Maintaining Good Mental Health And Conditioning Your Brain For Positivity With Kelli Hansen

 

We all feel different emotions depending on the circumstances we face every day. In this episode, Kelli Hansen shares her expertise on mental health. She founded the BCC Evolution, a mental health and suicide awareness nonprofit, in 2018 after losing her middle sister to a completed suicide in 2017. She wanted to break the stigma of associating mental health with negative and degrading things. We all need to focus on our mental health. How can we practice positive thinking in our daily lives? It all comes down to conditioning and practicing your mind for positivity. Stay tuned and find out more and maintain good mental health!

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Maintaining Good Mental Health And Conditioning Your Brain For Positivity With Kelli Hansen

We’re going to talk about mental health. I know I talk about mental health quite a bit but I think it’s a topic that deserves a lot of discussion because it’s integral to a lot of different aspects of our lives and a very important component of our life’s outcome. It’s an umbrella term that encompasses many different situations, fears, tragedies as well as states of mind.

One of the things that are interesting is as we become more aware of mental health, its presence and its importance to our life’s outcomes, more and more people are taking on mental health as their cause and idea of what they want to do with their lives. My guest Kelli Hansen is the Founder of a mental health organization called BCC Evolution.

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Kelli, welcome to the program.

Thank you so much, Steven. I appreciate you having me here.

I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to join us in the show. The first thing I want to do is get our audience oriented to BCC Evolution. What is your approach to mental health? What aspect of the mental health challenge because it’s so broad that you are solving? What inspired you to get started on it?

It’s absolutely my favorite subject. I founded BCC Evolution in 2018 after I lost my middle sister to a completed suicide in 2017. I knew that I didn’t want to sit around and do nothing. At that time, I was working with another organization that focused on the adolescent aspect. I was hyper-focused on suicide prevention.

Over the years, as I’ve gained more knowledge and had more collaborations, I’ve found that mental health is the root cause of what leads people to the complete act of suicide whether it be a moment or a lifetime of some mental health challenge is why people complete the act. If we can get to that root cause, start doing the education, bring more awareness, start having these hard conversations like you and I are having and breaking down that stigma, that’s how we’re going to start saving lives.

BCC Evolution fits in the pre-crisis space, more of the education, learning how to identify signs, knowing the symptoms. How do we talk to somebody when they come to me and they’re like, “I’m suicidal. I’m having this mental health challenge.” Instead of locking up like a deer in headlights, you have some tangible ways that you can talk or communicate, ultimately and potentially save their lives. That’s what BCC Evolution is all about. It’s the awareness, the conversation and the education.

One thing I love about it is that suicide hotlines at the moment of crisis prevention have been around for a while. I know it was 2017 when the rapper, Logic, wrote that song with the title of the suicide prevention hotline number but with education and with tackling these underlying longer-term issues. Not only it seems like at least to me, do you have a chance to save the person’s life but you also have a chance to make that person’s life better because it’s not that we kept you alive but we’re also addressing this underlying root problem that’s deeper within.

It's okay to cry. It's okay to be happy. All of the emotions, it's okay to have all of them. Click To Tweet

The more that I’ve had to have a conversation with people and the more that I’ve had people come to me asking me questions about how they talk to other people, the more it even makes me a better person. It’s not just being able to help them, which is the ultimate goal but also helping myself to understand how I communicate with people.

The suicide hotlines and all those hotlines are around for a great reason but when you get into maybe real life or you’re not in a crisis situation yet, how do we have that conversation with people? How do we communicate in general? In the mental health world, nobody wants to talk about it. I don’t want to burden anybody. I don’t want anybody to think bad about me. How do we start breaking down that stigma?

It’s okay to talk about whatever your feelings are. It’s okay to cry and be happy. All of the emotions, it’s okay to have all of them. Why not allow people to be people? We’d go to the doctor for a broken arm but we won’t go to a doctor for our potential broken mindset. How do we start getting people to shift that thought process of just because you can’t physically see it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening?

One encouraging trend I often talk about is if a trend is encouraging, disturbing or disencouraging. One encouraging trend is when I talk about the difference between Baby Boomers and Millennials, amongst Millennials and Gen Z as well, going to a therapist is far more normalized. It’s viewed less like a failure on the part of the person seeking therapy. It’s more of a normal thing to do.

Do you think that the component of it needs to go even further? Do you see that as an encouraging trend that has already given people at least access to therapy? There’s more when it comes to talking about mental health beyond your once every two-week appointment that you pay for. When it comes to seeking therapy, say way before you become suicidal or even with nothing to do with suicide, how you’re feeling about your life day-to-day, do you think that that is fully normalized yet? Do you think there are still a lot of stigmas around it in a lot of communities?

