If you’re currently feeling so out of it, totally out of your normal system and just basically hating and ignoring almost, always everything and anyone that comes along, try to get yourself checked by a psychiatrist because you those little mood swings and erratic Ally McBeal-ish behavior that you’re trying to ignore for some long may actually be symptoms of depression. Act fast because if you do, it’ll certainly be a lot harder for you to be able to have yourself cured from this illness, especially once self-delusion starts to kick in.
Actually start by hauling your depressed ass into the hospital and get yourself diagnosed by a reputable psychiatrist, one that’ll actually help you with your depression concerns, answer all the possible questions that you may have when it comes to depression as well as provide you with the best available to depression treatment that’ll make you give yourself some good-old, yet extremly effective depression help. All it needs is the right attitude.
After actually being honest with yourself when it comes to actually being a patient who is suffering from depression, quit turning youself into a victim and find out from these various types of depression the actual one that you’re suffering from: Manic or Bipolar depression – characterized by sudden and extreme changes in one’s mood wherein one minute he or she is in an elevated state of euphoria while the next minute (day or week) he or she is feeling to be in a personal hell, Postpartum depression – characterized by a prolonged sadness and a feeling of emptiness by a new mother wherein physical stress during child birth, an uncertain sense of responsibility towards the new born baby can be just some of the possible factors why some new mother go through this, Dysthimia – characterized by a slight similarity with depression, although this time, it’s been proven to be a lot less severe, but of course with any case, should be treated immediately, Cyclothemia – characterized by a slight similarity with Manic or Bipolar depression wherein the individual suffering from this mental illness may occasionally suffer from severe changes in one’s moods, Seasonal Affective Disorder – characterized by falling in a rut only during specific seasons (i.e. Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall) studies however, prove that more people actually fall in to a rut more during the Winter and Fall seasons and lastly, Mood swings, wherein a person’s mood may shift from happy to sad to angry in just a short time. But in spite of how scary or how daunting a task is the road towards a sound mental health is, depression help abounds and is just up to you if you’re willing to take in some of that depression help, may it be from your family, friends, support group and mainly starting from yourself, there really is a lot of depression help to go around.
The old adage, slowly but surely greatly applies in trying to treat depression, as the patient continues taking the prescribed medicines for his/her depression treatment, as well as the corresponding therapy sessions with the cognitive behavior therapist, a patient being treated from depression needs all the support and depression help that he or she can get.
While being treated for depression, the patient as well as his or her family and other loved ones are advised to make realistic goals concerning depression wherein, to not assume that their depression can be easily treated in a snap. Depression help begins with trying to understand the patient’s situation and continue on being patient as well as always extending your help because depression help is never easy nor is the depression treatment itself, which is why both patients and loved ones need to help each other out through every step of the way.
Try to never set goals that are high above your reach, give yourself some depression help by not being too hard on yourself, believe that you are good and strong enough to achieve your goals one step at a time.
Where do you start when you have a large goal to achieve.
There is a tool that is available to you and that is called an Action Plan. An Action Plan is different from a “To Do List” because it deals specifically with reaching one single goal. To do lists are used for multiple tasks that are unrelated to each other.
An action plan will help you to concentrate on each stage of your ultimate goal and helps chart your progress towards it. Drawing up an Action Plan simply means to list the tasks that need to be completed to achieve your main goal. It sounds simple and it is, while also being extremely useful in charting your progress. An Action Plan will help keep you on track if you tend to get distracted or discouraged about reaching your goal. It’s such a joy to be able to mark each task off your list and see how each step is bringing you closer to your goal.
Let’s look at an action plan that I developed to have a book published.
Develop your plot ideas and your characters. You have to start somewhere and you should know your characters and have a basic idea of what type of book you want to write. Determine if it will be fiction or non-fiction, for adults, children, or a book of poetry. That should be the first item on your Plan of Action.
Write your book. Take it chapter by chapter and keep plugging away on your manuscript until it is done. You may only write a paragraph at a time, but you are still working toward your main goal of publication.
Revisions and editing is the next step after your book is completed. It’s a necessary step to the process even if it isn’t your favorite part of writing. You want to send the very best to an interested publishing company, agent, or editor.
Research where your manuscript should be sent. You really don’t want to send your romance novel to a science fiction publishing house. It’s important to know your market. Research; find publishing companies that are happy to take a new author if that’s what you are. Find out what their specialty is before you send that manuscript.
You have researched, now it’s time to send a query letter. This letter will give a short synopsis of your story and hope it will grab the interest of an editor.
Your book has been accepted and is on its way to publication. Now is the time to do pre-publicity. Talk about your book, be your own promoter. Unless you are a big name author already, chances are, you will be the main PR person for your book. Take a pro-active interest in promoting your book to family, friends, and businesses in your area. In this area, don’t be shy, if you don’t let them know about your book, no one else may.
