Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Mental Health, Processing Loss, and Finding Happiness | Zak Williams

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Zak Williams, the son of the late Robin Williams and co-founder and CEO of PYM, a mental wellness company rooted in the belief that there is a world where someone can be the best version of themselves simply by establishing easy daily rituals that help support their mind and overall wellbeing. Zak is a US trustee of the international advocacy organization, United for Global Mental Health, a board member of mental health awareness non-profit Bring Change 2 Mind, an advisor to national policy organization Inseparable, and the mental health tech platform Project Healthy Minds. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, so it’s an important time to honor those who have been impacted and help others who might be struggling realize there’s alternative options.I’ve personally been affected by suicide and Zak opens up about the impact it had on him in this conversation, too. We discuss his experience growing up with an incredibly successful parent – the conditions that led to Zak’s mental health challenges, and how the same practices he used to right the ship, can be just as applicable in your own life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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and you don't want to feel anything, you know, that's not a state that I would wish upon anybody. All right. Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. Fortunate enough to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations, is to learn from people

by pulling back the curtain, to explore how they've committed to mastering both their craft and their minds. And as you know, our minds are our greatest asset. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, that's just a quick little note right here to check out the online psychological training course that we built to be able to pull together the best practices to meet that unique intersection of high performance psychology and wellbeing. And so we walk through 16 essential

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at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal for two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Fighting Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot.

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My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Zach Williams. He is the son of a legend in every sense of the word, the immutable Robin Williams. Man,

was he special. And Zach is the co-founder and the CEO of PYM, Prepare Your Mind, a mental wellness company that's rooted in the belief that there is a world where someone can be the best version of themselves simply by establishing easy daily rituals that help support their mind and overall wellness. The way Zach grew up has led him down this path. And he didn't try to just flip a company based on the importance of mental wellness in his life. He's deeply involved. He's a U.S. trustee of the international advocacy organization United for Global Mental Health.

He's a board member of Mental Health Awareness, the nonprofit Bring Change to Mind. He's an advisor to the national policy organization Inseparable and the mental health tech platform Project Healthy Minds. All right, so he's involved. So why is this podcast timely? Because September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. It's an important time right now to honor those who have been impacted and help others who might be struggling to realize that there's an alternative. I've been personally affected by suicide and Zach opens up about the impact that it's had on him as well. And this conversation, it's not doom and gloom and desperation. And it's not that it's about hope. It's about strategies. It's about insights and how to apply those insights for a healthy, vibrant life. We discuss his experience growing up with an incredibly successful parent.

I mean, world-changing influence and the conditions that led to Zach's mental health challenges and how the same practices that he used to right the ship, so to speak, can be used and applied in your life as well. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Zach Williams. Zach, how are you? Michael, I'm great. I just got back from a road trip and I'm feeling energized and excited about the remainder of the year and what's to come. So thank you for spending time with us and your passion interest around mental health and how it

fits into the modern workplace is something that feels like a tongue and groove for what we're trying to do as well. So can we start where it started for you? And so let's go back. Why mental health? And help me paint the picture. And, you know, you're obviously your dad is going to be a major part of your story. But why mental health for you? Well, mental health for me started or at least thinking about mental health, my personal well-being started very early on in my life. I had very obsessive traits as a child, a lot of thinking involving symmetry and repetition. And that manifested through my teens and early adult life in terms of anxiety and trying to manage obsessive thinking. And that really came to a head after my dad died by suicide because I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was using things like alcohol to self-medicate to quiet my thoughts, to quiet my mind. And that wasn't tenable in the longer term for me.

How old were you when you were diagnosed with PTSD? I was 33, which was about two years after my dad died by suicide. But during that time in between, I found myself really becoming dysregulated. I tend to run fast in terms of my thinking. And that really spun out of control. My anxiety, bouts of depression were just really taking over, especially when it came to self-medicating and abusing with alcohol. So for me, what I would call is kind of a predisposition towards anxiety, obsessive thinking, some depression really went into overdrive after experiencing a traumatic family event. The thing that really became front and center for me is working out ways in which I could heal. And what I found to be really insightful and helpful for me is advocacy, learning about how I could support others and support other organizations to heal from my personal experiences and traumas.

