It is likely that you have heard someone (perhaps a teacher or a parent) say Practice Makes Perfect!  And it is also likely that you may have rolled your eyes when you heard that for the tenth or one-hundredth time.  For the sake of an exercise, let’s focus not on making things “perfect” but on making them better.  One of the most effective means to make significant and long-lasting changes in life is to make repeated attempts at that change.  When you were younger, you didn’t learn how to ride a bike or jump rope by doing it once – – you learned how to master these fun skills by doing them repeatedly.  The reality is that practice is essential when we are interested in learning a new skill and having that skill become part of our life.  Take a look at what you are interested in learning at this point in your life, and see if you can carve away a little bit of time on a regular (weekly, if not daily) basis to practice . . . and then evaluate how far you have come over the course of a month!

Bad things happen in life.  You may not have planned for it and you may not deserve it.  But bad things happen anyway.  Many moons ago, one of my heroes gave me the following advice: “You may not be able to choose what or when something bad happens to you, but you are definitely in charge of how you respond to it.”

Do you curl up in a ball, pull the bedsheets up over your head and try to ignore the world passing you by?  Do you drink yourself to oblivion in an attempt to forget?  Do you impulsively retaliate against someone to try to even out the bad news?

Or do you take a few deep breaths, talk with a trusted person, vent and strategize how best to proceed?  I am not suggesting that taking this approach is easy.  In contrast, it can be very difficult depending on the size of the bad event or the duration of a series of bad luck.  But after years of working with clients and helping them navigate the bad news in their lives (as well as handling bad news in my own life), I am confident that it is more favorable in the long run to be thoughtful and methodical about how to proceed – – whether it be by no action at all, or by careful evaluation of what to do next.  After all, if bad events are unavoidable, don’t we deserve to make them the least damaging to our lives?

I’m regularly asked what recovery looks like, whether it be recovery from depression, an eating disorder, a loss such as a divorce or a death, or other experiences.  I’m not certain that I have the perfect answer, but here is how I think about recovery.  I view recovery as a journey, not a destination.  What I mean by that is that you don’t get to the point of not having any symptoms (of depression, grief, anxiety or an eating disorder) or returning to your normal baseline functioning without having worked very tediously to get there, and likely needing to continue to work to maintain those gains!  Thus, while there is a time to celebrate the achievement of abstinence from symptoms, it is not a time to stop doing what you have been doing.  Rather, keep doing those things that have helped you!