When life feels like sh*t: notes from my happier self
From the good days: how to get through the bad ones.
When I was feeling good, I was writing down notes to myself for times when I inevitably feel bad. Practical tips for what could lift my spirits or get me through a day. Here are my notes from my upbeat me to my really down me.
Some of these things are tied to how I process the world and understand what is happening to me. They are partially tied to my philosophy of life and finding meaning, energy, and purpose in life. They might not work for you. But look at them as a tool and inspiration. I would guess that doing these practices and thinking through some ideas will not make you worse.
Just a heads-up: This post is a collection of thoughts I've been saving for a long time. It’s not a reaction to one specific thing happening in my life right now, good or bad.
Short-term, little effort, practical tools
Hitting the brakes in the moment so you do not derail or break down in stressful situations and during the hard days. With these, you can be "better" in minutes, or seconds, or at least stop spiralling. Take them as a tape over a hole, through which all that "shit" flows into your life. These tape over the hole a bit and stop the flow of "problems".
Breathe
Your body is connected to your mind. When you get scared and stressed, your heartbeat increases, muscles become stiff, and your field of vision narrows. You are getting ready to fight or flight. Or you have an erotic thought, your genital area becomes flooded with blood, and other bodily signs show up. This is your mind influencing your body.
It's good to be aware that this mind-body connection is a two-way road. You can use your body to calm your mind.
If you close your eyes, you remove some stimuli. Focus on your breath and start breathing really slowly. You can use the box breathing technique. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold again for 4 seconds. By forcing yourself into this breathing, you are sending a signal through your body to calm your mind. Other parts of the body and its responses to stress start to ease up.
Relax your muscles, eyes, and face, focus on individual muscles throughout your body and face. Again, you are putting your body into the state of relaxation, which in turn, will start the cycle of mind and body relaxation.
Physiological sigh
Ever noticed yourself take a big sigh when you’re stressed or after a cry? That’s your body using the physiological sigh: a built-in reset for your nervous system.
Here’s how to do it deliberately: take one deep inhale through your nose as much as you can, add a quick second “top-up” inhale, then exhale slowly and fully through your mouth. Do it once or twice and you’ll usually feel calmer immediately.
Why does it work? The double inhale reopens tiny air sacs in the lungs, and the long exhale clears out excess carbon dioxide. This shifts your body out of stress mode and into calm mode fast. Unlike slower practices like box breathing, the physiological sigh works in seconds.
First described in the 1930s and recently studied at Stanford, it’s now one of the most science-backed breathing tools for stress relief. The best part? It’s fast, free, natural, and always with you.
Think of it as your instant stress reset button: double inhale, slow exhale, done. I do it occasionally during the day at work or when relaxing at home. It's a nice little pause for your body and mind.
Cold water in your face
If you have a sink close by, a splash of cold water in the face can help you focus and bring you into the moment. It helps you to slow down in the moment and calms you down. That's it.
Mid-term, mid effort fixes
With short-term fixes, you hit the brakes and stopped the spiraling. If you see a bit of release with them, you have a sign that you are on a good path. If short-term fixes did not help, try moving up the ladder.
Think of these practices: as with the short-term solutions above, we stopped the flow of the problem, but they still left some leakage. These give a stronger tape that can hold the flow and leakage, for the given amount of pressure.
These are repeated practices or lifestyle changes that require you to put in some effort and time, but they will generally give you mental resilience to handle your life and mind. Try them, but don't forget, work on long-term resilience.
No drugs, alcohol, coffee, vapes, energy drinks
I know, it's easy to say. If you could, you would stop, right? Anyway, I'm talking from my experience and I have the ability and self-control to hold back any influence on my body that raises my stress. In general, I refrain from drugs most of the time, I do not smoke, drink no energy drinks at all, and drink a couple of glasses of wine or beer roughly once a month. Do not worry, I do have my vices, just not in this area. However, I do drink a lot of coffee.
When I'm in difficult situations that cannot be resolved fast enough, I know I need a clear mind and functioning body, as close to my "natural baseline" as is normal. I dial back anything that influences my feelings and bodily sensations. The first thing to go is coffee. I turn my diet into lighter food, that's easier to digest. Again, I'm eating mostly healthily. I just raise my bar for the quality of food I put into my body.
So what could you do? Stopping all together if you are addicted to nicotine, caffeine, other substances, or energy drinks that have become habitual to you, is probably too much to ask, as you are probably already in a stressful situation and bad state. But try to hold back one-tenth first, or limit your window. Start by for example not drinking coffee after 2 pm (or at least 4 pm), so your body will have roughly 10 hours to digest it before you go to sleep.
