Author: Joe Oliveto

In this day and age, it’s common for young people to travel far away from home for school, for work, and for the rest of their lives. In fact, to some degree, choosing to remain in the same region is perceived as weak, as unadventurous. Any attachment to your home is seen as a limiting factor in your life.

It’s an odd belief to have, because there’s truly no merit to it. Sure, there are many reasons why one might want to move away, but if you feel the need to stay in the same part of the world your entire life, you’ve also got some common sense backing you up. Because. . .

We Need Natives

Whenever you travel to a foreign country, you often feel the urge to find someone who has lived in that spot their entire life, someone who knows the culture, knows the traditions, knows the history. These people are the ones who allow us to truly appreciate the aspects of that place that make it truly unique. They tell us the types of lessons we can’t learn from a tour guide.

These people are important. Those who remain attached to their homes can glorify them for visitors. The world will always need someone to fill these roles. Doing so is a strength, not a weakness.

We Need Connection

While we like to tell ourselves that we’re more connected than ever, thanks to communications technology, the truth is, we’re always drifting further apart. The kind of connection you share with someone via Facebook doesn’t hold a candle to the relationship you have with someone who has been an active, present part of your life for years.

Striving to find better jobs, more exciting experiences, and, hey, lower taxes, we leave our homes, and we leave the people who made those places special. Of course, if you didn’t have such connections growing up, it may be in your best interest to find a new home. But without settling somewhere, without creating roots, you deny yourself the privilege of truly knowing someone over the course of a lifetime.

We Need Curiosity

Not all homes are created equal. Some places are, quite simply, more exciting than others. That said, the attitude of those eager to leave home seems to imply that they’ve done all there is to do in that part of the world.

That’s pretty much impossible. No matter where you are, there’s history, there are stories, there are opportunities to explore. Many people claim that they wish to travel somewhere new out of a sense of curiosity. That very well may be true. If, however, you actually insist that you’ve learned everything there is to learn about the place you’ve already been, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ve actually turned off your natural curiosity.

We Need Reliability

Self-reliance is a wonderful quality to possess. Not many of us truly do, though. As we make our way through life, we need the help of others from time to time.

In other words, we need to be able to know that we have a home on which we can rely. A place we know, a place where we’re comfortable, a place with family and friends. When life gets difficult, having firm roots can make it a little bit easier.

We Need To Be Ourselves

At the end of the day, one of the keys to happiness is to be yourself, to follow your own instincts. If that leads you somewhere far from home, that’s completely fine, but it’s no better than the instincts that keep you connected to one place. If you try to force yourself to break free from a city, a state, a region that has been a guiding, positive force in your life, you may end up removing yourself from one of the prime sources of your own fulfillment.

We’ve all got our own ways of making it through life. Some people seek constant adventure in new lands. Others have a deep love for where they are. Neither one is right or wrong.

Do what you love. It’s pretty sound advice, assuming that what you love is not a drug. To be happy in life, it helps to do work about which you are passionate.

Unfortunately, reality does not always permit us to make this choice. Whether we like it or not, there may be instances in which we end up working in an industry completely unrelated to our interests, major, or values.

While it’s easy to perceive this situation as a negative one, the truth is, taking on a job in a field you’re not familiar with can offer up some fairly substantial benefits, assuming you make the conscious choice to acknowledge them.

By working outside of your comfort zone, you. . .

Develop Confidence

Working a job that relates to your life goals isn’t necessarily easy; the mere fact that you enjoy it does not guarantee that it won’t be demanding. We’d all like to be confident in our work, but actually achieving that state of self-assurance is a struggle.

If, however, you’ve already thrived in a position that didn’t have much to do with your previous training, you have solid evidence that you’re the type of individual who can manage to learn new skills and adapt to a challenging work environment. It seems that after college, many of us assume our degree has transformed us into a specialized person, only capable of operating within a narrow career path.

We forget the fact that we still possess the ability to learn. Rediscovering this truth allows us to develop a confidence that will make our entire professional life much easier.

Appreciate Other Goals

In any given moment, it is entirely possible to step back and ask yourself about the various values that went into creating the experience you’re having. Driving down the highway? Thank a civil engineer. Surfing the web? Some computer genius probably had a hand in what you’re doing right now. Out to dinner? Your food may have been prepared by someone whose lifelong goal was to be a chef.

