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dealing with depression on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by digit save money without thinking about it. Get paid $5 just for signing up at serve. No master dot com Backslash digit today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. Yesterday was a really happy episode we talked a lot about in our special fourth episode, The Value of Freedom. It was a happy, very positive episode. Today we're talking about something that's a little bit tougher, and the reason I wanna talk about this is it's something a lot of people face in isolation, and working on your own could allow depression to really creep into your life. As a child, I suffered from massive amounts of depression. I first thought about suicide when I was six or seven years old, I usedto imagine jumping off the roof of my parent's house on Christmas just to teach them a lesson. I had these intense, very negative thoughts that were just overpowering, and they affected my life in such a negative way. By the time I was in high school, my parents began sending me to different shrinks and different types of counselors. I think I've been to all the different types, you know, the ones who prescribed the ones who can't, counselor, shrinks, psychiatrists, psychologists, the whole spectrum. I went through five or six before I was aged 18. They medicated me in different ways to give me happiness. They tried all these different methods on me, so I really went through that experience. I know what it feels like and having been through the whole professional spectrum, no one ever really helped me to be completely honest with you. None of their methods help me. The pills didn't work. They just made me feel kind of dead inside, which is how they medicate a lot of Children these days. That's more more what a dirty medications do, and we just want a kind of dead in our Children's. They do what we want. But all of these psychologists and all of their advice you spend there every day or every week. You spent an hour sitting there just talking about your problems for an hour, saying all these negative words and my experience is that the more time you spend dwelling on negative things, the more powerful they become. Now I know that for some people psychiatry and going toe, this type of situation has been very beneficial, helpful for them. At the same time, you often go to a psychologist in the sale will have your problem fixed in 20 years, 20 years to fix the problems a really long time. I only have one friend, and I don't know if you ever did it, but he really wanted to become a psychologist, but only after he'd been sectioned. He had a breakdown. They put him into one of those places. I don't like to call them anymore. I know it's not an asylum anymore. It was it was much nicer than an asylum was more like more like an amazing vacation location. When he came out, he said, Oh, they helped me so much. That's what I want to do for my career. So it's this business where most people get into it because they had problems. So it's this cycle that I don't want to be a part of, and it's something that I dealt with personally on a very serious level and understanding the way depression works and the way it can sneak up on us is the key to solving in dealing with it. And I know other people. I'll tell you right now, other people have different methods and other people have different beliefs. This is the system that worked for me. I'm not telling you to stop going to your doctor or whatever. I'm simply telling you what worked for me and totally changed my life. Depression works by slowly creeping up on you. It's like a fog at first. It's just around your feet, slowly creeping up, and you ignore. You know that's not a big deal. I'll shake it off. It's kind of this denial phase. It's not that foggy. It'll go away, the sun will come out and disappear and it slowly rises and then it's above your legs and then it's above your waist and then something to neck level. You start to get worried, but you can't see anyone ask for help anymore, because then it's over your mouth and then your nose and in your eyes you can't breathe and you can't see, and it suffocates you in this feeling of Malays, or that nothing can change it. You start to feel down, and you feel that nothing will fix the way you feel. And it's this sinister power that really depends upon your silence. During the first few phases, I still to be really, honestly, completely and totally suffer from depression. But I haven't managed very successfully. When I was younger and I would hit a Depression cycle, they would last three or four weeks now, using my system. When I feel a flicker of depression, I know it is shot. Stop it and make it disappear within 15 minutes. I don't know how to make depression, never try and attack you again, but I do know how to make it go away every single time. I've never been depressed in the last 15 years. For more than an hour, the longest cycle I've dealt with was an hour compared to days and weeks. It's nothing. And those our long ones haven't happened in a long time, either. Usually, it's 10 minutes or less now because I take swift and efficient action, understanding that it's slowly creeping and admitting, Hey, this is depression attacking me. That's step one. If you could admit what's going on just like I'm in it with