This is my fourth attempt at writing a post today, and it'll be a miracle if it's my last. Since waking up this morning, I've started three different articles on three different topics, only to give up each after just a few sentences. Nothing was ringing true. So, I've decided to write about the only thing that does feel true, which is that today, I don't have much to say about bliss. I feel no bliss. 

I know how important authentic feelings are to recognize. I'm feeling a little blue. Sorrier words have never inaugurated a blog post, I'm sure, but I'm not here to impress you, I'm here to be authentic, to share authentic feelings. What's authentic right now is that it's just one of those days. 

This isn't one of those stock Thanksgiving blogicles where I waste 500 words tossing around washed-up phrases about how "gratitude is an attitude." It's much worse than that. I'm going to try to challenge your notion of gratitude altogether. I said early on in my HealthyPlace journey that I wasn't going to try to convince anyone of anything, but we all knew I was lying. So let me be explicit about this: I want you to leave this post believing that gratitude isn't just for the things in your life that are working. I want you to walk away feeling grateful for the challenges in your life that aren't. 

I'm writing this just a few minutes removed from a morning run, which I hated almost every second. I'm not like the runners you see in the movies who gracefully jog with their camera-ready smiles; my face is usually fixed in a mask of focused despair, disguising not at all how distasteful I find the whole situation. This run was no different—my feet hurt, my heart pounded quicker than it wanted to, and my respiration struggled to keep pace. In short, the run absolutely, unmistakably, irrevocably sucked. It was exactly what I'd hoped for. I was hoping to increase my distress tolerance.

In the aftermath of one of my mental breakdowns, a wise friend once told me that "sometimes you have to think your way into acting differently, and sometimes you have to act your way into thinking differently." I guarantee he didn't come up with this catchy phrase himself, but I give him full credit for introducing me to the notion that when it comes to changing your feelings, your body is as valuable of a mechanism as your mind. If your mind is already sour, thinking yourself into a more positive experience probably isn't an option. You're better off acting your way into thinking differently—or better: biohacking your way into thinking differently.

Today we'll discuss how not to hate your life. But first, in the last post, I suggested that we ought to drive a wedge between the mechanism by which we understand the world—our brains—and the product of that understanding—ourselves. In the end, I declared that you are pure observation. If you're still scratching your head about this, an easier way to view it is to equate yourself with your experience of reality, keeping in mind that said experience is mediated completely by your brain. It's critical you understand this. Because if you don't, you won't understand that your experience of reality and reality itself has very little to do with each other. The latter is unyielding. The former is entirely subject to the direction it's pointed in.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to my first official installment of "How to Live a Blissful Life." If I weren't in such an atrocious mood, I'd be happy to be here, but unfortunately, I'm in a bit of a tizzy. For the better part of a day, I've been hacking my way through the unforgiving jungle of my mind with my machete of words in order to deliver you something brilliant for this inaugural post. About an hour ago, I punctuated my final sentence and gave the piece I'd just barely conquered a once over. It was bad. It was really, really bad. It was drowning in inauthenticity and pretension, and I wouldn't have let you touch it with a 10-foot stick.

I've found that sometimes I need to trick my mind into changing my beliefs. While there are endless ways to do this, one, in particular, has worked well for me. Incorporating affirmations into my daily life has helped change my beliefs more habitually. And when you alter your beliefs, especially when it comes to what you think about yourself, life gets a whole lot better.

This year has been pretty overwhelming for most of us, so we need some self-care hacks to cope. In addition to the general stress of 2020, we are now approaching a season that often brings pain and grief to the forefront. With this in mind, I want to share some of my favorite skills for self-care during challenging times.

How you start your day can make or break your next 24 hours. There are so many ideas and suggestions about how to spend your time immediately after crawling out of your cozy bed. I've heard a lot of people say getting the hardest task out of the way first is the right approach. Others say following a morning routine will set your day up for success. After trying more morning rituals than I can count, I've learned that the best way to start my day is to do something that gives me energy. Feeling like I can tackle the day, rather than walking through the motions sluggishly, has helped me lead a happier life.