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Elephant Reference Manual: 5 Surefire Ways out of Everyday Depression.
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside—remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.” ~ Bukowski
I have experience with depression. So do you. We all do. It’s human.
It’s been a part of the human condition for all time—which is good, because folks like the Buddha and Jesus and every great realized human being ever has gone through it, and found her or his way out of it.
(I’m not talking about clinical depression, here).
5 Obvious, Quick, Simple, Easy Ways out of Depression (That we Fail to Think of When We’re Depressed).
1. Anything electronic—unplug it. Video games, instagram, surfing the web—anything too focus-oriented, repetitive, and mildly pleasurable keeps us anchored to our mindless churning beneath the waves.
2. Get outside. Light, fresh air—is the hope, the outlet, the gap, the pleasure that comes with tearing open our cocoon.
3. Touch in with a living sentient being’s heart. See someone. Hug a dog. Talk with community—what’s getting us down now, told as a story, will get us out of what’s getting us down, now. And it usually makes for a good story, too, if only because it’s real.
4. Music. Dance. Blues. Hard rock. Depends on your mood. Something we have to dance a little to. Move.
5. Most importantly: we can avoid the things we think will give us pleasure but know, from experience, will not—sex, porn, picking zits, video games, food we’re not hungry for, ice cream, watching too much TV, whatever it is—go the other direction and…
Breathe.
Remember to breathe. It’s that simple. We remember gratitude, the gift of reclaimed perspective. We remember to eat real food, hug like we mean it, drink good tea or coffee, comb our hair, exercise—the basics. The basics that, when we’re lost in the cool fog of our depression, seem out of reach.
Open that heart, clear that mind. We are not a machine—we are a poem.
Irrelephant back story (feel free to skip): Depression seems to come from somewhere. But, really, it comes from our inability not to roll with the waves, not the waves themselves.Today’s waves: elephantjournal.com was down. The experience of having one’s site down is something unfamiliar for most of us who deal in physical things. It’s a sudden experience of a modest, limited, but cold and toxic death.The gains of a month, evaporating in hours. My friend and webby Colin saved us, heroically sacrificing most of his Friday night out at a Holiday Party to get our site back up (he’s in the UK, eight-or-so hours ahead).I’m the founder of elephant. Having your site down is like being out of business, like having your product recalled, like having your house burn down—only not nearly so permanent. I know, rationally, it’ll come back. The rational side of me asked for help and asked you, our readers to find us on tumblr and pinterest and twitter and facebook…but still, our reader count—the way we know we’re one of the bigger web sites in the US, bigger than your favorite personal blog by a factor of 10 or 100 or 1000 or 10,000—was imploding by the minute. Folks from all over the world were coming to our site to find…nothing. And, leave.So the rational side of me did what I could—emails, tweets, reaching out, phoning our service provider twice, text, keeping the ball rolling and folks connecting. The irrational side of me, however, just committed seppeku again and again. At hour four, I tried to take a bath and read Raise the Bar, a re-inspiring book by one of the few non-sell outs in my world. But the water came out too cool.So, shivering, 230, the day nearly gone, I biked to the climbing gym, feeling dead inside, weak, tired, sad, defeated, dark. Depression.
RELEPHANT BONUS:
10 Basic Salves for Burn-out & Everyday Depression.
The Simple Buddhist Trick to being Happy.
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