you, It's not very exciting for me to admit to you that I suffer from depression. We have this social stigma against it, and that's part of the problem. We're afraid to say anything. So my step one is I tell the closest person to me As soon as I start to feel the press to ever standing near me, I say, I'm feeling depressed. If there's no one near me, I call someone every single time. When I first started doing that, it was very embarrassing. I started doing my parents, my sisters. It's very hard to see your dad. I'm feeling really depressed. We have to do something right now, but I trained the people around me to immediately take action. I say, Hey, we could do something about this depression right now or it could wait till tomorrow. And I'm gonna be awful for next three weeks. The people around you love you and care about you, and they will be glad to take action. The second step in my depression solution The way I deal with depression is to isolate activities that solve your problem. The things that you like to dio for me there a ton of things I'd like to do. I like to serve. I like to kayak. I like to stand up Paddle. I like to ride my exercise bike. I like to exercise my kettle bells. I like to watch movies. I like to play video games like to play my guitar. I have a host of things that I really, really like to d'oh when you start to feel depressed. And once you're in that deep Malays once the fog is above your waist level at your head level, you look at those things. You don't wanna do that. I don't want to play guitar. Guitar sucks. I hate guitar. The depression gets strong enough that it convinces you that you don't like these things. So as soon as I have a depression kick as soon as I feel it creeping up on me. I tell someone around me and we immediately go do something. The reason I tell the second person is I need that help for motivation because if it's a powerful strike of depression, if it's coming out hard, I might not last long enough doing the activity I like. But then the person around me will drag me to a movie or go to the batting cages, which I absolutely love. I wish there was a batting cage here or we'll go to the golf range. I like hitting golf balls will do something that's a quick activity, takes less than an hour and suddenly the Depression disappears. For me, this technique distracts you from the Depression and here's how it works. The reason it works. There is some science behind this. We, as a culture have decided that emotions are very special, that they're a unique occurrence inside of our brains that are more powerful than us. We have decided that emotions control behavior and that we have no power over emotions, that we're slaves to our emotions and you see this play out. Maur and Mawr in court cases in other places where they say It's not my phone. It's my emotions, as though there's 1/3 party inside of you controlling everything. And this is bad science, really. Science is this emotions or thoughts that one sentence will change your life? Because if emotions or thoughts, you have the ability to control them. I have complete and total control over my emotions. Some people around me don't really believe in that, but understanding the science, understanding that thoughts are controlled. But we choose what we think about. We believe that emotions are so powerful that they can control our thought life. We can't affect them, but they're simple tests. You can do simple experiments that can prove I'm correct, and I'm a big, big believer in science. I'd rather prove it to you. The first thing I'd like to do is prove there's a connection between your body and your emotions and that you can control it. If you pause this episode, go look in front of a mirror. Go stand in front of a mere right now and I want you to frown, make the biggest frown you can and count to 30 inside your head by the end of those 30 seconds, you'll start to feel pretty pretty bad. You feel pretty down. You like You know what I hate Jonathan. I hate to serve no master podcast. I think I'm gonna cancel. I don't listen that garbage anywhere, he's an idiot. But if you then force yourself to make a big, cheesy smile, no matter what and count to 30 again, you'll find your mood completely shifts into the positive. You become very happy again. Emotions control, behavior. Behavior also controls emotions. It's a two way communicative street. You can control your emotions on a basic level. This is the first test. So simple experiment is the next time you feel sad or depressed, stand in front of a mirror and say I'm gonna be depressed. But I'm gonna stand in front of me and smile for three minutes. After that, I'm gonna be as depressed as I want. Then I'll give in to this emotion and you discover most the time you shut down that depression feeling. But let's go one step beyond that. Let's give one more experiment to prove that I'm not just some podcast dumb dumb when you have a thought in your mind something you're really focused on if something else happens. If there's an emergency that thought disappears, for example, you have a shopping list. You need to buy 10 things today. If you go to the movies and watch a movie, the movie takes so much of your attention that the shopping list disappears from your mind. You no longer think about it. Behavior can affect our thoughts, and in fact, things that become important can be crushed by