When you woke up this morning, how did you feel?  Were you exited about the things you could accomplish today?  Were you anxious to get up and get started on the tasks that were waiting for you?  Did you have high expectations of yourself today? Or, were you trying to decide if you were actually going get up and go to work today?   Perhaps you were lying there trying to figure how you got into the problems you have.

Do you wonder why you feel this way?  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale says, ‘The blows of life, the accumulation of difficulties, the multiplication of problems tend to sap energy and leave you spent and discouraged’.  Does that sound familiar to you?  Are you ‘spent and discouraged’?

When you woke up this morning, if you were not excited, (or at least a little happy) perhaps you are feeling the effects of everyday life, wearing at you and dragging you deeper into a sense of despair or maybe even depression.  At times, dealing with a lot of issues can cause us to feel inadequate, unable to cope with everything at one time.  We begin to shut down and do nothing.  We adopt the philosophy – ‘what’s the use? I can’t do it all anyway’.

It then becomes a self-esteem problem for you – doubting yourself and your abilities.  At this point shutting down and doing nothing will only cause more problems, more deadlines missed, more dishes to wash, more, more, more…. And this just leads to more depression.  A vicious downward spiral has begun.

How do you stop it?  It’s just like the old adage about getting thrown off a horse, you just have to get back on again!  That’s easy to say and very tough to do.  But that’s the solution.  You have to start somewhere and get something done, no matter how small.  Chose a task that you are pretty sure you can solve and make that a goal.  Don’t allow yourself to quit until it’s finished.  Then move onto another task.  It doesn’t sound like much, but it will stop the downward cycle and give you an opportunity to recover your self-esteem and then move on to bigger issues.

- Joe Freeman