To a large extent, depression is a state of mind. The more isolated and wronged you feel, the more negative your thoughts would become. The key to avoid depression is to discard derogatory thoughts.
Get up, get going
Negative thoughts make way to your mind if you avoid socializing and mingling with people. Your life maybe very positive and blessed, but a secluded and lonely person cannot keep himself or herself out of the web of negative thoughts. You don’t need to plan an evening outing with a gang of friends every day. Go for a walk, join a dance class or try to talk to strangers. They may not be your friends but talking thaws aggressive thoughts and engages your mind to some other topics also.
Engage yourself in an activity
Join a salsa class that you might be postponing since years, teach painting if you have a creative eye; these may not look important over your office meetings and schedules, but activities like this are the essence of life. Not only such things ensure your conversations with several other people but they also help you in opening up. At the end of it, you would feel happy to see the number of friends you have added to your friend list and the skills that you have enhanced by doing this. This interaction would help you in directing your life to constructive thoughts and would keep depression at bay.
Write down a diary
Depression is often a result or thinking about the negative phases of life over and over again. You may not be willing to share your life story with anyone. A diary can be your best friend in such case. Write small and big events of your life in your diary. Don’t make your diary a chronicle of sad events of your life, jot down the small yet happy moments also. You may have gotten relieved of some huge mental burden on a given day, or you may have met some very interesting person on the railway platform, you can write down all of this. After a month when you would flip the pages of the diary you won’t feel depressed by seeing just sad moments. The happy moments would help you in reliving the good times too.
Feel good and try to look good
Your mental state often lays a strong affect on your mood. You can judge someone’s mental state easily by looking at the way he or she carries itself. Take out time to dress up properly. If you like makeup, take out time to apply it. Carry your clothes well. This would help you in getting connected to yourself. Researches have proved that happy people tend to dress properly than depressed people. You can use it to your benefit. Why should you sit at home and kill time when you can go out and become a center of everyone’s attraction. This attention would make you feel good.
Go to friends
A good friend is the best support anyone can have. If you have been hurt by some close friend, getting into depression with a hurt and torn feeling is not the solution. Your friendship circle should consist of a few close knit friends who are fair and sympathetic towards you. Remember, just because you know somebody for years this does not mean that you can consider him to be a friend of yours. You do not need to be rude to people you like less. Stay politically correct. Just refrain from trusting every other person. Conversing with a lot of people is a good stress buster. But a time out with a few very close friends would be rejuvenating for you.