That's something that became a heading in my life about five, actually at this point, about six years ago, around the time I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and found that actually a commitment to service was a way to find happiness and healing. It's actually considered one of the best practices for anxiety and depression. And so along with a handful of other best practices. So whoever was guiding you in that direction was grounded in good science. And it sounds like you grabbed that and said, yeah, I fit here much more than some of maybe the other practices. But before we get into the practices, you know, and what you're actually doing with the advocacy on a regular basis, let's rewind it back and let's understand your unique journey.

And not many people are, you know, the son of the best in the world, you know, and your dad certainly took up space. And I'm sure you hear this a lot, but I watched and laughed and cried with your dad, like, you know, from a distance on TV and was influenced by him. And I know you hear that a lot and I just want to share that as context that there's, um, not that it matters to you, but my experience with him was, is far less important, obviously in this conversation than your experience with him. I want to understand what is it like to be his son? And was it a spotlight? Was it a shadow?

Was it, you know, what was your experience like? Well, my experience spanned a number of different experiences. You know, a relationship between a parent and child is a mosaic right and for me there was a closeness that we had I would say it was more more like us being great friends than it was between a parent and child. And we had many similar interests. So our way of spending time together, I guess you could say, the language that we had and we shared was very much around our shared interests. So those involve computers, electronics, science.

I was less interested in fitness. I've become more interested over time, but that was something of great interest to him. I was more focused in terms of our relationship around computer games, focus on emerging technologies and, you know, products associated with emerging technologies. And, you know, that's often how we spent time together was exploring those paths. But, you know, in terms of his genius and brilliance and how he went about being a parent, for me very much, I saw the quiet, of the fun technology oriented things that we could do together. You know, we played a lot of computer games together.

He was very appreciative and a huge fan of science fiction. You know, everything, everyone from Harlan Ellison to Isaac Asimov, everything in between. And we, we spent a good deal of time, you know, watching things like Star Trek, primarily Star Trek next generation. And, and that was how we bonded. So, you know, the, the performative element, the, his, his, his genius relating to making people laugh and, and performance was something I experienced less in our

personal dynamic, but it's something I certainly had appreciation for. I love spending time with him when he was in his quiet introspective modes. Is there a time or story or an experience that you can share when you go, oh my God, my dad is incredible? Yeah. yeah, for me, the times that I would be in awe of him was when he was interacting with others. He, he was just the kindest person. And that might sound general when he was interacting with others, he was interacting with others a lot, but just, just seeing his compassion and empathy for others and how he would literally give time to anyone to learn about them and show up. For me, that was what impressed me most about him in terms of, you know, a characteristic and trait. He was just the nicest, most compassionate person. And I mean, I could go into dozens of times

where that specifically stood out in my mind. But did he give you that same gaze? I think for me, I saw him really derive a lot of happiness from philanthropy and being charitable and through just being a generally kind guy. And I took note. I really, really started integrating into my pathos until my 30s. But it was always something that I that I noticed as being exceptional about him and really wanted to emulate. But I wasn't quite sure how to. So I was I didn't go on tours with him to Afghanistan or or really, really see him when he was out on the road. So often what I would see is,

you know, us spending time together and him just being a giving generous person. It's just who he was. It was the makeup of his soul, you know? So, so I would say, you know, monkey see monkey do it, it was, it was something I saw that, you know, at least in terms of his altruism and compassion, I saw him really derive joy from it and ultimately found that that was something that I could participate in and find joy from. So there's a couple ways to think about psychological conditions.

I'll share two of them. One is it's organic, meaning that, you know, I was kind of born this way. My parents, you know, the genetic coding, my chemistry is just more aligned to something like OCD or anxiety or whatever. Like, there's just an organic nature. And then the other part is, you know, I think I kind of earned this. Like, my family was chaotic and the messaging I got. And listen, this is looking back, this was my survival strategy and I had to be ahead of it. I had to worry about things. And so I've developed this patterning, if you will, of obsessiveness and worry. And I'm, I'm, I'm folding in OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anxiety as a general disorder. But just for the moment now, can you pick a lane that feels more natural to you if you were to explain some of the origins? Is it more organic or was it more earned, experienced?

I would say it's both, but would have a bias towards it being more earned. For me, coping was a survival strategy. And what that looked like and how it manifested for me personally was around hypervigilance and overthinking scenarios and situations. I would say that it was something that I developed over time, although it happened for me at a very early age. So what were you trying to survive from? That's a great question.

