The importance of setting the goals during the self help process

”I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything.. at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.” Dan Millman

She is 46. Not ever married. No children. Pretty much no life. Same job she did for 15 years without ever getting even the hope of the promotion. Not because she is not good enough for it. She thought of being the boss here and kicking everyone out but that was simply it. It is much easier to sit quiet, covered up with a mantle of shines and hope that one day someone will notice you and will bring the come true of your secret wishes on the silver plate. However no one ever did as there always were going to be someone who is smarter, better looking, has better experience or at least speaks louder than she did. And no wonder these were the people climbing up or sometimes even jumping over the career stairs. But she really thought she has deserved a better position at work! Not that she wished for a manager assistant or manager position – she wished to be the the head of all the department. To walk with the chin pointed up as all these young shiny people do, who she thought, deserved the positions they are having much less than she did. However that is pretty much the story. She never actually stood up and did something about her job or her life. It is much more simple to hide under these piles of documents which seemed never to increase on the table. And of course to blame the rest of the world for you not ability to take any action.

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What ever you are into now the most important thing always is to set the goals. It is important always to have a goal – for a minute, for a day, week, month, year. And then to be able to sacrifice the smaller goals in order to achieve the bigger ones. But all of them have to be in order. Timing apparently is everything and the way you manage it, how reasonable your goals for the time are, influences how successful you are going to be in achieving them. To wish for something and to hope for something to happen is obviously good. And these things we wish for sometimes actually happen. However, most of the times to make them happen you need to put effort in it.

This is very important than it comes to the healing process – whether you are suffering from depression, anxiety or some other mental pain. It is important to understand that things do not become perfect in a day, not even in a week or a month. And that your goals need to be achieved gradually. If you are suffering from depression your final goal is to heal and get rid of it with no chance of falling back to it again. But at the stage you are at the moment this goal might not even be that much visible. Set the goal for this week – to accept your depression and make people who are important to you understand what you are suffering from. Set the goal for a month – no more negative thinking, no more self pity, just a believe you will get over it. Set a goal for the year – this is your last episode of depression you are suffering and no way you are falling back to it again. Yes, it is not easy. But it is not even meant to be easy. If you would be able to achieve all your goals within the blink of an eye – would you really value them? Sometimes it actually requires blood and sweat to get where you want to be.

The other value of setting the goals in the healing process (whether it is self help or therapy) is that then you set the goal you become optimist. You actually start seeing the future. And obviously your goal is related to the improvement of the situation you are in now. So you see the future more positive. That’s what being optimistic means – to see the light, even of the brightness of the dusty light bulb from the basement – but to know that it is there. To understand that you are going towards it and that is going to be your final goal.

So get from under that pile of papers in front of you, take that mantle of shines and hesitation off. Stand up. Speak with more trust. Lough louder. Breath in deeper. Make the eye contact with the people longer. Make every shake of the hand stronger. Every step more confident. Become who you want to be but keeping in mind that firstly you have to achieve the goals which are in between you and your ultimate wish. Good luck!

Forgiveness role in self help (Based on Dan Millman story)

I would like to start this blog post with a story written by a wonderful author and self help guru Dan Millman:

Once upon the time, a man was heading homeward, rowing his little boat upstream, when he felt another small boat, heading downstream, collide with his. Since he had the right-of-way, he felt angry. Turning, he yelled at the other boatman, ‘Watch where you’re going! Be more careful!’. The other man apologized, and passed by without further incident.

But an hour later, as the man continued upstream, he felt another boat collide with his. Furious, he turned to scream at this new reckless person -  and his anger vanished when he saw that the boat was empty. It must have come loose from its moorings, and drifted into him. Calmly, he pushed it aside and continued on his journey.

He never lost his temper again, because from then on, he treated everyone like an empty boat.

This is a brilliant story which illustrates that anger is a useless feeling as it can not affect what already has happened and can not do any good for the future events. All the feelings we release is a concentrated energy which gets out of us. Depending on the way we feel the energy we release might be neutral, positive or negative. The most important thing is to understand that all the energy flows going from us to outside are manageable just we need to train and learn how to do it.

