1. Increase physical activity. Being physically active increases your body’s production of hormones like serotonin, which improves your mood and helps you better withstand stress. Additionally, exercise improves sleep, reduces emotional eating habits and helps to decrease blood pressure. Exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous to be effective either, and a 20 minute brisk walk daily can provide significant stress-reduction improvements.

2. Learn to meditate. Don’t picture it as sitting with legs crossed, chanting to an invisible unknown. Meditation doesn’t have to be weird but it can be a powerful way to combat stress. Listening to soft music, relaxing sounds or just the sound of nature can give you a moment to stop and de-stress.

3. Breathe. It sounds simple, but most people don’t realize that they breathe in a stressful way, from their chest rather than from deep down in the stomach. Slow down your breathing, become conscious of it and make an effort to use your stomach to breathe, instead of your chest.

4. Journal. No one has to see what you’ve written, but writing for yourself is a way to bring out what’s eating you inside. Writing is one of the oldest forms of therapy and putting what you can’t necessarily say into words allows you a place to express yourself freely and reduce stress.

5. Get socially involved. Its a proven fact that people who surround themselves with a strong social support network are less likely to experience high levels of chronic stress. It isn’t that they are protected from stressful situations, but instead, they appear to be better at mediating its effects.

6. Get more flexible. Think about how a rigid object like a stick withstands the stress of bending. Your body too, can have the same reaction to stress and becoming more physically flexible can reduce the effects of stress that can break you.

7. Laugh. Taking the time to read or watch something funny or simply seeing the funny parts of your life and enjoying them can significantly reduce stress and improve your ability to cope with it. Laughter also stimulates the release of endorphins that can improve your overall mood.

8. Make a bucket list and begin to fulfill your dreams. No, you don’t have to be dying to create a bucket list, it’s simply a visual representation of your dreams and it can change over time. Putting your list on paper helps you visualize what you need to do to realize your dreams, and what better way to destress than to have a dream come true?

9. Purge your life of clutter. We all hang on to things we don’t necessarily need, but when we are hanging on to a lot of those things, it creates clutter than can actually cause stress. Work on organizing things first and be realistic about getting rid of things. A sentimental object doesn’t necessarily need to be discarded but can it be displayed in a way that doesn’t resemble chaos?

10. Perform random acts of kindness. It isn’t a cliche, doing things for others without expectation of return reduces stress and improves mood.

Going Out With Your Friends

One of the many paradoxes of depression is the fact that the more depressed you become the less you want to go out with your friends and do activities that you enjoy, which in turn is many times exactly what you need to do do overcome your blues. Even if you don’t feel like socializing, force yourself to do so anyway. Don’t be passive about it either, be the one who invites others and initiates the social activities. The reason this helps to keep you happy is because when you’re with friends you are able to escape the self absorbed mindset that is easy to fall into when you’re alone, causing you to dwell on your problems. Also when you do activities with your friends that you typically enjoy, it gives you a critical boost of positive feelings.

Exercising

In addition to the health benefits did you know that exercising is also good for you mentally? When you exercise you release a chemical in your brain known as endorphins that reduce your perception of pain, both physical and emotional. This can be a potent way to give yourself a boost if you’re feeling down. Another benefit of exercising is that it is a great way to improve your self esteem and self image. Keep a log book documenting your progress and you’ll feel proud of yourself as you are able to see yourself losing weight, gaining strength and gaining muscular endurance. For a double dose of good times try playing team sports with a local league or with your friends. This way not only do you get the benefits of exercise but also the benefits of socializing as well.

Volunteer Work

Relativity is the idea that something is only measurable in relation to something else. This being the case, if you can get involve in volunteer work in your community you can make a positive impact in the lives of others while at the same time seeing that your problems aren’t as bad as you think they are in the grand scheme of things. In addition to feeling good about helping others you’ll also be delighted to receive compliments from friends and family who are proud of you for your efforts. There are several different types of volunteer work that you can do. Some examples are doing a food drive, joining a group to raise awareness of a certain issue and coaching a kid’s little league sports team. As with most activities that keep you busy to keep you happy the more social your volunteer work is the better.

Bonus Tip

One thing you should remember is that there is a huge difference between clinical depression and feeling down. While keeping busy with positive activities to stay happy can be effective for both you should see a professional if you suspect you have clinical depression. In the end, staying busy doing positive activities may be more effective as a part of a larger treatment regimen to overcome depression.

Life is hard. The world can sometimes feel like a pretty hostile place. Everyday presenting us with new and more challenging obstacles, more disappointments, more negativity. This world is a cold and lonely place, void of hope or fortune.

If this is the world one insists on seeing, then this will be the world he will see. The truth is that this is a biased view, a negative view. If one allows negativity to take over their attitude, it opens the door to more negative thoughts and events, and shuts it on the positive. The key is learning how to avoid being negative, and cutting out that thinking at it’s core. Break it, just like you would any bad habit.

