Healing Depression for Life by Gregory L. Jantz Ph.D. & Keith Wall

Author:Gregory L. Jantz Ph.D. & Keith Wall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SELF-HELP / Mood Disorders / Depression, SELF-HELP / Emotions
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

Cultivate Gratitude

Simply put, gratitude fosters optimism, which strengthens hope. That’s why it’s hard to imagine a more effective soul medicine than gratitude. Medieval Christian philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” The list of things we can and should be thankful for, even in our darkest moments, is practically inexhaustible.

Sometimes severe depression makes it hard to muster gratitude for the big things like being alive or the loved ones in your life. So start with the little ones. Anyone can come up with those—the more whimsical, the better.

For example, I’m grateful for ice cream and for the inspired genius who invented it. I’m glad that freshly mowed grass is part of my world on summer evenings, how it smells and how it feels on bare feet. How about you?

Try saying thank you—out loud and with gusto—for teriyaki sauce or butterflies or kites or Mozart . . . anything that has ever made you smile. Say thank you for hot showers and soft towels. Roller coasters. Baseball. Elvis Presley. Fireworks. Tulips poking out of the dirt. A child’s unrestrained giggle. That magic moment when the lights go down in the movie theater.

I’m grateful for warm socks on a cold, rainy morning. And I’m not alone. Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote “Ode to My Socks,” which concludes with these marvelous lines:

The moral

of my ode is this:

beauty is twice

beauty

and what is good is doubly

good

when it is a matter of two socks

made of wool

in winter.[1]

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