Quest for a Depression-Free Life looks like a great book. What type of reader did you write the book for?
I wrote it for those who feel depressed, for those who know somebody who is depressed and they want to help. For those who seek a meaning in living their life. For those who are not fully satisfied with something and often feel negative emotions. For those who feel stuck in life and don’t know what to do next in their life. For those interested in various holistic health topics. For those who are on a spiritual path of awakening to their true nature, becoming consciously aware of that, which is beyond the physical and the thinking mind. It is for those who are open-minded and for those who prefer to live a love-based life in a love-based society.
That’s an amazing cover. Can you tell us a little about it?
The path to our goals, dreams, achievements is never or rarely a straight line. It’s like a maze where you start, but you don’t see all the steps. The next step (some doors open and some doors close) and the next challenge presents itself suddenly and unexpectedly as you follow an intention. We have a few certainties in life and one of them is “change”. We have to learn to embrace change and not fear (anticipating pain/failure) it. Attitude is important, because it hugely affects how we approach life situations, what we do with them and how we feel about them. Attitude is something that is completely within our control. There is also often more than one way to get to the destination. We are all unique beings, we have free will to express ourselves, we live in our unique set or environmental factors and circumstances and we experience and perceive it from our unique point of view. This means that when talking about solutions, there is more than one way to get what we want, and often, different people need to use different solutions. When we get lost or discouraged, what we highly benefit from is help from others who walked the path before us, who have other, new points of view and can give us motivation, inspiration, vital information, to continue and break through current obstacles, which seemed to us to be unsolvable before. There is often more solutions, we just don’t know about them yet, we don’t see them yet, and that’s where this book can come very handy. One of the questions is: “What is this whole journey about in the first place?” What makes sense to me is that ultimately whatever we do, when we do it with love (the heart symbol), when we receive love, when we give love, this always seems to feel good, very good. When somebody wants to feel happy, joyful and other positive emotions, what these emotions have in common is: “feeling good”. The highest form of feeling good appears to be when love is involved. Love towards the self, love towards others. I would like to help people find their way to feel love again, not just occasionally, but every single day. Live life from a place of love, not restricted to romantic type of love. Think what love would think, say what love would say, act what love would do such as acts of kindness and goodness, and feel different forms of love. The majority of mental suffering is due to thoughts, if you start thinking more loving/love-based thoughts (symbol of the heart in the head/brain) and when you do this frequently, then you can more easily start to feel associated positive feelings.
During our lives we get conditioned by our environment and all the people we meet. We pick up a huge amount of rules and beliefs. Some of these beliefs can easily cause us to feel miserable. Part of the journey towards the heart is being able to let go of identifications with negative limiting beliefs, which are not serving our highest good. Simply put, that which is not love based, is not serving your highest good. If you don’t know how to empty a glass, which is full of unuseful stuff, one way is to pour so much goodness into it, so that eventually it will replace the current content of the glass with this new goodness. There is nothing wrong with being kind, grateful, humble, selfless, it is that which touches and inspires your heart and the heart of others. We may have different goals in our lives, and it is totally fine to go through all of those experiences, achievements. What I suggest is to put the goal of living from the heart, listening to the heart, living based on love as the highest goal in life and use it to live your life from, whatever other activities you wish to do during your life. Life is better with love. Find out how to feel more love in your life. Whatever imbalances you may have, it is temporary and it can change soon. Know that there are many different ways to help balance, cleanse and heal from physical, mental and emotional traumas. Many of them are mentioned in this book. Let me give you more insights about the “how” with the help of this book. The peaceful face on the cover is to transmit a positive message that there is a way, no matter where you are at in your maze (suffering, life journey) right now. Moreover, it is absolutely worth it to finally get what you are longing for – to find inner peace and divine unconditional love and live life from that inner state of being. No matter what amounts of goodness you can include in your life, each and every act of goodness is meaningful and worth it.
What inspired you when writing Quest for a Depression-Free Life?
There was simply a longing to help others who suffer. My various own life experiences, and all the teachers I came across in my life path, and seeing all the suffering around me, inspired me to find some ways to help end suffering for more people or at least help reduce it for much more people. Everything in my life formed me into the person who was able to write this book. I was always drawn to: introspection, longing to understand why suffering exists, an inner calling to help others, writing. I had the perception, that there are solutions for not having to suffer in many cases, many people simply don’t know about such solutions and they don’t have access to them, or they don’t fully understand them or don’t know how to utilize/apply them. I felt like I can inspire and motivate people when I can share with them information, which I believe can have a positive effect on their life. While I was writing I was constantly inspired by seeing more suffering, and I just know that I don’t want to live in a world where there is suffering based on ignorance, lack of understanding, living based on non-love based values, so I do my best to do something about it by writing and finishing this book first. What I like about a book is the fact that it can reach much more people than I could possibly talk to personally in my life or during the availability of the book.
Did anything stick out as particularly challenging when writing the book?
I knew I wanted to write in English, but English is a foreign language for me, so it was challenging for me. I takes more time than I thought to finish the book. I thought I am ready several times a couple of months ago, only to feel that something is missing. In the end it took another 3 months to get the inner feeling of now I am satisfied with it myself. Due to depression and unhappiness affecting such a huge number of people worldwide, and due to different people having different belief systems, it was challenging to think about whether there is a middle path of expressing certain information. So that people stay open to what I am writing about, and just skip those sections, which are not relevant for them and continue reading. Maybe the minority of people need certain pieces of information in the book, but they do need it, so I decided to leave it in, even though it may be perhaps too challenging for some of the current beliefs of others.
What do you like to do when not writing?
I always liked sport: doing it and watching it. I like hiking. I like wellness. I like to travel.
Where can readers find out more about your work?
Currently as of doing this interview, the only webpage is: https://helphealdepression.com/
Check it out for more information. I will be adding new content to it and update it with relevant information regarding my next projects.