15: Double Suicide Attempt Survivor & Pro Golfer in Canada to Mental Health Ambassador // The Story of Andrew Jensen

My doctor even said to me, andrew, I think you have depression. And as a man, I told him to F off. I was like, no way. I'm an athlete. I'm strong, and I don't have depression. Like, this is just demons, something I can work through, walk it off kind of thing. Like, I grew up in a military family. Like, you don't show weakness as a man, therein lied a lot of my problems. I think what I've always said when I speak our hurt and our pain is kind of what connects us all because we all experience it, we can't avoid it. And the ability to open up and talk about it is what is connecting us. And then the power of community that it has on healing, it's profound.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live. Right here we cover subjects in business, sports, and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals up in the air. Use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcastericilbertwilliams.com Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say, hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcastricilbertwilliams. I know you're gonna love today's interview, so let's get started. Here with us today on From Rock Bottom to rockin it, straight from the world of professional golf is Andrew Jensen of PGA Tour Canada. Andrew's story is one of competing in professional sports at the highest of levels, of course. And his story is also one of mental health, particularly on the subject of suicide and suicide prevention. Now I'm going to let Andrew share the details of his own story in his own words. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be on.

Now you're out in Florida, I think, at the time of this recording. Is that right?

Yeah. I am a snowbird down here in the warm weather. Now, as a Canadian growing up Playing golf. Eventually when you turn pro, you have to get to Florida. And I've been wintering here for a handful of years and now it's unfortunate enough to call it home.

I think fortunate is the right word. I'm no golf player, but I do relate to running away from the lovely frigid Canadian winters. I mean, I'm still a Canadian citizen. This is the first winter without snow and this recording might come out a little bit after winter, probably in summer if I had to guess. So, you know, bear with me here. But coming from Canadian winters, anyone that's from Canada as well, or from a northern climate region, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There's a benefit to coming down south and so, yeah, it's great to be here.

Yeah, no kidding.

So Andrew, can you tell me and everyone listening in your own words? I always like to try and put a circumstance or a situation or an event in my own words, but sometimes they're so personal that it's better for me just to let the guest share your story in your own words. That's usually more effective. I mean, you have an incredible story and people listening to this right now, they're having their own version of a rock bottom moment. And you have a rockin it moment too that I wanna hear about and everyone wants to hear about. So but if we start at the bottom, no pun intended, in your own words, like what happened here?

There's been a lot of bottoms, I would say, over the course of my life. Like when I look back to look back at it, it's easier to identify those moments when you are at rock bottom. I think when you're experiencing it, you actually don't think it's rock bottom because for the depressed brain in particular, you anticipate it getting worse than. And I've been struggling my entire life from the minute my early teens. You know when you start kind of piecing together your identity, your value, your worth, that's when I began to really struggle with myself and all of that because some odd reason I just didn't like who I was, who I saw in the mirror. And I was always striving. And no matter what I did, it wasn't enough to kind of fill that hole, if you will. Like, it was always temporary. And for me, I grew up in a golfing family with a professional golfer father. I grew up at a golf course. Like golf was everything to me. And I showed a lot of promise early because I spent hours, hours all summer playing golf. Golf came naturally to me and When I played well in my early teens, I felt great. But the way that golf is, the very next day, you can have a bad day, you can have a bad score, someone could beat you, and then for me, it'd be from high to low, high to low, all relative to my golf score. And it wasn't like I could just keep it on the golf course. As I continued to mature and go through puberty, all of these feelings connected with things at school, social settings, grades, girls. Like, basically everything, My weight, anything that was an outside evaluation of myself. Basically, I always failed. And that hurt so, so much. But I didn't know. I mean, when you're a teenager, you don't know how to make sense of that. Your brain isn't developed enough to make sense of all of these things, especially if there's a lot of pain associated with it. So when I was 16, I tried to take my life, and I failed at that. And just through sheer kind of stubbornness, determination, I kind of put my nose to the grindstone. I was like, I need to fix this. Because I think I thought if I fixed it, I would feel good enough, be good enough. It was just this constant house of cards. So I fixed it, quote, unquote. Took about two years and lost £40, got better grades, finally had a girlfriend, started playing good golf, and then I kind of rode that out. But then once I got to college, you have new pressures, you have new everything. And there's so many low moments there. But thankfully, I was kind of surviving because of good golf on my team. And then I turned pro, and all of a sudden, just things got so difficult. Like, the depressed brain loves isolation. It wants to be alone. It wants to just kind of remove itself and remove you experiencing it from everything because you're ashamed of how you feel and you don't want to share it with people. And being out my rookie year on tour and traveling by myself across North America, playing golf for money with other people's invested money. It was the hardest year of my life, probably up until that point. I mean, I was only 24 years old, and that was the first time my doctor even said to me, andrew, I think you have depression. And as a man, I told him to F off. I was like, no way. I'm an athlete. I'm strong, and I don't have depression. Like, this is just demons, something I can work through, walk it off kind of thing. Like, I grew up in a military family. Like, you don't show weakness as a man. Therein lied a lot of My problems, I think.

So if we go back for a second to this early on when you said you were having these extreme highs and these extreme lows in your early golfing as a teenager, in your opinion, where's the line between passion and obsession? And what I mean is, for me anyways, I can relate to when I had my last business. I would be so excited to work on it. You know, every day I would wake up and think about the business and just dive in and do what needs to get done without thinking at all beyond what I need to do today. You know, go out there, hire and sell some contracts and build and create and innovate and do all the fun stuff that people get into entrepreneurship to do. Like this whole experience of being an entrepreneur and building a company was some of the best experiences I've ever had in my life. But then the next day would come by and I'd be lost, I'd be confused, I'd be frustrated, and I'd have a extreme low right after being really excited, a job went bad or someone quit or I had to fire someone or I lost a sale or something else just didn't go right. And for me, I took it too personal. And ultimately what was happening is what was this source of inspiration and passion and positive energy was it mutated, it changed into something that was a source of turmoil and frustration and just a big mass of negative energy. It was like a teeter totter. One day here, the other day there. One day was pure passion and raw excitement and the next day was just obsession, right? Unable to separate reality from the moment and separate my emotions and the frustration of the moment from life in general. Just losing context completely about what life's about. And that's really just not a healthy place to be. Losing sight of what really matters. Does any of this relate to you? Does this resonate with you at all?

