When gloom settles in and drains your energy, it is worth making your own deliberate effort to break free of it and move on towards the future. Here are a few ways to refresh yourself and face what comes next.

Change your surroundings

Moving somewhere new, or simply taking a holiday, will not fix the root of your unhappiness, which may be the loss of a job or the loss of someone you love. It will, at the very least, help you set your troubles aside for a while, and that pause has value of its own.

Take up yoga

Yoga does help. It works on body and mind together, and that double focus is exactly what you need when unhappy thoughts are crowding in on you. Find a good teacher and learn it properly.

Accept help from someone

Many people treat asking for help as something to be ashamed of. It does not have to be. You see a doctor for the ailments of your body without a second thought. In the same way, you should admit it when something in your mind is more than you can handle on your own, and let someone qualified help you with it.

Take up a hobby

Everyone has an interest of some kind. It might be something thrilling, such as an adventure sport, or something quieter, such as reading or listening to music. What all hobbies have in common is that they bring the mind some peace.

The thread running through all four

None of these makes a loss disappear. What they do is give you small, practical footholds: a change of scene, a calmer body, a listening ear and an absorbing pastime. Each one moves you a step away from the gloom and a step towards the future.

If you daydream a lot, your brain may simply have more thinking capacity to spare, enough that it can drift off while you do something easy.

How to tell

Do you look as though you are miles away, yet manage to snap back to the task without having missed anything important? Then you probably have an efficient brain. Letting the mind wander in this way seems to give your working memory a workout.

Working memory is the brain’s mental workbench: the space that lets it hold and juggle several thoughts at the same time. The more working memory a person has, the more they can daydream without losing track of what they are supposed to be doing.

Good or bad?

There are several views on whether a wandering mind helps or hinders. Unlike other animals, humans spend a great deal of time thinking about things that are not happening in front of them: going back over events in the past, picturing what might happen in the future, or imagining things that may never happen at all. In fact, drifting thought appears to be the brain’s natural resting state.

Where it costs you

Working memory can help you concentrate, but once your mind starts to wander, those mental resources get pulled elsewhere and you can lose sight of what you were trying to do. Most of us have arrived home with no memory of the journey, or suddenly realised we have turned several pages of a book without taking in a single word.

Where it pays you back

For the most part, though, a mind that roams freely from one thought to the next brings real benefits, because that is how fresh ideas and new approaches are born. For all its drawbacks, it is perfectly fine to let your thoughts drift every now and then.

We often wish someone would show us the whole picture of our lives. It is not always good for us, because seeing everything at once would easily overwhelm us.

The wish to know

Now and then we catch ourselves wanting to know what our lives will look like, and what gifts and difficulties the coming months or years will bring. We want to know whether our present relationship will last, or whether our goals will be reached. Faced with a decision, we want to know in advance which choice will work out best. Some people even turn to fortune-tellers, their dreams and all kinds of other sources, hoping to find out what lies ahead. At most we get fleeting glimpses.

We may believe we want the whole story in full detail. In truth, knowing everything that is going to happen to us would probably leave us swamped and worn out.

Look at what you have already lived

Think about your life so far. Like most people, you have probably done more and faced more than you could ever have pictured. If someone had told you as a child about every job and every relationship you would go through, with all their ups and downs, you would have been overwhelmed. With your head crammed with facts about the future, you would have struggled to live in the present moment, and the present is where everything actually happens.

Not knowing is how we grow

In many ways, not knowing what is coming draws out of us the very qualities we need to grow. It would have been hard to give yourself fully to certain people or projects if you had known they would not work out in the end. Yet it was by sticking with them that you learned the lessons you needed.

Look back over your life and you would struggle to name anything that should not have happened. Your hardest experiences, and the lessons that came with them, may well have brought you your greatest rewards. Not knowing the future keeps us in the right place: wholehearted, and living in the present.

Introspection means looking closely at your own thoughts, feelings and sensations so you can understand yourself better.

