Overcoming Depression and Finding Happiness

Having only a few interests and activities doesn't help very much in fighting boredom, depression, or other problems.  You can best improve mental health by developing and practicing many of them until you do them well.  Truly happy and productive people love life and often enjoy 50 to 100 of them.  Strive toward the ideal of the Renaissance man-a well-rounded person with broad social, cultural, and intellectual interests and skills.  You may find it difficult to think and come up with new interests and activities.  We often forget many we once enjoyed or we were once curious about.  Depressed people are especially likely to have forgotten previous interests and activities.  Go to the library and ask the librarian for help in finding a list of interests and activities. Of course, depressed people often find it very difficult to motivate themselves and often reject new interests and activities without trying them or after one attempt.  But even happy people don't enjoy interests without first cultivating them.  We often don't enjoy a new activity right away.  Instead, it may take time to become accustomed to a new activity and for interest and pleasure to grow.  You may need to learn to relax in the new situation or to develop some expertise or skill before you can learn to enjoy it.  Don't reject new activities before giving them a chance.  Try any new activity at least several times, with an open mind.  Motivate yourself with rewards for engaging in new activities and getting things done.  You might decide you must buy your groceries and finish all your laundry before you take a nap.  If you smoke cigarettes, you might avoid smoking until you try a new activity or accomplish something.  Ask friends and family members to help motivate you, too. 

Negative thinking habits play a very important role in depression.  Research shows depressed people tend to minimize their accomplishments, talents, and qualities.  They tend to see themselves as inferior and incompetent, despite being comparable to other people in qualities and skills.  Their thinking habits focus on or exaggerate problems and faults and minimize or fail to see the good things in their lives.  They tend to recall negative things more often than positive things, and they tend to minimize, overlook, or forget feelings of pleasure in their lives.  They may feel preoccupied with loss or personal problems, perhaps wallowing in thoughts about self-pity, inability to cope, or escaping their problems.

Happy people experience failure, disappointment, rejection, negative emotions, pain, and great sorrows, too, just like depressed people.  But happy people keep a positive attitude by gracefully accepting sadness and suffering as normal parts of life, while doing what they can about their problems.  This also makes them more pleasant to be around and improves their social lives.  Part of happiness is a courageous choice of loving life in the face of suffering, a chosen position or view of things.