Pandemic of Mental Health

Greetings. And it's good to be back. It's been a couple of weeks, but it's good to be back. This is Blair, back from Tanzania, back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Lots of great lessons there that over the course of the next several weeks, hopefully I'll be sharing some of those with you. I excuse the. The backdrop. I'm in quarantine. You can rest your mind as to what that's all about, but I'm in quarantine, but still operating from my house here in my bedroom, actually. But I didn't want to stop the message. We had a team meeting the other day that was very revealing, and I wanted to address that. And I know that we're in the middle of a pandemic. I know that the pandemic is brutal for some, crazy for others, at the minimum, confusing. But there's another pandemic, and I've talked about this before. The pan. Hey, Tiffany. Hey. Who's that? Ah, Pancho. Good to meet. Good to see you. And again, post your comments in here. If you have comments about what I'm about to talk about, I'll do my best to respond to them. But the big pandemic is a pandemic of mental health. Again, it's a pandemic of mental health, and it's kind of the unspoken problem going on. But I'm here to talk to you about the untold solutions, because there are some great solutions to it, if you understand a little bit about little voice mastery and the things that we talk about here. So why am I bringing this up? Well, if you've been watching the Olympics, you notice that, you know that there are a lot of comments being made by athletes, people pulling out of competitions, people getting beat early in early rounds, which is uncharacteristic for them. And most. And many of them complaining about the stress level and the stress and the trauma and all the stuff that goes along with it. And I'm not saying that's not true, but. But the difference is this. We know about those guys and we know about those athletes. Why? Because they have microphones and video cameras shoved in their face, and they're in the public eye. And so they speak out on what's going on for them, which is actually fairly therapeutic for them. Some people either love it, understand it, or hate it. I'm not going to get into all of that because that's immaterial to the topic here. But the challenge here is that those people are getting to get the cameras in their faces and the microphones at their mouths, so they become spokespeople. But what about everybody else? What about the other seven and a half billion people on this planet that are also suffering as a result of the things that have been happening over the last year and a half and they continue to persist, that don't seem to want to go away, that seem to be part of who we are and part of our society. And so. Hey, welcome from India, Karen. I'm in quarantine too. Only mental health issues are friends responses. Thank you. Thank you. So we're quarantined together in separate places. Awesome. So now. And what's the challenge with that, Karen? The challenge with that is with quarantine comes isolation. With isolation comes depression. With depression come bad decisions, crazy little voices and those types of things. And so I want to address it because there are things you can do, things that I do, things that our team does. Doesn't eliminate the problem. But here's just some food for thought right now. Just so you know that the incidence of substance abuse just last year went up over 13%. Now that's documented. These are people that have been treated, that have come into clinics, but that's up 13% year on year. Okay. In terms of overdoses, records of overdose, again, these are overdoses that we know about that have gone to clinics and people have been treated for overdose, up over 18% last year. Okay. So the kind of the good news is the statistics on suicides and things like that has remained fairly stable. But what's happened is people have compensated with opioids and alcohol and substance abuse and all these things. I have a friend, Josh and Lisa Lannan, who work with first responders and veterans, veterans, military veterans, police force, emt, emergency room folks, people that face tremendous trauma and, and they're bitten, that suffer from PTSD and as a result of the ptsd, suffer from substance abuse to self medicate. Let me tell you something. Their business is booming and that's good for their business, but it's not a good statement on what's going on around us right now. It's the untold story that will have much longer effects on who we are as individuals, as families, as teams than the actual virus, the COVID virus itself. So I want to address it, I want to bring it out to the light. I want to put it out there. If you have any comments about it, I think we, you know, feel free to talk about it. Tiffany, thanks for taking the time to address this right now. So important and more than ever, this is a Pot. This is such a positive platform. Thank you. Okay, well, thank you. And Paige, they join a high level sport, then they should be prepared for that and expect the pressure, shouldn't they? Okay, so again, I don't, I. Yeah, of course they're going to be under pressure, but there's normal pressure and then there's the pressure on top of the pressure. Okay. There's the normal pressure of being a world class athlete. Then there's normal pressure being a world class