S2E11 · Mental Health

and I think it's important to know that everyone's yeah like you said a different stage of their journey everyone's learning the same lessons in different ways but I think the mental health conversation and to kind of swing it back around is just to understand that your problems are both individual and universal at the same time you're dealing with your own shit and it doesn't there's no point looking at someone else who's maybe struggling more or in a in a worse place and going oh they've got it worse sure that perspective helps but it doesn't mean

you can't you can't feel your feelings and and accept that yeah this does suck and in this moment I swear we are infinite let's do this come on mounting it's too damn hot for a penguin to be just walking around three two one ego are these two doctors i'm afraid so welcome to episode six of the vertical cast season two i am 100 sure that this is episode six uh welcome today's episode we're talking about mental health um yeah you're with you're with locklin wallace and simon cooper hello how you feeling lock uh pretty good

oh yeah nice nice walk this morning had a uh a beautiful meditation at the beach sun was shining birds were singing bees were trying to have sex with them as is my understanding it was magical what could you ask for that's a bart simpson quote so some of this work speaking of quotes we uh we decided we're going to kick off this podcast with a quote you know how very original of us but this is a quote that upon further examination turns out it's misad misattributed misattributed is that how you say it close enough sure

um to to jim carrey apparently you said something similar but it wasn't actually his quote but regardless i'm claiming it that it was jim carrey because there were too many articles about the misattribution um but this quote i think best articulates my personal view on mental health and i think our view is a business on mental health and i know you resonate with this pretty strongly as well so so we thought it would be important to kick this off with a quote um and i guess before we we dive into that uh i just want

to preface this whole conversation saying that we are by no means experts um if you want behavior change and strength and conditioning then yes we are experts in that but the mental health space is uh such a big rabbit hole and i guess the we want to talk about these things to bring it to the surface and to allow people a little bit more uh capability and capacity and openness in discussing this but if anyone is struggling anyone have is having any issues call lifeline 13 11 14 uh 24 7 crisis support um they exist

so and this is their tagline i love it we exist so no person in australia has to face their darkest moments alone um so lean out lean on your friends lean on the people around you but lifeline beyond blue um these are the these are the places to uh the people to talk to when when things are tough yeah and i think this this conversation that we're about to have is uh based on our own experiences conversations that we've had with people within our community um our own kind of anecdotal evidence maybe but we'll be

sharing a couple of stories and yeah our own experiences and maybe some strategies that can help you but as lock said if you if you need help then there are resources and people out there who are um who are experts in this sort of thing and they exist for that reason yeah and we don't want to undervalue those anecdotal experiences um but we also want to want to know that there's a level there's levels above um and you know head to gp get a mental health plan you can get a bunch of sessions for free

go see a psych all those kind of things um because it will help you feel feel and do better um but the quote so i believe depression is legitimate but i also believe that if you don't exercise eat nutritious foods get sunlight get enough sleep consume positive material and surround yourself with support then you aren't giving yourself a fighting chance that is misquoted jim carrey so simon what do you think when you hear that quote i think it's it's pretty powerful uh i think it's powerful because it's almost uh simple things that we can do

to make ourselves feel better uh like exercising eating good food going outside uh sleeping enough being around positive people these are things that uh easy easy things that we can do it and we can do them daily and we they're all within our locus of control that's that's the biggest takeaway for me um i i think it's really important to to know that depression anxiety these are chemical imbalances that many people have and many people struggle with um we're not it's not anyone's fault that that happens but i think there's got to be a certain

amount of ownership around mental health around what you actually do with the the part of that that's within your control um you know it's the it's the free will debate like if there's one percent point one percent of of of your actions that are not determined predetermined then it should be a non-conversation it's yeah sorry no conversation should be aware of it but there's also like let's lean into what we can control um otherwise it just it gives something to so to blame give something to pass the buck to um i think taking ownership is

one of the pillars or cornerstones to to having a a strong relationship with your mental health yeah i think in health in general right like definitely taking taking responsibility and ownership of of what you can do and um like i think going back to this quote as well the there are things that are within your control that you can do but i also love how it ends saying you need to give yourself a fighting chance um and that that implies that there are things that are outside of our control but if we focus on the

