There can be various reasons for a person to suffer from depression. It could be because of a personal loss, the death of a loved one, loss of job, end of love relationship, divorce, mental problems or other stressful events. And it could end in anything, sadness, hopelessness, lack of interest, trouble concentrating, guilt, mental agitation and even suicidal thoughts.

Overcoming depression can be very easy only if one is strong willed and dedicated. There are certain things that one must remember.

LIFE DOESN’T END:

Lao Tsu said, “What we call the end of caterpillar is the beginning of a butterfly.” What you feel or call the end of a chapter is also beginning of a new chapter. Life doesn’t end there. It begins all anew. Sadness is temporary. the bad phase will pass.

TURN NEGATIVE THOUGHTS INTO POSITIVE:

The utmost important point is to to give up negative thoughts like wish I could do that, what if that wouldn’t have happened etc. Whatever happens happens for the best. God must have made bigger plans for us. It was you trail. Make it your strength. It is only in your hands to do that. All that you went through should make you stronger and wiser. Only if you let that happen, it will broaden your understanding. Thus, you know what to do in future when you come across a situation like this. You will be able to keep a positive attitude.

KEEP YOURSELF BUSY:

When a mind is free, all sorts of unwanted negative thoughts arrive which kills everything positive that is within a person. That is why a depressed person lacks interest in doing anything. Because he is too busy in self-pity. Hence, keep yourself busy by doing something that you like. Do any activity that makes you happy, that contributes to your self-esteem and keeps your mind off negative thoughts.

BE WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE:

The people whom are with, whom you work with or live with, your friends circle are also very important. Happiness is contagious. When one is happy, he passes on good vibes on another person and so on the cycle continues. When you are surrounded by negative people, you will only see the negative side of life because that is what is talked about with you. Hence, share your time with those people, be with those friends or family members whom you enjoy being with, feel happy and feel lively when you are with them.

DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF:

Don’t blame yourself for everything that went wrong. Not everyone can be perfect. Perfection is only God. Not everything is in your hands. Do your best but if things went wrong, it could not be necessarily because of you. Learn to accept the situation.

CHANGE YOURSELF:

Sometimes changing oneself, few habits that makes them depressed solves the whole problem. Don’t blame circumstances or other people for your depression. Don’t let helplessness go to you. Think, “You made yourself depressed over that.”Change the way your react to things and you will notice a huge difference.

Understand yourself better. You could write a diary or letters to yourself. Read them and figure out what is really bothering you. Try to keep a balance between pleasure and work. Don’t be too serious with life. Life is too short. Enjoy it to the fullest!

In our busy life, if we aren’t able to do certain things on time. We put the blame on time. For example, we didn’t have, the given time wasn’t enough etc. What we actually lack is proper time management.

From my personal experience, I have learnt few techniques which I stick to most of the time.

SETTING GOALS:

First of all, setting proper goals is very important. Proper planning should be done about what steps are we going to take to achieve our goals, identifying what is required to achieve them and what will be our approach. Further goals must be categorised as short term and long term. Even making To-do list on daily basis helps but only if you follow them strictly.

PROPER ORGANISATION:

For maximum efficiency, better organisation of yourself and you workspace is must. This will sound very lame but it is actually very important. Proper organisation saves a lot of time.The goal is to look for ways a person can save and invest time.
PRIORITAZATION OF TASKS:

When the work load is categorised and arranged according to its importance, a great amount of time is saved, hence, work can be submitted way ahead of deadlines.

For example, work should be divided or organised as that are perceived to being urgent and important which needs to done first. Next come tasks which are important but not urgent and next are those tasks that are neither important nor urgent. This will help is prioritizing your work thus saving an ample amount of time.

AVOID OR POSTPONE UNNECASSARY ACTIVITIES:

All other things other than work your can be put off until your work if finished which means that do no waste time on something that is not as important as work. Anything else can be a distraction which you will surely enjoy because at that it may be very appealing but this is what will result you in wastage of time. This is the most difficult challenge of time management.