Very often, we get so caught up in our own perspective that we forget how significant other types of work are. By learning to appreciate these different approaches to the question “What do I want to do for a living?” we can, quite simply, enjoy an enriched experience of the world around us.

Working a job in a field you know nothing about is a fantastic way to experience this. You’re surrounded by people driven to reach goals you never give a second thought to. You get to understand the work that goes into something you may take for granted.

Focus Your Priorities

While most of us have a dream job, the degree to which we pursue a career in our chosen field varies. Some of us are born with an innate drive to realize our ambitions, while others need outside forces to motivate us.

Working a job you didn’t hope for can be a powerful influence. On the one hand, you may discover that you have an unexpected knack for this type of work; your priorities realign as you find a new goal, one you never considered before. On the other hand, if your job doesn’t inspire you, you’ll feel a stronger desire to start chasing your dream. Every day at work will be a reminder that you need to strive towards your true aspirations.

When you read about successful celebrities, you often find that theirs are rags-to-riches stories. They started with nothing and ended up with fame and fortune. That may have something to do with the fact that they were desperate to escape their circumstances. It gave them the focus to keep chasing a dream.

Working a job you have no passion for can help you gain some of that necessary desperation.

Impress Employers

Anyone who has ever filled out an application for an adult job knows the frustration that accompanies reading the following words: “Preferred candidate has 2-3 years experience in [insert field here].”

How can you ever get any experience when no one wants to hire a newcomer? It seems that barely any employer wants to risk hiring someone who hasn’t done the job before.

As such, you may feel that working in an unrelated industry is a waste of your time; when you do get around to applying to your dream jobs, you won’t have the experience that everyone seems to want.

To an extent, this may seem like a legitimate concern, but you should also account for the fact that a potential employer may very well be impressed with your ability to thrive in a position for which you weren’t prepared. Talent and training are important to a potential boss, but so are qualities such as flexibility and maturity.

If you can demonstrate that you took a job seriously even though you didn’t care about it, you can prove that you’re the type of individual who commits to doing good work, whether or not it makes you feel personally fulfilled.

Employers want to know that they can rely on you to consistently perform to the highest standards of professionalism and dedication, even when you’re not completely enjoying yourself. Working a job you didn’t plan on is an effective way of showing off this trait.

Those of us fortunate to grow up with the expectation that we would move on to college after escaping the hell that was high school were often told that this institution of higher learning would serve as a training ground for the “real world.” For four years of our lives, we would develop the skills necessary to be a functioning adult.

Obviously, if you’ve actually been through the college experience, you know that it doesn’t quite achieve that goal. At least, not in an all-encompassing, general sense. Sure, there are ways in which college allows you to grow as a person, and the degree you get when it’s all over certainly doesn’t hurt when you enter the, ahem, “wonderful” world of job searching, but for the most part, college is a ridiculous, surreal, completely unrealistic time in your life. It doesn’t prepare you for the real world, because there’s nothing real about it.

After all, in college. . .

Work Is Fun

First of all, let’s be clear on something: If you had to work your way through school, you were already part of the adult community. You just decided you’d also tackle college while you were at it, to make the rest of us look irresponsible.

On the other hand, if, for the most part, you were able to remain relatively jobless throughout your undergrad years – save for part-time gigs during the semesters and temporary work over the summers – you were placed in an enviable spot that few people ever find outside of the university context: For several years, work was fun.

After all, as a student, your primary responsibility is to get good grades. Thankfully, in college, you’re able to select your major, so there’s reason to believe that the classes you end up taking will be at least somewhat related to your interests. You may not have always be thrilled with your coursework, but it certainly stimulates you more than the tasks you’ll encounter when you get an adult job.

Some people do end up working in fields about which they are passionate, and if you believe you’ve got the chance to do so, you should certainly strive towards that goal. Unfortunately, actually reaching it isn’t particularly easy. You’re much more likely to find yourself in a career that does little to keep your interest (and a lot to kill your soul).

Anyone who tells you that college is hard work is a liar or a pre-med student. Being an adult is hard work. College is doing whatever you want.

Socializing Is Easy

Adult responsibilities impose restrictions on our social lives. We could go out to the bar and let loose, but then we could be hungover at work, which would mean we could be fired, which would mean we could be living with our parents again, which would mean we would have to lie to everyone we knew about our housing situation. It could get exhausting.