Don’t misinterpret the story above. Treating everyone like an empty boat does not mean picturing the other people useless or ignoring them. Boat is here a metaphor resembling the negative feelings, in this case – anger. That empty boat which drifted in the river and accidentally hit the man’s boat was something he could not control. The man couldn’t influence the way the river floats to redirect the empty boat away, the same as the empty boat was floating uncontrolled and hit the other boat by accident. What it teaches us is that anger is such a waste of energy than we direct it to things which just happen and can not be changed. A man could shout and swear, releasing his energy through nasty words and it would be such a waste as it would not change the floating of the river or would redirect the boat. Treating everyone like an empty boat means understanding that some thing simply happen whether we want it or not, but just the same as that boat – it passes away. And then we are left alone in the river again until the other boat hits us. It just happens. It is simply the way life is built. So why worry about something you can not change?

You will probably say that anger is something you can not control. And than something pisses you of you simply get angry. However, you are wrong. All the feelings have a rational component and the beauty of being a hommo sapiens is that we understood how to trick and deal with our primitive human nature and how to control it or at least influence it. There are to techniques you can use in order to get rid of anger:

1. To ignore this feeling and little by little eliminate it from your feeling range. It is not easy to do obviously, but everything that is worth achieving requires efforts. Every time you are in the situation when you feel the anger coming – ask yourself, ‘ Is it something I can change? If nothing depends on me in this situation, why do I feel angry and worried? Is it worth?’ Admitting to yourself that actually in some situation you are helpless and powerless will just let all the negative feelings go away.

2. To understand the anger and to admit it. This is a more simple technique on how to deal with the anger. The magic in this one is that as soon as you say something you feel load it just goes away from your chest and the importance you gave to this feeling before simply decreases. So every time than you get angry at a person or at the situation or even at yourself – just say it load,’I am angry at you’, ‘I am angry that this has happened’, ‘I am angry at myself for doing this’. You will see that as soon you say this calmly, saving your energy, the anger will decrease and it will be much easier to go over it.

It is very important to understand that everything takes efforts. As that song says ‘Rome was not built in day’, so is our improvement – it does not happen in a minute. The most important is to have a goal, to see yourself in the stage you want to reach and take small steps towards it. Sometimes it might require to small steps back to make one big step forward. But everything is achievable it only depends how willing you are to work to get it.

Mentally gone

Than it comes to depression, not many people actually know what it is. Probably every second person you know time by time moans of how depressed he/she is. However, the other day you see the same person all shiny and happy and it appears to be that his/her so described ‘depression’ was simply a feeling of the hangover after the weekend.

I have a friend who was constantly suffering from depression. A brilliant artist by the way. We used to meet up like every single day, everything seemed fine and than he was just disappearing for a month or two. Not like disappearing in the sense that no one could find him. He was still there. But always at home. Mainly in bed. Smoking like two packs of red ‘Marlboro’ a day and barely eating. You could not really talk to him and most of the time you could simply sense these strange negative vibrations around. So basically, he disappeared mentally.

I did feel basically helpless. He was always more of the listener than a talker but than it came to these black periods you could more or less count that he doesn’t say more than 10 words a day. You can not just make him go and see a psychologist or stuff him with medicine. He was refusing any of it. so these few months he was going through everything alone. According to him to be a great artist he needs to be depressed as it is the only way he can actually create something deep and useful. I do believe it might be simply just an excuse for self pity but at the same time I must admit that the paintings he made after these black periods where absolutely fantastic. It was something deep in them and you could sense, you could even kinda smell it, that everything on the canvas is somehow real and true.

We had a lot of conversations every time he was out of this black hole, talking during these black periods were basically useless. Though I did try, it was obvious he needs help and I was way scared he is about to hang himself one day. But somehow he just managed to get out of it every time. The only thing I noticed that the length of these black periods were basically increasing by few weeks every time. So the last time he has disappeared I did hear anything from him for almost half a year. I was checking once a month if he is still alive though. Knocking and kicking the door until he bothered opening it. He used to take these long night walks as well, but even I was afraid to meet him during them.

