What is Depression? What is Positive Thinking? - Am I Depressed Quiz

If you have ever believed or felt that life was meant to be hard and full of lessons with little or no reward, then you can be sure that you can see one side of the coin. The question that you must ask if you want to be happy is: can you still remember how to see the other side?


Can you still feel ambitious? Excited? Adventurous? Inspired? Brilliant?

To lose sight of the joy in life is to accept depression as the norm. As you read this, billions of people of all languages, are confusing depression with "being realistic". 

What is depression? 

What is the difference between being negative and being realistic? 

What is being realistic?

One of the biggest problems with depression is the confusion in recognising it. 


To be clear, let's agree that

• the claim of "being realistic" is totally subjective, and depends on one's belief system and up-bringing

• in fact, the claim to be realistic has absolutely no grounds for reference beyond habit or cultural custom

• only this... lets call it tradition, is the criteria in deciding that a certain way of thinking is "realistic", and a certain other way of thinking is "unrealistic"

If we agree on these points, it is easy to understand how a successful person has attempted a certain aspect of happiness and succeeded, believing it to be "realistic", while an unsuccessful person may have attempted the same aspect of happiness and given up, or never have attempt at all, believing that it is "unrealistic". Another difference between these two people - I will come back to this - is the successful one knows how to use positive thinking to focus on the solution; the unsuccessful one only focusses on the problem.


In my practice alone, about half the cases of depression that I treat, do not believe that they are depressed. Their denial is based on their belief that their expectations of mediocrity are "realistic", and that other people or circumstances are to blame for their anger or stress. The bitter-sweet truth is, that the person who believes that happiness is realistic, achieves it, and the person who gives up, never achieves it.


Defining "realistic" is impossible - the concept is based entirely on belief systems - therefore the only way to discern between being negative and "being realistic", is to define depression. We can identify the signs, and recognise the symptoms. 


What is Depression?
Principle causes and symptoms of depression require an entire chapter. The "Am I Depressed? Quiz - 20 causes and symptoms to test if you have depression - with solutions!" defines the details. The link opens in a new tab, so you can easily return to this article.


Medical Treatment
Recognising and accepting depression, or hearing the diagnosis from a doctor, should signify the beginning of the journey to emotional balance. But instead of being pointed in the right direction, depression patients are made to feel more confused and hopeless by a system that dis-empowers the individual, and seems to be based more on profits than on common sense.

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How to Motivate Staff in the Workplace - overcoming depression, anxiety, and procrastination

Motivating staff can be hard work. People are complicated - we don't all respond the same way. Motivational seminars can be a breath of fresh air, they are usually inspirational and entertaining, but the real value to your organisation is measured in the degree of impact that the motivating experience has on the participants over time. 

The question is: Did your staff engage with that feeling of self-motivation deeply enough for it to become a habit?

Work sheets are essential - goal setting templates, personal affirmations, understanding the power of the mind and positive thinking - but words written on paper, even powerful words, lose their power unless they are kept alive by constant practice and repetition.

A detailed recipe is the crucial first step in the process that creates what you want, but events do not always flow in a strait line between writing down the recipe from the internet, and enjoying the perfect red velvet cupcake. Anxiety, depression, and procrastination in your place of work can be such a powerful combination, that even the notes from an inspiring seminar can seem pointless or confusing.

Depression is the most common psycho-emotional problem in the workplace, and yet a full cure can not be claimed by any of our extremely complicated, expensive psychiatric drugs. In fact, the full cure for depression can only be found in a personal decision to make certain lifestyle improvements, followed by a daily program for reminding yourself what you are doing, and why you are doing it. In 9 years of practice as a Hypnotherapist I have seen over 100 cases of depression transformed, using this method. You must make the decision to improve yourself, and you must follow a daily program to stay positive. 

The secret strategy to overcoming depression, is in knowing what you want, and then taking small, constant steps to get there. Short term goals are rewarding when you achieve them, and provide natural encouragement for you to continue to the next short term goal. The feeling of achievement is due to the natural release of dopamine into the blood stream from the central nervous system, and this hormone causes the opposite "feeling" from depression. So the "cure for depression" is really about what you do.

Procrastination is usually caused by the feeling of being ill-equipped to handle the task at hand. Not knowing what to do, self doubt, fear, or doubting your process, creates overload in your mind, too many thoughts, anxiety, and indecision. A task that should take a few hours, can take weeks, or just never happen. The opposite of procrastination is feeling confident, knowing what to do, having the skill and equipment to accomplish the task, and finding decisions easy to make, and obvious. 

How can you motivate your staff to become more confident, knowledgeable, skilled, and decisive? 

Full article: How to Motivate Staff in the Workplace - overcoming depression, anxiety, and procrastination

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