What’s At Stake

The more we like the story of who we are, the stronger our sense of self becomes, and the more confident we’ll be. Ultimately, our goal should be to feel complete. Where we can honestly say that ‘I wouldn’t want to be anyone else but me’.

But what happens when we’re heading in the opposite direction? When we hate what’s happened in our story so far, and the direction it’s heading in. What happens when we feel like we’re losing all the good pieces of our lives and they’re being replaced by something much worse? What happens when we are down to the final few pieces? What happens when we are down to none?

When I was a kid I was obsessed with stories, and watching movies was my favourite hobby. Which is how Robin Williams became one of my biggest heroes.

I think I’ve watched Jumanji more times than any other movie. Hook is probably a close second. Robin would have my siblings and I howling in laughter at his antics in films like Mrs Doubtfire and Flubber, but he also had a way of inspiring me like no other actor ever could. His real gift came from this incredible diversity.

His role as a therapist in Good Will Hunting was partly why I wanted to study psychology in the first place. And there are scenes from Dead Poets Society that will stick with me forever, and I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way.

Then of course, there was the Genie.

It was a role that was written specifically for him, and he almost refused to do it. He didn’t like the way Disney profited from selling toys and other merchandise from their films, but decided to do it anyway because he wanted to be a part of something his children could enjoy.^{Note 1} He improvised most of the dialogue for it, and Aladdin became a huge success, with the Genie instantly becoming one of the most loved animated characters of all time.

Even in his personal life, Robin lived up to the hype.

He co-founded Comic Relief USA with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, an annual HBO television benefit that has raised over $80 million to help the homeless. He was also regularly part of benefits in support of literacy, women’s rights, and veterans.

Despite all he achieved, and all he was, Robin still faced many hardships in his life.

He was admired for the way he could openly talk about personal issues in his standup comedy routines, including battles he’d faced with drugs, alcohol and depression. But Robin’s health took a sharp downwards turn after he was misdiagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s disease. He began experiencing intense anxiety, stress, and insomnia, which escalated to the point where he was having episodes of memory loss, paranoia, and delusions. According to his wife, Susan, “Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it.”^{Note 2}

Robin took his own life on the 11th of August, 2014.

His autopsy finally revealed the truth of what he was going through. He was suffering from diffuse Lewy body dementia, a serious brain disease. As Susan explained in her essay published in the journal of Neurology, “it’s not about psychology – it’s rooted in neurology. His brain was falling apart.”

Robin’s loss was felt all over the world. There were tributes of every kind to honour the man that gave so much to us all. The lights of Broadway were darkened for a night, and the Aladdin musical held a sing-along with their entire audience of the hit “Friend Like Me”, the Genie’s signature song, and the perfect description of how special Robin really was.

Even the president of the United States had something to say. Barack Obama released this statement shortly after Robin’s death: “Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between … He arrived in our lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets.”

Robin Williams wasn’t just my childhood hero. He was a real life hero.

To be all that he was, to have given so much and lived so fully, it’s impossible for me to imagine what it must have been like to know you’re losing it all and there’s nothing you can do about it. That the incredible, beautiful life you’ve built is slowly disappearing from your mind forever. That all the best parts of your story are being erased as easily as tearing out pages from a book.

Mental health is a spectrum we all struggle with to some extent. And misfortune plays its part. Some people are thrown into the thick of it for the simple reason that their brain’s biochemistry or neurology forced them there.

But most of us are sliding along the spectrum because our environment and lifestyle put us there.

Too much of our story feels out of our control, and the parts we do control feel like they’re being wasted.

A person who’d trade most of their life for someone else’s is a person who feels the weight of anxiety with them everywhere they go. And of course they do, how could you not be anxious when you feel that insecure in your own life? When you feel like there’s only one or two things you can hold onto, parts of your story you wouldn’t change. That’s a terrifying situation to be in.

When your sense of self has been reduced to only a few things you truly care about, you’re going to feel that emptiness. It will make you afraid of losing those last few pieces.

This isn’t to say that you don’t have lots of things going on in your life. You might be the busiest person you know. But if you’d much rather trade all of those things away, then you won’t count them as part of your story. They are just temporary pains, ready to be cast aside for something better at the first opportunity.

It goes without saying, but living like this means your mental health will suffer greatly. And when the last few pieces join the rest, and become just another thing you wish you could replace, you’ll come to know what true emptiness feels like.

Self Less

To have no sense of self, nothing you’d want to hold onto, no part of your life you wouldn’t trade for someone else’s, no story to tell anymore. This is the far end of the mental health spectrum. This is where it becomes lethal.

If you’re still not taking this seriously, go and google the suicide rates in your country.

The consequences of getting to this point could not be higher. It’s now, very literally, life and death.

When you understand how someone is feeling when they get to this point, you can understand how they’re able to end their life.

They don’t want to be them anymore. They don’t have a single thing to hold onto. In their minds, they have already traded away their lives, wishing they could be someone else.

Maybe they do have many reasons for living, maybe they have people they love, or things they enjoy. Maybe it’s only in their darkest moments that they lose these last few pieces. But one dark moment is all it takes to decide that there is only one way to stop being who they are forever.