In a world obsessed with speed and the urge to keep moving, finding time to sit down and reflect is hard. Yet setting aside even a small part of each day to examine yourself can help far more than you might think. Here are some of the ways it earns its place in daily life.

It shows you your negative patterns

Perhaps you keep going back to a relationship that hurts you, telling yourself that despite all the frustration and inconsistency the other person will change one day. Perhaps you keep covering for a colleague who does not pull their weight, putting your own work on hold and damaging your progress over time. Whatever the pattern, introspection helps you see it, and see how and why it drags down your mood and your outlook. From there you can think about other ways to handle those situations and, in time, move away from the sources of stress altogether.

It keeps the bigger picture in view

Without an overall aim, daily tasks start to feel pointless and more and more frustrating. That is why it matters to have a clear picture of where you want to be in the future.

It stops you fretting over what you cannot control

A maddening traffic jam, or a manager who never listens to your views: however often we are told not to stress over what we cannot change, we do it anyway. Accepting that we are not always in charge of the outcome, and that sometimes we simply have to adapt to poor conditions, is hard. Introspection helps us let go of the things we cannot influence and put our energy into the things about ourselves that we can definitely improve.

It lets you look your fears in the eye

We would all like to be the person who dives into any challenge and comes out on top. But everyone is afraid of something, whether it is rejection, failure or something else entirely. Introspection lets you admit your fears to yourself and, over time, work out how best to deal with them.

It lets you define happiness for yourself

When are you happiest? Whose company do you enjoy most? These questions can sound trite, but they are valuable. When you notice the good things in your life, you can use what you learn to shape your future goals and plans.

It lets you decide by your own conscience

When you face a big decision, the important people in your life will naturally have views. Introspection helps you decide on the basis of a full understanding of what is right or wrong for you. You end up choosing according to what you truly believe, rather than letting other people’s opinions push you around.

PERMA is often described as the simplest, most basic guide to finding happiness. It names five core elements that feed our sense of wellbeing. Here is what you need to know if happiness is what you are after.

The psychologist Martin Seligman, often called the father of positive psychology, argues that happiness has a formula. He sets out five elements that strongly shape how happy and fulfilled a person feels: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievement. Together they spell PERMA, and together they give practical pointers towards a happier life.

P for positive emotion: feeling good

A positive attitude is central to happiness. That does not mean smiling all the time. Quite the opposite: it should never mean bottling up any emotion. Building positive emotion means accepting and understanding your negative thoughts and feelings, learning where they come from and why, and gradually getting better at finding the brighter side of each situation.

E for engagement: finding flow

Doing something that truly matters to us keeps us fully in the present. That absorption brings a deep sense of joy, of mattering, of purpose and of happiness. To raise our happiness and keep it there, we need to let ourselves explore and find activities that absorb every one of our senses. Finding our drive and passion also means putting ourselves first sometimes, and saying no to whatever does not leave us immersed, inspired and energised.

R for relationships: real connection

To put this element into practice, look at the relationships you have now and work on their quality. Nurturing close bonds with friends, family, relatives and partners gives us a solid, healthy foundation, and the support and care we need throughout life. Spending real time together, backing one another and taking a genuine interest in each other’s lives builds healthy connections that deepen our sense of purpose, belonging and happiness.

M for meaning: a life with purpose

Meaning and purpose add hugely to happiness, because we all feel a pull to give our lives to something far larger than ourselves, something beyond the chase for money and passing pleasures. Finding purpose means setting aside small, short-lived rewards and looking at the bigger picture. Write down your dreams and goals. Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for and what you want to leave behind. And do not be alarmed if your dreams look too big for now.

A for achievement: a sense of accomplishment

Reaching our goals adds a great deal to our overall happiness and fulfilment. Achievement is closely tied to meaning and to goal-setting. Meeting a goal of any size confirms our strength, our ability and our staying power. When we stick with a goal and put all our energy, creativity and time into it, our happiness grows because we have given ourselves to something worthwhile.

Putting PERMA to work

• Knowing the model exists is the first step to using it. Keep looking at things from a positive angle.
• Find what makes you happy and fully absorbed.
• Invest in your relationships with family and friends by making time to connect and simply enjoy being together.
• Work out what gives your life meaning and purpose. It is different for everyone.

