Hey there Brain Masterz, have you ever been depressed?
When you’re depressed, it feels like your options are limited.
Your thoughts, emotions, and physical body all tell you to stay still and hide.
You’re in a zone- just not the zone that leads to success.
In a way, depression is a comfort zone- but it’s not comfortable.
But by calling it a comfort zone, we’re describing something deeper than just the feelings of depression. We’re describing the energy state.
The ‘comfort zone’ of depression is this: LOW ENERGY.
Nobody likes having low energy. But like any comfort zone, that’s the place we feel most at home. You can feel at home being miserable and tired.
By calling depression a comfort zone, we’re pointing to the idea that you need to ‘get out of your comfort zone’ to change depression.
That means breaking the limits of LOW ENERGY.
How do you do that?
Maybe your first instinct is to rest. But when you’re in a LOW ENERGY state, it’s actually harder, not easier, to get quality rest. You may be exhausted, but you won’t be able to sleep well. Or even if you do sleep, you wake up just as tired as before. Your energy state doesn’t just refer to how much sleep you’ve gotten. It’s deeper than that.
A LOW ENERGY state is fundamentally a problem of disconnection. It’s when our mind and body have spent too long being separated from each other, either because of stress, distraction, or illness.
Of course diet, stress, and life circumstances can all affect our energy level. It’s very normal to get tired and sad from time to time. But if that condition persists for months and years after an event, we may not be using our natural ability to recover and move on.
If depression is being stuck in a LOW ENERGY comfort zone, then to face the fact that our comfort zone is not helping us. We need to raise our energy level. The simplest way to do that is to activate your energy.
So what activates energy? Basically- things that naturally require you to feel your body and actively express your mind. And, since more positive emotions typically have a higher natural energy than negative emotions, being actively positive tends to help.
Here are some great energy-activation practices:
-laughing
-exercising
-singing
-smiling
-acting
-dancing
Are you starting to get the sense? These activities all require you to activate energy, otherwise you’re not even really doing them.
Here’s the secret: activating energy may actually make you more UNCOMFORTABLE at first. That’s because your comfort zone is all about LOW ENERGY. So the discomfort you feel when you activate energy is about getting out of your comfort zone.
If you’ve been stuck in LOW ENERGY for a long time, you won’t have much of a sense for how healthy it is to activate energy. Activating energy may even feel unhealthy. But the truth is, activating your energy is the way to get out of depression.
Like anything, you might need to take small steps at first. Just watch a funny movie. Practice smiling in the mirror. Do 10 jumping jacks or squats. Go for a walk or talk to one friend per day.
Once you activate your energy, it’ll be easier to activate it again and to a higher level next time.
Don’t listen to the doubts, the emotions, and the negative memories that get stirred up during this process. They’ll tell you all sorts of things like, “You can’t do it… You’re too weak… You don’t have the energy… It might hurt you…” You know the rest.
But trust that the way forward is with more energy.
Use it or Lose it! You can do it!
Brain Masterz 