How do I Overcome Hurt & Sadness?

Being sad is a part of life, everyone gets sad or hurt at one point or another in their life time. However, you don't have to stay sad. With a little effort you can overcome sadness and being hurt and move on with your life. According to Alan Gettis, Ph.D., author of The Happiness Solution: Finding Joy and Meaning in an Upside Down World, moving past these emotions allows you to feel new, brighter emotions like happiness and love.

Things You'll Need

• Pen
• Paper

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Instructions

• 1

  Make a list of things you enjoy in life. These can be very simple things, for example, if you enjoy walking out onto your porch in the morning and feeling the morning sunlight on your skin, write it down! If you enjoy watching figure skating, write that down too. Anything you enjoy, anything that makes you smile, put it on this list. Try to do these things as often as possible.

• 2

  Spend time with friends doing positive things. If you don't have any positive friends, go out and meet some new ones. Making friends is not as hard as it initially appears to be. Go to an eveny that you enjoy where you are sure to meet like-minded people who you would get along with. According to the book The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, positive influences in your life are important to staying happy and combating sadness and hurt.

• 3

  Exercise at least three times a week. According Dr. Gettis, exercising builds up endorphins, which make your feel great directly after. Any exercise that you are physically capable of will help--pick something and go with it! After you've exercised, take a shower and reflect on your accomplished workout session. An added perk is that you will start to look better and become healthier.

• 4

  Learn from animals in nature or get a pet. Animals can teach us a lot about enjoying the small things in life and not dwelling on the bad. If a cat is chasing a moth, it is having fun in the moment, but when the moth flies away the cat will not sit down and be sad, it will find something else to do. According to Liz Adamson, author of Releasing Hurt and Sadness, spending time with an animal will help you learn these traits and take one step closer to overcoming sadness.

• 5

  Start a journal. According to Adamson, writing in a journal will help you get your emotions out and onto paper so that you can move on with your life. Make a policy, once you've written about it and turned the page, forget about it! Push the bad from your mind and try not to think about it again. You'll always have it written down, when you're at a happier point in your life you can come back and read over how you were feeling at the time to see how far you've come.