All of our emotions are imperative for a well-rounded and healthy human experience. While a happy life is the ultimate goal, you still need to experience those “negative” emotions like fear, anger, and sadness. Knowing what these emotions feel like can make our joyful moments even more special.
Sometimes feeling upset, low, and sad doesn’t seem as fleeting as we’d like, though, and it lingers longer than we feel comfortable with. I’ve come up with a list of things for you to try to try to shake the blues because you always have the opportunity to turn your day (and mood) around!
These are not cures for mental illness, including depression.
100 Things To Do When You’re Feeling Down
- Pick or buy flowers (or send them to yourself at work)
- Hang twinkle lights in your room
- Write what’s bothering you on paper and burn it with a lighter or in a bonfire
- Take a B12 supplement
- Get a pedicure complete with foot massage
- Blow bubbles out of the window of a moving car
- Go outside, even if it’s just for a walk around the neighborhood
- Let yourself cry and get feelings out
- Draw a heart on your face with lipstick
- Say “screw it” to your to do list and go do something fun
- Write/draw something happy on your sidewalk with chalk
- Get yourself a coloring book and new set of crayons and go to town
- Rent a bike and go for a ride and remember what it feels like to move fast above the earth with the wind in your hair
- Do some simple yoga poses like sun salutations and warrior poses
- Write a letter to your future self
- Have a selfie photoshoot in your most glamorous outfit/make-up
- Binge watch a TV show from your adolescence
- Lay outside to soak up sun and watch the clouds
- Call in sick to work, they’ll be okay
- Don’t listen to sad music, look out for your fragile emotions
- Hide in a fort you build with sheets and cushions
- Bring out film from your childhood and laugh at old memories
- Eat a bar of dark chocolate (the more pure cocoa the better!)
- Read a very good book that’s been strongly recommended to you by someone you love or one you already know you love
- Take a nap during the day with a very soft blanket
- Masturbate with an awesome sex toy (using a realistic dildo is a great way to get started)
- Visit the aquarium and linger with the underwater life
- Go to Lush and ask to sample a bunch of good smelling, sparkly lotions
- Pop the shit out of some bubble wrap
- Google pictures of hot people (Chris Pratt and Zooey Deschannel are my go-to’s)
- Organize some of your digital files
- Order delivery for dinner so you don’t even need to get out of your pajamas
- Smell or rub some essential oils with citrus flavors on your skin (like orange, grapefruit, and lemon) which help with sadness and stress
- Make yourself a hot drink in a cute mug
- Go to a place where you can put your toes in a body of water
- Scream really loud until you cry, laugh, or gasp for breath
- Work on making an elaborate homemade gift for someone else
- Journal about how you feel and how you wish you felt
- Pet and/or cuddle an animal
- Cross something off your bucket list
- Fly a kite, they’re actually pretty cheap at toy stores
- Visit a library and smell old books
- Find a photobooth and sit in one as much as you can afford it
- Wear a mini top hat all day
- Go to a wig shop and try on a bunch of different hairstyles and colors
- Actually go get your hair cut and/or colored in a more permanent way by a professional
- Go get an ice cream in a bowl and put the cone on top like a hat
- Order multiple orders of mozzarella sticks at TGIFridays
- Bubble bath with a bath bomb that turns your water crazy cool colors
- Flirt with everyone
- Dance naked all over your house, Abbi style
- Put on a bald cap and then a toupee
- Type a letter on a typewriter, listen to the click clack sounds and ding of the carriage return
- Make a s’more, even if it’s just over your stove
- Watch a feel-good movie
- Stargaze and try to find constellations while thinking about how huge the universe is
- Throw a coin into a fountain and make a wish
- Check in at a hotel for the night and pamper the crap out of yourself, even room service if you can afford it
- Leave yourself a very nice voicemail to listen to later
- Unplug yourself from the internet and the world and just relax and remember what it’s like to be a person sans screen
- Walk around a garden or a nursery to smell and take photos of gorgeous flowers
- Fingerpaint and award yourself based on how messy you get
- Wear all of your jewelry at once and go to the local convenience store just to buy a drink
- Write “I am beautiful” on your mirror with your finger so it shows when it gets foggy or with a window/dry erase marker
- Start saying “That’s Dank City” whenever something is awesome and don’t worry about who that annoys
- Buy yourself a (bouquet of) balloon(s)
- Cuddle with a friend or lover, get all that oxytocin up in your brain (the “cuddle chemical”)
- Go next door and start singing your favorite Christmas song very loudly, even if it’s not December
- Put your hair in pigtails and tie ribbons or fuzzy pom poms on either side
- Go dancing at a gay bar
- Take a page from a magazine, book, or the internet and make some black out poetry
- Make a crown of wild flowers and wear it in your hair
- Make a fake infomercial for a fake product in a fake accent
- Go to an estate sale and look through someone’s treasures
- Cover a wall in your room with photographs
- Make a list of three goals you want to accomplish today, and remember they can be very small and simple goals
- Go to a thrift store with a friend and have a contest to see who can wear the most ridiculous 80’s outfit
- Walk barefoot through sand, tall grass, or just out to the mailbox
- Do some weird performance art on a street corner
- Play a boardgame with a group of friends
- Teach yourself the Thriller, Time Warp, or Evolution Of Dance dance
- Deep Google someone you find inspiring
- Buy, write on, and send ten postcards to friends’ snail mail addresses
- Browse a weird discount/wholesale/liquidator store for some super weird, old, discontinued treasures
- Watch an excessive amount of cute cat videos
- Hold a lithium quartz crystal which is helpful with fighting sadness and stress, and finding peace and harmony
- Go to a sports bar and scream “City Name, Sports Team!” at the televisions
- Teach yourself five new words (even if they’re just from Urban Dictionary or in another language)
- Turn your hand into a face and put on a puppet show
- Make your own pom poms or tassels out of yarn or flowers out of cardstock or tissue paper
- Visit a playground and get on the swings
- Yell “Fuck It!” out loud with your arms up towards the sky
- Write a positive haiku on a bathroom wall
- Get yourself a harmonica, kazoo, or simple percussion instrument and make some really terrible music
- Put a bunch of glitter on your eyes, face, and skin
- Make a list of things you’re grateful for and lucky to have in your life
- Buy and wear sexy underwear
- Watch stand-up comedy you find hilarious and cackle unattractively
- Wrap yourself up in soft blankets like a burrito and wiggle around
- Move your mouth into a smile for sixty seconds to trick your brain
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This is amazing- I dare anyone to not pee themselves laughing reading through this list. Thank you one hundred times!!!