I think for me, being a child of divorce and having a situation where you basically go between homes in a suitcase and don't have the same type of kind of permanent home and environment that you might have. I mean, in retrospect, it turns out that actually had two amazing permanent homes, but you find, you find yourself kind of ping ponging around and, and it can be very I don't know the opposite of grounding, but anxiety. Yeah, it can, it can, it can be very dysregulating when you're, when you're not finding a sense of kind of home, um, in the way that you,

you saw your friends or your peers engaging around. And, you know, for me, you know, the adage home is where the heart is really, really over time. I found that that to be the case. Um, it turns out that, you know, the mind and, and all the traits associated with it is very resilient. And so I would say early on, the anxiety that was developed was a coping mechanism. It helped me feel more safe in my surroundings, which might sound paradoxical, but when you're hypervigilant, you feel like you're accounting for all sorts of scenarios and the like. And generally, they can be a fabrication. But it's how you're managing this evolving, changing landscape that makes up your life as a child. I would say my families were awesome and tremendous

in how they took time and energy to help me feel safe and comfortable, but it's, it's just something that, you know, I, I found myself predisposed to. I also, as I mentioned earlier, I run fast. So, um, I tend to overthink and, and be anxious and disposition. So, um, disposition. So what I've discovered about myself, as I grow older is that you can manage that. And there are there are a bunch of different ways. And there's actually core deficiencies that I have that I've been able to better manage. I'm also predisposed to things like addiction and self-medicating. But I think in part that's earned and organic.

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And then you talk about how you managed it. And what I hear you saying is, listen, I inherited some of it. And also there's a chaotic nature and I was doing what I could to survive. And one of the ways that I was surviving was getting ahead of the danger. And that's really what anxiety is, an excessive worry or a rumination to try to protect oneself from the danger of the unknown, as opposed to the opposite, which is like, hey, I love the unknown. It's where the magic happens. Put me in it. I come alive in the unknown. There's another way to think about it. And that is the opposite to your words like of anxiety, right?

And we can put a pin in that for a moment because that's eventually, I think, where we want to get to as humans. But I want to stay on a moment. If you could teach folks that are feeling anxious right now, because it is at an all-time high in the United States and likely across the planet, how are you managing? How have you worked? And what are some of the skills and tools that you could pass on to folks

that are waking up with too much anxiousness where they feel unsettled even right out the gates? Well, the thing that I discovered was really, really transformatively helpful for me was developing a mental health hygiene ritual. So checking in, understanding what it is I'm feeling when I get up in the morning. Am I experiencing stress? Am I experiencing anxiety? What does that look like? And then I establish an approach to managing my mental health through the day. So the first thing I do

is I establish a gratitude list. What are things I'm appreciative of? Oh, you know, in my life, what am I feeling appreciative of at the moment? What am I grateful for? Top of mind are my family, my kids, the ability to have a business, run it, to work with people I adore, to have friends I adore. These are things that I'm extremely grateful of, to have the opportunity to be of service. And that's the first step, gratitude list. From there, I ask myself, how am I feeling? Am I feeling deficient? And that's a very specific thing to me because I tend to need to eat well and I need to do

things like take the appropriate supplementation to ensure that I'm not feeling anxious and depressed as a result of deficiencies. And things, for example, are if I ate a lot of sugar the night before, that generally increases my stress level in the morning. If I didn't eat the appropriate things, meaning, you know, focus more on just high carb, high fat things, that tends to lead me to feel more anxious, especially if I'm then not eating anything, you know, going from kind of eating poorly to kind of eating less or fasting. And so that's the second part. Am I feeling deficient? The third is what am I doing to connect with people? And, you know, personally, I'm in recovery. I find community support groups and the like to be very helpful for me. I've been in recovery for at this point over five years. How can I, how can I connect with the people I care about and find opportunities to maintain meaningful interactions? That's the third part.

And then the fourth would be, what can I do for my body? What can I do to take care of myself from a fitness perspective? And the subset of that is nutrition and the like, but really thinking, how can I be active? Because if I'm not active, I find myself just going through certain thoughts and ways of thinking with my mind. And then the other thing is what can I engage in, in terms of, uh, therapeutic support? Um, and I'm, I'm currently in between therapists and this is something that I'm under indexing on right now, but mindfulness meditation, uh, I think, are a great way to create daily rituals associated with personal support.

