Depression affects 18% of Americans alone. That’s a super high figure that looks to be getting higher every single year. I usually talk about anxiety on this blog, but I wanted to share some information on how to get motivated when you are depressed. Not only did I suffer from extreme anxiety and worry for many years, but this anxiety also led me to become depressed because of the negative state of mind I was in every day. This isn’t a light topic, and I don’t want to make it seem like one. Instead, I want to share some real motivation if you’re finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning because you’re so depressed. These are the things that have helped me become less depressed one day at a time.
Depression is a long battle. It’s one that some people struggle to ever really get over. It can always seem like it’s in the background. However, there are ways that you can start to get motivated out of depression when things seem like they’ll never get better. We need support from others when we are depressed but we also need motivation too. I hope to give you some motivation in this post because I know what it feels like to think everything is shit and nothing will get better. Believe me, I do.
1. First, Talk To Someone
The first thing you want to do is talk to someone. With my own anxiety and depression, I hid away and didn’t let anyone know how I truly felt for far too long. The problem is, if you keep things bottled up, you can end up making things worse for yourself than they need to be. Some people might be embarrassed about admitting it to others because it means admitting it to themselves too, which I totally understand. Depression in some form is something that most of us will experience in our lives and so it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
You can start by talking to a loved one about your depression. The good news is, talking about mental health isn’t as taboo as it was ten years ago. Mental health campaigns are at an all-time high and so it’s in front of more and more people. There have also been more and more famous celebs who have detailed their experiences with depression which helps the rest of us to realize that they are not ‘perfect’ themselves and it really can affect anyone in the world whether you’re famous or not.
If you’re still not comfortable about talking to a loved one about your depression, you can talk to your GP or a therapist. Talking with people who are specially trained can be, and usually is the best option that you have. If you don’t want to fork out $150-$250 every time you visit a therapist, you can try something like betterhelp.com where you can pay $45 a week (dropping to $35 a week after 3 months) and get on-tap therapy over the phone, in emails or video chats. This is a great concept that I have checked out myself and read other great reviews about. Being about to speak with a therapist when you need has obvious benefits like on-demand help throughout the day.
2. Get Up Like You Mean It
For me, it was all about getting up and facing the day. This can be scary when you feel like you’re too depressed to get out of bed, however, by staying in bed for too long, you’re only going to set yourself back further and further. Staying in bed for a long time in the morning, and into the afternoon, creates a habit that is really hard to shake. I used to feel like everything was doom and gloom and no matter what anyone said to me, I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. It sucks, I know. The world seems like a dark place and you don’t know what direction to take to start feeling more positive. By getting up first thing in the morning, you’re setting the tone for the rest of the day. The most important thing to realize is that you’re not ‘depressed’, you are simply ‘experiencing depression’.
There is still a happy, confident you in there. It is just being shadowed over by your current emotions. The difficult bit is bringing back that more confident self back to the surface. This won’t happen overnight but by taking small steps here and there adds up over time. Getting out of bed like you mean it is just one small step that needs to be taken to start the ball rolling into the rest of the day. Once you’re up, make yourself make breakfast and get dressed. I always feel wore off when I stay in my pyjamas for too long into the day. I feel like I missed the morning and wasted a lot of my day. These small steps put you into a different state of mind and give you those ‘little wins’ over the depression that we all need.
Once you’ve dressed, make your bed. By making your bed you gain a little sense of pride and accomplishment. This, in turn, makes you want to do another task and another. Charles Duhigg states in his best selling book The Power Of Habit that making your bed is correlated with higher productivity and wellbeing simply because it sets you up into the right mind-frame for more accomplishments through the day. Think about it, if you wake up and go straight onto the couch without making your bed first, what have you accomplished? Do you feel like you deserve to then sit/lay down again? Getting up when you wake up and making your bed acts as a keystone habit. Human beings need to feel like they have accomplished tasks to gain self-worth and wellbeing. Humans are also creatures of habit. If you do something for long enough it’s hard to change your behavior. If you started your day with a good habit, then that behavior would be hard to break too.
