The Advice Most Young Men Need

Today's episode is made possible by our sponsor, NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at nzmortgages.co nz. Young men, this is the advice no one is telling you. Learn to ask for help, embrace your emotions and build a community that truly supports you. As you know, I focus on the future, what's positive, what's possible. I speak to really inspiring people and I share their insights. But every now and then we've got to slow down and sit in less than positive emotions. Over the last few weeks, I've had two friends, two males that have taken their own lives and.

Left behind a massive wake of devastation and destruction. And I want to just take a moment to focus on what's most important. That's your mental health. And I'm going to share some tips with you. And this is based on discussions I've had with some of the world's leading experts on mental health and particularly for young men. And when we look at the statistics around suicide, I've been studying these for seven years now. Males are statistically much more likely to do this and the statistics are damning.

Getting close to a million people a year are taking their own lives. So this is an episode around mental health. If you are experiencing any suicidal thoughts, please go and seek help. And in the show notes I will put places you can go to get that help today. Today's the day to do it. Please go and get the help. Today is the day to take action and ask for help, talk about things. Okay, now let's get into some of the things that are really, really helpful. Maybe you need these right now, maybe you don't. Maybe you want to share them with someone. But number one, ask for help. It sounds simple, yet so many people find it difficult. Ask for help. It's no sign of weakness to ask for help. And men are much less likely to ask for help. You know, when we look at it from a comical standpoint, that's why when we get instructions, put together a table that we got at Ikea, most men will go, screw the instructions. I'll just do it. They don't want the help. I can figure it out, guys. We can't figure it out. We need help. And asking for help is the first step. So as I say, I'm going to put down in the show notes today, this is the day to take action towards asking for help if you need it. Number two, learn about your emotions.

When they did a study around what emotions do people know? What are they aware of? On average, most people could only label Three emotions, and it was like happiness, anger and sadness. Now there's like 80 plus emotions that we actually experience. Joy, anxiety, excitement, regret, guilt. There's so many different forms and shapes of emotion. We need to get more comfortable with labeling them, understanding them, feeling them and then going, okay, this is an emotion. It comes and it goes. The younger we can do that, the better. When we look at suicide statistics, again, 65 plus is where it starts to spike again. 18 to 25 is a big danger zone and 65 plus as well. So this is not a thing just for young men, this is for men in general. So start labeling your emotions. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a couple of resources. One is this card deck around labeling emotions. I got it actually for my son Finn, so we could talk about emotions, but I'm learning so much from it. At the dinner table, we just pick one out and talk about it. When was the last time you experienced that? Or what did it feel like? Where did you feel it in your body? And then the other link is for Brene Brown's book, which is the Atlas of the Heart. It's a bit of a bigger read, but incredible insights into labeling emotions. Number three, you have to create a healthy community of people around you. A community could be two people, it could be 30, it could be different groups, it could be where you study, where you hang out, where you eat, where you drink. Crafting and creating a healthy community of people around you will make a significant difference to your mental health. So if you're hanging out with people who smoke a lot of weed, who drink way too much alcohol, who swear a lot, who don't really have much meaning or purpose in their life, I promise you that will impact you. It's important. If you can't maybe, say, be away from them, maybe it's a family member that's doing those things. It's important that you do craft other people around you that are healthy, that have a healthy relationship with their emotions, with substances, with their commitment to doing meaningful work. Please take a look at the community around you and start bring people in and moving towards people that are healthy for you. Now, what's healthy for you might be not healthy for someone else. But ask yourself, what would be better for me? I know that when I was younger, there were certain times when I looked around me and thought, how on earth did I get here looking around me at people that I don't know how I ended up sitting with them at a table at a pub, but they were Thugs. But I guess as a young boy, it was safer to sit with them than not. So that led me down a path of making poor decisions and poor outcomes, and it was a pretty negative spiral. Thankfully, that changed. And the way it changed was my community around me changed vastly. I was in pipe bands, playing drums for a long time. And a beautiful pipe band community in Canada and in New Zealand gave me an opportunity to literally reshape my life. I'm so grateful to all of them. Number four, embrace vulnerability. Be vulnerable. When you lead with vulnerability, it lets people in. It increases people's chances of actually empathizing with you. So be vulnerable. And how do we do that? Well, we make sure we're vulnerable in a safe space. So if you don't have a good community or good people around you, maybe don't be vulnerable, but be vulnerable around healthy people, people that can hold space for you. And what is vulnerability? Well, it's sharing your failures, sharing your worries, sharing your concerns, sharing your darkest thoughts. You know, I was thinking, you know, what could I do differently? Now I've lost a few people to suicide. What could I do differently? In the conversations that we had over the years, and I thought, one thing I don't ever ask anyone, ever, is, what was your darkest thought? Or when was your last dark thought? God, I mean, it's an ugly question to ask, but would it make a difference? That's the question. Would it allow them to be more vulnerable? Because some of us feel like we need permission to be vulnerable. I'm here to tell you, you don't. You don't need any permission. Vulnerability is one of the greatest strengths. I see it in some of the best athletes that I work with. They are so vulnerable, and they influence people, large amounts of people, often hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, through their vulnerability. So I'm going to encourage you to consider embracing vulnerability. Last but not least, the fifth piece of, I guess, experience or advice I want to share with you is mental health is your number one priority. And someone said this to me a while ago, James, if you don't make time for health, you'd better make time for sickness. That applies to our mental health. So do what you need to do to be looking after your mental health. Talk to someone, learn about those emotions. Create a great community of people around you. Start one at a time and embrace vulnerability. I journal a lot. As anyone that's listened to the podcast.

You'Ll know that I talk about it a lot. Journaling is a great way for me to express my emotions and what's going on in my mind. So do what you need to do to prioritize your mental health. What you eat impacts your mental health. What you watch and consume impacts your mental health. How you talk to yourself impacts it and your environment, what's happening around you. Those are all important things. So sending much love to you all. And as I say, it's a bit of a different theme and topic today, but I felt it was really important to have this conversation. And as I say in the show notes, there's going to be links for you if you are in any way feeling in a low space, you need help or you're having suicidal thoughts. All of that information is in the show notes below. But thank you again for continuing to support the show. We've got some incredible guests coming up. Mind blowing. We took the show to Phoenix, Arizona, to Los Angeles. We're up in Auckland. Just as well, sitting down with some incredible people. So look out for some amazing episodes to come. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Today's episode is made possible by our sponsor, NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at NZMortgages Co NZ.