But that won't replace finding opportunities to engage with mental health practitioners. So that's something that I'm currently seeking support around. Okay. And is this all done in bed? Is it done over, you know, whatever morning beverage you're drinking? Or is it after breakfast? Like, when do you do it? And are you writing? Or is this something you're doing, you know, using mental imagery? I was writing. So first off, I do it in part, I do the gratitude list and the like in bed. And then after I get up and do basically a mental health check-in, that's something that's done, you know, vertical standing up and really taking a moment

generally in the bathroom saying, okay, what is it that I'm feeling? What is it that I'm doing to take care of myself today? And what are the things that will be part of my mental health hygiene ritual? This for me has been night and day. I don't experience anxiety in the way that I used to. The obsessive thinking I still have, but I'm able caught in obsessive compulsive loops, it is, I mean, it's a tough one now with good therapeutic support, you know, from a learned psychologist or whatever, you can work through that. Relatively the path is easier to understand than it is to execute. All that being said, it's folks that are in an OCD kind of pattern in their life. How did you interrupt that loop? Paradoxically, I self-medicated through alcohol to manage obsessive thinking throughout a good chunk of my life.

How'd that work? It worked out terribly in the end. It would exacerbate it. It creates all sorts of dysregulation. And I wasn't able to really treat my obsessive thinking until I stopped drinking. Oh, okay. So you couldn't really address it. Is it because you, the stopping of the drinking, let me get the timelines right. Did that happen post tragedy with your father and then post PTSD diagnosis? Yes. Okay. So you were having these OCD experiences, high anxiety, and it was part of the survival of the chaos of the family. And which home am I in looking back? They're both, it was both great, but your dad's ripping

across the world and, um, didn't, there was lack of stability, it sounds like. And go ahead. Yes, I want to say, you know, to the credit of my families and the like, there was every effort and intention made to establish stability. No, no, I hear that for you. I'm not coming at it that way, but I'm thinking about the role that the father takes and it's really tough. I struggle with this, Zach, you know, is that I travel a lot and I haven't, obviously for the last 18 months that I've, uh, this has been a gift of the pandemic for me is that I've made a commitment that I'm not traveling like I

used to. It's, it's, it must be significant for me to do so. And so I struggled with it. Like, this is like, I feel like in many respects, I don't want to be selfish about this conversation because you're going to help a lot of people that are feeling anxious, you know, through your practices and your shared vulnerability and experience. But selfishly, I'm like, Hey, I want to learn from Zach because I want to be a better dad. And, um, so I traveled a lot, Zach, and I know there's a bit of a vacuum and the instability that could come with that. Um, you know, it challenges me, you know, I worry about it so that I'm putting my stuff on there. So thanks for kind of cleaning that up on me a little bit. Yeah, well, you know, to go into as a continuation of the conversation, you know, the start for

me to really help manage the obsessive thinking was to cut out the self-medicating. That was the first step. Because then you can actually start going into the mechanics of obsessive thinking, right? If you're going out and you're trying to just numb yourself, and that can manifest in all sorts of different forms. For me, it was alcohol. You know, you won't be able to treat the underlying causes. So when I took drinking out of the equation, suddenly, you know, my, my stress, anxiety, my obsessive thoughts were went into overdrive at first. And, and so, so I had to really break it apart into different elements. There is stress, there is anxiety, and then there is obsessive thinking. It turns out that if you go through specific exercises around obsessive thinking, you can start compartmentalizing why you're thinking certain ways and why you're going about doing what you're doing. And when I started understanding why I was engaging in things like counting and symmetry and the like, I was able to actually take a step back and say, oh, wow, these are coping mechanisms to help me feel safe. To help me manage uncertainty.

Because math for me was a very certain thing. It's something that I found to be comforting. It just so happens that if I could then channel that energy into productive thinking, saying, hey, instead of just this mindlessness associated with just managing that anxiety and obsessive thing. You can say, okay, hey, a lot of what you're doing is a coping mechanism to help you feel safe. What are other ways that you can do to help you feel safe? Surround yourself with solid friendships and relationship. Try to seek high integrity people to surround yourself with in your life. Really understand. And of course, we're abstracting it maybe two or three levels.

