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How to Stop Wasting Your Life Being Depressed, Anxious and
Unhappy- The Top 10 Strategies of Emotionally Successful
People
©This is a protected publication of Dr. Audrey Sherman and www.psychskills.com
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About Dr. Sherman
Audrey Sherman, Pd.D. has been helping others to beat depression, anxiety,
relationship problems and more since 1995. She is a licensed psychologist with 17
years of experience assessing and treating adults and children with various life
challenges.
Dr Sherman has a strong background in both Education and Psychology and her goal
for Psychskills is to combine these backgrounds for the purpose of assisting others to
obtain their highest level of personal development and happiness.
Her belief is that it is not only possible for each client to overcome problems such as depression, anxiety,
chronic anger and relationship difficulties, but that each individual also possesses the ability to reach
their very utmost level of functioning and potential necessary for full personal gratification.
She believes that the process of feeling better should not have to involve some long miserable years of
therapy and should instead be thought of as a learning process. Her programs are based in the belief
that some individuals simply did not learn the emotional skills and thought patterns that non depressed
people did. Adding these skills can make a world of difference in someone’s life.
She is here to guide you through that process.
Dr. Sherman lives in Florida and enjoys travel, cooking, golf and reading (serious psychology stuff and
mysteries).
Are You Ready?
First of all, I would like to congratulate you for making the decision and commitment to get this
emotional success manual in order to start making some huge changes in your life!
You are obviously sick of feeling down, dragging yourself through your day to day life, perhaps having
crying spells as well as a pervasive feeling of loneliness or emptiness. You may have reached the point of
saying that if life is going to feel this bad, why go on?
By taking that first step, you have already separated yourself from the majority of people who only wish
for their lives to change but never do anything about it.
You are already giant steps ahead of everybody else. So, you should feel really great about that already!!
One thing I’d like you to understand is that this manual is not designed to be read passively. The only
way you will gain any real benefit from it is by using the information, by applying the knowledge and the
strategies to your own life. When you do that, there will be no limits to the level of emotional success,
happiness and personal fulfillment you can achieve.
It’s really not that difficult, and it will only take you a few minutes per day to do them. If you do that, I
promise you that your dreams of happiness and personal satisfaction will become daily reality.
I need to warn you that if you don’t use the information in this book, and if you don’t apply what you
learn, the book will be of very little use to you.
Without action, knowledge simply turns into “useless information.” If you have been depressed for a
while, you probably already have a lot of information about it, but that doesn’t necessarily make you
feel better.
Is being happy, fulfilled, energetic and satisfied with life worth spending a few minutes a day on some
simple exercises? If your answer is yes, and you are willing to do a little work to get big results, then get
ready for the best years of your life!!
That’s one of the most important lessons in emotional success: Take Action!!!
Wishing You Success!
Audrey Sherman, Ph.D.
Your 10 Strategies to Emotional Success Formula
I have found that planning for emotional success is very much like planning for anything else in your life.
It consists of a series of steps that need to be taken in the correct order.
The challenge for most people is that they not only don’t know what steps to take, but in what order to
take them. Some don’t take all the steps they need and others try to apply them all willy nilly and end up
frustrated and discouraged.
Chances are you have experienced success in your life in some form. You may have a good career or job,
an education, a well run household, something. You didn’t get that by chance. You must have wanted it,
found it important enough to invest yourself in, then you went for it. Ridding yourself of depression is
the same process, applied to your emotional life.
The 10 secrets of emotional success that you will learn are simply that, things to learn and apply. You
already know the process of learn and apply; now you just have to apply it to you.
I remember hearing a client once say, “Wouldn’t it be nice to feel like my life is fun and not a never
ending pool of sadness?” What a simple desire and I was excited to think of the possibilities that were
out there for this individual once they learned how to apply the success principles.
I didn’t see the person for a while as they became occupied with business and family matters, then
about 6 months down the road they came back to the practice to see me. After talking for a few minutes
about what was going on in their lives I realized they weren’t much happier than when I saw them last.
The problem was obvious. Their idea was too vague. They weren’t specific enough in their desire.
Happiness, personal satisfaction and fun are great ideas but rather vague unless defined in ways that are
specific and meaningful to you. Think of these end results like a destination, like when you head out to
the grocery store you know where you are going and why. You know where you live in relation to it and
how to get there. This is going to be a very different map or plan than the person on the other side of
town is going to experience.
