Today is the beginning of a new system I am implementing for myself. This system is designed to do three things:

1. Create a reading habit
2. Create a writing habit
3. Publish every Thursday

Last week, March 4, 2021, I decided that I’d publish something every Thursday. My first article was written in an hour. This is not bragging. If you read it, thank you, because it was more free writing and not thought out. It was written with just feeling. No concern about punctuation or grammar or whatever. Is it great? No idea, and I didn’t care. I had just made a commitment and damn it, I wasn’t going to fail on Article 1, Day 1!

However, I ran into a problem when thinking of Article 2. What the hell am I supposed to write about? The advice I hear/read/watch/whatever is to write about what you like, what you enjoy, what you are good at, what you are passionate about, what gets you moving, etc.

For me, nothing jumped to top of mind.

So I decided I’m going to write about what I’m currently doing. And what I’m doing is something I like to call, “Going Back to Basics” mixed with “Breaking the Cycle.” (Mental Note: Wow, this is good stuff. These are going to be the titles of future articles. Good find, James. Yes, I’m affirming myself.)

In a nutshell, back to basics is just relearning how to read, write, and making sure I exercise. These few things are helping me break out of my current cycle of negativity.

This new system is strengthening my going back to basics by writing weekly about a book that I am currently reading.

I’ll be reading a chapter a day (start easy, right?), taking notes, and putting some thought into my take away from each chapter. I’ll publish my thoughts every Thursday until the end of the book or the end of time, whichever comes first. To start, I’ve chosen Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kanehman, which I started to read in 2016, so the end of time might come sooner.

All kidding aside, my goal is to finish this book and be able to publish every Thursday. Whether I continue this system with a second book will be decided when I accomplish my first goal. Who knows, maybe it’ll evolve to something else. Maybe it’ll be even more interesting than “book reviews.” Wow, it’s so dull. God, help me.

There’s not one thing that will help get over depression. It’s a whole mix bag of things. Here’s my mixed bag over the last 60 days.

Write

I’m writing everyday. Not a lot and not about anything in particular. I’m just free writing. Meaning, I just write whatever is on my mind. When I first started, I’d literally write things such as “I have nothing to write about”, “what am i even writing”, “why am i doing this”, and “i am thinking about writing and just writing.” It was nothing.

What I was doing though, was getting into a state where my hand would write out what my subconscious was thinking. And what I found after several weeks was surprising and obvious at the same time.

I loathed myself. I hated myself. I hated everything about me. I hated that I hated it. And I hated that my writing was about hate. Surprise! And also, duh, I am depressed, of course i hate.

This helped identify that my depression and negativity was actually rooted in my subconscious. That made me realize that as much as my conscious mind was wanting not to be a negative asshole and a depressed piece of shit, my subconscious was like “no, fuck you, this is who we are.”

Finding out that it wasn’t me, per se, really helped me understand that I could get over depression.

Exercise

I love exercising. I used to be work out nut. But whenever life got the best of me, one of the first of my habits to disappear was exercise. So now I’ve made it a point that I will exercise every single fucking day. But running and lifting weights and counting calories and that shit was just too exhausting to think about to get back into exercise.

So i decided that going out for a walk in flip flops was exercise. Even if it was for 1 minute. Dead serious. Why is a 1 minute walk even count? Because, it was the ACT of going out for the walk that was important to me. Consider what it took to go out for that 1 minute.

I had to get out of bed, put on clothes, put on shoes, go out my apartment, into the elevator, through the lobby, and THEN go out for that 1 minute. Look at all I accomplished. Awesome job, James. You got your exercise in for the day.

And you know what? Now I actually go out for runs. Nuts how it started with just 1 minute.

Meditate

God. Meditation. I sit there and have to think about not thinking or think about my breathing. Nothing could be more stupid. And yet, after days of actually sitting there for just 10 minutes a day, I can honestly tell you that somehow meditation has helped me. Because now I can recognize when my mind starts to think about something else. So when i start to spin out of control and think about what a lazy fuck I am, i actually notice that my mind went there. It took me months to figure this out. I’m still horrible at meditation, but it’s something I do twice a day now. Just 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night. This isn’t to become more Zen. Maybe that comes later. This is just to get used to knowing when my mind shifts from one thought to another without me realizing.

Affirmations

I will admit that this one seemed stupid to me. In fact, I started this one by accident. My body is not very flexible, so I decided that since I’m exercising more, I should also start stretching more. I found a simple 10 minute yoga stretch routine by Yoga With Kassandra on YouTube. Her 30 day morning yoga videos also happened to include a different daily affirmation. I wasn’t going to do it. It’s dumb. I just wanted to learn to stretch.

Yet I found myself repeating her affirmations. Two have stuck out for me which are “I have all the answers within me” (because I tell myself “I don’t know” all the time) and “I am at peace with myself” (because if i was at peace with myself, than i wouldn’t hate myself, right?).

I found that these two affirmations come to me during my walks and when i’m writing. I believe it’s getting through to my subconscious. He hates it because he keeps telling me that we don’t know anything and actually hate ourselves. But fuck what he thinks.

Summary

I can’t promise that these 4 things will help everyone out of depression and negative thoughts. However, doing any of these things will help you to get moving. And honestly, when you’re in a deep dark rut, like being depressed, the best thing to do, and maybe the only thing, is to simply move. Take action. Move a pencil across the page. Just go outside. Learn to catch yourself when your thoughts shift. Tell yourself something good, even if you don’t believe it.

It won’t be an immediate cure, and sure, you’ll fall back, but when you do, just move.