How to overcome New Year Melancholy - the techniques and steps I employed..

THE STEPS AND TECHNIQUES I USED TO OVERCOME NEW YEAR MELANCHOLY

In a bid to understand my conflicting thoughts and emotions that would typically emerge near the end of each year, I started reading into psychology and came to the realisation that the brain is like a computer.

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza a healthy brain can process 400 billion bits of information per second.

The brain is very sensitive in the sense that whatever we subject it to it receives, processes and then broadcasts it as our thoughts and our reality.

After coming to this realisation, I became increasingly aware that EVERYTHING I subjected my computer (or brain) to would shape my identity, personality, emotions, perspective, behaviour and reality.


THIS LEAD ME TO RE-EVALUATE MY LIFE..

This included the people I spent time with, the places I went and my daily habits.

I retreated and I spent time alone in meditation to reflect.

It was through this retreat that I became what I can only describe as an outward observer looking into society.

It was only then that I observed the sheer scale of the constant bombardment of false depictions of life everywhere; through film, Facebook, Instagram, porn and TV for example.

These exaggerated versions of ‘reality’ can also be found in marketing for food, holidays, fashion and dating apps.

I came to the realisation that pretty much all the imagery I subjected myself to was an exaggerated version of the true nature of life.

That through subjecting myself to these things that I had unconsciously measured my life by these inaccurate portrayals of life.

My life didn’t reflect the ‘reality’ I had subjected myself to. In turn, this made me think that I was inferior or incapable and therefore, it wasn’t worth trying.

At the end of each year I would reflect and feel sh*t because I had not achieved the goals I wanted or just couldn’t find the consistency or motivation. Things never changed.


I REALISED THAT I NEEDED TO FEED MY BRAIN DIFFERENT INFORMATION OR AN ‘ALTERNATIVE REALITY’..

What kind of information would I feed my computer (or brain) in order to lead a more fulfilling life?

What kind of actions would I need to take in order to achieve this?

Part of this was based on advice I took from this contemporary Hindu philosopher by the name of Dandapani (He works with athletes and entrepreneurs in the US).

I heard him in a Youtube video saying to simplify your life. So I simplified my life.

I wrote the shortlist of the three things that were most important to me (based on his advice) and invested all my time and energy into these things.

I lthen set actions that corresponded to my three life priorities.

I started finding myself saying ‘No’ to about 85-90% of everything people were asking me to do because I realised my brain will download pretty much everything I subject it to.


I NEEDED TO PROTECT MYSELF..

One thing on my shortlist was a commitment to self education everyday.

Through reading, I came across Stoicism and became fascinated.

How was this practice possible?

What were these people doing in order to achieve this mindset?

I started to experiment...

What kind of steps could I take to try and replicate some of the things they were doing?


THROUGH THIS EXPERIMENT, EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE BECAME SIMPLE..

This included the festive holidays and New Year will be the same.

I treated it like any other day.

As soon as I simplified things in my life to the key things that mattered and paid attention to the information that I fed my brain everything changed.

A lot of my unhappiness at the end of the year came from the information I was unconsciously feeding my brain throughout the year.

Once I understood how my brain works, it helped me to understand what I needed to do.

It helped me to identify the lifestyle I wanted to live where the byproduct was happiness...

The questions I asked myself above really helped.

There are some other steps I also took to reflect on other things in my life which I break down in this step by step video guide. You will also find a document there you can print off and work through if you wish...

 

This is incredibly insightful and helpful. Thanks for posting.

 

I only came to this realisation earlier this year through reading a range of different books; psychology, philosophy.

Then everything made sense to me. I really needed to share this with others. I hope this helped..