I can relate to that in my adult life. I don't think as a teenager, as a 14, 15 year old, you know that I don't think you can connect those dots yet. Our brains don't fire on those cylinders. So I think it was all rooted in passion, but it was all. When you're playing golf at that age, you're playing for your college career, right? You're playing for a scholarship. And if you get that scholarship to the good school, like you're always playing for something, a trophy or whatever. And when you're a kid, you don't know how to differentiate identity. And your identity is not what you do. It's who you are. And I think as a kid, you don't know that yet. So I just. I mean, the highs and lows were basically just my whole junior golf career. I had great years when I was 14, 16, and 18. Fifteen is basically when I grew up and I played terrible, terrible golf. And then 17 is when I started to, like, click with these deeper things. I mean, I tried to take my life at 16, so clearly I'm starting to connect emotion and all of these things together. And 17, I didn't golf that summer. I struggled so much with my mental game because if I played bad, I didn't want to talk about it to my family. And it just. I did not enjoy it. So I just stopped playing golf. As I started to mature, I could connect those things. But, like, the. The obsession and the passion stuff that began to click, I can identify to that when I was a professional golfer, because the obsession blinds you from what's healthy, right, Appropriate. And I had played one year on tour, so difficulty, like, it was awful. I hated so much of it when it. Yet it was the most memorable, fun time of my life. Like, I can look back on that year. I literally drove all of North America in my car by myself, saw everything, experienced it all. It was so amazing. I had these amazing moments from that. But then when I think of the golf, the stress and all that, I hated it. I didn't enjoy it, but I didn't want to stop. My sponsors dropped me at the end of that year, but I didn't want to stop. And that was the obsession. No, I'm good enough if I just keep working because I was a good golfer. I still am a great golfer, but my mental was just terrible. I just would get in my own way. And the obsession side of it was it kept me from doing what was smart. And the obsession is what? I played three years of professional golf on credit cards. Like, I amassed $45,000 of debt playing golf because I was good enough. But I was obsessed with proving it. Right.

Right.

It becomes like a gambler. I play well this week and win 10 grand. Well, that helps a lot. Pay down what it's cost to get to this point. And then I had potential sponsor, and I'd have these conversations and I'd have handshakes, but I wouldn't have checked in the bank. And I would go and basically play as if the money had come in. And then two out of the three times, the money never came. But I went and played for two months as if it was coming. So it Was like more debt. That totally was my passion. My love for golf completely disappeared and was replaced with that obsession and chasing fulfillment, not even chasing the best offers in the world. Just want to win. Just want to win golf tournaments. When I think about competing again, I just want to win. I don't care what it's for. If it's 500 bucks, $5 million, you just want to win. Tiger woods doesn't play golf for how much money he's going to make. He plays to with trophies. But so many golfers, and myself included, at that time in my career, I was only playing for the money so that I could keep playing. Because if I didn't play, I had to get a job. And if I got a job, well, then I was a failed golfer and I only knew myself as a golfer. So passion just kind of got engulfed by obsession. Unhealthiness, if that's the word. I don't know, for lack of a better word, like it just got lost. And I hated golf. Absolutely hated it. And if I think of some of my rock bottom moments or those are those moments when I'm playing golf tournaments and I would rather be anywhere else in the world or dead than actually play a golf tournament, that was so hard to do, but I was still doing it because it's the only thing I knew how to do it, the only thing I was good at in.

My mind here at From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. You know that I love to support charitable organizations, people and groups that have positive impacts on the world and are making positive change. And, and the Canadian Mental Health association is certainly one of those places. You can check them out at CMHA CA and you can find a ton of resources that deal with mental health in a variety of different applications. If you check out the website, there's lots of resources, a lot of information to look through. And when you contact them, you're going to be able to find peer support groups. There's also an awards ceremony and a lot of people that are there to help you get to the next step in your mental health recovery. There's a focus on the pandemic, obviously Covid is impacting people everywhere. A section focused on people that are affected by police and the mental health of maybe having a negative experience in that realm. And we know a lot about that by watching what's happening in the United States. But it happens everywhere, right? It's not just there, it happens everywhere. And this is one of the resources to help people through that. You know, entrepreneurs are suffering everywhere. There's there's an echo that's going to happen with this pandemic. Pandemic and future generations. And anyways, I can go on and on but just check out CMHA ca make a donation to there. If you don't have a problem today you're looking to get help with, then maybe you can just support them in their cause and help them grow and help other people. Or just check out the resources and you'll hopefully find what it is that you need today. And now back to the show. I hear what you're saying Andrew, and I have a question for you on that subject. I'll tell you a short story and then a question to follow up. When I was about your age, at the time, when I was maybe 16 or so, for me I had hit my own rock bottom moment. And as people who listen to this show regularly, you already know, I dropped out of high school very young and left home and lived in a drug house basically. And then I found passion inside entrepreneurship and I latched onto it with everything and it was amazing. When I was 18 I had this event production company, maybe 19 actually, and it was losing money. It was a great business concept and there was a good following and I really enjoyed it. But it was financially a failure. It was losing money fast. Now echoing your words, when I look back, it was an amazing time. It was an amazing experience. I learned so much and I'm very grateful for, you know, being 19 and having gone against the grain for most of my childhood and adolescent life there. Up until that point, it was great to be accepted into the business community. As a 19 year old and being on stage and having having this momentum and credibility that happens when you get up there on that stage and have a following. And ultimately what happened is my self worth became tied and meshed with the event production company. It was my self worth. Without it then there is no more self worth left. It was like a dependency. It was almost like a drug helping me get through my own mental challenges at the time and self image challenges as a teenager and going through school, I had very very poor self esteem and very low self worth. I had no idea who I really was and I just had a very negative self image. So this event production company success helped in a way, for better or worse, helped me get through it and realize that there is something better than what the mean kids at school had convinced me of. So when the company started to fail and falter and have financial trouble, that was a direct in my mind anyways in the way that my Mind was interpreting the events and experiencing that reality. At that time, it was associating the failure of the company with proof that I am worthless. If the company's faltering, then maybe I'm actually a bad person. Because my identity was so closely intertwined, it was almost inseparable.

