The world is against me... or is it?

Things have not gone well this week. Nothing's going right... I got nothing accomplished at work. I don't get the Swedish jokes. The boss, the roommate, the colleagues, my family, the bus driver... everybody gets on my nerves. The weather's gray and gloomy. The air is difficult to breath.  Life sucks. I hate where I am in life right now.

Wait a minute.... Back track... Rewind, and replay. Does my life really suck that bad? Or.... Perhaps it's because I've been so anxious and stressing myself out lately, that I've been walking around looking grumpy and giving off a vibe that it's likely not safe to interact with me? Am I the one who's been avoiding eye contact with others, and not greeting people when I see them first thing in the morning? Have I been wearing a frown on my face, looking all depressed and mad? Could it be me who's been pushing everyone away, rather than people treating me in cold ways?

Either way, I don't like how this is going. I could complain forever about a million things. I could try to come up with things to be grateful for each day, which is useful but only up to a point, and/or I could think about ways to actively improve my life situations.

- I need to go to bed earlier

- I need to cut down the amount of time I stare at a screen (blogging feels therapeutic. Browsing psychology sites obsessively does not)

- I need to take more walks

- I need to do more pranayama and meditation

- I need to try to spend more time with people who cheer me up ( they are few but thank goodness they exist!) 

- I need to actively work on relieving my anxiety. It's good for myself and for the poor souls who have to be around me

- I need to be more aware of my needs.. Do I need to socialize? Do I need to eat better food? Do I need more: Fresh air? Friends? Kindness? Exercise? Pampering? Hugs? Time to myself? Nature? 

- Do I need to be less hard on myself? Less stress? Less workload? Less complaints? Less criticisms? Less negativity? Less stimuli? Less judgements? Less comparisons with others? 

- I need to distinguish my desires from everyone else's desires. Just because others crave a house, a nice car, and two beautiful kids, does not mean I should stress out about not owning these myself, since they were never big on my list of priorities in life anyways.

- Same goes with career advices. I get anxious reading about how all there are not enough jobs for PhDs; how all these PhDs stay as postdocs forever and never get any further in life. These guys want to become professors. I don't. Stop  worrying about my career outlook when I have less ambitious goals than other overly-anxious people. 

- Declutter, Declutter, Declutter.

- Cannot re-emphasize enough: do not be anxious over other people's expections of me or of how they think life should be. Everyone wants different things in life. Some are more ambitious than others. Some handle stress better than others. Some can multitask at a higher level; some are natural born leaders. Stop comparing myself to every single successful person my age. Keep my goals framed within my means and abilities.

- Be happy with what I have and what I've achieved so far. As long as the boss isn't anxious to kick me out the door ASAP, so stop beating myself up.

This list will probably just keep getting longer. But it feels good to be able to do something about the crappiness rather than just feel crappy every day. 

What little things can YOU do for yourself to lessen your crappy feelings about life?