Monday, October 3, 2022
Sometimes when you’re in the dumps, people advise you to keep your chin up, and to focus on what matters. But that’s terrible advice, your emotions don’t have a switch like that. Depression gives you a kind of amnesia, a forgetfulness of what joy and peace feel like. I think happiness contains three important ingredients: gratitude, hope, and peace. I suggest keeping a journal of those things: memories and thoughts of what bring you hope, gratitude, and peace.
You need an ingredients list, a stockpile of statements that you wrote to help you recall what joy is. When you’re hopeless you have simply forgotten joy, and you need a review. When you’re agitated, you need to re-visit the list of memories and activities that bring peace into your life. When you’re disenfranchised, you need to re-revisit your gratitude list. Rereading your list will be like a soothing salve that brings back the forgotten memory of joy.
When challenging circumstances make you foul, hopeless, or destitute, go to your list. It will be soothing because it came from you, not someone else’s platitudes like, “hang in there.” I keep a journal to help me remember joy in hard times; but I’m sure there are other ways – perhaps a calendar or a diary? In good times, if you keep a list of hopeful thoughts and things for which to be grateful, you’ll have something to turn to on a rainy day. Give it a try – it’s more meaningful because it’s written in your words, and you recognized what made you happy. Don’t be empty-handed when the blues give you “amnesia.” Have a list that recalls joy, hope, peace, and gratefulness. You’ll eventually regain your memory of what happiness is, when life gets you down and you simply forget.