But I think that these are things that I actually undertook personally to help feel safe, which in turn enabled me to not be as obsessive in my thinking. You know, for me, it very much came to understanding the relationships in my life. Is this a transactional relationship? Is this something deeper than that? And really starting to be able to not just pile everything together and have every day being kind of flat. I guess the term would be, I mean, there's a couple different terms for it. But for me, have every situation be an ad hoc situation. Every day feel like you're waking up and just trying to manage through the day. And actually find opportunities to establish more foundational things in your life. Rituals, opportunities to engage in meaningful relationships. These things that helped me

establish more of an accretive approach towards building this life that I wanted for myself. And the more I started identifying transactional interactions for what they are, the more I stop thinking obsessively, oh, does this person like me? Does this person want something from me? And I started realizing, yeah, this person might like you, might not like you, but it doesn't really matter. It really doesn't matter. Stop trying to please them. Does this person want something from you? In some circumstances, they certainly do. And that might be okay. But just identifying and tagging the relationships and interactions within your life is kind of either, are they accretive? Are they generative interactions? Accretive, but what I mean is actually like personally accretive, not building value or wealth or monetary wealth.

So really understanding what is it that you need personally? I'm speaking for myself. What do I need to feel fulfilled? And then starting to kind of build this superstructure around me that helps me feel fulfilled. And that's really been a core element of mitigating my obsessive thinking is really creating this enriching environment for me. It's helped me stop feeling so uncomfortable with my own skin and really helped me understand that if I can take care of myself, then I can show up for others and then I can be happy. That's basically the transitive equation for me. Taking care of myself enables me to be of service, which in turn enables me to be

happy. Okay. There's a lot to unpack there, but no, it's yeah, it's really clear. You're saying I can, I can tell you've done a lot of work here. You know, like your thinking is clear about, um, stringing together from pain to helping others to a life of joy and happiness. And there's a lot of meat in there, you know? And I think, um, I'd like to, you hit on something about relationships. You talked about trying to sort out what other people want from me or do they like me. And can you talk a little bit about your relationship with other people and what they might think of you and, and maybe how your dad orientated around being one of the most well known names and humans on the planet when he was alive. So can you talk about that from two different lenses? Sure. There's a lot to unpack here. And starting with my personal experience with seeking validation, I often sought validation

in unhealthy ways over a good chunk of my life. And the reason why I did so is because I was insecure in my place in the world. And when I sought validation from others, it's a very anxiety-inducing mode to be in because you don't have this foundation to fall on upon. I'm enough. I'm able to do what I do and do it well and, and not worry as much about how others perceive my actions. Right. And that was, you know, if you're in that situation, you, the analogy I use is you're like a cork on the ocean, right?

It's very much out of your control. The funny thing and the irony of that is most of the time people aren't thinking about you. In fact, the vast majority of the time, people aren't thinking about you. We just happen to be very solipsistic. And whether it's a cultural thing or just it's human nature, it's a bunch of different ways to slice that. But, you know, if you stop worrying so much about how others are viewing you and your place in the world, it suddenly becomes very liberating, right? And I'm a people pleaser. I have codependent traits.

And I have to identify the fact that I have codependent traits. And, you know, a great book that I read that really helped me understand how I would default to certain modes was a book called Attached. I don't know if you've read it or the like, but really understanding attachment theory as a way of acknowledging that I'm going into certain ways of thinking where it's like, oh, I need to please this person or, you know. So you were not like an avoidant attachment. You didn't have that. Do you remember your attachment style? Yes, anxiety. I have an anxious attachment style. Very much so.

Just for folks keeping score, there's basically four modes. There's avoidant style, which is reasonably self-explanatory. You tend to avoid intimacy and deepness in relationships. There's an anxious style in which you can overthink things. You can get worried about relationships, can ruminate. There's anxious avoidant, which is kind of a mishmash of the two. And then there's stable, the stable relationship. And what that looks like is being able to have boundaries, being able to establish closeness when you want to.

