Stop procrastinating happiness

One of the classic exercises psychology uses to help people define exactly what they want to achieve through therapy is the visualization essay. They ask you to answer the question: If I woke up tomorrow in my ideal world, what would that look like? How would the following be different: self, relationship, job, social life/friends, family, finances, etcetera?

Your answer to that can be as simple or as detailed as your mind dictates it. When confronted with this assignment given by my mental health professional right after my depression diagnosis, I typed in 940 words describing all the things that I wanted to improve in my life.

In my ideal world, my relationship with my husband was so much better! I lived in a house instead of a condo; I had a job I enjoyed; even my family had moved closer to us! I mean, if I’m already dreaming, why not throw them into my picture perfect life?

And to my therapist surprise, I wrote the whole essay in present tense. When visualizing, I wasn’t thinking of the future but narrating what was taking place. And this ideal world had many things that didn’t exist in my current life, such as a house!

Since we got married, we have lived in a 900 square feet condo. Pretty tight. I always felt that “if only we had a house, with a backyard, a garage, a bigger kitchen…” our days would be so much better! Therefore, I had procrastinated happiness until this goal of acquiring a home would be achieved. Big mistake.

You shouldn’t delay being happy. Depression can be a matter of life or death, every day in it is a day in pain. Happiness is a priority. A bigger house, a better job, a newer car, those things would be certainly nice to have, but I just can’t afford to wait until I acquire them to get out of my misery.

So, on a hot Sunday morning of this past May (2015), I sat down to go through the flyers and junk mail from this week, and there it was:  our local Home Depot ad, and what did I find? Nothing less than a great offer!

Today is the last day to get four herb or vegetable plants for $10 dollars! That’s less than $3 dollars each! I am feeling lazy and lousy (the usual) but if I don’t get this offer before the day is over I know I will regret it. I could start a little garden in my tiny patio for less than $20 dollars! It takes all of my strength to get up from the couch, take a shower, and make it to the store, which is, by the way, less than a mile away from our condo.

Once we get to the nursery, the smells and looks of the cilantro, peppermint, parsley, basil, and rosemary take me back to another happy time in life. My grandfather in Mexico used to have an herb garden. We rarely ever bought cilantro, peppers, or basil at the store, all it took for us was a short walk outside and we had a fresh bunch of herbs to complete the ingredients for our dinner.

Wouldn’t it be nice to gift my daughter with similar memories of kneeling on the earth to get fresh cilantro for her soup? We only have a narrow strip of soil to grow plants; luckily it doesn’t take much space to grow an herb garden!

We spent about $50 dollars total between the herbs, bags of soil, and digging tools. We also bought two rose bushes on sale, because what is a garden without red roses? 

My three year old daughter, my husband and I spent the rest of the day digging out the old dirt and replacing it with good, fertile soil, which could serve as an analogy to what behavioral therapy is: Supplanting the thinking patterns (procrastination) that hurt you with positive ones.

Just like I couldn’t wait one more day to take advantage of our local store offer, I couldn’t wait to see our garden grow! That night we went to bed exhausted and happy. And it drizzled a little during our sleep. What a great morning tomorrow will be!

Love and hope,

Nancy C. Harris 

My family's gardening gloves. It's easy to guess whose is whose...