DO NOT WASTE EVEN FREE TIME:

So much time is lost while just simply walking, riding bus etc. Find out in what way are you wasting your time. Thus, try utilising that time to read a chapter if you wanted to or to review your work. Hence, this way you are utilising your free time also in the best possible way.

SET DEADLINES:

Although your work will have its own deadline, set your own deadline before the original one so that you don’t lose a track of time and you know if you are too slow and if you need to be fast. This way you could finish before the original deadline itself.

DO NOT BE CARELESS:

Do not let go yourself so easily when you don’t finish your work on time. Find out your mistakes. And make you sure you don’t repeat them

But also understand that no matter how organized we are, a 48 hour time work can’t be done within 24 hours. Be kind to yourself. But remember only you can be manage yourself and what you do with time.

I have seen faces…
Faces which reveal
Thousand secrets which even ants have kept…
(As they can’t speak,)

I have witnessed pain…
Pain which was hidden behind breasts
That happened to have been revealed,
By the angry mind
Which then, was not at ease,

I have read poems…
Poems which clearly stated
A heart’s feelings which shouldn’t have been told
But revealed by the weak and weary poet in oneself,

And hence, when the secret is out…
I can only say
That I happened to say
What only I have felt deep,

The man I wrote about in my poems,
Emerged victorious
And I celebrated my defeated solitarily
While he celebrated with his readers,

He was a quiet man
So quiet that he never spoke a word
Yet his emotions and feelings were conveyed
And I became jealous of my own creation.

The ultimate conquest of every man
Is to find his ‘self’
But even in my poetry
I failed to understand the poet in me…

And what step should I take before I die,
To relieve the burden of the aged poet in me
For he has dispersed himself in every colour,

And for the same reason
I grieve for his suffering more than mine
Because even though he found words and readers,
He never found the real peace in his finished verse,

- ANTHONY J. D’ANGELO

The speed at which we travel to reach our goals is so great that during our travel, we forget ourselves.

First of all, what is a goal?

A goal is an aim, an end, an achievement toward which all our efforts are directed. It is a target set by ourselves; it is our objectives, and a finish line to our intentions.

But on our ways to achieve our goals, we have made a rat race for ourselves. And we run on them all our lives. And on this path, we forget everything else other than the finish line which is never going to be the finish line as man’s needs never end and so does his goals. If one goal ends, another one comes up and on and one. It is a circle of life.

Hence, during this rat race and the speed at which we run, we become too hard on ourselves. We forget to take good care of ourselves. We run like machines. And we forget that even machines need little oiling, care and once in a while, even they have to be switched off so that they don’t get over heated. And well, we are mere human beings. When we run like machines, we end up being stressed, depressed, suffering from anxiety and in severe cases patients with heart problems.

Do not set huge goals. Don’t create a larger than life goal which you know in your heart is difficult to achieve. Break your goals down into smaller and smaller targets which are attainable. Set your goals on a number of different levels. This will be easier for you to focus, to work on them and achieve them. For example, don’t set your a goal that say in ten years time I want to be the CEO of a company, instead, try a month plan, six month plan, a year plan. And be precise so that you can measure your own goals.

Don’t Over load. Overloading is the cause of stress and tensions because you are burdening yourself with too much of work. Remember you are a human being. Even machines get spoilt when over load. It is obvious that you will burn out too.

Forgive yourself. When you didn’t meet up to yours or other’s expectations, forgive yourself. When you meet with failure, be kind to yourself. We are so obsessed with our goals that we forget that we are human beings having certain limitations too. Perfection is only God.

Time Management. This is another point. Without time management, nothing can be achieved even if you have the best of goals planned out smoothly for you. Respect time. Create a list of things of things that you should do today to work towards your goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you in the long run reducing stress.

Take out some My-time. Once a day, extract at least ten minutes time for yourself. It could be before you go to bed, after you get up or anytime that suits you the best. And relax yourself. Do what you love. Day dream, sing or read a poem. But dedicate this time to yourself.

