Fighting Depression part 4 (Patience and stress)

This theory is my fourth post on fighting depression. I much like anyone else do not know how to defeat depression but I do know things that can help keep me out of it. Patience: The Tao Te Ching is 5000 year old Chinese literature written by Lao Tzu. I have read two different translations of it. It has philosophies in it that are very deep and some of them are hard to grasp. Still it is a great read. It has only 81 chapters and all of them are only 1 page long however if you read it in 30 minutes then you didn't really read it. The translated versions of it have the author’s thoughts on how to translate the chapters but I would recommend coming up with your own as it relates to your own experience. It is the main book I live my life by. I do also like the Bible and many of its stories the same as I like the AA book for its stories and inspiration. One of my favorite statements in the book Tao Te Ching I read was "Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?" There are many different ways to interpret this but I will give you mine as it pertains to what I am about to talk about. First it pertains to me because of my mood swings of bipolar. I often have to tell myself when I am depressed not to brood on it but let it pass naturally. That is waiting for the mud to settle in my foggy mind so that I can see the world clear and beautiful again. Another way of looking at is imagine you are trying to find something in a shallow creek. Maybe it was your watch that you dropped as you were walking through the creek stirring up mud. You freak out because you cannot see through the mud to find your watch so you start combing the creek bottom in the hope that you would feel it. Eventually you may find it. If you had waited for the mud to settle it may have took just as long to find it but in this world of instant gratification it is much more of a habit to freak out and panic then to stop and think. Which way of looking for the watch do you think would be the most beneficial cognitively? Another story that I like to think about took place at a McDonald's a few months back. I ran into one of my old military friends standing in line. He was the next in line and I was directly behind him. I said hi with a smile and we began to talk. We talked for maybe a minute and a half before he stopped me mid- sentence and yelled out "Doesn't anybody work here?" I thought it was funny because he was taking the quickest route to get a meal by going to a fast food restaurant but somehow it still wasn't quick enough. In my head it was funny but to the people working there which heard him scream it was likely insulting. That was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen. I practice patience every day. One of the main things people are guilty of doing that shows there impatience can be easily seen in the way they communicate. I am sure everyone has noticed when talking to a certain person that they are not listening at all. If you don't you will after you read this. If you pay close attention to the feedback you get from those you talk to you will learn a lot. If they say something totally unrelated to what you were talking about they were likely just waiting for their turn to talk. They dismiss what you said because they were waiting for you to stop so that they could tell you what they were thinking the whole time you were talking which they consider more important than anything you said. This shows a lack of patience. If I am going to walk somewhere and I have time I will take the longest route that I can. This is one way I practice patience. I don't listen to the voice in my head that is telling me to take the short route. I will talk about the voice in your head later when I talk about fear. Society is getting worse about patience because at this point in time it is easy to get what you want quick. I learned about instant gratification for the first time at an orientation for a job I had just gotten. The man leading it said that the job was difficult for most young people because they were programmed to get what they want instantly. He said that when working a job you have to work all week to get the reward of a paycheck. You have to work for months or years to get the reward of a promotion. He related this to video games. He said that when a person is playing a game they are rewarded multiple times a second. You push a button and you kill a bad guy. You kill a bunch of bad guys and you go to the next level. You go through all the levels and you beat the game and trade it for another one then start all over again. Nowadays if you want to talk to someone you take out your cellphone and call them. If they have a cellphone they will answer. Within seconds after taking the cellphone out of your pocket you are connected to a friend or family member. You can also look through your contacts and call someone without having to memorize the number. For those of you who remember "back in the day" you had to try to catch someone at home before you could talk to them and calling anywhere outside of your county or city costed extra money. Phone conversations were more enjoyable and lasted longer because you didn't know when both of you would have the time to sit in the house and talk. With the invention of wireless house phones you could at least walk around the house and clean but you couldn't venture far away from the receiver because it would cut off. I could go on and on with examples like this but I will just list a few for you to think about: Record player/tape player/cd player/walkman vs Ipod Playing sports on a game vs playing sports VHS vs DVR Multiple stores for merchandise and food vs Walmart Writing vs typing I think you get the idea. Practicing patience will help to keep away stress.

2014-10-30 11:55:28

Amy