Learn to Be Happy
Welcome to the self-care challenge. Your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to do something for yourself every day for the next five days. Take part in our challenge and win a self-care package. We’re giving away a prize every month.
If you’re having a bad day, this blog post can help you to turn it around. It will help you to “turn that frown upside down”, in the words of fellow ICR presenter Jeremy Frost. Here are my tips to help you cope when you’re having a bad day:
On Tuesday evening I had the privilege of being interviewed on Radio Suffolk’s Tuesday Night Takeover show about mental health with Jon Wright and Suffolk User Forum. I spoke of how my spiritual and Buddhist practices have helped me to overcome depression. Katie Mottram from Emerging Proud and author of Mend the Gap talked about the link between spirituality and mental health. Listen now. You can hear Katie at about 1 hour and 17 minutes and I’m on after that at about 1 hour and 40 minutes, along with Linda talking about Mindfulness.
Yesterday I left work early as I felt tired and tearful. I went to bed at 9 pm, determined to wake up feeling better and raring to go. Inspired by my ex-flatmate Lottie, I’ve been challenging myself to do Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning (more about that in a later post) over the last couple of days. I set my alarm for 6.30 am, determined to have a successful day three.
I have found Mindfulness to be a particularly helpful tool to overcome negativity and depression. It’s easy to go down a negative path. When I catch myself doing this there are three things I do to stop myself heading into a harmful spiral of self-destruction.
It turns out there is light at the end of the tunnel. For a while there I thought there was no hope. I must admit, since I came off my anti-depressants it has been a struggle and yet from what I read, I’ve had it easy compared to others in the same boat.
It’s easy to forget the importance of forgiveness. We forgive others, not to benefit them, but to benefit ourselves. Holding onto anger, bitterness and blame eats away at us and stops us from achieving peace of mind. It can be tricky to forgive, especially when we’ve been deeply hurt.
Continue reading “The Importance of Forgiveness (and how to achieve it)”
Where shall I start? Well, since coming off my medication it has been a rocky ride. I’ve had a few knock backs and sometimes it feels as if everything is going wrong at the same time. I feel as though I keep getting knocked down, get back up, dust myself down, only to get knocked down again. I still keep getting up though.
Wellbeing in the workplace is essential to the success of your business. If your employees are unhappy they will be less productive, less engaged, take more time off sick and ultimately cost you money. In the U.S. unhappy workers cost up to $550 billion every year. It is estimated that 137.3 million days were lost in the UK in 2016 due to sickness or injury.
On the flipside, happy employees are more engaged, more productive, take less time off work and will make you more money. They will give your customers a better service, which means those customers will keep coming back and recommend you to others. Having a wellbeing in the workplace policy will contribute to the happiness of your employees and will also help you achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR). At the Happiness Club we offer daily morning motivation sessions and weekly Happiness workshops to help ensure your employees are happy. In this blog post we share our tips for wellbeing in the workplace.
As you may know I’ve been weaning off my anti-depressants since the latter part of 2017. I’ve been on them for 26 years – since I was 17! I’ve tried to come off them many times before and each time I had a relapse. I had a relapse this time as I mentioned in my previous post Coming off the meds (again!). The difference is I was able to work through my feelings using my toolbox of Happiness techniques. I continued to cut down the meds and I took my final dose a couple of weeks ago. I must admit I’m feeling pretty chuffed and proud of myself. Continue reading “Life after anti-depressants”