Self Helping Yourself

Self Improvement Made Easy

covid-19

Try Jovial July to Improve Your Mood

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Jovial July woman with smiley baloon

Jovial July is the updated version of the challenge I created six months ago, called Genial January.

The idea is to spend the entire month without posting anything negative on social media, in either my own posts or comments.

I found it to be an extremely worthwhile exercise.

I repeated it for Affable April, and again found that it made me happier, more productive, and a much more pleasant person.

Which is why I’m going to repeat it again, for Jovial July.

How This Affects My Own Mood

We don’t realize just how much time we spend complaining, criticizing, and insulting, especially online.

I’ve worked very hard to become someone who does that far less often than most people.

I spent very little time on social media in January due to being crazy busy at work. Yet I was still shocked at how often I had to stop myself from writing something negative.… Read more

The Coronavirus Lazies Are Nothing to Be Ashamed Of – And Some Tips to Fight Them

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Woman laying on bed to represent Coronavirus Lazies

Lately many of us have been feeling the Coronavirus Lazies. The Coronavirus Lazies is the mix of loneliness, depression, worry, and stir-craziness that makes it hard to motivate ourselves to do basic functions like showering, putting on pants, and keeping our homes in any vague semblance of order.

The Pressure to Be Amazing Despite the Coronavirus Lazies

Yet I keep seeing challenges and demands that people use the quarantine time to complete some sort of grand project. These come in the forms of memes and attempts to be motivational from a certain type of self-help guru.

Obnoxious Jeremy Haynes tweet accusing people of lacking discipline.

These tell people that they have an obligation to take advantage of this global tragedy to produce something amazing. If instead they fall prey to the Coronavirus Lazies, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Even when advice-givers are less obnoxious about it than that Jeremy Haynes tweet, the message is still the same. I was recently taking a webinar about book marketing, and the instructor acknowledged that we’re all suffering from COVID doldrums, and sometimes it’s hard to just get out of bed.… Read more

Affable April

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Affable April

Three months ago I created a challenge that I called Genial January. The idea was to spend the entire month without posting anything negative on social media, in either my own posts or comments.

I don’t know how many people participated. Maybe I was the only one. But I found it to be an extremely worthwhile exercise. Which is why I’m going to repeat it, for Affable April.

We don’t realize just how much time we spend complaining, criticizing, and insulting. I’ve worked very hard to become someone who does that far less often than most people, and I spent very little time on social media in January due to being crazy busy at work, yet I was still shocked at how often I had to stop myself from writing something negative.

There’s a saying in sports: How you practice is how you play. Every time you write something negative on social media, you are training yourself to focus on the negative, which is training yourself to be unhappy.… Read more

Times of Disruption Are When Habits Change

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As I write this, we’re all going through a huge disruption in our lives due to COVID-19. We’re cooped up at home, we can’t see our friends, and a lot of people are out of work.

When our routines and the way we live our lives get upended like this, so do our habits. Suddenly all the regular cues and events that trigger our habit loops are gone, and without this normalcy, we forget to do the things we normally do. This can be both a curse and a blessing.

It’s very easy to abandon our good habits during a time like this. How do you exercise when the gyms are closed? How do you eat healthy when a trip to the grocery store is an hours-long ordeal that risks your safety? How do you read good literature when the library is shut down?

And even for habits that aren’t any more difficult, it’s still easy to forget about them when everything is changing, the days are running together, and you feel like a prisoner in your own home.… Read more