The best way out is always through

From MSN Health and Fitness (fast becoming a daily read for me!)

1. Stay the weight you were at 18

“Next to not smoking, this is probably the most important thing we can do to stay healthy and live longer,” says Walter Willett, MD, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Leanness matters, because fat cells produce hormones that raise the risk of type 2 diabetes. They also make substances called cytokines that cause inflammation—stiffening the arteries and the heart and other organs. Carrying excess fat also raises the risk of some cancers. Add it up, and studies show that lean people younger than age 75 halve their chances of premature death, compared with people who are obese.

2. Take the dynamic duo of supplements

They’re what Bruce N. Ames, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, swears by: his daily 800 mg of alpha-lipoic acid and 2,000 mg of acetyl-L-carnitine. In these amounts, he says, the chemicals boost the energy output of mitochondria, which power our cells. “I think mitochondrial decay is a major factor in aging,” Ames says—it’s been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

3. Skip a meal

Calorie restrictors improved their blood insulin levels and had fewer signs of damage to their DNA. Eating less food, scientists believe, may reduce tissue wear and tear from excess blood sugar, inflammation, or rogue molecules known as free radicals.

Try it: Skip a meal a day. You don’t need to try to cut calories; Or try fasting one day a week. Just drink plenty of water.

4. Get a pet

5. Take a hike

To make the walls of your arteries twice as flexible as those of a couch potato, just walk briskly for 30 minutes, 5 days a week. With age, blood vessel walls tend to stiffen up like old tires—the main reason two-thirds of people older than age 60 have high blood pressure. Exercise keeps vessels pliable. Mild exercise also reduces the risk of diabetes, certain cancers, depression, aging of the skin, maybe even dementia.

6. Fight fair

7. Stop and plant the roses

8. Do a good deed

9. Eat veggies, fruit, fish, curry, drink green tea, listen to music and donate blood (YAY!)10. Take a deep breath

Deep-breathing Technique

Exhale strongly through the mouth, making a whoosh sound. Breathe in quietly through the nose for a count of 4. Hold your breath for a count of 7; then exhale with the whoosh sound for a count of 8. Repeat the cycle three more times.

10. Get more shut-eye

Some sleep problems raise the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes—maybe even obesity. Everyone’s sleep needs are different; to find out what yours are, sleep experts recommend you turn off the alarm clock when you’re well rested, and see how long you naturally sleep. (Most people need 7 to 8 hours.)

11. Drop that hot potato

High-glycemic foods, rich in quick-digesting carbohydrates, can cause blood sugar spikes and crashes and contribute to overeating and diabetes risk—which accelerates aging.

We need to retrain our taste buds, says Willett. What to ditch: sugary drinks. And cut way back on America’s favorite veggie, the potato.

12. Put on your rose-colored glasses

If you’re a cranky sort, you might want to tweak your attitude about other things. “People who have a goal in life—a passion, a purpose, a positive outlook, and humor—live longer,” says Robert Butler, MD, president of the International Longevity Center in New York City.

Embrace life!

People don’t really recover from bulimia and depression do they?

They merely learn to cope.

cope1  /koʊp/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kohp] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, coped, cop‧ing.

Notice how negative the definition of the word ‘cope’ is in the first instance? In the second instance, well I guess that explains why on days that I can’t cope, I feel like going berserk, or, if allowed, smash plates.

—Related forms

What a difference a day makes.

I’m really foolish. I keep repeating the same mistakes. How many times must I tell you that instant gratification doesn’t work? That you should know youself almost inside-out by now? PLEASE for goodness sake stop being someone yr not.

damnit the world doesnt revolve ard me so i cant summon things and ppl and just discard them according to my whim and fancy. but i wish that i cld. im so tired of trying to be a nice reasonable person. i think being a selfish bitchy nasty person might be ok, even enjoyable for awhile, for a change.

for goodness sake why cant i jsut say no when i dont wanna do certain things. i already know that i wont enjoy those activities and keeping an open mind just makes it worse. what the shit what is wrong with me why am i so eager to please and scared of being criticised. why dont i just be a pig if i feel like being a pig. why do i try to care? nobody’s going to like anybody for long anyway. this is a fickle, fucked up world we live in and well today what seems important and rant-worthy to me will probably seem unneccesary tnmr. there is no permanance in anything anyway so why get so angry? i shld just focus on my work, the very work that’s driving me nuts, and finish it and getouttahere. but who am i kidding it can never be finished the fucking work just fucking sucks and i dont want to face reality or run away from it so i shld just die. i am a freak who just cant be happy with what ive decided upon becos i can only see limited choices none of which are satisfactory. what i really need now are strong arms to wrap ard me and to take care of everything and i simply dont get that. everything i say just becomes an accusation a fault a lie. all i get are promises that i cant believe in. maybe it’s my fault. i know i tried so hard to obey to trust to follow but ultimately it’s still a lonely battle. a fucking solitary eternal battle. who can understand? you’ve never been inside my world. to you im just creating trouble for myself, complicating my life etc. stop and think about it. you genuinely think i enjoy doing this to myself? you think im unaware that all this unhappiness leads nowhere? you think i dont want to break free? already im no good at dealing with crisis in my diminished state and where are the strong arms i need? who the fuck is protecting me and caring for me?

very self-destructive. i want to keep this here as a reminder to myself of the kind of uncontrollable and unreasonable rage i can feel

Article that really got me thinking further:

Quick, answer these questions:

• Do you dread Mondays?
• Do you have big plans for your retirement?
• Do you fantasize about winning the lottery so you can quit your job and live the life of your dreams?

