33. Don’t believe in good or bad, or winning and losing, or victory and defeat, or ups and down. At your lowest and your highest, whether you are happy or despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you that stays the same. That is the you that matters.

37. If the sun is shining, and you can be outside, be outside.38. Remember that the key thing about life on earth is change. Cars rust. Paper yellows. Technology dates. Caterpillars become butterflies. Nights morph into days. Depression lifts.

39. Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.40. Be brave. Be strong. Breathe, and keep going. You will thank yourself later.

20. Look at trees. Be near trees. Plant trees. (Trees are great.)21. Listen to that yoga instructor on YouTube, and “walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet”.22. Live. Love. Let go. The three Ls.

36. Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Green. Read Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are escape routes. They give you options when you have none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind.

32. Remember that there is nothing weird about you. You are just a human, and everything you do and feel is a natural thing, because we are natural animals. You are nature. You are a hominid ape. You are in the world and the world is in you. Everything connects.

30. Jules Verne wrote of the “Living Infinite”. This is the world of love and emotion that is like a “sea”. If we can submerge ourselves in it, we find infinity in ourselves, and the space we need to survive.31. Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.

15. Be kind.16. Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them, even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.

1. Appreciate happiness when it is there2. Sip, don’t gulp.3. Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more.

👇 Below, you can find forty pieces of advice that I find helpful but don't always follow:

Tips on How to Live a Fulfilling Life

4. There is absolutely nothing in the past that you can change. That’s basic physics. 5. Beware of Tuesdays. And Octobers.

26. No drug in the universe will make you feel better, at the deepest level, than being kind to other people.

34. Don’t worry about the time you lose to despair. The time you will have afterwards has just doubled its value.35. Be transparent to yourself. Make a greenhouse for your mind. Observe.

12. Go for a run. Then do some yoga.13. Shower before noon.14. Look at the sky. Remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity, in order to see the smallness of yourself.

28. If someone loves you, let them. Believe in that love. Live for them, even when you feel there is no point.29. You don’t need the world to understand you. It’s fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven’t experienced. Some will. Be grateful.

24. Beware of the gap. The gap between where you are and where you want to be. Simply thinking of the gap widens it. And you end up falling through. 25. Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don’t wish for it to end, or for it to never end.

17. Do not watch TV aimlessly. Do not go on social media aimlessly. Always be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Don’t value TV less. Value it more. Then you will watch it less. Unchecked distractions will lead you to distraction.

6. Kurt Vonnegut was right. “Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.”7. Listen more than you talk.

8. Don’t feel guilty about being idle. More harm is probably done to the world through work than idleness. But perfect your idleness. Make it mindful.9. Be aware that you are breathing.

18. Sit down. Lie down. Be still. Do nothing. Observe. Listen to your mind. Let it do what it does without judging it. Let it go, like Snow Queen in Frozen. 19. Don’t’ worry about things that probably won’t happen.

27. Listen to what Hamlet – literature’s most famous depressive – told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

10. Wherever you are, at any moment, try to find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.11. Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you.

23. Alcohol maths. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it is hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication.

Order THE COMFORT BOOK. Available now! THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE? Aged 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again. A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth. 'I wrote this book because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we haven't been able to see it . . . Words, just sometimes, really can set you free.'

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Books

Matt Haig was born in Sheffield, England. He writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist.

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