You may now be thinking, “I can’t even think about what I might like, what I want is to not be depressed,
then I can think of those things”. “Those things are for happy people”. This is backwards thinking. It is
having the very hope that your desires are possible and putting them in place that will start your journey
up out of the gloom. Depression feels helpless and hopeless, you have to do away with those two
vultures in order to start to feel better or even have the energy to start to feel better.
First Strategy in the Emotional Success Formula: You Have to
Pick a Destination.
You have to figure out exactly where you are starting and where you want to go. In other words, you
have to clarify the result you are after!
You have to be specific and pick the destination! Unless you do that, you’ll never make it out of the
house. If I don’t know where it is I want to go how would I ever get there? This client hadn’t made it out
of the house yet in terms of meeting their desire to end their depression once and for all.
So they did that. They got specific and picked a “destination” of being content and satisfied more days
than not, of adding great and exciting things to their lives in order to experience “fun” and of moving
away from the low energy, despair, and loneliness that was encompassing them at this time. “Taking my
meds on time” is not a goal that provides a jolt of energy or hope.
A few months went by, they just weren’t there yet. I realized that it was because they didn’t take the
next step, which was commitment! To pick a date to be done with these things and to make the very
important decision to make sure they got there. You don’t head to the grocery store then wander
around the city, never arriving at your destination because you weren’t really committed to getting
there. When you are headed for the store, you are headed for the store. Probably not much gets in your
way.
Strategy 2- Make A Commitment!
It was obvious that if I didn’t ask the client for their firm decision by picking a date and committing to it,
they would never get near their goals of happiness.
So, they picked a date four months down the road as they were working full time and balancing family
responsibilities also. That seemed realistic and I agreed. So now they were committed and I felt like we
were getting somewhere.
Next we needed to figure out exactly how to get them there. We had 4 months to do the job. I had to
figure out where they were starting from in terms of their own lives, learned patterns from the families
they grew up in and past personal experiences. We had to figure out what sorts of difficulties they were
having, was it just depression or was there some anxiety tied in there as well? Were they having
relationship problems, were attachment difficulties or fear getting in the way of healthy relationships?
Were they underachieving their potential due to having no confidence in themselves and was this also
the underlying problem with the depression? It is rare to find depression standing alone. It almost
always has a mass of these “emotional groupies” that travel with it.
Personally this is my favorite part of the process, figuring out the “mystery” behind someone’s
emotional difficulties. Where did the depression come from? What are they afraid of? What caused
them to think in certain ways? Who did they learn this from? What else is lurking there besides
depression? I like to pull it all apart and then see how the pieces make up the whole. Now we know
what to do, what to focus on. I also found that clients like this as they then have something concrete to
work on, not vague ideas about feeling “screwed up somehow”. Hope is gained instantly in this process.
Once the destinations are known, no matter how many there are, you can now draw a map. You may
have multiple maps and destinations and that is OK, think of it as a trip where you are seeing a lot (You
are not just going to Disney World, you are going to SeaWorld and Busch Gardens as well).
It’s important here to note that we are going to use the plans or maps that will get us where we are
going with the least amount of difficulties!
Strategy 3: Get Prepared and Have a Plan!
With the above client we decided after discussing their past and current issues that depression wasn’t
the only thing going on. They had been raised in a dysfunctional family type that I call the “Pooh Pooh’s”
or those that continually tell you what you should be thinking or feeling. Like when you are teased or
upset somehow at school and come home and they say something like, “you have nothing to be upset
about, you have everything you could ever want.” They have invalidated your feelings and when this
happens repeatedly over time you begin to wonder if what you think or feel is ever right, keeping you
from building the confidence necessary to achieve at your full potential. There are other family types
discussed in my “Dysfunction Interrupted” program that do various other things to your emotional well
being but this happened to be the one that applied to this individual.
This person then was not only feeling the painful symptoms of depression, but lacked self confidence
and was made very anxious by the thoughts of planning their own life geared to their desires because
they didn’t trust their own feelings. They had let others plan, suggest, and point out life to them ever
since they could remember. They had formed many relationships where they were “dependent”, further
hiding their own identity and making the “Perfect Storm” come together in terms of adding heaping
helpings of depression.
So they needed three maps:
1. An anxiety map
2. A depression map
3. A self confidence map
So now they knew they wanted out of the depressed lifestyle, they had made a commitment to work on
it for 4 months, giving it all they could and now we devise a plan. This particular client was obviously
already working with me so our plan was to teach her the skills necessary to overcome the three
problems listed above. We had already figured out the background. It seems like a lot but it isn’t
because many of the techniques taught overlap from one problem to the next.