athlete in a pandemic, which has its, its other thing. So let's not make a comment to, to that. Let's talk about you. Because they're fine. Here's the thing about those athletes. They'll be fine. They'll still get endorsements. People will judge them, love them, hate them, all that kind of stuff that's going to go on. They're fine. But what's. And they're being talked about. They're in the news every day. You're not being talked about. Our quarantine, Karen's in quarantine, my quarantine, are not being talked about, and the repercussions of those things. So the first step is to talk about it and create a platform where people can get some resolution to it. You know, one of my staff members said that 1 out of 10 people in the United States is on opioids, which is unheard of. Now why is that happening? It's a form of self medication. When we're under pressure, our brains want to do a couple things. We want to fight it or fight, run away from it or medicate it, ignore it, or we just act out and do stupid things. Okay, that, that's pretty normal for the average human being unchecked. So medication is an easy one. It's quick, it's easy, and it's pretty immediate. Okay. It will, it will medicate. I mean, stories that I've heard, you know, from police force. Individuals have faced horrendously horrible situations of life and death and had to deal with it and still operate under pressure and going home and wanting to do nothing more than take a shot of whiskey just to deaden the pain. Now that you know that's substance abuse and it leads to no good. So what are the things that you can do? First of all, understand, number one, a lot of this isolation creates depression. Isolation creates depression. The one thing that we've learned in this pandemic is that human beings, above everything else, and there have been lots written on this, above everything else, crave one thing more than anything else. And what we crave is connection. Connection to each other. Connection to be able to communicate, to share, to laugh, to cry, to yell, to scream, to do whatever. But we crave the connection when we're alone. Think about this. Any person that you've known that's ever been depressed, first sign of depression, they kind of disappear, don't they? They go in their room, they close the door, they don't. They don't want to talk to people, they don't. They should stop showing up for things. First sign of depression. First sign of depression. Now I'm going to talk about depression in a second because depression is not a bad thing if you understand what it is. And so part of this forum is to give you an idea of what it is and what to do about it. And these are things. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a therapist. However, I have worked with hundreds of thousands of people over 40 countries around the world, and also my own little voice. This is just from my own experience and hopefully it'll work for you as well. Okay, so let's see what else. Okay, cool. Thanks. Great to hear you're healthy and strong. I am. NLP works. That's true. Exactly. All those things work. So let me give you a couple of ideas. Number one, depression and isolation, they go together. So one of the things you can do, if you know that you're locked down or you're quarantined or you know somebody else, that is reach out and talk to them. Get on the phone, talk to them, have a video call, text them when you're bored, when you're sitting around doing nothing, if you're locked down, reach out to somebody, Reach out, say, what's happening, how you doing? And get into a conversation. That little conversation could be the difference between a person's brain spiraling into what's the use? Why am I doing this? This sucks. You know, I need something to pass the time. Okay, so reach out, reach out. The simplest, most important thing you can do. Now, the other thing about depression is that depression is when our energy kind of drops, we go inward. But depression is. One of my mentors said it very well. Depression also is a signal. If you look at economic cycles, if you look at teams, if you look at business and you look at your life, you're going to note that times when you've been depressed typically correlate with something else. And what they correlate with is what we would call end of a game. End of a game. In other words, let's say pandemic okay, Your business was doing pretty well. You're not killing it, but you're doing okay. But now everything got locked down. There's no more person to person meetings. You can't go talk to customers, they can't talk to you. Your services very much requires hands on being with people. And that overnight got taken away. Okay, so that game was taken away. It's not that you ended it, it got taken away, which happens. So what happens now is that those people that are able to say, well, I'll change, I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll do that, that's fine. What if that doesn't work? Or what if you don't have the resourcefulness to do that? All it means is depression. Means. The good news is it means the end of the game. Now what's the solution? The untold solution is when you've reached a depredit, a depressing point. Could be end of a relationship game, could be end of a business game, could be a lot of things. It's time to start a new one. That's it. Start a new worthy game. Something