Strive to get 6-8 hours of quality sleep nightly, viewing it as a continuous, daily investment like physical fitness, to support mood and mental health. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule, going to bed and waking up within plus or minus one hour of your regular times, to regulate mood, mental health, and optimize sleep stages.
View sunlight with your eyes for 10 minutes on clear days (20-30 minutes on overcast days) as early as possible after waking, without sunglasses or through windows, to positively impact mood, focus, alertness, and nighttime sleep. If sunlight is unavailable, use a 10,000 lux SAD lamp or 900 lux drawing tablet to enhance light exposure.
Ensure you are in very dim to completely dark environments for a continuous 6-8 hours within every 24-hour cycle, especially in your sleeping environment, as this independently improves mood and mental health outcomes and prevents disruption of morning glucose levels.
To reduce stress in real-time, perform a physiological sigh: a deep inhale through the nose, followed by a brief second inhale, then a long, extended exhale through the mouth. This hardwired breathing pattern calms you down quickly, enhancing mood and confidence in managing stressors.
Practice deliberate cold exposure, such as a cold shower for a minute, to elevate adrenaline levels and learn to stay calm and maintain clear cognition in stressful states. This builds your capacity to better navigate real-life stressors.
Incorporate 180-220 minutes of Zone 2 cardio and at least one session of VO2 max work per week, along with resistance training (6-10 sets per muscle group to failure), taking at least one full rest day weekly, as both cardiovascular and resistance training improve mood and mental health.
Consume sufficient, but not excessive, amounts of quality calories daily, primarily from non-processed or minimally processed foods, as nutrition provides the essential macronutrients and micronutrients that serve as substrates for neurotransmitters crucial for mood and mental health.
Strive to limit social interactions that feel taxing or stressful, as they drain energy and lead to negative affect, and instead prioritize interactions that provide ‘savings’ (metabolic and neurochemical resources) to enhance mood and mental health. Reflect on your internal dialogue to reduce mental rumination on unpleasant interactions.
Frequently ask yourself, ‘What am I really feeling right now?’ and use specific, nuanced language to describe your emotions (e.g., curious and anxious, rather than just ‘bad’). This practice enhances positive emotions, helps navigate negative ones, and improves physiological metrics like vagal tone and heart rate variability.
Dedicate five minutes daily to cyclic physiological sighing (two inhales through the nose, followed by a full exhale through the mouth, repeated), as this protocol significantly improves mood, reduces anxiety, and enhances autonomic function.
Create a structured life narrative by organizing your life history into dated folders or documents, adding bullet points of key milestone events (positive, negative, neutral) that were salient to you. This develops a historical sense of self, agency, and confidence.
Keep a dream journal to record key themes and narratives of your dreams, especially those from REM sleep, to explore the contents of your unconscious mind. If you struggle to recall dreams, remain still with eyes closed for a few minutes upon waking to aid recollection.
Upon waking, before moving or opening your eyes, remain still for 1-5 minutes and pay attention to where your mind goes, observing thoughts that ‘geyser up’ from the unconscious. This provides a portal into your unconscious mind for introspective work.
Regularly engage in free association journaling for 5-10 minutes, writing down anything that comes to mind without self-monitoring, to clear mental clutter and process anxieties.
Practice structured journaling by setting a specific intention to write about your goals and aspirations (material or feeling states), detailing what you wish to create for yourself. This helps access and build your generative drive, leading to actualization.
When processing traumas (alone or with a professional), allow yourself to use language that fully captures the magnitude and impact of the experience, rather than minimizing it. This prevents trauma from rooting into the unconscious, reducing guilt, shame, anxiety, and sleep disruptions.