Right.

When one goes down, so does the other, and vice versa. So at one point, I remember I was on stage and I was doing an introduction and I was pretending to be super happy and positive, but at the same time, I had maxed out three lines of credit. I didn't really know how to pay the bills. I was paying off minimum payments on one credit card by using the other credit card. And my self image was just screaming on the inside and I didn't know what to do. I had no idea how to deal with this turmoil and this shame that was growing inside me. Even though I'm standing on stage, no one had any idea. People still saw just the happy kid that was doing a really cool business. They didn't know what I was feeling on the inside. They didn't know I was exploding. So my question for you, Andrew, is, was your experience anything like that, like what I just described that I went through, or was it completely different? I'm curious.

Yeah, because I'd be out on the road. No surprise. I started YouTube because I was blogging. Like I was writing articles for my blog during all of this. And my closest friends could tell something was up, but I would just, you keep appearances. And every week was, oh, I'm a game strong. I'm feeling really good. And lo and behold, it's 7181 miscut. It was like clockwork. But I would try to show that I had it all together because especially in golf, like, you got a good golf swing, you hit a good, you can hit a golf ball far. Well, like everyone thinks, like, they don't think well, why aren't the pieces connecting? They can't. They see the outside. They feel good. Golfer, that's bad. It's like watching the PGA Tour. We only watch the best players every week. We don't see the great players that are struggling for months on end with the same looking golf swing, same ability. And so like I kind of kept those appearances. But yeah, on the inside, I was just afraid, ashamed, scared. Like all of it unhappy. And it just, it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And I got injured, like I got physically got injured in 2010 and played through it like I was playing golf with tendinitis. But like it was manifesting. I had half golf ball swelling size lumps in my forearm. But I was still golfing. I couldn't not golf because if I didn't golf, I couldn't fulfill this potential sponsor. How was I going to pay back my debt if I just started Went back to Lululemon.

It's a trap. Yeah.

I was 25, 26 years old. I had nothing else to do in my mind. And then did that whole year hurt? Nothing changed. And then 2011, I played a couple tournaments in North Carolina in February and they were all right. And then I went home to Ottawa. And by that Easter, it was like, I don't want to live anymore. I'm in so much pain. I couldn't connect those dots then. It took therapy to realize that. But it was like, I can't chase this anymore. I can't make up any ground. The debt is too big. I'm not a good enough golfer. I'm physically not healthy enough to compete anymore. I have nothing I can do. I'm in my parents basement at 26 years old. And then it just like by 2011, that was it. I tried to play a few tournaments here and there and nothing worked. I legitimately had to retire. I got a job flipping houses with some friends, knowing that the debt will disappear in a long, long time. But it just didn't change. I was still in so much pain and getting worse and worse and worse internally. No one knew. And then over the course of two and a half weeks, two suicide attempts. What? The second one being hospitalized. And that propelled me to be public about it a few months later. And it's a tale as old as time that everyone that found that out about me was, man, I had no idea. Andrew had everything going for him. Had everything going for him. And it's like, even guys that I room with on tour, guys that were now playing on the PGA Tour, that I roomed with on the Canadian Tour, were like, why didn't you say anything? Because, I mean, I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. How could we fix this? How could anything fix this? And when you're depressed and when you're going down that rabbit hole, when you're experiencing a severe bout of depression, you can't connect any of those dots. It just gets worse and worse and painful mentally, physically. It just hurts so much. And try and it's hard to explain that to people. It's hard to have people connect with that unless they've experienced it. And the human condition, we don't want to hurt. We do not like hurting. So I was hurting so much, I had no idea how to stop hurting. My brain basically just said, if you died, you wouldn't hurt anymore. So that's where it goes. That could easily be in terms of the grand narrative. Yeah. October 15, 2011 is the Rock bottom. And there's been rock bottom since. But it's ever since that moment I got a second chance at life. I still have made dumb decisions. I still play bad golf. I still went and played golf and probably amassed a little bit of debt in 2013 and 14 and. But since it's not been the case because my health is my top priority, I've withdrawn from tournaments because I'm playing and I'm contemplating how I'm going to kill myself during the round of golf. I'm like, I can't I get me out of here. And I've withdrawn. I don't care what people think anymore because my health is my top priority. And if I'm going to withdraw because I hate it, because I'm in so much pain, because I don't want to be out there, I'm going to withdraw because if someone has a physical, like, I broke my arm last year and I've tried to play some tournaments since, and I've had twice where I got in so much pain I had to withdraw, like, physically, I couldn't make a golf swing. People can understand that. Right. I also have this other pain that I experienced, and that's what was happening and that's why I withdrew. And people don't want to make sense of it. They don't want to, but that's why I'm using my voice to try to share as many intricacies of this illness as I can so that people can connect with it and understand. Yeah. That they are alone.

