I once coached an entrepreneur who described herself as "very, very depressed." We began with a walk in a forest. To gauge things, I asked: on a scale of 0–100, how have you felt on average this past month? "Below 10," she said, describing a weight of troubles.
Then, mid-sentence, she stopped, grabbed my arm, and pointed with sudden joy at a beautiful fern basking in a sunbeam against a moss-covered trunk. "Isn't that beautiful?"
"On that same scale, how are you NOW?" "98," she answered instantly. I smiled: "That's astoundingly high for someone very depressed." We both laughed. As we walked on, I kept asking "How about now?" — each time, above 90.
Key learnings: the power of presence; gratitude for small wonders; nature's therapeutic effect; and emotional fluidity — emotions are not fixed, so despair need not be permanent. She realized her emotional state was not as fixed as she'd thought — a genuinely empowering discovery.