If you answered yes to any of these questions–let alone all of them–there’s a good chance you are wasting your life in the wrong job.

I’ve had enough of trying to find reasons or excuses to motivate myself into believing that I can stay on in my job forever or that I actually like it. The truth is, it’s a safe, fairly pleasant job that I can get by on comfortably for the rest of my working life but I’ll never be truly happy/satisfied/fulfilled/motivated.

You spend most of your waking life at work (and up until then, at school, preparing for your career). If you don’t love what you do and look forward to doing it, that means you are condemning yourself to a life of discontent.

It’s not that every moment at work has to be the best moment ever. As with anything, even the ideal job has its challenges and frustrations. But if you’re just putting in time, waiting for retirement or some other milestone to really live your life, you’re in trouble.

It’s no secret that what we do for a living matters, and has in our culture for a good long time. Why else would people have last names such as Baker, or Butcher, or Smith? It’s because, in many senses, our jobs define us–even though we aren’t required to change our last names to Proctologist or Secretary these days.

“What do you do?” is a standard question we ask when we meet people. Work is important because it pays the bills, lends structure to our lives, and gives us identity.

Til now I really dread going to school, making it through the year etc. I can’t keep proper records and now I absolutely do not care anymore. My heart’s not there. But i’m trying to do my best til the time comes because taking MC is simply not a way out for me. One false assumption is if you’re smart enough and you work hard enough, you can do anything. The problem with this is that we fail to listen to our true desires, and substitute intensity of work for actual passion for something. There’s a difference between working feverishly and having a burning passion–a difference that requires soul-searching to understand.

What’s more, being smart doesn’t make it any easier to figure out what you want to do with your life–the key to job satisfaction is to search for something meaningful, significant, and fulfilling (as opposed to exciting, challenging, and stimulating, which can be a trap).

So baby, thank you for allowing me to go find something that I want to do. I should have job-hopped, I should have taken a gap year. But since I didn’t do that earlier Im going to do so in future! Many people live lives of sorts just to finance material trappings. I too want a nice flat of my own and a nice van of my own. I realise I need money for that to happen (and for you to take a break). But i figure that I can earn less, spend less and be happier. And as you’ve been trying to tell me, no point me worrying about being a liability and struggling on. Better to make a clean beark and get ‘cured’ once and for all.

And well, if I put aside my strong. cheerful, independent mask, my inner world is a messy, cottony-soft topsy-turvy place. I’ve had enough. I cry easily because I have so many bottled up emotions inside of me that I’ve had no outlet for for years.

All a person needs to know to be happy is to know

1) how to find meaningful work, 2) how to get along with others, and 3) how to persevere when things get tough (which implies both optimism and ongoing learning).

I can learn to be resilient. But it must be for a purpose and worth it! I guess my 2) and 3) have been impacted by my lack of 1). Take the  weekend for example. I had a great time running around but I felt worried that I had piles of undone work and I felt unhappy that Monday was fast approaching. Silly to worry about that but well, that’s my reality. But haha at least today I started work! Yay! 9 mths to July and the end of teaching torture!

Think about what you always wanted to do. Our careers don’t necessarily take the fantasy shape they did when we were children, but even as children, we have the capacity to know what effort delights us most.

Of course, you do need to figure out how much you can realistically make following your dream, and how you will cover those pesky little things like health insurance. If your dream job is with a company that provides such things, great. If you want to be self-employed, you have to figure out how much money you need to live on, after taxes–which are higher for self-employed people–as well as health insurance and the like. There are lots of books with helpful insight in this area. The key here is to value yourself and your skills, and have faith that people will pay you for them.

Another key is to give yourself time. This is separate from giving yourself deadlines–those help keep you on track, but there is no formula for how long it will take to rebuild your life the way you want it to be. It could take several years. But that time will pass no matter what you do. It’s better that you spend it reaching toward a goal than gritting your teeth until retirement, and wondering what could have been.

And finally, you have to give yourself permission. No matter how much you’ve spent on your education or how much time you’ve invested in your career, what matters in the end is that you’re doing something that fills your life with meaning. You deserve no less.

That’s right. Enough of the justifications. JUST DO something about IT already piggy!

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Currently reading: Depression: The Way out of your Prison by Dorothy Rowe

I want to paint my walls a myriad of cheery or soothing colours and also stencil in pithy aphorisms or maxims such as Lao Tzu’s

Because a sage always confronts difficulties

He never experiences them

Or phrases from verses or poems that I like, such as Blake’s

To see a World in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour