Finding A Way Forward Through Depression

0:00Adam Holbrook: If you've ever worked with someone who creates chaos, plays the victim, and blames everyone else, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook.

0:19Welcome to the Managing Difficult People podcast. My name is Adam Holbrook. Today, we're going to be talking about depression. It's real. The reason I created the Managing Difficult People podcast was I was noticing that there's so many people out there that aren't leading themselves well and their teams well. And I said, maybe I can create a place, a safe place where people can listen to my story, my guest stories, and maybe gain awareness of what's holding them back in their own life and a pathway forward. I work with schools and organizations that want to change culture. Because when we stop talking about changing culture and actually do something about it, that's when everything changes.

1:05People show up better. Relationships are stronger. And the bottom line increases as well. If your school or organization want to find out more about this, go ahead and reach out to me at adam-holbrook.com. Or you can email me at info at adam-holbrook.com. Today we're talking about depression. Depression is real. I've suffered from depression heavy in my late 20s. I still struggle with it at points in time, but it doesn't have the same power as it used to have over me. And today I want to talk about this because wintertime is coming and the sun isn't out as much as long as it used to be. We're not getting the vitamin D that we used to be able to get.

1:56And I'm noticing that my depression increases sometimes during winter. Other people's depression can increase at some points as well. And I'm noticing that there's three factors that deal with depression. Now, I'm not a doctor. I'm speaking from my own experience. I'm not a psychologist. If you're struggling with depression, I definitely urge you to reach out for medical help. But today I want to share my story and what has worked for me and for other people. There's three types of health. We have our social health, our physical health, and our mental health. Our physical health we talk about all the time.

2:38Our physical health is how we exercise, how we eat right, and take care of ourselves. Because when we do that, that's the starting point. And if we miss that, a lot of times we miss that. We're not getting outside. We're not exercising. We're not doing things for ourselves. That's the first thing that we notice when I start to get depressed. If I haven't been able to exercise all week because I have a lot going on, my book is coming out, and I got a lot of things going on, and I'm trying to exercise and get everything done, but I'm also trying to get all my work done. But I'm recognizing when I do take care of myself and go for my morning walk and hit the weights for just a little bit, it just changes my state.

3:19So that's physical health. And we're not gonna stay there long because we all know that we need to take care of ourselves. We all know that we need to exercise, but sometimes it's just a matter of rearranging our routine because right now your routine may not consist of daily physical health, not eating right, choosing the prepared meal over going out for fast food, going for that walk over lunch instead of just sitting there, whatever it could be. And you can have an accountability partner. You can take somebody from work with you and say, we're going to go for a walk today, but that's physical health.

3:53And I want to move on to social health. Social health is the second component for me for depression. If I'm not hanging out with my friends now, I know light gets busy. Things happen and we are just constantly taking care of our kids, our families, and that's so important and that contributes to our social health. But sometimes we make excuses as to why we won't hang out with our friends because we're tired, we're exhausted. Life is exhausting. But when we hang out with those friends, that's the very thing that we need to energize us. So ask yourselves, are you making excuses for not hanging out with other people?

4:36Or are your reasons valid? And there's some valid reasons for not hanging out with friends, but there's also some excuses. Like you're tired. I get it. Life's exhausting. But hanging out for that cup of coffee or going out to dinner with that friend is the very thing that we need to take care of ourselves in our physical health. and our social health. Our social health is being with other people. Now, if you're asking yourself, how often should I hang out with friends? If you're asking yourself that question, the answer has been too long. It's been too long. You need to make commitments to hanging out with your friends.

5:16And I know you may not like your friends and that's the case. Keep looking, join a new organization, do something else that will inspire you, something you like, like a Toastbusters public speaking group, volunteer your time. Do something that's going to build some sort of relationships. And when you have those relationships, start working those relationships. They don't need to just sit on the sidelines and see them once a month. You could actually develop a phone conversation, ask that person out to lunch. That's the second important cue. And I noticed that during winter time, my social health starts to decline because I want to come home.

