Cooking and working out. Proper nutrition and taking care of your body make a huge difference, along with reading.
Daily walks are so simple but getting out does wonders
I agree, especially if it’s not in a built up area. There definitely something about being able to see the horizon.
Even if it’s inner city, getting out and being around a different energy than being alone in the apartment is so helpful. It’s difficult to get moving though
Photography maybe, you go on walks and travel, forces you to observe the world around you.
If anyone struggles with plenty of ego identification and unhelpful destructive thoughts I recommend meditating. 30-day guest pass https://dynamic.wakingup.com/guestpass/SC13AF7E5
You can also ask a support for a 1 year for free when you ccan’t afford it.
Making the absolute best possible pizza you can, it’s an obsession and sometimes it’s actively stressful which you’d think would be bad for mental health but it’s just the right level of stress and frustration and reward and relaxation and well, pizza, that it’s something that the more I get in to it the more even the most unnecessary extra effort to get only the slightest improvement of the texture or the taste will seem worth it. I also really love trying to emulate ones that I’ve had and loved so there’s kind of an end goal in so far as I can test if I think I’ve replicated or exceeded a standard I’ve set from my favourite pizza place. Doing it this way also opens you up to all the different existing styles you can try and then try to recreate. You could also invent your own if you’re creative enough. You can spend big on fun equipment but you don’t even have to because part of the fun is figuring out the smartest ways to achieve similarity of results with the resources at your disposal. I like making lots of notes to try something subtly different next time.
Whatever else is going on, I’m always in that zone when making pizza. The only problem with it is that it’s a bit impractical. The best pizza tends to be at least a 24 hour long affair with dough made in the morning ready for that night so when you’re super busy at work it’s not easy to fit a good pizza day in there with all the effort and mess involved but when you can, all feels right with the world.
I need to feel productive. Be it a programming project or woodworking. Just creating something new instead of maintenance like oil changes and mowing the lawn. Creating something new.
Also, take a walk in the forest. Get out on the water. Both are great therapy to disconnect from the mental todo-list of things going on around the house.
Renting a paddleboard and just chilling on a lake on a sunny day. It really is a kind of heaven.
Whatever hobby you enjoy, avoid its online community as much as possible. It’s a great way to see negativity and arguing, which we all know constant negativity and discourse is fantastic for our collective mental health.
It’s also a good way to never actually getting the ball rolling on a new hobby, and instead obsessively research what the “correct” way of doing xyz is and then be too overwhelmed by all the opinions to actually get started yourself.
Playing an instrument, like a guitar. It’s great being able to play, but it takes time to learn it.
Cycling has been a massive boon to my health, both mental and otherwise. It’s such a fun way to get around, and just so happens to be great exercise in the process.
Hobby? I dunno, but habit? Meditation.
I’d say anything creative, something which pushes the mind to focus on generating new ideas instead of just running through the same old ones - this worked for me, at least, as rumination and catastrophising have been stapled to my noggin my entire life.
To be more specific, painting, building stuff with Legos, drawing, writing poetry, composing songs, whittling, woodworking, stuff like that.
Another important aspect (at least from personal experience, ymmv) is keeping the hobby a hobby - what I mean by this is not falling into the trap of perfectionism or productivity with it, keeping it light and fun. I now strongly believe that the brain needs something “inconsequential” on which to chew if only to remind it that not every stimulus it receives is do-or-die.
League of Legends /s
There’s not gonna be a proper answer that applies to everyone. For myself, riding BMX flatland, riding unicycles, carving wood, learning survival skills, keeping time…
Jigsaw puzzles. Start with a couple of hundreds of pieces and then go with the ones of thousands. Also gardening, but you need to have a garden or enough space to have plants inside your home.
