+
Top Splash

Woman beats depression by leaving her comfort zone and doing something new every day for a year

Here's a list of some of the new things she tried.

jess mell, new year's resolutions, depression

A woman happily embracing life from a balcony.

Like many of us, Jess Mell, 34, an insurance adjuster in England, had a hard time during the pandemic. During the first two years of lockdowns, she suffered from anxiety and depression, so on December 27, 2021, she decided to fight back by getting out of her comfort zone.

To overcome her mental health problems, she challenged herself to try something new, every day, for 100 days. The challenge was so effective at improving her mental health that she extended the challenge to a whole year.

“The first 100 I did one new thing every day—for the rest of the year I decided I’d do 365 new things in 365 days,” she said, according to The Metro. “I could do ten things in one day if I was free.”


One of the most interesting things about the challenge was the wide variety of new things that Mell attempted. She tried new artistic endeavors such as taking a life drawing class, origami and attempting to play the ukulele.

She gave up on the ukulele, but at least she tried.

She also expanded her life skills by learning to pick a lock, using chopsticks and changing a car wheel. Mell also took a walk on the wild side by drinking moonshine, taking a shot out of a belly button and dying her hair pink.

According to the New York Post, by the end of 2022, she had only accomplished 364 new tasks. She found the perfect number 365 by turning her year of new experiences into her first Instagram reel.

Mell has gotten tremendous benefits from expanding her horizons and she looks to continue the challenge in 2023 as well. “I’m going to keep [trying new things] in that it’s now just part of what I do,” Mell said according to the New York Post. “I’ve always tried to find new things to do, so that will go on. Whether I track it the same way I’m not sure.”

Anxiety and depression are serious health conditions that require professional help, so Mell’s experiences shouldn’t be seen as a cure-all for complex conditions. However, there is some scientific backing to her turnaround.

In Psychology Today, Dr. Jutta Joormann explains that “experiential diversity” (having new experiences) “can improve overall well-being” and leads to an increase in “positive affect.” Dr. Joorman adds that when we experience new things it can lead to a positive “upward cycle” that can “promote subsequent development of more positive emotions.”

That’s probably why once Mell started her challenge, she couldn’t stop.

Mell’s story is a wonderful reminder to all of us of the benefits of getting out there and trying something new. Hopefully, her story encourages people to break free from their routines and have some new experiences. As science shows, it’s bound to improve your outlook on life.

“What has been so nice about the whole experience has been that whenever I’ve thought ‘I could try that,’ rather than putting it off, I just ask myself ‘why don’t I?’ I really hope I keep that up,” she said, according to The Metro.

Here’s s partial list of some of the new things that Mell tried. Any sound interesting to you?

Tried origami

Went to hot yoga

Dyed my hair pink

Learned how to do various types of knots

Went to a life drawing class

Completed a paint by numbers

Learned to pick a lock

Ate using chopsticks

Attended a first aid course

Changed a car wheel (or helped to!)

Drank a shot out of a belly button

Made fudge

Played golf

Made a pizza from scratch

Went to Belfast/Northern Ireland for the first time

Attempted to learn to play the ukulele (gave up!)

Visited Krakow/Poland

Tried moonshine – 72% strength

Had a beekeeping experience afternoon

Tried breast milk

Our home, from space.

Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the "overview effect." This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where “borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.”

The overview effect makes man’s squabbles with one another seem incredibly petty and presents the planet as it truly is, one interconnected organism.

Keep ReadingShow less
Identity

Woman’s experience scheduling an EEG highlights the unconscious bias of textured hair

Though her scalp was exposed for the procedure, they still insisted she take her twists out, making it harder to get to her scalp.

Woman can't schedule EEG due to unconscious textured hair bias.

Getting a medical procedure done can be scary, or at the very least nerve-wracking, no matter how many times you've had it done. It's something that's outside of your normal routine and you're essentially at the mercy of the medical facility and providers. Most of the time, the pre-procedure instructions make sense, and if something catches you by surprise, it's usually easily explained.