A negative attitude spreads until it starts to affect how well people work and how well they decide. The remedy is to put enthusiasm and a positive outlook in its place.

Negativity behaves a lot like a common cold. It can start with a single person, and before long the whole team feels it, and morale and performance slide. Unlike a cold, though, it has a cure. Enthusiasm and a good attitude are just as contagious, and they can lift performance just as quickly. Here are five ways to beat negativity at work.

1. Turn obstacles into openings

Rather than dreading problems, you can keep your own outlook positive by choosing how you respond to them. Negativity frequently begins as negative self-talk: the same gloomy messages running on repeat in your head, darkening your view and wearing down your confidence.

2. Swap negative self-talk for positive

Negative thoughts lead to self-doubt, and self-doubt leads to failure. Watch for negative messages, both in your own thinking and in what other people think and do. Then practise turning each one round into something constructive. Positive thinking produces positive action, and positive action produces positive results.

3. Build trust

Use a positive attitude and real enthusiasm to build relationships. Negativity makes it hard to trust people, and without trust you cannot bring about any good change. Taking deliberate steps to build trust makes people more comfortable and makes relationships stronger.

4. Win people over instead of winning arguments

The only way to win an argument is not to have one. Handled well, disagreements and debates are chances to make things better. When one comes up, respect the other person’s opinion, never tell them flatly that they are wrong, and make a real effort to see the matter from where they stand.

5. Disagree pleasantly

The question we all face is how to disagree without being disagreeable, and still get our ideas heard. Keep talking, and keep trying to see the issue through different eyes. Take the time to think carefully about how the other person thinks and why they feel as they do.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is standing up to fear and learning to master it.

An old saying runs that just as the caterpillar believed its world was ending, it became a butterfly. What looks like the end is often the start of something better.

Does your future draw you on? Does it help you get up in the morning? The way you imagine what lies ahead can raise your spirits or drag them down. Fill your future with hopes, dreams and bold ambitions that tug you forward, and you will have a steady supply of motivation that comes from inside you rather than from outside.

Design a future that lifts you

The motivational speaker Jim Rohn had a gift for putting this plainly. His warning was that without a bright, ambitious picture of the future, you end up acting from fear and doubt. What you need is a future that raises you up. The promise of better days ahead is a source of motivation that keeps renewing itself.

Treat your past as a teacher, not a weapon

Your attitude needs to work for you, not against you. Do not use your past as a stick to beat yourself with. Take the lessons it offers and keep moving. That is how you recover more strongly and rise above whatever is trying to hold you down. Be the balloon that carries you up, not the anchor that drags you under.

Set goals worth getting up for

Have you ever met someone with real goals? You can tell they are going somewhere. Their drive comes from what they hope to do and the person they hope to be. You can be like that too. Setting a few goals that genuinely excite you changes how you feel about the future almost immediately.

Use those goals to shape a future you are eager to live and willing to work for. An easy place to begin is to imagine, in detail, an ideal day in your future life, from waking up to going to sleep. Then let those pictures carry you, the way the wind lifts a bird’s wings.

A short guided practice can help you see how cravings rise up in your mind and body. Once you can see them, you have a real chance of breaking free from unhealthy habits.

Our minds are wired to crave. When a craving arrives, we have two options. We can feed it, or we can notice what set it off and work with that. Here is a simple practice for the second option.

Settle into a comfortable position

Start by getting comfortable, in whatever posture suits you at this moment. There is no correct pose. Just let yourself settle.

Tune in to your body

Turn your attention to the physical sensations you can feel. Check in with your body. How does it feel right now? Are you holding tension anywhere? You might start with your feet and the other places where you touch the ground or the chair: your knees, your hips, your hands, your shoulders. Notice your breath, the simple fact of breathing. Be genuinely curious about what is going on inside you right now.