There are many sorts of plans you might decide on.
1. You can go to a psychologist and let them know this is what you would like to do and find one to
work with on these specific things. Therapy is not effective if you are not doing something
specific. It’s nice to go in and talk but you have to be goal oriented to actually benefit from it.
Choose a psychologist who is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as this will provide you
with the best results.
2. You can buy self help CD’s or books in each subject if you already know what is wrong. Again,
choose those that are based in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, it should say in the title or
somewhere on the back if that is the theoretical background of the program.
3. You can try online therapy with someone if it is more convenient.
4. You can try my program and see if it helps, group and individual coaching are available if you
feel you need one on one attention.
So I could give them the maps and we devised a plan, but everything could still fall apart unless they
followed through on their plans. Making the plans or maps is just half the battle. You still have to get up
and go!
Strategy 4: You Have to Follow Through. You Have to Take
Action!
And once you start to take action, your journey has just begun! You must start doing the things your are
learning.
You can’t just sit in your car and hope to arrive at the store. You have to watch what you are doing. You
have to steer yourself and you have to look out for everyone else on your road that might be bad
drivers. There are obstacles that you may have to slow down or even temporarily stop for. When things
start going off track, you simply nudge them back in the right direction. There will always be obstacles.
And lastly, if you make mistake and take a wrong turn somewhere, you have to correct yourself and get
back on track.
Strategy 5: You Have to Pay Attention and Adjust/Adapt as
Needed.
This is another place where people get off track-those who could have otherwise been extremely
successful in their program. You may have heard the saying…If it doesn’t bend, it breaks. That is
definitely true of humans.
So my client did that too. We tweaked as needed, across their environments and around the different
people in their life, and four months later, they were no longer depressed, anxious and underachieving,
but satisfied with thoughts of a new career, an enriched life and new relationships, and looking forward
to every day. Mission accomplished.
And that s all there is to it. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
Believe it or not, that’s basically how you get from point A to point B with anything you do in life. Yes,
these steps are very basic and I’ve left out some of the details to remain within the scope of this
download, but those are the main steps.
If you do nothing else but follow them in order, you usually reach your destination.
Next Stop: Feeling Good
As I’ve said earlier, the above steps can be used to succeed in any area of your life.
The goal, however, is to help you achieve emotional success. To feel good. That will be our main focus
throughout.
It is common knowledge that many people never beat depression. TV ads push for a bigger “medication
cocktail” when your first antidepressant didn’t work or when you have been taking one for a while and
still feel no better than when you started. People hop from psychologist to psychologist trying to get the
help they need to feel better. Most of them still remain depressed and anxious. That’s just the way
things are.
But if you haven’t figured it out already, you should know that whenever you follow the majority of
people, whenever you do the things the way the masses do it, you are pretty much doomed to their
same failures. Because, by following the masses, you’ll get the same results as they are getting, which
are usually pretty dismal.
I remember being taught in graduate school that there was a formula applied to psychology. The
formula was this: One third of clients will get well, one third will stay the same, and one third will get
worse. That means that two thirds, or the majority of clients will not benefit from psychological help.
You do not want to be part of those two thirds. You want to be part of the first one third.
I learned that in order to get results for my clients similar to those of the emotionally successful crowd, I
would have to break away from the norms of focusing on just “what was wrong” like the rest of the
psychological world and incorporate into my teachings the methods of the very emotionally successful
which also focus on “what is right”. This is also the foundation to the principles of Positive Psychology.
Here is an example of what I mean. I read this somewhere in the Positive Psychology literature and liked
it very much so I would like to share it with you. Pretend you are in a sailboat trying to get somewhere.
The sailboat then springs a leak which we will call it’s “weakness”. Although this weakness is important
to tend to, it is actually the sails that will propel you forward, they are the boat’s strength. If you spend
all your time focused on the leak, you will never get where you are going because you haven’t paid
attention to the sails or the strengths.
If you spend all your time focused on depression and ignore your strengths, or the things that will
actually help heal you, you will continue to be depressed.
Isn’t that just denial? NO!! Absolutely not! There are no therapeutic laws that state that in order to
recover from depression you must focus solely on it. You have enough attention to go around and there
is a whole world of things out there that are much more fun to attend to.
That is what I want to share with you. I want you to know all those things that the emotionally
successful and non depressed people do to create amazing happiness and satisfaction, and to build a
life of their choosing. You will be in that one third of people who actually benefit from being helped.
I will also show you how you can get yourself to take action!
