When I was in the Dominican Republic dating my then-girlfriend, I made a string of mistakes. Some of them were relatively small: I saw her as a perfect match for me in my head while reality revealed a great chasm of differences; I held out hope for the person she could be instead of the person she was; I expected a level of emotional intimacy she wasn’t ready for and was subsequently disappointed. But there was one huge mistake: she was also my coworker. When we broke up, the pain of seeing her daily consumed me.

After the split, I couldn’t pull myself together. We had only been together for a month, and I was as confused as everyone else as to why this was such a heartbreaking loss. After three years of therapy, I finally figured out the pattern in my relationships, but not before I would repeat it twice more. This was the grave situation in the DR: I had stumbled upon a deeply dysfunctional pattern of behavior that only left me heartbroken and lonely, and I had no idea how to dig myself out of it.

Nothing worked to make me feel better. I had no close friends, no family in the country, didn’t speak good Spanish, was a thousand miles from home, and my ex lived directly across the balcony from me–where I could see and hear her laughing and enjoying life nightly with her roommate. There were days when I was so overcome with sadness and heartsickness that I didn’t want to even try getting up–the first and only time I’ve ever felt that way. The thing I remember most about that period was the piercing loneliness and the constant crying. It was the darkest time in my life.

During this time, I started to evaluate how to heal most effectively. I started a Notion page called Tools That Get Me Through Hard Times where I began compiling what was working for me in healing from this disastrous breakup. With nowhere to run from the feelings, I became intimately familiar with toxic thinking patterns and intrusive thoughts. It provided a perfect testing ground for tools for what worked in my healing process. There was only one metric: did I feel better?

And I did begin to feel better. I realized there had always been a four-part formula that, if I got it right, would mean I would have a good day 90% of the time. I had unconsciously followed this formula for my whole life, never thinking that my good days could be attributed to anything other than a sunny disposition. Silently, this framework had been working for my success every day of my life without me knowing it. I realized that by ignoring this formula, it was making my life hell. I started religiously following this framework and my mental health and “good days” drastically improved.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–the three ideals enshrined in the US Constitution. Red, blue, and yellow–the three primary colors. Food, water, and air–the three resources most crucial to our survival. Perhaps most famously, there’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–the Holy Trinity and the three forms of God in Christian thought. People say good things come in threes, but this framework is so powerful that it’s got an extra item. It helped me heal when I didn’t know how, and the name reflects its importance.

I’d like to introduce the Holy Quaternity.

Holy Quaternity concept #1: Food

One amazing aspect of living in the DR was the food. Mangù, chuleta, habichuelas–it was all so good. But one of my favorite meals came from the local joint down the street: Pica Pollo. In my desperation to feel good again, I turned to eating as a source of pleasure. But having fried chicken and plantain chips twice a week wasn’t giving me the nutrients I needed to thrive. I began focusing on a couple of basics that helped me immensely: tomatoes, avocados, cabbage, potatoes, olive oil, bread, and chicken breast. I wasn’t trying to win Chef of the Year–I was just trying to get more nutrients in my diet. I found the Minimum Effective Dose for improving my mental health with food: less fried stuff, more fruits and vegetables. It was pretty simple.

A couple years later, I watched the documentary The Game-Changers about plant-based athletes. From that day on, I went vegan six days a week and never looked back. The research pointed to the health benefits, but I also didn’t want to give up pizza and shrimp. When it comes to diet, make the rules based on what works for you. Veganism makes me feel lighter and fresher than when I eat whatever I want. I lost weight going vegan, as well as improved my mood and energy.

A vegan diet might not be right for you. Have you ever tried the Paleo diet, the ketogenic diet, or the Slow Carb Diet? Find an eating pattern that works for you and stick with it. Self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the full power of the Holy Quaternity. Does bread make you feel sluggish? Do grains make you feel full longer? Do root vegetables improve your sleep? Do you need breakfast? There’s no diet that has improved my life like the vegan diet, but it may not be right for you. Spend some time to figure out what does work.

