The truth…

Because they don’t know it…

Depression tends to occur after either a period of chronic stress or an instance of intolerable acute stress…

The stressor may not even have abated yet but the body’s stress response has given up…

The HPA axis, responsible for release of the stress hormone cortisol, becomes underactive.  It’s resources are taxed and it’s efforts don’t seem to be contributing to an adequate resolution to the problem.

This has many implications, one of which is that cortisol elicits our “get up and go” response…

So our “getting stuff done” mode becomes inhibited and more difficult to access…

Without the ability to engage in effortful focus of attention and energy on meaningful and challenging activities we miss out on what the Brits would call “feeling knackered,” or well spent.

Without the ability to feel passionately “well spent,” we suffer…

And this can lead to depression…

And what’s interesting here is that there seems to be some evidence to suggest that people with an underactive HPA response tend to seek out high cortisol inducing activities…

Stimulants (including sugar)…
Scary movies…
Work-a-holism / hyper-fixation…
Worrying…
Risky behavior…

And more…

Anyway, I bring it up because depression can look like either laziness or productivity or both…

What matters is the internal experience and its long term effect on our health…

Everything can seem fine and yet be intolerable…

But not the other way around…

Things can’t be fine and seem intolerable…

One of the best ways I know to gain some insight on the matter is to give up entertainment for a week…

Starting now.

Until next time,
Kevin

Turns out…

We’re not that great at predicting how future events will make us feel, nor for how long those events might leave us feeling any particular way…

Mostly because we have no idea how much we will have changed as a person by the time the future arrives…

It also turns out, we’re pretty bad at predicting how much time changes who we are, what we care about, and what we’re capable of…

As a result, it’s pretty tough to aim directly at happiness…

Or even the things that we think will make our future selves happy…

But with the ongoing moment to moment process of feedback & calibration…
(trying a thing, evaluating the results, modifying future actions)

We can certainly improve our aim along the way…

But some methods of improvement are better than others…

In The Journey of Crazy Horse, Joseph M. Marshall III reveals the training methods used for the adolescent boys of the Oglala Lakota to sharpen their aim with a bow and arrow…

After learning to consistently fly their arrow through the center of a rolling hoop, they’re taught to lay still in a field, holding their arrow ready, and wait for a grasshopper to appear as it leaps through the air…

Difficult, yes…
Impossible, no…

But if you really want to sharpen your aim…

Chase grasshoppers.

Until next time,
Kevin