Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depresion-Proofing Young Children--for Life
(McGraw-Hill, 2006) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

Creating Optimism:
A Proven Seven-Step Program for Overcoming Depression
(McGraw-Hill, 2004) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

By Bob Murray, PhD

I remember riding on a train in England, traveling between London and Bristol, where I was then living, looking at the countryside as it sped by. I was quite young then and climbing up the ladder of what I thought would be my career as a TV producer with the BBC. How wrong we can be!

Looking back on that journey--the memory is probably an amalgam of many that I took at that time--I question the wisdom of speed. I could look and admire the beauty that I passed, but not feel connected to it. To feel connected I had to walk through the fields and feel the undulating earth beneath my feet.

We're told that we have to get from place to place--to go to meetings, to achieve goals, to meet targets, to advance our careers. To change, always change.

But here in the fields, or in the woods or by a river there are different, older, saner voices.

Imagine lying on the grass on a fine warm day. Feel the ground support you. There's something unchanging about the ground. Something solid, something permanent.

Give me your mind for a moment.

If you're depressed or anxious you probably feel the lack of something solid, a grounding. Your life is a leaf that the winds of rapid change, or the cold of isolation, has torn off from the branch that held you. You feel yourself falling, moving towards oblivion. There is no stasis to cling onto. Just voices that say you must move on, hurry, be different, change. They tell you to be that which you cannot be, to do that which you cannot do, to achieve. For what? Ah! For what?

But rest, now. Rest on this solid ground. Listen to the leaves sing you a lullaby, it is, perhaps, the song of All There Is. The singing is of peace, of hope, of the possibility of renewal.

You can look up and watch small clouds drift across the blue infinity that you call the sky, making ever-changing shapes. A cloud can be a face, and then a castle, and then candy floss and still be indisputably a cloud. And then nothing. For now your mind and the vapors that make the cloud play games together. Exchanging shapes and fantasies. You talk to each other silently, you revere each other intensely, you give to each other willingly.

This is change you can accept. You can accept even the ending when the cloud dissipates into nothing. Everything changes. But in the existence of All There Is everything changes at its own preordained pace. A cloud rapidly, the earth you rest upon slowly, a galaxy more slowly still and our universe takes an infinite time to go through its cycle from creation to extinction.

A rock, a planet, a human can accept change without stress if that change is geared to its own cycles.

Give me your breath for a moment.

Breathe slowly, gently and without force. You can feel inner change and yet sense a control over your being that is missing in your stress, your anxiety, your depression. Your breathing is unique to you-no two people breathe at the same pace or in the same way, no two lungs are the same size. But so is the rate at which you can tolerate change unique to you.

With your breathing take in the power to be human and let go of the forces that try to make you something else. These are the forces that control you through their power to make you hurried, stressed. That force change upon you. That refuse to allow you to find your own ground.

We underestimate our power. The voices of rapid change depend on your compliance, your "yes" to each of their frenetic demands. Breathe in deeply. Say "No!" as you exhale. "No" is your power.

If you can control your own body, your own breath, you can begin to control your world. Of course unexpected things will happen that cause change--earthquakes, accidents, economic recessions, climatic change. These you can surmount, take in your stride, if you are in control of you.

Give me your future for a moment.

As you lie there try and picture, no, try and feel, the slow movement of the earth beneath you. The massive tectonic plates of the earth's crust forcing slow, profound change. Where you lie will one day be a mountain, or a sea.

Picture, no, feel, the slow growth of an oak. Feel it flex its roots. Feel the movement of sap within its timber veins.

Now picture, no, feel, you. You as you were meant to be. You who have your own pace of change. Your own right to live in your own time. Your right to "No!"

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About the Author

Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on depression, post-traumatic stress and relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of the new book Creating Optimism: A Proven, 7-Step Program for Overcoming Depression (McGraw-Hill, 2004). They offer seminars, courses and audio-programs teaching people how to beat depression and improve self-esteem by creating healing relationships.