Thursday, February 6, 2014
Bill Nye vs Ken Ham --What the evolution debate is REALLY about!
Everyone who grew up in the 90s loves Bill Nye, and those who are interested in Christianity and Creationism will love this debate. I watched it and tried to be as objective as possible to determine what the debate was really about.
To save you 2:45 hrs of your life, let me just explain this debate and if you want to watch it after with my enlightenment, please do so.
Ken Ham's Argument:
We should only teach the science that we know is Truth in schools.
Definitions:
Observational Science - Science that derives truth from what we can observe in the present and recreate through experiments.
Historical Science - Science that derives assumptions of the past based on the present **Which Ham emphasizes the word Assumption, because it isn't 100% provable.
Creationism - (His definition is broad, so I'm going to take the liberty of explaining what I believe is pertinent to this debate) The theory that there were around 2,000 kinds and from those kinds all other animals have evolved. I.e. Finches evolved from the bird kind, parrots evolved from the bird kind, etc.
Kind - A species of animal, such as a dog, cat, mouse, lion, bird, man, etc.
Truth - (again, his definition is broad) Anything observable and/or repeatable--OR anything God has spoken in the Bible. [he tacked that one on]
Additional claims:
Ham claims evolutionists are "hijacking" the definitions of "evolution" to include observational science (finches change generationally) AND historical science (finches spawned from a single celled organism a long time ago).
Bill Nye's Argument:
We should allow teachers to teach students the scientific process, regardless of whether what they say is true or false, the emphasis is on the process and it is an exciting thing.
Bill Nye doesn't necessarily claim evolutionists are 100% right or wrong, but he claims students should be taught about everything and all the facts and possible facts should be presented to them as well as the tools to determine if it is true or false.
Definitions:
Nye doesn't directly present definitions, his argument is straightforward in this regard however, to present his argument he presented a lot of other (in my opinion) "off topic" points that debunk some of what Ham was claiming. I have however included a few useful definitions
Evolving - Taking one species and making it more complex for some purpose.
Science - The process of discovery.
Additional claims:
Science is about the process of discovery, not the truth itself.
Nye argues that the job of a scientist is to prove theories right or wrong and that a scientist can stand on either side of the debate so long as they bring Evidence forward about it. If they can't bring evidence forward then they aren't doing science, they are making claims without founding. So...he presented a few claims and provided evidence for them, (here is one of many:) such as the layers of different rocks found in the grand canyon and the fossils found in those areas how they become more and more complex. He even challenged scientists to find just 1 species from a lower layer that is found in an upper layer because if they could do that it would be ground breaking and disprove what we understand about evolutionary science--as of yet no one has.
Nye Argues that we need to encourage the younger generation to ask questions and seek answers via science in order to solve the problems of the future and keep America economically strong because otherwise other countries will do so and surpass america.
--Along with that, he argues that if we limit what students can be taught down to just the truth, we will stifle curiosity and limit the act of science (the process of discovery). [the assumption is, that if students are taught that one way is the truth and only the truth, then they will not bother researching other things outside that scope--and also, if that truth is false, no one will question it]
Some things to realize:
Private schools are increasing in enrollment, and private schools aren't limited to just creationism or just evolution. The debate is limited to public education.
This may have just been a publicity stunt on Ham's part to promote his museum and books.
Nye is a public education figure and mechanical engineer (scientist).
Ham has a degree related to education curriculum design (museum curator).
Nye is American, Ham is Australian.
Nye is Agnostic, Ham is Christian.
My opinion:
Ham was the better debater of the two--Nye wasn't as organized and not as focused on his actual argument but instead focused on the points of his argument rather than the argument as a whole. Ham came across well practiced.
I have to come out now and say that I side with Bill Nye. Nye's argument is non-judgmental of the truth. Under Nye's argument you can believe whatever you want as long as you back it up with proof whereas Ham's argument supposes that there are certain things that we shouldn't believe or argue about. If Nye is correct in his assumption, we already stifle our creativity and critical thinking by refusing to investigate the truth for ourselves.
I think public education should teach all viewpoints, all theories, and the pluses and minuses of those theories--even silly things that people once believed but no longer do (like the greek humors) because understanding the flaws in that way of thinking gives you a better idea of how to determine truth in the present times.
The important thing that public education should teach is how to come to the truth on your own. We live in the information age--we can look up any information we want, but if we don't know how to interpret that information for ourselvse and figure out how it applies to us, or we don't know how to determine if it is correct or incorrect, then what good does it do for us to know the said "truth?" Schools focus too much on memory regurgitation and not enough on independent thinking. Memory regurgitation was useful when our economy was more industrial and there were strict procedures for doing everything in our economy, but now that things have changed we need to focus on how to think for ourselves, how to come up with good ideas and solve problems, and to determine truth from untruth and how to objectively analyze things and to change our opinions if we are proven wrong.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
All-Natural Anti-Depressant: Part 9
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
PART 7 - Be Constructive
PART 8 - Balance (+)(-)
CONCLUSION
Happiness is within each an every one of us; you have the power to heal yourself from emotional maladies all it takes is a little bit of insight and the commitment to beat depression.
The key to finding lasting happiness is to stop doing things that are dragging you down and to start doing things that will build you up. The problem that most people have is that they don't realize all of the little things that are dragging them down. With depression, you MUST come to the realization that NO ONE can help you except yourself. Friends, family, and other well-wishers all have pure motives and desire to help you, but without full knowledge of your life, your goals, your ambitions, your personality, etc. they cannot make good decisions for you and cannot offer purely beneficial advice. The only person who knows you well enough to help you is you, and out of all of the people who hold a stake in your life and what you do with it, YOU are most dependent on your own success--more than any other person in the world.
Just to recap and reexplain, a few things that might be dragging you down are: people close to you such as friends and family, your desires and wants, your perceptions of life, and your values.
Humanity is both individual and collective--our survival requires us to work with other people and give up part of our independence to fit in with groups. The internal problem occurs when our groups (family, friends, society, etc) push on our boundaries and we lose too much of our independence to fend for ourselves.