Ask yourself this though: How much do you do this behaviour because you feel bad, and how much do you feel bad because you do this behaviour? Do not beat yourself up, and you should not feel weak, or bad, by answering this question. But it is a thought you can work on later.
Journaling
Sit down, write down your thoughts. This was one of the latest practices I adopted. Took me time. Ugh, diary, writing your thoughts and emotions. What the hell, why? I've heard about it multiple times in the past, but still skipped it.
I realised its value when I was diligently preparing for therapy. I want to use the time I have with my therapist effectively, so I jot down my thoughts and ideas in the weeks leading up to the therapy and then create a synthesis of talking points I want to go over with him. This was an analytical approach, practical, but it gave me a glimpse of the value of sitting down and just writing.
It forces you to organise your thoughts at least enough to form coherent words and sentences. Do not worry about what you write, whether it makes sense, or if the thoughts are connected or not. It's something like a little therapy.
If you are worried about your privacy, that someone might see it, find a time and spot where you are alone. Write on paper. Then you can burn it (safely, please be careful).
I stress the importance of writing on paper, with a pen or pencil. Writing on your tablet or computer is still better than not writing, but if you want to listen to my words, go for the physical sensation of holding something, leaving a mark on a physical thing.
Walking
Walking is free. Go for a walk. if your body allows it. Feeling so bad that you cannot imagine going for a walk? Try to stand up from the bed or couch. Success? Try to go to the kitchen. Nice. Put on your shoes. Go out. Go for 500m to the end of the street. 1km, 2km, 5, 10.
Just the physical activity will be enough of a win. But want to get the most? For me, the most therapeutic experience is walking without headphones, music, or a podcast. Just listening to the city or nature. It grounds you, brings you into the current moment. I do walks with headphones and a podcast in my ears, but from time to time, I consciously put them away and just walk.
You can walk out some of your (bad/unproductive/negative) thoughts, feelings, and possibly problems.
Can't get yourself to go for a walk? Try to choose a slightly longer route when you are already going from point A to point B. Doctor's appointment, school. Take the stairs. Little wins count too, and they get your ball rolling.
Nature
Get out into nature. A garden, the woods, a field, a park. You do not have to walk, or do heavy activity. Just get in touch with nature. Listen to it. Touch the textures, the bark of the trees, the moss, the dew on leaves. Sit in the grass. Listen to the birds, insects. Take as long as you can, or need.
Sport
When I'm not sick or my body isn't the problematic part of my life and the culprit is instead somewhere in my mind, I tend to use sport and physical activity to keep stress down and refocus me on something more productive. Making sport and movement a foundational part of your life is a great life hack.
From my experience and nonscientific observation of others, the best combination is resistance training (lifting weights in some manner), something that raises your heart rate (running, cycling), and some kind of core/flexibility work, let's say yoga or pilates. If you want to go for the best combo, do them all.
I usually work out three times a week, and if everything is going to plan, then 5. During summer I go for a ride on my bike, if I'm honest, once every two weeks, and I go for a run about as often. Yoga probably once a month, but every training session, 3 times a week, starts with something like a mobility-focused warmup yoga and ends with static stretching. So from a physical perspective, I invest a lot of time and effort.
That's probably a lot more than average. It took me 10+ years to get to this routine. It's not perfect. But it works for me. Start with something you can stick to. Running tends to be the first choice, as you only need somewhat okay shoes for it. People tend to overdo it and push it without considering reason, recovery, or technique. Start small, start slow. If your body allows movement but your mind is the main culprit that is holding you back, try walking. I guess you already have everything for that.
Stretching
Take it reeeeally slow. Listen to your body. Stretching forces you to be in the moment, focus on your muscles, and what your body is telling you. What feels nice, what hurts. Listen to it. Feel it through. Breathe. Slow down. Do not push it.
Where to start? Yoga could be nice. Go to a guided hour. Check the type, find something for beginners, relaxing. Don't worry, you might feel awkward first, and you will, but no one gives a fuck about you. That's true in a yoga lesson, but it's also true in general in life when you are self-conscious.
Want to save money, or try it first? Here is a youtube video you could start with. Keep in mind this lady is way too fit and flexible compared to an average adult. Try to do the pose to the point where you feel comfortable. Just focusing on your body, breath, and sensations will do you good.
Clean up
If your mind and life are a mess, you can bring in a little peace by cleaning up your surroundings. Put away your things, change the sheets, clean up the kitchen, clean the bathroom, and declutter your home. You will definitely feel better in a clean room, house, or apartment than in a messy one.
