How I Got Out Of A Massive Rut & Transformed My Mindset
So I recently went through a bit of a wild ride (you could call it a transformation). I went from the worst mental state I’ve ever been, to the best I’ve ever been in a 3 month window. The contrast is literally night and day, if I was writing this 90 days ago it would be a very different article!
The reason I wrote this was to articulate my thoughts, have a ‘framework’ to look back on the next time I’m in a rut, share with family what actually happened and to give some practical advice to other people who might be going through something similar. So here we go!
You’re not alone.
Before I start this off, I wanted to let you know that you’re not alone. People don’t talk about their problems or mental health enough, and because you’re not talking to anyone, it can feel like you’re the only one dealing with it. It’s easy to see people on social media and think “all these people have their life all figured out, I am so behind and I suck.”
Don’t do that! The people you look up to are just as messed up as the rest of us, and they all have their own issues. You’re not the only one dealing with stress, anxiety, insecurities or whatever your demons are. Hopefully with this article (and with the content I share on my Instagram Stories) you can see you’re not alone. Speak up!
What Happened…
July 2020
Alrighty let’s start off where it started to go south. When I get stressed it’s rarely because of one big event, it’s a combination of little things all adding up. This time, it was a combination of big events all piling onto top of each other, resulting in what felt like a 2 month long panic attack.
I naturally have a high tolerance for stress because I have a business, but it gradually became too much. I was constantly on edge, and my body was saying “mate, you need to stop!”
Where I was mentally…
The most anxious I’ve ever been.
Stressed and incredibly short tempered.
A negative attitude and always complaining.
A victim mentality asking “why me?”
Exhausted with work and a “who cares” attitude.
How I got there.
Covid
Certainly not a problem unique to me but it’s naturally stressful when a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic pops up out of nowhere and completely changes everybody’s lives. Thankfully my business actually wasn’t affected too much and we handled it quite well, but it did result in more work for less money. Not a huge deal and a lot of people had it far worse than I did, but it was block number one in the Jenga tower of stress I was building.
Work Fatigue
I genuinely love to work so I don’t mind not having many vacations, but I was struggling to switch off and my work was becoming unfulfilling. I was dealing with difficult people who don’t share my values at all and it was just becoming exhausting.
I felt trapped by work because even though I’m my own boss, I have a team of 9 and we’re in the middle of a pandemic! I don’t like what I’m doing, but how am I meant to change now?! I also felt guilty and somewhat ungrateful because I had a good little business humming along, but I was just getting tired of it. Jenga block number 2.
Bullying memories
I was bullied pretty consistently in high school, and for some reason the memories kept coming back up during this time. Being bullied can make you vengeful, toxic, overly sensitive to criticism and can even make you self-sabotage relationships.
I realised this was a problem at Stradbroke Island. I have lots of friends but they’re all from different social circles, so I’ve never really had a ‘group’ of close friends. I finally had one, who were kind people I could count on and who cared about me, but my mind was fighting it.
I’ve been a lone wolf for so long that when I finally had a crew, my mind felt uncomfortable. So much of my energy and progress has come from resenting the mainstream, being independent and not ‘needing’ others, that even when I finally had my own clan I’d start thinking “they’re not actually my friends, I’m just here because I’m Kaz’s partner”.
Obviously, this is a stupid thing to say. But the fact I knew how stupid it was made me feel even more confused and annoyed. Later in this article I have some really interesting insights into why I hung onto it for so long and how I tackled it.
not the brain!
Okay… this is where sh*t really hit the fan. This was the most anxiety-driven 2 weeks of my entire life. I could write a whole blog just on this experience but I’ll keep it brief.
I was doing a lot of pushups at the time, and my right forearm started to twitch, get cramps then eventually lock up. I have this video of my arm where it literally looks possessed. I thought it was just muscle fatigue so I went to a physio and they figured the same. Although after 5+ treatments of remedial massage, dry needling and magnesium supplements, it just was not going away. Blood tests came back fine too.
The physios were concerned and said ‘don’t freak out, we just want to rule out all options so we need you to get an MRI’. ‘What for?’ I replied. ‘The involuntary movement in your arm is one of those red flags for something like MS or a brain injury.’
DON’T FREAK OUT!? (Add 10 x Jenga blocks for this one!)
Anybody who knows me knows how much I enjoy mental work, learning, being creative and using… my brain! My brain is easily my biggest asset, so despite their recommendation, of course I freaked the f*ck out. I thought it was a bit overblown at first, but then after having multiple professionals see it, now I had 2 different doctors and 2 different physios saying they were seriously worried.
Come on down anxiety! We’ve saved a spot for you in the front row!
The worst part is you have to wait to see the doctor, then have the MRI (which in itself is a pretty terrifying experience) and then wait for the results. The waiting is awful! I would wake up in the middle of the night panicking. What if I have MS? What if I can’t have kids? What if I’m in a wheelchair? What if I can’t walk my dog?
