Hmmm...I have a few. One of them is learning to see the funny side of things, oddly enough. I used to have a good sense of humor. It pretty much left when things got really bad. However, knowing someone blessed with a good sense of humor as well as the ability to poke fun at himself now and then has been helpful in regaining it! There are times now when I beat him to the funny line about whatever just went down that I would have been hopelessly enraged by a couple years ago, and I often find myself looking for whatever in a situation might be amusing.
A second method involves turning on the oldies station and singing along, usually at the top of my lungs, for a couple of hours. Oddly, my neighbors tell me they don;t hear me, even at midnight. Must be the lack of heavy bass speakers?
The other is exercise related, but for me it's turned into a whole regimen involving other things too. I used to trail walk. Accent on used to. I have spinal problems in two places, and that, with trashed knees, have gotten too bad to handle it anymore. I tried swimming --funny because I literally never learned to swim-- and used to stay in the water "swimming laps" (ie getting from one end of the pool to the other) up to 2 hours but finally that became too painful to continue also. Not to mention the problems with such things as little kids leaping into the lap lanes right in front of you and big kids (20somethings) leaping into the end of the same lane and half-drowning me as they blow past! LOL! As I lost the capacity to exercise, I gained a lot of weight --naturally makes bad knees and backs worse too! Oh yes...and there's the allergy to chlorine. ,,,,
After the latest VA screwup a few months ago I started researching human nutritional parameters. I've balanced rations for a bunch of different critters, humans are no different, and I was sick of trying to get the VA to treat the problems that were keeping me from being active or treat the consequences of couch potatoism. I could've done a fairly good human ration, but I needed specific details of micronutrients to pull off this one. The short tale is this: I dropped my caloric intake to 800-1100 per day and started doing daily 30 min slow motion water workouts in the 8 foot deep area of the pool here. Think water jogging done at quarter speed. It appears to be working quite well. I can usually handle 30 minutes without much physical pain and there is less time for anyone to pull a stunt that pisses me off. Some of the consequences of overweight I'd begun to experience have lightened, some have disappeared. Despite my "kicking a refrigerator's ass" post elsewhere, it also appears to be helping with rage. Or possibly feeling better overall as I drop pounds has to do with that, or even just feeling more in control of ANYTHING is what's doing it.
Of course, with that allergy, just showering at the pool isn't enough. I take an hour long soak in a hot bath every other evening, with a book, an audio tape of nature sounds or some instrumental music that I find especially relaxing, and some aromatherapeutic scent that I also find relaxing. Having something relaxing for all the senses that way seems to do a better job than leaving any of them out. I'd still rather be walking trails --THAT gives something for each sense as well-- but this will do for now.