things that we can do daily uh the people that we can surround ourselves with then that's going to put us in the best position that we can to move forward and uh and have a positive relationship with with how we feel and it's gonna be lots of little battles along the way there's gonna be good days and bad days and everything in between um but if we can lean on these things i think the most yeah none of these are the most important um but the the surrounding self-support is for my like we spoke about

it last week and i guess this is the the intentionality of these podcasts is they each kind of flow into the the next and you know the the energy generation conversation feeds directly into the mental health conversation as does the building resilience conversation so but the the people in place that we spoke about last week if you're surrounding yourself with people who are doing good things who are have a positive outlook on life you know the the optimus basket rather than the pessimist basket there's no doubt that you're going to uh you know feel that

those same ways and repeat some of those feelings and um and you you know you begin to emphasize the positive things that can come out of each day rather than the you know the negative things for example and we all fall into the trap of of those negative frames of mind but if people in place if we have places we can go and people we can talk to who help promote these great things then you know that's going to be our that's going to be our normal not not the other way around yeah yeah i

think um a lot of people that we've spoken to who have expressed uh difficulties with with their mental health feel as though uh like the loneliness thing comes into it a lot and not feeling as though they have the people around them to support them certainly um and loneliness i actually did a little bit of research on loneliness and one in australia this was this is research in 2018 uh one in five people express feelings of loneliness on a regular basis i like that's not that's on like a weekly basis that is that's 20 of

the whole population it's insane it's wild um yeah i guess at the moment like i had a i had a couple of tough mental health days um last week and a half ago i yeah i just had a day where i was just just sad um like i didn't like you know a couple of days around i didn't want to get out of bed and and things like that and i think that loneliness is what i was feeling it's just um you know we spoke about last week again but the such a people person a

lot of the time not having those uh you know conversations and hugs and high fives and handshakes and things like that um and to to lean into the love languages to a self-awareness play like my love language is physical touch not having those uh those cuddles and high fives definitely impacted me more than i probably thought slash let on um and i had that that you know immense feeling of loneliness for a couple of days and it was horrendous and like i've you know i've got the girls lucy and kp and and taco um here

so i have no reason to feel lonely but not having those other layers of you know love and support that you know we built it with our community at vertice and i've got with the the boys at footy and you know you know the the circles of friends that we've all got um yeah i definitely felt that i think that's the thing you can still be lonely or experience feelings of loneliness even though you are surrounded by people you might be living with your with a family of of 10 but still feel lonely um and

it's more of like uh it's less uh quantity maybe in more quality like cultivating quality genuine relationships in where you are fostering this connection um that's more important than having being surrounded by people all the time and i think that's almost like a maybe a misconception or a um a misnomer about having uh being surrounded by people facebook and uh let's call it social medias they're a perfect example of this like you can on social media you can have a thousand friends or followers and yet not cultivate meaningful relationships with anyone and not actually connect

with any of them properly yep and so i think like this loneliness or um disconnection is it's like a public health issue and it's something that we need to address and be aware of so that we can begin to cultivate these more meaningful relationships do you think it's propagated by social media i think it is not the cause but it is uh yes facilitated by that yeah um yeah like like anything there's there's ways we use it ways we execute on it which impacts our the outcomes we get what are the things that you think

people can do better and people as in us um we think we can do better to to cultivate meaningful relationships on social media and you know the to come come back to that quote and i think that might be something we come back to throughout this conversation is the the consuming positive material is such a big part of that how can we use social media to cultivate those feelings of connection and eliminate those feelings of disconnection yeah uh i think i think this conversation around what comes up for me here is the conversation around social

media is uh like let's zoom in on the actual interactions between people rather than the influence of social media as a whole yep the interactions between people i think it's i think social media needs to be viewed as a platform to connect because it has so much power and potential right like we can we can connect with anyone in the world if we wanted to um yeah the the key is making that interaction something with substance um and i think uh look i don't know the answer to this this is me just kind of why

don't you know all the answers right well if only but i think um connecting with people who have similar interests or world views enables us to foster connection and i'm not saying that we shouldn't connect with people who don't have different world views i think that's also important but um having something that people can bond over finding commonality even with people that disagree on you know 90 of what you agree on is yeah yep and i think external social media conversation i think if we anyone in the world we could sit down with and find