Success! Your book is published and now nationally and internationally available. You’ve reached your goal taking small steps and working your Action Plan. Celebrate and then make a new goal and start working on that.
Wasn’t it satisfying to mark items off your list as you accomplished them? If you’re original Action Plan looks too short or has too many large steps, break them down again. Small steps will always help you to attain your goal.
This can also work when you begin thinking about starting your own business. In fact, an Action Plan is recommended before you begin looking for financing for your new venture. An Action Plan will be slightly different from the one I outlined above, but will use the same basic principals.
Take each step one at a time and give yourself a pat on the back when you have marked off each task on your list. An Action Plan will help you stay organized, chart your progress, and helps keep your goal in sight. Good luck reaching your goals!
As part of the overall business planning process, establishing goals is of course fundamental in providing a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Setting one or more goals seems to be a straightforward process. You establish a specific goal, one that’s measurable and has a defined timeframe for completion. You implement your plan, measure your progress towards reaching your goal and then evaluate the outcome objectively to refine your process.
On the surface of things, it reads well and sounds easy enough to do. Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way for numerous reasons; primarily because we often fail to establish realistic goals. Additionally, we often casually set goals with only a hazy view towards how they’ll actually be accomplished. And while we’re typically motivated at the beginning of the process, it’s not at all unusual to lose our motivation somewhere along the way.
When preparing your own goals, it’s important to first understand that every goal you set must be realistic and readily achievable, given an appropriate amount of time and resources. For example, setting a goal to earn $25,000 per month within three months, when your present earnings are less than $1,000, is probably unrealistic. On the other hand, setting an ongoing goal to increase your earnings by 5% or 10% per month is not only realistic, but more likely to be achievable.
Once you’ve defined a goal you believe you can accomplish, the next step is to break it down into smaller, manageable tasks and scheduling them in sequence (assuming one task depends on the completion of another). Before defining the target date the overall goal must be completed, be certain that each task is given a reasonable amount of time for completion and allow the sum of the tasks to define the completion date, rather than arbitrarily selecting one.
Depending on how far into the future your goals are planned for, it’s very helpful to schedule regular progress reviews, even if you’re the only one involved. For example, scheduling time every Friday afternoon to review your progress and make any necessary adjustments will keep your goals current. Don’t be surprised if something unexpected interferes with your scheduling from time-to-time. That’s normal and you will simply need to identify some way to compensate for it.
Another artificial barrier to actually meeting your goals is the process itself. Be careful to avoid implementing a goal management process that consumes more time than the goal itself. On a smaller scale, a simple spreadsheet will often suffice to meet all of your management needs. For larger scale management, a variety of goal management software exists, usually scalable for most organizations.
Aside from actually working the process towards eventually realizing your goal, the final step is to take some time to evaluate the overall process and your performance at the end. This should be done objectively and embraced as a learning opportunity, one that will help you to improve your performance the next time.
With proper planning, setting realistic goals can only benefit you and your business in the long run, especially if you streamline the goal management process for yourself. If you think of it as an evolving process focused on continual performance improvement, over time you will see a measurable improvement in everything you do!
It seems we are all are searching for methods of self improvement. There is no shortage of advice, opinions, articles, reports, books, and audios
giving us multiple opinions and solutions to improving our lives or just being a better person. All the information can be overwhelming in trying to
determine what path you should follow to achieve your goals.
The best approach is to simplify your goals and approach them one step at a time.
The following video tells us alot about how simplifying things can help us move mountains.
As we quickly approach a new year we are all reflecting on the past and our goals for the future.
Many thoughts and questions come to mind.
How can you become more efficient?
How can you save time on one task to gain more time, and money?
How can you make more money?
What do I need to do to get that nice new car?
What do you need to do to look better or lose more weight?
How can you improve your relationships and make your spouse love you more?
How can you be more like the Joneses. They seem to have it all together.
We all are guilty of judging our own success by comparing ourselves to others.
Friends, there is not a single person out there better than you, as a human being, if you are not hurting people, or involved in criminal activity and doing the best that you can at what you do.
The most important goals we can set for ourselves are those that help us achieve satisfaction with life.
Take the time, as you write down your resolutions for the new year, to see if the following thoughts fit into your gameplan for the coming year.
1. Visualize How You want Your Life To Be- take the time every day to relax and think about what you want. Visualize how you see yourself. What you are doing, what you are wearing, who you hang out with. Change how you dress if that makes you feel better about yourself. See yourself as someone with endless energy and ready to conquer the world or at least your next task. Feel good about yourself.
2. Learn Something New Everyday- keep reading, researching, and brainstorming. Just reading something of interest may turn on a light that gives you an idea or answer to an issue you have been pondering.
