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Feeling down or anxious and want to feel better soon? Do some exercise.

Considering how good one can feel after exercise it is amazing how few of us do it. Besides strengthening and lubricating our bodies, exercise actually changes our brain chemistry.

Even mild exercise like a half-hour walk will increase the happy hormones like endorphins, adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine, and those hormones will stay elevated for a few hours post exercise.

Not only do we feel happier after exercise, but also calmer, so exercise is also a great way to lower anxiety levels. We usually feel better even after one exercise session!

Research has shown that regular cardiovascular exercise seems to work as well as Zoloft, a commonly prescribed SSRI antidepressant, for reducing major depression in those over 50, without any of the negative side effects.

This particular study was concluded after 4 months, but when the groups were reassessed for depression again at 10 months, the exercise group was doing better than the medication group in terms of relapses.

Those that exercised on their own after the study was over had fewer depressive symptoms than those that did not. In addition to improved mood, the exercise group gained the other benefits that exercise offers, such as better stamina and a healthier circulatory system. Perhaps the first prescription a physician tries for depression should be exercise for 30 minutes, 3 times a week.

Besides the chemical changes in the brain that improve mood and lower feelings of anxiety, getting an exercise session done makes us feel better about ourselves simply due to the sense of accomplishment.

We feel more confident, we feel we are doing something good for ourselves by getting into better shape, and perhaps we are socializing with friends, all of which can make us happier. Over time we look better, which further improves our confidence. And exercise provides a healthy coping strategy as well as a distraction from the negative thought-patterns that feed anxiety and depression.

It is pretty tough for most of us to be motivated enough to exercise 3 to 4 days a week, but when one is feeling down it is even harder. And if one is clinically depressed, just getting out of bed can seem like the hardest thing in the world.

So, how do you move from knowing it might be helpful to actually heading out the door for a walk, or into the gym for a work out?

1. Your goal is to exercise regularly for the long haul – not to give it up in a couple of months. So what activity do you like to do and can see yourself doing for years to come? Something you can integrate into your life like your daily shower? Do you like badminton? Bike riding? Yoga? Walking?

2. Ask a friend to join you each time for your walk, work-out or exercise class. Or hire a trainer. Simply knowing you have committed to meet someone will get you out the door even if you don’t feel like going. And the social aspect will help a lot too.

3. Commit to at least going to the gym and changing into your exercise gear. Most likely once you are there, you will be able to do at least a few minutes of exercise. Or even easier, commit to putting on your walking shoes, walk out the door and keep walking for 7.5 minutes, then turn around and come back. That’s it. Then do it every day.

4. For most people, exercise is something that is scheduled around all the other stuff that must get done in a day. Everything else is the priority and exercising only happens if there is time. Change that around and schedule everything else around your exercise sessions.

The people around you will soon realize that you are not available at particular times because you are exercising, so they will stop bothering you during those times. This is kind of like the “pay yourself first” idea when it comes to money management.

4. Get a dog. Dogs need to be walked a couple of times a day, so this will get you out walking regularly. Furthermore you will discover a whole new community of friendly people in your neighbourhood that you probably did not even know existed.

5. Measure your mood before and after your exercise on a scale of 1 to 10, and see how you do over time. Seeing results can often help you continue.

6. Realize that lack of motivation is not the problem. The problem is not being good at managing your behaviour.

You may not be motivated to clean up after yourself but you do because you're wife's boss is coming for dinner tonight. In this case you choose to do something different than what you "feel like doing" because helping her out is the right thing to do.

So with respect to exercise, you may not be motivated, but recognize that you are able to do it and are choosing not to. Then change your choice.

7. Treat exercise like a professional athlete does. It is their job to stay in shape in order to play their sport. And even though most of us don’t get paid the big bucks to stay in shape, we can try to view exercise in the same light. It is our job to stay in shape to keep our brain and bodies working well so we can fully enjoy doing the activities we want to do.

If you want to share this article, scroll to the very bottom and click the “share” icon to post on Facebook, Twitter etc. If you want to subscribe or search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.

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If you have a busy life, keeping up can seem an impossible task and can create a lot of stress. Writing down your next actions in all projects can help.

I know I am not the only one that has a hard time keeping up with everything that needs to get done on a daily or weekly basis. And I am probably not the only one that creates daily to-do lists. I would find at the end of the day I would often have only accomplished about half what I was hoping to do, despite feeling like I was working hard, and running about like a chicken with its head cut off.

Other times, I would forget about something important that would suddenly appear on my agenda as an urgent matter, which would mean I would have to drop everything to address it. Often it’s little stuff that falls through the cracks, like emailing the phone number of the chiro to a client as promised. Important, but little.

Often when I did have a good chunk of time, I would start working on one thing, then something else would flit into my mind and I would decide that was more important, so I would start working on that, often resulting in neither project getting completed.