That's the whole purpose of this podcast, of course. It's to share these stories and to remind people listening right now that you're not alone. Now, hopefully you already know that and you remember that daily, but if you don't, then this episode is your reminder. Here you are right now hearing it from two people who definitely did feel alone and did have some rock bottom moments. And we're just telling you, you're not alone out there. We're sitting here talking about these subjects because getting them off our chest, getting them out into the open, it takes so much pressure off of yourself. And perhaps equally important is it gives an opportunity for your loved ones to help. And you do have loved ones. And that's really what we're trying to get at here. Andrew, as soon as we come back from this short little break, I want to ask you a couple questions about being an ambassador with the Bell Let's Talk initiative and I want to hear about some of the people's lives that you've touched and helped heal that as soon as we come back from this short break. Hey, Eric. Here on from Rock Bottom, the rockin it. On today's episode, I decided to help out the organization called the Mental health Colorado. That's mentalhealthcolorado.org check them out, check out their website if you're struggling, if you're in need. I mean, mental health is a subject that doesn't have to end tragically, right? You, you need there's resources like this out there everywhere. Just mental healthcolorado.org there's resources out there to help you or to help your friends. I encourage you to check it out. They have a couple toolkits you can download. There's a school mental health toolkit. I would have been a big beneficiary of that if I had that when I was in school. Early childhood mental health toolkit. There's lots of good resources on here and there's a lot of support available to you. So please check out the website and maybe even most importantly, click the donate now button in the top right corner of their website. It's bit a little yellow button. Donate a little bit. It goes a lot farther than you might ever possibly realize. So check it out. Remember, that's mentalhealthcolorado.org support them, support your friends, support the community. Do what you gotta do to help make lives better. And now back to the show. We are back now here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it. Andrew, what is it like to be an ambassador with the Bell Let's Talk initiative? What's it all about and what do you do there?

It's pretty cool. Like if the program has changed so much, it's been 10 years now. I've been on officially since 2015. Yeah.

Time flies here. You're dating yourself.

Well, cause I did my first Bell Let's Talk thing on Bell Let's Talk Day in 2014. I did off the Record with Michael Landsberg. We did a special Bell Talk episode. But then after that episode is when I was asked to be an ambassador for the program. And I mean, it's obviously a huge honor because you're kind of, you're breathing the same air as Michael Landsberg, Clara Hughes, Howie Mandel, like these great Canadians that have also suffered with mental Illness and we're just the dozen of us or so are the flag bearers, if you will, of it's one particular day that all the emphasis is on. But Bell, let's talk is a year long initiative and like I said, it's been for 10 years now and it's, it's raised so much money for mental health initiatives in Canada, literally coast to coast. And I've been fortunate enough to see that happen. And yes, we have the one particular day where the ambassadors were kind of set up in a city and we kind of will do speaking events or media or whatever, but also throughout the year, if our schedules happen to work, we get to go and present a check to say one of, one of the organizations that's getting a community fund grant and connect with those people in that community. And one thing that I've, I would say, I mean, I've been lucky, I've spoke across all of Canada. But with, let's say something that's specifically under the Bell, let's talk manner, no matter what community I've got to do it in, there's something about that community that I have a connection with. And it's just, it's so special to see that across the entire country, Canadian kid from Ottawa is in Yukon and there's connections to that community. Having been there for a day and met those people or Sudbury or Halifax or Vancouver, it's so special because it just drives home the point that we are all so, so very similar. And what I've always said when I speak, our hurt and our pain is kind of what connects us all because we all experience it, we can't avoid it. And the ability to open up and talk about it is what is connecting us. And then the power of community that it has on healing is just, it's profound. I pinch myself every year. They ask me in the fall of every year, are you still in for next year? And it's like, you don't even have to ask me. It doesn't matter. Whatever city you want me to go to, I'm honored. It's amazing. And this year was extra special because I got to be in Ottawa for the 10th anniversary and speak, you know, at an event for our government. And especially living in America now, whenever I get to go home and share my story and that kid who tried to kill himself at 16, then that man who tried to kill himself at 27 is given a stage, a voice, a microphone to the military, to the government, the private sector in the country I'm from, it's just like, it blows me away. I can't believe it. And when I go back to when I was really struggling 2012, watching Clara Hughes's documentary, I had just come out of the hospital, like, it'd been two and a half months from that Bell west cocktail 2012. And then to go, I'm hanging out with these people. I'm. I'm sharing the same message as these people. And I always joke, even to this day, I think I'm the only one without a blue check. On Twitter, I'm not verified. I'm just a struggling professional golfer. Like, it's just cool to hang with Olympians and broadcasters and gray tough winners. It's unbelievable.

And speaking of healing, I want to talk about that for a second. Before we did this recording, I went online. I started watching a bunch of your YouTube videos. And anyone who's listening right now who has not checked out Andrew's channel, I encourage you to check it out. There's a lot of good stuff there. And I'll put a link to the YouTube channel in the show notes of this episode. Now, when I was watching these videos, Andrew, you look so fundamentally happy and grounded and not in a fake sort of I'm on TV sort of way at all. You just seem. You have this energy that is just content. You seem really happy with what you're doing. It's like you're just having fun with life as a concept and life in general. You know, playing golf and doing your video and engaging with your audience. You just seem to be really enjoying it, even when you're playing golf against yourself by yourself. Because, of course, the social distancing is strange and affecting everything. So even out there, making these videos on the course by yourself, talking essentially to a camera with no one else there to listen, and you're just the happiest guy in the world. And when I think about that, I see. All right, you identified that golf was your passion, and you approached it initially as a younger adult in the traditional route, which was going down the direction and road of competition and competitive sporting and engaging from that perspective. And you found out some great things, discovered some really good experiences, and also found some huge obstacles and challenges. And so you stopped. But you kept the dream alive, right? The dream was to play golf. That's what you loved. And so now you're engaging with your passion in a way that supports your life. Based on the lessons that you've learned so far, you found a way to do what you love that doesn't have the same drawbacks. That came with your first attempt to engage with that passion. When I was little, I always dreamed of flying. And there was a time when I started doing my pilot license. And I found all of that joy and happiness that comes from living the dream and finally experiencing in reality the thing that you've been thinking about for a long time. I was finally up there flying and learning how to do banks and do recoveries from a spin and all that cool stuff. But really soon into that flight training, I realized I didn't want to be a pilot. I didn't want to dedicate my life to being a commercial airline pilot. That wasn't part of the dream. The dream was to fly. It wasn't to have a career or an entire life inside of an airplane. And it was automatic. I didn't even realize that that's what was happening. But there's this automatic association. Society says, okay, if you want to fly, all right, you got to be a pilot. You got to be a commercial airline pilot, and you got to dedicate your life to it. If you want to play golf, you have to be a competitor. You got to go to the highest ranks. You got to dedicate and push and sacrifice in order to engage with the thing that you love. And I think that's bullshit. That's a falsity. You don't have to do anything in order to engage with your passion other than just engage with it, other than to just be with it, right? Just do what it is that makes you really happy in life. And let's not get caught up in societal pressure or in the norms. Now, as an adult, looking back, I can see, yeah, of course, that is all bullshit. And everyone's path is very unique, and there is no one way to do anything. So I dropped out of the flight school. And inevitably, back then, I felt like a failure. I felt like I tried and it didn't work. And I felt embarrassed to tell people that I had quit my pilot training. And it felt like the dream died. But then I started to realize some of the things that I just said now. So I looked for different ways to engage with flying and discovered hang gliding. And hang gliding is amazing. You don't have to dedicate 30,000 or $40,000 in flight school and wait a couple years in order to start flying, right? It's not like that. It's much more easy to access that passion through a different avenue than the one that might have been normal. And that felt normal to me when I first started. Right? Super cheap. 3,000 bucks. Get a hang Glider. Compare that to the cost of an airplane. And I mean relatively super cheap. Go on a hill and practice your takeoff and landings in a very low risk sort of environment with your friends and a good instructor. Easy. Or do a tandem flight off of a mountain. And you know, Mount Severn in British Columbia was a great spot. I did a few there. Or paragliding in the Alps or doing a tow plane, like getting towed behind an ATV on a hang glider or whatnot. Or just joining a friend who has a pilot's license and being the co pilot and just hanging out up in the air.

