All of us have days when we feel depressed and discouraged. For many people certain days of the week seem more difficult than others. A pattern I have observed with my clients is that the weekends are particularly tough. I think part of the reason why this is so is that we have increased expectations for weekends. We "assume" that everyone has something grand and exciting planned when our own plans in comparison, seem dreary and uninspiring. If we are not in a relationship, we "assume" that "everyone" else is with a romantic other or at the very least, has an expansive social group and is eagerly participating in exhilarating planned activities. The reality is that the majority of people struggle with deciding what to do like we do and on many weekends, find themselves hanging out with no real plans at all. So...weekends can be tough emotionally with no clear cut plans and sometimes no one to hang out with either.

A client told me that she spends so many weekends being depressed. I asked her what this was about and she responded, "Well, I wish I were in a relationship and since I am not, I rent movies and eat the whole weekend." No wonder she is depressed!! I thought about how often clients report doing similar activities when they are not in a relationship. All of us deal with periods of loneliness in our lives when we don’t have a special other. Since life is a series of coming together and partings, we need to develop better strategies for dealing with ourselves during these times. What I had this client do is brainstorm with me around the question, "What are the activities I can do by myself that bring me a sense of joy or pleasure?" What we came up with was an entire list of activities such as, "browsing in a bookstore," "taking a walk," "sipping a latte while reading a good book," "strolling through an outdoor arts and craft show, "going to a movie," "exercising at the gym, "visiting with a friend either on the phone or in person," taking a hot bath," "going to the museum," "taking a drive," "working on my marketing plan," etc. These are just some of the ideas that were on my client’s plan.

I share these ideas with you because we all need to stop and develop a similar list of activities for ourselves. For not only can you turn a weekend or whichever day of week you might feel lonely and/or depressed into a positive fulfilling experience but also, you now of some ideas of how to nurture yourself. This is a skill we all need to develop. Instead of looking to others to make us feel good about ourselves or our life, we need to be able to do this for ourselves.

Take the time to develop your own personal list then post it on the refrigerator so that it is always handy. The next time you start to feel lonely or discouraged because you don’t have any plans or just because you want to be good to yourself.....read your list and select a couple of your "pleasure" activities and treat yourself to something you really like to do. Add "nurturing myself" to your daily calendar, you will find yourself feeling more positive about your life in general. Taking better care of yourself emotionally will lead to you feeling more self confident and more self reliant. Let me know how it goes!