And I'm working towards stability. Aren't we all? Yeah. Yeah. But if you're, you know, to go into the second part, how did that relate to my family and my relationship with my dad? I would say it's a characteristic of many successful entertainers to be people pleasers and to seek validation. You have to have a certain orientation to go into comedy, to go into entertaining, to make others laugh, to find validation from places outside of, say, your personal life, your inner circle. Entertainers need that. really challenging because one can go about one. I won't speak so generally, but in the case of, you know, noticing how my dad went about thinking about entertaining and,

and seeking validation from others, it made him really happy. It made him really happy, but it was also excruciating when he wasn't getting validation you know and so it's it's a fine line if you're solely finding happiness from the validation of others it's an excruciating way to live life if you're not getting validation. And so, you know, the good thing was he was surrounded by friends and family who loved him and just thought the world of him. But, you know, when you go beyond that and you have rough waters or difficulty in relationships or the like, it can be really hard. And that, that would happen. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

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Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. What was it like for you when, let's say this is one of your dad's, I don't know, bits of kryptonite that would really be a big source of anxiety and or pain when it wasn't going the way that he hoped, meaning favorability from others. I'm wondering if there's a scenario where he comes home, it's not quite working the way that he had hoped. You're a kid, a young kid, pick whatever age comes to mind. Can you walk through an experience when you realized or you felt that your dad's really concerned about other people's opinions of him, what that was like for you. I was, I felt really challenged by him feeling down and out when say, you know, a movie review

or something wouldn't, wouldn't be glowing, you know, or there was some sort of performance or like where he didn't feel that he knocked it out of the park i mean the irony is you know 90 of the time he would knock it out of the park and it was at 10 of the time that or that 10 of the audience that he felt he wasn't getting to that was upsetting him. And how did it challenge you? Well, I felt challenged because I wanted to make him happy. And I wanted to see him happy and feel fulfilled because, you know, I thought the world of him, I still think the world of him he was the most amazing man in my life and um and it was so frustrating when you know you see someone who was literally was about as close to being universally adored as you could get and you would see someone fixate on that one one person or a small group of people

that might just be having a bad day and you know wasn't thinking about him or when they were thinking about him were kind of transferring something and and that upset him and and so the challenge i felt is like how can i how can i you happy? How can I distract you from you feeling this way? And in part, that's, that's part of my inherent nature. How can I, you know, how much so and how would he come home how would you there's like three parts to this how would he come home how would you sense it and then what tricks would you employ and then how did he respond to those tricks so if you walk through like it's almost like a story which is like okay he would come home and then and so like can you walk through, it's almost like a story, which is like, okay, we come home and then. And so can you walk through that? So it wasn't like a nine to five job.

It's not like you had someone who come home from the office any given day. It would be periods of time spent together after he was out on the road or doing a film. For me personally, our way of connecting was through things like computer games, video games, and watching films, watching TV, and then talking about that. So it was very much a distraction that we were seeking. Well, I'm curious though, I want to your antenna like how what was he experiencing when you're like oh okay this is this is a hard day for dad how would he come home and show up that way sure um i would see anxiety and obsessive thinking in him. Very much relating to him feeling like he didn't achieve his goals of making people happy. That was his whole being. That's what he,

that's what he loved to do. He loved to make people laugh and he loved to make people learn. If I could consolidate into one sentence what he was all about, it was he loved making people laugh and he loved helping people learn. Zach. Yeah. Sorry.

You spent, he spent his life working on it. You've spent a majority of your life working on it. My understanding is we cannot make others happy. That is their responsibility. So I'd love to hear more from your perspective about the idea of making people happy. Well, I think, you know, the lens that I take is one of providing education, right? How can you help people heal, specifically their mental health. And so I've become a student. I mean, I believe I've always been a student, but specific to this path, I've become a student around finding ways

to help teach people and to help educate people around ways in which they can take care of themselves. I was so down and out and so dysregulated and in such a state of despair that I literally had to piece my life back together from a very low low. And through that journey, I picked up a lot along the way, but also had to delve very deeply into what it is that makes me happy and ultimately what I can share with the world to help ideally heal people, maybe, and just be of service where I can to ultimately lead to my personal happiness as well. Is it? Yeah, well said. Is there an experience that you are comfortable sharing to demonstrate how low the low was

for you? Sure. I really related to alcoholism. I found myself not wanting to feel anything and was seeking oblivion. And when you wake up in the morning and you don't want to feel anything, that's not a state that I would wish upon anybody. and and when I was just seeking drinking as a means of just not feeling because I felt like my personal life was falling apart I was going down. I was graduating in alcoholism. I think, you know, I took this self-medicating that I had done from a pretty early age and evolved it into not wanting to do anything but drink. So I wouldn't have to feel anything. That, for me, was a low.

