British writer Matt Hague suffered from depression at the age of 24, and later embarked on the road of self-salvation through writing. In his book "Reasons to Live", he shared 40 life suggestions that he found useful. The excerpts are as follows. This dose of "other people's medicine" is given to everyone who is struggling to live.
How to live
- 40 suggestions that I find useful
Author/[UK] Matt Haig
1. Enjoy happiness when it appears.
2. Sip slowly, don’t gobble it up.
3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less and rest more.
4. You can't change the past. This is basic physics.
5. Watch out for Tuesday and October.
6. Kurt Vonnegut was right: "Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation ever discovered by man."
7. Listen more, talk less.
8. Don’t feel guilty when you have nothing to do. Maybe work is doing more harm to the world than doing nothing. But you can perfect your idleness and make it aware.
9. Be aware that you are breathing.
10. No matter where you are, at any time, try to discover beauty. A face, a poem, the clouds outside the window, a graffiti painting, a wind field. Beauty can purify the mind.
11. Hate is a meaningless emotion. Like eating a scorpion as punishment for stinging you.
12. Go for a run and do some yoga.
13. Take a shower before noon.
14. Looking at the sky. Remind yourself how vast the universe is. Seize every opportunity to feel the vastness and distance, it will make you see your own insignificance.
15. Kindness.
16. Realize that ideas are just ideas. If an idea doesn't make sense, argue with it, even if you can't figure it out. You are an observer of your mind, not a victim.
17. Don’t watch TV aimlessly. Don’t go on social networking sites aimlessly. Be conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Don't take TV less seriously, take it more seriously so you'll watch less. Unbridled entertainment will distract you.
18. Sit down, lie down, don’t move, do nothing. Observe and listen to your head. Don’t judge what’s going on in your head, just let it be, like the Snow Queen in Frozen.
19. Don’t worry too much.
20. Look at the trees, get close to the trees, plant trees. (Because trees are awesome.)
21. Listen to that yoga instructor, "Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet."
22. Live, love, let go.
23. The mathematics of wine is power operation. The more you drink, the more you want to drink. If it's hard for you to stop at one drink, it's even harder to stop at three. Addition is multiplication.
24. Watch out for that gap. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Just thinking about it makes that gap widen and you risk falling into it.
25. Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read. Enjoy every word, sentence, paragraph. Don't expect it to end, or ever.
26. At the deepest level, there is no medicine in the universe that makes you feel better than being kind to others.
27. Listen to what Hamlet, the most famous depressive in literature, said to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "There is no good or evil in the world, it is thought."
28. Allow others to love you. Believe in this love. Live for them even if it feels pointless to you.
29. You don’t need the world to understand you. it does not matter. Some people will never truly understand what they have not experienced, but some will. Be grateful to those who understand you.
30. Jules Verne wrote "Infinite Life". It is a world of love and emotion as vast as the sea. If we immerse ourselves in it, we will find infinity and the space we need to survive.
31. Three o'clock in the morning is not the time to try to sort out your life.
32. Remember: you are not weird at all. You are a human being, and all your behaviors and feelings are in line with nature, because you are an animal in nature. You are nature. You are a ape . You live in this world, and the world lives in your heart. Everything is connected.
33. Don’t believe in good or bad, winning or losing, victory or defeat, highs and lows. At your lowest and highest, whether you are happy or desperate, calm or angry, there is a core "you" that remains the same. This "you" is the most important.
34. Don't worry about the time lost due to despair. After surviving despair, the value of time will double.
35. Be transparent with yourself. Build a glass house for your mind. observe.
36. Read Emily Dickinson, read Graham Greene , read Italo Calvino, read Maya Angelou . Read whatever you want to read, just read it. Books are possibilities, escape routes. They give you opportunities when you have no choice. Every book is a home for the displaced mind.
37. On a sunny day, if you can be outdoors, just be outdoors.
38. Remember: the key to life on Earth is change. Cars rust, book pages yellow, technology becomes obsolete, caterpillars turn into butterflies, nights turn into days, and depression fades away.
39. When you feel that you are too busy and have no time to rest, that is when you need to find time to rest the most.
40. Be brave, be strong, breathe, live. You’ll thank yourself for who you are today.