Sadé Naima recently had an experience while attempting to get an EEG that wasn't easily explained away. In fact, the entire situation didn't make sense to the TikTok creator who experiences migraines. Naima uploaded a video to the social media platform explaining the sequence of events that happened after her doctor referred her to receive an MRI and EEG.

An MRI uses a magnetic field to generate images and an EEG uses electrodes that stick to your scalp to create images of your brain waves.

Keep ReadingShow less

Brianna Greenfield makes nachos for her husband.

A viral video showing a woman preparing nachos for her "picky" spouse after he refused to eat the salmon dinner she cooked has sparked a contentious debate on TikTok. The video was shared on April 26 by Brianna Greenfield (@themamabrianna on TikTok) and has since earned over 2.5 million views.

Brianna is a mother of two who lives in Iowa.

The video starts with Brianna grating a massive hunk of cheese with a caption that reads: “My husband didn’t eat the dinner that I made…So let’s make him some nachos.”

“If I don’t feed him, he literally won’t eat,” she wrote. “This used to irritate me. Now I just blame his mother for never making him try salmon,” Greenfield wrote. The video features Meghan Trainor’s single “Mother” playing in the background.

Keep ReadingShow less

An MTA employee rescues a 3-year-old child on the tracks.

Five Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees are hailed as heroes for their quick thinking and diligence in the April 6 rescue of a young boy. Locomotive Engineer William Kennedy was operating a southbound Hudson Line train near Tarrytown, a few miles north of New York City, when he noticed an unusual object on the northbound track.

That “object” was a 3-year-old boy.

Kennedy sent an emergency call out to all trains in the area, catching the attention of a northbound conductor, Shawn Loughran, and a trainee. Loughran slowed down his train as he approached the child, who was straddling the electrified third rail.

When the train screeched to a halt, Assistant Conductor Marcus Higgins didn't waste a second. Leaping down the tracks, he sprinted 40 yards ahead of the train, scooping up the young child like a guardian angel.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

Here’s how we can use the power of awe to make our lives more fulfilling

Being amazed by things outside ourselves is tremendous for our mental health.

A young man looking into the sky

The exhilaration of a rock concert. The feeling of deep serenity you experience during a religious ceremony. That sense of connectedness you get while walking through a dense forest. The lightness that flows through your body while dancing and the dissolution of the ego you experience on psychedelics. These are all experiences that give us the feeling of awe.

Most of us love having at least a few of these experiences and believe they help us grow. But now, a team of psychologists has explained why cultivating a sense of awe can benefit our minds and bodies and how we can create these experiences ourselves.

Maria Monroy and Dacher Keltner posit that a sense of awe can help solve the crises of individualism, excessive self-focus, loneliness and a culture of cynicism, and can even improve our physical health. They explain it in a research article titled “Awe as a Pathway to Mental and Physical Health.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Woman flawlessly breaks down how luxury bags—and other designer brands—keep people 'poor'

"They're targeting the people who want to look rich—middle and lower class folks who don't have a lot of money or savings. That is the bread and butter of designer brands."

Cara Nicole/Youtube

Not worth it.

It feels safe to say that we are all hoping to be more mindful about how we spend our money these days, whether it’s to be kinder to the environment, align better with our values, improve our finances or simply exercise free will against the siren call of consumerism.

That’s why this video essay created by Cara Nicole (who gives all kinds of financials and sustainability education on her Youtube channel) feels so timely.

In just under twenty minutes, Nicole astutely breaks down how luxury brands like Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Rolex create the fake illusion of wealth through “manufactured exclusivity” and getting free marketing from celebrities and influencers—who often don’t even pay for the products themselves. Meanwhile, most real rich people wouldn’t be caught dead in the flashy brands, and in reality consider them "overrated." But still, the illusion persists. Because advertising.

Keep ReadingShow less