Along with the limits we have to set when we realize that shots of Jager won’t do us any favors when we have to wake up and fill out Excel sheets in the morning, as adults, we must also deal with the fact that our friends often live across a wide area. People tend to pursue jobs wherever they can find them these days, and that means that you won’t be able to see the important people in your life as frequently as you might like to.

In college, of course, everyone you want to see is right around the corner. If you want to go out with them and do something stupid, you will, because the lack of real responsibility, lack of a consistent schedule, and lack of shame are the typical aspects of the student experience.

Adults don’t have that luxury. Enjoy your Jager shots while you can.

(If you can. Kind of hard to enjoy those ever, really.)

Decisions Are Fairly Minor

College may seem to be an environment in which you’re forced to make quite a few substantial decisions. Which dorm should I live in? Which major should I choose? Bud Light, or Coors Light?

The truth is, though, most of these options don’t make much of a difference in the long run. Your dorm will be like any other dorm on campus, your major won’t necessarily dictate what you do for a living, and all light beer is equally terrible. You certainly feel the stress that accompanies making any sort of life choice that seems significant, but unlike the choices you’ll make as an adult, the consequences are actually fairly minor.

Outside of college, you need to consider serious topics, such as which career you’ll pursue, where you’ll live, when to start a family, etc. It’s quite likely that nothing you decided to do in college will prepare you for those situations.

Everything Is Accessible

Campuses are designed to be self-contained communities, miniature towns that offer everything you might need or want throughout your day: food, health services, even a gym. It’s all in walking distance, and it’s all part of the package.

The real world doesn’t work like that. No matter where you live, you’re not going to have the option of strolling one minute down the road to get to any place you could possibly need to be. Your job will probably involve a commute, and every other spot you may hope to visit will be scattered across a larger area.

On campus, you have no excuse for not being where you need or want to be. In life, the decision to ever go to the gym may be heavily informed by whether or not it’s on your drive home from work.

Everyone Is Equally Irresponsible

Although there are always students at every major university who opt out of the typical “college experience,” for the most part, a large portion of the population tends to place partying, drinking, and having irresponsible fun pretty high on their list of life priorities. If you want to find people who value that lifestyle, you won’t have much trouble.

As a member of the real world, though, you’ll soon discover that your peers start to drift towards different interests. Some still want to live a high-intensity life, others want to take a more relaxed approach to socializing, and some want to go ahead and settle down into married life. The simple act of finding people with whom to spend your time becomes a balancing act, as you try to identify who has the same ideas about “fun” as you, and who has the availability to actually participate.

College is a fantastic, rewarding experience. But it’s nothing like the real world.

While adolescence is often thought of as the time in our lives when we go through the most profound changes, the years that you spend at college will also involve some fairly significant developments. Going through this experience, if you let yourself learn from it, will result in a degree of maturity that will allow you to make the most of the next phase in your life.

During college, you’ll hopefully. . .

Learn Your Limits

College invites experimenting. You’re young, free, and not yet capable of making the smartest decisions. As such, you’ll probably push your limits at times. While doing so can have serious consequences, it can also let you know just where your limits actually are. If you’re approaching the experience with the right attitude, you’ll know not to exceed them again.

Appreciate Relationships

Although it’s not impossible to allow a mature relationship to thrive during your college years, more often than not, you won’t be able to make an adult romance work during this period. Too many people are preoccupied with hooking up to want anything more substantial.

Of course, this approach isn’t negative, but when you realize that it doesn’t fulfill you on an emotional level, you’ll put more emphasis on enjoying a real connection with another.

Manage Your Finances

College students don’t have a lot of money. Sure, some may be fortunate enough to have parents who can provide them with more disposable income than they need, but for the most part, undergrads are stuck with some pretty thin wallets.

In order to make sure that the contents of those wallets don’t entirely go to the Let’s Get Drunk Fund of America, you’ll need to learn some financial responsibility. This process may be somewhat stressful, but it will let you learn a valuable lesson about spending your money.

That lesson: Don’t. Not if you don’t have to.

Ignore Drama

In high school, drama dominates the landscape. You will give in to the urge to gossip just as quickly as you would give in to any other urge at that time in your life.

In other words, far, far too quickly. You won’t give yourself a second to think, because thinking might stop you from doing what you want.