3. Allow Yourself To Gain Perspective.
Gaining a higher sense of perspective over my life is another healthy mental habit I have adopted to overcome anxiety and depression. When you’re anxious or depressed, you lose all perspective because you’re currently the one experiencing these things. That’s why it’s important to talk to someone else that has still got the perspective you need reminding of. Again, when I was depressed, it felt like there was no point getting up in the morning. Even things I deemed as ‘good’ had no appeal to me. It felt like if I didn’t exist, it really wouldn’t matter to the world and I’d be just another person who was born at some random point in history. Life seemed shit and pointless. Then I had to get perspective on things. I didn’t regain a healthier perspective right away, but it was something I had to work on and still do have to work on. I’m naturally pessimistic which means that I have to work twice as hard to ingrain healthier habits.
The truth is, I realized it’s never been a better time to be a human being. You could have ended up a cat or a tree, but instead, you were given the chance to be a human being and experience everything that that means, good or bad. Although there have been billions of folks born since the dawn of time, it’s always a roll of the dice when the sperm races to the egg. You were up against millions of other potential babies to be born. However, if you’re reading this, you’re already a winner. That might seem silly, but I believe it to be true. You are already a winner. You fought your way through and were born into life.
No matter how you look at the world, you won the lottery of life. A lot of us become depressed because we feel like there is no meaning in our lives but the truth is you’ve got the chance to give it it’s own meaning. There’s no right or wrong way to do life. There’s no way to do a day ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Everyone I’ve ever come across sets themselves expectations that they usually can’t live up to. The problem is, we already have an idea of what our life is going to be like, even when we’re really young. When it doesn’t happen, we get down and depressed. All we can really do is give it our best shot and ride the wave. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try our best in life, but we suffer and put pressure on ourselves that we don’t need to. Has your life up to this point gone the way you imagined? If you say yes, I’m not sure you’re being honest with yourself…
Life is full of twists and turns and almost never occurs how we envision it to.
Gaining this kind of perspective allows you to understand that it’s not your fault you feel the way you do. Instead, I think we need to understand that we can ‘do a day’ however we want to, and leave our expectations at the door.
It’s truly never been better to be alive right now. If you want to learn something, you can. All you have to do is open your phone or laptop and you can gain almost anything you want. There is unlimited knowledge out there ready to be consumed. For example, you can currently;
- Learn how to play the guitar FREE
- Learn how to cook FREE
- Learn how to blog FREE
- Read about overcoming depression and anxiety FREE
No matter how dark the world seems, we can change our lives by simply unlocking our phones and learning new things. To me, that’s pretty amazing. You didn’t have these options 20 years ago. How mad is it that life changes so quickly? It reminds us that things don’t stay the same for long and everything is but a fleeting moment in time.
We often get ‘trapped’ in our own heads, thinking that we’ll be ‘this way forever’, however we really won’t. Things will change eventually and we have the chance to change how we feel and see the world.
4. Remember We’re All Oppressed
Getting motivated when you are depressed is difficult because you feel like you’re on your own. You feel as though you’re some kind of marginalized victim. Feeling like the odd one out is enough to make you shy away and stay in bed. The truth is, we’re all the odd one out. It can sometimes seem as if everyone has it together apart from us as if we’re somehow just unlucky. However, we are all oppressed by life itself, terrible things happen, people get sick, we can get injured, people die.
So in this sense, you can choose to make a choice of whether you’ll remain oppressed by the harshness of life or whether you’ll get up and do what you want anyway. To me, there really is no choice but to get up and get on with it.
In life, you really have no choice but to push through in the face of sadness and depression. We are all victims of life so you should never tell yourself you are different. Those who wear smiles choose to in the face of this fact.
So, wake up, make your bed, get dressed, learn something new, and remember to ‘do your day‘ as it feels right. I hope this gave you even a little bit of motivation with your depression. I won’t lie, it’s hard to change things when you’re stuck in our own head. You can do it though.
Here’s to your success,
Sean
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This post was previously published on Projectenergise.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock