London, UK -- "Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful".
So wrote Norman Vincent Peale, author of the 1952 bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale's prescription for contentment has been regurgitated and recycled in thousands of self-help books over the past half-century, but despite a never-ending avalanche of sales, the alluringly simple "think happy-be happy" formula hasn't made much of a dent in mental suffering. According to the World Health Organisation, depression is set to be the planet's second biggest cause of disability by 2020.
In my experience too, these affirmations of "think happy, be happy" never worked!
Buddhist meditation worked for me. I noticed I have far fewer mood swings than I did before Buddhist meditation.
The scary part is that depression is such a huge debilitating disease and is growing at such a high rate, and so few people have access to the Dharma!
CAN YOU IMAGINE -- 15% of teens in the US think they will die young:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/29/health/main5122141.shtml
A surprising number of teenagers - nearly 15 percent - think they're going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests.
The study, based on a survey of more than 20,000 kids, challenges conventional wisdom that says teens engage in risky behavior because they think they're invulnerable to harm. Instead, a sizable number of teens may take chances "because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake," said study author Dr. Iris Borowsky, a researcher at the University of Minnesota.