Right.

It doesn't. I don't have to dedicate my whole life. You guys don't have to dedicate your whole lives to your passions. A passion can be experienced and expressed in a multitude of ways. And I challenge you to think outside the box with that. And Andrew, I feel like this is exactly what happened with you. When you started to discover your passion for golf doesn't mean that you have to be a competitive player. But I'm not sure, I mean, tell me in your own words what you think.

Yeah, I mean, like, bang on, basically. I started the YouTube channel in this in March of 2017, and the whole premise was I wanted to share behind the scenes of professional golf, of chasing down the PGA Tour. I was 33 years old. I'd been through what I'd been through. I wanted to. Basically, I'm a huge Gary Vaynerchuk fan. And it was like, all right, I'm finally going to do this. I have some skill as video creation. Like, let's just flex this muscle. Let's do this. And for no reason other than a creative outlet and potentially something that could help me keep playing golf, but also share my experience. Because I remember when I was turning pro when I was in college, having to reach out and find information on how to become a professional golfer was difficult. So, like, I want to share. I'm a storyteller and having been a public speaker for three years, four years, is it kind of connected with that? And it was like, all right, let's share this journey and my kind of quote, unquote, love of golf in an effort to. It's so cliche, but it's like, grow the game of golf. But for me, it was in an effort to maybe help some people. And then that whole year 2017, it was difficult because being creative and being competitive, they clashed quite a bit. And then my channel didn't really get a lot of traction early. It took like seven months for people to really notice it. But you're documenting playing golf, and a lot of times it's bad. 20% of the time, you're in the mix. 80% of the time, you're in the middle of the pack, and it's just not glamorous. And I was fighting with that. And in that fight, I was kind of losing my love for golf. And then my channel got a bit of viral attention, and. And then 2018, it was like, okay, I have 10,000 people watching me play tournaments every week. That's a lot of pressure. And that started to, like, really take away from loving the game of golf. And it also took away from my. Why. Why did I start this channel? Now? I was just making videos, and I was paying attention to what people were saying. It was just, like, throwing me back into my first group of sponsors. What are they saying? What do I need to do to impress them? And it was like, what videos do I need to make to convince people that I can play golf and that this is worth watching? Any YouTube, any creators, I think, struggles with that. But then eventually, it took me breaking my arm last January for me to realize this channel is a platform still to share my love for the game of golf. I'm not going to be playing tournament golf till, like, July probably, so how am I going to share my love for the game of golf? And I had to kind of get creative and find ways to do that. And in doing that, it made the recovery from a broken arm a lot more tolerable than I would have ever anticipated it to be. Professional golfer breaks his arm, like, that's it. What the hell? Like, you're done. And it's not like, I'm never going to be the same golfer. Golf's not as easy for me as it was, and. But I found I kind of really fell in love with the game of golf because it was taken away from me. And then I made a commitment to myself and to my channel that I'm probably not going to play as much tournament golf as when I started this channel. And I'm not going to document that, But I have an opportunity to share a love of golf. And if that makes other people love golf, then I'm winning, because I know what it's like to loathe the game of golf. So there's a lot of people that have experienced that. So if I can have a small dent in changing that for someone, then that's it. That's it. It's awesome. And I think that, like, what you were saying, I think it does show in my videos. Like if I watch older videos or videos from 2017 or 2018, I can tell if I was putting on a face or just saying what I thought I needed to say. Whereas now I'm making videos and I'm doing exactly what I want to do because I love doing it. And you can see that I'm not doing it for anyone else. I know people are watching. I know it's help. You know, it can help. It can, but it frustrates. I mean, the bigger any Internet presence gets, the more morons you have out there that want to tell you their opinion, right? And I have all kinds of people that tell me I'm a shitty golfer and that I should retire. And it's like, dude, you're missing the point. Like I said that two videos ago. I know I'm a shitty copper right now, but at the end of the day, it sucks to say it. I don't think I'm ever going to play on the PGA Tour. And that pains me to say it could still happen. But it pains me to say that because that's the only thing I've wanted to do my entire life is playing the PGA Tour. I still think I can, I still think I can work towards that. But my priorities have changed. And what's more important to me right now is not that relentless pursuit where you eliminate everything from your life and focus solely on your golf game. I don't want to do that. I want to continue to enjoy my life. I'm fortunate that I get to. I mean, I work far more than a full time job for a part time income with YouTube, but it still opens doors and if it allows me to play some tournaments here and there and if those tournaments go well, great. And we'll see what happens. Like I said earlier in our chat, I just want to list a trophy, that's all. I just want to win golf tournament. That's why I'll forever be a professional. I'm never going to be an amateur again. Some people think I'm an amateur that watch my videos. They don't know that I'm a professional golfer because they've come into my channel after I've really documented playing tournament golf. So now I'm just documenting golf and practice and challenges and fun and to make a living doing it. So I get to still make a living playing golf. So everything I dreamt of as a kid is happening. But it doesn't look like kind of what you said the way that it society or the way that we Expect it to look like because everything changes. Fifteen years ago, this wasn't the possibility. Five years ago, 10 years ago, this wasn't a possibility. Now you have a good handful of professional golfers, club pros, touring pros, they play golf for a Living on YouTube and it's so friggin cool. The passion is there and I get to do that. And during this whole lockdown process, it's almost like I was prepared for it from breaking my arm last year because I couldn't do anything last year. Whereas now I can still go to the golf course. I'm fortunate and. But I know that people don't have PJ Tour golf to watch right now. So it's like I can fill a little bit of a void. Very, very small void. A part of that void, I should say. Giving you something that's new and it's golf to watch because that's what you want to watch, that's what you want to do with your time. It's an honor to be able to do that in the wake of what happened. And some people want to shit on me for that. But like you said, when you're doing it out of pure love and passion for what you're doing, you don't hear them. All, right, Give me a hard time because I'm out on a golf course when I should be social distancing. I'm on a golf course by myself, around no one, and this is my job. Some people are being forced to work from home. I have to go and work under different circumstances at a golf course and be mindful of my health and safety while I'm out there to continue to provide light, joy, entertainment, positivity in these incredibly weird times that we are living right now. You want to shit on me for that? Well, all right, so be it. It's not changing anything. Whereas two years ago, if someone shit on me for that, it would get to me, or early on in my career that stuff would get to me. But like you had said, when you're doing it out of that passion, it's so easy to keep doing it, like strength to strength and it's just so easy to ignore it.

