“Focus on the Possibilities for Success, Not on the Potential for Failure.”

Napoleon Hill said that.

A year has almost passed since I walked into the emergency room and was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.

I was so numb, that it was months before what that meant sunk in. Even now, while the diagnosis makes sense, I am still learning coping skills and tools to live a balanced life with depression. Recently, I have begun to look at where I am looking.

My expectations for the day frame the events of the day.

I can control this! Yet very often, I allow my mind to decide how I am going to feel that day. I do not ask better questions and challenge this, I often just roll with it. This means I am allowing depression or a pulled muscle, or a fitful sleep to determine how the following day will play out.

Not taking control of the one thing I can control is disheartening.

I can do better. I can advocate for myself, with myself. I can decide where I want to focus my attention and how I want to frame my day. I CAN CONTROL THIS. Controlling this is what all the tools I have learned are about. Seeing unhelpful thinking gives me an understanding of how depression wants to have me keep secrets, to dwell on past mistakes and failures.

I spent so many years’ time-traveling into the past to live with my failures, I am still learning how to live in the moment.

And my time traveling into the future to play out all the potential “failures” I might have, kept me preoccupied for years. And depression supported both activities. Depression was ecstatic when I would time travel and stay away from the present moment. This made depression very happy. And the more I time-traveled, the more depression added other things for me to worry about.

Depression is the master of potential failure.

It does not even have to come to pass. I have worried, stressed, and lost sleep over things that have never happened. Score one for depression. For over 43 years, it has presented potential failures and I have gobbled them up.

So where does that leave me?

I will continue to journal, to post these publicly in my blog. But I want to focus on the positive, the successes we can have, even with depression.

Just writing about how depressed I have been is very depressing.

I am not sure that reading about my bad days is helpful to others. Yet, some of my most heartfelt comments have been about entries I wrote where I have shared my most personal feelings about depression. So, I do not want to give that up.

So, my goal moving forward is to be more positive, using the whole law of attraction thing.

Napoleon Hill said many years ago that many people he worked with had to be made “success conscious” before they could be successful. Their days were not framed in a positive light. They didn’t understand how to use a positive attitude to attract positive results.

By thinking about “avoiding the potential for failure,” they were attracting failure.

By becoming success conscious, one can attract more positive energy and positive events. This is where I want to spend my energy in the coming months and years.

Focusing on the possibilities for success is how I will live a balanced life with depression.

My concealed depression is written under the alias “Depression is not my boss.” I have certifications in SMART Recovery and am a Global Career Development Facilitator.

Last year, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.