To consistently follow through on your plans and reach your goals, I will reveal the strategies and
principles of the emotionally successful people so that it will be very easy for you to get the same kind of
results that they do.
But…unfortunately, that’s all I can do. In the end, you’ll have to be willing to put this knowledge to use.
In the end, only you can decide how emotionally successful you will be and how much happiness you
will achieve.
I can only offer the tools. You have to use them.
If you can make a promise to yourself to put these tools to use, to take the time out to apply the
knowledge and principles I share with you, I can promise that you will be emotionally successful.
Fast-Track to Feeling Better!
So, what is the fastest track to beating depression?
The quickest way to feel better immediately is to feel good about yourself and in control of your life. A
life where you call the shots, you wake up and look in the mirror and feel that there is quite the
somebody looking back at you. Where you don’t feel like you are disordered, diseased, handicapped or
unable for some reason to achieve what you want. A life where you choose what makes you happy, you
choose your relationships wisely and you choose not to be sucked down into the emotional mire of
those around you. The next 5 strategies are those that really put you on this fast track.
I’m willing to bet that like most people with depression or other emotional difficulties you have tried
many things over the years, including therapy with a professional, self help books and possible antidepressant or some other kind of psychiatric medication.
But you probably also know that for most people with depression, starting and continuing in the things
taught are not that easy, are they? And if you have been doing this repeatedly for years, you probably
know all too well that it’s not that easy to apply the methods in order to continuously feel better, every
day of your life. There are often setbacks or somehow we just find ourselves right back where we
started, feeling like crap, even after many sessions with a therapist, a new therapist, new medications
and/or numerous self help exercises later.
Well, these strategies apply there as well. It is about giving you the tools and knowledge that few people
know and use to make themselves emotionally successful and achieve the long lasting results that they
want. Who wants to do all that soul searching and heavy, emotionally laden work just to find
themselves right back there at the end of the month or year or whatever?
Or, maybe you have done all the heavy lifting of your emotions and you already feel reasonably Ok on a
daily basis but would like to excel at what you are doing or add something greater to your life than what
you are already doing. You would like to lift your spirits a bit further and experience ultra emotional
success.
Well, we’ll cover that as well. Whether you are very depressed, somewhat down or reasonably Ok, the
information in this book will help you be as emotionally successful as you’d like to be!
So, if all it takes is to be emotionally successful is to feel good about yourself and in control of your life,
how come everyone isn’t doing it? And how come everyone isn’t emotionally successful?
Good Question.
One of the most important lessons we can learn from the emotionally successful people is, they are not
just running through life at random. They have chosen a life that allows them to do what they enjoy
doing! They actually look forward to waking up every day because they enjoy it.
One of the main reasons that most individuals fail in the happiness department is because they usually
have chosen a life that they feel may be the easiest. Or sometimes they didn’t choose at all, maybe the
choice was made for them by well meaning but unknowing parents or others. Maybe they just fell into it
somehow. Most of the time, they don’t enjoy what they are doing or who they are with and the “work”
that it takes to run their lives. And quite often, the person actually hates their lives.
See, they took the first step, which was to choose a destination but they didn’t pick a very good one. If I
had chosen to go to the tire store instead of the grocery when I needed food, you can bet I would hate it
also when I finally got there. None of my needs would be met there and I then have to start over. Very
discouraging.
I know right now sitting here that I wouldn’t care for the tire store nor is there anything there that
interests me nor do I need tires. So, why choose to go there? Sounds easy enough when you’re picking a
store to go to, doesn’t it? But when it comes to choosing a life, most people don’t realize that the same
principles apply.
So, after we’ve picked a life that we can enjoy working on, we are guaranteed to be emotionally
successful, right? Not quite.
Even after I picked the correct store to go to, I would still need the confidence, the courage, and the
motivation to continue my journey till I got to the grocery. I would need to be mentally prepared for the
journey to be able to handle the roadblocks, detours, accidents, or other challenges that came my way.
For many of us, this is where most of the problem lies when it comes to taking control of and choosing a
lifestyle we enjoy. And it is no small problem either.
You’ve got to have a burning desire for achieving your feel good goals! You’ve got to want it with a
passion. And, you have to decide to go for it. You’ve got to decide to not give up after the first few
bumps and hurdles.
Over the years, I have come to find out that no one is really emotionally unsuccessful; they just haven’t
learned how to become emotionally successful yet.
That’s right……emotional success and beating depression are things that you learn!