I don’t think it’s normalized at all because I know that for most people that I talk with, it’s the hardest for them to even ask for help. A lot of times, we don’t know what’s going on anyways. We have all these emotions, hormones, maybe all these different changes in our bodies and we’re not exactly sure what’s going on. I’m trying to figure out all of those things and being like, “I need to ask for help.” Most people, what they do is instead of asking for help, they will sit in whatever is happening. It’s still a challenge even in the groups that I’m in getting people to have conversations about their feelings or get into that deep conversation versus the surface level.

I know in the mental health world that it is very inundated. In getting into a therapist or a counselor, there are waiting lists. That, for me is not okay because the space that we lose the most people to suicide is from when they go to maybe their general doctor and they’re diagnosed to when they can get professional help. How do we fit that gap with everyday people to understand and have these tough conversations without having that stigma centered around it? Even more normalizing the conversations and that’s what I’m trying to do with my nonprofit in general.

You’re trying to make it one of the things that I observed quite a bit that I feel like it exacerbates. I’m not saying that’s right but what furthers the problem along is our culture has a way of amplifying the ups and downs in people’s lives. When someone is doing well, everyone wants to be around them, to come out, to do that and if someone is not doing well, for one reason or another, they become a tougher person to be around.

 

The more shallow fake friends, if you want to call it that, slip away, go by the wayside and then become lonelier, makes the problem worse because you don’t have that person to talk to. You’re going about finding a way when someone is slipping and say, “We’re going to notice this person is slipping and before they go into the spiral where they have slipped a little bit and they’re becoming a little bit runty. People are like, “I don’t want to be around this person anymore because they’re going to rant, wallow or however it manifests.” That cycle continues to find that cycle and squash it before it happens amongst people.

One of the things that I created is called Self-Care Safety Plan. It’s a safety plan and a self-care plan altogether so when you’re going into those moments that you already have this list of things. I designed it in threes. If you think about the structure of a triangle, it’s the strongest structure in the world. If you think of things in threes, one, it’s easier because then you don’t have this whole list.

Two, it’s going to be a lot stronger. How do you create this list or the safety plan or the self-care plan when you’re at a high? If you’re going into that low, you can pull up this plan and be like, “This is a person I know I can call at any moment. These are the things that I’m grateful for. This is the people place, wherever that I can call or talk to if I’m in a crisis situation.

Building in the skills for people to understand their own behaviors is important. What you were talking about at first is our brain naturally steers away from pain and it goes towards pleasure. Those people that are super energetic and always happy, people were like, “That’s so pleasurable to me. I want to be with them.”

Those people that are, as we call them Debbie Downers or whatever you want to call them, are a pain for us. That’s a pain for our brain. Our brain is naturally going to avoid the things that are painful for us and go towards pleasure. It’s more understanding about how our brains work, which I think it’s cool but I’m a total nerd that way. Understand that we have all the resources inside of ourselves. We have to access them when we’re at those highs so that we can use them when we’re at those lows.

What can we do about the way we set up our relationships, friendships and community with one another to make it so that people recognize when someone needs help or even when you need help? One of the things that I sometimes struggle with is that people’s cries for help don’t always come out in a way that’s intuitive to me that this person needs help. It sounds like this person has spent a little bit too much time on extremely partisan Twitter or something like that and regurgitating rants. Oftentimes in those cases, it’s someone that needs mental help or someone to talk to a little bit and empathize with them and say, “I understand your struggle, why this is hard and why this seems unjust and unfair.”

I think you will have to think about like so we all have our baseline. It’s all how I normally function, what I normally do on a daily basis. You have your high highs and low lows. Maybe you know them well or don’t know them well. It’s easier with people that you know well because you know what their baseline is. A great question to ask, especially in those moments of ranting is, “Is this that you want to get this off your chest and you’re ranting and you’d like me to listen? Do you possibly need me to help you create solutions? Do you need me to listen and not give advice?” Nobody likes anybody else’s advice.

It’s asking that question of, “I hear you and it sounds like you’re passionate about what you’re talking about.” Is this something that you need me to help you come up with solutions or maybe you need some help with? Are you looking to rant and rave?” It’s totally fine too like, “I’ll listen if you need me to.” It’s hard to ask those because you’re like, “Here they go again?” Being in that moment of like, “This may be something more.” Let me ask them two questions to see which way we’re going with this.