Tensions are caused by YOU. Because you let them affect you. And no amount of spending on superficial things is going to give a peace of mind. As you yourself built it, hence, you only can heal yourself.

What is education? Education is a road, which is cultivated and paved ahead through the means of knowledge to a meaningfully better and defined way of life.

But in spite of knowing that, there are many people in the world who believe that when a child can earn at a younger age without an education, why is there a need to study? And mind you, this is not just what the poor and illiterate think; the ‘educated society’ also thinks that. The difference is that the ‘educated society’ doesn’t say openly. That is why you will still find child labour in their house. You will find children as young as their kids or even younger than them cleaning their utensils, sweeping their floor. Well, this is the answer to all such people.

First of all, why is education important? Why do we teach our children?

Education liberalises everyone. It gives a child various ways to breathe a complete new life, to open their eyes to see a different new world and opens the child’s doors to that world which is waiting for them. It makes him creative. From day one when he starts choosing his blocks to build his block building, a child is taught decision making and independence.

Education improves a person’s understanding, accepted wisdom and outlook. It teaches them the accepted wisdom of living in a better way. It is a fresh attitude towards humanity; a common denominator of life that binds human beings regardless of differences in cast, creed, country and religion. To eradicate these differences education is important.
Education not only improves the child’s perceptive of the world but also helps them understand and accept other cultures and respect them. Their lifestyle, attitudes and opinion individualize. They will know what they want. Why and how to get it. And on the basis of their knowledge, they grow up to make their lifestyle and our society better.

Here we are teaching our kids that forget cast, creed, country and religion but also here we are repeating the same mistakes thinking that our children needs to know such stuff but not the one who is cleaning our utensils. Every child needs to know this. Because every child is a part of society and his share to the society is equally important as any other child’s.

The more a child acquires an education, the more they become aware of the fact that there is still more to discover and their understanding is still very minute compared to the vast sea of knowledge. Hence, imparting knowledge and teaching style is very necessary so that their intellectual attitudes may not be limited within the restricted confines of a few sects.

Education teaches that humanity is the basic ground on which we should always approach our fellow human beings and nurture friendly attitudes towards the building of this world. It is the key factor. But are we actually doing this? Let us join our hands together and see that every child in our neighbourhood is getting at least a decent education because our society’s, country’s as well as humanity’s future is on their shoulders.

The intellectual era of my thoughts ends
As my heart takes a strong step
To free my mind off its thinking burden,

My heart senses the burden of my thoughts
Through the crazy lines that run on my forehead
And hence, it plans to let my mind rest.

But again, my mind is sharp
And senses that this is not the solution
For the wrinkles on my forehead
Reflects my hardships and wise decisions.

Thus, this is the first battle
Which my mind wins without any strength
As to the earlier battles were heavily armed
Unlike this one
Since my heart had only my crazy lines to talk about.

Today I feel lost
And I don’t intend to find myself,
Neither do I want anyone to find me.

I hate this fiend in me
Who purely can’t accept the truth
But neither can I lie to my soul.

I don’t want anyone to recognise me
While I am pretending to be busy.

For all the times I tried to be brave
I could do nothing but accept my cowardice.

Accepting the truth of life and living with it
All that seems unfeasible to me
And living with lies beneath me
Seems very hard to obey.

Yet again running away seems the only choice left
But to whom can i surrender my dark soul?
Except to the man above,
Who will accept me for who I am,
And he will forgive me who for who I was.

Oh! Sweet flying robin
Eat not those breadcrumbs which I threw
As I thought to eat those
For life led me to grieve,

Oh! Sweet flying robin,
Fly somewhere else and make another home
For my life, I lived on rent
So what can I provide you?

Ah! My dear, I know you love me too much to part
But darkness is upon me
And I don’t want to deprive you of light,

Hence, my dear sweet robin
I leave you, thoughts and memories of mine
So do remember me with morbid fascination
As I will remember my life.