5:51I want to just chill out on the couch, relax, read a book, do something like that. But sometimes I just need to force myself out of the house to go play poker at poker night, the guy's poker night, whatever it would be. And then the last component is mental health. I've struggled with mental health for years. In my first business, I was suicidal. I had a commercial office cleaning business. I've said this story many times on the podcast, in my speakings, but I don't know who needs to hear it today because I was struggling to create my version of success and my mental health wasn't good. I was constantly going, constantly striving for something that I couldn't even name.

6:39And it was exhausting and it left me suicidal. And I was ashamed. I didn't tell a soul, but I pictured it all the time, taking my car, driving it off a cliff and ending my life. And that Christmas Eve, 2005, I'm drunk. I have my suicide note. I wrote a suicide note to my parents apologizing for killing myself. I'm drunk. I'm there and I'm ready. And that night, my dad reached out to me and it was late and he told me he loved me. Me and my dad were in some sort of fight. I don't know how long it was, but I know it was at least a few weeks we hadn't talked. And that night he told me he loved me.

7:27My dad hadn't told me he loved me in years. And as many times as I replay that same story over and over, I know that God reached out to me that night in my dad's voice and he saved my life. And the next day it was Christmas day. I wake up to a 17 hour straight shift. After my shift, I start researching how to sell a business. I post my business for sale and it sold four months later for$220 ,000, which was more money than I had ever had in my entire life. For the first time in my life, I had a little bit of money, But I started asking myself, why do some people go so far in life and other people, they cap off and they can barely leave themselves.

8:15And I realized it was all about our mental health and taking care of ourselves and growing ourselves, knowing ourselves and getting to the point of where we can serve more and greater. Because here's the thing is now that I escaped the pressure of life and the pressure of finances a little bit because I had a little bit of my money, I didn't. I escaped and it felt like the greatest feeling in the world. I had freedom, freedom to hit golf balls. I had a little bit of freedom. But the problem was I escaped stress, but I also escaped purpose. I wasn't leading anyone at that point. I wasn't taking care of anyone, not even myself.

8:59And then I started to recognize that when I take care of other people, when I take care of other people, I do serve, I serve other people. I feel better about myself and I'm fulfilling my purpose and my mental health gets better. I start my second business. And in that second business, I start building relationships with people. I start acting differently, controlling my emotions, not reacting nearly as much. working on myself. And do I still make mistakes? Yeah, I make mistakes all the time, but it doesn't have the same power over me because when I'm serving, I feel best. And when I'm serving, I feel best, but other people benefit from it because I'm helping other people.

9:42I'm raising money for this homeless family, Sinead, Gordon, and Dale, and they want to help other people. Their desire in life is to help other people. They feel best when they're helping other people. And they've talked about struggling with their own mental health, but they feel best when they're serving other people and finding our purpose. Our purpose here is to serve other people, whether it's serving God. Now, some people will say, well, I can just give financially. And giving financially may be good enough for some people. And I'm not saying that one way is the all in, but if you're fine and your mental state is great and you can donate money to other people and that fulfills your cup, That's great.

10:23But if not, maybe it's about going out and volunteering, doing something. For me, I don't really like the structure of volunteer organizations. I really like going out in the street and finding this homeless family that's living in their car to work with and see if I can directly have an impact with them. Now, it's different for everyone. It's different for everyone. But all three criterias are so important. Our mental health. And I think mental health is about taking care of ourselves, our physical health, and our social health. But they're divided up separately. Physical health is one thing, making sure we exercise and we exercise and we eat right.

11:04Our physical health, that's our physical health. Our social health is our relationships. And sometimes we need to have a little bit of fun. Sometimes we just need to put everything down and just go have a little bit of fun. When was the last time you had fun? Now, for me, I was exercising. I exercise every morning. I go for my morning walk and I hit the weights. But I was calling that exercise routine my fun for the day. But fun and filling our cup and taking care of ourselves are two completely different things. We need all three. We need social health. We need physical health and we need mental health.