Australia, the country I grew up in, for all its beauty and opportunity, is a place where suicide is a national health concern. Growing up in a rural town along the east coast, you’d think I could tell you stories of people dying from poisonous snake bites and shark attacks.

But suicide was a more common and dangerous threat than those animals could ever be.

Enter the Phoenix

I believe that there is one human experience we can all relate to. No matter who you are, or how good you’ve had it, we’ve all felt what it’s like to wish our whole life would change, down to the very last detail. Even if just for a moment.

Every single one of us has looked out at the endless ways other people are living their lives. So many people that are happier, healthier, wealthier, and most definitely sexier than we are. Then we look at all the pieces of our own lives and feel our stomachs drop. And we can’t help but ask, when is all of this going to change?

Now it’s time for hope to enter the scene. And yes, there is a great deal of it. For as dark as this topic is, there’s unquestionably more hope involved than not.

Hope is our first line of defence against insecurity. It’s our lifeline, our anchor in the storm, our shield in war, or whatever other metaphor you like the sound of.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, over 5 and a half thousand people were surveyed on their subjective well-being, as well as their levels of insecurity, self-control, and hope. The results showed that hope was the crucial factor in limiting the negative effects of insecurity.^{Note 3} The people who reported the highest levels of hope were the most confident in the face of a great deal of global uncertainty and fear.

People have returned from the edge countless times over. The phoenix may be known for rising from the ashes, but it’s humans that have truly mastered the skill.

When the most successful and happy people in the world are asked to share their story, the one thing you can bet on is that they’ve had their ‘dark’ days. Their own struggles with being who they are.

My own experience with rock bottom came while sitting in a crowded A&E in an inner city London hospital, convinced I was having a heart attack.

It started a few hours earlier, I just finished a workout and was swimming some laps in my gym’s pool, when suddenly I felt a strange tingling in my arm and a pain across my chest. I stopped swimming and tried to take a few deep breaths. It felt like I couldn’t get any oxygen into my lungs.

I was freaking out, no doubt about it. I went straight home, sat down and tried to relax, but even when I managed to get my heart rate down, a fresh wave of panic would wash over me and it would jump back up to thundering speed, like I’d just finished a 100 metre sprint.

It was at this point that I took myself to hospital.

I’d never experienced anything like this, and I genuinely had no idea what was going on. When I got there they listened to my heart, told me it was beating normally but a little fast and asked me to sit and wait to be seen by a doctor. I ended up sitting in that emergency room for over 6 hours waiting. A few times my heart would start racing again, and I had to keep reminding myself that the absolute best place to have a heart attack was right there, surrounded by literally hundreds of doctors.

When I was finally called up to see a doctor, they checked my heart rate, blood pressure, and even x-rayed my chest to see if there was anything wrong with my lungs.

There wasn’t. I was fine.

And that’s how I learned what a panic attack feels like.

Spoiler alert for all of you who’ve never experienced one, it’s an absolute nightmare. Not only do you feel like you’ve lost control of your body, but you feel like you’ve lost control of your mind as well.

Looking back at this moment in my life, it was clear I’d been building up to this for a very long time.

I’d been working in stressful, low paying jobs for years. I was making little progress in my life, wasting most of my free time watching TV or going out drinking. I didn’t have any hobbies, I was too insecure to take dating seriously. The only positive thing I was doing was working out, but I wasn’t even doing that right, I was pushing myself too hard, not letting myself recover, and not eating or sleeping properly.

I was a stressed out mess. So yeah, a panic attack seemed pretty inevitable in hindsight.

It was a long overdue wake up call. I knew I couldn’t let this become the new normal, so I made some fundamental changes to my life and the way I was living it. I was lucky, because despite the stress I was living under I still had many reasons to be hopeful for the future.

It took me quite a while to dig myself out of that hole, and my first panic attack was not my last, but the changes I made after that night were easily the best decisions of my life. I prioritised my health, took up hobbies, moved forward in my career, and even met the love of my life.

I never want to return to those dark days, but I’m grateful I had them.

They taught me that the trick to life is not to avoid the dark moments. Why avoid the inevitable? No, the trick isn’t to escape the fire, it’s to learn how to grow in ashes. Renewed, and stronger.

The good news here is that no matter how hard I look, there doesn’t seem to be one single way to do this. No guaranteed formula that will get you where you want to be.

Everyone that makes it does it in their own way.

This is good news. Really good news.

It means you don’t need to copy anyone else. You can do it the way that’s going to work best for you.

All you need is enough hope to get you started. And the only way to get it is by believing that your future is going to be better than your present.

The reason most of us struggle to believe the future is going to be bright is because we already think our past was better than how things currently are.

People long for the days of being young and carefree, and feel like life has gotten progressively worse over the years. They have every reason to believe this trend will continue, so have little hope that better days are ahead of them.

This is why it’s so hard to find people that are truly hopeful. Most of us don’t think our current life is any better than our past, or that it’s already much worse.

The secret to finding hope is to invest in your future. To give yourself more and more reasons to think the future will be awesome. The reason self-improvement feels good is because it gives you hope that your future self will be better than your current self, so your life will likely be better too.

The more reasons you give yourself to look ahead with hope, the less power your insecurity will have over you.

We’ll dive a whole lot deeper into this during the next part of the book, but there’s one more obstacle in our way we need to talk about first.