The dishes are piled up, the bills are overdue, and you’re stewing over a spat with your partner. Your phone’s pinging nonstop: texts, headlines, spam. You haven’t exercised in days, and you don’t know when you’ll next have time.

Many of us feel the weight of everyday overwhelm. But if we try to overhaul our lives all at once — relationships, finances, and spiritual outlook — we’re likely to end up feeling even more defeated and distant from the relief we’re seeking. Then we blame ourselves.

“When our results fall short of our expectations, the inner critic finds an opening and steps on stage,” writes behavior scientist BJ Fogg, PhD, in Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything.

The problem isn’t our desire for change; it’s the scale of change we’re pursuing. Fogg’s book shows readers, step by step, how to get around that impasse and improve their lives by focusing on tiny changes.

“You could scold yourself down the path of change,” writes Fogg, who founded Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab. “Or you could make your life easier. You could start tiny.”

Taking small, intentional actions reminds us that we still have some agency and control, an important antidote to overwhelm.

“It boosts your mental health. It boosts how you’re able to show up and provide for other people,” explains home-organizing expert Shira Gill, ­author of LifeStyled: Your Guide to a More Organized and Intentional Life.

The next time you feel bogged down, try one of these strategies. Each can remind you there is something positive you can do in the moment, no matter how helpless you might feel.

As Fogg notes, “Feeling successful offers an antidote to the go-big-or-go-home culture, and a new lens through which to see yourself.”

5 Tips for Starting to Move for Mental Health

Initiating an exercise routine when you’re struggling with your mental health can be difficult. Experts offer advice for overcoming inertia.

1) Set an intention.

Acknowledge how you’re feeling ­before you commit to movement, says Life Time trainer Austin Head. “The first step to change is awareness.”

Once you acknowledge the issues you’re facing, set an intention to act. That act could be taking a group fitness class, going for a quick walk, or pausing to do a few yoga poses in your living room.

 

2) Lead with self-compassion.

“Intuitively, people know that movement would be good for their mood,” says integrative psychiatrist Henry Emmons, MD. However, he adds, it can be extremely difficult to mobilize yourself when you’re in the middle of a depressive episode. So, treat yourself with compassion.

There may be plenty of days when you need to take it easy; other days, you may be unable to exercise at all. Try not to judge yourself for it.

“It’s important that guilt or shame doesn’t get added on top of the difficulty the person has with getting themselves moving,” he says.

 

3) Ditch the all-or-nothing mindset.

Going in with a high-stakes mindset is a prescription for failure when you’re not feeling your best. “A lot of people have that all-or-nothing mindset when they’re in low states of mental health,” says therapist and performance coach Brie Vortherms, LMFT.

If you think your workouts must look a certain way to be worth doing, you probably won’t start — or you’ll quit the moment you can’t meet your strict, self-imposed standards.

 

4) Start small.

You may not have the energy or ­motivation for a long or intense workout when you’re depressed or overwhelmed with stress — and that’s OK. It doesn’t take much time or effort to feel the mental health benefits of exercise. “It has an effect on mood within minutes,” Emmons says.

Vortherms often tells clients to start with a 10-minute walk twice a week. If that seems too easy or difficult, pick something else that feels manageable.

 

5) Work out with a friend.

You don’t have to navigate movement and mental health alone. “It can be super helpful to have an exercise partner who can get you out for a walk; or if you like going to the gym, they can be there with you and make it a social event,” Emmons says.

Group fitness classes can also provide support and help you break out of a funk.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Movement is a powerful tool for improv­ing mental health. But becoming overly reliant on exercise for mental health support can backfire.

“Exercise is great and does many things for your body, but you don’t want that to be the only arrow in your quiver,” says ­Emmons.

If exercise is your only tool for managing mental health, your rela­tionship with movement can become rigid and unhealthy. Instead of exercise giving us more freedom and flexibility, we can get compulsive about it, ­Emmons says.

You may be convinced that you have to exercise to feel good — such that missing a workout causes your mood to plummet, bringing feelings of shame and disappointment. Then you’re vulnerable to relapse if you become sick, injured, or otherwise unable to work out for a prolonged period.

