Aromatherapy to soothe your jangled nerves

Ellie over at Living with it has written a two part series on Aromatherapy that’s well worth checking out.

For instance, did you know that the Bergamot oil in Earl Grey tea can help stabilise emotions and give you the power to lift your mood? Amazing stuff.

Part one
Part two

Have Little Faith in Me

When the road gets dark
and you can no longer see
just let my love throw a spark
and have a little faith in me.

When your secret heart
cannot speak so easily
come here . . . from a whispering start
have a little faith in me

when your back’s against the wall
just turn around and you will see
I’ll be there to catch your fall
have a little faith in me

I will hold you up
because your love gives me strength

The Best Of John Hiatt, Have a Little Faith in Me

Quotes: how to judge yourself

“You can either hold yourself up to the unrealistic standards of others, or ignore them and concentrate on being happy with yourself as you are.”
- J. Jacques

Depression and goals

You know a lot of people think setting goals is bad for people with depression. You, they say, already feel down, and failing at a goal will just make you feel worse. Are they right? Hell no!

Setting realistic goals can be one of the most helpful things you can do to help your depression, and we’ll talk about that later. Right now, let’s concentrate on something a lot of people have some trouble with: how to measure your progress as you succeed in life and achieve your goals.

What do you want, and how will know when you’ve got it?

This is one of the most important questions in all goal-setting, and one of the most powerful in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming). Humans are goal-seeking creatures, our brains are designed to picture a goal and then to achieve that goal. How do you do this?

Go to a quiet place, a place that you feel safe in. Clear your mind. Ask yourself “what do I want?” Listen to what you body tells you, what your unconscious says you really want - you may be surprised, or perhaps not. I don’t know. Just listen to your inner-self.

Now you know what you want, ask “how will I know when I’ve got it?” Picture yourself archiving your goal in as much or as little details as you wish. You are in control. Your life can be like this. What do you feel, smell, hear, taste, touch, see?

Now you know what your life will be like, you can start, now, to achieve this goal.

Measuring progress

You know something a lot of people with low self-esteem or depression do is to measure where you are right now against your end goal, a goal which might be years in the future. As you see how far you have to go it’s natural, isn’t it, to feel down at the thought of how long the journey ahead is. This is not helpful.

It is important to know where you are going, but to accurately measure your progress you have to look at how far you have been: how much you have achieved. When you look back at how far you have come in the last month, year, 5 years or even just this week you will feel great about what you have achieved.

Using past successes

If you have a new goal that you’ve only just started to achieve then think of something that you can do now really well, maybe driving a car or using a web browser, and then think back to a time when you were just starting to learn. Now take the memory of the past and compare what you see, feel, what you hear and touch, smell and even taste now you can do it. Take this feeling of achievement and use the energy to get yourself started achieving your dreams.

Let me know the goal you are going to start working on today in the comments.

A journey begins with a single step

Every journey you take has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most actually have way more steps than this - have you ever gone on holiday without packing? I doubt it - but 3 steps is easy to understand, so we’ll start here.

Beginning

This is where we are now. You might be feeling just a little blue, maybe work has you under a lot of stress or a relationship is going sour. Pull up a chair. Maybe you’re suffering with a more serious condition like Seasonal Affective Disorder, Manic Depression (Bi-polar) or even Clinical Depression. Perhaps you just need someone to talk to and a few pointers to get you back on track. I don’t know, talk to me; I’m here.

Middle

The middle is how we move forward. It’s the car, the boat, the train, the tools; the hope. I’d like us to take this journey together. Let’s start now.

End

Depression never ends. There will always be times when you are sad or actually seriously poorly. Sometimes you will need help, other times using the tools and techniques we will learn together you can solve your problems and get on with your life.