Here are some tips and tricks on how to avoid being negative:

•  Ask yourself if your friends and acquaintances are positive or negative influences? If the answer is negative, consider how much time you choose to spend with this person, and it’s affect on your attitude. Surrounding yourself with more negative minded influences will only further reinforce your own negative thoughts, try to spend more time with positive minded friends, or even consider making new ones.

• Boredom can very easily lead to depression and negativity. Actively try your hardest to break your habits. This can mean changing your scenery, your routines, your activities. If you always wanted to see Paris, consider taking some time off to see Paris. But it can also be much simpler than that. Even small changes like trying new cuisines, exercise routines, embarking on day trips or viewing local sights can work wonders to break the habits of day to day life. Habits that can grow to become negativity.

• Stay active. This isn’t exclusive to exercising or trying to stay in shape, just running simple errands can work wonders to keep your mind focused on something other than negativity. If there is nothing you need done today, try asking a close friend of family member if they need help with anything, they’ll appreciate the gesture and chances are there is always something to do if you try to find it.

• Get in touch with your spirituality. Whether this means practicing religion you may choose to follow, or even getting into simple meditation or yoga. This can help strengthen your relationship with your beliefs, whatever they may be, and in the process learn a great a deal about yourself. Daily meditation can help turn down the noise of daily life and make the day seem less overwhelming.

• Put yourself in perspective. Most of the harsh realities of life that make you negative are things everyone also must goes through everyday. Think about a close friend or family member, chances are they have also gone through many challenges in their life. This may seem a depressing fact at first, but it’s also a reality one must accept and hopefully overcome. Sometimes realizing you’re not alone in being depressed is just the kick you need to make a change in your life.

Cutting out negativity at the thinking level is the first step in cutting out the negativity in your life. You’ll find that if you can master you’re attitude and learn how to avoid being negative, there is no hardship or conflict in the world that can ruin your day, or your week, or your month.

• 1. Find a new hobby. Finding a new hobby is a great way to meet people that have the same interests that you have. Join a local group or class that pertains to your hobby. If you have always dreamed about trying rock climbing, then join a rock climbing class. While you are in the group or class, ask other people if they would like to get together to practice your new hobby.

• 2. Smile. Smiling is such a simple task, yet so many people forget to do it. When you smile, people are more likely to be drawn to you. Let’s face it, we don’t always feel like smiling. Make an effort to consciously smile, at least ten times a day. Even when you are doing mundane tasks such as grocery shopping, put a smile on your face. You will be surprised at how contagious smiling is. When people smile back at you, take that as an opportunity to strike up a conversation that might lead to a new friendship.

• 3. Join an online forum. If you are too shy or just do not have the time to go out, joining an online chat room or forum is a great way to make new friends, while you are in the comfort of your own home. There are online forums for every subject imaginable. Once you join an online forum, participate in it! Don’t just be a lurker. Speak out and talk in it. You will probably be shocked at how easy it is to make friends with total strangers, once you start talking on forums. Of course, you need to be careful not to give out too much private information when you are on an online forum.

• 4. Volunteer. Volunteering is an amazing way to make new friends. People, who take the time to volunteer, for a good cause, are usually very friendly people. When they are volunteering, they are also not under pressure to perform as if they are at a paying job. Since it is usually a relaxed atmosphere, volunteers are likely to start chatting with each other. If you are volunteering and no one starts talking to you, take the initiative and start talking to them.

• 5. Invite your co-workers to meet outside of work. Many people miss this great opportunity to make new friends. It is easy to keep your co-workers out your private life. However, people who do this, could be missing a change to make a new friend. If you have a co-worker, that seems nice, invite him or her out for lunch or a cup of coffee. You know that you already have at least one thing in common, since you already work together.

Medical professionals can tell you that if you are generally an unhappy person it can negatively affect your health. Unhappiness triggers the stress hormone and can lead to things like heart disease, high blood pressure, ulcers and depression. It would be irresponsible to neglect these vital aspects of our health and, lets face it, it can get darn expensive to pay those medical bills! Even something as simple as getting a pet such as a cat or dog can lower stress levels and lower blood pressure. In this case doing something to make you happy isn’t selfish but is generous as you are giving a home and offering love to an animal who is dying for the affection.

More often than not someone who is happy is someone who wants to share that happy feeling with others, and when we spread happiness to others it’s hard not to let even more happy feelings creep up on us. In our house we teach our son that doing things for others is just something we do and we enjoy every minute of making people smile. One mom blogger has begun a project (more appropriately a mission) to do ’100 Acts of Kindness’ at toddlerapproved.blogspot.com over the course of a month with her children. She posts the things they do and encourages her readers to join in the project. My son has had a great time making projects for the mailman, friends at church, his dad and his music teacher for no reason other than to make them happy. A woman at church is having a particularly rough time so we made her a jar filled with paper hearts as a way to share our love with her and she cried and said how thankful she was to warrant such a special gift. My son was so overjoyed at giving her this gift that I can’t help but think happy has to equal good.

Whether you are doing something good for someone else or you have chosen to kick back with Sex & the City and a glass of wine remember that making yourself happy will keep you happy and ultimately spread to those around you. After all, who wants to hang out with a guilt-ridden grouch anyway?