THE BEST WAY TO BREAK OUT OF DEPRESSION!

Look, I’ve been there too; depression, it gets all of us at some point or another.

This depression can come from feeling like you aren’t living up to a certain standard you have for yourself.

For starters, the standards you have set for yourself are the most important, because in the end you need to be satisfied with the feedback you perceive from your own actions.

You have to learn to actually LIKE THE PERSON THAT YOU ARE before basing your identity on other people’s opinions of you.

It took getting into working out for me to like the person that I was.

With working out came discipline, structure, confidence, recognition, and all of these newfound benefits began to flow like a river into other areas of my life.

Women became easy because I truly didn’t care for their approval or not.

I knew the right ones would approve of the person I was becoming from building my life through bodybuilding as my foundation.

I was pretty broke before bodybuilding and in a way bodybuilding took a pretty good financial commitment, but I learned to handle my business while still allotting the money for groceries and supplements (which can get well over $1,000 a month once you get to a certain level of development).

But throughout bodybuilding there were still things in life that anyone would normally have to deal with on top of trying to stay disciplined enough to hold down a job, purchase life essentials, and those pop-up things in life that become financial surprises!

While dealing with life’s shit on top of trying to stay committed to the bodybuilding lifestyle, it can still become easy to fall into depression.

The gym may be going great, but it can feel like you’re letting other things slip away from you.

There is a song by the band In Flames (Yes, I’m sort of a metalhead) called “Like Sand”, and the chorus goes:

I want the whole world, the whole world, the whole world in my hands,

But it’s just slipping through like sand”

That’s how trying to bodybuild and balance life can feel at times for me!

So today I went to the gym and hit a killer leg workout and afterwards I used the treadmill on a steep incline setting, doing a brisk walk.

I began thinking about how life was so much of the same shit, day in and day out.

I looked around the gym and EVERY SINGLE PERSON WAS DISTRACTED BY THEIR PHONE!

I don’t mean most of the people, I mean damn near EVERYBODY!

When the treadmill hit the 10 minute mark I shut it off and just left the gym.

It was time for a new plan; I came home and loaded my dog up in my Yukon and hit the national park for some outdoor cardio instead.

Fuck that gym full of zombies!

I normally don’t train at that particular gym but I had to handle something in that part of town and I was in the area.

I didn’t want to drive all the way across town to my preferred gym due to time constraints.

Everyone was just a zombie in the gym and nobody was working hard.

Also, what’s the deal now with taking photos after people have been in the gym only 2 weeks and have a shit-ass physique?

I see more pencil necked dickwads snapping photos and looking at a phone than actually working out now!

That is why I prefer to train at my main gym, which is usually empty!

On my way home I came up with a new plan; all cardio outdoors!

I hit an hour of cardio with ease and felt good about being out there as opposed to trying to do cardio in the gym.

Our days can blend together so much together that even parts of gym activities can become mundane.

Low testosterone can make this even worse.

But even if your testosterone levels are up to par, I believe more of the problem with people’s depression is a lack of communication with like-minded people because everyone is totally out of tune!

Nobody is paying attention to anything anymore!

Go try to have a conversation with someone and count how long it takes for them to look at their phone.

Usually you can get about a good 20 seconds out of them before they look back down at their phone.

You just cannot establish a relationship with people anymore.

Even when the meeting is something that could BENEFIT THEM, they still cannot give you their undivided attention and they’re all bullshit people now.

So it’s easy to get depressed because you can sometimes feel lost in a world that you don’t feel like you belong in.

How do you make your life exciting again?

Aside from working out and making sure your hormone levels are good, how do you break away from the day to day monotony and depression?

I think I figured it out today…the easiest way to break away from feeling that same old daily grind!

EXPERIENCE 1 NEW THING EACH DAY, THAT IS THE KEY!

It’s as simple as that, each day you figure out something you’ve never done before!

• If all you do is listen to rock music, try listening to classical music that day, or the blues, or anything different.
• If you’ve never had a certain food then try it out.
• If you have never danced before then take a dance class (women love that shit anyways!)
• If you normally do your cardio indoors then do it outdoors instead.
• If you’ve never been swimming in cold January weather then go swimming outside when it’s freezing cold. You either swim and deal with it or you fucking die!

Crazy?

Maybe a little, but tell me how you feel when you’re done!

Maybe you’ve never painted before, work on painting an oil based painting!

Try an exercise you’ve never done before, or go for a new record distance on a jog or a hike!

IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW BIG OR SMALL THE NEW THING IS, JUST DO 1 NEW THING EACH DAY!

Read a new article each day, pick up a book on building a wooden deck and study it, or a book on finances, or even a fictional book. Read 10 pages a night. That’s about the average sized book every month, and that is 12 books a year.

Think about how much knowledge you could gain off reading 12 new books every year! Also, your grammar and spelling will stay sharper because you’re seeing words spelled over and over again.

You will feel excited because you’re experiencing the “NEW” once again.

When you were a kid EVERYTHING WAS EXCITING TO YOU!

It was all exciting because you had never done it before!

But now life is repetitive, and the daily grind can make us feel like we are simply floating through life waiting to die.

It can become depressing at times.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, success is about the experiences and feelings we get of excitement in life. It’s not strictly monetary gain.

Rich people are depressed too, don’t let the pretty pictures of perfect lives fool you!

So that is my secret on the easiest way to feel good about life aside from working out and feeling powerful.

Now, this is going to be a little challenging because you have to pick 1 new thing each day.

Some things can be small, others can be big.

The larger experiences may cost money so I say to spread them out among the smaller things so every so often you can hit something extreme as well.

This could be skydiving, zip-lining, white water rafting, paintball, or climbing a new mountain and hanging a hammock up between some trees and just chilling out!

That’s it, that’s my big secret out of the bag, pick something new and do it, taste it, listen to it, and take life in while taking action.

You will become a better person for it, more knowledgeable, more desirable to be around, and more attractive to people.

And when you find a woman that is decent and you can let her in on your life of constantly providing new experiences, she will become happy to be around you.

Other men will seem boring to her, and in a world full of sheep you’ll be the wolf!

Women are chameleons, they change colors with the environment.

Provide an exciting life for yourself and let her in on it and she won’t want to go anywhere else but with you.

Trust me, I’ve been married 14 years now and I know what I’m talking about here!

Fuck doing the same shit everyday, the clock is ticking away right now as I’m writing this!

Anyone that wants to share a new experience with me is encouraged to leave their new experience in the comments.

Let’s help each other out and bounce ideas off one another! Lets kick life’s ass together!

Experiences and EMPOWERMENT will develop you as a whole unit.

A working unit of knowledge, muscle, and happiness in life! I’m going to hold myself accountable to this as well.

I’ll go first, today I said fuck the treadmill and walked my dog through a new trail in the woods around a small lake I’ve never been around before.

Who is next to share something?

-JD