Grady Harp

Kansas City author Roland Griffith was a successful business owner and entrepreneur for many years but in that time he suffered from depression. Like many heroes of the day Roland overcame his depression and founded Discovery International, a company that teaches people how to overcome depression and emotional suffering. He has helped people throughout the Kansas City area relieve their depressive symptoms and increase their productivity. In his Introduction Roland sets the tone of the book; ‘Through years of study, I discovered that a constant flow of thoughts in the background of my mind was affecting everything in my life: how I related to others, my physical well being, my decision making, and my overall attitude. When I understood how the mind operates and developed a way to work with it, I was able to create my own moments of peace. The mind is always busy generating thoughts, whether you are aware of them or not. The thoughts can be simple and neutral— observations and comments about what’s happening at the moment; or they can be judgmental, negative, and harmful, as when they tell you how worthless you are or how hopeless your life is. We can call this constant stream of thoughts “mental chatter.” Negative mental chatter is the cause of a problematic life. Often the ongoing thoughts are preoccupied with something regrettable from the past— an event that happened earlier in your life or last week or today.’ As is outlined in the synopsis, ‘If you have tendencies toward depression—frequent moodiness and feelings that life is too hard and there’s nothing to live for—Roland wrote this book for you. His is a remarkable story, told frankly and simply. He tells about his restrictive, religious background in which he was raised, and the guilt that accompanied his expanding awareness of the world. Although he became a successful businessman and attained financial and material success, Roland was plagued by internal doubts, fears, and depression. Medicated and miserable, he began a long search for a way out of the darkness that haunted him. A failed attempt at suicide in 2000 convinced him to increase his efforts to find a way out. He discovered that his mind was constantly feeding him negative chatter, causing him distress and unhappiness. He developed a technique to turn down the volume of that chatter that enabled him—finally—to emerge from depression. He has been practicing it every day since then, and now he looks forward to waking up every morning. His life is full of hope and joy.’ As simple as his book sounds it stands on firm ground in coaching us on how to defeat depression and find those Pieces of Peace. Highly Recommended.