that is challenging, that's worthwhile to you and to other people around you. Okay, so start a new game. So what does that mean? Okay, so let's say you're a fitness instructor and you can't, you couldn't do fitness anymore. Now it's freeing up right now. Okay, so people are able to come back, but it's going to get locked down again and then it'll open up again. So here's the thing. So what's the new game? Well, the new game is I'm just going to get really good at Zoom. I'm going to get all my, I'm going to compliment all my clients into a Zoom account. We're going to set it aside a couple times during the day and we're going to do it online, we're going to do it together. That's what my coach did. And his business never suffered a hiccup. He had not a big base, but a well paying base. And so his game continued so he didn't have to go through the depressing state of what do I do? How am I going to do it? So, solution to depression. Excuse me? New game, start a new game or join somebody else's game, be part of somebody else's. You don't have to be the creator all the time. Be part of something new, something that you've always wanted to learn. Or maybe it's just to learn something new. I want to take the time to learn something new. You could say that. Well, you know, I had, my business was working and now I have to do it a different way and I'm not real happy about it, but I'll do that as long as I can. Well, that's only prolonging the agony. The truth of it is, if your game ended, probably was supposed to, probably is the universe's way. Marketplace telling you, you know, I've been telling you that you need to change a little bit. Now's the time to do it. Okay? Technology is, is racing at an unprecedented rate. That's not going away. Jobs are being eaten up and chewed up and spit out. And you know, the health care has changed, transportation's change, warehousing's changed, distribution has changed, all these things have changed. If you look at, and again, just as a little thought for you, check, go online and look up side hustles, side hustles. Okay, this is not new information, but look up side hustles and look up information like what are the top 20 pandemic proof businesses that people are doing right now? What are people doing? They have multiple businesses, they have their main job, but then they have other businesses supplement their income that will ultimately turn into other endeavors. Right now, for example, if you do anything that can have anything to do with delivery or online coaching, online translating, online therapy, anything that you can teach online, you can command a very, a very good income, anywhere from fifty to a hundred dollars an hour, which is not bad to, to work a couple, you know, work a few hours a day. Okay, so what is the new game? What is the new game? The fastest way to fight depression. Okay, now on top of that, one of the things I also recommend is that one of the things I've been doing for years is a great book called Miracle Morning. I think I've talked about it on a prior stream, Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. And it's about having an amazing day before 8 o' clock in the morning, which means you start. He has a system called Savers. Saver stands for S is solitude like a little meditation, A for affirmations, V V for visualization, E for a little bit of exercise, R for reading, and S for scribing or journaling. Okay, now I'm not gonna go into those detail. You can go check him out online and I've got a bunch of, I have a bunch of YouTube videos and if you go to Blairsinger.com, you'll further descriptions on how to do all that Stuff. But that routine of every day, set before you do anything else, is setting aside special, what I call sacred time for you to get your head together. Okay? Okay. Solitude. Meditate. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna meditate. Meditate for five minutes. Five minutes, 25 minutes, whatever you have time to do. And if you. Well, I can't meditate. Somebody said to me, I can't meditate. I can't shut my brain. That's the point. That's why you meditate. If you knew how to do that, you wouldn't have to meditate. So the whole idea is, even if you can shut down that little voice for 10 seconds, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, that's of huge value. And again, we have lots of resources to show you how to do that. But to meditate, not an option anymore. Auto meditate, that's for sissies. No, it's not. It's for any person trying to keep their mental health together. Too many pressures, too many things going on. Okay, So a little bit of solitude, of meditation, doing some affirmations, a couple minutes of affirmations. You say them out loud, close your eyes, and again, visualize some of the things that you want. Visualize your business, visualize your health, visualize your family. Okay? And then get some exercise. Hopefully. I think most people are getting exercise. Anybody's watching me, for sure, is getting exercise. Even with a lockdown with COVID in the air, you know, you can still get some exercise and keep. Keep your body and your immune system very strong. And then take some time to read something. Where? Where? There? Yeah, right there. You know, there. There? Yeah, over there. See those books? To read something that's spiritually enlightening, something that lifts you