Comment by yondys
9 hours ago
I wish it was this easy. But mental health is as complex and multifaceted as our brain is. There can be more than one reason why a once happy engineer is now struggling to complete basic tasks, and they are often hard to find and explain or to relate to simple explanations like these (which is why more and more people are turning to therapy for answers).
You raise good questions, but thousands more could be asked: Are you taking care of your foundations? Sleeping enough? Eating nutritious food? Do you have any bad habits or trauma that you haven't even acknowledged to yourself? Is your work environment healthy? What things aren't healthy that you've normalised? Are you seeing enough friendly people in your day to day life? And so on.
My point is that there are rarely easy answers to easy questions such as these, so "bucking up" can be seen as either great advice or irresponsible and insensitive, and it doesn't necessarely apply to "most of y'all". So maybe you need to buck up, but also don't be frustrated if you don't. Maybe the solution is elsewhere.
I think mental health is way over blown in terms of complexity.
>My point is that there are rarely easy answers to easy questions such as these
I'd argue these are all binary questions and pretty easy to answer:
>Eating nutritious food? : Yes/No
>Sleeping enough?: Yes/No
>Are you taking care of your foundations? Yes/No based on above plus Yes/No to "Sufficient Exercise?"
>Do you have any bad habits or trauma that you haven't even acknowledged to yourself?: Yes/No (Stop playing videogames, reduce phone use, limit drugs and alcohol)
>Is your work environment healthy?: Yes/No (If 'No' how can you leave it)
> Are you seeing enough friendly people in your day to day life? : Yes/No
An easy happiness formula is:
1. Eat right: Maintain a healthy diet to keep your physical energy stable.
2. Exercise: Keep active every day to release mood-boosting chemicals.
3. Get enough sleep: Prioritize rest to reset your mental state.
4. Imagine an incredible future: Daydream about grand possibilities, even if you don't fully believe them at first.
5. Work toward a flexible schedule: Having control over your time is one of the highest drivers of happiness.
6. Do things you can steadily improve at: Progress and mastery trigger the chemicals in your body that make you happy.
7. Help others: Once you’ve helped yourself first, giving back provides profound psychological benefits.
8. Reduce daily decisions to routine: Remove mental clutter and decision fatigue by establishing steady habits
While I do agree with the majority of your post and it's very close to what I've been trying to do on my own, I wouldn't call it easy. It's a simple formula and I think the majority of people would benefit from trying to attempt the formula or a version of it before seeking professional help.
When you're in a negative mental state, none of these things are easy. Eating right, for example, assumes you know what right is, you can afford it, you have access to it and you have the energy to get it. All of those points have their own unique "prerequisites".
A bad mental state can keep you from completing those prerequisites.
A bad mental state can prevent the formula from working even if strictly followed.
There's still value in doing them because it keeps things from being worse. If there's something worse than being depressed, it's being depressed and hungry, or depressed and scared, or depressed and tired.
A bad mental state also messes with your perception. Good becomes bad, bad becomes worse, and worse becomes worst. Keeping a daily track of things ensures that you'll always have an objective source of truth. So that even if things feel hopeless, you can look back and pinpoint the few good moments.
I've been steadily working on my version of the formula for ~4y and the majority of the time I feel content but there are days where its still a challenge to do the right thing and days where I have to force myself to even get out of bed. But I can always look back and see that things aren't that bad. They just feel that way right now.
> An easy happiness formula is
I literally do all 8 of those things and I'm depressed as fuck. Maybe mental health is harder than you think?
> An easy happiness formula is:
> [list of eight things that may be extremely difficult for people with depression]
.