I believe that most people are emotionally unsuccessful, living day to day with depression, anxiety and
more not because they are lazy, or lack intelligence. They just haven’t learned to do what emotionally
successful people do.
Emotionally successful and non depressed people do most things differently than the rest of the
population. They think differently, they perceive differently, and they act differently. But most
importantly, they have learned one very important truth: Emotional success always starts in the mind.
Actually, if you think about it, everything starts first in your mind. Every goal you have accomplished,
every skill you have learned, started first as just an idea in your mind. If you were to even reach out to
pick something up right now, you would first have to think about doing it.
Emotional success and ridding yourself of unwanted emotional pain is no different. In order to be
consistently happy and satisfied, you have to adopt the right mindset. And since I believe that you can
be successful in every area of your life, including the area of emotional well being, I like to call this
mindset the “correct emotional mindset” We are going to discuss this further…
Strategy 6-The Correct Emotional Mindset
So, what exactly is the real key to emotional success?
It is the frame of mind you keep on a consistent basis, it’s what you focus on most, and it’s what you
believe to be possible or not possible. It’s your mindset.
With the right frame of mind, humans can accomplish some pretty amazing feats, some of which would
normally be considered impossible by most people.
With the correct emotional mindset, you can do just about anything!
Emotionally successful people know that when you change your mindset, you change your reality-you
change your world.
When you change your emotional mindset, you change your world!
Emotionally successful people have a very unique mindset. Their beliefs and values are very different
from those of other people. And they have adopted different habits that support their beliefs and helps
them achieve their goals
As a result, emotionally successful and non depressed people react differently to events, situations and
challenges in their lives. They also react differently to what other people say or think. Only they decide
what they are to focus on at any given time.
Emotionally successful people ask the right questions! While most people look at a situation and ask
‘Why isn’t this working?”, the successful person will look at the same situation and ask “How can I make
this work?”
Where most people will wonder “Why is this happening to me?” the emotionally successful person will
ask, “What can I change in order to get what I want?”
People who do not suffer from depression have a very different mindset than those that do.
But here’s what’s interesting…..
Emotionally successful people are not born this way. Many of them also report bouts of depression
starting as early as in their teen years. They are different because they choose to be different, because
they took the time to learn and adopt what was needed. They simply decided to change their lives
because they didn’t like how they felt or what they had.
They didn’t like always feeling sad, struggling with tearfulness and loneliness and never accomplishing
the things they wanted to accomplish. They just didn’t like the kind of results they were getting, or the
direction in which their lives were headed. So they decided to change it.
But they realized that in order to change their feelings and their lives, they first needed to change some
of their learned beliefs, values and habits. Some didn’t even remember where they learned their beliefs
or habits but recognized that they didn’t really even represent what they truly felt. They were not core
beliefs that fit them. They realized they needed some that fit better; they needed to change their
mindset, so they did.
Anyone can do the same!
Anyone can decide to become emotionally more successful. Anyone can obtain riches, optimum health,
fulfilling relationships and personal satisfaction with their life. Anyone can go out there and start
searching for answers, for the knowledge and skills that would take them out of a depressed state and
into one of feeling good about themselves and just good in general.
And since this success starts first in the mind, right where the depression is also hanging out, anyone can
choose to adopt new empowering beliefs and habits and let go of the old, ill fitting and limiting ones.
You choose to control your mind as opposed to letting it control you!
Throughout this intro book, you are discovering the knowledge, beliefs, views and insights that these
highly emotionally successful people know and use to get whatever they want in virtually every area of
their lives. I hope you will decide that you want them for yourself also.
Strategy 7-To Create a Specific Mindset, In This Case One of
Happiness and Satisfaction, You Have to Rehearse It.
Yes, rehearse it!
You might be thinking, I don’t even know what that feels like, let alone rehearse it. Dig deep, there had
to have been a time you laughed or were happy for even a brief moment. Maybe being around certain
people makes you feel good. Bring that feeling back up and rehearse it.
For the most part, your mind learns through repetition. This is why any skill or activity can be learned
through practice i.e. “repetition”-until it becomes automatic... It becomes automatic when your mind
finally “gets” it.
Whatever it is that you’re doing repeatedly, either consciously or unconsciously, your mind picks up on it
and assumes that you want to learn it some more. So it starts paying attention to the repetitive task
and begins to learn it better and better each time it’s repeated. This is fine if you are learning a musical
instrument, not so fine if you are listening to someone barrage you with insults or negative input and
not doing something about it other than listen closer each time.