Finding other means of coping with stress and negative thoughts or ­behaviors is important for sustaining your mental health. “It’s a good idea to have a wide array of tools and not rely on just one,” Emmons says.

Luckily, there are many options. You can combine movement with various mental health treatments, including talk therapy, medication, and support groups.

Two practices may make the difference between recovering from ­depression and getting stuck. One is connection and the other is self-acceptance.

These are two sides of the same coin. Connec­tion involves cultivating ­authentic relationships with others, and self-­acceptance means creating an authentic relationship with yourself. Yet our brains often experience a major block to self-­acceptance: the negativity bias.

Imagine you’re having a quarterly review at work, or someone has just given you feedback on your box jump or poetry manuscript or parenting style. Most of the response is positive, but there’s one wee piece of negative feedback.

Which part of the con­versation lingers in your brain? If it’s solely the negative part, you’re not alone. Positive feedback typically disappears into the ether, while negative feedback is much stickier.

There may be an evolutionary reason for this: When our early ancestors were foraging for plants to eat, they needed to remember which ones previously made them sick. Recalling the negative — in this case, the poisonous plants — would help ensure they survived.

Even if your boss’s feedback won’t kill you, you’re still likely to ruminate, analyze, and try to explain it. Furthermore, if you’re like many people, you’ll internalize it and turn it into self-criticism.

This overprocessing is a major obstacle to self-acceptance. With­out awareness, we may become preoccupied with avoiding criticism rather than working for positive change.

We can escape these loops. If we practice savoring the positive, it helps balance the asymmetry. It’s also freeing when we treat our negative habits with more kindness.

There’s a quote from psychologist Carl Rogers describing what he calls a curious paradox: “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” The following meditation can help.

Self-Acceptance Meditation

1. Settle in as comfortably as you can. This may mean sitting, standing, or lying down. Quiet your mind. Tune in to your body and notice how you are holding yourself. See whether there’s any way to make yourself even more comfortable.
2. Notice the earth supporting you. Allow yourself to feel grounded, even rooted, in the earth. Bring awareness to your breathing. There’s no need to do anything; just breathe in and out at a comfortable, normal pace. You might notice how the thinking part of your mind begins to settle down.
3. Shift your focus from your breathing to the heart center in the middle of your chest. Allow the heart center to be as open and still as possible. If you’re having trouble feeling your heart center, recall an experience when you felt grateful or moved. You might notice a sense of warmth or expansion — or not. Whatever you’re feeling is fine. Accept that, in this moment, you’re doing the best you can.
4. Broaden your attention to your whole body. Notice any physical pain or discomfort you might be feeling. There’s no need to change it right now; you can just invite it in and hold it lightly. Next, scan your mind and heart to see whether you’re carrying any emotional pain, any sense of heaviness, fear, shame, or regret. Gently invite these feelings to be part of the experience. Breathing in, notice what you’re feeling. Breathing out, say to yourself, Can I just be with this, at least for this moment? Then imagine releasing your grip on your emotions and your emotions releasing their grip on you.
5. Turn your awareness toward your stories and beliefs about yourself. These might include things you’ve done wrong or things that are wrong with you. See if you can allow one or two of those beliefs to rise into your awareness. Invite yourself to release them. You might ask yourself: Is this story I’ve told myself really true? Consider that it might not be.
6. Bring yourself back to your body. See if you can find a sense of appreciation and gratitude for your body and for simply being here, right now. Take a couple of deep breaths and look for a sense of release as you breathe out.
7. Let your eyes open. Come back to the space you’re in. Sense how it feels to be there without trying to change yourself, without striving for perfection or accomplishment, without trying to please anyone else. Just be exactly as you are, right here and now.

Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

This article originally appeared as “Seeking Self-Acceptance” in the November/December 2024 issue of Experience Life.

After being laid off from my newspaper job several years ago, I struggled to find anything to be happy about. My job applications and freelance-story pitches seemed to meet consistent rejection, and every day turned into the same slog of negative experiences. It all reminded me that job hunting is the worst.

To turn it around, I decided I would do one positive thing for the world each day. I complimented strangers, sent resources to friends in need, and even donated blood. Tracking those good deeds on my calendar helped me feel that no matter how my job search was going, my day’s efforts weren’t totally wasted.

