in late 2019 i started to feel depressed because i was spending too much time
digging into climate change. This only got worse when the pandemic rolled around and i started to
dive deep into the economic consequences that this was going to have on the world i found
myself struggling with things like motivation and especially my mood i was a lot angrier for
many many months but recently things have been getting a lot better today i want to show you
how i was able to cure my depression and it all comes down to three things now just a disclaimer
i am not a licensed therapist i'm just some guy on the internet speaking about my personal experience
the form of depression that i had was not a very severe one if you feel like you're in need of real
help i suggest you find a licensed professional to talk to now the first thing i did was double down
on the world's healthiest drug what do i mean by this well what if i told you that there's a drug
that will make you feel energized make you feel happier for the rest of the day make you feel
like you've accomplished something make you sleep better at night make you feel more confident raise
your self-esteem and on top of all of that this is a drug that has almost no negative consequences
if such a drug existed surely you would want to take it every day to feel better
right well it does exist it's called working out working out is one of the most powerful keystone
habits out there which basically means if you stick to it you'll end up adopting a bunch of
other good habits such as eating healthier which when combined tends to boost your overall sense
of well-being now of course i know a lot of you are thinking but the gyms are closed
okay just get a pull-up bar put some textbooks in a book bag and follow a home workout routine
there's plenty of good ones floating around online for free many of them don't even require equipment
personally i recommend checking out jeff nippert's channel he really knows his stuff
but the most important thing you need to do is figure out exactly what you'll be doing during
the workouts and then physically writing down when and where you're going to start for example i'm
going to do jeff's back routine tomorrow at 1pm in my living room the second thing i did that helped
me overcome my depression was to go out of my way to talk to more people and i don't mean just
messaging but actually jumping on the phone and having real conversations a lot of my childhood
friends have been trying to build businesses at home with all their extra free time and i've been
talking to them on a daily basis trying to lend a hand now the reason this is so important is
because having deep meaningful conversations helps you feel fulfilled and serves as a healthy way to
relieve stress all of us are under more stress nowadays because of the current world situation
and this is causing us to turn to our bad habits such as drinking smoking and jerkin as a way to
cope it's much healthier to cope by socializing pick up the phone and reach out to people that you
care about that you haven't spoken to in a while i know some of you are a bit hesitant because you
don't want to bother others but i found that people are actually more receptive nowadays
because we're all feeling lonelier than usual now i know some of you are thinking well i don't have
that many close friends i can't be calling the same person every single day and to some
extent you're right and i would usually suggest that you go out and meet some new people but we
can't really do that because of the current world situation luckily i have an alternative solution
you see we've been building up an online community with hundreds of members on discord we're holding
weekly events like book clubs improv classes debates game nights and much much more and it
only costs 10 dollars per month to be a part of it now i want to stress something very very important
here none of this money goes to me we are redistributing the monthly donations back to the
people in the server that are hosting the events which will allow for even more events to be hosted
down the line our goal is to have something going on every single day so that no matter what your
schedule is like you'll be able to find people to have deep and meaningful interactions with
the reason this is not free is simply because i believe in a concept called skin in the game
people take things more seriously when they have something on the line there's less trolling in
the server and people are much more mature you can learn more about our community by checking
out our patreon page which i'll link to in the description box below and finally the third
thing that helped me overcome my depression was finding hope you need to genuinely believe that
the future will be better in order for you to feel better this was something that i struggled
with a lot last year my obsession with climate change caused me to become a doomer basically i
was convinced that we only had a couple of years left before things got really really ugly and this
was extremely bad for my mental health i found myself indulging in destructive habits more often
because i figured what's the point of maintaining perfect health when there's no future now i'm sure
most of you are not battling with thoughts of the apocalypse but you're still probably worried about
your financial future your family the meaning of this all that sort of stuff in which case
here's a way for you to find hope you need to find or tell yourself a story that's believable
and then you need to take an active role in it i know this is a bit hard to digest so let me give
you an example you see i was able to find hope i was able to convince myself that the apocalypse
wasn't guaranteed by stumbling across a project that seems like it could be a viable solution
to climate change and the more i looked into it the stronger my belief in this story became the
more hope i started to gain now i took this even further by taking an active role in this story
you see i'm currently in the works of interviewing the lead researcher in order to spread awareness
for this entire project the fact that my actions will make a difference has given me even more
hope and a very strong sense of purpose now i have something to fight for you need to find something
similar you need a story that you can believe in and take part of and it doesn't have to be
something as dramatic as saving the world from the apocalypse it could be something humble like
working on yourself or your business so that you can turn your financial situation around so that
you can support your loved ones right that's a common story that a lot of people have you see
athletes all the time that work their butt off so that they can buy their mama home so she doesn't
have to work anymore stories about saving loved ones from future suffering are very very powerful
now if you're having a hard time figuring out what sort of story to tell yourself i suggest you check
out my video on the different forms of purpose in life which i will link to in the description
box below if you can come up with a story that aligns with one of the nine forms of purpose
that i cover in that video you should be able to find a lot more hope alternatively one of the best
ways to spark hope is by working on a skill and seeing progress this gives you hope that you'll
be able to make use of that skill to prosper in the future which is why this episode was
brought to you with the help of the people over at skillshare skillshare is an online learning
community with thousands of classes topics ranging from things like copywriting to animating speaking
of animating i know a lot of you have been asking about how we make these videos if you want to
learn exactly how some of our artists are doing this check out animation for illustration by libby
vanderblog on skillshare it's a beginner-friendly course that will introduce you to many of
the things we use for our videos skillshare is giving away access to their premium membership
to the first 1000 people who click on the link in the description box below after that it's only
around 10 a month which is incredibly affordable compared to what you would have to pay to learn
these skills in an in-person class i hope this video was helpful besides that guys stay tuned