Anxiety and Depression - 10 Ways I Try to Fight Them Off

Hey, what's up everyone and welcome to the School of Personal Finance. So in this video, I'm going to talk about how I fight off anxiety and depression. Now, this is obviously a topic that is different than videos that I've done in the past, but I feel it's important to talk about because I would guesstimate that about 50% of the conversations I'm having these days, the word depression or anxious or anxiety are brought up in those conversations and we're all feeling it. Now, I am by no means an expert on this topic. I just want to share with you what I personally do in my life to not fall into depression or to not get overtaken with anxiety considering everything that's going on. Even if I just help one person out there who's going through this and maybe hasn't felt it before or maybe it's somebody who struggles with this all the time. Next week, I'll get back to talking about something that's a little bit more having to do with personal finance, but to be honest, it does all intermingle together. So people have big time stress and anxiety about money and about personal finances. And if you've been laid off from your job, you might be struggling with those things right now. So I hope you find this useful. Let's get to it. I'm going to talk about 10 things that I do in my life to help me when I am feeling depressed or when I am feeling anxious. And some of these things are daily. They're actually things that I try to implement, make it a habit and do every single day. Where other things, I only take them out when I need the big guns, when I'm really feeling crappy and I can't pick myself up out of it. All right. So the first thing that I'm going to talk about, it's something that I try to do daily. And it sounds cheesy, but I don't give a crap because it helps. And that is being grateful. So every night when I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up, I try to sit there and think about all the things that I'm grateful for in my life. So things like having three beautiful, healthy children, having married my soulmate, having loving family and friends around me. The fact that whenever I'm hungry, I could go get something out of the refrigerator and eat. These are all things that make me blessed and make me very lucky in life. So when I think about all those things every morning and every night before I go to sleep, it's hard for me to be depressed. How can I be depressed when I feel like I'm privileged and I'm lucky in this world? So we all have things that we are lucky to have in our lives. So it's great to think about those things often and to be grateful that you have them. Number two, and this is my go-to when I'm really feeling depressed and down and out and I can't seem to lift myself up out of it. And that is to take my attention off of me and off of my pity party and how I'm feeling about myself and instead go and help somebody else. So it might be my spouse, it might be my kids, a loved one, a family member, a relative, whoever it may be. If I take my energy, my attention, and I focus it on helping them have a better day or helping them out of a stressful situation, then what I do in turn is I take my mind off of myself and the feelings that I'm currently having about my situation. So in fact, by helping others, it's actually a selfish act. By doing it, I am in turn really helping myself. And I preach this all the time. I preach it to my children that if you want to feel better about yourself, the best way to do it is to go make somebody feel better about themselves. Even if it's just through listening to them or through building them up or just being a friend to somebody. If you're there for somebody, if you give them your time, if you help them through a situation or you make them feel better about themselves, you will in turn feel better about yourself. And that also has to do with happiness. I always say to my son, if you make your sister happy, it's going to make you happy. So by helping others, by making others happy, it's a selfish act. It will help you become happier and it will lift you out of the funk and out of the depression that you're currently feeling. And now number three. And this is something that I try to implement in my life daily. And that is to accomplish something important right when I wake up. First thing right out of the gate. Now this could be like exercising or reading a book or meditation. Something that's important to you that's going to make you feel like you accomplished something. Like five years ago, I read this book by Hal Elrod called The Miracle Morning. And it had a big impact on my life. He talks about, he called it savers. And there were these five or six things that you could do every single morning to start off your day and have a miracle morning. To start off on the right foot and set yourself up for having a great day. Highly recommend reading that book if you have not done so. It really did have a big impact on my life. And even though I don't implement it every single day, there are a few things that I do do every day. And when I exercise first thing in the morning, I feel great. I just have a hard time doing it. Especially during this quarantine, as I've put on 20 pounds during this, which might be a result of my depression and anxiety. But if I exercise first thing in the morning, it makes me feel so much better. But I do try to meditate every morning. I do sit there in silence and just try to think about my life and what I want to accomplish that day. So I'm a big fan of getting up early and accomplishing something right off the bat. So you set yourself up to have a great day. All right. And now number four. And this one I do every once in a while. But especially when I'm feeling crappy, I will go and do this. And that is escape to my happy place. Everybody should have a safe place or a happy place that they go to that makes them feel better. Now, I love the outdoors. I love nature. Luckily, where I live in New York, there is Bear Mountain, which is my favorite place in the world. The Hudson River is here. So there are some beautiful spots that I could go to and I could hang out for a few hours and just collect my thoughts and be by myself and think about life and think about my goals and think about what's going on. And it's where I escape to. So everybody should have a place where they feel safe and at home and happy and go there when you're not feeling too good, when you need to stop and let the world around you continue while you could sit and calm your nerves and just think and keep your mind from racing and just go hang out for a day and enjoy yourself. So having an escape place, it's highly recommended. And now number five is that I always have to remind myself that I'm playing the long game. I can't get caught up in short little setbacks that are happening right now and have them bring me down because I have a long way to go. So if something happens, if something's embarrassing to me or if I fail at something, who gives a crap? I have a long way to go. I am planning for the future. It's the people who live in the now who have everything caught up in right now and they haven't planned for their future. If they get derailed, then it could lead to depression. It could lead to a downward spiral. You always have to be planning ahead so that you have options as life goes on. To keep myself from getting very anxious or overwhelmed, I try to break things down. If I have a big goal or if I have a big task