Research has found that these kinds of micro acts of joy appreciably increase our sense of well-being and help create a habit of feeling happy. People who performed five kind acts each week experienced a self-reported boost in happiness over six weeks, according to one study led by Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. Subsequent experiments on kindness replicated these findings, with noted increases in well-being.

Kind acts are just one of the many ways to create a happiness habit, according to Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD, science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. There are practical steps you can take to feel more connected, effectively manage setbacks, and increase your sense of meaning and purpose. To spread this message and help people learn to cultivate a habit of joy through bite-sized, actionable behaviors, Simon-Thomas and her colleagues launched the Big JOY Project.

“Happiness isn’t a genetic phenomenon that they have nothing to do with.”

“We wanted people to know that happiness isn’t a genetic phenomenon that they have nothing to do with,” she explains. “Your everyday experience and behavior also factor into how happy you are. There are some very simple things you can weave into your daily experiences that can make a difference.”

Participants in the Big JOY Project receive daily email prompts for one week, inviting them to complete a micro act that will take seven minutes or less. So far, more than 98,000 people from 209 countries have signed up, and they’ve completed a total of over 404,000 micro acts of joy since the project first launched, in 2021.

According to questionnaires completed by a subset of participants, those micro acts increased their well-being by an average of 26 percent and their relationship satisfaction by an average of 30 percent, Simon-Thomas reports. Participants also reported improvements in the quality of their sleep.

Simon-Thomas uses “happiness” and “joy” somewhat interchangeably. These aren’t momentary feelings, she explains, but durable characteristics of your life that include pleasure, amusement, pride, enthusiasm, and curiosity. And they can bear you through difficult emotions like fear, grief, and annoyance.

“Being a happy person involves a rich array of emotional states — the positive and the unpleasant ones,” she notes. “It really hinges on your sense of mattering in the world and your feelings of connection with others.”

7 Steps to Feeling Happy

Try these micro actions to create a happiness habit in your own life.

1) Celebrate another’s joy. Research suggests that happiness is contagious. Watch a sitcom with a laugh track, and you’re likely to feel your mood lift. Even better, aim to spread laughter.

Ask a friend or family member to share something positive that happened to them and listen with what psychologists call an “active-constructive” mindset. That means making eye contact, expressing enthusiasm, and asking open-ended questions. Note the positive implications and reflect on the potential benefits of the experience.

For example, if someone tells you about reaching a personal exercise goal, you might say, “I bet this means you’ll do even better in that 10K next month.” Or you could draw their attention to positive feelings, like by saying, “It must feel really satisfying to succeed at something you trained so hard for.”

(Read more on “How to Be Happy for Others.”)

2) Shift your perspective. Processing your anxieties and daily annoyances can help you become more resilient. Consider a worry you have about the future and describe your feelings in the second or third person. I might think, Why does Katherine worry that this article will be terrible, when she’s written hundreds of well-received articles in the past? The idea is to gain some distance and view the stressor through the eyes of an impartial, third-party observer.

Feel free to journal if that helps. You may come to realizations or closure that eluded you when viewed up close. Studies suggest that this practice may help reduce anger and grief as well as rumination — getting caught in a loop of negative thoughts. (Learn more about reducing rumination at “How to Stop Ruminating.”) 

3) Dwell in awe. Have you heard of forest bathing as a way to reset your stress level? (If not, learn more at “What Is Forest Bathing?“) You don’t need to journey to a faraway forest to take an awe walk. Participants in the Big JOY Project simply watch a video of a beautiful scene in nature that envokes a sense of vastness.

Research has found that the benefits of awe include more patience, an increased sense of social connection, and greater life satisfaction.

We can all awaken wonder through experiences that challenge and expand the way we see the world — often due to the presence of something greater than ourselves. You could find awe in a virtual reality setting or while attending a choral performance at a nearby church. (Discover more ways to experience awe at “How to Experience More Awe.”)

4) Tune in to what matters. Focusing on your values can lower your stress, help you think more expansively, and guide you to make healthy choices. Researchers have noted that writing about a closely held value compared with writing about a less important value can reduce defensive tendencies and even help your blood pressure recover more quickly after criticism. That’s because daily interactions that bruise your sense of self — anything from admonishment at work to feeling FOMO — can cloud your thinking and decision making.

