In case you haven’t noticed, men are different from women. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that their black dog is different too. If you go by the numbers it would appear that men don’t suffer from depression as much as women do. Or maybe it’s masked by anger, irritability, drinking, sex addiction, drug use, excessive work, etc . . . and just not reported?

I never thought of myself as a particularly macho man but when the black dog showed up, the desire to be in control (or at least appear to be) was overwhelming. Everyone wants to feel like they’re in control of their lives.

Many people are desperate for something to quiet their mind so they try therapy, medication (prescribed or not), Yoga, etc. They may even try excessive amounts of work, exercise or some other activity in the hopes that if they distract themselves long enough their mind will stop racing around and settle down. To varying degrees some of these things may work but others make things worse.

Developing good habits can, overtime, greatly improve our quality of life. Yet for many people the word discipline is a dirty word that conjures up images of drill instructors screaming at raw recruits. Not an endearing picture of something to strive towards.

Discipline is more than punishment or being forced to do something we don’t want to do. The root is the Latin disciplina which means to ‘instruct’ so let’s take a look at how we can instruct ourselves and change our behavior to become happier and healthier.

When I was a child my dad was an Army officer and would often be gone for 6 months, a year or sometimes 2 years at a time. As a kid I had no idea of what being a soldier was all about other than through the movies and on t.v. - hardly a ringing endorsement of the realities of war.

When my dad was gone, mom had to step up and take command. She would go from little or no knowledge of family finances to knowing everything she could about insurance, bills to pay, homes & cars to maintain and 4 kids to raise all on her own. I often wondered who had it harder - dad in combat overseas, or mom in combat at home.