The feeling of depression draws this image in my mind: you are at the bottom of a well. It is dark, musty, dirty and there is no way out. The only way is to claw your way out. Fingernails dig into the wet slimy bricks barely able to get a grip. You find some sort of divet in the stone to dig your toes into to hold onto and push your way out of this dark, life sucking feeling. Finally reaching the top of the well you take a deep breath, a sye of relief that you made it, yet again to the top of the well. Looking back anticipating the next time you will be knocked on your ass and plummet back down to the bottom of your personal hell once again. Will it be in 10 minutes? Maybe the relief will be an entire day! Maybe it will last longer than last time.

And then it happens, falling, falling. Sometimes the fall is slow and mesmerizing, asking yourself “am I really slipping back down?” And sometimes it’s as if someone came up to you at the side of the well and ripped your grasp off the wall and threw you down with such force you didn’t see it coming. Either way, you are back to the all too familiar dark, gloomy, dirty personal hell. And the journey begins again. Clawing at the walls, grasping for some sense of another reality, a better reality.

Read: Back to Basics, Depression 101

All the attention is about the wall and escaping this pain and anguish. As you claw your way out of the hole, your attention is on the fear of returning. So you overlook the bright glowing sunshine that is warming the brick at the top of the well. The warmth you feel on your cheek is the sun nourishing your skin, giving you life. But you don’t see it, you barely recognize the comforting feeling. You are only seeing the hole that you will soon return to. Inevitably, because that is the way it has been for you. Why would you expect something different? Why?

I ask, Why not? Why not reach for the sun instead of clawing your way out of the deep dark hole? Why not breath in the rays of the sun and bask in its nourishing warmth for just a moment? Why not put a smile on your face and say “this feels good and I deserve it!”? Why not want something else?

Why not say “I want something different for my life”? Maybe you don’t know what that looks like but who cares! You know what you don’t want, right?

I present to you some really hard questions to ask yourself (honesty is key!)

Do you deserve to be happy?

Do you believe in yourself to make a change no matter what?

Do you have a choice about how you feel, think, and act in your life or are you a victim in all circumstances?

Will you choose to live outside of the label of “depression” or “anxious” or “stressed”?

Are you ready to acknowledge how you have defined your existence?

If you want to achieve a positive powerful change in your life, then YES would be the answer! Shout it! Claim it! It’s your life, WHY NOT!

We all have a personal hell. Some of our wells our shallow, and some go so deep that the bottom is never ending. But everyone’s well is similar – they have walls that we have all climbed out of more than once, and they all have a bright shiny, glowing, life filling sunshine ready to give us all the energy we need to put that smile on our face and bask in our glory.

I was with a client the other day and while she was wrapped in her anger of being depressed, and fed up, and hopeless, and worthless, I was stuck in my “how do I show her the light? How do I help her see the answer?”

It wasn’t until the next day I remembered one of my most powerful mantras “ I am right where I need to be”. It occurred to me that I needed to let her be angry, and that she needed to be angry, and had every right to be angry. We tend to shy away from anger as if it’s bad or a poisonous feeling. And what I realized was that it could be her anger that creates the momentum for change! It could be. Why Not! When we resist the pain, it persists. She was not in resistance. It was as if she was staring it straight in the eye saying, “ I don’t like you, you don’t serve me any more.” With that, though, came her helplessness. But from it can come her power! To see that she can use that emotion to propel her into something different.

It’s your time to choose, it’s your time to shine. You are here for a reason. You have two choices; to be the conscious creator in your life, or to walk blindly through experiences feeling like a victim.

You can choose your brilliance!

WHY NOT!!!!