That’s extremely interesting because based on the fact that we still talk about that ongoing stigma, the psychological term is called displacement, where instead of saying what they’re upset about, they’ll displace it onto something else. Displacement can be destructive because displacement has the potential to offend or even ruin some other relationships that have nothing to do with what’s going on and what’s going wrong. Does this toolkit that you’re setting up help people get out of this trap? Where “I’m going to displace my anger onto whatever the people are telling me. I should yell at about some world event and say, “I recognize that this is my unmet need and this is what I need to do to try to make it better.”

Where your focus goes, your energy flows. Click To Tweet

I think it definitely could because one of the pieces is like, “What are the three things that you’re grateful for?” Our brains literally cannot be in a state of gratitude, anger, sadness, depression, anxiety or any of those negative. You can’t have negative and positive thoughts simultaneously. The list could potentially be like, “All these things in this world are happening.” You’ve got all this talk over here. You look at your list and like, “Wait but I’m grateful for these things.” I could definitely start to retrain your brain to focus on the positive versus the negative aspects. I think we all get caught up in the world at moments. What are the feelings that are coming out?

I’ve learned over time and if you had met me before my sister passed, I’m a much different person now because I have more understanding about myself, of words and how that affects me. I’m much more aware of acknowledging my feelings at that moment of being like, “Why is this scarcity or something popping up in my head? What is it trying to tell me? Versus going down that rabbit hole of like, “I don’t have this.”

Nobody wants to talk about COVID anymore, “The flu is going around. I’m going to get the flu.” Instead of being like, “Why is this fear popping up into my head?” Being a little bit more aware of your emotions, allowing them to come through and how do you change them instead of living in fear or whatever is happening? How do you shift it a little bit more? The list could help in that aspect of retraining the brain into the positives versus the negatives.

I had heard someone say a couple of years ago that 80% of all thoughts are negative. Do you agree? I’ve also heard people say that they don’t think that’s right. Do you have any sense of where we are with that particular metric?

I don’t know necessarily the metric. I do know that from what I understand, I’ve heard that we have more negative thoughts than positive but it’s all based on you and what you’re all about? Do you have this awareness about your thoughts or do you not have this awareness? It’s always a matter of how do you shift your mindset and what are you focused on? I don’t know statistically but I know that I have heard that we have more negative than positive thoughts. I think it’s all about what you’re aware of.

In a previous episode, Episode Number 16, I interviewed Darren Kanthal. He talked about the Positive Intelligence Movement. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this movement and if this is incorporated anything into this practice of being aware of your thoughts and trying to make your narrative more positive.

I haven’t heard of that movement but I definitely am going to go check that out. I hear the saying all the time, like, “Where your focus goes, your energy flows.” Whatever you’re focused on, that’s where your energy is going to go. If you’re constantly focused on the negative, you’re going to go towards the negative. If you’re constantly focused on the positive, you’re going to go towards a positive. You may have those moments that come up. We all have them. I’m not perfect. It’s because I’m a little bit more aware, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have those things creep into my brain.

I also have trained myself to sit with it and be like, “What is going on in my head? How can I shift this a little bit more towards a positive?” It’s true. I had a mentor at one time tell me to do 30 days of positivity. I did it on Facebook but it was like every single day, I put something on my page that I was grateful for or that was a positive quote or whatever. Interestingly enough, I was like, “That works.” There’s definitely something behind that for sure.

I’m sure you’ve also heard the term toxic positivity. Do you see that as a threat? Occasionally, we have people who are insecure. They’re toxically positive but because our thoughts are so lopsided toward the negative. If you do 30 or 40 days of positivity, that’s only going to get us to a better balance. Toxic positivity is a whole other realm of human behavior up there.

 

Definitely humans, in general, have these extremes. If you talk about addiction, it’s because they’re always searching for that security or the positive aspect. They’re trying to get all their brain chemicals as I call them the happy juices in their brains to release. It’s all these endorphins that give you a high. They’re looking for that satisfaction.

The toxic positive people are going for this high. It could be something that they’re addicted to. You have the flip side of the ones that are in the deep depression and are always negative. They’re truly probably searching for something to grasp onto. I think you have all extremes that can be not so good for your body in general either way you go.

I think of the toxic positivity and I was thinking of the most extreme scenario where someone is like, “A tornado destroyed my home,” and someone will be like, “That’s a new challenge for you to figure out how to build a new home and you can learn so much.” Hopefully, you don’t get attacked by a bear or something while you’re exposed out there or have a place to stay. What does it come to when people have a lot of negative things going on?