And we're talking about motivations here. As soon as we come back from this short break, I want to ask you two questions. Andrew, I'm going to be looking for two pieces of advice. I hope you're ready for this, by the way. Pop quiz. The two things are so people listening to this right now can probably relate to something that they feel really passionate about. Everyone's got one and they're struggling to keep that passion alive. So this could be in business, you know, pushing that startup or maintaining that, that existing large organization that you've perhaps already built and feeling stuck in it, you know, feeling like a hostage to this, this thing that you've created. Or it could be in a personal relationship, whether a friendship or romantic or family member. It could be in engaging with a sport or any sort of physical activity or something creative, like musical or dance. Whatever it is, whatever your passion is something that you've been really passionate about and now you're scared about where it might go. You know, there's a threat looming on the horizon. So the question, Andrew, is how would you advise people listening to this show who are trying to keep that passion alive? They're trying to navigate through the turbulent waters and continue experiencing this thing they're really passionate about. How do you encourage people listening to think outside the box? And the second question is now going back in time to when you were struggling as a teenager, specifically back when you had the second suicide attempt, right? This is so going back to your rock bottom moment. What kind of advice would you give to yourself if you were looking at yourself face to face right now? You as the adult versus you as a child. What advice would you give to yourself if you were. If you had that opportunity right now? Those are my two questions when we come back from this short break. If you like golf, then you need to go to YouTube and check out Andrew Jensen's channel. Just type in his name, Andrew Jensen. That's a N, D R, E, W, J, E N, S e N. And you'll see his channel has over 22,000 subscribers. There's tons of videos to help you increase the quality of your grain level, lower your score, and ace that hole. Check out his YouTube channel. If you like entertainment, then you also need to check out Andrew's YouTube channel because I went through a few of them myself today and they're actually pretty funny. So he's got a really good sense of humor. He loves the game. If you love the game, I encourage you to check it out here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. We have amazing guests. Please remember also to share this episode with someone who needs it. Please like the channel, subscribe to the channel, send it to your friends and share the love. And now back to the episode. Okay, we're back now here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it with Andrew Jensen. And it's time for a little bit of advice from the pro. How do you advise people to help keep their passion alive?

There's a lot there I would get, like, there's a lot of avenues to go. I would say get the starting point.

Yeah.

Read the book the One Thing by Gary Keller of Keller Williams. I literally just read it. It's only 2012. It'd been on my to read list for a handful of years, and I finally just read it. And I read it basically right before this kind of quarantine started. And it's all about kind of how to really prioritize your time for your one thing. And you're like, in this instance, your one thing is your passion. And I think a lot of people, like, they maybe have something they want to do as, like, on the side, but they don't have the time for it. You do. You do have the time for it. And I can't really relate to people that are kind of in something that struggle, like a passion that's struggling and how to kind of get through that. What I can relate to is I have friends, peers and viewers, followers that ask me, hey, I want to start a YouTube channel. How do I do it? I love this. I want to share this. You do it. You just start. It's Gary Vaynerchuk. You start, you be patient, and you work your ass off. When I started my YouTube channel, I said to myself, I'm going to do it for six months. One video a week for six months. And if I don't like doing it when it's said and done, then I won't do it. And it was regardless of any amount of views or no views, monetization, anything. It was, give yourself six months, commit to this, don't miss one, and then evaluate if you want to keep doing it. And after six months, I'd only gained 200 subscribers. And, I mean, the first 50 to 100 were just friends and family, Facebook people. And then it was like, in month seven, I went from 200 to 3,500. But luckily, I still love doing it. Right. Like, it wasn't like, I kept going because I love doing it. And I have friends, especially in, like, Instagrammers with big audiences that want to get on YouTube and they do three videos and they stop because they don't see the rewards immediately. That is not passion. That's chasing the wrong thing. That's chasing, like, it's like golf. That's chasing the score. You can't. You got to focus on your process. And I think for someone that wants to start something or maybe reshift something, that's been struggling. That is, the passion is you have to set parameters. You have to set a timetable and commitment to your work. Because if you don't have put in the work or the patience for it, don't even bother. So many people want to do XYZ or have be able to pay for this, put in the frigging work. That's when I get really Gary Vee in my head, because he's the ultimate encourager. And I was watching his YouTube videos and his thing was always like, watch my stuff. I don't want you to watch anymore because you're out doing what you're learning. You have to have that drive. And I think if you discover, if it's rooted in passion, you're willing to work hard for it. But I think the patience is the thing that a lot of people give up on too soon. Like, I tell a lot of young golfers that message me that they want to lower the scores or get into college or turn pro or start a YouTube channel. And I always say you have to be so incredibly patient, but more patient than what you think is enough patience. If what you see is patience, well, you got to go even further than that, because nothing really comes easy. And anything that does come easy can go away just as easily if you didn't put that effort into it. So, short story long, I hope that's some sort of advice or motivation. Like, there's no magic formula other than putting in the work and being patient and being honest with yourself and finding that one thing.