3. Interact With Positive People- if your friends are negative they will bring you down. There are people who find something wrong with any experience, or idea that comes their way. These people may be members of your own family. Make it a goal to network and make friends with positive people that have similar interest to your own. Those are the people that will keep you motivated when things do not seem to be going as planned.
4. Enjoy The Simple Things- take the time to enjoy the things you like to do. What kind of life is it to only focus on what you think others expect from you. Take the time to smell the roses.
5. Laugh Alot- this is the cheapest, safest form of therapy anyone can have. Laughing helps you forget your troubles, decreases stress, and stimulates the release of endorphins, which are the bodies natural pain killers.
6. Make Fitness A Part Of Your Life- if you do not focus and take care of yourself what good will you be to others? Exercising decreases stress, helps clear mental cloudiness, relaxes you, improves your morale, and helps you be more productive. You will enjoy life, your work, be more pleasant to be around and increase your chances of living a longer and healthier life.
7. Stay Healthy- you should make educating yourself on what is considered optimal health a life long goal. Take the time to learn what your ideal weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol should be. Know and understand what illness you may be at risk for based upon your life style, family history, and habits. You may think that is your doctors problem, but in reality you are ultimately responsible for your own health. The most important thing you can do for yourself and loved ones is doing your part to understand your health so that you can live a longer and more productive life. If there are health problems that need addressed, approach them one at a time, unless it is something potentially life threatening.
8. Be Happy- if you are unhappy you must look inside to determine what keeps you in that state of mind. There is no question that financial, health, relationship, and others problems can weigh so heavily on you that it is hard to see the joy in any aspect of your life. Life and the issues that go with it can be overwhelming. If you are having trouble seeing light at the end of the tunnel talk to someone about your problems. Sometimes just hearing someone elses perspective on something will improve your outlook and give you direction. Do not be embarassed to seek professional counseling. Some of the brightest and most successful people have a therapist to help them keep things in check. Try to look inside yourself and find what you need to bring you happiness. Try to find inside yourself what would make you happy if you were never being able to change your current relationships, financial situation, or social status. I am sure there are others that would agree that having more than enough money, the biggest house, the nicest car, etc. does not ultimately bring more happiness. These things all come with there own set of headaches. Financial security does provide you with more oppurtunities, but not true happiness. This is not intended to give you an excuse to maintain status quo, but to encourage you to look deeper for what you need in life to make you feel content and happy.
9. Manage Your Stress- we are all unique in how we respond to life stressors. You must find ways to help relieve stress even if you only allow yourself 5 minutes per day. Unmanaged stress will impact all aspects of your life in a negative way. Offer to help someone out, so that they can take a stress relieving break. They will more than likely be happy to return the favor.
10. Take A Worry Break- constantly worrying about all of lifes issues can paralyze you. It can lead to procrastination in all aspects of your life. If you are constantly worrying about things take the time to write them all down. Then look at each one and determine if there is something or someone that could help remove that worrry. Letting someone else help you deal with issues that are overwhelming will allow you to focus on more important things in your life in a more productive way. It could be something as simple as letting someone else deal with phone calls from bill collectors that you find yourself avoiding. It may be hard to do and require some practice, but give yourself 5 or 10 minutes per day, to just worry about the things that are on your mind.Then get back to focusssing on more important task that will help bring back the joy in your life.
11. Teach Something- we all have unique experiences, knowlege, and wisdom that will benefit another. Keep learning then pass it on. The best way to keep feeling young is to feel useful. Make it your goal, for the new year, to pass along something useful to someone that expresses an interest in your interest.
No matter what your game, if you are doing the best that you can, then that should be good enough.
If you want to find contentment and happiness you must not allow your satisfaction in life to revolve around how someone else is living or doing things.
If you are making a living, taking care of your family, and being a good parent then no one can or has the right to say they are better than you.
If you are not happy with your performance then look at how others are doing something similar to what you are currently focussing your time on. Study their methods and then tweek your system until you feel things are good enough. Watching and learning how others perform certain task or conduct their lives does not make them a better person, they may be just performing a similar thing differently or more efficiently.
This could be applied to anyone. It doesn’t matter if your game is being a parent, teaching second grade, a physician, nurse, pumping gas, or running the most powerful country in the world. There will always be someone that does it a little better or different than you do. That makes them an oppurtunity for you to learn from and fine tune your skills.
I speculate that future wealth will not be reflected by our checking account balance, but in the value we provide to others through networking and just being a good person.
No matter how small or unbelievable your goals may be for 2009, make it your mission to share something of value with another. Those things that you consider trivial may be just what is needed to change your world and the world of those around you.
The possibilities are endless……….
The type of day that makes you forget what you found passionate about your work, an unrewarding day and full of frustration.
The type of day that makes it important to frequently take a self evaluation of what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you had to do to get there, and what it cost you or you have lost along the way.
Success works in peculiar ways.
Freidson wrote an article, “Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge”, almost 40 years ago.
