Another week in NYC.
I’m feeling horrible these days, my black dog is here with me.
Trying to improve your mood makes sense, up to a certain point, but when you reach rock bottom, surrendering and giving yourself a break is probably the best approach.
Mood bankruptcy
So here I go, after quite some weeks trying to cope with a growing fit of depression. I’ve decided to file mood bankruptcy. There’s no way I’m going to win this battle, I ran out of solutions and trying to talk myself into happiness will only make me look like a tragic clown. No self-help method seems to do the trick anymore. The effort needed to resist my state exceeded what I can give.
I decided to drop out and let it go.
I always remember what my friend Guillaume Jégou once told me:
“when I really feel like hell, I surrender and I let myself drown. Then I rest there, at the bottom”.
His words stayed with me for a long time. And I decided to apply this policy when I went through a strong wave of depression.
This piece of advice goes against most self-help literature I’ve seen, maybe that’s why I like it so much: it has a punk flavor to it :)
You just drop out, you accept your fate and let the black wave of discomfort invade your mind…To finally discover that it was just a passing dream.
War is over
“Fighting depression” is a misleading expression. I stopped using that martial terminology a while ago because it only leads to more confusion. If you assume that you have to struggle against depression, you believe that you’re dealing with a serious threat.
But there’s nothing real here, only a temporary feeling, the sooner you lay your weapons on the ground, the faster the recovery.
The best way I found out of depression is:
1/ acknowledgement > I admit that I’m depressed
2/ acceptance > I accept that state and I treat myself as a friend
Author: Jan Jacobsen
3/ pleasure > I give way for creative solutions that will help me feel better.
In short, my whole approach is completely the opposite of waging war against an inner enemy. As I said here, fighting an emotion often makes it bigger.
There’s a lot of relief in switching strategy, from combat mode, to acceptance and creativity.
Naughty boy
Another efficient approach I use is to INDULGE. I pick the stupidest things that I like and I spend time:
– eating Chocolate
– having Sex with my GF
– watching Zombie movies
– smoking Weed
– Oversleeping
That’s where creativity helps me the most: finding all the best ways to indulge and be counterproductive.
All that, combined with a lot of exercise and meditation, seems to be the right cocktail to dissolve a horrible mood.
And that’s what I did. And once again it did the job.
I’m still in NYC. Still kind of broke.
But my mind stopped soaking in dirty juice: the black dog is retreating to the dark land where it belongs.