Whatever your choice of diet and food lifestyle, make sure it’s nutrient-rich. Don’t forget about trace minerals, the unsung heroes of the body. These are minerals like selenium, zinc, manganese, iron, and copper. Food has a massive impact on mood, and if you only eat fried chicken and plantains, you’re going to have some tough mental health days like me. If you need help with getting all your requirements in, a supplement like Athletic Greens is a great way to do so.

Holy Quaternity concept #2: Water

I didn’t have a single drinking glass in my Dominican apartment–I only had my glow-in-the-dark Nalgene water bottle from college. This turned out to be a blessing. Because I drank more than I would have usually, I had a life-changing realization: drinking water dissolves frustration.

Once I started figuring this out, I started hydrating like a madman. Countless times, I’ve caught myself in an angry thought loop about a relationship; I’ll think about the ways I’ve been wronged, have an imaginary fight with the person, or engage in some other unproductive, anger-inducing behavior. When I realize this thought pattern, I drink water.

With every gulp, my anger lessens until it dissolves completely. That’s not an exaggeration.

Knowing when to drink water requires you to catch yourself when you are irritable. Notice your thoughts and see if they suddenly sharpen, increase in frequency or emotional intensity, or lean toward irritability. A sudden onset of frustration signals that I need water, and you’re likely the same. The inverse relationship between dehydration and irritability is well-documented in the scientific literature. But if you are relying on thirst to signal when you need water, you have gone too long without it–likely letting irritation run and ruin your day.

To know how much water to drink, I use what I call the Belly Test. Can I feel my belly filling up with water? Is there a little bit of uncomfortable pressure in my stomach after drinking water? Do I feel a little sick after I finish? If you sip water instead of following the Belly Test, you’ll think that hydration doesn’t improve mood. You’ll thank me once you start drinking water using the Belly Test. After you finish, your should feel unmistakably fuller. It will do wonders for your irritability.

Now I know that when I have an angry thought pattern, it’s a sign I need water. In fact, while writing the first draft of this essay, I began to feel irritated by a past relationship. I drank water until I felt fuller, my mood stabilized, and I wasn’t angry anymore. My rule is that if I’m thinking about a person who wronged me, I simply needed water. It works every time.

What’s your dehydrated emotion? What’s your default mental state when you’re not thirsty but need water? Mine is a rising tide of irritability that crescendos until my need to hydrate crosses over into my conscious awareness. If can catch the thought, I can dissolve it. And if I can’t get to water immediately, I’ve found that simply acknowledging that I need water lessens my anger. I can now contextualize my anger in a new way: I’m just thirsty.

Holy Quaternity concept #3: Exercise

I need to exercise every day. I don’t need to run an ultramarathon, but I need some sort of daily physical activity. For you, it might be Pilates, CrossFit, or tennis. Even a short walk can do wonders for your mind. You probably know the exercise that works for you. If you don’t, consider what sounds fun and try it out. Whatever it is, you need to do it almost every day, leaving room for days when you stretch with yoga or take a walk in lieu of a hard workout.

In the DR, I signed up for an online home exercise program that I did on my kitchen floor. After work, I’d do an hour of bodyweight exercises on my tile floor, six days a week. My body started to change. My mood did, too. The woes of the day fell away and I finished with a clear mind.

When I was living in South Korea after living in the DR, I got into weightlifting. I’d go to the gym daily and hit the machines. But as the pandemic worsened and restrictions tightened, all the gyms closed. I was left without a way to exercise, and so I began running. I had always hated running because I thought the method was to run as fast as you could until you burned out and then force yourself to keep going until you absolutely couldn’t anymore. Later that year, I ran to the next town and back in two hours–and it was an absolute joy. What changed?

The answer is Zone 2 cardio. I chanced upon research regarding endurance at the same time I started using the Nike Run Club app, which offers free guided runs. I discovered that when I started the run out easy–running with the least effort at the beginning–I gave my body a chance to warm up and realize that it was going to be running for more than a couple minutes, and that my speed naturally increased as the run went on. Doing more research on the topic, I found out that training in Zone 2 cardio is an effective way to increase running endurance. The cardio zones, one through five, reflect how hard your heart and lungs work during physical activity. Walking slowly would be a one. Sprinting at your very fastest would be a five. While Zone Two cardio can be measured with heart rate, there’s a low-tech method that’s just as reliable: The Conversation Test.