People, or their absence
As an introvert, in most cases, I usually regenerate and recharge my batteries alone. So I tend to schedule time for myself, ideally whole empty days, mostly Saturdays, that take out stress from my life. On those days, I consider it something of a success when I do not have to say a word to a single person. These days can be used to find time for some practices mentioned in this blog post, or cleaning your apartment/room, but don't overthink it or make them productive for no reason. I do sometimes have days, when I do literally nothing (nothing I could call practical or productive). These days recharge my self-control and willpower, and I'll be able to use that energy in the real world to make good or better decisions that support my long-term wellbeing.
But, people are different and not all situations need the same solutions. Sometimes, after long solitude or social exhaustion from work, it helps to go out and meet more people. Try to find something that is not tied to harmful activities such as drinking, but a short retreat, yoga class, meeting with friends, or a pottery class. I don't know. Just an interaction that takes you out of your ordinary life and lets you meet other people who come from a different bubble, so they can break your gloomy one.
A word of caution
Many of the things above will make you feel legitimately better. But remember, those are still a kind of tape over a fracture that doesn't solve your issues long-term and doesn't give you long-term resistance, or resilience.
I often see (and sometimes myself) people running to these solutions and as they work, they go all in, 100%. Sport becomes addictive, because it's a good escape from responsibilities, and gives you both short and mid-term release of internal pain. Travel, nature, hiking—a great addition to normal life, but a bad escape. Ascetic life, self-control, productive channeling of energy short-term, but still an effort and energy being expressed in a specific way.
Without addressing the issue and doing some deeper introspection (which I'll be touching on in the long-term fixes), the shit that you stopped for a while will start to flow again. And, given the nature of this fix (not permanent and able to hold only lower pressure), it will flow with much higher intensity.
But take these practices and moments as a release, a temporary liminal space that gives you breathing room, so you can start building a stronger foundation for a more content you.
Long-term fixes, possibly big effort
Long-term fixes help us not just stop the flow of issues, but also give us tools and durability against even higher pressure and more problems pushing towards us. They can be a permanent solution, or help us to handle bigger challenges.
Therapy
I cannot imagine a person who would not benefit from therapy. I wrote about my journey and approach to therapy in a blog post I named Therapy saved me, so that probably tells a lot about my affinity for it. Finding a good therapist is not easy. Facing your "problems" and parts of you that hijack your mind and your life takes courage. Do it. It was the single best investment in my life and radically changed my quality of life long-term.
Books
Multiple benefits. They can transport you to a different world, give you the distilled lifetime experience of smart people, or give you tools and ideas you can use in your daily life. They can offer in-the-moment benefits or long-lasting change. Dividing my tips into two categories.
When you feel bad:
These books come handy when you're feeling down or are in a bad phase. They could lift you up or change your momentary state, and introduce better ideas. Even though these books are good in the moment and can give you a temporary release, they leave a mark and shape your thinking, leaving a long-term effect, or at least give you a tool you can come back to.
Lamp in the darkness by Jack Kornfield
A comforting guide. With meditative reflections and stories that help transform pain, loss, or fear into calmness, wisdom and compassion. Reading it can remind you that even in moments of despair, there’s a quiet light of hope within you that never goes out. This is the book I reached for, when I'm feeling really, really bad.
The wise heart by Jack Kornfield
An exploration of Buddhist psychology, it blends spiritual insight with practical guidance, showing how mindfulness, compassion, and awareness can help us navigate suffering and awaken our inner peace. Reading it in hard times can bring a sense of being grounded, reminding you that healing and understanding arise from turning gently toward your own experience.
Feeling good by Dr. David D. Burns
It's a classic book on cognitive behavioral therapy that teaches how our thoughts shape our emotions. It offers practical tools to identify and challenge negative thinking patterns, helping to lift depression and build emotional resilience. Reading it in tough times can give you both structure and hope. A way to regain control of your mood through understanding your own mind.
Everyday Dharma by Lama Willa Mille
A practical guide to bringing Buddhist wisdom into daily life. It helps you find meaning and peace amid ordinary struggles by showing how small shifts in perspective - toward mindfulness, compassion, and acceptance - can transform your experience. Reading it in difficult times can remind you that spiritual practice isn’t about escaping pain, but learning to live wisely and kindly within it.
When you feel at least kind of ok, ready for mental work. The are good for building resilience:
These books are a little harder to read and might challenge you a bit, so keep them for when you're not at your lowest. It's okay if it's a 'not-so-good' phase for you, but you are ready for some mental sparring. These books might help to shape your thinking or give you some mental tools to handle difficult times.
