If You Can’t See The Wound, Do You Treat It?

We talk about losing a friend and how that shock reshapes our view of mental health. We share the simple frameworks we use to build mental fortitude, reduce stress, and show up with more kindness for ourselves and others. 
• grief after a friend’s death and the lasting impact 
• mental health as a daily pillar alongside physical health and relationships 
• practicing mental fortitude through response and perspective 
• permission to be authentic and have lapses 
• redefining a good day so it is achievable 
• redefining a bad day so it is rare and specific 
• fitness and running as stress relief and regulation 
• the 5-year and 85-year perspective check 
• being nicer because you never know the fight 
• asking “what is your mental health today?” without judgment 
• financial responsibility as mental health support 
• choosing a life you truly enjoy over status chasing

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Transcript

Why Mental Health Became A Pillar

Practice And Permission To Lapse

Redefining Good Days And Bad Days

Fitness As A Pressure Release

The 5 Year And 85 Year Test

Kindness And Checking In For Real

Money Stress And Choosing Your Life

The Takeaways I Carry Forward

SPEAKER_00 0:58

It was 2016. No, 2017. And I got a terrifying call. And I was, I remember I was walking into a test, and I took the call. I ended up doing the test. And I left the class right afterwards. And I realized that one of my friends decided that life wasn't for him. And over the next couple months, it was it was awful. It was terrible. It was a very surreal thing for me. Because at that time in my life, I didn't consider mental health a big challenge. I thought for a lot of people, it was just keep pushing forward, keep trying a little harder, keep doing your thing. Don't let up. And what I realized is that a lot of people battle. A lot of people struggle. A lot of people have challenges. And I want to talk in this video about what I learned and what my my big takeaways from this experience were. And his name was Jamal Naganja. And he and he was my sophomore year roommate. And we were in the fraternity together. And it was horrible. It was a terrible, terrible moment for me. And my my the biggest thing that happened to me that I apply to each and every day, where I think about them more often than not, is that in my coaching framework, one of the pillars I picked was mental health. And I picked that in 2018 going into 2019 because I knew how important it was. What a big deal it was. The other pillars are it's mental health, physical health, community service, philanthropy, spirituality, and relationships. And what I realized is that mental health is a big, big deal. A lot of people aren't able to control it. And a lot of the time there's anxiety and depression and sadness and happiness and all these different things. And most of it is because we can't see it. It's hard to fix it. And then what ended up happening for me, like one of the biggest helpers, like I was just unaware of it. Like I was unaware of mental health for a long time because I would just I just didn't want to think about it. And some of the things that helped me a lot throughout and a lot of my clients, I mean, there's a few major points that really helped me have a strong mental fortitude. First of all, it's practicing it. And it's how do we handle situations, how do we think about them, how do we continue to move forward. Another big component of it is realizing that it's okay. It's okay to be authentic, it's okay to have days of lapse. And I think that's the tough part is that if you have one bad hour, does that make it a bad day? And that's something that I learned from Tony Robbins, where we talked about what's the definition of a good day and definition of a bad day. And in the training, in the training, the definition was a lot of us have definitions. I mean, even here, right now, you can sit here and what's your definition of a good day? Sit there, think about it, decide, come up with something amazing. What's your definition of bad day? Sit there, think about it, come up with something. Is the bad day easier to achieve, or is the good day easier to achieve? In everyone I've ever asked, the bad day is much easier to achieve. The reason for that is because we don't have definitions, we don't have frameworks. So my definition of a bad day is something that's really hard for me to achieve, which ended up being when someone close to me passes away. That's a bad day. So I've had a few bad days, but not that many. And then when I have a good day, what would be a good day that makes it super easy and achievable? It's opening my eyes. It's opening my like realizing that I'm on that path. And it's just waking up each day. Because we don't we don't know what's promised. We don't know how long we have, we don't know where we're going, we don't know what we're gonna be doing. But I just want us to realize that if we have strong mental frameworks, then we'll be able to survive a lot better. Another one that really helped me was fitness, working out, running. And at that similar time, I started to get into marathon training and running long races and having this idea of like, what do I actually want to do? What what what's my what's my big takeaway in life? Like, how do I want to show up for myself? How do I want to be seen? And the running was very helpful for me because it alleviated a lot of the stress, it put out a lot of things. And then the third thing I would say that was really, really helpful was the frame of Alex Romose talked about it, the grandfather frame, which is is this a big deal to me? Is this a big deal in five years? Is this a big deal in 85 years? And you start to realize that what is it really that important? Is it that exciting? Is it that detrimental? And I even as I'm saying this to you now, there's something that came up today that was a little stressful, and I've kind of realized that it's not that important. It's gonna be okay. And it's what's the point of bringing that stress and that anger and that detriment if there's no point. So, what did I learn from Jamal? I learned that we have to be nice to each other, we have to be happy. We don't know what people are going through, we don't know the challenges that we face. But I've also learned the importance of focusing on my mental health and the focusing on others' mental health. And that's why even in my coaching calls, I always ask people, what is your mental health like today? And I've had people say one, two, I've had people say nine, ten. Doesn't make it right or wrong. It's just how you're feeling, how you want to be seen and how you want to show up. So I just want us to realize that mental health is a very important aspect. And too many times it's it can be forgotten, it can be blown over, it can be missed. And it's important for us to always have this top of mind. It's not always about chasing the money, it's not always about chasing the people to try to think that they know you. It's about finding something that you truly enjoy and a life that you truly want to live. And another one is like the financial security, like being responsible with your money helps your mental health a lot. Like I've had a lot of clients where they've had challenges because they made decisions that were not that were very short-term, not long-term thinking, and it really bothered them. And it still does to this day. So it's just important for us to realize we can decide how we want to live our life. We can decide how we view our life because the our perspective is the perspective that helps us see the world. So I want, I hope some of those carry with you the definition of a good day and bad day, exercising, long term thinking, and just realizing that you're you're valuable, you're important, and you're you're supposed to be here. So these are the big things that I learned from Jamal. Thank you.