What’s the right balance between this toxic positivity, which could get into the realm of avoidance? People talk about having to sit in it or having to ponder it and not avoid it but also avoiding the trap where you wallow or rant for so long that your energy is going to flow toward, “I’m not doing well in life. I’m angry at these successful people,” or some of these other self-destructive thought processes that we see quite a bit.

I call that the Eeyore Syndrome. It’s like, “I hate everybody. Nobody likes me. I’m going to go eat worms.” I think that life is all about balance. We have the extremes, both sides, the positive and the negative. I think that it’s finding what works for you. When I think about toxic positivity, what pops into my head is, at least in the scenario that you gave is it’s possibly their way of thinking in the aspect of, “Your house got demolished by a tornado but let’s look at the sunshine.” It’s all about how we react to situations too and how we look for the good in the bad.

Whatever comes up for me when I think about that is what is it within myself that is causing me to get flustered or upset with this person that’s like shining rays of sunshine and/or flip side of like, “What is it within me that’s getting upset at this person being so negative?” I reflect back to myself. There’s probably some imbalance in my body or my thought process as to why I’m annoyed, which that’s the feeling that comes out for me that I’m annoyed by this person who is extreme either way.

I think it’s the understanding of ourselves and maybe that’s their reality and that’s okay because we all have our own roadmap and reality. We can’t understand somebody else’s model of the world but we can understand our own. I think extremes either way can be harmful to people. How do we find that balance? There are a lot of books that you can read and tools that you can use but also find finding or figuring out what’s going on with ourselves when maybe the emotions of annoyance or whatever comes up as related to other people.

One of the things that come to my mind when we talk about how we react to people and a lot of your business is about how we react to others is the phrase, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time around.” The implications of that phrase are that people’s attitudes, thought processes and what people do rub off on you. If you are always around alcoholics, you’d probably become an alcoholic.

If you’re always around successful people, you’ll probably become successful. What is the best way to balance being there for people that need help? The person that maybe they’re being toxically positive or maybe they’re being toxically negative and everything someone else’s fault, everything is that successful person’s fault and also protecting your own mental health in saying that I still need to mostly be around a more positive message around people that are going to spread a more positive message.

You have to take care of yourself first. You cannot help anybody else if you can't help yourself first. If you're not in a place to help somebody, do not try to help them. If you're not okay yourself, helping them won't help them. Click To Tweet

That is huge because I find this even in myself. Being in the mental health world on a daily basis can be very challenging. In a way, I’m an empath so I absorbed energies. When I’m around negative people, I get drained. That’s why I try to shift it more towards the positive. When I’m with energetic, positive people, it fuels my fire. I have more extroverted energy about myself, with the balance and trying to remind myself, especially being in this world because it can be hard to talk about and with people constantly coming to me about their challenges or their family’s challenges. I specialize in trauma, mental health, depression and anxiety.

I have to remind myself more often than not to take care of myself and that could be because I have the extroverted energy is being with people. Being with my friends and my family, I’m very kinesthetic also. With my hands, I love hugs and I like touching. I know the things that are beneficial to my soul. It’s reminding yourself. You have to take care of yourself first. You cannot help anybody else if you can’t help yourself first.

What I constantly have to remind myself is and for anybody reading too, if you’re not in a place to help somebody, do not try to help them. Ask somebody else to help, go find a professional because if you’re not okay yourself, helping them won’t help them. Take care of yourself first and foremost because if your cup isn’t full, you’re not going to be able to help fill anybody else’s cup.

That’s an important point. It was great to hone that in for those readers out there. You do have to fill up your cup and I know a lot of people talk about being aware of what activities fill up your cup, drain your cup and knowing where you are. I don’t know if there’s a way to describe your mental health on a scale of 0 to 100 and you have the idea that if you’re below 75, for example, you’re not in a place to help someone. If someone does start doing on their Eeyore, as you put it, you say, “You’re struggling and I want to be there for you but I’m not in a place to do it. Maybe there’s someone else around.”

I have a couple of questions as an extrovert myself. It feels a lot more emphasis has been placed on introverts when you hear our discourse right now. I had a couple of theories that I want to quickly run by you to see if you had any other thoughts about this. One thing that occurred to me as I was talking with people at events where people talked about the difference between extroverts and introverts is that even the most extroverted person ever needs alone time.

