Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot, which also has a major effect on stress levels and happiness.
I started realizing that when I feel down and discouraged, often the cause is simply being tired and not sleeping enough. I’d drink more coffee/caffeine to compensate, making me sleep even worse. It’s a bad cycle. But a sufficiently tough workout cancels out the over-caffeination and makes it easy to fall asleep at night.
> Another great thing about exercise is it tends to improve sleep a lot
Depends. For example, picking up a new sport (new type of movement/activity) can disrupt your sleep for weeks or months and it represents lots of extra stress. I've been doing quite lot of running for around two years (never had more than two days rest between runs), and then picked up BJJ. Then I got injured and had to stop exercising for a few weeks. I have not slept that well for years -- finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness :)
So be careful with _too hard_ exercise if you're stressed out; it raises dopamine levels but doesn't negate stress.
It sounds like it wasn't the exercise itself that was sabotaging you, your comment about muscle pain makes it sound like you weren't allowing for proper recovery time between workouts. That's just as important as the actual workout.
>finally I had nights without muscle pain and tiredness
This is well-researched problem. All it means you don't have diet balanced enough to provide everything necessary for proper recovery. For me it was magnesium deficiency, now I take magnesium every night and sleep just fine even after muscle-intense exercise. Before this "miracle" (<= joke) OTC supplement I had tense muscles and crumps and wasn't getting good sleep.
(Magnesium comes in many forms, it takes time to find one which is not disturbing for the stomach, I use magnesium glycenate in capsules).
I started realizing that when I feel down and discouraged, often the cause is simply being tired and not sleeping enough. I’d drink more coffee/caffeine to compensate, making me sleep even worse. It’s a bad cycle. But a sufficiently tough workout cancels out the over-caffeination and makes it easy to fall asleep at night.