It's not always depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel
Offers a compassionate roadmap for understanding emotions beneath anxiety, anger, or numbness. Rooted in the “Change Triangle” framework, it helps you reconnect with core feelings and authenticity, showing that healing comes from feeling, not avoiding. It’s a powerful guide for building emotional resilience and deep self-awareness.
On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
A guide to understanding and moving through loss. Centered on the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It offers language and validation for the emotional chaos that follows death or major change. Reading it helps you see grief not as something to fix, but as a natural, transformative process that can open the heart to healing and renewed meaning. Very hard to read, but when grief inevitably hits you, the framework and knowledge from this book will make it a little bit more bearable.
No bad parts by Dr. Richard Schwartz
ntroduces Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, revealing how every part of us, even the ones we dislike, has a positive intention. By learning to listen to and integrate these inner parts, we develop emotional balance, self-compassion, and true inner harmony, building resilience from within. One of my favorite books, for me a life-changing one and one of my most recommended ones.
How to do the work by Dr. Nicole LePera
Empowers you to break free from unconscious patterns rooted in trauma and conditioning. Blending psychology and holistic practices, it offers tools for self-healing, emotional regulation, and authentic living, helping you become your own healer and create lasting change.
Myth of normal by Dr. Gabor Maté
Challenges the modern definition of “normal,” arguing that much of our distress stems from a culture disconnected from emotional truth and compassion. It explores a deep link between mind, body, and environment, and how to find healing by reclaiming authenticity and connection in our current world. For me, the content of this book is really valuable, but it's not an easy read as I found it full of fluff and could have been much shorter. Anyway, it's probably worth it..
Meditation
My journey with meditation is on par with therapy in terms of its impact on my quality of life and wellbeing. It's multipurpose and can be viewed and used as some kind of little self-therapy. If you read No Bad Parts, you'll be equipped to do wonders for your inner world and bring peace to any situation or life decision.
I meditate to:
- calm down
- clear my thoughts and arrange my inner monologue
- listen to my needs and wants
- make decisions
- find areas of life and myself to focus on and improve
- some other "too esoteric stuff" to share without giving proper context
For a start, I recommend the app called The Way. Even friends who never meditated, or struggled with being able to meditate, gave me good reviews and were thankful. It's unique because it doesn’t just offer quick mindfulness exercises to choose from, it guides you on a structured inner journey of self-discovery and emotional healing. It draws from authentic Zen practice yet is designed for modern life. Henry Shukman, who leads you on "The Way", is a Zen teacher, blending inner wisdom with modern psychology.
Psychology, Philosophy and Mindset
Studying and understanding your mind helps you to work with your thoughts, thought-patterns, and unconscious behaviours. Together with meditation and introspection, you will be able to "watch" yourself think and behave, and have a momentary pause before doing, saying, deciding, or running with the first thought.
Pair it with some philosophy, framing of reality, and some concepts that will help you to grasp what you and every other being goes through, and you will have a tool at hand that helps you to study every situation and everything that happens to you.
The most valuable philosophy in this regard that I can relate to is Stoicism paired with ideas from Buddhism and Buddhist practices. Go, start studying. If you have to start somewhere I suggest:
Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment
The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual
You will find many thoughts and exercises in your reading that will speak to you and your situation. Every re-read gives you something new for your life, because you change between every read.
Example thoughts I use
Examples of thoughts I use to change my current state and approach to situations. They might not speak to you, but that is why you should read and study more philosophy and question your current thoughts and mindset. To find the mental tools that do you some good.
Amor Fati
Stoic practice and thought, amor fati means to fully embrace everything that happens, good or bad, as necessary and even beautiful. It’s not just acceptance or resilience to plow through hard times, it’s active love for your circumstances, as if you had chosen them yourself. It teaches you to change your mindset and approach to your current state. It is not necessarily just changing your view on your current status, but also finding some kind of joy, positive emotion, or love as it is in the phrase, in even the bad things happening to you. Why would you love it? Because it's part of your life. It can help to strengthen your patience, resilience, humility, and clarity. It helps you to accept the reality and not fight it, to embrace it instead of trying to push it away, which is not possible. Have trust that these hard times will have meaning in the future and you'll look back at this point with some kind of smile, reverence for yourself for making it through. It must be this way. Why? Simply, because it is. It's fate. Why fight, if you can choose love?