Your wants and desires can drag you down as well. If you want things that you shouldn't have, getting them won't make you any happier. If you want things you can't have, the attempt to obtain them can make you unhappy as well. Lastly, if you try to obtain your wants in the wrong ways, no matter how hard you try to get them if you're doing it the wrong way it'll never happen.
I have observed that with the latter, it isn't that we do the wrong things to reach our wants, it's that we have too many conditional wants and the conditions compete with one another. For example, wanting to find a job that pays well and gives plenty of free time is a lot harder than finding a good paying job or a job that offers plenty of free time. The conditions compete with one another and can trick you into thinking that there is no hope of finding a job with free time or a job that pays well--sometimes the solution is to pick one or the other but not both.
Perceptions of life are huge deterrents to happiness. If you think life is supposed to work a certain way that it isn't, or that happiness is something that it isn't, then you're bound to have a lot of internal turmoil. For example, if you think that getting a job or promotion is about what you know, you'll incredibly frustrated to learn about times that you got passed up for a promotion because someone else knew somebody. You will think that they didn't deserve it or that you aren't getting what you deserve and it can contribute to your long-term depression.
Once you are able to look beyond the things that you are doing to drag yourself down, you can start to replace them with good things. Negative emotions aren't bad, they are your subconscious recalling a pattern of experiences in order to help you make good decisions in the future. If you try to stifle your emotions rather than let yourself experience them you risk making them return for the wrong reasons. Instead of feeling sad when something sad happens, you'll start to feel sad when things are sad AND whenever you feel the need to suppress your emotions, because that is how you are training yourself--whenever you need to be scared, you'll feel sad, whenever you need to be angry you'll feel sadness. Instead of suppressing your emotions, try acknowledging them, contemplate what sort of message your subconscious is trying to tell you, and then make intuitive decisions based on those feelings. Much of our emotions are simple messages from our subconscious saying: "don't do it this way again, look for a different solution to this problem."
Aside from emotions, a lot of people suffer from boredom and confusion. We've made life too easy for ourselves in some regards by inventing means of being more efficient, and in other regards we've made life more complex. It's easy to become confused, even flustered, by having to make so many decisions in a day. A good habit to form is to default your decisions to what is most constructive (as opposed to destructive). If you feel bored, think of something to improve your life or others' lives. If you feel confused, do something to improve your life or others' lives. Being focused on decision making is synonymous with being stagnant--so is being bored! A few common, constructive activities are: exercising, learning, writing, home improvement, gardening, and cleaning.
Balance balance balance. Balance being an individual vs being a part of social groups. Balance time spend on negative emotions just as much as you do positive ones. Balance being constructive and pushing yourself vs relaxing and taking time to recover. Life is a balancing act. You don't have to be happy all the time, and a brief period of depression never hurt anyone but instead helps you to enjoy the good times more.
You have it within you to heal yourself.
My grandmother could do it. I did it. You can do it too.
Happiness is within your grasp, you just have to reach out and snatch it.
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
PART 7 - Be Constructive
PART 8 - Balance (+)(-)
CONCLUSION
Happiness is within each an every one of us; you have the power to heal yourself from emotional maladies all it takes is a little bit of insight and the commitment to beat depression.
The key to finding lasting happiness is to stop doing things that are dragging you down and to start doing things that will build you up. The problem that most people have is that they don't realize all of the little things that are dragging them down. With depression, you MUST come to the realization that NO ONE can help you except yourself. Friends, family, and other well-wishers all have pure motives and desire to help you, but without full knowledge of your life, your goals, your ambitions, your personality, etc. they cannot make good decisions for you and cannot offer purely beneficial advice. The only person who knows you well enough to help you is you, and out of all of the people who hold a stake in your life and what you do with it, YOU are most dependent on your own success--more than any other person in the world.
Just to recap and reexplain, a few things that might be dragging you down are: people close to you such as friends and family, your desires and wants, your perceptions of life, and your values.
Humanity is both individual and collective--our survival requires us to work with other people and give up part of our independence to fit in with groups. The internal problem occurs when our groups (family, friends, society, etc) push on our boundaries and we lose too much of our independence to fend for ourselves.
Your wants and desires can drag you down as well. If you want things that you shouldn't have, getting them won't make you any happier. If you want things you can't have, the attempt to obtain them can make you unhappy as well. Lastly, if you try to obtain your wants in the wrong ways, no matter how hard you try to get them if you're doing it the wrong way it'll never happen.
I have observed that with the latter, it isn't that we do the wrong things to reach our wants, it's that we have too many conditional wants and the conditions compete with one another. For example, wanting to find a job that pays well and gives plenty of free time is a lot harder than finding a good paying job or a job that offers plenty of free time. The conditions compete with one another and can trick you into thinking that there is no hope of finding a job with free time or a job that pays well--sometimes the solution is to pick one or the other but not both.
Perceptions of life are huge deterrents to happiness. If you think life is supposed to work a certain way that it isn't, or that happiness is something that it isn't, then you're bound to have a lot of internal turmoil. For example, if you think that getting a job or promotion is about what you know, you'll incredibly frustrated to learn about times that you got passed up for a promotion because someone else knew somebody. You will think that they didn't deserve it or that you aren't getting what you deserve and it can contribute to your long-term depression.
Once you are able to look beyond the things that you are doing to drag yourself down, you can start to replace them with good things. Negative emotions aren't bad, they are your subconscious recalling a pattern of experiences in order to help you make good decisions in the future. If you try to stifle your emotions rather than let yourself experience them you risk making them return for the wrong reasons. Instead of feeling sad when something sad happens, you'll start to feel sad when things are sad AND whenever you feel the need to suppress your emotions, because that is how you are training yourself--whenever you need to be scared, you'll feel sad, whenever you need to be angry you'll feel sadness. Instead of suppressing your emotions, try acknowledging them, contemplate what sort of message your subconscious is trying to tell you, and then make intuitive decisions based on those feelings. Much of our emotions are simple messages from our subconscious saying: "don't do it this way again, look for a different solution to this problem."