As a college student, though, you’ll be pretty bored with that type of interaction. College life may not be completely devoid of drama, but it’s far less pronounced than it is in high school. That’s not because you’ll get along with everyone, but simply because you’ll finally decide that you’re better off simply ignoring the people who upset you.

Obviously, this is a key life skill. Many, many people will upset you. You’re doing yourself a favor when you just let the drama go.

Cook And Clean

Listen, we should all live in households in which we learn the basics of survival before heading off into the real world.

The truth is, though, we don’t all live in such households. Many of us head to college not knowing how to do our own laundry, cook our own food, or earn back our security deposits.

During the years you spend as an undergrad, you’ll need to pick up these skills. Acquiring them probably won’t be a profound learning experience, but it will be a necessary experience.

Put Off Gratification

College offers many, many opportunities to have fun. Unfortunately, if you say “yes” to all of them, you’ll find yourself expelled pretty quickly. You’re there to earn a degree, after all, and until they offer a Bachelor of Arts in Keg Stands, you can’t expect to get very far if you go to every single party you’re invited to.

No, in order to succeed in college, you’ll have to make the choice to do your homework every now and then, even when you’d much rather hang out with your friends.

And, in order to succeed in life, you’ll have to make the choice to go to work every day, even when you’d much rather do anything else at all. College is a training ground for the rest of your existence, when, in order to simply live, you’ll have to do things you don’t want to do.

Spring is on its way, and while winter certainly has a worse reputation than it deserves – skiing is fun, snow is beautiful – it’s a welcome change for many of us. With the arrival of the new season, we can participate in plenty of activities that we’ve been missing out on.

If you’re excited about spring, you’re probably excited about. . .

Outdoor Exercise

Thanks to gym memberships, home fitness equipment, and the fact that bodyweight squats are actually pretty difficult, working out is not something that must be relegated to the warmer months. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s refreshing to be able to get in your regular workout while also enjoying the outdoors. Running on a treadmill may provide the same health benefits of running on the road, but we’d probably be less impressed with Forrest Gump if he did all that running in an air-conditioned gym.

Being outside when you exercise involves seeing new sights, enjoying fresh air, and not having to deal with guys who don’t rerack their weights at the gym.

And while we’re on the topic. . .

Hiking

Sure, there are plenty of people who see hiking as a pointless activity; we’ve spent all this time developing civilization, just so we can get away from it? No thank you.

Well, while that may be an understandable attitude, those who refrain from hiking miss out on a truly enriching experience. The health benefits aside – and they are certainly part of the appeal – hiking allows us to escape, if only for a few hours, from the hectic world that surrounds us. In an age when many of us are striving to find ways to calm our minds, bodies, and souls, hiking is a wonderful solution.

Spontaneity

Spontaneity is a key to a joyful life, but there seem to be few opportunities to indulge in it. For most of us, day-to-day life consists of following a set schedule. That’s simply the nature of being an adult and having a job.

On the weekends, though, we can explore, we can walk around, we can take our time to figure out how we want to have fun. One of the simple joys of living in or near a big city is spending a Saturday without much of a plan, following our instinct to find the experiences we’d like to have.

This is much more difficult in the cold weather, when we’d like to limit the amount of time we spend outdoors. We can’t wander around a city comfortably, so we force ourselves to plan every moment of the day. That sense of spontaneity is set aside for months at a time.

Outdoor Events

Whether you enjoy music festivals, Shakespeare in the park, or wine tastings (why not all three?), you understand the excitement that accompanies the return of spring. In the winter, it’s not very easy to find an outdoor event worth attending, because no sane person would hold one.

In spring, however, opportunities to enjoy music, appreciate Shakespeare, or get drunk in a totally public yet totally acceptable way are plentiful.

Easy Driving

If you don’t have access to public transportation, you need to drive to get to wherever it is you want to go. Or, you know, places you don’t want to go. Unless you’re the caretaker of a haunted Colorado hotel (in which case you’ve got bigger problems, Mr. Torrance), your winter will involve constant driving in conditions that are unsafe, unpleasant, and unwanted. If you know how to take advantage of snow via winter sports activities, that’s great, but you still probably don’t appreciate it when it’s turning your hour-long commute into two hours of pure terror.

Thankfully, in spring, you can roll down the windows, relax a little bit, and not feel as though you’re playing Russian roulette every time you get behind the wheel.