Instead of sweating the small stuff, make a list of personal values and rank them according to their importance. Write a brief reflection about the top value and why it’s special to you. This exercise will remind you that there’s something you care about more than the momentary stressor and may call to mind other resources you can rely on, such as your interpersonal skills or supportive community. 

5) Make a gratitude list. Studies have shown that intentionally appreciating the good in your life can improve your well-being, your relationships, and possibly even your physical health. We tend to dwell more on what’s going wrong than what’s going right, but it’s smart to count your good fortunes. By reflecting on the positive, you steer more attention to those pleasant events or circumstances. That habit can shift the emotional tone of your daily life.

To deepen the effect, record your thoughts. Be as specific as possible: Name individuals who have improved your life, or consider what your life would be like if you hadn’t had certain lucky breaks. (Learn more about the benefits of gratitude at “Real Thanks.”)

6) Be a force for good. Sending positive thoughts into the world through a lovingkindness meditation, also known as a metta meditation, conveys a huge array of benefits, according to years of research. Those include more life satisfaction, stronger relationships, less depression, and relief from anxiety.

A basic version of the practice is to put one hand over your heart, close your eyes, and repeat three blessings: one for yourself, one for someone you love, and one for someone with whom you have conflict. One standard blessing is to say, “May you be happy. May you be well. May you be peaceful and safe.” (Learn more about lovingkindness meditation at “How to Practice a Lovingkindness Meditation.”)

7) Do something kind. As I discovered firsthand after my layoff, random acts of kindness can increase your happiness and feelings of goodwill toward others. Try to mix it up so your kind acts don’t start to feel routine. Approach the practice with a spirit of curiosity, challenging yourself to find new ways to express your care and seeking out new people to help. The beneficiary doesn’t even need to know about it! For a happiness boost, write down what you did and how it made you feel.

Deep, loving connections with others are among life’s most gratifying experiences. They also support our mental, emotional, and physical health in ways too numerous to count. Yet deep connections require us to open our hearts — a process that can be difficult and uncomfortable.

Most security-seeking humans find vulnerability at least a little challenging; when we’ve had our hearts broken, opening them again can feel almost impossible.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke acknowledged this difficulty — yet he also insisted that learning to love well is the most important thing any of us can do in this lifetime. He described it as “the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

Rilke was right. Deep connections — with ourselves and others — are essential for well-being. In that spirit, we share these five lessons with the intent of helping you learn to love deeply and well.

1) Learn to love yourself. A story from Islamic tradition describes a man whose garden was overrun with dandelions. He asked neighbors for advice about getting rid of them. He tried everything they suggested, but nothing worked.

He went to the local gardening club, and their advice didn’t help either. He finally asked the king’s gardener, who thought for a moment, stroked his beard, and said, “There’s only one more thing you can do: Learn to love the dandelions.”

This advice is good for more than gardens. Many of us believe we first must weed out all our flaws before we can be lovable. Yet this is an impossible task. We can all use a little improvement, but it’s an illusion to think we need to be perfect before we can connect with others. Do your best to love yourself as you are, dandelions and all.

2) Learn to see the ­innocence in others. We often watch the world around us through a lens of harsh judgment. It’s easy to focus on somebody else’s problem and how we think it should be fixed. Such a rigid perspective can cause us to misrecognize what’s right in front of us. We make assumptions based on little evidence or understanding.

A simple way to shift the habit of judging is to see the innocence in others. Give folks the benefit of the doubt. This can help pull us out of the cycles of reactivity and negativity that hold us down and keep us apart.

3) Learn to be ­permeable. True, you don’t often hear people described as permeable. But this description offers a helpful reminder that we are a part of a larger system. In the natural world, healthy organisms cannot wall themselves off from their surroundings — at least not for long.

We humans are no different. We are in constant interplay with everything around us — a give and take that is essential not only for survival but also for a life of meaning and purpose. We are not designed to be impenetrable fortresses, even if this helps us avoid getting hurt.

We all wall ourselves off from time to time, often unconsciously, but if we consistently put up a wall, we end up hurting ourselves even more. When we’re shut down, the good stuff can’t come in either.