And then suicide is, I've got a member of my family that committed suicide. And it is, um, I don't know another word other than just brutal. And so that's my experience of it. Um, can you speak to your experience? Um, and I don't want to be insensitive at all to it. So can, can you speak to it? Um, sure. My, my experience was that it was one of the most terrifying and awful things that i experienced and it was very traumatic for myself and my family and you know a large part of

the past decade has been spent recovering from that experience. How do you make sense of why he committed suicide? Yeah, I do. I, I'm personally, I have, I have some thoughts and, you know, fortunately, I can process a lot of that personally. And, you know, for those listening, when you deal with personal family traumas and the like, some things are private and some things can be shared publicly. And in this particular circumstance, I am processing a lot of this grief privately. Yeah, very fair. I am processing a lot of this grief privately. Mm-hmm. Yeah, very fair. And when you process it, is it,

you said you're in between therapists, is it formal work with a therapist or are there other support groups? Is it, I know you mentioned meditation and mindfulness, but I'm more interested in the relationships that you're building to, for the processing. Well, I've gone through a lot of my personal processing at this point. For me,

really what I'm thinking about is how can I be a great dad to my children. And I create fantastic foundations for them to help deal anything the world can throw at them. So, you know, as the phase I'm in, in my life is, is, is that I'm going through a phase shift in becoming a parent myself. And I'm finding ways in which I can feel happy and fulfilled so I can be the parent that I want to be. And could you speak to somebody who is suicidal right now, who's got some strong ideation, might even have a plan? Could you speak to them for just a moment? For those who are experiencing suicidal ideation,

I would say there are opportunities to find happiness and to take a time to really understand what it is that you need personally, uh, to be happy and then kind of work backwards to say, Hey, you know, how can we find opportunities to be fulfilled in simple ways? What's that one step? What's that next step? What's that next step that you can do to take care of yourself? That's the first step along the journey of really finding ways to heal. Because ideation can feel, it can happen over a long period of time. It can happen all of a sudden and really just finding that one action that you can do to feel fulfilled, to take care of yourself and then stacking it with another action, stacking it with another action, stacking it with another action.

You know, those positive actions are ways to kind of get out of that state. Can you speak to a child who has lost a parent to suicide? And then I want to see if you can speak to a surviving parent as well. You know, for a child who has lost a parent to suicide, I would say, don't rush the healing process. Take every, take the time you need to take, to take care of yourself. This is not something that can happen overnight or over a month or in many cases over a year, it just takes time. So don't rush it. Take the time to process what you're feeling and give yourself the opportunity to feel. It needs to come and it needs, it's,

it's something that can feel scary and it can feel anxiety-inducing. But the main thing that needs to be done is taking the time for yourself to process at your pace. And then for a parent, I would say a similar thing. Take the time to process at your pace, but also try to really understand that you can't blame yourself. You know, I would say this for child's too. You're not to blame for any of this. It really comes down to finding ways to find that path

to healing in conjunction with that as well. Find things that make you happy and find opportunities to layer that into your life on a daily basis. I can't emphasize that enough. You know, it's not just about vacation or a weekend. It's about finding those opportunities, however small or large, to really take the time to take care of yourself. And that's something that I think we discount and we can orient towards blaming ourselves and really trying to let go of the blame and really saying we deserve to be happy

is a part of the healing process that I think is often discounted. People talk about, I'm just sick of being tired. And that's when, you know, sick and tired of being sick and tired is when the pain is so great that they begin to make the change. For you, what was the pain that created the change? Um, it was a, it was a collection of events in my life that made me realize, Hey, I really can be happy. I didn't think I deserved happiness. I, you know, there was a period where, so about 2015, beginning of 2016, where I was just like, I don't deserve to be happy. I was going through a lot of personal turmoil. I was going through breakup of a very long-term relationship and ultimate divorce.