Aside from emotions, a lot of people suffer from boredom and confusion. We've made life too easy for ourselves in some regards by inventing means of being more efficient, and in other regards we've made life more complex. It's easy to become confused, even flustered, by having to make so many decisions in a day. A good habit to form is to default your decisions to what is most constructive (as opposed to destructive). If you feel bored, think of something to improve your life or others' lives. If you feel confused, do something to improve your life or others' lives. Being focused on decision making is synonymous with being stagnant--so is being bored! A few common, constructive activities are: exercising, learning, writing, home improvement, gardening, and cleaning.
Balance balance balance. Balance being an individual vs being a part of social groups. Balance time spend on negative emotions just as much as you do positive ones. Balance being constructive and pushing yourself vs relaxing and taking time to recover. Life is a balancing act. You don't have to be happy all the time, and a brief period of depression never hurt anyone but instead helps you to enjoy the good times more.
You have it within you to heal yourself.
My grandmother could do it. I did it. You can do it too.
Happiness is within your grasp, you just have to reach out and snatch it.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
All-Natural Anti-Depressant: Part 8
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
PART 7 - Be Constructive
BALANCE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
Bad things are good now and again, and good things are bad if you have too much of them. Forcing yourself to be positive 100% of the time because you have an image in your head of a happy-go-lucky, ultra-positive individual --who you want to be--can really stress you out and make you less happy with yourself.
I specifically put this ingredient last on the list because if you don't understand the other 7 you might not understand what I try to say here, or worse you could end up in a more difficult situation to pull out of. Go back and reread the other ingredients because they're crucial.
Life isn't black and white, it isn't all good and all bad, it isn't all positive and all negative, but for whatever reason these are the things we focus on most and we try to make sense of everything in polar terms. Let's face it, life is incredibly complex and it changes so rapidly that to attempt to understand and make a firm pattern out of it could prove futile--you can't accurately describe something as black or white, good or bad. Many of the things that, upon initial inspection, appear to be good for us come to harm us later and most of the bad things that happen to us in life end up being good for us because of how we change because of them. It's easy to get caught up first in the present--and to think that everything is so horrible because we are facing hard times right now--and second in the black and white, thinking that everything is so horrible because of our perspective. I tried to point this out in Part 4 and Part 5 that if you want to live happily in this life, you need to get comfortable with the idea that you don't know everything and your circumstances right now aren't how they will always be.
Instead of focusing so much effort on trying to figure out if something is good for you or bad for you, focus on balancing your life. Balance is a synonym for control--when things start to tip in a direction that you don't want them to, you compensate by making changes--you control the acts that create the stability.
Everyone goes through rough times and at one point or another you will have something horribly bad happen to you. No one escapes life without at least one incredibly bad thing happening to them, whether its being molested as a child, taken advantage of when you were defenseless, having to face some abnormality or disease, being cheated, beat up, abandoned, retaliated against, betrayed--the list goes on and on. The only people who don't have these things happen to them die before they are old enough to face them and I would argue that they got the worst fate of all because they never got to experience life. With all of these horrible things that happen to us it's a wonder that we are able to not only survive them but thrive in spite of them!
Happiness isn't as simple as only good things happening to us, happiness is being comfortable with the bad and good that happens to us. If you go through life thinking you'll get your fair share of the good you deserve, you'll be incredibly disappointed; and if you think you don't deserve all of the bad that you're getting, you might be wrong as well.
The 8th ingredient to my All-natural Anti-Depressant is to accept the positive and the negative. Don't be greedy, it will eat you alive! You will get exactly what you deserve in life based on what you fight to obtain or what you fight to defend; you will not get what you think you deserve, ever. Life is too complicated for you to know what you deserve and it is a waste of time and energy to look back and reflect on it until you have made it out of your depressed state. Instead of focusing on how and why you are in the situation you are in right now, focus on how you're going to get out.
Acceptance means you take what life gives you and you roll with it. To accept the positive things that happen to you is to realize that, "this may be the only positive thing that happens for a while, but that's okay, I'll enjoy it while it lasts." It means that you accept the negative things that happen to you because, in that moment, you have no control over the negative things. We live in a delayed-present. The positive and negative things that are happening to us right now were triggered by things in our past. Once the trigger is pulled you can't go back and untrigger it, at the present time you only have two options: accept them for what they are, or fight them by arguing, denying, beating yourself up over them, and ultimately prolonging your unhappiness.
When you accept the positive and the negative, you establish balance in your life. You let life happen the way it is supposed to happen and you free yourself to enjoy life and not be depressed. Happiness is in you, you just need to recognize it and stop suppressing it. The only thing that can prevent you from being happy is your own mind--your actions don't lead you to unhappiness, actions lead to different situations--true happiness is founded on the only thing you have complete control over 100% of the time: your conscious.
You can heal yourself. I know you can do it!
NEXT PART 9
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
PART 7 - Be Constructive
BALANCE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
Bad things are good now and again, and good things are bad if you have too much of them. Forcing yourself to be positive 100% of the time because you have an image in your head of a happy-go-lucky, ultra-positive individual --who you want to be--can really stress you out and make you less happy with yourself.
I specifically put this ingredient last on the list because if you don't understand the other 7 you might not understand what I try to say here, or worse you could end up in a more difficult situation to pull out of. Go back and reread the other ingredients because they're crucial.
Life isn't black and white, it isn't all good and all bad, it isn't all positive and all negative, but for whatever reason these are the things we focus on most and we try to make sense of everything in polar terms. Let's face it, life is incredibly complex and it changes so rapidly that to attempt to understand and make a firm pattern out of it could prove futile--you can't accurately describe something as black or white, good or bad. Many of the things that, upon initial inspection, appear to be good for us come to harm us later and most of the bad things that happen to us in life end up being good for us because of how we change because of them. It's easy to get caught up first in the present--and to think that everything is so horrible because we are facing hard times right now--and second in the black and white, thinking that everything is so horrible because of our perspective. I tried to point this out in Part 4 and Part 5 that if you want to live happily in this life, you need to get comfortable with the idea that you don't know everything and your circumstances right now aren't how they will always be.
Instead of focusing so much effort on trying to figure out if something is good for you or bad for you, focus on balancing your life. Balance is a synonym for control--when things start to tip in a direction that you don't want them to, you compensate by making changes--you control the acts that create the stability.
