6 Habits You Must Stop to Beat Depression

Depression is chemical imbalance in your brain but chemical imbalance is not from your birth. There was a time when you were not depressed rather you were happy and peaceful but over a period of time you developed a few habits consciously or unconsciously which led you to depression. Now those habits have become automatic process and part of your life, which seems normal to you. Those habits are the actual reason for your unhappiness in your life. If you want to get rid of your depression and unhappiness then instead of focusing on restoring those chemical imbalances in your brain, you should get into the root causes which led chemical imbalances to happen.6 habits you must change immediately to get rid of depression are

1. Staying with negative people
Our mind is nothing but collection of beliefs. Beliefs are the operating system of our mind and our thoughts quality depend on quality of our beliefs. Wrong beliefs generate wrong thoughts and wrong thoughts lead to wrong action.
The problem with negative people is that, they see everything from negative angle. When you stay with negative people, they bombard your mind with their negative thoughts. At first you will try to resist those negative thoughts but after a long period of time your mind will just give up and start accepting those negative thoughts. After sometime, you’ll notice that your beliefs started getting negative as same as your negative friends.

2. You stopped playing and exercisingRemember the last time when you played, you felt very happy and energetic but these days we don’t have time for playing or exercising. Exercise is very important, it increases happiness hormones level in our brain. We always misunderstand exercise with body building. Exercise is not having celebrity like physique. Exercise is way of increasing blood flow in our brain, getting fresh oxygen and moving all our body parts. If you don’t exercise then no medication or no achievement can make you feel fresh and happy. If you don’t have opportunity or time for exercise then do at-least one thing, RUN. Run a lot in the open air.

3. Getting exposed to the negative messagesWhether you like it or not, the movies, TV programs you watch, the songs you listen will program your mind with the quality of the programs. If you constantly expose yourself to the negative messages then it will turn your beliefs into negative. Negative beliefs will lead to negative thoughts and hence unhappiness and sadness. So, before it becomes too late, withdraw yourself from negatives sources. Ask yourself whatever you are watching, listening or reading something joyful and helpful or it is just entertainment which is full of negative messages.

4. Not exposing yourself to positive sourcesIf negative sources can make your beliefs negative then positive sources also have the power to turn your negative beliefs into positive one. Read inspiring books, success stories of great people. Positive messages will program your mind with empowering beliefs. Remember the last time when you watched something motivational, you felt motivated and energetic. But one day exposure is not enough, you will need to get regular exposure of positive messages so that it counters all the wrong beliefs you’re holding right now.

5. Not setting goalsWhen you’re depressed, you’ll feel like that you won’t achieve anything. Life is stuck to one place and you don’t have energy or you are not able to move forward from that point. At that point, you have to break that inertia and move ahead forcefully. Start setting small goals everyday and give your full efforts to accomplish it. Then make your goal bigger and bigger. Let’s say you start with goal of walking 1 KM today or reading 1 hour non-stop and next day 2 hours. It will help you to move forward.

6. Eating junk foodsStop eating fast foods and processed foods. Control your diets. Eat healthy foods and have more omega-3-fatty acids. Omega-3-fatty acids acts as anti-depressants. Common sources of omega-3-fatty acid are fish, walnuts, beans, fish oil, poultry etc. (Google omega-3-fatty acid for more information). Having healthy diets will regulate your brain chemicals and body functions.