We live in a world full of division, and despite our best efforts, it seems as though any attempt to allow all people to reconcile their differences is, ultimately, in vain.

Well, that may be true. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find ways to forge connections with as many others as possible. Music, of course, is among the best methods by which we can accomplish such a goal. That’s because music. . .

Is A Universal Language

We don’t all share the same language, and even within our own languages, there are many different ways of communicating verbally. Anyone who has offended someone else by using a euphemism they thought was harmless knows this.

Music, though, is pure sound. If you can hear it, you can understand it. The notes speak to every soul, no matter what their native tongue may be. We may not all appreciate the same melodies, but those of us fortunate enough to have the sense of hearing can understand them.

Inspires Community

Although music can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home, as you curl up in bed with nothing but your iPod, the experience of live music can be one of true communion with others. Sure, this isn’t something that happens all the time – plenty of concerts involve shoving through walls of people who are each stubbornly trying to grab their share of the floor space – but there are instances in which thousands of people can be brought together in a shared experience of joy. That doesn’t happen often in other life situations.

Bridges Gaps

Trying to understand another culture is never an easy task. Even though many of us strive to accept and tolerate our neighbors, we don’t always succeed at truly appreciating them.

That’s because communicating something as basic and yet significant as one’s values and lifestyle is a nearly impossible feat. It takes an entire life to develop those qualities; how could you allow someone else to understand them without having had the same experiences as you?

Music. Music allows people from all walks of life to explain who they are, where they come from, and what they care about. When you find yourself enjoying the music of someone who has lived a life entirely different from your own, you realize that you may indeed have something in common.

Encourages Participation

Few of us have true musical talent. We can’t sing, play an instrument, or compose a symphony.

That doesn’t stop most of us from trying, though. Whether it’s singing in the car, the shower, or in a drunken revelry at a college party, you know that you’ve probably felt the impulse to participate in the expression of music at some point in your life. In that way, music allows us to extend a hand to others and ask that, whether they have the skill or not, they join in the song. Unlike so many other aspects of life, which seem to be based around excluding others from participation, music is an invitation.

It Enriches Us Personally

Many who have worked to bring a sense of understanding and community to the world know that, in order to do so, it is important that you focus on your own behavior and attitudes. You can’t help others work towards a positive goal if you are driven by negativity.

Music, thankfully, helps us heal our inner faults. It can calm us in moments of anger, soothe us in moments of sadness, and simply distract us in moments of irritation. It’s a powerful tool to make the world a better place, because it allows you to make yourself a better person.

Whether you’re a millennial, or simply someone who has gone through the awkward process of being in your twenties, you know that this particular phase of life, while not as anxiety-riddled as your teenage years, still involves making some very substantial life decisions. At the same time, you’re urged to “find yourself” before you settle down in a career, a marriage, and a fairly regular Netflix addiction.

As such, you’re going to be exposed to quite a lot of advice, words of wisdom from family and friends who’ve been in your shoes before. On the other hand, if the plethora of blogs by millennials, for millennials, is any indication, we’re also pretty confident that we can dish out some advice of our own.

Much of this wisdom is fairly sound and well-intentioned. Some of it, though, doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. If you’re a millennial, you’ve probably heard the following advice. You’re just not sure how you’re supposed to apply it to your life.

“Travel The World”

There’s a big world out there, and as someone with relatively few commitments tying you down, it makes sense that you should use this period of life to see as much of it as possible. Rather than get a career right out of college, there are those who will tell you that you would gain more from taking a year off and traveling to as many different countries as you can.

Well, while this probably would be a rewarding and enriching experience, one has to wonder just how anyone is supposed to actually go about doing this. Sure, if you’ve got rich parents, won the lottery, or plan on pulling major heists in every country you visit, you might be able to pull of such a trip, but otherwise, the idea just isn’t financially possible.

Advice doesn’t do anyone much good if it requires “I’m the founder of Facebook” money to follow it.

“Never Work A Job You Hate”

Many millennials will be told that they should follow their passions, and not settle for a career that doesn’t fulfill them. This, on its own, is very good advice. If you’ve got a talent that can provide you with an income, you should do whatever you can to make a living doing what you love. Life’s too short to be miserable all the way up to your retirement.

On the other hand, there will be those who take this type of wisdom a step further, arguing that you should never work a job that you hate under any circumstances. They believe that there’s no point in subjecting yourself to that type of experience.

