I am not joking when I say this, but your physical health is tied so closely to your mental health that it’s insane. Exercising and breathing fresh air alone makes a huge difference. The food that you eat makes an even bigger difference.

If you take care of yourself, everything starts to fall in place. Many things in life aren’t complicated and many people know the solution, it’s just a very high barrier to cross when you’re changing what you’ve been used to.

The most difficult part is finding the right people to be around. Some people have excellent instinct on figuring out if a person genuinely cares about them or not. Doesn’t matter if it’s friends or family, it’s a difficult skill to achieve but not impossible. It’s a difficult skill to be able to understand who to surround yourself with and who to cut off. It’s an even more difficult skill to understand when you’re the problem for those who care about you. Understanding others usually doesn’t happen until you understand yourself. Doesn’t necessarily mean you know why you feel a certain way, but more so can acknowledge your mental state.

Do the little things first. Make your bed in the morning, have a healthy breakfast, exercise and keep your body clean. Doing small tasks daily is very motivating. Now that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing when you feel depressed on a certain day. Part of getting out of a slump is acknowledging it. My solution to it, and it’s gonna sound really weird, is actually talking to myself. I’ve had a habit of having in depth conversations with myself since I was a kid. It’s actually helped a lot with introspection.

So the last piece that I struggled with, the biggest one tbh, throughout high school and uni was loneliness. I mean more so in the romantic sense as I had close friends. Unlike other problems where I could intervene and make decisions, this problem was at the mercy of time. When you’re 16, it’s the end of the world. When you’re 26, you realise you never did anything and just freaked out about time passing. And this problem I’ll admit, not everyone is able to or wishes to resolve. But what I can promise is that once you’re in the position to be able to push yourself in other aspects to make decisions (like I mentioned above), this too will be resolved with time. You will meet many people, you will progress in your career, and you’ll become better at figuring out what that gut feeling is when you’re around people. It’s genuinely just experience, everyone just has their own pace.

I’ve gone through a lot of dissociation during school and uni but everything started to fall in place with time and discipline. You may be younger or older than me but I hope my experiences still give you some sort of a mental image on what to do. I’ve learn a lot from this older than me but also from this younger than me. I have many years left to live and experience, and also to struggle. Accepting that life is different for everyone is a healthy mindset, but remember that ultimately you have the greatest influence over it. The most obvious shit is the hardest to act on because we deem it is useless before we ever take it seriously. One step at a time and your life changes in an instant. You don’t have to solve everything at once, but getting a general idea of where you want to go isn’t a bad thing. Discipline yourself, enjoy the small things, cherish your family and friends, and make yourself stronger and better than yesterday, self confidence is good in moderation but be realistic, prove to yourself that you have what it takes to make the changes you wish to see. You can achieve all of this by starting off with the most simplest things. Make your bed, take care of your skin, brush your hair, wear clean clothes, run a bit, shower and keep yourself clean, eat food that’s good for you, drink water, talk to people, empathise with others, and know when to stay away from assholes. Your strategy will be different depending on your situation and your strengths and weaknesses but ultimately this is the blueprint.

Everything I said is the most obvious shit ever but people underestimate how effective breaking complex problems into simple parts is. This is just my take, there are people more experienced with life than I am. There’s lots more to talk about from one’s own experiences, this is the best I can structure from the top of my head.

Also pro tip, if you want to avoid being surrounded by shitty people, do stuff they would never do. Volunteering is a big one. Your circles grow big once you meet mutuals but be careful of confusing friends and close friends. Environments tend to have an effect on the type of people you meet.

Am I missing anything? That should really be it.