When you’re running, you want to be able to have a conversation with someone else. It shouldn’t be difficult to speak full sentences out loud, and continue to do so for as long as you want. If you’re a runner, try speaking out loud while you’re training; you’ll quickly find out if you’re in Zone Two. This test is how I know when to speed up or slow down. I have one phrase I keep in the back of my mind while running, something that I’ve thought of so much that it’s become second nature: “Keep it conversational.”

Why is Zone Two cardio so good for endurance? This is the sweet spot of physical exertion that stimulates mitochondrial growth in your muscle cells. More mitochondria means more production of ATP, the body’s energy source. More ATP means more available energy, and the ability to go further, longer. When you start training in Zone Two cardio for a couple months, you’ll start to see that you can run far without much effort. Dare I say it, running relatively long distances becomes easy. When I came back from South Korea and started a job requiring a one-hour commute each way, I started running halfway to work with a change of clothes in my backpack. Without Zone Two cardio, I could have never run eight miles with a twenty-five pound pack on my back. And yet I did. Running doesn’t have to be difficult.

Holy Quaternity concept #4: Sleep

I wasn’t sleeping well during my breakup. However, the exercise, healthy food, and water helped me fall asleep at a regular time each night. And with every good night of sleep I got, I began to get a better handle on my pain.

There are numerous factors that contribute to a good night’s sleep. One of the most important metrics how much sleep you need a night. I need ten hours. If I don’t get that much, it impacts my mood and performance in every aspect of my life. If you don’t know how many hours of sleep you need, don’t set an alarm this weekend and calculate how long you slept based on the rough time you fell asleep and the time you woke up.

There are other things that impact your sleep. Caffeine has a half-life of somewhere between eight and ten hours. Some people process caffeine faster than others; some can have an afternoon cup and conk out six hours later. For me, even decaf makes me shaky, energetic, and anxious. If I want coffee, I need to plan ahead, have it no later than 10 AM, make sure it’s not super strong, and make sure there’s nothing in my life that I’ll start to unnecessarily fret about.

Alcohol is another part of the equation. Coffee and alcohol are rumored to be the yin and yang in the capitalist nightmare: drink coffee to wake up to work and drink alcohol to fall asleep after work so you can repeat the cycle all over again. Alcohol, even just one drink, has a significant negative impact on sleep. One way it does so is it suppresses REM sleep, important for memory and creativity. This skews the ratio between deep sleep and REM sleep, which means you wake up feeling less rested and have poorer sleep quality.

Temperature plays another role in sleep quality. Anyone who has ever tried to go to bed without AC during a heat wave knows that sleeping when it is too hot is nearly impossible. The ideal sleep temperature is subjective, but generally, a cooler temperature is better.

Getting natural light in the morning–when you first wake up–is a great way to set your sleep schedule. Get outside–not inside by a window–and spend time exposed to natural light, up to ten minutes if it’s overcast. This helps calibrate your circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle of daily processes that happen in your body that includes the sleep-wake cycle. When you view bright light after waking up, the intrinsically photosensitive melonopsin cells in your eyes register the blue light from the sun. They send a signal to the suprachiasmatic nucleus in your brain which then sends signals out to the rest of your body–including a signal to kickstart becoming more alert. I’ve found that two days of viewing natural light at the same time each morning is enough to recalibrate my bedtime and wakeup time.

One important caveat to remember about the Holy Quaternity: these four things feed into each other negatively and positively. If you drink caffeinated soda and eight pieces of pizza for a 9 PM dinner, that’s going to affect your sleep. If you go to bed at 4 AM, that’s going to dysregulate your hunger levels. If you don’t don’t exercise every day, your mood will be thrown off and you’ll make worse food choices. It’s all connected. The good news, however, is that it works in reverse: just one good choice kickstarts a virtuous cycle.

Getting these four tools right–food, water, exercise, and sleep–are what I use to have good days 90% of the time. During the hardest period of my life, I dug myself out of a deep hole focusing obsessively on these four things. The concepts may seem pedestrian. But this deceptively simple advice saved my mental health and turned my life from chaos back to calm.