up a little bit, and then do a daily gratitude exercise as a journal, what, at the minimum, 10 things that you're grateful for at the beginning of the day. Now, I'm going to tell you something that anybody suffering from depression, anybody suffering from mental anguish, it's going to help it. It's going to help that. I wonder whether the athletes that we read about are doing those things. They're so driven in their basic disciplines and routine, as I am, as we all. Is mental health as much of a priority as physical prowess and athletic health? Have to ask yourself, COVID 19 has brought to the forefront for all of us, the need for that to happen. That we are. No, we are not just physical beings. We are also spiritual beings and emotional beings, and that needs to be taken care of and nurtured as well. And any programs that you can take that will help you deal with the little voice. You know the little voice I'm talking about? Right. So, again, these are some tips. See, we thank you. They're very interesting times. Require a lot of patience, love, focus. It's important to be aware of feelings that can clean the subconscious reasons for unsupportive thoughts. That's so true. And. And. Hi, Helmut from Austria. I'm glad to see you. Glad to be talking to you. Depression is fear of future unhappiness. Yeah. And so how do you overcome Paige future unhappiness is to create a new game in the present. One of my friends is one of the problems with our little voices. Part of bad mental health is we spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the future. Okay. And regretting the past. Okay. Not being in the present. But, you know, the beauty of Kilimanjaro is that when you're on Kilimanjaro, there is no past and there is no future. There is just one step at a time. 45 minutes to the next break on summit day. And that's really all your brain is able to handle, which is very therapeutic. So how do you bring that back to this, to this life? Well, understanding that if most anxiety and worry and depression comes from the worry of future unhappiness, you got to ask yourself how much of that really is going to happen. And the truth of it is, probably less than 25% of what you worry about is actually going to happen. Okay. If you just took a look at it, anything you're worried about, things you did in the past are over. There's nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about any of that stuff. So your best bet is to stay as present as possible. That's the reason for the daily routine. To do things that keep you very focused and very present. Writing a book, scribing, talking to people. You know, when you're taught. Think about it, it's just as simple as me having a conversation with you. There's really nothing else on my mind right now than talking to you into the camera right now. Because my brain can only hold one thought at a time. So as long as I'm doing that, I'm present. So it eliminates the future worry and the future unhappiness. And to somebody's point, that was that. Hey, Michael Lee. To. To somebody's point about it, that there's. That they're. They're saying is that if you. If you really believe that future events are going to be negative, they'll probably turn out to be negative. And how will that happen? Because you'll. You'll cause them to be negative because you'll be looking at the negative side of things. So who. The final point that I had on my list here is that one of the other things to be very, very careful about to maintain your mental health is to who do you hang around with? Who are the people that you talk to? Who are the people that support you? Are you around? You know, because the people you used to hang around with may not be supportive anymore. Okay. People that have. That are abusive. You know, sometimes it's kind of fun to banter. You don't need that right now. I mean, unless you enjoy it. Unless you enjoy the abusive banter with some of your friends, that can be fun. But right now, maybe you don't need that right now. What you need is somebody that can help you create, somebody that can help you develop your new game, somebody that can help you get back on track. Okay, those are some of my thoughts. Who else here? And it's calm. How do you avoid that noise if you're stuck at home with that noise, mentally already down and have people who are not supportive? Okay, so it's a good question. It's a good question. And again, it comes back to who you surround yourself with. So my thing is, I'm in quarantine here. Okay. So who do I hang around with? Well, I'm obviously not hanging around with anybody else from my household because they're off doing other things. So I'm hanging around with you. I get hang around with colleagues on the phone. I am in constant chats and conversations with other people, and I have specific games and projects I'm working on. I just finished writing what's going it's going to be editor now. My book on summit leadership, which is about Kilimanjaro and how you become a summit leader. Take your team to the top lessons at 5,900 meters. So again, by focusing on things that you want to do, focusing on things that are important to you, regardless of what other people think about it, which is probably something you should be doing anyway. But now that you're locked in with people and some of them are supportive, some of them are not, you just