ahead of me, I try to break it down into small manageable tasks. I love the saying, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And it's true because if you think of this big thing that you need to complete in order to move on and it's overwhelming and it causes you to freeze up and not do anything, then what good is it for? You have to be able to break it down into small manageable tasks and start banging them out and get some motivation, get the ball rolling and bust through it all. It's the only way that you're going to get through it. And now number six, it's a few different things, but these are things that I'll do when I'm feeling pretty depressed, when I'm down and out and I can't get myself up out of it. And number one is I'll reach out to somebody that I haven't spoken to in a while. So like one of my old friends, it'll just be nice to catch up and talk to and see what's going on in their lives. Number two is I'll try to spend time with my kids or with my wife without any distractions, not worrying about any crap. Like the best therapy for me is sitting with my three-year-old and watching Peppa Pig for a couple hours and just cuddling with him. That always makes me feel a lot better. And then the last thing is to stay off of social media. I have found that that could be a great therapy as well. So social media, I'm not even going to get into that in this video, but it could cause a lot of harm, especially if you're feeling bad about yourself. Because then you're looking at Facebook, you're looking at Instagram, you're seeing pictures of everybody's perfect lives and all that crap. And it just makes you feel worse and worse. So when I'm feeling bad about myself, for whatever reason it may be, staying off of social media, it's usually a good thing. And that leads right into number seven, which is I really try to not feel resentment or jealousy towards other people, especially when I'm feeling bad about myself. That's a big reason why I try to stay off social media when I'm kind of down and out. Because as you're scrolling through and you're seeing your friends or whoever it is, and their successes and their vacations and the great life that they're living, the last thing I want to do is feel jealousy or resentment towards those things because of my current situation. All it does is it weighs on you and it brings you further into depression and it makes you feel worse about yourself. So I really try to not let those feelings surface and to really stay away from that stuff. All right, number eight. So now when I'm feeling down and depressed about myself or my current situation, one thing that I have found that has helped me in the past is if I start a new project or I try to learn a new skill. And it could be anything. Like some people find gardening might be something that helps lift them out of depression. For me, I like to read books. That will help me out. But like the last time when I was at my previous job and I became very unhappy, I started learning YouTube. I started learning how to post videos on YouTube, learning about the YouTube algorithm, how it all works, how to make videos, you know, the microphone, the camera, the lighting, all of that stuff. And I turned it into a project and it's led me to start making videos all the time. So me sitting here in front of you, this led out of me being depressed about the situation that I was in a few years ago. And you know, my first few videos, they sucked like so bad where I could have just given up and stopped and said, there's no way that I'm going to continue doing this. And it's not like I have this, you know, huge successful channel at the moment, but I've gotten a zillion times better than I was when I first started. So that was all the product of me feeling pretty crappy about my job and just needing an outlet and wanting to try something else and doing something else. And also in the back of my mind, me thinking that I could actually help people, which in turn will help me feel better about who I am. So that's how all of this got started, just from this little side project where I wanted to do something different to lift myself up out of my current situation. And now number nine is to just focus on the things that you can control. If you worry all the time, if you're anxious about things that are completely out of your control, it's going to drive you crazy. I always say this to my wife and she rolls her eyes at me, but you have to just worry about things that you actually can control and have an impact on. You can't control other people's actions. There are just things in this world that are just way beyond your control and you can't worry about them because it's not going to help anything. It's just going to drive you into depression and being anxious. I remember very well in my early 20s when I was losing my hair and it got to the point where there was really nothing left to do but to shave my head. I wasn't going to do the comb over. I wasn't going to have like hair around the side and nothing on top. I was in my early 20s and I went through a pretty big depression over that. It hit me pretty hard that I was never going to have hair again. I remember I was at my wife's house. This was before we got married and it was her parents' house. We were on the deck and I said, screw it, let's just shave it. Let's just move on. I don't even want to think about it anymore. So we had that ceremonial shaving of the head and that was it for me and I moved past it. But it was out of my control. There was nothing that I could do. I wasn't going to let it get the best of me. Yeah, I guess I was never going to be a GQ model after that point, but I did always have my mom telling me how handsome I was and that did make me feel better. But yeah, it was out of my control. There was nothing that I was going to be able to do about it and I wasn't going to let it, you know, have me get all depressed about it and be down about it. It is what it is and I had to move on. And then that leads me to number 10, which is the only way that I'd be able to deal with all of these things that are out of my control and that is by having faith. So if I didn't have faith that God was looking down over all of us and helping guide us, then I would feel a tremendous burden, a tremendous amount of stress in every decision that I made or in everything that I can't control that's out in that world. So having faith, it gives me peace of mind. It helps me to get through things and to go with my gut and with my instinct and to, you know, do things that maybe I wouldn't do if I didn't believe that everything was going to be okay. If you don't believe in destiny and you don't have faith in anything, then I would think that you're under a tremendous amount of stress, which would lead to depression and to anxiety. But if you do have faith that no matter what happens in this world, that everything is going to be okay, then that takes a tremendous amount of stress off of your shoulders and it helps you to get through day to day. All right, everyone. That is it for this one. Thanks for watching. I hope you got something out of that. And just to reiterate, I am not an expert in this stuff. If you do suffer from anxiety and depression, go see a medical professional, get some help. You know, they'll be able to help you much better than I am. But I thought that sharing at least what I do in my experiences might provide some value for you. So I will see you again next Friday with a new video. Thanks again. Bye.