DEPRESSION: Finding the inner strength to change what's wrong in your life

We all experience pain, suffering and loss, but it's important to understand that you don't have to remain the product of all that has happened to you in life, forever.

To be sure, it's easy to feel deflated by circumstances and remain stuck in depression and unable to see past your pain. When you feel that lost, life becomes very dark and it's impossible to see any way out.

I know from experience. I'm a recovering alcoholic who drank away many years of my life in a futile, desperate attempt to avoid feeling emotional pain. Focusing on my failures kept me stuck and fueled my feelings of being worthless and unlovable.

My biggest mistake was trying to heal myself by reaching for external things in an effort to change the way I felt about myself and my circumstances. I was powerless and sustained a victim mentality coupled with a pessimistic attitude. I continued to complain and remained utterly miserable.

My debilitating pain became so great that, fortunately, I became desperate enough to be willing to change and came to realize you cannot live a good life with a bad attitude.

So what was the key ingredient that gave me a new lease on life? Spirituality. I believe in an all-loving, all-inclusive Higher Power, and this belief system changed me for the better.

I don't think that what we call this power matters, but I know belief in a Higher Power is the only metric that really matters for you to have internal power and genuine self-worth.

Also, along the way I came to realize that happiness is a choice, not a result. It is imperative for us to consciously decide to think positively.

If you're going to think anyway, it might as well be positive because research has shown that thinking positively produces positive results. Stop abusing yourself with the same old negative thought pattern. Remember that the past can't be changed, only accepted.

Believing in yourself is the first step to success. Focus on the good within you and, at the same time, forgive yourself and anyone who has wronged you, because resentments will steal your joy and ruin your life.

Understand that forgiveness really is for you and has little to do with other people or events. Terrible and unfair things happen to good people everyday.

We don't have to like that fact or approve of it, but we need to forgive people if we're going to find peace. Forgiveness is acknowledging that whatever happened is over with, and you refuse to let that bad experience dominate the balance of your life. Carrying around a load of hate and resentment is too heavy a burden to bear.

After all, there is good and bad in all of us. We all have good and bad experiences and there is good and bad in the world. The question is, what do you want to focus on?

And if we agree that there is good and bad in all of us, the other question we must ask is whether it is good or bad that is going to prevail?
The answer is whichever one you choose to feed.

Jane Zarse grew up in the private-school world of privilege and excess as she spiraled into alcoholism before joining Alcoholics Anonymous and finding her way back. In her book "Love and Compassion Is My Religion"  she writes about learning to love herself again and how finding spirituality helped her do so.