Everyone goes through rough times and at one point or another you will have something horribly bad happen to you. No one escapes life without at least one incredibly bad thing happening to them, whether its being molested as a child, taken advantage of when you were defenseless, having to face some abnormality or disease, being cheated, beat up, abandoned, retaliated against, betrayed--the list goes on and on. The only people who don't have these things happen to them die before they are old enough to face them and I would argue that they got the worst fate of all because they never got to experience life. With all of these horrible things that happen to us it's a wonder that we are able to not only survive them but thrive in spite of them!
Happiness isn't as simple as only good things happening to us, happiness is being comfortable with the bad and good that happens to us. If you go through life thinking you'll get your fair share of the good you deserve, you'll be incredibly disappointed; and if you think you don't deserve all of the bad that you're getting, you might be wrong as well.
The 8th ingredient to my All-natural Anti-Depressant is to accept the positive and the negative. Don't be greedy, it will eat you alive! You will get exactly what you deserve in life based on what you fight to obtain or what you fight to defend; you will not get what you think you deserve, ever. Life is too complicated for you to know what you deserve and it is a waste of time and energy to look back and reflect on it until you have made it out of your depressed state. Instead of focusing on how and why you are in the situation you are in right now, focus on how you're going to get out.
Acceptance means you take what life gives you and you roll with it. To accept the positive things that happen to you is to realize that, "this may be the only positive thing that happens for a while, but that's okay, I'll enjoy it while it lasts." It means that you accept the negative things that happen to you because, in that moment, you have no control over the negative things. We live in a delayed-present. The positive and negative things that are happening to us right now were triggered by things in our past. Once the trigger is pulled you can't go back and untrigger it, at the present time you only have two options: accept them for what they are, or fight them by arguing, denying, beating yourself up over them, and ultimately prolonging your unhappiness.
When you accept the positive and the negative, you establish balance in your life. You let life happen the way it is supposed to happen and you free yourself to enjoy life and not be depressed. Happiness is in you, you just need to recognize it and stop suppressing it. The only thing that can prevent you from being happy is your own mind--your actions don't lead you to unhappiness, actions lead to different situations--true happiness is founded on the only thing you have complete control over 100% of the time: your conscious.
You can heal yourself. I know you can do it!
NEXT PART 9
Saturday, November 23, 2013
All-Natural Anti-Depressant: Part 7
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
BE CONSTRUCTIVE
Hey, you made it to my favorite part! This is my favorite ingredient to add to the mixture: be constructive.
When you're depressed, it's easy to want to just lay in bed and mope. It's easy to be lazy or to just sit around doing nothing because you think you have nothing to do. When all you are doing is sitting around or laying in bed, it leaves your mind wide open to whatever it wants to do--including reflecting on how miserable you are.
I may have only had two major depressions, but I have also had a lot of mild depressions and extended periods of time where I was unhappy. I learned something incredibly simple though: when I was doing things I enjoyed, it took my mind off of how unhappy I was and helped me to focus on other things outside of myself. When I was thinking of things outside of myself, I was momentarily happy, and it was that brief glimmer of happiness that gave me hope that I could one day be completely happy the way that I am today.
This is where I have to get very serious with you and break a few rules of writing by taking a tangent before proceeding and speaking directly to you. In life, there are people all around you who are unhappy for whatever reason. In fact, most people are unhappy and it is rare to find someone who is really happy--someone who isn't blown about by their emotions like a leaf on the wind--those people are rare, and let me tell you, no one is happy all of the time. Life can be pretty rough.
From this unhappiness, people turn to addictions: alcohol, cigarettes, porn, money, sex, power, and food to name a few. It isn't the alcohol it isn't the food, it isn't the sex that is bad--its the fact that they are using these things as means to an end rather than finding ways to understand their unhappiness and what triggers it and to gain more control over it. Sex is good, power is good, and food is good too--provided you aren't using them to numb your unhappiness.
With that in mind, I'll proceed.
My seventh ingredient, being constructive, is to turn your attention to something positive that can benefit yourself or others. Cleaning your house, using a toothbrush to scrub grout or some other intricate work, can turn your mind away from your depression and towards the benefit of other people--including yourself. I like to write poetry every now and again when I start feeling down--that's why my poems are always sad or angry--poetry has been an avenue for getting these emotions out of my system. --I don't recommend that you read my poems, and I've stopped publishing those poems, but you get the idea: the poems benefit me.
Do something constructive: build something, clean something, exercise, or volunteer (or just go out and help people), start projects, start a collection, walk around the block looking for interesting things, go learn something new--do something! Not only does this take your mind off of your depression, it also helps build up your sense of worth and gives you hope that you can be happy because everything you accomplish is another good experience to balance out the bad ones.
You might could say that I'm advocating building addictions--and you'd be absolutely correct to make that observation, but if you're in a situation where you're going to be addicted either way, be addicted to something that improves lives. I can recall a distinct thought I had a long time ago which was, "if I'm going to be miserable either way, I might as well be miserable doing something that will make someone else's life better." All of those things people think are chores (yes, scrubbing grout with a toothbrush), you might as well do them while you're at your lowest, because they aren't going to make you any lower and when you've completed them you'll feel a sense of relief that they're done.
I have heard many times, and experienced it first hand, that when you have other people to look after or other people--or animals--that you care about, you're less likely to be depressed. I think the reason for this is because your responsibility to other people distracts you from your own problems. It it almost as if there is too much time in one day for a single person to take care of themselves and build themselves up, and then with their extra time they tear themselves down and become depressed. When you add another person into the mix, suddenly you have to take care of yourself and assist that other person and you take it from that time that you would have otherwise devoted to being sad and lonely.
NEXT: Part 8
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
PART 6 - Be Individual
BE CONSTRUCTIVE
Hey, you made it to my favorite part! This is my favorite ingredient to add to the mixture: be constructive.
When you're depressed, it's easy to want to just lay in bed and mope. It's easy to be lazy or to just sit around doing nothing because you think you have nothing to do. When all you are doing is sitting around or laying in bed, it leaves your mind wide open to whatever it wants to do--including reflecting on how miserable you are.
