April 2018

12 Hard Things You Need to Hear About Your Attitude

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the mind is your ultimate battleground. It’s the space where the greatest and fiercest conflict resides. It’s where half of the things you thought were going to happen, never actually happened. It’s where your inner resistance buries you with negativity. And, when you allow these thoughts to dwell in your mind, they gradually succeed in robbing you of peace, joy, and ultimately your life. You think yourself right into nervous breakdowns and bouts of depression, time and again.

I know because I’ve been there.

Honestly, we’ve all been there at times.

But, what can we learn from our trials? A whole lot!

There’s so much about our lives—and our fate—we can’t control, it makes absolutely no sense to focus all our energy on these things and then neglect everything we CAN control. We can decide how we spend our time right now, what we choose to focus on, and whom we share our energy with. We can choose our words and the tone of voice in which we speak to ourselves and others. We can decide what we will engage in, read and study next. We can choose how we’re going to respond to challenging life situations when they arise, and whether we will see them as curses or opportunities for growth…

And most importantly, we can [Read more…]

There are wounds that never show on our bodies that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. Depression and heartbreak are two such wounds. I know, from experience.

About a decade ago, in quick succession, Angel and I dealt with several significant, back-to-back losses and life changes, including: losing Angel’s brother, Todd, to suicide, losing our mutual best friend, Josh, to cardiac arrest, and losing our home in the downturn of the economy. The pain inflicted by each of these experiences was absolutely brutal, and enduring them one after another broke our hearts and knocked us both into a moderate state of depression. There was a long stretch of time when we shut out the world, shut out each other, and avoided our loved ones who were grieving alongside us.

Luckily, with the right support, and the gradual restoration of our inner resolve, we pushed forward, stronger and with a greater respect for life. And while there were many intricate steps to our recovery process that I’m leaving out here, the outcome of our journey ultimately led us to the work we do today, over a decade later. Through our course and coaching we have spent the better part of the past ten years leveraging our lessons learned to guide amazing human beings through the process of coping with significant bouts of depression and heartbreak (and other forms of adversity). The work has been anything but easy, but it’s also been incredibly rewarding and life-changing—it has undoubtedly been the most significant silver lining of the painful losses and life changes we were forced to endure.

This morning Angel and I were interviewed on a national radio station about our brand new book, Getting Back to Happy: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Reality, and Turn Your Trials into Triumphs. Near the end of the interview the radio talk show host asked the most sweeping question imaginable:

What have you learned over the past 10 years from coaching people through depression and heartbreak?

We answered the question [Read more…]

Archives for April 2018