This was really an epiphany for me: that URGENT doesn't necessarily mean IMPORTANT. In "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People," Stephen Covey explains:
The two factors that define an activity are URGENT and IMPORTANT. URGENT means it requires immediate attention. It's "Now!" Urgent things act on us. A ringing phone is urgent. Most people can't stand the thought of just allowing the phone to ring.
You could spend hours preparing materials, you could get all dressed up and travel to a person's office to discuss a particular issue, but if the phone were to ring while you were there, it would generally take precedence over your personal visit.
If you were to phone someone, there aren't many people who would say, "I'll get to you in 15 minutes; just hold." But those same people would probably let you wait in an office for at least that long while they completed a telephone conversation with someone else.
Urgent matters are usually visible. They press on us; they insist on action. They're often popular with others. They're usually right in front of us. And often they are pleasant, easy, fun to do. But so often they are unimportant!
IMPORTANCE, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, your high priority goals.
We REACT to urgent matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more proactivity. We must ACT to seize opportunity, to make things happen. If we don't practice Habit 2 (Begin with the End in Mind), if we don't have a clear idea of what is important, of the results we desire in our lives, we are easily diverted into responding to the urgent.
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I resent all depression being called depression. Sometimes a person can be sad because of the valleys we find in life. Sometimes we can't avoid those pits. Wouldn't one expect a friend to be 'low' when life is throwing the book at them. Excellence in training and recovery is when a person realizes that just praying and trying on one's own is not enough, and that one must trust a physician and ask for help.
Even when, that help is going to nearly dull their senses for part of each day, until the body can tolerate the medication a doctor will give. It is just like when my blood pressure meds need to be increased again, and it takes awhile for them to kick in and the body to tolerate them. Again, I may be paranoid, but sometimes the sob's are out to get you.
"Your Name", I'm in full agreement. The word "depression" has a wide range of meaning, from a momentary funk to the long-term deep pit of despair and pain that results from major depressive disorder.
We're not going to be able to change that, but we CAN qualify the term so people understand this isn't a short-term situational funk. I generally use expressions like "major depression", "clinical depression", or "medical-grade depression" to describe that aspect of my illness.
I even describe the difference. Maybe you can relate to this feeling. Remember the "Li'l Abner" comic strip? One of the characters was a little guy with a crooked black hat. He had a small thundercloud constantly hovering over his head that shot out lighting bolts and rained on the fellow. Major depression is like that, except that the thundercloud is IN one's head. In my experience, that illustration seems to be helpful with people who are open to understanding what's going on.
Until I got on medication that really helped, I lived like that. I still have other effects of depression, but PTL, I no longer live with the curse of that cloud.
Just for the record, there is another step between prayer and toughing it out vs. medication (and at all steps, the other things can make a difference); that's psychotherapy using cognitive therapy, such as described in Dr. David Burns' "Feeling Good:The New Mood Therapy". The principle described is that we have a constant conversation with ourselves, and by allowing certain kinds of thinking to have their way, the brain's ability to regulate mood is diminished, allowing the "stinking thinking" to get a greater toehold, and there's a downward spiral. In cognitive therapy, one learns to "talk back" to that internal conversation, which starts an upward spiral. Some folks are able to come back out of depression without medication in that way; same principle as medication, boosting the neurotransmitters that regulate mood. I've used that with limited success myself, and it REALLY comes in handy if I'm in a really bad funk (which still happens from time to time). Helps a lot to maintain until my brain cycles out of the funk. I'm including a link to the book's page at Amazon.com to this post. I recommend it highly. Hope this helps somebody.
It's only paranoia if it is NOT true. :-D
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