11:45And I was missing in my life. I was missing fun. pure fun. So I started asking myself, what brings me joy? And it was hitting golf balls. It was blasting my car stereo and singing. It was hanging out with friends, going to poker night, just being goofy, going out to dinner with my family, hanging out with my family outside of the house. Because when you're in the house, there's always something else to do, whatever it would be. And we're all going to get frustrated and depression is going to creep into all of us, but it's about recognizing what area of our life is in the lack when we are. Are we not having good social relationships and having fun enough?

12:29Are we not mentally, our mental health is falling apart because we're not taking care of ourselves. We're not serving ourselves and serving other people. We first got to take care of ourselves, right? Number one, take care of ourselves. We want to take care of ourselves. We want to always serve God. We want God's given purpose. And I know that you may have served in your past and it may have felt great, but we've got to get back to that place where we're serving. If you want to feel better about yourself. For me, I was chasing money my whole life. Chasing money is exhausting because when is it ever going to be enough?

13:03You always want more houses, more money, more of this and more of that. And when I actually stopped chasing the money and actually said to myself, I want to serve, the money naturally follows. Because people like people that can take care of themselves, that can have fun, that really recognize that their own needs. And sometimes we just need to slow down and say, what do I need? What do I need? Because people are exhausted. Life is exhausting. We go from one activity to the next activity. We don't even have a chance to breathe. And this is all about getting back to our roots and asking ourselves, how can I take care of myself, not just today, but every day?

13:45People will say to me, Adam, I like to exercise or I like to read books on the weekends. And I'm going to say, well, what do you do the other five days a week? You say to me, I got a vacation coming up. I'm really excited about it. I'm going to say, great. What are you going to do when you get back? How can you fill your cup up every single day? Every day I exercise every day. I try to read a book every day, not an entire book, but a chapter of a book, but how I can take care of myself. Because if I don't, I start to slip. I start comparing. I start playing the victim's mindset. I'm not good enough.

14:22I'm not good enough. I can't do this anymore. But when I still concentrate on myself and now look, I don't know if depression could ever be completely cured, but it doesn't have the power it used to have over me. It doesn't control me the way it used to, because I recognize what's happening because I have the awareness of, uh-oh, I'm slipping into a victim's mindset here. Uh-oh, I'm slipping. My mental health isn't strong. And then I ask myself, number one, am I taking care of myself? Am I exercising? Am I eating right? Am I sleeping right? Am I going outside to get some fresh air every single day?

15:01Am I having enough fun? Am I hanging out with my friends, even if it's for an hour? And then how can I serve? Most important, serving God's given purpose, whatever your God's given purpose is. And if you don't know what your God's given purpose is, keep searching. because when you find it, you're going to wake up every day so excited. And for me, it's physically helping people. Some people like to give money. That's fine. We talked about that. But other people, it might just be offering their time, working at a food pantry, being able to build a bigger business and serve a larger community in a product or a service that you believe in.

15:39Because when you have a business that you're in and you actually believe in the product or the service that you're doing and you think it's going to change lives, It changes everything. So ask ourselves today, if we're feeling the depression, the weather's getting colder, the sun is disappearing, I still need us to get some exercise outside and still need us to go outside. But ask ourselves, how is my social health? Am I hanging out with friends enough? Am I having enough fun? How is my physical health? Am I exercising? Am I taking care of myself? Am I eating right? and my mental health? Am I filling my cup up every single day?

16:19Am I doing the things that I need to do to take care of myself? And am I serving myself first, serving God, and serving others? Because when you can do those three things, it doesn't have the same power over you. You start to show up differently. People are attracted to people that have it all together or serving other people because they want to be like that too. Because you're going to inspire, as you get better, you're going to inspire other people around you. And they're going to want to be that way as well. This depression thing, it just comes in and out. Sometimes you could have seven great days, three good days, and then all of a sudden it comes in and out of nowhere.

17:04And I want to ask yourself, number one, how did I sleep? Did I take care of myself today? Did I go for a walk exercise? Can I call that friend up? And how can I serve? Now, if you're missing any one of those areas, any one of those areas, you could have two of those. You could be exercising every single day. You could be sleeping every day, hanging out with friends. But if you're not serving, whether volunteering or helping in a way that feels fulfilling enough, maybe your past job was a super fulfilling job, and now you have a job that is just to pay the bills, I ask yourself, how can I find purpose more?