To me having something like this is arguably worse than death, because your entire family has to change their lives to take care of you for 60 years. I remember saying to Kaz ‘I don’t care if I have fricken’ diabetes, give me anything but a brain disorder’.
Anyway… the day finally comes for my MRI results and the doctor says ‘how are you today?’. ‘About to be a whole lot better or a whole lot worse in a second’ I said. He replied ‘better!’ Thank christ. They actually don’t know what it is, they put it down to a motor tick but it’s nothing serious.
Now this might seem weird… but whilst I was relieved, I still had the after-affects of such hardcore paranoia. It’s like during the waiting period I was running on adrenaline, trying to plan what I should do. Once I got the news it felt like all the anxiety that was masked by adrenaline now hit me. I said to Kaz “If you get stabbed in the leg, it feels good when the knife is taken out. But you’ve still got a bloody sore leg!”
This is the crazy thing about anxiety — I didn’t even have anything wrong with me! I spent 2 weeks in sheer panic, destroying my mental state for something that never even existed. There’s something valuable to learn there.
Dad should be dead
Just in case it couldn’t get worse, a few weeks later Dad goes to see the doctor thinking he’d given himself food poisoning. Now, my Dad is 73 and one of the healthiest people I know. Whenever he has a checkup or donates blood they literally think he’s an ex-athlete (he’s not, he has just had very healthy habits his whole life).
The doctor said “do you have any other symptoms?”. Occasional chest pains he replied. They figured just in case, they should run a few tests. They were a bit more concerned after that first test and said they need to run another one. Thank god they did.
Dad didn’t have food poisoning. He was having a heart attack.
3 out of the 4 arteries to his heart were blocked, and the fourth one was like a pinhole. The doctor was astonished that he was not already dead. He was going to need an immediate open-heart surgery (a QUADRUPLE bypass which I didn’t even know was a thing until now) because he could drop dead at literally any second.
They booked him in for the earliest possible operation but it was 3 days away (another few days of sheer panic). He was strictly ordered to do absolutely nothing, no exercise, no driving, nothing to get his heart rate up. Dad being the hilariously practical (and a bit stubborn!) man he said to the doctor “I just had timber delivered for my new deck, can I move that?”.
“If you want to die, go pick up that timber. You will be dead before you hit the ground" he replied.
Thankfully the surgery went well, and as I’m writing this on October 25th he finished rehab like a champion and he’s back home with another 10+ years on his ticker. I am so incredibly grateful that he caught this issue by accident. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a Dad this Christmas.
Rock Bottom
During all this I was an absolute mess. It would be 9.30am on a Monday and I’d be breaking down in the living room. I had vertigo, I’d be sitting down and feel like I was going to fall over. I couldn’t see properly, I was lethargic and I couldn’t focus. I’ve never felt so out of sync before in my life, and it had gotten to that point where it was like… okay this is actually pretty bad.
I kept asking myself ‘what is the universe trying to tell me?’ which is now a question I ask almost on a weekly basis. It was telling me I’d pushed myself too far, and I needed to stop and re-calibrate. So that’s what I did.
How I Turned It Around
I’m a really big believer that in life you’re either winning or you’re learning. Failure and hard times are an opportunity for growth, and you have two choices. You can either sit here, sad and depressed, complaining about the world and being toxic. Or you can make a decision to listen to the universe, look at this as an opportunity and make a choice to actively improve your life.
Choose the latter. Here’s what I did to turn it all around.
I Learned to meditate properly
Everyone successful you talk to or hear about, almost always practices meditation. I knew it was important and I had tried it a decent amount, but I’d flip-flopped with it and never done it properly, or done it for a long period of time. Let me tell you… you need to meditate. It is the #1 biggest contributor to my mental clarity and calmness.
Martin Millard, an ex-client and now a friend/mentor brought me to his house and showed me how to do it properly. Up until then I’d maybe do 5 minutes, and 10 minutes felt like forever. With him I did 28 minutes and it felt like nothing. I was mind blown, and I’ve done it nearly every day since then.
I Journaled Every Day
Another really powerful thing I recommend to people is keeping a journal. I use the DayOne app, but you can use anything (even a pen and a notepad). It allows you to get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper, so you can make some more sense of them and also realise that most of them are silly.
Again, I’ve journaled before but not properly. To make sure I stayed committed to it I created a morning routine where I would wake up, meditate, journal, stretch, eat breakfast then start work. I also got the Done app so I could tick it off each day and never forget to do it.
I Hired a Therapist
Hiring a therapist or a psychologist is something I’d always wanted to do, but I had never properly got around to it. I’d heard about this thing called Better Help (online therapy) and thought I’d give it a go. The first therapist was no good, but then I found Sonya who has been incredible.
Talking to a therapist is so powerful. Not only is it good to get things off your chest, but when you say them out loud in a somewhat-organised way, you have profound realisations (including realising how trivial some of your thought processes are). These realisations are even more amazing when you have a trained professional dissecting them from a non-biased perspective, who can start to see patterns and root causes.
