On Thursday last I came smack up against one of the challenges of writing about transforming depression into happiness - that if I write too much about the depression part of it the memoir chapters become depressing! I'm tackling this by shading all the happy, uplifting bits yellow and all the bits about depression and difficult times grey. Then I'm using the formula developed by happiness researcher Barbara Fredrickson in conjunction with Marcial Losada that happiness happens when you have three or more positive events (e.g. experiencing a positive emotion, a positive communication) to every negative event. So I'm counting up the lines of grey and yellow and making sure there are three times or more as many yellow as grey lines. The last thing I want to do with a book on changing depression to happiness is to make my readers more depressed!
As for my mood, it's pretty good. I had a grey moment when I realised that the memoir could be depressing, then lifted myself out of it by going to Toastmasters. After an hour of laughing and talking I felt great. Then yesterday I took three dogs (my two and a friends) out to the park and had a ball walking them and collecting pine cones for the fire. I find it's much easier to be happy on the days when my physical health is good and my energy levels are high. I'm also enjoying having a new blog and setting up Facebook pages for my book and the Writers and Readers Group I've set up locally. As I told one other member - the group is saving my sanity one brain cell at a time! Lastly, I've re-started my weekly email to friends of my UPOs - unexpected positive occurences. If you'd like to get this, let me know and I'll add you to the UPO list! I find that even when I feel good to start with I get uplift in my mood from writing down all the unexpected positive events from the past week and hearing about the positive things that are happening to other people.
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