17:45And sometimes you pick something and it's not what you thought it was, or it changes over time. And that's okay too. But saying yes to something, serving someone, helping someone, serving God's given purpose is the first step. Now don't say yes to everything, We don't want to say yes to everything. We want to make sure it aligns with our purpose and it would help us in our own lives.

18:13Depression, it's real. Sometimes we just have to slow down our lives, reach out to that friend.

18:24Adam Holbrook: Go to sleep earlier. Do something to fill our cup up. Go have some fun and find a way to surf. And over and over again, I'm noticing the same thing. It's the majority of people, myself included, didn't find a way to surf. And when I sold my second company, my bottiless water cooler company, I sold it for seven figures. And after I sold it, I felt like I can just kind of chill out and enjoy life. And guess what? Every day I was doing stuff fun, exercising, going to hit golf balls, living the life, calling some friends, hanging out with some friends. But after six months of this routine where people were jealous of my routine, I started to get depressed.

19:16I escaped the pressure, but I also escaped the purpose. And the purpose comes when you're serving your God-given talent. And if you don't know what your God-given talent is, start where you are. Start asking yourself, what would I like to do even if I wasn't paid for it? What am I good at? And if you don't know, you could serve at a food pantry. You could do something. There's so many places you can serve. You can call me up. I have some service positions that you can do for me. I know depression is real. I've struggled with it for a very long time. And I know that some people do need to have medication for it.

19:59And I'm not claiming that I know all the answers because I don't. Sometimes you need to have a medical professional. But I'm sharing my own story of how I've overcome it. And I still struggle with it. I also stopped drinking alcohol. Alcohol was making me jealous of other people, angry, not in control of my emotions. And when I gave up drinking, I was never an alcoholic. But even if I had a few drinks, I didn't like the way I was showing up. And I didn't like the way I felt the next day. So I haven't had a drink. It's going to be four years in December. But everyone's different. I'm not saying you shouldn't drink.

20:35Go ahead and do what you feel like you need to do. I'm just saying, being aware of where you need help. You need to serve more. You need to take care of yourself more. You need to have more friends more. You need to care about everything going on in your life. my new book, You're Not For Everyone, is coming out in the next few weeks. It's been delayed. I have to be honest with you. It's been delayed and the process has been grueling. The book is written. Everything is done. It's the layout and formatting and all of the things that go into the back end of getting this book out there. I'm bummed out that it's delayed, but I recognize I am moving in the right direction.

21:16The book will be coming out in the next three weeks for sure. And I'm excited about that book. That book is about removing the masks that no longer serve us and building better relationships, trusting ourselves and living authentically. That book is so special. I'm grateful for it. My first book I wrote about depression and my first book was about depression. It was called Character Evolution. And this book was about my mental health struggle and everything that I continue to do to serve my mental health. It's about overcoming self-sabotage, about conflict resolution and managing difficult people.

22:01It's called Character Evolution. You can get it on Amazon. on. This book connected the dots for me. This book took a while and I'm still, sometimes I get stuck and I actually refer back to this book to recognize where I need to fill my cup up more, serve myself more, help other people more, be grateful more, not allow other people to control my life and I get to control my own journey. This book is about getting out of the prison that we're in our own brains. Look at this guy. This guy is holding the bars in his prison, in his own mind. This book is beautiful. If you're struggling with mental health or managing difficult people, conflict resolution, self-sabotage, pick up character evolution.

22:49And until next time, I am thinking of you. I know you can overcome this depression, whether with listening to this story, whether reaching out for professional help or just recognizing where in your life you need to serve yourself more, serve God more, serve others more. God bless. See you next time on the Managing Difficult People podcast.

23:17Adam Holbrook: So that's it for today's episode of the Managing Difficult People podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or iTunes wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a$10 ,000 private VIP day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.

23:56You