Primarily, everything is learned through repetition, through rehearsal. Think of a way you may be
repeating some dysfunctional dynamic of your family, you probably have had many years to “rehearse”
and get it just right!
This is where we sometimes come up short after therapy sessions. We learn a new technique that feels
pretty good the one time we do it, but we don’t rehearse, we don’t repeat it long enough for the mind
to get it and make it a part of who you are. Particularly if it is something that felt quite foreign to you.
Most of us read a self help book one time and think everything will change. If only it were that easy.
Emotionally successful people read certain books over and over till the book is falling apart!
Why? Because they learned the most important lesson about success. That you have to continue to feed
positive information and emotional success advice to your brain every single day-until it gets it! On top
of reading books they often hire coaches and therapists to “tweak” their individual processes. You really
want that learning to sink in.
It doesn’t happen overnight. It can’t. Most of us have years and years of negative conditioning and
beliefs from our families or wherever to work through.
That is why repetition is so important! More important than most other things.
Rehearse a task-or even a mindset-until you master it. Your goal is to master depression, you have to
rehearse the thoughts and ideas that will allow you to do that.
What Do You Believe?
You already know that people who are not depressed think differently and have different beliefs than
you do. These beliefs that they have chosen to adopt play a big role in dictating their level of emotional
success.
You see, beliefs are not necessarily what are true or factual in the real world. The power of each belief
comes only from you, the believer of that belief. The strength of your belief depends on how strongly
you believe it to be true.
That means that you can believe whatever you want to believe. As long as you believe it to be true, it
will be true in your life. Consequently, you will attract events, experiences and people in your life that
match your beliefs, which in turn will strengthen those beliefs.
Back to our example earlier of my client, they had learned to believe from childhood that what they
were thinking or feeling made no sense or was somehow not correct. That was a belief they garnered
from listening to their parents tell them that, not a belief based in any factual information. But they
went on to live a good part of their adult life making choices for themselves based on that belief.
Choices that ultimately led to years of depression and anxiety because they were poor choices that did
not allow them to realize their own fulfillment. If your choices don’t fit you, you will feel poorly.
Strategy 8-Adopt Only The Beliefs That Serve You and Let Go
of Those That Limit You.
You have to think like people do who are not depressed, you have to believe what they believe.
As you begin to adopt the beliefs of emotionally successful people, you will realize that a lot of what you
learned growing up was not very useful. They were not the best advice, lessons, beliefs and habits we
could have adopted and used. It’s not your fault. The society we live in makes it difficult for us to not
pick up on these not so useful beliefs and habits. Along with the poor thinking patterns we may adopt
from our families, we are bombarded with information stating that depression is genetic, in the family,
there’s nothing you can do about it but take medication for life, and so on. There are no studies that
definitively prove that depression is genetic. There are some medical reasons for depression such as
endocrine disorders, hormonal disturbances and head injury but these are not the majority of
depression cases that we see.
But beliefs can be changed. You’ve done it before I am sure. It takes courage to be willing to look at your
current beliefs and then decide whether they serve you or sabotage you, whether to keep them or get
rid of them.
And yes, it takes consistent rehearsal and repetition, until your brain “gets it”.
Maybe we’ve been conditioned from day 1 to believe that our feelings or happiness are not that
important. Maybe that it is selfish or wrong somehow to want to be happy and satisfied with life. Yet
the entire world around us seems reasonably happy and it is in our face bothering us so it must be
important!
It is one of the biggest myths parents teach their kids. And it’s the reason that so many of these kids
grow up to be depressed adults.
What if I told you that your level of emotional success is also directly related to how much emotional
value you create for others? If you have a lot of happiness or life satisfaction maybe that means that you
have created a lot of this type of value in other people’s lives. If you don’t have that sort of satisfaction
yet, that simply means that you have not yet produced the kind of value for others that you’re capable
of...or..You just went about it in a not so useful way. That brings us to our next strategy
Strategy 9-Get Gratification
Happiness may not be the most important thing in life, but let’s face facts here. Happiness and life
satisfaction are pretty important in this day and age. These are different times than our parents where
happiness was put on the back burner as a luxury and depending on how old you are, self help books
were almost nonexistent.
Emotional success is how you are able to give to your loved ones the daily attention, love and tasks they
may need. In a depressed state you cannot fulfill others needs very well as you haven’t fulfilled your
own.
Emotional success is how you get through each day and look forward to the next. It is the way that you
are able to survive the bad times and come out on the other side, it is how you deal everyday with
people who are a pain in the neck. It is what gives you the courage to be successful and go after your
dreams. Are these not important things?
