whether it’s in bed, or dug in soil, or in a pile of unwashed clothes and dishes, you choose. Just get down and get dirty. 5. Socially distance yourself from cognitive dissonance. Such a big f*cking word we’re already out. It’s something 100% of us do, though. Hear us out - the most unhappy you feel is when you’re having negative thoughts about yourself. And you have those, when you think you’ll do something and actually do something else. Simply put? That’s what cognitive dissonance is - your thoughts and your being not aligning with each other. Simply solved? Start the morning with realistic checklists (those which give you plenty time to stop and smell the roses), spend the day getting sh*t done, and close the evening with a highlight across all of them.