commonality if you had a conversation for 20 minutes and that kind of leads into what i was what i was going to say next which is going into it with an open mind and a sense of vulnerability uh which is difficult on social media because being vulnerable opens you up to uh criticism yes but so this is why i think this is like a public health thing it's like a social or a cultural issue where we need to facilitate this kind of change on a broader level and it does start with one person like let's

not underestimate what each of us can do but we all need to kind of approach it in a little bit of a softer way and be vulnerable in how you interact with people which requires a level of level of bravery uh in order for us to kind of show each other empathy and and kindness definitely yeah having having the you know the the device in front of us and and not seeing the person impacts that ability to show empathy and to feel empathy and i think the you know the word i come back i've come

back to in my head about 20 times while we've been talking is just intention is be intentional about who you're talking to and what you're talking about and if you're on social media for the sake of being on social media be intentional about how long you're on or about what you actually look at you know the the mind mindless scrolling leaves us vulnerable to not the good kind of vulnerable but it leaves us vulnerable to you know going down the rabbit holes of of the negative uh things you know i've like i'm sure everyone has

had different elements of it throughout this time like i'm someone that doesn't usually spend a lot of time on things that i don't like to follow on social media my instagram for example is heavily cultivated around you know philosophy and strength conditioning and people doing good things but i found myself maybe three or four weeks ago six weeks ago kind of leaning into the um the anti-maskers anti-maskers and the uh and the coronavirus is a hoax and the conspiracy theories and purely from a because it interests me why people do what they do and why

people believe what they believe but i found myself like biting back on a few things um and i was genuinely like i fell into that trap for a few days um i was kind of like this isn't serving me this is making me feel worse i need to get i need to get out of this and you know there were things that i did to cultivate the positivity and you know i it was all around intentionality it was okay there's these few people that i'm maybe butting heads with it's not getting us anywhere no positive

thing is coming from this let's unfollow these people and then it was you know about a week and a half ago i just removed facebook from my phone um it's not going to be gone forever um it doesn't necessarily change anything but it just changes the way i approach that social media bubble and how i'm feeling um you know my focus now is around what can i do um to cultivate these positive feelings and you know things like meditation and mindfulness and these kind of conversations and my journaling and my reading and if i do

go on social media what am i actually paying attention to these are the conversations i'm trying to have with myself to bring that back to am i benefiting benefiting from this or am i not yeah yeah i think that's really important being really deliberate in where you direct your energy and this comes back to the energy generation conversation um but yeah being deliberate with with what we uh surround let's say who we surround ourselves with and where we what we expose ourselves to is uh a an effective way to cut out the negative negative things

that are making us feel bad and surrounding ourselves with more positive things which make us feel good um and good things make us feel good so that's uh yeah and i think having uh the capacity to and i wrote about it on instagram this morning uh yep so and i think it's important that to use these platforms for positive things like last week i shared i shared some you know i had a kind of those tough couple of days i spoke about it before i shared that um because i think it's important to normalize these

conversations and the response i got was phenomenal um i had a you know a big chunk of people reach out some i hadn't spoken to it for a long time some i talked to really regularly um this morning i kind of posted almost like an update like a here's a week later and the two feelings of chalk and cheese like i genuinely remember feeling horrendous last week and meditating and you know teared up a little bit and i was just sad um this morning i meditated after we went for a walk and joyously happy like

is the the term i was using like thinking about during the meditation and i was just like why am i happy and i'm like well the focus for last week's been around pulling myself out of that hole but the the individual focus has been just cultivating an indifference to what which to that which is outside of my control um it was okay what can i do what what can i not affect or or influence um and i just focused on what i could do and again tomorrow i might not feel like might not feel that

joyous level of happiness that i felt today that's fine all all the meditation was was just an observation of how i was feeling um so i think cultivating one a focus um around okay what do i need to focus on to get me where i want to get to and then two being able to appreciate when you're in that mode um the i love that this too shall pass quote um when things are magical when things are going well and like when you're feeling like i was this morning and you know we had a great

walk and this will that'll pass that feeling will pass um it seemed that feeling is impermanent as much as i would love to feel like that forever i can't it won't happen um you know what i was feeling last week same deal this too shall pass it's impermanent so knowing that and a quote a quote or part of a poem by reina maria rilke that i love is no feeling is final keep going yeah which you know eventually a feeling will be final but you'll be dead it won't matter so but i love that i