I may have only had two major depressions, but I have also had a lot of mild depressions and extended periods of time where I was unhappy. I learned something incredibly simple though: when I was doing things I enjoyed, it took my mind off of how unhappy I was and helped me to focus on other things outside of myself. When I was thinking of things outside of myself, I was momentarily happy, and it was that brief glimmer of happiness that gave me hope that I could one day be completely happy the way that I am today.
This is where I have to get very serious with you and break a few rules of writing by taking a tangent before proceeding and speaking directly to you. In life, there are people all around you who are unhappy for whatever reason. In fact, most people are unhappy and it is rare to find someone who is really happy--someone who isn't blown about by their emotions like a leaf on the wind--those people are rare, and let me tell you, no one is happy all of the time. Life can be pretty rough.
From this unhappiness, people turn to addictions: alcohol, cigarettes, porn, money, sex, power, and food to name a few. It isn't the alcohol it isn't the food, it isn't the sex that is bad--its the fact that they are using these things as means to an end rather than finding ways to understand their unhappiness and what triggers it and to gain more control over it. Sex is good, power is good, and food is good too--provided you aren't using them to numb your unhappiness.
With that in mind, I'll proceed.
My seventh ingredient, being constructive, is to turn your attention to something positive that can benefit yourself or others. Cleaning your house, using a toothbrush to scrub grout or some other intricate work, can turn your mind away from your depression and towards the benefit of other people--including yourself. I like to write poetry every now and again when I start feeling down--that's why my poems are always sad or angry--poetry has been an avenue for getting these emotions out of my system. --I don't recommend that you read my poems, and I've stopped publishing those poems, but you get the idea: the poems benefit me.
Do something constructive: build something, clean something, exercise, or volunteer (or just go out and help people), start projects, start a collection, walk around the block looking for interesting things, go learn something new--do something! Not only does this take your mind off of your depression, it also helps build up your sense of worth and gives you hope that you can be happy because everything you accomplish is another good experience to balance out the bad ones.
You might could say that I'm advocating building addictions--and you'd be absolutely correct to make that observation, but if you're in a situation where you're going to be addicted either way, be addicted to something that improves lives. I can recall a distinct thought I had a long time ago which was, "if I'm going to be miserable either way, I might as well be miserable doing something that will make someone else's life better." All of those things people think are chores (yes, scrubbing grout with a toothbrush), you might as well do them while you're at your lowest, because they aren't going to make you any lower and when you've completed them you'll feel a sense of relief that they're done.
I have heard many times, and experienced it first hand, that when you have other people to look after or other people--or animals--that you care about, you're less likely to be depressed. I think the reason for this is because your responsibility to other people distracts you from your own problems. It it almost as if there is too much time in one day for a single person to take care of themselves and build themselves up, and then with their extra time they tear themselves down and become depressed. When you add another person into the mix, suddenly you have to take care of yourself and assist that other person and you take it from that time that you would have otherwise devoted to being sad and lonely.
NEXT: Part 8
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
All-Natural Anti-Depressant: Part 6
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
BE INDIVIDUAL
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
PART 5 - Broaden your Perspective: Truth
BE INDIVIDUAL
American culture is deep rooted in Independence, yet we often lose focus and trade independence for dependency. The social pressure and cultural desire to be independent often creates an internal conflict that contributes to depression. Furthermore, dependency--whether emotional, physical, or intellectual--can cause further conflicts as we try to juggle the desires of those who we depend on. Conflict with others we depend on can leave us feeling hopeless and can wear on us physically and emotionally. Worse still, conflict with ourselves can be the worst kind of conflict because we think we ought to have full control over ourselves and yet we realize that we do not.
As children, we are very dependent on our parents and caretakers to survive. The institution of the family provides us with our most influential learning experiences, it teaches us how to cope with our emotions, develop relationships and make decisions. The natural progression of a man or woman is to leave the confines of his or her parents and venture into the world on our own to ultimately start our own families and continue the cycle.
Venturing into the real world is a difficult process and many individuals struggle with integrating into it. When faced with difficult situations, we tend to revert back to what we know and what is familiar--this includes our family and friends. We give up our independence and our chance to learn independence in order to keep things the way they are, but we aren't meant to stagnate in life, we are meant to adapt and change and move forward.
Because we prefer to revert back to the familiar when life becomes challenging, I have found that depression and independence tend to be at odds. Instead of dealing with emotions on our own, we revert back to our childhood when we would cry and whine and our parents or other family members would take care of us--this is a familiar pattern that has worked for us in the past and so our instinct is to remain in that dependent state in hopes that it will continue working into the future.
The sixth ingredient to my All-Natural Anti-Depressant is to look at yourself as an individual. Individuals make decisions for themselves, by themselves. Individuals, although they may be apart of social units such as family and community, remain independent of those social units.
I originally planned to put this article in part 3, but I realized as I was writing it that I needed to refer to the previous parts in order to explain the importance of this ingredient.
The first ingredient to my anti-depressant may be to create space, but the space isn't an end, it is a means to an end. It is difficult to gain your own independence if you rely on your family, friends, religion, school, or other community membership to tell you whether you are living life correctly. If you use other people to gauge whether you are making correct decisions or you use them as a comparison to determine what happiness is, you will never learn what makes you happy--all you will know is what makes other people happy. Without experiencing things you cannot develop a refined enough palate to truly understand what is making you happy or unhappy.
The hardest thing for me to overcome, and I recognize that this is true for many other people, was learning how to comfort myself and deal with my own emotions. When I was angry, I always--ALWAYS--attributed them to other people. Sometimes I did this directly by telling myself that X made me angry or Y made me unhappy, and sometimes I would do this by saying I did this to myself because of what X has done. It took me a long time to realize that other people trigger emotions in me, and emotions are my subconscious' attempt to influence my decisions based on patterns of events in my past, however that does not make them good or bad. I used to always think loneliness was a bad feeling (I still do sometimes) but it isn't the feeling that is bad, it is how I react to it. If I embrace loneliness and it leads me to make new friends and break out of my comfort zone, then loneliness has served a good purpose. But if I resort to blaming other people for my sorrows, then I am merely slipping back into that dependent stage that I did as a child.