Anyways, I was about to write about these conversations we had after he was out of it. What I basically wanted to know was what is it that he feels. What is it to be depressed. And the answer was very simple – he feels nothing. That what depression was for him, and I do believe that it is like this for many other people – it is a lack of feelings. It is not about being sad or feeling down. According to him, it is the sadness at the stage where you simply feel nothing. He says he doesn’t even remember what he does in these months he is in his depression  again. For him it just passes by and somehow, at a certain point he just gets out of it. It is pretty scary, thinking that he never knows exactly than it is going to repeat again. Sometimes, he says, he can sense it. He sleeps more, eat less, smokes more intensively, forget things. Usually it is autumn and spring he mentally disappears.

As it appeared, his mother was struggling with depression as well. She was an artist, so all of the talent he got, probably came from that side. So did the depression. The only difference was that she was actually suicidal and I do believe that he never tried to raise a hand against himself. Probably because his depression started after his mother suicide, than he was something like 16. He said he is never going to do it, he saw how much suffer it brought to the people around her. It is a bit strange the way he accepts depression as a component of the talent which was passed from his mother together with the genes.

And it was my primary idea of the post, to write about the origin of depression, just because some people are so aware that it is something you inherit. I am not any close to a psychologist or psychiatrist, therefore, I want to share this video with you. It tries to explain what are the origins of depression and how much genetic it is. Hope it will answer some of your questions, enjoy!

Living in the age of depression.

At these hectic ages no one seems to have time for anything or anyone. Probably you don’t remember when you received a paper hand written letter last because it asks a dedication of half an hour than a Hallmark card can be sent within two minutes. Probably you chat on Facebook with most of your friends more than you actually see them in real. And… do you really know these 354 people who are on your friends list? Years ago we used to invite people to our birthdays while calling them or sending a lovely paper invitation but probably your last three birthdays invitations were done while creating an event on some social network and get people to confirm it online. You probably don’t remember than last you took a tram and listened what two old grandmas are talking behind you or what radio station is on because half of the day your ears are plugged with an iPhone/iPod/iPad or whatever else ‘i’….

Isn’t it a strange thing that we consume 3 times more than our grandparents but at the same time we seem to be 3 times more unhappy. We have stuff. We have lots and lots of stuff. We have access to free and easy traveling, information, social and health care but the more we consume the more unhappy we are. We have tens of times more of allergies, we get much more stressed and suffer from anxiety. We constantly feel under pressure, less and less things make us happy and less and less we care.

The fact, that you are depressed, constantly stressed, unhappy, anxious, tired, afraid, worried, disappointed does not mean that you have exaggerated sensitivity to things or you just don’t know how to cope. Unless you are living somewhere in the jungles in south America, where all that hype of technologies didn’t touch you. Depression is a ‘plague’ of our generation. We created the surroundings we live in, wanting to travel further, to eat faster, to communicate quicker, to live higher… But all the technologies, all the hectic life style is turning back to us and bringing us down, affecting our psychological health and nerves. And out of sudden, even we have everything – we are unhappy. Yes, we are simply unhappy. At first just sometimes, then we get back to cold and technologically equipped home after 10 hours of work. Then we speak to our parents over the phone and don’t remember than we saw them last. Then instead of going to groceries and picking up dinner ingredients we get a fast delivery from Chinese restaurant round the corner. However, soon feeling down becomes not just a random feeling once a week, it becomes a constant state. And that’s the moment you start looking depression straight in the eyes.

Of course it is not ok to be depressed. But from the point of view, that you depression is the sign that you need changes, it becomes ok. That means you are not different than millions of people suffering from depression round the world. You are not too sensitive or weak. You simply find it hard to keep up with hectic life style, you need to reevaluate some things, to deal with them and move on. To do the same, what all of us do.

An affective self-help exercise which will help you to get rid of negative feelings such as stress, anxiety and depression

There are various ways to get rid of negative feelings but different people find different exercises useful. The best ones, in my believe, are the ones which require least of time and give the best of the result. However, these are never the ones you can easily stumble upon on the internet.

The exercise I am going to describe here might help you to deal with stress, anxiety and depression. The idea of this exercise is based on the believe that positive thinking naturally attracts positive things. In this way it is bit similar to a solution focused therapy then negative thoughts and facts are eliminated from the process.  But lets come back to positive thinking. The idea of the subconscious power and the believe that we have energy to influence people and things around us makes this exercise so powerful. People say: ‘what goes around comes around’. Therefore, you can imagine your energy going all the time in circles and getting directly influenced by new energy flows. So if you think negative – that is what’s going to come back to you at the end.