love the the the idea around impermanence and this too shall pass and no feelings final yeah for sure for sure and i think that um and like you touched on a good point it applies to good feelings as well as or positive feelings as well as negative emotions um and maybe a lot of people who experience mental health challenges feel as though it will that this feeling won't stop um and that can be kind of amplified by a feeling of overwhelm because there's so many things outside of their control so like you said having a

focus um something where you can direct your energy toward is really important uh and then come back to that like loneliness thing connecting yourself to a community um connecting yourself to other people who can kind of pull you out of that hole or can help pull you out of that hole in the right direction why do you think that's so important and obviously you know it's that's a loaded question because we talk about community so often it's something that we are you know it's almost our number one value at vertice and it's the thing we're

trying to cultivate around but also you know amongst and on top of everything else is a community of people that care for each other and and love each other and you know so that everyone has a place where they can love and be loved why do you think that's so important and obviously diving into the to the loneliness um research that you did um the other week was based around um you know our intention as a business right yeah yeah well yeah to give some context i was doing research and trying to kind of nail

down exactly what we were trying to do at vertice like yes we are a uh a gym um but like what what problem are we trying to solve not just for our members but for community and society as a whole and loneliness and uh disconnection was one of the things that i came to uh and community is almost like the the whole is greater than the sum of its parts when people come together then positive feelings uh positive experiences are just amplified i think and i think there's like a maybe like a sense of magic

in that that can't really oh i don't know if it can i can explain it or i probably can't articulate it here's a quote for you happiness is the only thing that doubles when shared good yes yeah yeah um yeah i think it's just people i think it i think it's this is the thing people who come together knowing that uh like they're creating value for other people the they might come in for not not selfish reasons but because they want to be a part of something but then as they kind of integrate into the

community it becomes less about them and more about the tribe yes it becomes like a yeah like a joint feeling of connection and and happiness that they're contributing to definitely i think the you know the idea around find a place where people care more about your goals than theirs like inherently you go oh like why would i do that but once you're in it and you realize that okay well these hundred people give a shit really give a shit about what i want to achieve and how i feel and what i'm doing you know that

that's an immensely more powerful uh route to take than if you went okay i'm just going to focus on my goals because you end up with all the momentum of all these people behind you so the the motivation conversation is irrelevant the dedication and commitment uh conversation is irrelevant and the the suffering uh discipline conversation is irrelevant because you just want to surround yourself with these people who genuinely give a fuck about what you're doing and how you are and where you want to get to um so that all of those negative feelings are counteracted

they're not they're not eliminated because they're still going to be there but they're counteracted when you show up at 10 to 6 and there's 15 people that want to see you do good things there's it's cultivated by you know knowing that you're going to have bad days and there's going to be people who train at the same time as you or people in your groups or the coaches around you that are going to pick you up on those days and knowing that that's okay because there's going to be days when you're feeling top of the

world where you can help the others get up and it's almost this like faultless system of momentum giving that creates a snowball effect amongst the community of people just wanting to contribute and people wanting to to do good things and i think everyone whether you know it or not everyone wants to be a part of a community um if you don't necessarily feel that way then maybe you haven't found the right community or maybe you haven't lent into your community because i think the most important part of community and whether it's you know a tribe

a couple thousand years ago or whether it's a a small group that center around the common ideal at the moment it's all around how can i contribute to these people knowing that indirectly that'll come back to me and you don't do it because it'll come back to you but um self like there needs to be selfish reasons for doing things but yeah you know you know there's a there's a book by peter singer that talks about like is there such thing as um as true it might be true philanthropy or like true giving because obviously

there's a selfish uh reason for doing everything i don't think it matters um personally because if i'm doing something for someone else because it makes me feel good then that's like double win yeah and i think that's what a community is in in a nutshell yeah yep um that's really cool and a few things just came up for me there one is around the momentum conversation and something that we use in our team at vertice quite often is uh is the quote or the the saying that the best way to build momentum for yourself is

to give it to others and i think that's super i think that's true and if you uh like i also think that inherently we want to help people we want to help others like i think it's almost like inbuilt into our dna that we want to contribute to the tribe um yeah and if we don't then like it's a survival thing um if we don't contribute then we're going to be cast out of the tribe and our chances of survival is is zero so i think that's true um well it from an i'm listening to