Being permeable means we soften our defenses a bit, we let emotions in, we let emotions out. Importantly, being permeable allows us to let in the good. (For more on this, see “The Promise of Permeability.”)

4) Learn to listen deeply. Deep listening positively affects both those who practice it and those who speak. We build connections with others as we listen to them.

Poet Marilyn Nelson says that when we listen deeply to one another and ourselves, poetry arises. It’s another way of saying deep listening can allow us to make connections between disparate things we may not have considered before. Deep listening helps us get out of our own way.

5) Learn to build a house of belonging. Almost all of us have a yearning to belong, even as we resist letting down our guard. David Whyte’s poem “The House of Belonging” speaks to this; in it he describes the house of belonging as a place “where I want / to love all the things / it has taken me so long / to learn to love.”

Like building a house, building a sense of belonging takes attention and effort. It’s a process that involves getting outside of ourselves to connect with others while learning to create a deeper sense of meaning in our lives. Then we can envision a blueprint and take action.

What does a house of belonging look like to you? How are you connecting in ways that nourish you, ways that help build that house? How do you feel when you sense that you belong?

Imagine your house and then take the brave steps to start building.

This article originally appeared as “Loving Well” in the September/October 2024 issue of Experience Life.

Play might seem like a pretty lightweight topic for mental health. Yet play is an active form of fun, and fun is an essential element of joy. Joy, in turn, helps fuel our inner lives.

Nobody can function well without adequate fuel — we all need good food, clean water, fresh air. Similarly, our inner selves require joy to thrive, and play is a direct route to that state.

Of course, there are obstacles: You feel too busy, too burdened, too preoccupied with seemingly more important things. Most of us can talk ourselves out of play pretty fast.

By the time I (Henry) was 16, I felt and acted a lot like a 50-year-old man. I was laser-focused on academic success, so I learned to set fun and play aside — to delay gratification.

On the positive side, delaying gratification later helped me survive my medical training. But it also turned me into a workaholic who was ready to defer joy indefinitely.

We think workaholism is best described as an amnesia where one completely forgets how to play. But I found my way back to it, and so can you.

Rediscovering Play

After years of all work and no play, I discovered mindfulness practices. These gave me enough self-awareness to become a witness to my own life. I saw how avoiding play had kept me from being “in flow” and able to enjoy myself. I could tell something inside me was stuck.

We all know this feeling: It’s like a blockage. Every time we refuse to loosen up, when we cling to our seriousness and urgency, we’re rein­forcing that block and refusing to let it go.

When we play, we stop clinging to these obstacles. We make room for the feeling of joy — and this frees us.

By “free,” we don’t mean free to do whatever we want. We mean free to be our true selves.

We’re convinced one of the most profound aspects of play is its relationship with authenticity. The more playful we are, the better we feel in our own skin, and the more easily we can let go of pressures to perform.

This allows us to show up as we really are. As monk and theologian Thomas Merton wrote, “Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ­ambition is to be what I already am.”

This is how play helps us become more fully ourselves. We are all more than the roles we play in our professions and families, and play helps us remember who we are and what brings us joy.

Finding Your Playful Nature

A Morning Meditation From Aimee Prasek, PhD

Close your eyes. Gradually turn your attention inward. Become aware of your breathing and the sensations of your body. Allow any tension you’re holding to leave your body.

Now think of a time you felt playful.

It may be an activity you enjoyed as a kid or a game you played recently with your children or pets. If you don’t have specific memories, try to recall the last time you laughed really hard.

Go over all the details in your mind. What did it feel like to be playful? Who were you with? What were you doing?

Now think about the day ahead and allow this playful feeling to emerge. If you allowed yourself to be a little more playful, how would the day unfold? What would you do differently? How would you feel?

Imagine yourself maintaining this playful feeling throughout your day. Do you have more energy? How do your interactions feel? How would you respond to a stressful surprise?

Set an intention to become more playful, exuberant, loving, joyful, spontaneous, humorous. Take time to absorb any feelings or images you experience.

When you’re ready, open your eyes. Sit quietly for a few moments and enjoy the feeling. Maybe you feel more peaceful, less anxious. Take that sense of play into the rest of your day. Let it make your life a little lighter.

This article originally appeared as “Hit Play” in the May/June 2023 issue of Experience Life.