If you want to learn how to be happy and not slip into depression, you need to learn how to do it independently. Other people can't give you happiness, you have to learn it; and because each of us is unique, what makes one person happy doesn't necessarily make another person happy. The only way you can know what makes you happy is to broaden your perspective of the truth: to experience many things that make you happy and many things that make you sad.
It took a long time for me to realize that other people were telling me what would make me happy and what would make me sad. Because so many people told me about things that would make me sad, I avoided those things only to realize that they made me very happy. Getting a degree in English was one of those things: many people told me that it was a useless degree and would not help me to have a nice career. --What those people didn't realize is that I don't value the same careers that they do, and now that I have obtained my bachelors in English, I know that it has made me more happy than not having a degree. I also think there is still plenty of time for me to have a "nice career," even if it doesn't lead me to be a doctor or engineer. If I would have listened to other people, I would have been limiting myself to a state of less happiness, it wasn't until I ventured out independent of other people that I was able to learn for myself what made me happy.--And guess what? My degree in English was a crucial component along my path to discovering this All-natural Anti-depressant.
As an individual I make decisions on my own rather than follow the decisions of others. Sometimes my decisions coincide with decisions others wish I would make, but most of the time I have to make decisions for myself because no one else knows my situation better than me. To be happy, you need to be an individual as well. You need to become less emotionally dependent on other people and discover ways that you can be physically and mentally independent as well. When you can embrace who you are because you made all of the decisions that lead you to where you are now, you will be less prone to feelings of depression, you will have more control over your happiness, and you will have a new sense of purpose in life.
NEXT: Part 7
As children, we are very dependent on our parents and caretakers to survive. The institution of the family provides us with our most influential learning experiences, it teaches us how to cope with our emotions, develop relationships and make decisions. The natural progression of a man or woman is to leave the confines of his or her parents and venture into the world on our own to ultimately start our own families and continue the cycle.
Venturing into the real world is a difficult process and many individuals struggle with integrating into it. When faced with difficult situations, we tend to revert back to what we know and what is familiar--this includes our family and friends. We give up our independence and our chance to learn independence in order to keep things the way they are, but we aren't meant to stagnate in life, we are meant to adapt and change and move forward.
Because we prefer to revert back to the familiar when life becomes challenging, I have found that depression and independence tend to be at odds. Instead of dealing with emotions on our own, we revert back to our childhood when we would cry and whine and our parents or other family members would take care of us--this is a familiar pattern that has worked for us in the past and so our instinct is to remain in that dependent state in hopes that it will continue working into the future.
The sixth ingredient to my All-Natural Anti-Depressant is to look at yourself as an individual. Individuals make decisions for themselves, by themselves. Individuals, although they may be apart of social units such as family and community, remain independent of those social units.
I originally planned to put this article in part 3, but I realized as I was writing it that I needed to refer to the previous parts in order to explain the importance of this ingredient.
The first ingredient to my anti-depressant may be to create space, but the space isn't an end, it is a means to an end. It is difficult to gain your own independence if you rely on your family, friends, religion, school, or other community membership to tell you whether you are living life correctly. If you use other people to gauge whether you are making correct decisions or you use them as a comparison to determine what happiness is, you will never learn what makes you happy--all you will know is what makes other people happy. Without experiencing things you cannot develop a refined enough palate to truly understand what is making you happy or unhappy.
The hardest thing for me to overcome, and I recognize that this is true for many other people, was learning how to comfort myself and deal with my own emotions. When I was angry, I always--ALWAYS--attributed them to other people. Sometimes I did this directly by telling myself that X made me angry or Y made me unhappy, and sometimes I would do this by saying I did this to myself because of what X has done. It took me a long time to realize that other people trigger emotions in me, and emotions are my subconscious' attempt to influence my decisions based on patterns of events in my past, however that does not make them good or bad. I used to always think loneliness was a bad feeling (I still do sometimes) but it isn't the feeling that is bad, it is how I react to it. If I embrace loneliness and it leads me to make new friends and break out of my comfort zone, then loneliness has served a good purpose. But if I resort to blaming other people for my sorrows, then I am merely slipping back into that dependent stage that I did as a child.
If you want to learn how to be happy and not slip into depression, you need to learn how to do it independently. Other people can't give you happiness, you have to learn it; and because each of us is unique, what makes one person happy doesn't necessarily make another person happy. The only way you can know what makes you happy is to broaden your perspective of the truth: to experience many things that make you happy and many things that make you sad.
It took a long time for me to realize that other people were telling me what would make me happy and what would make me sad. Because so many people told me about things that would make me sad, I avoided those things only to realize that they made me very happy. Getting a degree in English was one of those things: many people told me that it was a useless degree and would not help me to have a nice career. --What those people didn't realize is that I don't value the same careers that they do, and now that I have obtained my bachelors in English, I know that it has made me more happy than not having a degree. I also think there is still plenty of time for me to have a "nice career," even if it doesn't lead me to be a doctor or engineer. If I would have listened to other people, I would have been limiting myself to a state of less happiness, it wasn't until I ventured out independent of other people that I was able to learn for myself what made me happy.--And guess what? My degree in English was a crucial component along my path to discovering this All-natural Anti-depressant.
As an individual I make decisions on my own rather than follow the decisions of others. Sometimes my decisions coincide with decisions others wish I would make, but most of the time I have to make decisions for myself because no one else knows my situation better than me. To be happy, you need to be an individual as well. You need to become less emotionally dependent on other people and discover ways that you can be physically and mentally independent as well. When you can embrace who you are because you made all of the decisions that lead you to where you are now, you will be less prone to feelings of depression, you will have more control over your happiness, and you will have a new sense of purpose in life.
NEXT: Part 7
Saturday, November 16, 2013
All-Natural Anti-Depressant: Part 5
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE: TRUTH
The following section might repeat a few things from the previous section because they are both about broadening your perspective. Self doubt seems to be a common problem with many people who are depressed, including myself. Self doubt extends depression because in order to heal yourself you need to trust in yourself and your capabilities.
Most people will attempt to tell you about some truth that they know, whether it's truth about their area of expertise, truth about life in general, religion, spirituality, etc. The real truth is that everything that people think they know to be universal may not apply to you because of lack of experience.