sapiens for the 20th time at the moment and from an evolutionary perspective it is completely true because if we don't contribute or if we're more disagreeable then there's less we're less likely to be a part of that tribe wherever whichever part of the world is which means we're more likely to be cast out and we're more likely to be uh eaten by a lion or you know die of starvation or or be you know whatever it may be so those attributes the people that were more like that those uh predispositions are more likely to have

died out over the the last how long has the earth been i think six thousand years is that right oh less maybe i don't know i haven't read that book for a while not an archaeologist you know so whatever like over the hundreds of thousands years of evolution of the evolution of the homo sapien the those traits are the disagreeable the not wanting to be a part of a community those have died out in different ways and yes they come up in selfishness and things like that yep um well that's like the next part the

being selfish uh guarantees our survival and so well again like if we look after ourselves then we will survive um and so yeah like what you said about that philanthropy quote but pete is single is i think that's uh got a maybe a grain of truth to it as well that inherently we all want even maybe subconsciously we want to look after ourselves first want to put our own um the face mask on before we put on others yes um but from a how do we move forward how do we improve the way we live

and how to and things like that then it's um well once my face mask is on once my oxygen mask is on how do i look after other people yes and then it goes into like generosity and how we can help serve others and serve the tribe um definitely and the last thing that came up from before was um closing off that kind of social media loop is that communities we we have the opportunity now uh to build communities that are digital or remote um and they can still be just as powerful as in person

and like we have the challenge now to try to make those interactions meaningful and try to build these uh communities in a different way yeah and that's the the power and beauty of something like social media is we're able to cultivate uh those relationships virtually like we've got people that we look up to in different parts of the world that we've never met but we feel as though we could have conversations with them and you know we have even talked about traveling to the other side of the world to go and meet them yeah um

because we connected on social media because we had a a common interest or a a single person connection or whatever and i think the capacity for that for us to decentralize our or what social media has done over the last how long has facebook been around 2007 or something 2011 those are two very different years who knows it's not important um what the changes it's made has allowed that decentralized interconnectedness in the world happen but i think there's two parts of that one is how cool is that how beneficial and and um yeah how beneficial

can that be but then there's also the well how much will it make us go back to community um and i think that's our next the next step of you know whether it be business or whether it be um evolution or whatever you want to use but i think that our us focusing and leaning into community over the next 15-20 years will be um and almost going back to the tribe mentality we can understand that each tribe is connected on ways that we never would have been throughout history yeah definitely yeah it's it's exciting times

um let's let's shift a little bit and talk about uh how to cultivate positive mental resources um and we've spoken about this a little bit in other podcasts things like uh gratitude and hope and um self-efficacy uh in in my power of change workshop i talk about a concept called psychological capital which consists of four main uh elements let's call them and the elements um you can remember them with the uh what do you call it um each of the elements spell out hero an acronym acronym i just had my brain my brain just did

not work for a second there welcome to episode three of the podcast an acronym uh spells that hero and that stands for h is hope e is efficacy or self-efficacy r is resilience and o is optimism and uh if we can cultivate these positive mental resources then that allows us to uh be well the the concept comes from organizational and organizational context so it kind of relates to job satisfaction and effectiveness but i think it can easily be translated to personal well-being um so do you have any sort of strategies in mind that that can

help us cultivate these mental resources i do and i think i think mental health comes back to a lot about how you feel about yourself um there's obviously how you feel about the world and i think the um i made the thing the other the other week and i don't have it in front of me but it was around circles of influence um and there's like six circles of influence there's like uh universal there's national there's um state there's local there's community there's family and friends and then there's you and the only one you really

have any influence over is yourself there's the circle around you that you can have some sort of influence over but ultimately it doesn't really exist so to take the how you feel about the world conversation away knowing you can't fucking do anything about it um oh you've got it up good from you those on youtube you can now see the sequence of influence um so i made this when i was going into that kind of deep dark hole of conspiracies and and people not doing the right thing and uh people complaining about masks and things

