How do you motivate yourself when you go through depression? Or how do you cope with a lack of motivation to do things? When severely depressed, it takes a lot to effort to even attend to basic general hygiene. There will be days when you go without bathing or washing your face! Eating takes too much effort as you don't have appetite. Exercise became extremely difficult because you are too tired.
But when you are not doing very much, you begin to believe that you are useless, ineffective, inadequate, helpless and incapable of achieving anything. These negative thoughts make you feel more discouraged and in turn reduce your ability to do things. It becomes harder and harder to wake up each morning and to attend any usual activities. This becomes a visual cycle and it has been called the lethargic circuit.
How do you break this lethargic circuit and derive motivation to face each day?
But when you are not doing very much, you begin to believe that you are useless, ineffective, inadequate, helpless and incapable of achieving anything. These negative thoughts make you feel more discouraged and in turn reduce your ability to do things. It becomes harder and harder to wake up each morning and to attend any usual activities. This becomes a visual cycle and it has been called the lethargic circuit.
How do you break this lethargic circuit and derive motivation to face each day?
There is always a conventional way in which you can approach issues and end depression even in your most trying moments:
1. Learn to wake up at the same time each day though you dread waking up. You will realize that once you are up, you can do some things after all. Try to sleep at the same time every night so that you get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep or rest can worsen depression.
2. Learn to eat meals regularly and as nutritiously as possible. Though you may not have much appetite and eating seems to be such an effort, you will realize that you need all the energy and nutrition to fight this depression and therefore you must eat! Try to eat more vegetable and fruits to gain more vitamins and nutrition.
3. Learn to exercise regularly. Exercise may seem so difficult at first as you are so tired daily. But learn that exercise is important to build up your strength and stamina. So learn to start slowly and daily. You will find that as the days go by, you will begin to exercise longer. The body and mind becomes stronger. Exercise release good chemicals to help us fight depression.
Try brisk walking. Go for brisk walks whenever you can. Sometimes exercise by walking around the neighborhood or ride bike.
4. Learn to create a routine. You will realize that without a routine, you tend to avoid doing things as you no longer enjoy anything. This will only cause you to remain in the lethargic circuit. To break this lethargic circuit, learn to plan your days. Schedule regular exercise and some activities that you enjoy for each day. You will find that with every task that you manage to complete, you begin to feel motivated to do more. You experience a sense of accomplishment.
5. Break tasks into smaller portions. When going through depression, every tasks seems so difficult. It's hard to began to do anything. Procastination sets in. To avoid this, learn to break tasks into smaller and more manageable portions. Try to do only a portion each day and you find that you are able to get things done slowly. This again gives you a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to do more.
6. Learn to be patient and not to be too hard with yourself. Try to remember that you are unwell now and it takes time to rebuild your body and mind. So when you failed to accomplish what you planned for the day, learn to tell yourself, it's okay. I will try harder tomorrow. Or break the task into even smaller portions.
7. Learn not to let your negative thoughts or feelings prevent you from daily activities. Learn that your feelings during depression are not necessarily valid. They often have little bearing on the truth. Your feelings of being too depressed to cope do not mean that you will not be able to cope when you are actually in a situation.
Whether you have been looking for a job in vain or if you have undergone any situation that can easily let you down, we hope this motivates you. Depression comes in any form and it may not necessarily be lethargic, you may be experiencing it without knowing, please follow the above.
Otherwise, we at HCC wish you a stress free life.
