Overcome Depression: Powerful Motivation to Heal & Rise

Through growing up, what I've discovered is that this world is a very vast, a very wonderful,

beautiful one, and there are so many things to discover. But the most important journey, I think,

all of us will go through is the journey in ourselves to find our truth, to find who we are and

what makes us happy. And in our culture, we are told that if we're beautiful, if we're skinny,

if we're successful, famous, if we fit in, if everyone loves us, that we'll be happy. But that's not

entirely true. The world is a hurting place and the world needs hope and the world needs love.

Without hope, we feel like why are we here? Depression is a terrible thing and many, many,

many things cause it and we don't understand. We understand some of them, but lots of them we

don't understand at all. You know, sometimes people get depressed because they're really sick.

There's lots of reasons that people get depressed and depressed people can go places that are so dark,

you just cannot imagine it. You're stuck in this cycle where your brain chemistry and your

wiring and all your habits are designed to keep you still and sedentary and you make the mistake

we all do of waiting to feel ready. Depression does not rob you of the choice. It just tricks you

into making the wrong one. Your best bet in life is to shoulder your suffering and to take

responsibility and to move forward. Depression, frustration, anxiety, pain, dissolution.

It's just a natural part of the process of becoming a stronger version of yourself.

It happens to us spiritually and it happens in the world physically.

If you have depression, if you have anxiety, if you have post-traumatic stress disorder,

if you have any kind of mental health condition, it's nothing to be ashamed of and it's nothing

to hide and it's something to hit head on with. There's one thing, one thing, that if you did

every single day, no joke, it would make an extraordinary difference in whatever mental health issue

you're struggling with and that is exercise. What we know about healing beings is that when you physically

move, your physiology changes and that changes your brain. You've got to exercise. You've got to express

the energy in the body. You've got to get it out. We forget that we can use our bodies to affect

our minds. The mind has become overactive. It's not your friend anymore. It's depressed your body

but we can take our body back and express it and allow it to help the brain recover. Go for

runs. Go for walks. Join a crossfit gym. Join a powerlifting gym. Do something that's going to

get your body moving. Begin doing yoga. Begin stretching. Get outside with your dog in the woods.

Walk with a good friend for two or three miles. Doing that every single day not only moves your body

which changes your mind. It gets you out of your physical environment which is one of the things

that people with depression tend to have a hard time doing and it also creates a bit of momentum

and a bit of a routine in your life. For many people, if they don't get up at the same time,

they follow up the functioning of their circadian rhythms and that's enough to make them depressed

right off the bat, especially if they start napping during the afternoon. They also don't have a

purpose. People aren't good without a purpose. If someone comes in to see me and they say they're

depressed, I always ask them, do you have a job? If you don't have a job, you're really in trouble

in our society. Don't sacrifice your stability. Even if it's not the job you exactly want. Get a

damn job. You need a job. Almost all the positive emotions that any of you are likely to experience

in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things. It will be a consequence of seeing

that things are working as you proceed towards a goal you value. So the very first piece that I want to

read is from Abdul Baha that the mind and spirit of man advance when he's tried by suffering.

The more ground is plowed, the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be.

Just as the plow foes the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles so suffering and

tribulation free man from the petty affairs of the worldly life until he arrives at a state of

complete detachment. For the ground to produce strong fruit, strong trees, it needs to be dug up

really deep. You need that pain, you need that suffering, you need that digging, you need that

turning, you need that turmoil to get rid of all the impurities that allow the seed to grow

to its fullest potential. People have a choice. Choice number one. Nothing you do means anything.

The alternative, the alternative is everything you do matters. It means responsibility. It means

that the decisions you make are important. At age 10, I tried to drown myself in six inches of

fifteen centimeters of water. I had enough. I wanted to get out of here because of the bullying

in my life because I was going to be a burden to my parents and had nothing to look forward to.

There was one thing more burdensome than having a child without limbs. What is it? A child without

limbs who gives up. So when I saw in my mind, my mum and my dad and my brother crying up my grave

if I went through with him, that one thought saved me. When you talk about topics like depression,

like sobriety, like anxiety, they can feel so big. Even a topic like growing your business

triple in your income, it can feel so big. But when you realize that anything that you have in life

is all just the sum of all the decisions that you make and you shrink everything down to just

managing one decision at a time to be a decision that empowers you versus a decision that

disempowers you, you now have the secret to changing anything. Yes, still talk through therapist,

yes, still stay on your meds if you're on them, but you can start to now go and change how you

respond. Because what's happening is the alarm goes off, you don't feel like getting up, see it on.

You have a choice about what you do when that alarm goes off. You got things to do and they're

going to be difficult. You pick up the weight of your suffering voluntarily and you walk uphill

with it and that not only gives you the meaning that you need in your life to stop you from degenerating.

Even the worst parts of my life can be turned into good and even more special.

You got to come to the truth of knowing who you are and why you're here. William Bakley,

he said, the greatest two days in anyone's life, the day you were born and the day you knew why.

Every single human being has value and my value is not determined on how I look or what job I have

or where I'm from, where I was born, how much money, all that stuff is nothing.

I'm wonderful and faithfully made. There's a greater purpose for my life.

You can look at your life and you can see what isn't right about it.

Then you can start to fix that and the way you fix it is by noticing what you could in fact fix.

Small accruing gains that repeat unbelievably powerful.

Be open, don't be ashamed, get the help that you need. If you want to start doing something today.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, give yourself a push and you're going to feel a lot better.