that those that i was being very i was very frustrated by that but this is kind of like one of the things that i created um to help me cultivate a thought process around why am i feeling this way and what can i do about it and if we understand these circles of influence then the focus is on the self and a big part of self is is being able to depend on yourself um it's the it's the integrity definition that greg loves and i i also prescribed to it is that integrity is doing what

you said you would do when you said you would do it which basically means that if i say i'm going to go for a run and i go for a run then i'm going to feel wonderful about myself and i'm going to that's kind of a a vote towards the person i want to be i want to be dependable to everyone else but i need to be dependable for me first if i say i'm going to get up at 6 a.m and i get up at 6 30 or if i sleep until 11 then i'm

going to feel very differently about myself of course there's the balance that we need to find between self-care and discipline but i think that they i think that they support each other and a quote that i saved yesterday that it rocked me when i read it is we reward our good behavior with bad behavior and wonder why we don't make progress so we do something really good and then we we justify why we can take the foot off the pedal um like we we might go for a run and go sweet i can eat something

shitty now and or we might go oh sweet i went for a run yesterday i don't have to go for a run today um so i think the you know and it's a quote that we've repeated a bunch but it's the hard decisions easy life easy decisions hard life yeah if we can continually show up more often than not and yeah there's a time to rest and the time to eat fucking block of chocolate there's a time to netflix binge but if the majority of time we can show up and know what we're going to

get from ourselves um then we are ultimately going to have a stronger more resilient uh view of our own mental and physical health so that when things are tough we have the tools to break ourselves out of the negative headspace and to work work out of it and yes you know the tools as in meditation or journaling or podcasting or talking to people or you know or exercise or whatever they may be everyone's going to have their own box of tools they can use um but i think that what allows you to have a bigger

toolbox maybe is just the the discipline to do what you said you would do um and it's not an easy answer it's almost like the hard the hard route but it's the the one that gives you the most um it pays you back the most in interest in compound interest down the track there's nothing i like more than seeing jocko willing post his fucking watch at like 4 30 kids time every fucking day on instagram and on twitter like it's it's amazing how often and again this is just a uh this is just um cognitive

bias that i link it to when i should be going to bed but every now and again i'm like i really should go to bed and i jump on twitter i see his fucking watch and it's sitting there right in front of me i'm like this guy's getting up before 30 every morning and getting after it yeah what am i missing and he's not spent like he's not special in the fact that he his brain's wired differently so that maybe maybe he's maybe he's not special in the fact that he can do that he just

does it because that's what he does and that's the the contract he's made with himself and i guarantee you he goes through ups and downs i get right else i guarantee he doesn't want to get up like you know i opened a gym because i love the gym right the last thing i want to do most days is try the last thing i want to do most days is meditate the last things i want to do thing i want to do most days is go for a run but i know inherently and i'm sure everyone

knows this that when you do the things you said you would do you feel better about yourself and that you know it's not an easy answer like i said but it's the most powerful thing to taking control of your mental health and the when i need like for example there's a lot of people on medication for different mental health issues a part of showing up might be i don't want to take my medication today but i know it makes me feel better i need to do it it doesn't have to be a a sweaty um

hour-long kettlebell session or or run the hard thing the hard thing can be sitting for 10 minutes in a meditative state and relaxing the hard thing can be taking your meditation the hard thing can be reaching out to a gp and going i need help with my mental health it can be texting a friend and saying hey i'm not doing so great can we have a chat the hard thing doesn't have to be physically painful um the hard thing can be as simple as sitting down and you know writing a page in your journal it

doesn't matter what it is i guess what i'm trying to say is that we can build it up as this big mountain to to tackle um but all you've got to do is start moving no one feels worse once they've finished meditating no one feels worse once they've taken their medication depending on medication no one feels worse once they've reached out to their gp no one feels worse once they've done the training session it's just around convincing ourselves to do it yeah i know it's i know i talked a lot there but unpack that for

me yeah there's a bit to unpack there uh some of the things that came out for me were the conversation about systems and we talked about that in the systems for success podcast episode uh where you create the systems in your life that you can default back to when you feel in the dumps when you feel bad um and these are the the habits that you cultivate uh and the the things that you put in place to to make yourself feel good um and if we can make that our default set of behaviors then uh

