10 Ways to Snap Out of it When You’re Feeling, blah

Life can be good, but it takes work to keep it that way. Ask a few miserable people what they’re doing to make their lives better and try to find the pattern. The content people who’ve mastered life might be hiding, but if you ask a few of them you’ll find a surprising fact: it’s different for everybody. The common thread is that people who are miserable put in a lot of work to stay that way and people who are happy put in a lot of work to stay that way. The difference is usually working to do nothing or working to do something. So as long as you’ve got something you’ll be ok. One caveat, however, is that everybody, sometimes, feels blah. Here’s ten steps that can snap you out of it and renew your resolve to improve your health:

1. Take a long hard look in the mirror. Shave, do your makeup, take a selfie or two. You’re all you’ve got and you’re not doing yourself any favors by ignoring what you look like.
2. Care for others. Need cat food. Son or daughter crying? Get up and take care of that!
3. Apply a principle to everything you do for as long as you can remember it. A good one is to rephrase everything you “have to do” as something you “get to do.” Need to get your mail and pay your bills? Try getting to use your legs, that not everybody has, so you can get to check mail sent to your address, which not everybody has, so you can get to pay for the things or services you appreciate with your hard-earned money, which not everybody has… And remember you don’t need to be humble to be grateful, you haven’t been relying on luck. You’re pretty awesome!
4. Do nothing. Do you feel like doing nothing? Do you really? Drop whatever you’re doing, silence your phone, turn off the tv and think for about five minutes.
5. Put a physical pen to a physical piece of paper. It doesn’t matter what you write or draw, let it surprise you.
6. Put some music on, really loud. If you’re in your car, put the windows down and turn up the radio. If you’re at home, connect your phone to the stereo, turn the ringer off and groove, if you’re elsewhere put some headphones on and hit shuffle.
7. Appreciate the irony of your situation, find humor in it. Be careful not to give yourself an easy excuse for your blah behavior, but there’s nothing wrong with laughing about the fact you already know that exercising, eating right, and socializing will cure your feeling of not wanting to exercise, eat right, and socialize.
8. Sleep. Not too much. Ideally, at an appropriate time and for an appropriate length of time.
9. Look at animals, in person or on the Internet. Pets, cuteoverload.com. These are things that are scientifically proven to extend the amount of time you will live.
10. Call someone and pace while you talk to them. Even if you start out twiddling your feet on the couch, you’ll get moving. And a sedentary lifestyle is a bigger risk factor for cancer than smoking, alcohol, heredity, and diet combined.

So get busy living!