If you had to choose between natural and unnatural, which one would you pick?
How to cure depression naturally at Live On Purpose TV.
Depression is such a
common thing that many of us deal with and really, it's not always a disorder,
sometimes it's just a typical human experience but we need to know how to
handle that and a lot of people have asked me, how do I take care of this in a
more natural way? You know, they're not extremely excited about
getting on medication or even signing up for therapy. There's a lot of things that
you can do as you understand what depression is and then what you can do
about it. Let's start with the two basic things that we need to look at. The first
thing is, we want to take care of the brain. It's your brain that is the major
control center over everything so proper brain maintenance is something that we
want to take care of. Now I talked about this in an earlier video that you can
link to right up here about how to take care of your brain. Let's do a quick
recap here. It's basically a maintenance plan so think about maintenance on your
car for example, this is what you do to maintain the vehicle so that you don't
have to run into costly repairs. Same kind of an idea with our brain, we're
going to take care of the equipment so that it can take care of us. There are
four basic components to brain maintenance. First, get enough sleep. Sleep
is so important. We've had other videos about that that you can search here on
this channel. Sleep is so important to take care of your brain functioning and
the research shows that you want to get depending on who you are and what your
circumstances are on the average 6 to 10 hours per night of good restful sleep so
take care of your sleep. Second, get regular exercise. I've mentioned this
many times that when exercise and medication
are put up against each other in the clinical trials, exercise wins almost
every time, it's huge for taking care of your brain. I was having a conversation
with Vicky, my wife, not too long ago and she was talking to one of her friends,
this friend mentioned that she exercises, I think it was four or five times a week
and Vicki says, "Oh, that must keep you in really great shape." And this friend
responded, "Well, yes but that's not why I do it.
It's mood management." So this has definite benefits for other parts of
your body but remember, your brain is part of your body and it's a big energy
hog too, it consumes more energy than any other organ in your body. We got to take
care of it and give it the exercise and that leads right to the next thing too
and that's the fuel. Eat a balanced, healthy diet. Now I'm not a nutritionist,
I'm not here to advise you about that but it's been shown time and time again
in the research that you have to have the right kind of fuel running through
your body in order to operate at peak efficiency, that is true for the most
vital organ of your body, your brain. So pay attention to the diet. Is this
surprising anybody? We've got sleep, exercise and diet so far. The fourth one
sometimes surprises people and that is meditation. Meditation or mindfulness or
quieting your mind a little bit to connect with and clear your mind,
meditation or some practice related to that, prayer, yoga, mindfulness. Okay, so you
got it? Four steps for brain maintenance. Now let's move on to the mind part.
I like to make a distinction between brain and mind because your brain is part of
your body and we're going to take care of it physiologically. Your mind is the
psychological part, okay, it's you, it's the agent, it's the observer, it's the
part that does the thinking and the evaluating. Understanding how we think
is a really important part of this whole process, we put out several videos about
that. I want to hit a specific aspect of that today for you that I call paradigm.
Now paradigm is your worldview so if you think about it like this pair of glasses,
paradigm is your worldview, the way you see the world so I'll use this pair of
glasses to demonstrate what we're talking about. When you put on a pair of
glasses, everything that you see is altered by the lenses that you're
wearing. I ask people all the time, why you wear in those glasses? Just to kind
of get this idea going, well so I can see, come on, you can see without them. I know
but I like the way I see better with them. Right, so you can see without
glasses but it changes the way your eyes pick up the signal and you prefer that
because you can see better with them, you see where I'm coming from? What if I gave
you a pair of glasses that were colored green? What does the world look like to
you? It's like you're living in the Emerald City, the lawn looks awesome,
your family not so much. Now is the world really green? No, it just looks green to
you because if the lenses that you're wearing. What if I switch those out for
you and you get a nice rose-colored pair of glasses? See how the world just
changed? Well did it? The world didn't change but the way you see it changes
drastically depending on the lenses that you're viewing it through. This is what
paradigm is all about and instead of eyesight, it's really my insight, it's the
way you see the world, it's the way you understand your world. Think of it as a
pair of lenses through which you view everything and it comes down to really
two distinct paradigms. So let's talk about those two paradigms and how they
compare to each other. I've titled these two paradigms, noxious negativity
or pathological positivity, which is the title of my book and I've taken some
flak for that title because the word pathological in psychological lingo, it
means disorder, disconnected from reality, crazy and it sounds a little crazy to
consider what I'm proposing here but just stay with me a minute.
