Day 42 Record Keeping SRHI = 50
Day 10 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 44
Day 9 Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 57
Great night sleep, ok wakeup
Depressed.

Yesterday I woke up to a massive cloud of horrible depression. I was uncertain of everything and I only got over it after fighting, fighting, fighting with multiple techniques.

After all the techniques and some time at the beach, once I got past it I was still shaky. Eventually I got back to the moments of clarity from last week. And I feel this is important.

I started getting into a state where I felt like I could choose. I could easily choose happiness. I could just choose, and in choosing laugh because it felt like cheating. Don’t do something right? Doesn’t matter, I can choose to be happy and unaffected. Didn’t get enough done, doesn’t matter. I would laugh because it’s cheating at life. It’s like wearing a bubble of invincibility and no one can hurt you.

And the key was to recognize that in each turn of my mind when I felt negativity welling up. And I feel it, I feel it welling up just sitting here writing this. Nervousness, worry, pessimism, they come up moment to moment for me, and at each point if I recognize it and then say in my mind “nope, I’m going to be happy” I sometimes just crack up laughing, which helps as well.

The act of pointing them out I feel is really important. It distances the self from the emotion instantly, whereas yesterday morning I was already drowning in the emotion.

Lydia told me yesterday at the beach that what I’m doing is rewiring habitual frames of mind - because my natural state of mind is to beat myself up over not succeeding at cutting off that negativity yesterday. And that will take time, and there will be moments where you fail because it’s a herculean task.

I think of it as a meditation where I’m still wobbly. You’ve got to first get the state of mind just so. Just once. I’ve gotten that. The next step is to prolong it. I’m working on that.

I realize that this is all a bit “woo-woo” regarding habit formation. But for someone like me who has to deal with this destructive force within myself moment to moment in my mind trying to tear him down, this is the most important habit there is.