“You don't get depressed, you do it!”

Tony Robbins

from “Date with Destiny” seminar, December 2004

OK. You’re depressed.

Please think about all the things that suck in your life and, even more importantly for this exercise, please assume the posture of you being depressed.

Got it?

OK.

What’d you do?

If you’re like me, you kinda slouched over. Stopped smiling. You probably looked down. Kinda rounded your back. Which made your breath shallow…

Yah?

You get into the “wilted flower” pose or something like that?

Nice.

Now try this: Stand up straight. Maybe jump up and down a couple times. Shake yourself out. Smile. Pull your shoulders back. Breathe. Smile again. Look forward and up. Maybe even bounce on your toes and shake your body.

Own it.

Rock it.

OK. Got it? Good.

Now…get depressed.

Come on! Keep on smiling, breathing, bouncing a bit and get depressed.

I don’t know about you but I can’t “get” depressed when I’m holding myself up, breathing deeply and smiling. Just doesn’t work.

Hmmm…

Let’s not “do” depression any more, mmmmk?

(Not to be flippant about the serious challenges of depression (I’ve certainly experienced some very dark times) but it pretty much is that simple. :))

I get Tony Robbins physiological approach to not giving into being depressed but my experience shows me this solution is not enough. In fact, I have had such deep depressions I try to have an early alert system to warn me when one might be coming on. For me it is so hard to get out of depression I know I will save much time and pain by not going into this deep hole in the first place. My last bout with depression was caused by my sadness seeing how the countries of the world just watched the Sudanese Natives being exterminated by their own government ( and that process is continuing after several years). Being an active world citizen led me to chose their plight to work on, which led me to read as much as I could find to be thoroughly informed. So you might say I focused on Sh**t but to me and the Sudanese natives it was reality nevertheless. Eventually too much of that led me into a six month depression. The way I got out was I started reading support writings on how to deal with stress from being an activist dealing with many conflicts. But beyond that I change my belief from I can change the world to I can only do my best and then I must hope that what I did has some effect…that it causes some ripples. As a result I keep a high respect for depressions and stay alert for them coming into my life.