I will die anyway, eventually
Everything is temporary. So is my time alive. Reminding yourself that you will die anyway can help you pull out of the moment, the tunnel vision that leads only to your current problem, and helps you see your life in a bigger picture. Nothing lasts forever, this shall pass, too. Depending on the problem, a reminder of death clarifies what truly matters and reminds you what you (can and cannot) control.
How am I part of the suffering I am living now?
This shifts the focus from blaming the outside world and circumstances, to taking responsibility and looking at your own behaviours and thought patterns. Taking ownership of your situation. What do you expect from life when you have no reason to expect to be given anything? Where is the difference between what you want and how you behave to reach your goals? What values do you declare, and what values do you really live?
Get your dopamine addiction in check
In the short-term solutions, I mentioned scaling back your drug, caffeine, or nicotine usage. Those are harmful things you willingly put into your body. But many people do similar things to their brains. Things designed and with characteristics that will keep you wanting more. What am I thinking about? Excessive games, social media, porn.
Games, social media, and porn can be seen as fun distractions, quick escapes from reality. They are engineered, or are part of industries built upon, hijacking the motivational circuits in your brain that used to push humans to hunt, explore, and build.
Note: I do not think that games and social media are all bad and have only negative aspects if used and enjoyed consciously.
Every time you win, get a like, or see something stimulating, your brain gets a quick dopamine hit. It feels good for a moment. But the more often you flood those receptors, the more your baseline drops. You start needing more stimulation just to feel “normal.”
The quiet moments, like reading, working, walking, or thinking will get more difficult. That’s the real cost: the ability to feel alive without constant stimulation, to stay calm with your thoughts and body. The part of your mind that once could sit down, focus, and create something real gets replaced by a feeling of restlessness and a desire for the next reel, game, or video.
When you pull back from those instant-reward systems, you give your brain time to reset its sensitivity.
That’s the tradeoff: short-term hits vs. long-term energy. You can’t have both. One feeds the surface, the other builds depth.
So, maybe, put down your phone, stop scrolling and try reading, walking, cooking, drawing, or just sitting and being bored. It might be more difficult than it sounds, but it's rewarding.
Btw, if you have difficulty blocking, or not using and visiting apps or websites by your own force of will, try using technology to defeat technology, and use an app like Freedom, which helps you to block, or create a schedule. For me personally it works often to go 100% with something, but it might be a productive approach to give yourself timeslots you stick to. Eg. games for 2 hours/day, social media not before 10 am and not after 6 pm, or if your addiction is in the direction of porn, try to give yourself some windows for this activity and try decreasing their frequency over time.
Sleep
Just sleep. Regularly. For the length you need to feel refreshed, mentally and physically. I already mentioned scaling back from abusing your body and mind, but here it comes into play.
Sleep isn’t rest. It’s repair. For body and mind. Your brain uses those hours to clean up the mess from the day - literally washing away toxins, "saving" memories, balancing hormones, and resetting dopamine levels. Without that reset, your mind and body won't recover. You start the next day already tired, unfocused, anxious, and craving stimulation, dopamine hits, and sugar to compensate. This leads to more behaviour that doesn't do you any good.
Lack of sleep destroys emotional regulation. You get irritated faster, your willpower drops, and everything feels heavier. One bad night is fine. A few weeks of poor sleep, and you start losing your edge, your focus, your optimism. You’re not lazy, you’re sleep-deprived.
Cut back caffeine after 2 pm. Cut out energy drinks. Avoid alcohol. No social media and games before sleep. Preferably no TV/series to engage your brain. Find what helps you wind down and relax. Add physical activity if you can, but give yourself a 2-3 hour window to finish heavier training before sleep. A quick workout, run, or yoga should be okay. Earplugs. Eye masks. Yoganidra. Cool down your room. Warm shower, cool room. Racing mind? Meditation. Books. Journaling. Just quick tips and keywords, you can start digging into to find solutions for better sleep.
Your day is often a reflection of your sleep quality. If your sleep is shit... there you have an answer.
Congrats, bad times means growth
If you've made it this far, you're already doing the work. Just by reading this, you're looking for the tools. Good job.
These are the notes from my clearer days, passed back in time to my stormy ones. They're my proof that the good days do return. It’s hard, but try to appreciate the moments when it's bad. Hard times are an inevitable catalyst for change. Those are the moments when you are growing, learning things about yourself you’d never discover when life is easy.
And then, enjoy the moments of calm. When you feel good, clear, and energized, that's your cue. Grab a notebook and start writing your own list. What thoughts and practices work for you? That will become the most powerful manual you'll ever own, a guide from your happier self. Don't let happy times just go to waste.
This will pass, too. It's going to be all right.
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