On top of this I also hired a success/performance coach to help me with mental toughness and overcoming my barriers. Regardless of what you end up doing, you’ll find yourself spending a lot more time on yourself and that is incredibly powerful.
I Overcame Bullying
This one was huge for me. During therapy, I realised that the need for revenge was a big driver for me, it gave me a lot of motivation and energy, so my body was hanging onto these feelings because it served a productive purpose. But that productivity comes with a price…
Yes you might have motivation but it’s powered by toxicity, spite, needing to be liked and being motivated by other people and not your own passion which will never be fulfilling. You can also become power-obsessed. I said to my therapist I love how in the show Billions, Bobby Axelrod is a badass who nobody messes with. She said ‘people don’t respect Bobby, they fear him. Do you want to be remembered the way you remember your bullies?’. Damn. That was a powerful statement.
I did a forgiveness exercise which was impossible at first. I didn’t want to forgive them, I wanted to crush them. But after a while I came around to it, and chose kindness over viciousness. I actually went to a ‘rage cage’ where you can go and break things (which is a hoot by the way).
I went into it thinking “let it all out here, and let it go. After this, it’s time to move on.” I wrote their names on dinner plates, and smashed the sh*t out of them with a metal baseball bat. This made me feel surprisingly good.
My last task was to write a message to my bullies letting them know that what they did really hurt, but it made me the man I am, that I forgive them and hope they’re doing well. I knew there might be some backlash but I didn’t care, this was my way of symbolically ‘passing’ it off of me, and back into the universe. Two of them replied and genuinely apologised which was nice, and I moved on.
I Went To A Health Retreat
I can thank my beautiful Mother for this one. She could see how stressed out I was and knew I wouldn’t book something like this myself, so for my 26th birthday she bought me a 4-day health retreat at Gwinganna. I didn’t want to go! I thought “ugh this is going to be time away from work, I’ll be even more stressed, it’s going to be boring”… etc.
Turns out it was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. It was the ‘pinnacle’ of this whole journey, the absolute perfect thing at the perfect time. Before I arrived I came around to accepting I had to go, and I went in with an intention… “I am here to find clarity.” Setting that intention helped me get the most out of it. Another piece of wisdom… ask the universe the right questions!
It was incredible, in fact I wrote a whole blog about it here >> What I Learned After 4 Days In The Mountains With No Phone
I Worked Out a lot more
I know I keep saying ‘this is one of the most important things you can do’ but hey, there are a few fundamentals in life and exercise is one of them. Not only does exercise relieve stress and release endorphins but it changes your environment, gives you more confidence and is really good for your mental toughness (jump on the assault bike and you’ll see what I mean!).
You’ll also be sick less often. When I was really stressed in 2012 I would get sick every 3-4 weeks for a year straight. Since I’ve worked out, built muscle and eaten healthier, I rarely get sick and when I do, it’s not intense.
I Pivoted The Business
Like I said at the start, I was working with people who were not my tribe. I found the work unfulfilling, so I completely rebranded my agency to focus on nonprofits, charities and people who make the world a better place.
My dream is to combine my two passions — animals/environment and technology. I figured why wait until one day I have the resources to solve some sort of big problem, what if I could help them now? And what if by helping them now, I can actually find that big problem worth solving?
So that’s what I did. You can check out the new site at >> masteredmarketing.com
I Went Rock Climbing
I know this one sounds totally random, but I have a fear or falling. Not so much heights (I live on the 20th floor and love a good view) but I’m afraid of falling. I spontaneously went indoor rock climbing with a friend who taught me how to do it and said, (without knowing I was afraid of this!) “okay well let’s just go to the highest one first up, just so it’s out of the way”.
Secretly freaking out, I just jumped in and did it. It was scary at first (and will always still be a little bit) but there’s something that happens to your mental toughness when you’re scared to do something, and you do it anyway. It gives you confidence and momentum.
The Results
October 2020
If you put in the work, you will get results. I had a radical transformation by deciding to make a change, and using this suffering as an opportunity to grow. If you are having a rough time please don’t just accept it and be miserable. Make a change. The difference between where I was in July/August and now in late October is wild.
These were the wins I had as a result of making lifestyle choices. I’m now the happiest, healthiest and fittest I’ve ever been!
Drastically reduced stress and anxiety.
Developed healthy, consistent habits.
Started doing work I actually enjoy.
Increased my confidence and energy.
Finally let go of bullying memories.
Embraced my new friendship group.
Got out of my own head.
Developed a morning routine.
Built muscle and reduced body fat.
Felt more connected to the universe.
Stopped complaining to my fiance!
Everybody has a different journey — this was a piece of mine. Wherever you are at in life, I encourage you to be introspective, assess your life and make choices with intention. Life is full of ups and downs, but if you can start to see the patterns, you’ll be able to pick yourself back up when you’re down and ultimately be more happy.
