7 Quick Pick-Me-Ups You Can Do Right Now

Sometimes, you just need to get out of your head for a minute. Here are some things I do when my focus starts to shift.

1. Go for a walk or a run and listen to an uplifting podcast—I suggest Tony Robbin's most recent fireside chat series entitled Find the Blessing.

2. Make a list of your blessings. This will especially make more sense once you listen to the podcast, but make a list of everything that has been a blessing from this situation. Continually doing this will help you train your mind to focus on the good. It's a practice, and it takes practice, so don't feel bad if at first it is difficult. All things that are easy were once difficult. Accept your situation, say I feel like crap today and that's okay. And here are my blessings.

3. Call a friend and ask how they're doing AND/OR pick out a gift to ship or bring to them, or make something nice and bring it to them. Doing for others that you appreciate will take you out of your headspace.

4. Clean your house/apartment/room. Seriously, this doesn't sound "fun" or like a pick me up I know, but having control over your space and having that space be clean & calming is seriously one of the best feelings. So pick a podcast or audiobook that will make you feel good (sometimes my guilty pleasure is Harry Potter audiobooks that I have listened to a thousand times, whatever who cares) and vacuum, wipe down surfaces, Once you're done, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment, control, and relaxation having gotten a big task done.

5. Take care of an animal 🐶 . Go to a local animal shelter and play with the dogs, take your dog to a park, or ask a friend to take their dog out with them. Animals are naturally calming and stimulate oxytocin the same way being in love does, and taking care of an animal is a natural stress reliever because again, it makes you focus on another living being besides yourself. Tony Robbins always says that suffering is obsessing about yourself. Taking care of someone or something is always the antidote.

6. Get some sunshine! If you live in a sunny place, make sure to get out and about for at least 20 minutes during the peak of the day—go for a walk, lay out and read a book on your break from work, eat lunch outside. If you don't live in a sunny place (which I'm all too familiar with, I grew up in Chicago) try getting a SAD lamp AKA a sun lamp, which usually aren't too expensive and are definitely worth doing a quick session with while reading a book, doing a meditation, or listening to a book or a podcast.

7. GIVE! The most surefire way to turn your day around is to give to others. Drop off toiletries at your local homeless shelter, pass out gift cards to workers who work outside during the holidays, bring a cup of coffee to your doorman—whatever it is, however small, force yourself to go out and do it.