Negativity, positivity, I used to call this the victim and the agent. Now I'm
not talking about a victim of crime or a victim of abuse, I'm talking about a
victim pair of eyeglasses a victim way of seeing the world as opposed to the
agent. Now I could have used the word hero or some other awesome word like
that, I picked agent because it implies agency
or our ability to choose and determine our course. In the victim paradigm, we get
into blaming mode so when we're in victim mode, we're like, it's not my fault
and then we find some favorite target to hang it on. You hear this all the time if
you watch the news, it seems like the most important question is, who's to
blame? We find people blaming the government, we find people blaming the
president for things I'm sure he's not even capable of, they blame their parents,
they blame that nasty person who abused them in the past, they blame the economy,
they blame God, they blame the devil for the same things interestingly enough but
it's all about shifting that blame whereas on the agent side of things, we
have responsibility. Now I've broken that into two words, I did that on purpose
because it's your ability to respond to what's going on, you don't always get to
pick what's going on but you always get to choose your response. Have you ever
done this where you're out driving and you get kind of lost in your thoughts
and you go right past your exit? I almost hate to admit this, I've done
this twice now at the same place. I was going to see a client that lives in
St. George Utah, southern Utah and I'm just driving along and listening to a podcast
or something and I get lost in my thoughts, I knew I had missed my exit,
when I saw the big colourful sign, Arizona welcomes you. I'm like, crap,
Arizona? This isn't where I wanted to be. Nothing against Arizona, love the state.
But this isn't where I wanted to be, not what I had in mind and how often does that
show up in life where we look around and we're like, oh, this isn't what I had in
mind and then I look down and guess whose hands I see on my steering wheel?
Yeah, they're mine. See that bites a little bit to realize, hey, I'm here
because I drove here but you know what? The bad news is also the good news
because if I drove here, if my hands are on the wheel, what can I do now? Right,
turn it around, steer it, take it somewhere. Victims can't do that, their
hands aren't on the wheel, they're too busy blaming someone else so the bad
news is also the good news.The victim paradigm is about I can't. I can't and I
know I can't and I can give you 15 reasons why. Whereas in the agent
paradigm and a paradigm of positivity, it's about how can I, what's it going to
take, this is like a power switch on your brain, it's got two positions on or off.
If you say I can't, what's the next step? There is no next step, that's the whole
point, we're going to shut her down. When you say how can I, you've just given
yourself a whole world of opportunity to figure out how there's always a next
step. In negativity mode, we're focused on scarcity. In a world of scarcity, there's
never enough, there's not enough time, love, money, attention, it starts first
thing in the morning.. Oh I didn't get enough sleep last night. Do you see
how we slip into scarcity? As opposed to abundance which is where the positive
agent paradigm is, there's enough and to spare, there's plenty, breathe it, share it.
In the victim paradigm, it's all about "why me?" kind of in a whiny voice, right?
We call these whiners or why babies. Why me? Why now? Why this? Well, I'm a good person,
why me? As opposed to the agent question, why not me? Am I not just as qualified as
anybody else to take this on? See how empowering that is? And they are
both legitimate questions. Pick one, the victim mode is all about being a
consumer. Now we're all consumers, we're mortal human beings, we have to consume
but what I'm talking about here is a consumer paradigm, a consumer mindset
where I eat up or devour or consume more than I bring to the table. You can tell
when you're around a consumer because it creates this sucking sound and you leave
an interaction with a victim feeling drained, number one answer, because of all
that consumption, as opposed to the agent paradigm which is all about a producer
mindset. In this paradigm, we create or make or produce more than we take away
and you can tell when you're around a producer because you always feel
enriched or enhanced in some way and so does the producer, by the way, because
it's a cumulative effect. In victim mode, we're always waiting for a rescue.
Someone will rescue me. I did an interview years ago on my podcast with
Mary Louise Zeller, some of you might know her,
she's this amazing inspiring woman who in her mid seventies is a sixth degree
black belt in Taekwondo, she's got this amazing inspiring story,
she shared with me as we were visiting, she said, "Paul, the troops aren't coming."
And then she paused for a moment to let that sink in and she followed it up with,
"We are the troops." Wow, what a flash of insight that was for
me because at the time, I was struggling with some things that I was hoping
someone would rescue me from. What if I were still waiting for the rescue?
I'd be hunched up in some corner somewhere maybe in fetal position, it's
not going to happen, the troops aren't coming,
we are the troops and that's the agent side of this thing. I'll do whatever it
takes. I've got this. Now we're going to drop to
the bottom line because all of this description of these two paradigms leads
to one outcome for both paradigms. On the victims side, when we get into victim
mode, we create captivity captivity and think about what that means for
depression or mental health, okay. Captivity sometimes sounds like,
I'm stuck but it can range through the extreme of, I'm incarcerated. I've had the
opportunity and privilege three times in the last year to speak for an audience
of inmates. They're in captivity and without exception, captivity is created
by some form of victim paradigm that leads to behaviors that create captivity.
Go do the research and see what you find on this. As opposed to the agent paradigm,
a paradigm of pathological positivity that creates liberty which in my mind is
synonymous with freedom because now we are creating opportunities and chances
and possibilities that didn't this before and we did it through the
power of our own mind. Can you do something about depression? Absolutely.
Take care of your brain and then choose a paradigm that serves you well.
Let's see what that does toward increasing your mental health.
So you're tracking those two modes down, victim mode, agent mode. Powerful in
curing depression naturally. You might want to share this with someone.