The only way you can "know" anything is to experience it and to experience it's opposite, the rest of the time you merely "think" things. The English word "to know" gets abused all of the time when a majority of the time the person using it really means "to think." Someone, myself included, may tell you that they know that if you devote a whole day to smiling, you'll feel better and feel happier; but what they really mean is they think that if you devote a whole day to smiling you'll feel better and happier.
The way our human knowledge works, we have to experience the outcome and the inverse outcome in order to claim we know something. We know about gravity because we have seen an object at rest and an object being pulled by gravity. If all we saw, or rather all we recognized, was one of the two, we could make no assumption about the universal force called gravity.
Another example of truth: most people are able to claim, rightly, that they know what it means to be loved, because they had parents and family who loved them, and they have probably felt the uncaring world where there was a lack of love. However, some people grow up sheltered enough that they don't really know what love is because they remain among those who love them for such a long time. When they finally face the uncaring world, they don't know what to make of it and they don't recognize that it is the lack of love. It takes a few experiences for them to recognize the difference between what being loved and not being loved is like.
Taking "truth" further, it is possible to know something then to forget it: for example, people who drive a manual transmission car and then switch to an automatic for the majority of their life have a hard time remembering how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. Some people go for extended periods of time without love and forget what it feels like to be loved. The conclusion I am trying to lead you to is that it's possible to be depressed for such a long period of time that you forget what it means to be happy and you forget WHAT makes you happy.
There is a lot of false information out there--I don't mean that it's necessarily wrong either, just that it might not work for you. Each of us is unique, what works for one person might not work for another. Whenever someone gives you advice, myself included, keep your perspective broad--it may or may not work. Even all of the ingredients in my All-natural Anti-depressant might not work for you--they worked for me, but that doesn't mean they will work for you; you have to find what works for you through experimentation.
The Firth ingredient to my All-Natural Anti-Depressant is broaden your perspective of the truth. No one can "give" you the truth and the only way you'll "know" anything is if you try it. In other words: until you try those things that other people tell you to do or not do, you won't know if they will make you happy or if the opposite will make you happy. You might be surprised what you discover!
NEXT
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
PART 4 - Broaden your Perspective: Situations
BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE: TRUTH
The following section might repeat a few things from the previous section because they are both about broadening your perspective. Self doubt seems to be a common problem with many people who are depressed, including myself. Self doubt extends depression because in order to heal yourself you need to trust in yourself and your capabilities.
Most people will attempt to tell you about some truth that they know, whether it's truth about their area of expertise, truth about life in general, religion, spirituality, etc. The real truth is that everything that people think they know to be universal may not apply to you because of lack of experience.
The only way you can "know" anything is to experience it and to experience it's opposite, the rest of the time you merely "think" things. The English word "to know" gets abused all of the time when a majority of the time the person using it really means "to think." Someone, myself included, may tell you that they know that if you devote a whole day to smiling, you'll feel better and feel happier; but what they really mean is they think that if you devote a whole day to smiling you'll feel better and happier.
The way our human knowledge works, we have to experience the outcome and the inverse outcome in order to claim we know something. We know about gravity because we have seen an object at rest and an object being pulled by gravity. If all we saw, or rather all we recognized, was one of the two, we could make no assumption about the universal force called gravity.
Another example of truth: most people are able to claim, rightly, that they know what it means to be loved, because they had parents and family who loved them, and they have probably felt the uncaring world where there was a lack of love. However, some people grow up sheltered enough that they don't really know what love is because they remain among those who love them for such a long time. When they finally face the uncaring world, they don't know what to make of it and they don't recognize that it is the lack of love. It takes a few experiences for them to recognize the difference between what being loved and not being loved is like.
Taking "truth" further, it is possible to know something then to forget it: for example, people who drive a manual transmission car and then switch to an automatic for the majority of their life have a hard time remembering how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. Some people go for extended periods of time without love and forget what it feels like to be loved. The conclusion I am trying to lead you to is that it's possible to be depressed for such a long period of time that you forget what it means to be happy and you forget WHAT makes you happy.
There is a lot of false information out there--I don't mean that it's necessarily wrong either, just that it might not work for you. Each of us is unique, what works for one person might not work for another. Whenever someone gives you advice, myself included, keep your perspective broad--it may or may not work. Even all of the ingredients in my All-natural Anti-depressant might not work for you--they worked for me, but that doesn't mean they will work for you; you have to find what works for you through experimentation.
The Firth ingredient to my All-Natural Anti-Depressant is broaden your perspective of the truth. No one can "give" you the truth and the only way you'll "know" anything is if you try it. In other words: until you try those things that other people tell you to do or not do, you won't know if they will make you happy or if the opposite will make you happy. You might be surprised what you discover!
NEXT
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
All-natural Anti-Depressant: Part 4
Reread:
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE: SITUATIONS
Both of the times in my life that I had severe depression were influenced greatly by my perception of my situation. The situation of my first bout of depression was similar to many young teenagers: I was trying to cope with physical and emotional growth in a hostile environment and I wasn't hacking it. In my second bout of severe depression, my situation was conducive to self-doubt, guilt, and fear of consequences. It wasn't until I took a step back and critically looked at the things I valued and believed in firmly that I realized how to pull myself out. You have to have a plan if you want to get out of depression for good, it will not happen to you unless you make changes to your life.
When I was 13-15, the first time I was depressed, I didn't instantly conclude that my friends were causing my problems. It seems obvious now that the situation I had gotten into was the biggest influence on what was causing me stress and sadness. I had put myself into a situation that made me unhappy--or rather, I didn't do anything with my life and that's what put me in that situation. I didn't try to control my situation, I let my situation control me. Because I let life happen to me rather than make life happen for me, I had (and thought) that I had no control over my life and that is was miserable because of things outside of me.
I don't want to get into the details of the situation when I was 20 years old and facing another severe depression, but I can remember waking up every day in a bad, depressed mood and thinking that I must be under some sort of punishment for decisions I made already and couldn't change or correct. To add to my situation, I was among people who I didn't trust and I wasn't allowed to speak to my family and friends about my situation. Things were bad.