more important priorities. So the next time you're feeling depressed, think about what would happen if there was a fire. You're lying in bed, super depressing. You say this. I don't want to get out of bed today. If the house caught on fire, you would stop thinking about your impression immediately. Your priorities would change. And if emergencies can shift your priorities than anything else can shift your priorities because we determine what our emergencies, we have the choice inside of our brands to decide if that fires an emergency or not. I've seen plenty of people in a fire go, Oh, that fire is not that big of a deal. When I was younger, I served on an ambulance for a year. I saw a real fire. I saw a real fire start. I saw someone flicked a cigarette out the window of a van into some bushes and I watched it catch on fire, which almost never happens. But it does sometimes in front of this furniture store, I will tell you, I couldn't believe how fast a fire grew. You hear about it and you hear about forest fires. This fire went from nothing to 12 or 15 feet tall in about 10 seconds. I jumped in the eight months, grabbed a fire extinguisher, walked out and the fire that was inside of a little bush that was nothing was now touching the eaves of this furniture store. Unbelievable. I'll tell you right now, that place would have burned to the ground if we hadn't been there in her. Amos, we just happened to be there. We're eating at the restaurant next door, walking out to the van. When it happened, it was total luck that saved this entire business from a little cigarette. Fire fires very powerful, very fast, but we don't always treat. It is an emergency. It's an active decision. Decided something is an emergency. You have the ability with the way you thought, with the way you approach your thoughts and the way you prioritize, too. Push these negative thoughts away. Go. This is just the thought. Feeling sad is just a thought and it's not important. I'm gonna push it away. This is a little bit of the science and you can actively do this. I find it really helps to bring someone else into my life and to go actually do something rather than just try and fight depression in my mind. But you can't successfully put depression down by going. Hey, this is just a thought. I don't want this thought anything about something makes me happy. I don't want things. Make me sad and you could take total control of your Depression like this is my personal experience, and I find that it's very powerful. I find that this is a very powerful technique and can really help you. The reason we're talking about depression a little bit on a podcast that's about working yourself and achieving success is that you will experience moments of loneliness when you work by yourself. I am around my kids, my family all the time, but sometimes I'm working and I'm locked in. I've got my headphones on and I'm really, really focused. And these flick of the Depression could hit me. These flickers of loneliness because I'm around everyone, but I'm a little bit lonely and it's totally an artificial construct. I have no reason to feel loneliness. My kids are amazing. I'm at that stage in life for my kids. Love spending time with me haven't turned up yet. I'm surrounded by people that love spending time with me. Then I really, really enjoy. So the loneliness feeling is not really artificial artificial construct created by my depression. That's just trying to sneak in by hiding behind another name. This is a very long episode, and that's because it's not a very complicated problem. My solution to dealing with their passion is very simple. So as you're moving forward, I want to prepare you for things before they happen. I wanna share this message with you before you email me saying, I finally quit my job and I'm so depressed because I'm so lonely. I don't have anyone to hang out with all day. I want to give you some of these tools so you could deal with this problem in advance. Some of the other structural decisions you can make changes you can make when you leave your job behind. When you get working for yourself, you need to find a support group people around you that are on the same path and these could be in the form of masterminds or meetup dot com meet ups. Find other people on the same path as you that you can talk Thio because your struggles become unique. The reason we have such great report with our co workers is because we have the same experience. We can complain about what it's like with our boss. I cannot complain about work to my girlfriend. She doesn't know what it's like. She doesn't write books. So even though she'll listen and she'll commissar and be very supportive, she doesn't know the experience in the same way that complaining or talk, another author can connect with me. She doesn't know what it's like to get a bad review in a book because she's never written a book and there's plenty of things that she does that I do not know how to commit straight with her about. I don't know that experience surrounding yourself with people on the same path can be very, very helpful. I've talked over and over again how joining mass runs and join these groups helps you financially, but also helps you emotionally. It gives you, but a social context, a little bit of social contact, a lot of new mothers. You know, I write a lot of books in the mom space, a lot of