The article discusses 5 physician traits and what makes us do what we do.
1. Do physicians believe in what they are doing?2..Do physicians prefer action, even with little chance of success, over no action at all?3. Do physicians see apparent cause/effect relationships even in their absence?4. Do physicians depend more on personal judgments than on empirical evidence?5. Do physicians chalk it up to chance, when things go wrong? These questions can be easily applied to all of us. It does not matter if you are a nurse, banker, school teacher or parent. Deep inside we all have unique reasons for why we do what we do.
All of us should take time, periodically, to step back and do a self analysis. Reflect on why we do what we do. It is easy to get stuck in our daily routines and forget what brought us to this point in our careers, relationships, and life.
Do we still have the same passion for what we do? Are we able to change with the system? Is it still worth the less than optimal days that go with all aspects of life? Do we still awaken with the same attraction that was there in the beginning? Has it lost its glamour? Do you love it as much as you once did?
If you find the passion is still there, don’t let the “bad stuff” get in the way of the life that you want to live. Look at the “bad stuff” as tools to help you tweak the system for a better tomorrow.
We are quickly coming upon the end of 2008. A time when we all look back on our achievements over the past year and reflect on our lives up to this point. A time of year that passes so quickly that it seems we have stepped into the next year with a blink of an eye. This is the time of year to begin thinking about our goals for the next year. A time to make those New Year resolutions.
It would be rare to find someone that doesn’t have great aspirations for the new year. We all have dreams of making more money, losing more weight, being more healthy, taking long vacations, the new car, a better job, and the list goes on.
A few weeks after the New Year celebration and many of us may find we have forgotten all about what we hoped to achieve. The desire to achieve something better tends to take a back seat as we strive to keep up with the day to day demands of our fast paced lives.
The problem with achieving most of our resolutions is that they are too broad in definition, lack an end point, are boring or just simply too unrealistic to achieve.
We need to understand the benefits and repercussions of each and every one of our resolutions. Understand why we want what we desire, before we can create a road map that will take us there. A road map that gives us a direction to super achievement one step at a time.
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Start creating your road map for a better year.
Make a list of all that you desire. Then take the 12 most important things from the list and make it your mission to achieve one per month.
Make a list of all the things you have accomplished in your life. Review it daily and when you are feeling down.
Discover your true passion.
Love someone.
Allow someone to love you.
Read a new book every month.
Start that hobby and share it with the world.
Learn to network, one person at a time.
Walk more.
Exercise at least 3 times per week even if you have to do it sitting in a chair.
Take a multivitamin.
Quit smoking one cigarette at a time. It will save your life.
Learn a new thing, everyday, and share it with the world.
Start your own blog and make it your online playground.
Get a checkup from your doctor.
Understand the things necessary to maintain proper health.
Improve your diet one meal at a time.
Teach something you are passionate about to another.
Say hello, with a smile, to everyone you meet.
Make contact with old friends.
Reward yourself when you accomplish something that is great to you.
Say something positive everyday.
Face your fears.
Make “me” time a part of your daily routine.
Believe in yourself and others will believe in you.
Write yourself a letter about what you have dreamed of becoming and accomplishing.
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Try adding some of the above to your list of resolutions and get back to adding joy and meaning to your life, one step at a time.
If you want to conquer the world or just spend more time with your kids you must have a game plan.
If you want to have your best year ever, in 2009, you must start now.
Get up and start living today for your best next year. Make 2009 your best year ever.
If you can dream it, you can achieve it.
We all gain knowledge and wisdom as we experience a new birthday each year.
Each new year subjects us to additional challenges of growing older. We all are faced with physical declines in appearance, memory trouble, less energy, cosmetic changes, weight gain or loss, loss of hair, and changes in hair color just to name a few.
Despite these changes it is important to maintain some perspective and learn to cope with these changes that are inevitable.
So how do you know if you are doing well?
The following are some skills that indicate you are coping and getting along well.
1. You continue to focus your thoughts on learning and personal improvement.
2. You are driven to pursue your goals and passions.
3. You understand that changes occur in life and you have to be willing and able to adapt.
4. You realize that it is important to have fun and live life to the fullest.
5. You know the importance of maintaining proper health with exercise and proper eating.
6. You enjoy being around younger people and feel younger than your age.
7. You know the importance of allowing others to help you decrease stress and get through tough times.
8. You believe that each year you become a better person through wisdom and education.
9. You have a good sense of humor.
10. You have learned to pace yourself and stop to enjoy your accomplishments.
Try using the aforementioned to help you see where you are in your life. It is easy to allow your beliefs, attitude, and coping skills affect
your ability to enjoy life. Try to maintain an energetic outlook on life to help delay the aging process and maintain optimal health.
If you take time to implement these skills into your daily life you may find that you are more emotionally and physically fit.