Even the most introverted person ever needs interaction with others, which I think is a pandemic we no longer want to discuss, highlighted for a lot of people. The theory I came up with is that there are certain discussions with people that are energizing and certain that are draining. Even these draining ones, even the most extroverted person ever has discussions that will drain them. Even the most introverted person ever will be energized by the right discussion. The real difference between an introvert and an extrovert is where that bar is. For an introvert, the bar is high. It has to be an engaging, important discussion for them to be energized by it. An extrovert is energized by most discussions except for the depressing ones.

I think of it as energy. That’s what I’ve learned over time. It’s more of an energy verse. We label ourselves in society more often than not. It’s like, “I’m an introvert. I’m an extrovert.” It’s more of an energy. What is your energy? I think that we all have both energies. You said it perfectly is that at times sometimes, that introversion energy, you need that to balance the extroverted energy.

There’s a balance there too and you don’t have to be one or the other. We have both energies in our bodies. It’s in certain situations you may be showing the extroverted energy more or the introverted energy more. It depends on certain situations or whatever is happening at that moment. We can both go both ways or either way. It’s an energy that you have within your body. It doesn’t label you one way or the other.

 

One of the interesting things is that we’re all looking for alignment in some capacity or another. Maybe the case is that someone who’s showing introverted energy could possibly be showing it because their life is out of alignment. They’re getting more of one thing versus another and more pestered by people. I’m thinking of people who are parents and their kids are always talking to them. There’s like, “I need some peace and quiet,” versus what I think is an even bigger issue.

A lot of people are showing these extroverted energies because we do live in somewhat of a lonely era. We’ve replaced so many in-person interactions with online or the screen of some kind. People who are focusing on extroversion are more saying, “My life is out of alignment. I need more time with people and less time alone.”

We definitely are seeing that more now because, as a mammal and as a human, we are not built to be isolated. We need that physical energy from other people, even the people who say that they’re like full introverts, finding that they need that connection. That’s what our life, our body, mammals, everything is all about connection. How do you get that from other people?

I’ve hosted other guests here that have had community development type of pursuits. This is something that’s important to me. Do you see more and more people starting to try to build some form of community to combat how isolating many of our modern customs have become?

Every single person that adds me on Facebook, I swear they have a group. They have something they want me to be a part of. I have also found that, as much as we say, people may be sick of the Zoom calls or the online things. It’s still a way of connecting and finding your tribe and finding people that do light you up or people that give you that energy, I think is important. There are so many more groups, masterminds, all of these things that you can do networking and some of it is via Zoom and in-person.

We’re getting a good mix. All the online stuff is a great way of connecting with people who live far away or in a whole other city. I know the first thing I did when the pandemic hit was set up a lot of Zoom calls with people who live elsewhere. I was like, “I’m not supposed to leave the house.” The person who is a mile away or 1,000 miles away is as accessible the same click of a button so they might as well start connecting with people.

One last thing I wanted to cover with you is some of the trends that I’m observing. Whenever I think about mental health and some of the innovations in mental health, I think of these somewhat conflicting trends. I feel like mental health and mental health struggles are becoming more aware of other people. Some pop singers are starting to write songs like it’s okay not to be okay. At least in some places, people are more likely to see a therapist for some of their struggles.

Yet, at the same time, it still feels like many of our mental health issues are still getting worse at this point in time. What do you see happening in this trend? Do you see it continuing to get worse? Do you see more innovation? Do you see the field shifting to a little bit more of this longer-term preventative aspect that you’re talking about as opposed to putting out the fire that we had done before?

It is getting worse. It’s like what we were talking about is being isolated. People are having more worry, more depression and more anxiety than ever before. It all boils down to that connection and the interaction, not the fear. It’s all fear-based. Now, it is getting worse. My grant team came with a bunch of stats and suicide is now the first leading cause of death for ages 10 to 14, which blows my mind because our future is dying by their own hands.

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They have higher rates of anxiety, worry and depression. I think that companies are starting to acknowledge this is happening, which is incredible. It’s just that we are reactive at this point. We have not been proactive other than there are several companies that have been but at this point, they’re reacting to what is happening. If we can get companies, schools, the world onboard, it’s cool that I’ve done a bunch of shows in the UK. You click away now, we can all be one. We can all be a world together that must make the shift of schools, companies, people, everyone in general like mental health facilities. Everybody is being more proactive versus reactive.

They’re trying to catch up, which is hard, especially in the mental health world is so inundated right now. There are not enough professionals to handle what is happening now. I spoke to one of the school districts in Aurora and they are having a much higher rate of their teachers needing to use the mental health EAP. Luckily, they have it but the requests are beyond what they can even fill at this point. It’s getting worse but I hope it starts to trend into the better verse.

