DAY 50 OF 100-DAY SELF-REINVENTION SERIES - If You Can Say That You Are Depressed, You Are Probably Not

“Depression is a state when you refuse to use the will” - Colin Wilson

If you are in a conscious state and can say that you are going through depression, chances are, you’re not. The dictionary defines depression as a depressed or sunken place or part; an area lower than the surrounding surface; dullness or inactivity. In psychiatry, depression is a condition of general emotional dejection and withdrawal; sadness greater and more prolonged than that warranted by any objective reason. Depression is so severe as to be considered abnormal, either due to no obvious environmental causes or because the reaction to unfortunate life circumstances is more intense or prolonged than would generally be expected.

The definitions of depression given above point to one common state – a mental state in which you’re not functioning as you would ordinarily do. My question is, what is wrong with this? Nothing is wrong in your life until you say something is wrong. What is wrong with not wanting to go out today? What is wrong with not wanting to do what you did yesterday? The fact is that until you say there is something wrong with it, there is nothing wrong with it. As I have said repeatedly, all our experience of life is the product of our thinking. All mental pain is a disconnect between where you think you are and where you think you ought to be. The reverse is true for all our joys – when we think that where we are is better than where we ought to be, that thinking evokes feelings of joy, happiness, and gratitude. Which of these states would you prefer in your conscious mind? How does the knowledge that each of these states is your creation affect you right now? The keyword is thought, many people are thinking way too much. When they should be doing, they are thinking. You have eight hours to devote to a task, rather than start, you think about all the work before you. Thinking about all the work you’re faced with isn’t going to move a thing. What will get the job done is action, simple action. To borrow the words of Nike, just do it, that’s what is needed.

Depression is a story that you made up. It is not there until you make it up. A phrase from the famous writer, E. W. Kenyon, ‘the tenses whip us’ sums up the current challenge you’re faced with. People that think they’re depressed don’t feel like doing as much as what they did before. When Google is used to research this emotion, the algorithm answer is usually depression. The pertinent question here is whether a search engine should tell you who you are? Once you put that ugly label on, you are hooked. Jesus was tired and had to take a break. If the most powerful man that ever walked the face of the earth could be tired, don’t you think that being tired isn’t something abnormal? The labels and tenses we use to describe our situation or tell our stories can have far more consequences than we think. “This is the worst company to work for.” Is that true? Have you taken the time to slow down and question this expression? Why not reframe your sentence to say, “My capacity is challenged by this employment?’ You might ask the difference between the two expressions…the whole world! One sentence makes you a victim of life, while the other challenges you to be the best that you can be.

I am speaking to your spirit, to that infinite potential within. I’m not addressing the robot running your life, or the ‘you’ composed of your fabricated accounts. All these stories about being depressed or going

through depression are your imagination. If your conscious faculties are in order, only your stories can make you diagnose depression. I do not feel like I felt yesterday, I have lost my job, I have just been ejected from my house, so what? Until you create a tale out of the event, it is just one of many events that have happened or that occur in anyone’s life, for that matter.

I remember reading some years ago about an Olympic medallist who, later in life, was dying of cancer in his early fifties. While he was going through this agony, he made a speech in which he said, “many people are calling me to tell me this should not happen to me; why should this have to happen to me; my response is this, why not me? If it is not me, who should it be? I should be asking why I was the one that the world stood up for when I was getting all the gold medals; why was I the one that God chose to top the 100m race for five years repeatedly? If I did not ask then, why it was me, I should not ask now, why me?” He decided his own story, you can determine yours too. You can choose to tell any story you want right now. It doesn’t need to take ten weeks or five hours. Right now, you can tell a new story. Like the Olympic medallist, you can turn a negative account around.

Have you been laid off after working faithfully for a company for twenty years without taking a day off? Don’t tell the story that your robot wants. Instead of asking why me? Turn the question around, why not me? The right question to ask is, why is it that God allowed me to work in this company for twenty years? Why was I the one promoted to laboratory manager in 2006? Why was I the one chosen to give a press address amidst so many others? Have you made up a why me story because you are yet to have children? Turn the story around. Why am I the one this blessed to anticipate a child? Why am I this blessed to be married? Why am I so blessed to be alive? When you change your questions, your life will certainly take a new direction. The job, marriage, or relationship that you previously hated takes on new life when you tell the story that gives it life. Change the stories that you are telling, and your life will take on a new life on its own. If you continue to tell the why me account, feel free to tell God the name of the person you think appropriate for the event that you’re griping about. If I were God and you cried to me and asked, why me? I would show up and say, “tell me who it should be!”

I remember a story Steve Chandler once told. A fellow came from the hospital to tell him that the doctor told him he had six months to live. This fellow was sad. Steve’s response was, “You are the only one amongst this bunch that has six months to live; the rest of us have just today.” The message sunk home. Stop thinking, start living!

Colin Wilson was a great English writer, and in one of his writings, he said, “depression is a state when one stops to use his will.” I think there is no better way to put it. You lie down, expecting someone to come and save you? Nobody is going to come. That is the good news. The ability to stand up is right there inside you, but you have refused to stand up. Right now, you can get up and do whatever you choose unless you have a medical condition or physical impairment. All you need is the will to rise. The question is whether you will use your will?

When you are driven, everything in front of you gets destroyed – David Goggins

Tell a story that gets you going today. Tell a story that strengthens your spirit, not one that imprisons it. When you tell a story that drives you, the days of depression are over, days of why me become part of

the past. And once you’re driven, every discouragement, every obstacle is destroyed. Use your will today, get up and destroy that sob story that has disempowered you up until now. Nobody is coming to save you but you. Neither your friends nor their best intentions can rescue you, only you can do that.