Oswald Chambers in “My Utmost For His Highest”, a daily devotional I highly recommend, states:

“Arise and do the next thing”. If we are inspired of God, what is the next thing? To trust Him absolutely….Never let the sense of failure corrupt  your new action.”

The “next thing” is different for everyone. For some it’s going to work. For others, it might be cleaning the house. For some, it will be the sheer act of putting one foot in front of the other for the task at hand.

The point is, there is always a “next thing”.

The great benefit of the next thing is that the next thing almost always distracts us.

A mental health therapist once told a patient, “Distraction is a wonderful thing.”

It is.

It’s nothing short of amazing how, if we can distract our minds with just one simple thing, it almost always leads to another action. Then to another. And so on. Eventually, our mood improves.

ourTweet

Any healthy distraction that keeps our mind off our feelings, especially on a really bad day, is a wonderful tool.

It’s almost always something mundane, routine, and ordinary. The simple act of tinkering in the garage or around the house, cleaning out a drawer or organizing something gives us a sense of accomplishment and most importantly, relief from our very crowded mind.

Some days we have no strength to do the hard work of examining ourselves or searching for the reasons we are depressed. Those are the days that instead of working hard to get better we just “do”.

We do anything that keeps us moving and our mind distracted.

A word of caution. There is a time for this type of self-preservation and it’s not all the time. And it’s important our “doing” isn’t destructive or unhealthy. That only and always complicates depression.

This is the beginning of the healing process. There are lots of specific principles I will be addressing that will take us further along in this healing process.

Do you need a respite today from your mind?

Is there something you can get up and do right now? Anything?