that's kind of half the battle all of the time um like i'm on a quote train today but james clear we we don't rise to the level of our goals we fall to the level of our systems yep these like you know to use jocko as an example the bloke gets up at six at 4 30 every morning and does his thing the he knows that that's what he does everyone else knows that's what he does um you know i'm i'm sure he doesn't do it for social media but the knowing that he's going to

post his watch at 4 30 probably gives him that little nudge to get up some days yep that's it so he's created a system of accountability that that makes him do the thing um like i post my journal on social media relatively regularly i post my step streak relatively regularly um one i've been cultivating lately is my meditation streak like i'm trying to i intentionally post it on social media not part of part of its validation like i go hey i did this thing check it out how fucking awesome am i but most of it's

just well if more people know that i have a journaling a meditation and a steps habit that i'm cultivating more people know that you know the day where i'm on 4 000 steps at seven o'clock at night uh and we're in lockdown and i've got an hour to go for a walk those days i go fuck i better go for a walk at seven o'clock yeah or i'd better sit down and and meditate or i'd i'd better write my journal um that their systems and you know it's like a contract with like a contract with

ourself that i think we can all cultivate we've just got to figure out okay what's something that i know i can do now then show up and do it for 30 to 50 days then add something on top of it and then it's just a consistent thing and every every person's system is going to be different every person's self-care routine is going to be different and i think that's important as well to to state that like it's all relative uh what one person posts on social media is well a it's just a snapshot of uh

their life and it's something that they want to show you like you said it's like a validation thing but also they're a different they're in a different stage of their journey they have gone through uh maybe they've gone through the same challenges at a different time in their life maybe they're going through completely different challenges but it's all relative and the the comparison trap is something that we haven't spoken about but that's again one of the social media detriments or negative things but i think that's maybe another conversation um yeah i think the important part

of that is to know that no one everyone is oh what's the quote actually keep talking i'm going to find the quote uh yes everyone's everyone's routine is going to be different and being kind to yourself and having a level of self-awareness and knowing what you need is uh the other side to that sometimes you mentioned before that sometimes you need a need to have a block of chocolate and sit in sit in front of netflix and sometimes that's that is a perfectly healthy uh behavior or response to what you're going through um it's not

a maybe sustainable thing that you should defer to every time you feel bad because if we if that becomes our default system then before long we are turning to that every time we feel a negative emotion habits are just systems um we talk about systems a lot systems and habits interchangeable so um here's the here's the quote in terms of the comparison trap um and i screenshot way too much stuff on my phone i've just realized i've just scroll back through 700 photos it's like three days um we're prone to assuming brilliance and organization in

others but we keep our own chaos in intimate focus we don't realize that our chaos is universal everyone is just throwing shit at a wall and hoping it sticks like the imposter syndrome is such an important thing to understand is that you know i some people look at my life or what i do with vertice and things like that and say where like everything's going so well or you've got your shit together or whatever i doubt what we're doing at vertice and i doubt what i'm doing personally every single day and that's i don't think

that's necessarily a bad thing but i think it's important for everyone to understand that the people who you put on the on your pedestal um you know the people i look up to locally when we dive into it and talk about how they're going they're they're trying to figure out just like everyone else is um and i think it's important to know that everyone's yeah like you said a different stage of their journey everyone's learning the same lessons in different ways um but i think the mental health conversation and to kind of swing it back

around is just to understand that your problems are are both individual and universal at the same time um you're dealing with your own shit and it doesn't there's no point looking at someone else who's maybe struggling more or in a in a worse place and going oh they've got it worse sure that perspective helps but it doesn't mean you can't you can't feel your feelings and and accept that yeah this does suck yes and and that's that's another thing worth saying is that it's okay to not feel okay and i know that's like maybe a

phrase that's thrown around around quite a bit now but uh negative emotions are normal i don't think that i think having a uh a negative relationship with negative emotions isn't a good thing like we need to know understand that negative emotions are normal everyone feels them we all feel sadness and anger and jealousy and um and to a sense loneliness uh the key i think and this is my own personal experience because i am i think i am someone who almost rejects negative emotions a bit like i i give the facade that everything's okay when

uh i need to maybe express myself a little bit more um but i think the key is just to have this self-awareness to to recognize what you're feeling recognize that it's okay to feel that way uh to and express yourself the way that you need to and then bring yourself back around to the to cultivating those positive emotions um whether that's then connecting yourself with other people or sharing with someone whether it's going for a long walk or sitting in meditating just standing at the sun and taking a big breath just get uh your mate

