Our modern lives are only made stable by a surprisingly fragile configuration of routines. When one or more parts is broken, problems appear everywhere. And even the most bland adjustment could throw things off.

The Fragility of Ordinary Life

Solving a problem is very difficult when its cause is hard to trace. You can’t isolate the trouble the same way you would dunk a leaky inner tube into a bathtub to see where the bubbles come out, for example.
What you can do is try to focus on better inputs: i.e, if you're struggling because of the pandemic and its social and health consequences, try pouring more vegetables, books, and exercise into the front end of the system, while reducing the intake of sugar, Netflix, and news.

When You Don't Know What's Wrong

There are 2 types of feel-better activities:
<ul>
<li>Those that immediately improve your mood, but often at the expense of overall well-being. Easy to start doing, and often hard to stop, they tend not to have long-term rewards.</li>
<li>Those are activities that improve your well-being, and your mood too, but usually not right away. You never regret these activities and they take effort.</li>
</ul>

Feel-Good Activities

While there are things that are simply outside of your control, there are lots of actionable steps you can take to seize control and feel better. 

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<img src="https://www.raptitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/jarek-ceborski-jn7uVeCdf6U-unsplash.jpg" width="550" height="367" alt="Post image for How to Feel Better When You Don’t Know What’s Wrong">Where I live, “How are you?” has traditionally been more of a greeting than a question. You’re supposed to say something like, “Good! You?” and then talk about whatever you were going to talk about.In the last three months, it seems to have become a question again. People genuinely want to know how friends and neighbors are doing, so there’s often an added inflection to indicate that they are indeed asking: “So… how are you?”This seems healthy. It also seems healthy that “I don’t know” has become a perfectly acceptable and relatable answer.Like many people I’ve spoken to this spring, I don’t know how I’m doing, only that some things feel off. I’m not particularly anxious or worried, but getting ordinary things done has become inexplicably difficult.I hope you’re doing okay in your corner of civilization. But in case you’re not, I want to share something that has helped me move through the murk, even though I don’t know what the murk is exactly.<h3>Ordinary Life is Fragile</h3>One of my hypotheses is that our fancy modern lives are only made stable by a surprisingly fragile configuration of routines. When one or more parts is broken, problems occur everywhere in the machine.Even the most innocuous change could throw things off. Social distancing changes the way you grocery shop, and maybe that changes your diet. That affects your sleep, which affects your attitude, which affects your work, which affects your outlook, and your view of yourself, and so on, until ordinary life has become completely disrupted, with no indication that it’s all because you’re no longer comfortable in the cramped produce section of your local Price Chopper.It’s hard to solve a problem when its cause is untraceable. You can’t isolate the issue the way you might dunk a leaky inner tube into a bathtub to see where the bubbles come out.What’s worked best for me has been <a href="https://www.raptitude.com/2020/05/focus-on-the-inputs/" dir="ltr">focusing on better inputs</a>: pouring more vegetables, books, and exercise into the front end of the system, while reducing the intake of sugar, Netflix, and Reddit. This is all done without knowing quite what problems it will solve. (For what it’s worth, I can report that so far, sleep quality has gone from a three out-of-ten to a six.)I formalized this strategy by returning to a simple tool I once used to get through a different period of inexplicable stagnation. You might want to try it if you sometimes—or always—feel down, or off, without knowing why.<h3>The Cupboard Sheet</h3>Inside the door of my breakfast cupboard I taped a list of activities that reliably make me feel better: journaling, meditation, cleaning something that’s been dirty for a long time, reaching out to a friend, reading a real book, and half a dozen others.However, I only included activities that made me feel better in a particular way.When we feel bad, off, or stuck, we naturally want to do something that makes us feel better. There are two distinct types of feel-better activities.Some activities immediately improve your mood, but often at the expense of overall well-being. These are easy to start doing, and often hard to stop. Many of them involve screens, caloric intake, or both. They tend not to have long-term rewards.Then there are activities that improve your well-being. They improve mood too, but often not right away. You never regret these activities. There’s a certain comfort to be found in doing them, or having done them, but they do take effort. These are the ones that go on the list.Whenever I feel down, aimless, unproductive, or lost, I open the cupboard, pick the most appealing item on the list, and do ten or twenty minutes of it. Read on the front stoop. Send off a few “Hey what are you up to?” texts. Take a fifteen-minute jog around the neighborhood.Every single time I do something from the list, I’m in a better place afterward. I might not feel amazing, but I do feel more capable, and that is a huge relief. My desire for diversion is also sated, and I no longer feel stuck. It always works.Your Cupboard Sheet activities might be different from mine. Practicing piano, reading scripture, doing handstands against the wall, whatever your thing is. In making your list, you’re looking for activities with the golden trio of comfort, effort, and non-regrettability. Choose six to twelve items in total.<h3>Why does it work so well?</h3>I think there are three reasons the Cupboard Sheet is so reliable.There’s nothing moralistic about it. It’s not a list of things you should do. It’s a list of things that tend to make you feel saner, healthier, and more empowered.It’s humble. There’s no expectation of a miracle. Your activity may or may not shift your mood into “good” territory, but you know it’ll move you some distance away from stagnation and aimlessness.It’s appealing. Because there are options, there will almost always be one item that feels appropriate for this particular moment. Sometimes strapping on the runners feels like the right thing. Other times it absolutely does not, but sitting down with a paperback does.Perhaps the Cupboard Sheet’s great secret is that it doesn’t offer the easiest ways to feel better. The modest effort required to access the list’s rewards shifts your feel-better strategy away from the negative feedback loops of snacks and screens, to a different mental territory, where the loops go the other way.No matter how the next twenty minutes goes, you end up a little higher on the hill, with a better view.***Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@jarson" dir="ltr">Jarek Ceborski</a><h3>
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Where I live, “How are you?” has traditionally been more of a greeting than a question. You’re supposed to say something like, “Good! You?” and then talk about whatever you were going to talk about. In the last three months, […]

How to Feel Better When You Don’t Know What’s Wrong

The Fragility of Ordinary Life

When You Don't Know What's Wrong

Feel-Good Activities

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