Warning: There is a similarity between grief and depression, similarity of symptoms.
Most people that think they are depressed aren’t… in fact they are grieving… Make sure you read my article on grieving. Thanks.
Imagine if you found out that all your hopes for a “normal” life are crushed. You are too old to get married, your way of communicating doesn’t attract the other sex anyway.
You just found out…
…that the little infection you got is now here to stay: unless you completely overhaul how you eat, what you eat, when you eat, unless you are stress free, it will not just be in remission, but will torment you to no end?
You don’t like your job, and they don’t like you. You have never gotten a promotion, you have never gotten a raise, although you do a decent job.
Your personal and home life is in shambles, your friends aren’t there for you, and there is no one to turn to.
You would be depressed, right?
Depression means that you can’t see that there is an outside of the predicament that you are in. That there is fog between you and a future that is worth living for, worth getting up, cleaning up, striving for. When the future is looks so bad, so glum, that the only reason you don’t die because you don’t have the energy, and it doesn’t look like a good alternative.
OK, you imagined. Now, how do you get out of depression like that? After all the circumstances seem to have conspired against you, and it seems clear that you can’t win.
I’ve been there, not once, but several times.
I have a student who lives in this place right now, and I have a few who are not far from it.
So, what do you do? What can you do?
First, let me tell you the story differently, so you can get a different view of it:
You find out some bad news about your health, your personality, your chances of succeeding living a normal life. The problem is, that you can see that the common denominator in all the areas of life is YOU… but what about you?
You see that you don’t like yourself. That your opinion, to yourself, is very very low of yourself, bad, lazy, weak.
When you love yourself, you love your life
You heard me say and I will say it again: When you love yourself, you love your life. When you like yourself you start building a life that you love.
What does this mean? Sounds good, but you are far from loving yourself, and you are even far from liking yourself.
Introducing Integrity:
Without integrity nothing works. With integrity life starts working.
Your job is to re-establish the power of your word. To return integrity to your word. Scientifically, consciously, calculatingly, really causing it.
Some people do what they said they would do, because they are good, because they are obedient, because they want to look good.
But you will do that, keep your word, because it works.
Start small.
Set some small actions that are easy but you don’t always do them. When you are depressed, your body hygiene suffers, so promise that you’ll brush your teeth as soon as you get up.
Then brush your teeth because you said so. Not because it’s good to brush your teeth, not because you have to, but because you said so.
The job is to restore your relationship with Word.
Little victories like that make a big difference if they are in the right context.
Care only about this: you did it because you said so.
Don’t worry about any future, any hope needs to be killed. You want to restore your capacity to call the shot, to be the power in your life. Not hope, not some future, not some pie in the sky normal life, blah blah blah.
Not other people. Not god. No. You, and your word.
Once you can trust yourself with one task, add another, and get to a point where you can trust yourself to do both tasks.
Slowly but surely you’ll start seeing glimpses of light, and emerge as a powerful human who can handle anything, who can go anywhere, who needs nothing, wants nothing, but can do anything, because you said so.
A totally new you. A you you can like, a YOU you can Love.
What happens if you get out of depression because of some drug? or some good news?
When you get out of your depression because of some drug, or because something good happens, you didn’t rebuild yourself, some drug, some circumstance did it, not you.
The you that went down didn’t change.
But the purpose of life is to grow. Grow to the next level of evolution.
This is the fastest way I know.
P.S. Right after I published this article, I had a conversation with a friend, where I became clear that this concept of integrity, word, and their connection to what you do, the quality of life, etc. is totally Greek for most people, including my friend.
If you like to listen to candid audio between two people discussing something that is of great interest to you, if you like to be the fly on the wall, I am willing to sell you a copy of the recording of the call. If you get it, when you get what I am saying, you’ll suddenly find yourself in the top 1% of 1% of humanity with the knowledge I share in the call. Email me for a link to pay the $15 I ask.