If you are constantly doing for others or ignoring your own happiness there will be nothing of you to give
at some point. It is not selfish to attend to yourself because if you are bolstered up by positive emotion
you can actually give way more! You can do much more for others and you can help a lot more people if
you want when you have more energy and emotional resources to give.
Recent studies on depression reveal over and over that giving to others produces fast recovery results as
well as long lasting results, making this more effective than medication! The term for this is gratification
and it is different from pleasure, it is more long lasting and it makes you feel good about yourself.
Pleasure is eating something yummy, gratification is making a lonely elderly person smile as you spend
some time with them. Gratification can also be had by accomplishing a task you set out for yourself or
reaching a big goal like running a marathon or something along those lines.
Strategy 10-The Power of Focus
Did you ever play with a magnifier as a kid? I remember trying to burn a hole through paper by allowing
sunlight to pass through the magnifier and hit the paper.
Direct sunlight didn’t have this burning power but when the same light was intensified and focused onto
one point, using the magnifier, it would create intense heat, and sometimes fire!
That’s the power of focus.
You can intensify your thoughts, intent, and actions the same way. We have touched on this subject
before, and I am sure you’ve heard it elsewhere before, but it truly deserves its own section.
Whatever You Focus on Consistently Will Become Your
Reality!
When you allow your mind to wander, when you allow it to focus on whatever happens to be in front of
you, at random, you don’t get much done. You don’t move forward in any direction. When your focus is
on your depression, you will remain depressed.
But, when reversed and you consciously get yourself to focus single mindedly on a specific goal, such as
emotional success, you create an amazing amount of productive energy.
The right amount of focus can cut through any barrier and help you accomplish any task.
Learn to shift your focus from depression and unhappiness to what you would rather be feeling.
Your mind will only focus on what you allow it to focus on. Give your mind a direction to move towards,
a target to shoot for, a goal to accomplish. Put your maps in place and let it move to your destination of
emotional well being.
If you give the ongoing events, and people around you the power to choose your focus, they will jump to
it! And they will control your destiny. And you will still be depressed.
Only you get to decide what you focus on. Not your environment, not your situation, and certainly not
other people.
How do you do this? Practice! Rehearse it. Even while performing daily mundane chores you can be
practicing your new emotionally successful mindset and getting used to the positive feelings it will
provide.
So, take back the control of your focus-and your life.
Input Equals Output
This has to do with focus. Just as focusing on what you want will get you what you want, focusing on
what you don’t want will only get you more of what you don’t want.
You’ve probably heard this before…
You reap what you sow.
If you plant corn, you will get corn. If you plant weeds, you will get weeds. And…if you don’t plant
anything, you will usually still get weeds.
The weeds will grow regardless. Weeds don’t need cultivation.
It’s the same with your mind. If you let positive, productive and creative thoughts in, you will get
positive, productive and creative results out.
Similarly, if you allow thoughts of fear, worry, and pain in, you will only create the same in your life. Its
then as if you are caring for and watering the weeds.
And…if you don’t let anything in intentionally, there’s enough negative news and information around
you to make you think negatively anyway! (weeds will grow regardless, remember?)
Aside from what you internally focus on, you have to also be careful of what you focus on most from the
outside!
Guard your mind from the thoughts that enter into it! And guard it with your life!
If you tend to watch or read the news a lot, beware! A lot of what is discussed on the news these days is
“negatively charged”. There’s more bad news on the news than good news.
If doesn’t matter that whatever horrible thing has happened to someone else. If you focus on the bad
news enough, it will start to steer your thoughts, actions, and consequently your life, in the wrong
direction.
Our society seems to thrive on melodrama. Pain and suffering seems to be the way most people can
connect with others. Be very careful what you are consistently focusing on. If you don’t think you can
live without the news, then find a balance between being informed and being drowned in bad news.
You get to decide how much of the negative stuff you let into your mind. No one else should decide
that. But if you don’t take control, others will do it for you.
Outline Your Daily Focus
There will be times when you will be forced to focus on negative things that you’d rather not focus on.
When this happens, learn to catch yourself. And learn to stop yourself. Don’t spend too much time
focusing on whatever negative thing has wormed its way into your field of attention. As soon as you
realize you’re doing that, simply realign your focus. Direct your thoughts toward the positive, the
productive, and the creative.
All it takes is a little practice.
One of the best ways to prepare yourself in advance is to create a list of “daily questions” to focus upon.