marie condo is that her name ask what brings you joy does it yeah it doesn't bring you joy it's like it's it's a um we did a connection in my bonus session with a bunch of diverse family the other week and the finishing thing was what are the 20 things you're grateful for um just write them down and stick it on the fridge so when you are feeling those negative feelings feel them but then know that there's a way out of that whole um not as necessarily always a whole but there's a way out of

that whole by looking or paying attention to what you do love what you do appreciate what you are grateful for um so in terms of a for anyone that feels like they don't know where to start i have two suggestions for you one suggestion one is writing a list of all the things you love to do slash are grateful for and do everything you can to fill your days with those things second thing is find someone who you look up to um and go what do you do for x what do you do to cultivate

mindfulness what do you do to feel better what do you do to um to shift away from the negativity on social media because again everyone like koop said before everyone's got their own practices everyone's got their own uh way they deal with their mental health but if you don't have uh the the practices currently steal someone else's um schedule and then tweak it as you go to fit yourself um you know the really simple and it's just gonna sit right in front of me but a really simple example i come back to is my journaling

practice is i tried 50 things before i kind of cultivated a way that worked you've got one that's completely different to mine um but they both work for us and i'm sure if anyone wanted to cultivate a journaling practice they could start with yours online and they'd end up somewhere in the middle or somewhere that's you know got mixes of both um and you know it's almost like the the best business advice is find someone who's doing what you want to do and go learn off them it's the same thing from a physical health point

of view the same thing from a mental health point of view yes you're going to be different yes you're going to have your own there's going to be nuance in how you look after yourself but um you'll learn more by going that way than going i've got to do this do this on my own i've got to cultivate this online yep that's awesome come join the first family we'll help i promise yes um there might be a cool way to finish before we do finish um there are we have talked about this conversation this is

like there's no way we can touch on everything mental health in a thousand episodes of this podcast so yeah it's a big conversation yeah so to reiterate always at the start lifeline australia 13 11 14 um is the number beyond blue lean into it there's immense amount of resources um we talked about this in with some you know pulsi in a random set 100 with pulsi and rick mirabella we talked about mental health from um from moo's own experiences um which is incredibly valuable to just to hear him be vulnerable enough to talk about his

experiences um love that man he's a king uh tommy curtis and i talked about are you okay day 100 episodes ago but it's there and i think it's really valuable episode so there's lots of resources here but there's an immense amount of resources out there yeah it's worth it's worth um and i agree those podcasts are awesome and um one of the other sort of projects that we did during the current pandemic is was our marathon for mental health oh yeah which we which we did in may uh we ran 42 kilometers we stopped at

around 10 different cafes and coffee spots and interviewed a bunch of amazing people who have had experiences with mental health um and we i guess we're still in the process of putting together that video uh it's a it's a big project i'll do it at some point yes but um what what i realized from that is there are so many people that want to contribute so many people that want to help like in a time where finances were uh with the financial situation was tough for a lot of people they didn't know what was happening

we raised i think 5k in you know on like 10 days 10 days planning um and it was it was immense so you know there's everyone is going through something um everyone suffers i think it helps to know that but i think the most important thing is that there's people there for you and our community exists to promote love and care and get people strong as fuck in the meantime um and yeah all you've got to do is lean on the people around you and the help is there so you don't ever feel like you

are alone yeah and the last thing i want to say is maybe a call to action for everyone and that's to reach out to reach out to your friends um ask them how they are and ask them from a genuine place that is uh because i know that you all truly care about your friends um and asking how they are asking how they truly are and using empathy to to understand where they're coming from and engage in a conversation around this is just going to move us all forward in a positive way um and be

kind to yourselves give yourselves a bit of love or we will can't wait for cuddles uh next week what are you talking about next week episode seven we are talking well we're going to talk about community and accountability we are touched on a community quite a lot here uh it's almost as if we pre-planned these 10 episodes to flow into it one another that is bizarre it's like the river of life a man never stands in the same river twice because for he is not the same man it is not the same river or is

swimming and he's not standing see you next week sorry for that awful joke catch ya there is one more thing it's been emotional