Now we are ready to ask: How can you manipulate your mental apparatus so as to prevent the flow of negative self-comparisons about which you feel helpless? There are several possibilities for any given person, and any one method may be successful for you. Or perhaps some combination of methods will prove best for you. The possibilities include: changing the numerator in the Mood Ratio; changing the denominator; changing the dimensions upon which you compare yourself; making no comparisons at all; reducing your sense of helplessness about changing the situation; and using one or more of your most cherished values as an engine to propel you out of your depression. Sometimes a powerful way to break a logjam in your thinking is to get rid of some of your "oughts" and "musts", and recognize that you do not need to make the negative comparisons that have been causing your sadness. I'll say a few words about each possibility now, and I'll discuss each general tactic at length later in the book.

Improving Your Numerator

We are talking about assessments of yourself that can be checked objectively. An example: Samuel G. complained that he was a consistent "loser" at everything he did. His counselor knew that he played ping pong, and asked him whether he usually won or lost at ping pong. Sam said that he usually lost. The counselor asked him to keep a record of the games he played in the following week. The record showed that Sam won a bit more often than he lost, which surprised Sam. With that evidence in hand, he was receptive to the idea that he also was giving himself a short count in other areas of his life, and hence producing fallacious negative self-comparisons and a Rotten Ratio. If you can raise your numerator - if you can find yourself really to be a better person than you now think you are -you will make your self- comparisons more positive. By so doing you will reduce sadness, increase your good feelings, and fight depression.

Sweetening Your Denominator

When told that life is hard, Voltaire asked," Compared to what?" The denominator is the standard of comparison that you habitually measure yourself against. Whether your self- comparison appears favorable or unfavorable depends as much upon the denominator you use as upon the supposed facts of your own life. Standards of comparison include what you hope to be, what you formerly were, what you think you ought to be, or others to whom you compare yourself.

"Normal" people--that is, people who do not get depressed frequently or for a long time--alter their denominators flexibly. Their procedure is: choose the denominator that will make you feel good about yourself. Psychologically-normal tennis players choose opponents who provide an even match--strong enough to provide invigorating competition, but sufficiently weak so you can often feel successful. The depressive personality, on the other hand, may pick an opponent so strong that the depressive almost always gets beaten. (A person with another sort of problem picks an opponent who is so weak that he or she provides no exciting competition.)

In the more important life situations, however, it is not as easy as in tennis to choose a well-fitting denominator as the standard of comparison. A boy who is physically weak and unathletic relative to his grammar-school classmates is stuck with that fact. So is the child who is slow at learning arithmetic, and the homely girl. A death of a spouse or child or parent is another fact which one cannot deal with as flexibly as one can change tennis partners.

Though the denominator that stares you in the face may be a simple fact, you are not chained to it with unbreakable shackles. Misery is not your inexorable fate. People can change schools, start new families, or retrain themselves for occupations that fit them better than the old ones. Others find ways to accept difficult facts as facts, and to alter their thinking so that the unpleasing facts cease causing distress. But some people--people we call "depressives"--do not manage to free themselves from denominators that hag-ride them into depression, or even unto death by suicide or other depression-caused diseases.

Why do some people appropriately adjust their denominators while others do not? Some do not change their denominators because they lack experience or imagination or flexibility to consider other relevant possibilities. For example, until he got some professional career advice, Joe T. had never even considered an occupation in which his talent later enabled him to succeed, after failing in his previous occupation.

Other people are stuck with pain-causing denominators because they have somehow acquired the idea that they must meet the standards of those pain-causing denominators. Often this is the legacy of parents who insisted that unless the child would reach certain particular goals--say, a Nobel prize, or becoming a millionaire--the child should consider himself or herself a failure in the parent's eyes. The person may never realize that it is not necessary that she or he accept as valid those goals set by the parents. Instead, the person masturbates, in Ellis's memorable term (and note that Ellis has good words to say about masturbation). Ellis emphasizes the importance of getting rid of such unnecessary and damaging "oughts" as part of his Rational- Emotive variation of cognitive therapy.