I want to be <font color="purple">inspired</font> by life. I want believe in possibilities and miracles.

And I'm not. How do I get this back? Where do I start?

Dr.Clay has written about the importance of having goals. I no longer have any goals beyond trying rather desperately to survive and not live in poverty as retirement approaches. Maybe that's what's missing.

I've used parts of Psychological Self-Help when I was in the worst part of my depression in 2004, and I used to mention it in the Forums a good deal. Keeping a journal of triggers and remembering that we may have to try many strategies was helpful. Perhaps its most important use was to help me feel empowered, instead of helpless, and that I was taking steps to help myself. That was important to me.

I think the meds and time played equal roles with persistently trying to help myself as I got better.

I used to be an avid reader of self-help, especially New Thought, books (Catherine Ponder, Florence Shinn, Thomas Troward, Barker, etc.). At some point, it sunk in that one needs to practice, and I embarked on a program of affirmations and reframing my negative views of reality.

Since 2003, I've been hit with one thing after another: illness, job loss, relationship loss, unemployment, underemployment, yadda, yadda. Just as I thought I was making real progress, something has come up that is a real set-back. I thought I was making a comeback, and I feel very dis-courage-d.

I sitll use journaling and praying. I don't read much anymore -- but I'm willing to take on some targeted reading. After sopping up 200 pages a night of dense academic texts, 7 days a week, in graduate school for 6 years, I just stopped feeling interested.

Now that I'm in the third trimester of life, maybe it's not realistic to expect life to seem full of possibilities and to believe that miracles can happen.

I would like to recapture the feeling I had when I was younger that "anything is possible."

[b]Any ideas about where to start and what to do and how to accomplish this, anyone?[b]