I Was Depressed & Anxious Until I Started Doing These 4 Things

A few years back, I faced a devastating setback in my career that left me riddled with anxiety and overcome with depression. My self-esteem hit an all-time low when the business I had built went under.

You’ve maybe never thought about it before, but there is a distinct difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is a cognitive experience based in the brain’s cortex. It’s a state of mind, which comes and goes easily. Happiness activates the sympathetic nervous system1, which activates the brain’s fight-or-flight response—it feels exciting and stimulating to the body.

My "joy plan" (which eventually led me to write a book on joy; go figure) required simple steps every day and was not a quick fix. In order to make these small shifts effective long-term, they must become a lifestyle. Repetition is the key to forming new habits of thought in the brain, which then become new feelings, new actions, and eventually a new experience of life. Thirty days is just long enough to form new habits and put this lifestyle into place.

After spending a month with the sole purpose of creating joy in my life, I discovered that finding joy in my current state of affairs could change the actual circumstances in my life. I found joy despite my external conditions, and then those conditions morphed to match my joy.

My life changed in wonderful ways I never could have imagined. I’m now a mindfulness teacher for elementary school students. I make a living as a writer, doing work that I love from anywhere in the world.

Was this magic? A miracle? It could appear that way, but I believe it was simply science.

By intentionally practicing thinking new thoughts, which lead to new behaviors, we create new patterns in our brains, which ultimately translate into a new experience of life. Quantum physics has proved that, at the subatomic level, all matter is made of energy, and our thoughts influence the behavior of that energy. Essentially, our thoughts shift subatomic particles and create our physical world.

This is not just philosophy; this is physics. And I have tested this principle and seen the proof in my own life. By taking small steps to change my very negative state of mind, I created a radical shift in my emotional experience and—very quickly—a significant change in my reality.

You don’t have to set aside a whole month for the sole purpose of joy in order to create a Joy Plan in your life. It may sound like a crazy idea, but often crazy ideas are the ones you should listen to.