Perseverance

This week I was asked what keeps me going and fighting depression how do I find the strength to fight everyday? I always answer in the same manner I just love life now, I enjoy every moment that I am alive. If it means fighting and using my tools I was taught to use then I just do it and some days it is really easy and some days it is really hard and some days I just don’t have to fight at all.

Sooner or later the fight just doesn’t feel like a fight anymore and the things I do to fight just come naturally and I enjoy them because you see part of fighting depression is learning to treat your self with love and kindness when you start enjoying life and doing things you love depression will slowly fade away.

When I do my talks on mindfulness and meditation I talk about how at first, I was so against trying these new things that it was all just hippie trippie bull shit. But over time it started to feel natural, I actually started to look forward to meditating and practicing mindfulness. It now has become a part of my everyday health and well being. People who suffer from depression have a hard time doing anything for them self’s without felling guilty or feeling that nothing will ever help them.

When you have learned over time to act a certain way it is so hard to change but over time in the same manner that depression pulled you down using the tools you can build you self back up to a point were you actually start enjoying life again and the tools that you use are not tools anymore but are actually things you love to do! And believe it or not that is what life is all about happiness, love and just enjoying life . When those things are your tool box, Depression has no chance.

I would like to share a short passage from my book were I learned how to use meditation and mindfulness.

Meditation:

In therapy we started to work on many types of mediation to help me stay calm when a tough situation would arrive or when I just needed to relax. Since now I was able to go to my safe place without any problems. Mastora added a wonderfull meditation.

She told me to sit comfortably and just breathe deep and naturally, just take notice of how my body felt my arms and my legs just relax and empty my mind.

Now I was to picture what emotion I felt and make it into a large object any shape or thing I wished it to be. I pictured a large glowing ball just in front me it was big and hot! She now told me to take my hands and bring them up to the ball and place them on each side of the ball. Imagine that I can bring my hands together and shrink this ball into a small object that could fit into the palm of my hand. I turned this large ball into a tinny cloud which just sat in the middle of the palm of my left hand. Now she said make that object disappear in any way you would like, maybe just close your hand and squeeze it until there is nothing left. I chose to shine sun light on this cloud and just make it slowly disappear into nothing. This meditation was fantastic and just proved to me any emotions in life that are playing on my mind can just be shrunk down to nothing and I can make them disappear and calm my mood. Like I said before nothing in my life is life threatening or needs to be dealt with any state of urgency. I alone control my moods and emotions and this was just another tool for me to use. This is a journal entry I made on a run so I would have lots of different things to turn the negative emotions into when I did this Meditation.

Journal entry

This morning on my run I thought about soft harmless things for my new meditation I was taught to use at my last session.

A tiny feather that sits in the palm of my hand and is lighter than air. With a tiny breath it can float out of my hand and get taken away by a gentle breeze.

Dry sand running threw my fingers and just disappearing into nothing.

Holding a dead dandy lion and blowing it with my breath and sending the seeds flying away in a warm summer breeze.

A nice soft leaf from a lavender plant holding it between my thumb and finger, slowly rubbing it and releasing its wonderful scent into the air and just dropping it after I am done.

After my run I was relaxed and slowly walked home and was at peace, smiling and feeling proud of myself for what I had accomplished on this run I now had I lot of images to use in my meditation. The fact that my run itself was like a meditation of its own was even better.

Do something you love today!