Today is the 1st day of my journey to happiness!

When I was young my Parents taught me that God wants me to enjoy my life. That this life is a gift of education. He wants me to take it in abundance so it can be filled with an overflowing joy that will spill into the loves of others. He gave us a text books full of instructions called Scriptures on how to find Him for the keys to unlock the prize box.

Todays Scripture:

     "When I said, My foot is slipping, Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, held me up."  ~PSALM 94:18

I will try to day to start the day on the right foot.

                                                          (Painting by Greg Olsen combined with my digital painting)

This is a great article I found that has helped me understand my

 depression a little more.

At one time or another, everyone has been depressed. For this reason, it would not seem to be a mysterious and new problem, but it is. The latest studies on popular antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil indicate that about 50 percent of patients get little or no benefit, but lots of unwanted side effects. These are people with mild to moderate depression, which account for approximately 70 percent of depression cases.

Is there a way to help them and to get millions of other depressed people off the pill?

This is now an urgent question. Doctors keep writing prescriptions, but back in the research lab, the findings are discouraging. It turns out that antidepressants don't correct imbalanced brain chemistry. And there's no real proof that the brain chemistry of depressed people is any different that of people who aren't depressed. All of this is bad news for big pharma, but it opens the way for other approaches. So let's start from scratch.

If you met a young person with awful table manners, what would you think? It's natural to suppose that this behavior started in childhood and turned into a habit. What if the same is true for depression? Most patients who complain of depression cannot say when it started. They talk about depression running in the family. This indicates that depression has three components:

·         1. An early outside cause.

·         2. A response to that cause.

·         3. A longstanding habit.

Let's rid our minds of calling depression a disease, just for a moment. Severe, chronic depression can be approached like other mental disorders. But you aren't ill if you get depressed after a bad divorce. We commonly say things like "She's out of her mind with grief" when someone loses a beloved spouse, but grief is natural, and the depression that comes with it is also natural. What this tells me is that depression is a natural response that can go terribly wrong.

Read more copy and paste in your address bar: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-to-Heal-from-Depression#ixzz417LlWTFF