Sometimes my brain would be doing gymnastics telling me all the things I need to do, and I would wind up feeling paralyzed trying to figure out what to work on. This indecision as well as the feeling of overwhelm I found to be quite stressful. Furthermore, I would often forget to ask myself if this item could be done by someone else.

Each year as I reflect back, I think that somehow there has got to be a way to be more efficient and get more done. And how can one possibly think about long-term goals and how to move towards them when there is so much going on day-to-day that needs to be taken care of?

Over the holiday, I read a book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, and I thought I would give his method a try. He thinks that until you “clear the runway” as he puts it, or at least feel like you are in control everything on your radar and nothing is falling through the cracks, it is very tough to consider the bigger picture except in very abstract terms.

We all may want that house on the beach, but the steps to get there might be pretty murky when we are trying to get the kids to soccer practice on time, fulfill our day-to-day work responsibilities, get that appointment in with the dentist, get groceries, remember to phone Pierre and wish him a happy birthday, clean up after the cat that just puked on the carpet – you get the picture.

I am far from implementing his entire system, but already after just doing the first step, I have noticed my head is more clear and that I am far less stressed. And I have done way more in the first two weeks of January than I would have thought possible. So, so far so good!

The first thing Allen suggests we do is “collect 100% of our incompletes”, referring to everything that you at some point might have to do both at work and at home. It doesn’t matter if it is urgent or not, big or not, important or not. Everything must be collected so that your brain can feel confident that nothing will fall through the cracks. In your “mind sweep” you gather or write down everything that you think should be different than it is right now, or needs to be processed and completed.

This includes your mail, email, voicemail etc., any current or pending projects, and also includes dead gadgets that need to be fixed or recycled, ideas that you might want to move forward either professionally (work on merger proposal) or personally (spend more time with Timmy), vacation thoughts (is that why that magazine is still hanging around?)

If you think you “should” or “ought to” do something about it, it needs to be in your collection basket or on a list, as it is considered an open loop that your brain will throw back at you again in the future. By creating external baskets for all your stuff and thoughts that were in the past ricocheting through your internal in-basket called the brain, your brain can quieten down as it won’t be preoccupied with trying to remember everything for you.

Allen suggests walking through each room in your home and writing down stuff that you think needs to be different than it is, as well as going through all your drawers and file cabinets in your office, and collecting 100% of everything that needs to be addressed.  This can take from several hours to several days. 

You can use a physical “in basket” and/or your smart phone or computer to capture any information, commitments or agreements that you have made to yourself or others for action. Once absolutely everything is captured, it will be out of your head.

If you have a collection method wherever you are, (pad of paper in the car, smart phone that you have with you at all times), you can note down any valuable thought that pops into your mind, or if your partner phones you to tell you to pick up butter on the way home, you won’t forget.

You will probably need an “in basket” at work, as well as one at home. I’ve been using my phone for most of my collecting, but I still need to set up a physical “in basket” to put in mail and other physical stuff that needs addressing, like my camera if it needs batteries or if I have to download pics.

Of course, the only way to keep the brain trusting your new system is to process your in basket very regularly – say a minimum once a week. I'll get into this in more detail another time, but here are a couple of quick tricks. The key to clearing in basket is to ask yourself "Is there a next action that can be done to move this forward? If so, what exactly is the very next action to be done?" Write down that next action.

You can create a "calls" list, a "computer" list, an "out and about" list etc. so the next time you are at your computer you can do the actions on your computer list. If there is no action, but you want to keep something for reference, you can file it appropriately.

Process each thing one at a time – nothing goes back in the in-basket and nothing remains in the in-basket. You can keep files for various projects, next actions, items you are waiting on, sometime maybe, etc. Create whatever files you need and keep them in alphabetical order.

My to-do lists USED TO have stuff like “eye appt”, “advertise workshop”, “buy more weight plates for studio” etc. None of those are listed in a way that helps me get started. Taking the extra moment to figure out exactly what my next action would be makes all the difference. “Email Janice for number of good optometrist”, “call location to see what night I can run the workshop”, or “research weight plates online for best price” encourages action.

So, each week when going through the inbox, part of the job is thinking through what the very next action is, and noting that on the appropriate context list (calls, computer, at home, out and about etc.). Thinking of the next action needed on each project is helpful in keeping all projects moving forward.

I have found that just noting down all my "open loops" has helped me focus on the projects at hand. My brain is no longer flitting all over the place. And because I feel I am gaining control of "my runway" and am less worried I am going to forget something important, I feel more relaxed and less stressed.

I also think I will do a better job staying on top of all my projects, which will hopefully mean that I will move further towards my goals this year. I would highly recommend David Allen's book. Read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and have your most productive and least stressful year ever!

If you want to share this article, scroll to the very bottom and click the “share” icon to post on Facebook, Twitter etc. If you want to subscribe or search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.

Related tips:
Creating new habits
Acute vs. Chronic Stress

www.wellnesstips.ca