Power of thought

Sometimes people who make you think cross your path.
Which has happened just lately, and his latest blog entry made me think about something. The power of your mind and how your way of thinking affects to your life. Negative vs. Positive.

As I may have mentioned I suffered from chronic, rather severe depression in my previous life. Most people would have explained it with all the bad things which have happened in my life and think that that depression was completely normal consequence.
Allow me to disagree a bit. I admit that when my depression begun it had a reason, small child has no tools to understand adult world and my depression was normal reaction for stress. (I was extremely good at hiding it, which may also prove my mental strength.) And admittedly I had several major stress factors in my life when it started and while it lasted.

I remember those times, and I remember the weight of my past. I remember how much it weighed on my whole being, on my heart, soul and mind. I also remember how no depression drug seemed to work on me...
Then I take my current self and look at her past. She has bucket loads of maneur in there, pain, darkness... but this person has no need for depression medication. She is able to look at the darkest parts of her past with no pain or distress.

I am she. She is I. And I know what made the difference.

Some years ago I realised that my past is just what it is, past, and I can't change it. I realised that it has caused me pain, but I am the one who allows it to ruin my life. I asked myself what are my options and I had only two: either to die or to teach myself to accept things as they are, let my dear pain go and learn to love myself. Let my past be what it is: past. Which meant learning to think positive sides of everything, living for today and for the future, not for the past.
As you may deduce I chose to live (I don't believe in suicide and I have never been suicidal (which actually baffled few shrinks)) and learn to accept. I chose future. And on the way I have learnt that nothing is as bad as it looks like and tomorrow is usually better day even if today it sleets.

My way has taught me my value, it made me make some difficult decisions (divorce), it has meant leaving most people from my past behind because they couldn't accept that I grew and they could not accept what I became because I became different than they are or different from what they wanted me to be.

You may understand by now why I sometimes refer to my previous life. It was my previous life in sense of being alive. This life is one worth living.