say, excuse me, I'm busy right now working on this project, and I'll talk to you a little bit later. And you know, I. Over the last two and a half weeks, I've done a lot of that. And everybody kind of gets it and they. And they understand, but it Keeps my energy up, keeps me moving ahead, and keeps me focused in the right direction. Okay, so Arand from India. Couldn't agree with you more. Oh, and Michael Lee says, couldn't agree with you more. Surround yourself with people that will serve you. Well, that's right. You know, and before, Before COVID that's why, you know, I. You've heard me say this before. I think Covid is a blessing in many ways. Yes, it's claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and that's a bad thing, but it's also been a good thing. I mean, if it teaches you something, if it teaches you that it's time to get on with your life, I can't help but think that if there's a God or a great spirit or whatever, that this, that part of this virus. By the way, viruses are nothing new. Pandemics and viruses happen about every hundred years. The Roman Empire, in the last days of the Roman Empire, I think over 18 million people died of a pandemic there. There was the bubonic plague, There was a Spanish flu. These bugs, these viruses, these viral things are not new to humanity. It's just that because we are so connected via Internet and media right now that it's like it's right in your own home. And there's also almost 8 billion of us on the planet, meaning that the proximity and being able to catch it is not quite the same as when there were only a billion people on the planet. So again, these are things that are not new. However, if you learn the lesson, you get better, your family stays healthy, you survive it, you get better, we all get better. And we. And we pass on that knowledge, hopefully to the next generation. By the way, the reason these viruses and economic collapses happen about every 90 to 100 years, because that's the. The maximum life lifespan of a human being. So what happens is people that lived it forget, die, and the other people forget about it. And so they make the same mistakes again. So that's why the cycle continues to persist along those lines. But if you're an enlightened leader, a great teacher and leader, you won't let that happen. You'll learn the lessons. You'll create great learning. For those of you that are trainers, you'll create great learning experiences that will perpetuate beyond you in your books, in your programs and your digital products, whatever you can do to support the advancing of other people. Beatrice, Be here. Be here. From the Philippines. I usually experience depression at least once in a year or two, at least three days of not Wanting to wake up, not wanting to get up, not wanting to think or do. I just wanted to sleep forever. I don't even know if it was. Didn't even know it was depression until I had it again 2019. And yes, my, my 5am Daily self building hour helped me to overcome it. Workout, meditation, journaling and all that. Okay, so congratulations on that Beatric. And, and, and you know, the truth is we all go through depression. I don't know. I don't think there's any human being on planet earth doesn't go through it. And you go through it for various reasons. You periodically go through it. You're just like, I'm wiped out. I'm done. I'm sick of everything. I just want to go to sleep, turn the blanket over my head, turned it up to womb and forget about it happens. And you know what bad to do that I will say this is that I was working with a coaching group this morning actually. Person was telling me, you know, my business is doing great, but I'm like burnout. I am like so burnout. I, I really don't want to do it anymore. It just, I get bags under my eyes just thinking about it and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, well, Chris, I said, look, what are you doing this weekend? He goes, I'm taking a break. I go, good for you. How long? He goes, two days. I go, make it four. Four days. Unplug and close the door. The beauty of Kilimanjaro. The beauty of Kilimanjaro is that all the things you thought were really important below the clouds all of a sudden don't seem nearly as important once you're up there. And what happens for me every time I go and I summited now 10 times. Okay. What happens for me every time that I come back down that mountain is that I close the door on some things that I was doing, things that don't serve me, things that I felt obligated to do, things that other people wanted me to do, things that I thought I wanted to do but really didn't have the energy to do it. And you know what? It's a good thing. Mac Newton, who, you know, talk about goal setting and setting new goals and new resolutions. And I always tell people before we do any kind of goal setting, the first thing you're going to do is make a list of all the things not to do, things that you don't want to do anymore. So, Beatrice, I think it was your body telling you it's time for a reset. It's Time for a new game. Time to shut the door on all that stuff and just welcome it. Welcome the peace and the. In the, in, in the, you know, and if you can fight off the negative feeling of the depression and just go and just say to yourself, this is, this is time for a new game. I need to change my game. I need. I don't know what it is