Rest in that awareness

Notice what it is like simply to rest in awareness of your body. Notice, too, what it is like to realise that you can become aware of these sensations at all. That realisation matters. It means you do not have to be ruled by your cravings. You can study them with curiosity, one moment at a time.

Watch for other urges

For the last few minutes, stay aware of your body and look out for any other urges that come up. There may be a pull to drift into daydreams, or a pull to scold yourself over something that happened earlier in the day or the week. Do not push them away. Go straight towards them and explore them, holding each sensation with the same gentle, curious attention.

Why it works

A habit runs on autopilot: the urge appears and we act on it before we have even noticed it. This practice puts a small gap between the urge and the action. In that gap, the craving becomes something you can look at rather than something that simply happens to you, and you get to choose what to do next.

You know the voice. The fretful whisper at the back of your mind saying you cannot do something because it is foolish, risky or daft. That voice did not start with you. It could have come from anyone: family, friends, teachers, bosses or society in general. Somewhere along the way they planted a seed of doubt in all of us. How did it get there, why, and above all, how do we quieten it?

We are not born doubting

Nobody arrives in the world doubting themselves or their future. Ask a child what they want to be when they grow up and they will say anything at all. They set no limits based on whether they are a boy or a girl, on their background, or on whether they count as rich or poor, because none of that matters to them. As we get older, the answers shrink. They become more “sensible”, or they drift towards whatever pays more. Other people’s influence narrows our choices and our dreams get smaller.

Consider this: whatever answer you give today to the dreaded question of what you want to do with your life, someone will probably respond with disapproval, shock or laughter. At fifteen or at fifty, people will pick at your dreams, ideas and plans, question them, criticise them, or tell you that you cannot or should not. That is hard to hear, especially from the people you love.

You cannot fully silence it

So how do you get rid of the discouraging noise? Honestly, you cannot, not completely. But take comfort: it happens to everyone. Every successful person, now or in history, has been criticised. Each of them had the seed of doubt planted in them too. They simply did not let it grow.

You can choose whether to listen

We cannot stop other people offering opinions and advice, but we can decide whether to take them. Remember that they do not know what you are capable of. Everything they say comes from their own viewpoint, a collection of what they alone believe they know. The best response is to recognise this, and to make sure you never do the same to anyone else. Just because you would not want to do something, or think you could not, is no reason someone else should not at least try.

Take the wheel

Listen to the doubt and worry, and you will probably end up somewhere you are not really happy. Often we do not even notice the seed being planted, because society quietly persuades us that one particular way of living is the only way. It is not. If you do not decide what you want to do with your life and how you want to live it, if you do not take the wheel yourself, someone else will steer, and you may not like where you end up.

Attachment is a warm word when it describes the bond between a baby and the person who looks after it. As adults, though, many of us stay attached to people as if our survival still depended on them. Family, friends or colleagues, we hold on to them to meet our emotional, financial or practical needs.

That dependence can make you feel safe for a while. Far more often it leads to expectations, attempts at control and, eventually, heartbreak. Leaning too hard on others narrows your view of what is possible and keeps you from the independent person you really are.

Walking away is not the answer

The fix lies in how you handle your relationships. Ending one and cutting the other person loose looks like an easy way out, but it solves nothing. You simply move from one relationship to the next, looking for the one special bond where every expectation is finally met.

Going silent does not work either. Shutting down communication only widens the gap and puts more pressure on a relationship that is already cracked. The resentment you carry then closes your heart, and a closed heart cannot take in even the good and happy feelings on offer. The heart is where compassion and love live, and it needs to stay open.

Staying close without clinging

• Recognise that attachment grows out of dependence, whether emotional, physical or financial. Letting go of that dependence is how you find your independent self.
• Talk things through to clear up misunderstandings.
• Forgive people who have wronged you, in whatever way.
• Drop the labels and fixed ideas you hold about how people behave, so you can see them fairly and clearly.
• Practise acceptance, so you can understand when someone sees a situation differently from you.

Where it leads

Together these help you reach the part of you that is independent, loving, understanding and kind. Staying in touch with that true self is what makes relationships joyful without making them clingy.