The exercise itself is very simple and will take not more than 20 minutes of your time. You need to be sure that in order to do this exercise you not necessarily need to be already depressed or generally unhappy. This exercise was with me during the best times same as the worst as it can makes you bad times better and the good ones even more amazing.

All you need is an empty notebook. It does not matter what size, color or pattern it is. Just use the one you like and will not mind to hold in hands every day for the following month. The length of the exercise is a month, after you should do a brake but the results will be already seen in a week. Here is the detailed plan of the exercise:

1. Every morning open you notebook’s different page.

2. In the morning on the left page of the notebook write your expectations of the day, one after the other in different lines. The more concrete they are the better.

3. In the evening you have to complete the right page of the day in your notebook. At the top right corner write the date. Also at the top write 3 positive adjectives about yourself. ( I am ….., …… and …….)

4. On the same page write positive things that happened to you that day. It can be anything: maybe the unexpected and good weather made your day? was the sun shining to your face than you walked home from work? did you have nice lunch? did the child on the street smile to you? it can be absolutely anything, even the smallest details that made you happy at least for a second that day.

5. On the left page tick the expectations which became true.

Do this every day for a month and you will see that every day you tick more and more expectations and what a power a positive thinking has. A week after you read this post, come back, and share your experience. Encourage and motivate the others.

To see how your notebook should be filled, look down on the link below  ,-)

How to make things happen

Here I am going to describe a simply exercise which is based on my own experience and believe that we can not completely get rid of the old habits but we can always change them by the new one, the same as we can make our positive thoughts  materialize.  Try this simple exercise once a day for a week and you will see what a string influence it will have on the way you are going to feel that week and what you want to happen. So…

1. Think what you want to happen at the end of this week or during this week. It must be very concrete and should not sound like ‘I want to be happy’, ‘I want to have a good week at work’ etc. No, it must be very concrete, something like ‘I want to get compliments from my boss’, ‘I want our relationship with mister x to move to the other level’, ‘I want him to ask me to live with him’. Very simple. It should involve concrete people, places and situations.

2. Find 15 minutes a day than you are alone, there is no noise and no threat that someone might disturb you. Grab a chair and sit down. Close your eyes. You need to be relaxed, clear your mind, breve slowly.

3. In your head form a very accurate image the way the thing you want to happen is happening. What do you wear? What does he/people around you wear? Are you alone? What time of the day is it? What music is at the background? Do you smell anything? Food? Street? What weather is outside? Just imagine all the situation of the way what you want to happen is happening and go through it for the 15 minutes. Pay attention even to the smallest details.

4. Do it once a day for a week. Every day you have to repeat the same image i your head for 15 minutes, you can always add more details but don’t change the event itself…. and a week later come back to tell us what happened!

How did I quit smoking in one day

A cigarette for me, the same as for most of the smokers, at first was a simple and fast way to get rid of the stress. Every time, something got me out of order, distracted or unpleasantly surprised I just needed to light up a cigarette and in a minute if not all than  half of the problems disappeared.

At the point, where a number of cigarettes I smoked a day could fit in the package, I actually didn’t have any problems any more. The situation at work was pretty much ok, and the personal life was going fine but i still was smoking. And this time it was not anymore about the stress reduction. All these reasons were replaced by the simple joy you get from lighting up a cigarette on holidays, at the bar, on a hallway during the dinner at a friends. And these few puffs (well, to be honest, it was round 200 of them a day if we say that it takes 10 puffs to smoke a cigarette and I had round 20 a day) was just a joy. Well, was, until one day I noticed that to get up these stairs leading to my flat on the 5th floor became pretty much impossible, not talking about running to the bus or trying to catch a nephew in the garden.

And one day I simply stopped. Quit for good. What I realized was that smoking is nothing more than a release of energy you have. It is a physical action which gets out the various energy you have inside. Some people smoke, others drink, some take drugs, but the others go running, paint or take a walk more often. So why this particular action, smoking, is the one you have to choose for your energy release?