Back again!

After an absence of two years I've decided to start writing this blog again. With depression a world-wide epidemic, it seems important to share what I've learned about transforming depression into happiness. In the past few years life has thrown so many adversities at me, in the form of illness, not being able to work, moving far away from all my friends, having people close to me get sick or die, that maintaining my happiness has been the big focus. I'm delighted and proud that I've been able to do this. I know it's because I've worked so hard at making happiness a habit.

Right now I'm facing the house I live in going into a mortgagee sale and not knowing if the new owner will want me to stay on. It just shows that there is no such thing as security - life is always changing and throwing up new things. This provides yet another challenge to maintaining my precious happiness.

What I'm doing to stay happy in the face of this stress is:

• keeping up my habit of writing down the good things that happen each day (or every few days)


• planning enjoyable events


• looking for things in the situation that I can control, however little. For example, I rang the bank's lawyers to find out the time frame for the sale and typed up and distributed this information to tenants in the other houses the landlord owns


• make sure I have regular rest time where I can do enjoyable activities and not think about practical problems.