Except, there clearly is. The simple fact of the matter is, no matter what you want to do in life, until you find a job that matches up with your aspirations – and doing so can take a very, very long time – you still need to earn money. That means taking whatever work you can get, even if it kills your soul a little bit.

Working a job you hate doesn’t mean you stop looking for other work, or quit pursuing your dreams entirely. It just means collecting a steady paycheck so you don’t, you know, stop living.

“Regret Nothing”

Many an inspirational meme will tell you that a life lived with any regrets is a life wasted. No matter what it is you do, you should accept the experience, accept your involvement in it, and move on.

And yes, acceptance is a key to making sure that you don’t ruminate on the past. It’s necessary for your mental health. But regret is a key to making sure you don’t wind up living your entire life as a blindly selfish person.

Why this “forget regret” notion is so popular among millennials, we’ll never know.

(Just kidding. Of course we will. Looking at you, Rent.)

Regret, like any negative emotion, exists for a reason. In excess, it can be problematic, but in general, it serves to let us know that something we did, experienced, or chose, was wrong for us or for others. Without regret, we’d be prone to making the same mistakes over and over again.

“Follow Your Heart, And Nothing Else”

Following your heart is certainly among the best ways to ensure that the life you live corresponds to your values and desires. For the most part, it’s a pretty solid plan.

That said, sometimes your heart can be confused. There are many out there – both millennial bloggers and those who’ve been through this experience – who will suggest that the moment your heart sends you an impulse, you should act on it. They will truly claim that you should leave a relationship the second you feel it’s difficult, that there’s nothing wrong with cheating on your significant other if you were simply giving in to your true feelings for another, that you should quit your job in a spontaneous and dramatic fashion if doing so will make you feel better.

Unfortunately, while that “Do whatever I want, when I want” attitude may be acceptable for an infant, as an adult, you need to keep in mind that you’ve got responsibilities. You can’t just break up with someone if, for a fleeting moment, your heart tells you that’s what you want. You shouldn’t abandon the people at your job who depend on you to wrap up your projects – even if some of them are jerks – because you’re following your heart.

In the end, maybe your heart is right. You should try to make that relationship work first, but if it’s not right, it’s not right. That job you hate? You need to make sure you’ve secured another form of employment, and fulfilled your responsibilities to your employer, before ditching it, but sure, it may be a job you need to get out of. That said, you can’t give in to these desires without taking care of the other people involved in the situation first.

Your heart may tell you what you want, and it may guide you in the direction of a happy life, but there’s no getting around the fact that doing what you want without regard for others is, in plain and simple terms, selfish, irresponsible, and wrong.

Depression is a disease. However, unlike many other illnesses, the signs of this particular problem may not be easy to identify to someone not suffering from it. The common complains of those suffering from depression – negative thinking, irritability, upset mood – tend to be the types of challenges that any one of us can confront at some point in our lives. Knowing the difference between someone struggling with the general difficulties of life and someone facing a serious mental illness can be a challenge.

That is why it is important to make sure that we educate ourselves about mental illnesses. If you’re not depressed, but know someone who is, you should understand that. . .

It’s Physical

Due to its classification as a “mental illness,” depression is often misunderstood; people think that it’s “all in your head.”

Well, that’s true. If by head, you mean brain. Quite simply, the brain of a depressed person is physically different from that of someone who is mentally healthy. The “feel-good” chemicals that provide us with a sense of pleasure and motivation are not operating correctly if you are depressed. That’s not your fault, that’s a genuine physical condition. Understanding that depression is based in the body, a person can hopefully realize that someone suffering from it can’t “snap out of it” anymore than someone suffering from asthma can snap out of it. The problem is in the brain, and the brain is just another organ. It does us a lot of good, but when it doesn’t work properly, that’s not our fault.

It’s Draining

Depressed people can sometimes come across as lazy, depending upon the situations they face every day. While many do manage to overcome the lack of motivation that tends to accompany this illness, others often spend days confined to their bed, seemingly unwilling to contribute to the world around them.

The problem is, our sense of motivation generally has less to do with our character and more to do with the dopamine signals providing us with clear messages: “Money is good. Love is good. Vacations are good.”

To get these things, we know that we need to work. As such, we put ourselves in situations that aren’t always enjoyable – stressful jobs, demanding diets, exercise routines – in pursuit of life’s pleasures.

