Pathways Out of Depression Part 1: The Link Between Depression & Life Purpose
If you buy into what the entertainment media is selling, I’m guessing that you think depression is bad—something to be avoided at all costs.
If you will only:
- Take this pill
- Buy that car
- Wear these shoes that make your feet feel oh so good,
Then you can keep depression at bay.
But how much money do you spend each year trying to push depression away? Funny thing is, all of those fixes are only temporary. They don’t get to the core of what is making you blue.
So, let’s say you decide to get therapy so you can get to the bottom of this. You bolster up your courage, make that phone call, drag yourself to the appointment, and some dude with a bunch of diplomas on his wall tells you to change your thoughts and do deep breathing.
Techniques like this are part of mainstream psychology. And often they do help, especially if you have clinical depression.
Take this quiz to see if you are depressed to the point that you should get therapy.
No matter what level of depression you have, there’s still a big piece of the puzzle that you might be missing.
Unless you grew up in some television sitcom family, you probably didn’t learn much about emotions. It scares the bejeeburs out of us when someone is really ticked off and screaming. And we get squirmy when somebody’s crying their eyes out over a breakup.
Maybe your parents even told you stuff like, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” So if you’ve been avoiding depression, it’s no wonder.
Even if you didn’t avoid depression you may have tried to think your way out of it. You read that best-selling book and even went to a 4 day retreat at a cushy resort. Maybe you even felt better for a while. But pretty soon, those clouds of doom seemed to settle back in.
Here’s my take on depression. It, like any other emotion, is a signal.
It’s the Universe’s way of tapping us on the shoulder to let you know that something’s out of balance in your life.
Many times what’s out of kilter is that you’ve strayed off the path of your purpose in life—what it is that you were born to do or be.
Let’s say you’re buying into my notion that depression is a chance to get back on track with your life purpose. What’s the next step? Dive into it. It’s never too late to get started.
Check out this website to learn about an amazing 68 year old woman who will inspire you with the pathway out of depression that she found.
Think about all of the things that are making you feel blue. Pour over them with a fine tooth comb and tease out the patterns you find.
These themes are clues to help you understand how the Universe has shaped you, through all of these challenges, to be at the perfect place, at this point in time, to grab hold of the things you always dreamed of doing until the “shoulds” of life got in your way.
In my next post, I’ll be writing about how to put a stop to the “shoulds” that feed your depression: Old Programming.
Many blessings!