Make up a list of the important questions and thoughts you’d like to focus on as soon as you wake up in
the morning. This will condition your mind to focus on things you want it to focus on instead of dwelling
on random (usually negative) thoughts.
Questions work really well because they allow your mind to get involved with the process!
Just thinking positive thoughts can be difficult sometimes, especially when you feel like crap. But when
you ask yourself questions, you trick your mind into paying attention and getting involved. Your mind
has to shift focus.
Here are some examples of questions you can ask yourself:
What do I want to focus on most today, and why?
What am I absolutely committed to doing/accomplishing today, during the week, the month, etc.?
What is most important to me in my life?
What am I most grateful for in my life?
(remember that giving gratitude every day is an absolutely powerful way to attract happiness,
fulfillment and satisfaction to you!)
Exercise:
Create your own set of daily questions by modeling the ones above. Feel free to use the ones given as-is,
and add your own as needed.
Ask yourself these questions as soon as you get up in the morning, before any other train of thought
sneaks in there. Whatever you start your day focusing on is usually what your mind will focus on most
throughout the day.
Do the same thing at night, just before you go to bed. Your mind is very impressionable at this time.
Wanting Versus Deserving
So we’ve said that in order to be happy and emotionally successful, you have to have a burning desire
for it!
You’ve also learned that you have to believe the way emotionally happy people believe if you are to
ever have the kind of day to day satisfaction with your life that they do.
The combination of the two can be very powerful. But if either one is missing, you won’t go far.
Wanting something bad enough is very important if you are to ever achieve it. But if you don’t believe
you’ll ever get it, then you are wasting your time.
You have to realize something very important…
Understand that in life, you will not get what you really want. You will only get what you believe you
deserve.
What this means is that if you want something, you will do what is necessary to get it. But…if you don’t
believe that you deserve it, you will unknowingly and unconsciously sabotage your progress. Or you will
get something and then mysteriously lose it again.
So, even if you have a strong desire for achieving a goal, on some level, you will also simultaneously try
to avoid getting that goal, if you don’t feel you deserve it.
Do you truly believe that you deserve to be successful in every area of your life, including emotional
success? If you do, then you can be successful. If you don’t, you need to figure out what is blocking you
and why. Chances are there are some deep seated messages that you are listening to that you picked up
somewhere, maybe in childhood, maybe from past experiences, but they are holding you back. You owe
it to yourself to figure out what these are and where they came from so you can challenge them and
move forward and away from being depressed.
There is really no way around this. You have to believe that you deserve it. When you start to believe
that you deserve it, you begin to open yourself up to receiving what is rightfully yours.
The truth is that we all deserve the very best we can have in life. No one deserves more than you or less
than you. The only difference is what they believe they deserve.
Beliefs are very powerful indeed. They are what drive your thoughts, habits, actions, and consequently
your life.
There is enough happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, good partners and joy to go around for everyone,
including you. The sooner you start believing this, the sooner you’ll be on your way to emotional
success.
In Conclusion
These are just ten of the things or “secrets” that I know to be true about ridding yourself of the terrible
waste of your life that is depression. Depression is not a mystery and once everything is studied and a
plan is made it is very doable to eradicate it from your life.
I think many clients don’t get well because it seems like such hard work or it is miserable to go and
rehash all the terrible episodes from their life. They leave feeling worse than when they arrived! I don’t
think this is the key to emotional success any more than it would be the key to career success. I think it
is necessary only to look into the past to figure out what is wrong now and fix it.
If you step on something sharp, you might relay to the doctor treating you that you stepped on the
object barefoot on the beach in Florida two weeks ago and now you have considerable pain. This is
enough information for the doctor to analyze whether there is now infection, what types of infection
are common in Florida, and whether you now need surgery, antibiotics or just stitches.
So get your correct mindset in place because now it’s all about doing it.
Unfortunately two thirds of the people who read this will not take action, don’t allow yourself to fall into
this group.
Don’t cheat yourself out of the quality of life you deserve! Don’t cheat your loved ones out of the kind of
life you can design that allows them to see the real you, fulfilled and happy. Learn these skills and then
model them for your children so that they do not struggle with depression as you have.
Emotional success and personal fulfillment are waiting for you. They can be yours. But they won’t just
come to you, you have to go out and get them.
You may decide you want our help, just contact us at http://www.psychskills.com and see if our
program is right for you. It is offered at different levels, we have individual as well as group coaching
available and there is a risk free guarantee of a full refund if you are not satisfied.
Feel Good For Life!
Audrey Sherman, Ph.D.