A Beautiful Mind

Today I want to reference the movie that Russell Crowe was in a few years ago called “A Beautiful Mind.” It’s about a brilliant man who drives himself, overworks himself, and spends most of his life working alone. Then one day he discovers that some of the people in his life were not real. They were just part of his mind.

In my own life I do a lot of work – like writing – on my own. While the character had some special psychological challenges, I understand how he could have gotten to the way he was. I have learned the power of my mind, how it is able to control so much about how we see the world.

Some of my writings over the past few weeks have shown that I work really hard to make my world a better place. I have developed a lot of self-control to be able to work the way I do. I have a lot of determination to be able to keep myself on track enough to produce so many writings. It is a self-discipline I have developed over the years. I was not born this way; I had to work to achieve it.

So, why did I choose to write this today? For the past 18 years of my life I have battled depression on an off. I wake up some days and have no drive, so on days like that, I must assign myself tasks to do in order to make good use of this beautiful mind God gave me. To do this today, I made myself get out and visit a friend who needed to see me. I also made myself go to Starbucks and write instead of sitting in my small office to write. This is how I choose to use my mind to keep on track when depression threatens to sidetrack me.

So now I’m sitting in Starbucks, writing this to you and I want to ask what you are going through right now? Whatever it is, take some steps to assign yourself the duties that will get you through it, that will help you stay on track. If you work a job, get up and keep going, even though you may be tempted to stay in bed or call in sick. Stay with your routine until you find the way to change your life, until you develop a way to do without it.  If you are self-employed, you must create your own routine, something that keeps you moving when you don’t want to move.

These are my five steps to develop a beautiful mind:

1.  Pinpoint the weakness. For me, it means having to face a day, sometimes longer of just being depressed over my world, of wanting to just give up. This is my weakness, the thing that I must face.

2.  Make a determination. No matter what, I continue to work towards the goals I wanted to achieve in life. I was determined to go through the problem no matter what. I was not going to run from it, I was not going to take a drug to control it. I want to find a way, through determination, to make it through and be able to say when I’m old that I controlled it. I did it.

3.  Keep a safe zone to move to when things are really bad.  As I stated earlier, today I moved outside of my lonely office to work. I took myself from a comfort zone, to take my mind off what was going on in my head and remove myself from any danger of giving up.

4.  Stretch yourself daily. Each day I try to find new ways to move my life around. I stay flexible with the directions I take towards reaching the goals and purpose in my life. The reason the big palm trees grow so tall and are able to withstand so much is they are flexible. A strong wind can bend them over but not uproot them. So they flex back and become stronger and better for it. In your own life, become that flexible person who grows stronger through whatever challenge life gives.

5.  Keep moving forward. Any successful, long-term business strives to keep moving forward. They never get to a point where they say “This is good; let’s just stay here.” I was told by one of my mentors in life that you are either growing or dying. So always keep moving forward. As Rocky Balboa said life is about how many hits you can take and keep moving forward.

Well here are my short words about how I deal with my depression. Hope you never have to deal with anything this severe in life. If you do, use these simple points to help you to become a Rockstar in a world that just wants to bring you down.

I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach, telling you to Live.. Love…Rock on. See you next time.