So as a reminder, everyone listening here, if you're looking for your first step, the first thing you can do to find a new way to engage with your passion, then pick up the book the One Thing and have a read. I mean, right now in Corona Lockdown, there's plenty of time for that, so just do it.

Another book that would be great for that as well is Simon Sinek. Start with why and find your why. That's a big thing. It ties into the one thing, like your why. Why are you doing this? And to relate that to what I've been through, I started a YouTube channel to share a love of golf with people. And then it went through where all I was focusing on was the what and the how. Okay, what video am I going to make? How am I going to make a video? This week I completely lost why I was doing it. And it's no surprise that that is the valley where I wasn't enjoying it. Whereas now why am I making YouTube videos? Well, it's the original why is to share love and hopefully get more people golfing and enjoying the game of golf. The what and the how looks a lot different now. Now I go out and play videos with a six iron only as opposed to making a vlog about a tournament. But the why is the same. And reconnecting with my why or my one thing if you want. That's what's given me the wherewithal to be patient, to work hard again and not get discouraged because I'm focused on the what and the how. I'd say those books are pretty good for that topic.

Oh, I love it. And I appreciate the courage you have to share your story and I also appreciate your recommendations coming from experience. When I was little and looking for inspiration and help, people would tell me to read a book and then I would. So I hope people listening to this just take that action that you need to take in order to take that step towards keeping your passion alive and the next step because the way the brain works for retention of new information. Once you're done reading the book, talk about it with someone, right? Send me an email if you'd like and I'll send you a reply. Or talk to a friend or a family member or join a book club and engage in these conversations. Re listen to this episode a thousand times if you'd like, share it with people who also would be interested and then you can talk about the episode together. The second thing and Andrew, the second piece of advice I want to ask you. Imagine we got hot tub time machine going on here. We jump in the hot tub, we go back in time and lo and behold, here you are looking at yourself when you were struggling right when you were a teenager, second suicide attempt. You see yourself there and you have this opportunity to say something to your struggling version of yourself back then. What would you say?

This is going to be very rare for me, but it's the polar opposite to to how I answered the last question honestly. All I would say to myself is you matter. It's that simple. In those moments and countless amount of people I've met, you just don't think you matter or you're good enough. That's all. And that thought is poisonous. It can change and ruin and sabotage relationships work, literally everything. If you think you're not good enough, you're not blank enough or if you don't matter. And that's all I would say to myself. And to be able to have someone to say that to me with such conviction and not just kind of like a Platitude. It literally could change. Can would have changed my life. Someone had come to my high school and I connected with him and someone had made it clear and known to me that no matter what I do, I'm enough. Then you and I wouldn't be having this conversation basically because I wouldn't have experienced what I and frankly, I wouldn't.

Have had the motivation to make this show to me. The subject we're talking about right now is self love and self worth. Now when I was struggling as a kid, I had no friends, I had a very difficult time. I didn't fit in and I had no self love and I had very low self worth. Now there's some people in my surroundings back then who might disagree and say that I had friends. But the mind is a powerful thing, right? And my mind perceived my reality in the way that I just described. And it doesn't matter if someone else sees it differently. The that's how I was interpreting it. That's how I was experiencing it. Therefore it was the truth. In my experience of reality in the moment my mind told me I was fat, I was ugly, I was stupid, I had no friends. That was the reality. Some people get through it and they're just fine and other people don't. You know all about that, right? And for me, I snapped in a different way. I didn't realize it. Now I'm 35 years old recording this right now. And it wasn't until maybe somewhere around three, maybe four years ago, it wasn't until then that I realized my why I'm referencing here Simon Sinek's terminology on his book, the why or your why that you alluded to earlier. I didn't realize that I was driven to build three businesses for over 15 years because I was trying to prove to the world that I am a good person, that I am worth something, and that everyone from my childhood was wrong had no idea that that was a core aspect of my motivation. I had absolutely no clue. Not one. On a conscious level anyways. I'm sure subconsciously perhaps I was aware. But on a conscious level, I was not aware that this unhealthy motivator was brewing inside me. And then now, as an adult coming to this place where I don't really care what people think anymore, right? I'm happy with myself now. I'm loving what I'm doing. And I found that inner self worth. I figured out that I do matter. Using your words exactly. This is, it's such a powerful concept to integrate into daily Practice. I love that you went there, Andrea. I'm really passionate about that subject.

I'm a big kind of. I practice gratitude. I force myself to do it. Like, I have a gratitude journal and the five minute journal. And at the end of every thing, there's an affirmation like, I am blank. And for me, some people's affirmations, they need to write a lot or they're very long winded. Not because they need it, but that's just how their brain works. But if I look through my 5 minute journal from the last year, basically I filled in that blank countless times with, I'm enough. I'm a winner. I'm a legend. Like, that's all I need to affirm myself with every morning. Not I'm gonna do great. Like, it's just, I feel kind of like I'm wasting the paper because I only write one word. But that's really all I need to subtly remind myself every morning that all your efforts today aren't in vain. You're good enough. And you're gonna screw up. You're gonna be an to your wife. You're gonna, you're gonna be offended by a comment on YouTube. You're gonna do dumb things. You're gonna scream at that person in the car like, you're not perfect, but you're still enough.

