How to Lift Yourself Out of a Depression

depression

There was a time in college when I was going through a very bad patch – my personal life was going down the drain, I was unable to focus on my academic performance, and I had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed as if my past, present and future were conspiring against me to keep me in a depressing limbo from which there was no respite. And then I came across a paragraph that turned things around radically; leafing idly through an old textbook which I had bought secondhand, I found a piece of paper titled Footprints in the Sand.

Many of you may know the story, but for those who don’t, it details a conversation between man and God – there are two sets of footprints in the sand that represents the man’s life, and God tells him that he is there too, walking beside him and taking him through life. And so the man traverses his life, identifying the highs and lows that he has been through. He finds a curious pattern – during all his times of turbulence and trouble, there is only one set of footprints. So he turns to God and accuses him of ditching him during his difficult periods. And God in his infinite wisdom replies – No my Son, I did not leave you to face your troubles alone. Rather, I carried you through them to help lighten your burden. The sole set of footprints you see are mine, not yours. Needless to say, the man is chastened and ashamed.

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30 Tiny Changes for Health, Wealth and Happiness

tiny changes

Have you ever started off on some huge project to overhaul your entire life – only to give up after a couple of weeks?

Change doesn’t need to be dramatic or all-encompassing. Small, individual changes can lead to new habits, and – eventually – to a much-improved life. They might seem insignificant on their own, but they build up to a powerful force, just like raindrops working away at rocks.

Here are 30 tiny changes that you can start on today. If you made just one change every day, you’d be doing them all in a month’s time. How different could your life look in a year?

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Getting Productive By “Getting Real”

getting real

In this post, I’ll talk about how dropping our efforts to please others with the way we look and act can actually help us get more done and find more joy in our work.

As you know, most of us work in environments where other people are around — whether we’re in an office, on our laptops in a café, or somewhere else.

When others are around, many of us start getting concerned about what those people think of us. To manage this anxiety, we start talking and behaving in ways we think will make the “right impression.”

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When Helping Hurts: A Lesson on Enabling

enabling

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge advocate for helping others. I believe in reaching out, giving a helping hand, providing emotional support, and contributing financially. I believe each individual can make the world a better place by helping others in some way. On the other hand, it’s relatively clear that anything, including help, can be done in excess. So, what does it mean to help until it hurts?

When Helping Hurts

Helping aids progression, creates an environment of positivity, adds value to the life of another human being. Helping lifts you up, but doesn’t hold you up; it allows you to hold yourself up as best you can. Helping at its best is supportive, not controlling; strengthening, not debilitating; mobilizing, not paralyzing. When helping hurts, it is no longer helping. It is enabling.

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How to Explore New Careers (Without Quitting Your Day Job)

explore new careers

Ever wonder what it would be like to spend your 40+ hours a week working somewhere else? If so, you’re in good company. In the US alone, 55% of people aren’t happy with their current job. We’ve heard the success stories of people who quit their day job and found something better. Maybe they went back to school, moved to another location, or even started their own business. We admire their tenacity because we too would love to drop our lives and start afresh.

Then reality kicks in. Many of us can’t take the financial risk of quitting our jobs. Our children need a roof over their heads, our house payments keep coming, and our obligations keep us rooted in our current communities. We dream about changing jobs, but looking at our lives, it appears impossible to follow in our career heroes’ footsteps.

Fortunately for us, exploring new career opportunities doesn’t mean you have quit your day job tomorrow. There are more subtle ways of getting where you want to be. Consider these simple ways to start pursuing a new career:

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Five Pitfalls Anxiety Sufferers Fall into… and How to Get Past Them

anxiety sufferer

The more that I learn about life, the more that it becomes clear that I know only a little. Even though I am relatively young in my late twenties, it seems that almost each and every day there becomes apparent in my life a new stumbling block, whether it is an anxiety stumbling block or something else. As a human, it is ingrained in my nature to find countless ways, both conscious and subconscious, to engage in self-defeating behavior. But fortunately, as a human I have also been blessed with the ability to find solutions to some of the stumbling blocks presented in my path. In regard to anxiety, at least a few have become apparent, some of which others may already have discovered.

1. Self blame

The first stumbling block that exists in every anxiety sufferer’s life is the tendency to blame him or her self for having the condition, as well as for all the shortcomings that result from the condition. The truth is that anxiety is always a natural reaction to some sort of difficulty that is too great for a person to handle early on in life. In particular, social anxiety sufferers tend to have developed their condition because of very critical parents, or children at school who constantly harass them. If one thinks about it logically, what is a child who does not have the experience to deal with that kind of stress going to do? Is he going to be exceedingly confident and slay his enemies one by one? Probably not – a more natural reaction is fear and cautiousness around people.

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Personality 2.0

personality 2.0

Technology is a marvellous thing. In the always-connected world of 2011, if we hit a problem with a piece of software or a gadget – the manufacturer can issue a patch or a firmware upgrade to solve the problems.

When it comes to humans, however, fixing our problems isn’t as straight forward as downloading an upgrade, plugging in and re-synching.

If we were able to upgrade our ‘personality firmware’ however, here’s how I think it might look, with the ‘Personality 2.0’ firmware release notes!

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The Wisdom of the Serenity Prayer

serenity prayer

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr wrote what is usually called ‘the serenity prayer’ for a sermon in the 1930s, although it is sometimes misattributed to other writers. The prayer is now quoted widely, and you don’t have to be a Christian or, indeed, have any religious beliefs to see the timeless wisdom in this simple and profound statement.

Some years ago, I attended a seminar given by an excellent motivational speaker. At one point, he handed out pens with the words ‘fact of life’ printed on the side. On stage, he had a large version of the pen, and repeatedly dropped it. The idea was that, like gravity acting on the pen, some things were just ‘facts of life.’ They cannot be changed and you have no power over them. To complain about these things or to seek to change them is, at best, a waste of time and, more often, corrosive and self-defeating.

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How to Change Your Mindset for Growth

growth mindset

Pop quiz. Which of these do you agree with? 1) Intelligence is fixed at birth. 2)Some people are creative, others aren’t. 3) You can become a world-class expert through enough practice, whatever your starting point. 4) You can change your personality.

If you agreed with the first two statements, you’re coming from a fixed mindset. If you agreed with the second two, you’ve got a growth mindset.

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Are You Determined to Change This Year?

“The key to change… is to let go of fear” – Rosanne Cash

New Year resolutions are easy to list or write, but can be difficult to implement. New Year resolutions are about change. We all see the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to change certain habits or start new ways of life. We all want to change, but certain factors, such as fear, hold us back.

The key to change is to let go of fear. As Dorothy Thompson put it, ‘Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live’. To begin to live is to begin to live without fear; it’s to be able to change without fear. We live in a society that fears failure. Many times, we want to make a change in our careers, social lives, or family traditions or religion, but fear prevents us from achieving these goals. Fear is like a virus that wrecks havoc in our lives. It develops into mistrust, anxiety, worry, hopelessness, and other negative emotions. It paralyzes us and hinders our progress in life. When fear grips you, you become powerless. It’s the greatest obstacle to personal success.

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Forgiving Yourself

forgiving yourself

I am a critic. To some degree, we all are. We criticize our co-workers when they do a bad job. We get upset when our friends don’t come to our aid. We lament that our family doesn’t understand who we have become. It can be particularly hard to forgive someone else if they have done a terrible wrong against you. Relationships suffer, loneliness ensues, and it takes a lot of time to heal these wounds.

But even harder than forgiving someone else, we struggle to forgive ourselves.

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