For depressed people, life’s pleasures aren’t all that appealing. The dopamine that would allow anyone else to enjoy an experience fully is not as active in their brain. As such, they lack the fundamental factor that would motivate someone else to get out of bed and go to work. If you’re depressed, life not only feels unpleasant in general, but it also feels as though there would be no way to make it otherwise; winning the lottery wouldn’t change your mood at all, because your mood is tied to your brain, and not your life circumstances.

So, the urge to add to your lack of enjoyment by going to work simply makes no sense. As far as you’re concerned, there’s no reward to doing so.

It Requires Professional Treatment

While the picture painted by depression is fairly bleak, make no mistake about it: it can be treated. Though patients respond to the different therapies available on a case-by-case basis, those who spend the time searching for the proper method of treatment often do recover.

However, in order to see this kind of success, the treatment must almost certainly be administered by a professional, trained to guide an individual through this illness. Many well-meaning people try to help their loves ones conquer this condition on their own, resorting to their personal approaches to mental well-being.

While their intentions may be good, they simply lack the resources necessary to properly treat this issue. If you know someone who is depressed, don’t for one moment believe that you alone can fix them. Your support may help, and you can almost certainly point them in the right direction, but in the end, they require professional care.

Thankfully, once they receive it, their life can truly improve.

Day-to-day life is a lot like driving a car. It’s not entirely easy – you need to pay attention to traffic conditions, remain alert at all times, and maintain control – but on a normal day, it can still be enjoyable. You can roll down the windows, enjoy the music on the radio, appreciate the sights, and have fun talking to friends. By the time you reach your destination – the end of the day – you feel fairly relaxed.

Day-to-day life with social anxiety is a lot like driving a car in a blizzard. You grip the wheel tight, not once letting your guard down. Danger is everywhere, and you just have to get through this experience. No song on the radio will calm you down. If anyone in the car is trying to have a conversation, you simply want them to be quiet; you need to concentrate. By the time you reach your destination, you’re drained.

The problem is, while your life may be relatively free of real reasons for concern, your brain is telling you that danger is right around the corner. That’s why, on a normal day, the social-anxiety sufferer will experience any of the following ridiculous thoughts. . .

“Should I Say Hi?”

Whether you’re a student, an office worker, or simply someone who leaves the house from time to time, during an average day, you’ll probably encounter people who you know on a casual basis. You aren’t close friends, but you’re certainly not strangers.

For most people, the question of whether or not they should greet this other individual when they pass them in the hall isn’t a question at all; of course, why not?

If you suffer from social anxiety, though, you’ve convinced yourself that somehow, doing so could be foolish. How, you don’t know. All you know is that another part of yourself is also telling you that not greeting this individual will make you appear cold and unfriendly. It’s a no-win situation.

“Where Should I Walk?”

Typical day at work. You’re at your desk, and you need to go to the restroom. For most people, doing so is as simple as standing up and walking towards their destination.

For someone with social anxiety, the process is much more complicated. They ask themselves which route they should take from the desk to the restroom, trying to determine which one will allow them to encounter the least amount of people along the way.

It’s not that people with social anxiety don’t like others. That said, they often feel uncomfortable around people, and every step they take throughout the day is designed to minimize that feeling of discomfort.

“They’re All Gonna Laugh At Me”

The social-anxiety-sufferer lives with a constant barrage from an inner voice that’s doing its best to imitate Carrie White’s mother. They are convinced that somehow, they will make a fool of themselves. Maybe it’s the way they’re dressed, maybe they’ll do something clumsy, maybe they’ll make a social faux pas. Either way, they feel as though they are constantly in danger of being the center of attention.

Unfortunately, they also feel that such attention will be negative.

“I’m A Failure”

Any chronic anxiety disorder can lead to depression, and it’s not difficult to understand why. If you suffer from social anxiety, something as seemingly simple as basic human interaction is, for you, a cause of physical terror. As such, when you find that those around you are entirely capable of operating in the real world without being plagued by such fears, you feel as though you are somehow a failure, unable to shape up and act natural.

Obviously, as with all of the thoughts in this article, this line of reasoning is ridiculous; your body is merely betraying you, that evolutionary impulse that protected us from tigers kicking in where it’s no longer needed. Knowing that, though, isn’t always the same as believing it.