So we have a parallel here, Andrew, that I didn't know about and you probably didn't know about either. Two nights ago was one of the worst sleeps ever. You know, I have this weird insomnia thing that kicks in sometimes. And so I just, you know, got up and worked out and went jogging outside by myself and do pull ups on a tree because the gyms are closed and basically just worked myself into this state where I was exhausted. And then I slept like a baby after. And the first thing I did when I woke up was check the calendar, right? I get prepared for this show. And when I looked at that calendar, I saw the same thing that I do every day. And it's a daily reminder to sit down and do a little bit of journaling, to do a little bit of gratitude practicing. And I mean, everyone has their own way. But for me, I open up my journal, I sit down and I write three things that I feel very grateful for. And I don't just write them. Writing is half the battle, half the other half is experiencing, right? If I'm going to write down that I'm grateful for something, I better feel it as I'm writing. So it's this process of Slowing down and looking deep inside and finding something that I'm actually really grateful for. I have a really comfortable pillow. Now, that might sound stupid and trivial, but it's actually truth, right? I actually do feel very grateful that I have a pillow. If I didn't have a comfortable pillow, then I would crave one and I would wish that I had one back. Right. It's these simple little things around us that are everywhere that we can practice being grateful for. And that's what I do every morning, right. I sit down and I find three little tiny things that I feel very grateful for. I feel grateful it's a good day outside. I feel grateful I get to run this podcast. I feel grateful I had a good sleep finally after struggling initially, you know, I feel grateful that there was a comfortable pillow and that I have a good breakfast. Now, if it wasn't in my calendar, I might have accidentally forgotten. I might have just jumped out of bed and go, go, go back into what needs to get done. It's in there on purpose. And this way I don't ever forget.

Right.

The first task of every day is to practice being grateful for three things that could take 15 seconds or five minutes. It takes nothing. It's a tiny little fraction of a day and has a really great long term positive effect for the whole day. Now, people listening to this right now, I'm speaking to you at the moment. It's not about what you write or how you write or how good your handwriting is or how good your journal is. None of that matters at all. What matters is taking a moment to experience gratitude and to find something that you're actually grateful for. Having this personal moment only for you to come from a positive place and dig down deep to start your energy and your day in a direction that's a positive place. It's the process here that's important. So I love that you brought that up, Andrew.

Yeah. Because I think I've been a journaler for a long time off and on, and I think a lot of like a barrier of entry for a lot of people and even myself. You think people are going to read your journal in the back of your mind, think you need to write something that makes sense or you can't write the same thing two days in a row. Like, it's just the way our brains work.

Yeah.

But when you kind of distance yourself from that hesitation. Yeah. Right now it's a no brainer to I'm healthy, I'm not worried. I mean, I'm worried, but I'm not afflicted with COVID 19 right now. So I can literally write that every morning. I could feel like a dummy for writing it, but then I'm actually a dummy for feeling like a dummy for writing it. No one's reading my five minute journal. Maybe my wife. Like, I'd be comfortable if my wife read it, if she read the same thing. Man, there's times where I just write. Coffee is my thing. Or blue sky. I write a lot of the same stuff over and over again. I can talk anyone's ear off for hours. But then when it comes to writing my gratitude journal, it's like one or two words over and over and over again. That's all you need.

And back to people listening to this. If you're having that little bit of anxiety or if you're struggling with the fear of other people reading what you've been writing, then I've got a cool little tip for you here. I heard this first from a friend of mine years ago who was doing this. His process was he would write in the journal, and as soon as he was done writing, he would rip out the page and destroy it. Poof, it's gone. You never have to think or be worried about anyone reading it ever again because it's now gone. You wrote it. You benefited from the process. The paper's destroyed because the outcome doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you keep the record or keep the paper. That's irrelevant. You win simply by having engaged with the process of finding something to be grateful for. And the destruction of the paper doesn't come from a negative place. It's not coming from fear. Let's make sure that the intention is right here. The destruction of the paper is simply in recognition that it doesn't matter anymore. What mattered was the process that's been accomplished. Let's just let the paper go. It no longer exists, and now we can move forward. So you can do whatever you like with your journal, or you can destroy. You can burn it in a safe place, of course, because I have to say that I'm on the air here. Or put it through the shredder or whatever you need to do, just get rid of it. All that matters is that you write into the journal and that you don't get caught up on reasons not to. Anyways, there's my little tip of the day.

Yeah. The best people are the best minds. Authors, everyone. World leaders over the course of time have all been journalers, all of them. It's a practice that if you want to share the same air as some of the people that you probably admire. That'd be something to start for sure. And I mean, I'm someone like, I love having my old journals because as we've gone down the past and present, now I can go and look back. And the power of reflection is something that's been very helpful for me over the years because I can go and look back and then kind of read where I was at, how I was doing, who I was. But then also I can go back and read and find similar scenarios or similar emotions. And I can see that, oh, I got through it. Just like we say, go back in time and say something to yourself. Well, if you journal and write, you have that ability. Because I can actually use the past to kind of talk to me now type thing.

Andrew, I really appreciate the time that you took out of your day to be here on this show. I hope that we keep in touch. If anyone wants to talk to Andrew, I encourage you to check out his YouTube channel. That's how you can reach out to him. There'll be a link to it on the show. Notes of this episode. You'll get to see just how good Andrew actually is at golf and. And you get to have a laugh and a good time at the same time. They're very entertaining. Check out Andrew's YouTube channel and we'll see you guys. Or we'll talk to you at least, because the YouTube version of this show is coming out pretty soon. Until then, have a Rockin it day here. From rock bottom to Rockin It. This is your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, signing in. And that's it, my friends, for this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think. Give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter. Just get it out there. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time on From a Rock Bottom to Rockin It. Have a Rockin it day.