Neil

Just count the number of times you think “should” or “shouldn’t” within a ten-minute period, and you will have a good estimate of your degree of depression. Most likely you will experience a sense of burden, victimhood, and failure.

taught him how to catch the early signs of depression about lost opportunities, reminding himself to say, “Yes, they’re in the past. Too bad; nothing I can do now about that. But what can I do now?” He then practiced rapidly turning his attention toward one, small corrective step he could take in the present moment. Don also learned to turn the stuck energy and worry about future “should’s” into constructive effort by asking himself, “When is the next time I can start working toward that goal?”

Watching those men who showed ambivalence on leaving the plane and hearing their bodies thump against the bulkhead helped me make my first choice: “I’m not leaving the plane that way,” I said to myself. That’s when I discovered the power of choice—a third place that is neither “have to” or “want to.” That discovery freed me to move forward to make two other choices: 1) I’m not going to be kicked out of this plane; and 2) If I’m going to leave this plane, it will be under my own power.