new mother's struggle from depression because you leave the workforce and suddenly you're just around your kid all the time. You have no other adults to talk to. And as much as you love your child, you need that other release, which is why people develop Mommy and me programs and other mom. You get together places and my mom's love to get go to the park. I understand all of that. It's the same type of experience it's going from being around people all the time to being a little bit by yourself all the time. So you're three action steps. The three key steps for dealing with depression or admitting it, admitting that you're feeling about loneliness or sadness, taking immediate action and remembering that it's just a thought. You have the ability to change what you think about. If you take those three steps anytime depression attacks you, you'll be able to overcome it and begin to develop a social bulwark against that situation. If you're staying at home and your partners at work, you can't text them and they come home. I'm feeling depressed. Not gonna like that at all. Do not respond positively that I know that that's why you want to find other at home workers or at home moms and dads from developing this other group, developing a mastermind or social group that you can call them and say Hey, I need to do something right away. I'm feeling depressed. I don't want I don't want to kick in. People don't look down on you when you say you're depressed. It only comes from depression itself, trying to convince you that it's bad ass for help because if you don't ask for help, then depression become more more powerful, overwhelm you. So whether you're dealing with feelings of sadness or having bad days, I get hit with little hits from random places. Sometimes, oh, Amazon, it doesn't always update fast enough. So sometimes I'll look and it looks like I'm having a terrible sales day. Oh my gosh, no one's got any My books today. I guess I'm a loser. And then I looked two hours later. Updates. I've sold a ton of books, but I have this kick a depression When I see that this depression thinks it sees an opportunity to attack me and because I'm proactive, it can never sneak in the door. It can hit me. We'll ask for a few seconds ago. What you kidding? This is gonna go away or turn my girlfriend. So I'm feeling a little bit sad about these numbers. Let's go do something. Taking action can really change your life. It can shut down depression and remove. Remove this curse on your life and give you real freedom, which is what you deserve. See, Servant Master isn't just about making money. It's about so much more. It's about total and complete lifestyle change, and I want to help you transition to do an amazing life. And part of that is sharing and being honest to you about something that I really dealt with, something that I really struggle with his kid. I haven't seen a professional since I was 17. That was 20 years now. I don't need it. The thought of sitting and talking about my problems all the time. It doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to talk about negative things because then it gives them life and they become powerful. I would much rather talk about really happy things. And then the negative feelings disappear, they fade away. I really hope that this lesson has been powerful for you. And I want you to know, don't worry. I'm not always gonna have negative lessons. This is a lesson of hope as well, showing you can overcome these negative feelings in the next lesson, which I'm very excited about in our next episode. Gonna talk about finding your passion. So people have been messaging me, saying I want to work on a passion project. I'm not sure what I'm passionate about. It's some people if you have a passionate sounds crazy. But if you don't, it's told the reason why I told understand, we're coming from finding your passion is very important. You don't want to guess wrong and go down the past start of business go. Oh, you know what? I'm not passionate about this, so I'm very excited top out than in the next episode. And I'm very excited to spend more time with you. And remember, anytime you're feeling lonely or kicking oppression, you can fight against it. If you need a message someone you can email me, I only check email one today. So I'm not the best resource of the world because sometimes you need that immediate reply. But I'm there for you were on this journey together. I'm a little higher up the mountain than you. And it's my job, my duty to cut away the branches and to guide you up the correct path. So I'm here for you in any way that you need. I appreciate you being with me on this lesson. I'm very excited to record more of my podcast episodes on the beach. I love being in paradise and just enjoying being outdoors. This transition is very pleasant for me As much as I enjoy recording inside, recording outside is 1000 times better, even though you do get a little bit of bird noise and ocean noise. I hope you appreciate the sounds of paradise. That air coming in your future very soon. Thank you so much for listening and remember, you have the ability to control your depression. It does not have the ability to control you. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for Listen to this episode of the serve. No master podcast. Join me on my Facebook page at facebook dot com. Backslash serve no master