Choose to Choose!

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to ourselves. ~Montaigne


What I believe now (that I didn't use to believe) is that we choose to be who we are. We choose to feel the way we feel, we see life the way we choose to see life, we react to life events the way we choose to react. We may have had a lousy childhood, we may even have a genetic proneness to depression, we may have suffered profound losses, and illnesses, but we are not condemned to live in a NOW created by our THEN.

This idea is sometimes difficult to accept. I had difficulty accepting it. The physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the substance abuse were inflicted upon me, I would think, so that’s why I’m messed up, and because I can’t change my abusive history I am condemned to before-ever a damaged being. We might think we are condemned to the life our past created for us, but the truth is, we are depressed because we choose to be depressed.

. . . we easily get stuck in . . . believing. . . that the way we've framed everything in our thoughts is how things actually are. ~Steve Hagen


Now I’ve been a behaviorist ever since studying B. F. Skinner back in college. I believe we do what we get paid to do. I believe there is always some reward attached to our behaviors. Unfortunately, sometimes we settle for less than we could’ve gotten. We eat a can of dog food when a Porterhouse steak was available. What I’m saying is that if I am depressed it’s because I have picked to be depressed and I picked it, because I was getting paid for that depression behavior.


This may be difficult for you to accept.

“I’m miserable. Why would I pick to be depressed? And as far as payoffs go, I assure you there are not benefits from being depressed.”

I once thought this, but then it occurred to me that when I had a major depressive episode I got sympathy (pity) from my wife and friends, and people stopped putting stressful demands on me. These benefits from depression may not seem like much, and certainly there are better benefits available, but when this kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ was going on in my brain, I had a crisis of imagination. I settled for the first benefits I came across and never imagined that there might be something better available to me if I just made different choices.


When you are depressed it certainly feels like you are the victim, but the truth is that the depressed person is the perpetrator. Each one of us is the architect of our attitudes, experiences, and moods. Depression is a cage we design and build for ourselves. We lock ourselves into our own prison of despair and then rattle the bars with a tin cup bemoaning the fact that we have been condemned to this depressive misery, when the key that sets us free rests in our shirt pocket.


Getting free from the prison of despondency does not require years, months or weeks of work. Find the key to freedom and happiness, use the key, and step into the freedom you deserve.

Yes, it may be valuable for some to explore the past to see why we react the way we react, but the goal of such reflection is not to pile your hurts up in one place and then wallow in them. There is only one reason to examine the abuses and losses of your past, and that is to recognize what triggers reactions and to opt to not react.

Happy people live informed, intentional lives, making happy choices.

Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves. ~Pema Chodron

The Prayer of Confession in the Book of Common prayer has the petitioner asking to be forgiven for our thoughts, words, and deeds.


What we think determines what we say. What we say directs our deeds. If you are depressed it’s not because you’re bad, it’s not because your daddy beat you with a belt, depression grows out of our thoughts, words, and deeds. I do not call these thoughts words, and deeds sins. I don’t even think they are wrong, or bad. I think that if we are depressed it’s because of how we think, what we say to ourselves, and the actions we take. If you choose to continue being depressed that’s your choice, go forth and be miserable. If you’re tired of being down in the dumps, if you’re weary of the great gray funk, if you are ready to stop hating yourself and, instead, to experience joy, peace, and love then you can choose different thoughts, choose different words, and take different deeds.


Are there people so severely damaged by their abusive upbringing that they are hopelessly trapped by their past? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I do think that there are mental illnesses that make making different positive choices more difficult. Just because a choice is there doesn’t mean it will always be exercised. I would never pretend that depression will be eliminated from all mankind. Depression will always exist within mankind, but it doesn’t have to exist within you, or within me.


I have two definitions important to mention here: SAD and DEPRESSED. There first is SAD. You can be sad and not be depressed. I say that because when I use the word I mean that a person is appropriately down, blue, saddened by some loss, or disappointment. The key here is appropriate. The degree of one’s sadness fits with the level of loss one has experienced. If you have a flat tire, you can be sad about it, but just a little. Its a pain in the sistabottarinktum, but it’s not all that bad, so the level of your sadness is not all that much. If you just bought a new car and it catches fire and burns up, then it is appropriate that you be sadder than you were for the flat. If someone you love died in the car fire, then it would be appropriate to be inconsolable for a time, to shed tears, pound on the table, and perhaps even curse god, but even with this horrible loss one would not expect a person to stay in that initial shocked howling grief for months.


Depression, on the other hand is a sort of sadness on methamphetamines, a horrible despair that is far too excessive when you examine what has triggered the episode of despondency. If someone breaks a date with you and you lay on your bed and wish you were dead, that response is not proportionately appropriate when you consider the rather minor trigger


Believe that better choices exist, look for them, and choose them. Never accept the lie that you are too damaged to ever get better. Do not accept that you are too old to change. It has been proven by The Dog Whisperer that old dogs can learn new tricks. There is no dysfunction so great that it renders you helpless to choose happiness. If you’re depressed you may not realize it, but you are stronger than you think you are, you have a greater capacity than you imagine, and you can change your life much faster than you could ever envisage.

ME: Do choices exist? Always? Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way.

THE OTHER ME: You’ve been around long enough now to’ve figured out that feelings are not facts. feelings are just the body responding to the chemicals that were released from glands that got triggered by your thinking.

ME: All I have to make decisions is my perception. I have to trust what I see, think, and then react, then make my choices.

THE OTHER ME: You remember that time you drove to Sebring, Florida and when you got there you knew you’d passed through Avon Park, but you don’t remember it, remember that?

ME: Yeah, but that’s because I was so use to driving down there that I didn’t have to think that much about driving. I was on sort of an automatic pilot. I was thinking of other things. My mind was a million miles away.

THE OTHER ME: Well life is like that. Sometimes we go through life and don’t see things that are around us all the time, because our minds are a million miles away dealing with other stuff. There were dozens of things that you would’ve noticed IF you’d been focused on what you were doing. We always have options. There are always choices we could make if we could only see them, but we don’t see them because too often we go through life on automatic pilot.