~ Think positively – in every situation try and see something positive. Even what is seen as failure is a valuable learning experience.

~ Get things done, be active – do chores, achieve small things every day, take small steps at a time doing things, learn something new and do it every day.

~ Focus on what you have achieved – and not on what you still need to do. Every day see what you did get done and be proud of it. Celebrate the victories.

~ Get out and meet people – is related to being active, but also on focusing on someone else, takes your mind of all the negative thought patterns.

~ Set a goal and take one small step towards it every day. Learn a new language, take classes/education, write a novel. And every day, do a small step, achieve something, see your progress, focus on the progress, focus on every step that’s completed and take pride and joy in it.

~ Eat a healthy solid breakfast – I’ve found the days I skip breakfast I lack energy, am more prone to bad moods, lack motivation to do things. All which in return enforces my bad moods that comes from not getting things done, all that enforces my feeling of being down because I don’t have the physical energy to get things done.

~ Find beauty in your surroundings – gaze upon a flour, enjoy the scents and beauty, see children play and laugh, watch a cloud and how it moves, feel the sun on your skin, study your palm and see it for the first time. Spend time every day focusing on something beautiful and focus only on that and be amazed again over how diverse and fascinating and beautiful life and nature actually is.

~ Meditate – spending a time every day focusing on your breath, emptying the mind, letting go of all thoughts and feelings of worry, sadness, helplessness, hopelessness and so on. Just exist in the moment, focusing on it.

~ Live in the now and appreciate the now – this is a difficult one and to me it came after I had broken a lot of bad thought patterns and behaviours. When I take myself in thinking about the past (bemoaning what I didn’t do, what I lost, the pain or whatever) I focus on the now and what I have, what I have achieved, of the steps I’ve taken and feeling proud of where I am right now. When I take myself thinking of wishful dreams or good things to come, while doing something in the now, I force myself to focus on the now and appreciate the now (like watching my daughter play and be happy, I have a tendency to tell her what will happen of fun things tomorrow. Which is utterly silly since she’s perfectly happy living in the now and enjoying it. We should not mare the enjoyment of the now by distancing ourselves from it and focus on what might come in the future).

~ Look in the mirror and accept yourself. Tell yourself that you accept yourself, that you are proud of yourself, that you are capable, that you will achieve your goals and dreams if you work hard enough for it, that you are an amazing person, that you are beautiful (all people are beautiful), find the most appealing trait you have and be proud of it, tell yourself that you love yourself.

~ Do things fully. If you’re working on a task, give your best to it, do it as well as you can. If you’re doing annoying chores, give your best, dedicate yourself fully. By the end of the day you can look back at what you have done and know deep inside that you did your best, that you could not have done better in the situation. That breeds acceptance of yourself and what you do, it lets you know that even if you didn’t get a big success out of a task, you did the best you could do and learned from it.

~ Take action. Every time you begin to complain (to yourself or others) about how things are, take action to change the situation, set a goal of how you want things to be, work out a plan on how to get there, and start going there. The things you don’t want to change (for all things can essentially be changed, but many we won’t out of consideration to others), accept that it is your decision that you won’t change it and move on.

Heh, this became a longer ramble. Some of these things can easily be put into your schedule, and are only meant to be additional suggestions to what you already have. I hope it’s useful for you.

Good luck with your project. I know that one day you’ll truly be happy and live a life without depression.

It is measured weekly but added daily?

I would add that the quality of our personal relationships plays a huge part in our overall wellbeing, so I would include:

1. Meeting new people;
2. Spending time with friends;
3. Spending time with family

Best of luck with this!

Austin

Tx
Austin