In both of my worst moments, I didn't realize that my depression was primarily situational. Once I got out of the bad situation, created some space from it, it eventually got better, but I wasn't sure at the time that it ever would. Once you get out a bad situation, life really does gradually get better, but sometimes that only makes you feel more depressed because the task of getting out of your situation can seem daunting. Don't be discouraged, because your problem isn't that you are in a bad situation, it is that right now you lack the knowledge of how to get out.
When I was 13 till I was 15, I didn't seize control of my life and therefore I didn't have any control over what happened to me. Instead of putting myself out into the world and into situations where I could make friends, I stayed at home and was comfortable with the "friends" who latched on to me, rather than me reaching out to make friends for myself. Instead of doing anything that would have given me accomplishments and would have made me feel good about myself, I did things that I thought made me smarter such as studying and reading. Don't get me wrong, I had a few good friends and I really was becoming smarter, but I was focusing on the wrong things and I wasn't making any kind of decisions! I thought being smart would make me friends and I thought that they would just come to me if they liked me--never did I realize that smart people have few friends and you have to reach out to other people to make friends.
The fourth ingredient to my all-natural anti-depressant is to broaden your perspective of your situation. The things that you're doing right now, the things that you value, you have to take a hard look at them and determine if they are contributing to what you ultimately want or if they are taking you in a different direction. The things that I valued and believed were good things, but they weren't directly correlated with what my desires were (to be happy). It has taken me many years to come to the conclusion that smart people have benefits, but making friends isn't related to being smart--it isn't one of the benefits of being smart--respect might be a benefit of being smart, but respect doesn't mean you'll make friends, it just means that the friends you make will be more likely to respect you.
In science, if a claim is considered "valid" that means that whatever the claim to do relates to what it claims will happen. One way you can look at this is that some of your values might not be valid values. Some of the things that you think will make you happy, such as having more money, possessions, or even things you have no control over, like better genetics, or pleasing your family or friends, or anything related to other people for that matter--these things might not actually make you happy or worse, they might not be possible.
Broadening your perspective of your situation will require you to make a list (mental or on paper) of all the things you currently believe will make you happy and to be open to the possibility that other things might be true, even the opposite might be true. For example, living your life trying to please your parents and not be seen as selfish might contribute to depression, but living your life to please your self and be independent of your parents might actually make you very happy. You never know if something is true or not unless you try it out, so don't limit yourself to false preconceptions and you might be surprised at how well they work!
NEXT Part 5
INTRODUCTION
PART 1- Create Space
PART 2- Persuade Yourself
PART 3- Emotions
BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE: SITUATIONS
Both of the times in my life that I had severe depression were influenced greatly by my perception of my situation. The situation of my first bout of depression was similar to many young teenagers: I was trying to cope with physical and emotional growth in a hostile environment and I wasn't hacking it. In my second bout of severe depression, my situation was conducive to self-doubt, guilt, and fear of consequences. It wasn't until I took a step back and critically looked at the things I valued and believed in firmly that I realized how to pull myself out. You have to have a plan if you want to get out of depression for good, it will not happen to you unless you make changes to your life.
When I was 13-15, the first time I was depressed, I didn't instantly conclude that my friends were causing my problems. It seems obvious now that the situation I had gotten into was the biggest influence on what was causing me stress and sadness. I had put myself into a situation that made me unhappy--or rather, I didn't do anything with my life and that's what put me in that situation. I didn't try to control my situation, I let my situation control me. Because I let life happen to me rather than make life happen for me, I had (and thought) that I had no control over my life and that is was miserable because of things outside of me.
I don't want to get into the details of the situation when I was 20 years old and facing another severe depression, but I can remember waking up every day in a bad, depressed mood and thinking that I must be under some sort of punishment for decisions I made already and couldn't change or correct. To add to my situation, I was among people who I didn't trust and I wasn't allowed to speak to my family and friends about my situation. Things were bad.
In both of my worst moments, I didn't realize that my depression was primarily situational. Once I got out of the bad situation, created some space from it, it eventually got better, but I wasn't sure at the time that it ever would. Once you get out a bad situation, life really does gradually get better, but sometimes that only makes you feel more depressed because the task of getting out of your situation can seem daunting. Don't be discouraged, because your problem isn't that you are in a bad situation, it is that right now you lack the knowledge of how to get out.
When I was 13 till I was 15, I didn't seize control of my life and therefore I didn't have any control over what happened to me. Instead of putting myself out into the world and into situations where I could make friends, I stayed at home and was comfortable with the "friends" who latched on to me, rather than me reaching out to make friends for myself. Instead of doing anything that would have given me accomplishments and would have made me feel good about myself, I did things that I thought made me smarter such as studying and reading. Don't get me wrong, I had a few good friends and I really was becoming smarter, but I was focusing on the wrong things and I wasn't making any kind of decisions! I thought being smart would make me friends and I thought that they would just come to me if they liked me--never did I realize that smart people have few friends and you have to reach out to other people to make friends.
The fourth ingredient to my all-natural anti-depressant is to broaden your perspective of your situation. The things that you're doing right now, the things that you value, you have to take a hard look at them and determine if they are contributing to what you ultimately want or if they are taking you in a different direction. The things that I valued and believed were good things, but they weren't directly correlated with what my desires were (to be happy). It has taken me many years to come to the conclusion that smart people have benefits, but making friends isn't related to being smart--it isn't one of the benefits of being smart--respect might be a benefit of being smart, but respect doesn't mean you'll make friends, it just means that the friends you make will be more likely to respect you.
In science, if a claim is considered "valid" that means that whatever the claim to do relates to what it claims will happen. One way you can look at this is that some of your values might not be valid values. Some of the things that you think will make you happy, such as having more money, possessions, or even things you have no control over, like better genetics, or pleasing your family or friends, or anything related to other people for that matter--these things might not actually make you happy or worse, they might not be possible.
Broadening your perspective of your situation will require you to make a list (mental or on paper) of all the things you currently believe will make you happy and to be open to the possibility that other things might be true, even the opposite might be true. For example, living your life trying to please your parents and not be seen as selfish might contribute to depression, but living your life to please your self and be independent of your parents might actually make you very happy. You never know if something is true or not unless you try it out, so don't limit yourself to false preconceptions and you might be surprised at how well they work!
NEXT Part 5
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