I was reading through some statistics regarding depression and the percentage of people suffering from this has increased substantially. And I remembered what I often hear from people: 'I have failed in my life' or 'I have not achieved anything,'or 'I experienced such and such in my past and it will jeopardize my entire life',or 'I have made a lot of mistakes',or 'I have been feeling depressed or anxious for so many years and I can't change.'

Do you think if we have such thoughts we are going to feel good? Well, no. We actually make ourselves depressed.

Now, the truth is that no matter where you are at in your life right now, no matter what your past has been, no matter what your present circumstances are, no matter how you have been feeling for years, no matter the mistakes you have made, you can change your future. That is for sure.

The thing is that sometimes we don't know what can help us to change, so here are some ideas.

The first thing to do is to take total and full responsibility.

You are the only person responsible for your actions, for your behaviours, for your thoughts, for your emotions, for your health, wealth, happiness, inner peace, etc., for your life. You might have heard about the great movie 'The Secret' and how it shows how much power you really have. Your thoughts create. It is the Law of Attraction. Everything that has happened in your life, everything that is happening, you create. For some people it might be a little uncomfortable to take this on board, but it is the truth. Blaming or complaining is simply giving your power away. But this also means that you can change anything you want in your life by a simple shift in your awareness. Every bit is really down to you.

Now, let us consider things in order.

If you have experienced a difficult past, time line therapy is very helpful. Whatever you have experienced in the past, time line therapy does not go back into the past and analyze it; that would keep you there. Instead it gives you the power to feel free from your past and empowered to create your future. It enables you to relive it with more empowering resources and change the memory of it.

If you feel, for example, depressed or anxious, NLP and hypnosis are incredibly powerful tools to enable you to take control of your emotional state. All emotions generate from thoughts, beliefs, the meaning we give to events, self-talk, and you are the master of your own mind. But the thing is that nobody has given us a manual of how the brain works, so when we do not feel good we do not know what to do. If we buy a PC we are given a manual, and your brain is an extraordinary computer! Once you know how the conscious and subconscious mind works, you can take control of your emotional state, and so choose how to feel.

Now, another thing to say is that if we do the same things, we get the same results. So, sometimes we feel stuck in our life or our habits, but if we want to change we need to change what we do and think. So, if you are doing something that makes you feel bad or does not work, stop, right now, and do something different, and you will get different results.

Guilt is a very powerful and damaging emotion, and what I have often found with clients is that we have a strong tendency to beat ourselves up harshly. Now, everybody makes mistakes, and what we need to do is recognise them, take full responsibility, learn from them and grow. One aspect of this is taking full responsibility for our behaviour; a very different thing to feeling guilty about it. The way we treat ourselves has a very strong impact on our emotional state. And if I were to ask you: 'Would you treat another person as harshly as you treat yourself?' I am sure your answer would be no. So, please treat yourself with the same compassion as you would your best friend. Now, do you think God would want you to beat yourself up? No, no, no. Please be kind to yourself. God loves you unconditionally: forgive and love yourself. Strive for excellence, not perfection. And always remember you always do the best you can at all times with the resources you have got.

Now, one of the reasons why we do not achieve what we want in life is because we do not know what we want. Many people live a life by default, they react to what happens, but are they going to make themselves happy? Maybe, maybe not. How about if you could work more smartly? If you could know what makes you happy and create it in your life? So, establish a vision of the life that you really want, establish goals toward that vision, and actions to take. And if you know what you want and you focus on it, the Law of Attraction says it will manifest, without exception.

So, what are you going to do today to become the person you want to be and create the life you want to live?