When I looked at your website, which by the way, BCCEvolution.org and I looked at all the stats you’ve put in, the one that stuck with me the most was toward the end where you said, “5 out of 5 people have mental health.” When I read that, it said to me and it’s like your physical health. When you’re in okay health and want to get better, you take up more cycling or more yoga or something like that. I’m guessing you see this as something that we should always be looking to improve.

I feel like everybody is like, “Mental health is a dirty word. Don’t talk about it,” but we all have mental health. Mental health is our mind, brain, body or physiology, all about us. That’s what our mental health is. It’s not a dirty word and not something you’re going to catch. We all have it. 5 and 5 of us have mental health. Not all of us have mental health challenges or illnesses but we do all have mental health. We are having conversations, bringing awareness and going to the doctor. If you’re above or below your baseline, have the conversation. It’s not going to hurt to have that conversation and/or talk to somebody you trust to see if you can work through what’s going on.

My original field was in the weather. If it’s 72 degrees and sunny out, you still have weather. You have some good weather that’s not going to present many challenges for anyone and you can do whatever you want but that still is the weather. It’s still weather that can change tomorrow. Those of us that live in Colorado know how quickly it can change. I went to the botanical gardens blossom of lights and it was pretty cold that night but now it’s nice once again.

That’s a great way to explain it. It’s always going to be the weather. It’s going to change.

I know you’re always looking for volunteers and people who are willing to help. If anyone is interested, would they contact you through that website that I started? Is there a better method?

The best way is through the website. There’s an email on there. We’re on all the social media. It’s BCCEvolution.org. We’re on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. There is TikTok, not very much content but we’re on there. Anywhere you can find us, it’s all @BCCEvolution. If you’re in that place where you need to reach out to somebody, maybe you don’t have that one person that you feel like you can talk to, reach out to us. I have a whole board of people that we can help and/or direct you to somebody that would be able to help you.

To wrap this up, any reader out there, I’m going to use these broad crude categories. If you’re in poor mental health, reach out to you and get the resources you need to have health or find the person you need to reach out to. If you’re in good mental health, that’s developing that plan. If someone is somewhere in that murky middle ground where it’s like, “I’m not suicidal or dealing with schizophrenia or anything like that but I’m also not like jubilant joyous. I still have my problems in that middle ground,” what is something that you would recommend this group of readers starts doing now to improve that situation?

 

On our website, we do have some great resources. Because you’re not the extremes, BCC Evolution fits in all of those categories. We do have a YouTube channel where there’s a lot of how-to’s on there. I have seven strategies that I do for mental wellness and that can be utilized by anybody at any point in time. Across the board, highs, lows, in the middle, BCC Evolution has you covered. We offer education classes and tips and tricks to help you get through everyday life.

What is one thing that you would recommend people don’t do if someone wants to be on a path to better mental health? Is there an activity that you think, “This activity is usually pretty bad? That needs to be limited.”

I don’t think I’ve been asked that question before. Probably the worst thing that you could do is lay in bed all day long. Maybe there’s a moment for that and being able to rest, which is fine but getting out of bed and movement in your body is going to help. I don’t think there’s any one specific activity. Talking about substance abuse, I wouldn’t try to cope with something else. See if you can maybe use some of the positive, like exercising, meditation, breathing, whatever it might be, to get you out of that state versus looking for a substance. I think not moving and not doing anything is going to keep you stuck to exactly where you’re at. Move your body a little bit and you never know what you’ll get out of that.

The answer is the first word of my show title, action. Do something as opposed to sitting there being stuck. Kelli, I would like to thank you so much for joining us in the show. I believe in this mission especially the whole preventative part of it. It’s not about putting out the fire when something happens. It’s something we can all think about all the time.

I would like to encourage all those readers out there to take care of their mental health because most of the things that people associate with success, the mindset, the ideas and the way people are driven all require a pretty decent mental health state of mind. If you’re in a bad state of mind, you’re not going to see your passion project through. The world is going to be better off when you pursue your passion project as opposed to going through the motions on whatever life someone else designed for you or, worse, not going through the motions anymore, which we sadly covered quite a bit in the show too.

The world is better off with you in the world in good condition, following your true passions and bringing what you want to bring into the world. That’s the message I have for everybody. Stay tuned for more episodes where I will present more interviews with inspiring people who will have more positive, great messages and inspiration for you all. Thank you very much.

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About Kelli Hansen