yet, but I need to change my game, change my friends, change what's going on, because we all have to do that. You know, that's how nature works. Everything refreshes. A forest burns down so it can stimulate new growth. You know, forests that are burning all over the United States that are long overdue to burn. It's unfortunate because of the damage, but the truth is, is that, that those forests will die unless they burn. Once they burn, then it actually re. Germinates New trees and new growth and they become stronger and, and better. We're the same way. We're human beings. Just can't live on a high every day for the rest of your life. I mean, it'd be nice, but it just doesn't work that way. So. Good for you, Beatrice. Hey, Michael Dell. What's up? What's up, bro? Michael Dell just came back from me, from, with me from Kilimanjaro. Are you good? Dude? I'm still in lockdown over here. It's like, it's good to see familiar face. And Michael Dell and several of us made it to the top, to, to Uhuru Peak. We unfurled an American flag up there and in the, in the cold and the, in the clouds and all that stuff with big smiles on our faces. And it was a great, great, great accomplishment. And Michael Dell is one of the people I was referring to earlier, works with my friend Josh Lannan. Just so you know, Michael Dell, the topic today was mental, you know, endemic of mental health. And certainly you work at Warrior's heart and work with all those first responders and veterans and you know firsthand that it's a pandemic of bad mental health. So we're just talking about ways of handling it, staying positive and pushing through workouts. That's right. And if you saw Michael Dell, maybe you'll put picture of himself at some point. The guy is a beast. Huge loving ex United States Marine, young guy, you know, great kids. And he's, he's a, he's a wonderful guy and he knows how to make you feel good. He knows how to help push people to their next level. And he does it himself. So thank you for that, Michael. Yeah. Stay positive. Stay with positive people. And the workouts are important. The workouts are important. Remember, you are a spiritual being, but you are in a physical body. You are in a physical body. If you neglect the physical body, the universe will tell you that game of abuse is going to have to end. Otherwise it's not going to. Otherwise you will end in not a good way. Okay, so. So again, they're all lessons. And if you get it, go. Okay, I got it. I need. My immune system sucks. I'm. I'm not getting exercise. I need to do this and start small, but keep building and make it a discipline and make it a routine. All these things will help you increase your mental health. Okay. Like I said, the challenge with Olympic. Olympic athletes is. Is my suspicion. I don't know for sure. My suspicion is that their workouts and their physical training and disciplines are so strong that perhaps some of them neglect the mental. The mental, emotional and spiritual workouts that we all need to do as well to be a balanced human being. You're not just physical and your body will give out due to age if nothing else. Okay. Code of honor. I learned from you train the train. 2018 helped me a lot too, to, to sustain depression free life. Thank you very much and thank God for meeting you as my teacher. Thank you. That's very nice of you, Beatrice. Thank you for saying that. Code of honor, set of rules designed to protect you from you. Designed for me. To protect me, for me. Okay. And again, these are the rules. Like, I'm gonna do my savers every morning. I'm gonna do my workout every day. I'm gonna do. Write down my wins. At the end of the day, I'm gonna. I'm not gonna talk to negative people. I'm gonna, you know, when I get depressed, I know what to do. I know how to bring myself out of it. I know it's the end of a game, it's time to start a new one. All these things, these are all disciplines, these are all rules. Rules that I have for myself that I'm going to do that I'm going to do on a regular basis. I'm going to do it every day. Okay. All right, so hopefully today was helpful for you guys. Hopefully you learned something. And again, I'm happy to, if you're interested, just go to my Facebook page and say, like to talk more about it and give me some specific questions and we'll talk about those things. But yeah, we face a pandemic that is way more sinister than the virus. In my experience, it's the virus of mental health, of which you and I have pretty much 100% control over that, if we choose to control it. If you choose to stay depressed, if you like being depressed, and if you like the sympathy and if you like being a victim, then that's going to be a little bit more difficult for you. Then what you need is you need a friend to kind of shake you up a little bit and shake you out of that. Out of that mode and get you back on track again. And I am blessed with all of you as great friends and students and to have friends that are willing to push me as well. Okay? So again, thank you guys for being here. Go to BlairCenter.com There's a whole bunch on the savers and also on YouTube, by the way, a lot of information on the daily disciplines you can use to keep yourself out of the mental funk that is upon all of us. Okay? So be awesome and take care of the people that are most special to you. Okay? Be cool, you guys. Bye. Bye. It.