I was being sued. It was an estate matter. My dad's widow was suing And I was not wanting to wake up in the morning. And so, you know, I felt very, very sad, depressed, anxious, and was drinking alcoholically to manage all those feelings. Of course, that doesn't help anything in the longer run. But I found an organization that I was working with to help me, specifically around discovering service. And, you know, not to say I hadn't volunteered my time and hadn't worked with organizations before. And I had really, really started this path

of understanding how helpful healing could be, primarily through teaching financial literacy at San Quentin Prison. I'm very passionate about finance and specifically teaching financial literacy, but I found that as a positive healing outlet for me, but it wasn't until I really discovered supporting mental health organizations, specifically the first organization, Bring Change to Mind, which is an organization focused on

providing programming for kids in high schools throughout the united states focused on peer-to-peer mental health support and then launching anti-stigma campaigns it wasn't until i really discovered that organization that i that i found that hey you know i can really share my story and start focusing on finding ways, discovering ways to help others heal while I was healing myself. And that for me made me realize that, A, I had to cut out drinking if I was going to be able to really be of service. And B, that I could find, I can build a foundation in my life that I could then go out and live happily from. Zach Williams walks into San Quentin and he looks down, you know, he's, you're greeted and you're inspected and you go through screening and they bring in

10 to 15 incarcerated individuals and you're going to teach them? Well, so I was working with an incarcerated individual who went by the name Wall Street, Curtis Carroll, who ultimately would teach the class with me. So he had been teaching the class. And this is on literacy. This is on financial literacy. Financial literacy. He had been teaching the class for a long time. It's not like I came in and founded the class and suddenly, you know.

Yeah. Sorry, I'm painting this picture like you're drinking, you know, like there's some deep kind of struggles that you're going through. And then you're showing up to like, you know, San Quentin and you're like, okay, guys, I'm going to help you with your life skills. So I got the order a bit wrong there. No. So I consider my role in it as an adjunct, right? I was an adjunct. The class was taught, was created and taught by incarcerated individuals. And I came in as an adjunct supporter of the course. It's still going on at San Quentin.

It's still led by Curtis Carroll, aka Wall Street. And he is front and center when it came to you know developing the the curricula that ultimately would would uh help many many many folks so you know from from my lens is more so coming in and being a supporter of everything he and his his uh other uh class creators were doing. So this might've been the, one of the first, I don't want to over-dramatize this, but this might've been the beginnings of you going, Oh, this, this thing of helping others, this actually,

there's some purpose in my life when I get up in the morning to go help others. I think, I think that this is going to be something i'm going to want to invest in it sounds like this would i'm not assuming it was the first time you've helped others in a formal way but was this one of the beginnings where you're like this would be a good way for me to invest my time uh let's just call it a catalyzing yeah moment for me it was a saying, Hey, you can heal from the trauma by committing to causes you are passionate about. That was the starting point. Yeah. Okay. Very cool.

Yeah. So, so, you know, that's, and it's not to say, you know, I had been, again, volunteering. I was very passionate about specific causes and it's not like just life began at that point you know i i had had a career i mean i have a career but i i had had a productive career up to that point um but it was it was lacking a certain meaning that, you know, I was having difficulty piecing everything together. There wasn't this North Star, this vector that I had up until that point. And I'm still passionate about financial literacy. I stopped teaching to focus more on mental health advocacy because it's something that, you know, became very apparent that I needed to learn more about and also wanted to focus more of my time on. But, you know, that was, it was teaching in San Quentin that was a catalyzing moment for me.

What's the mission of your company and the name of it and where can we find it and, you know, be more engaged in your mission? The mission of my company, which is called PIM, it stands for Prepare Your Mind, is to provide optimal neurotransmitter health while breaking down the stigma associated with mental health. You can find our products at youcanpym.com, Y-O-U-C-A-M-P-Y-M.com. You can follow us at at youcanpym, both on Twitter and Instagram, also TikTok. And the reason why I started the company is because I was having an extremely tough time. After my dad died by suicide, I was self-medicating using alcohol. When I stopped self-medicating using alcohol and found myself really stressed

and anxious, I found natural formulations, specifically amino acids, to be very helpful for me as I went about the healing process and discovered mental health advocacy as a healing path for the trauma. All that said, the advocacy is fantastic for the trauma. It doesn't help me with the stress and anxiety. And so I found ways to help manage those deficiencies relating to my neuroendocrine system through amino acid formulations and other natural compounds. So I created a brand that stands for mental health advocacy that provides support

for your body's neurotransmitter environment. And we launched in September 2020. Our next iteration, what we're launching soon, is a mood management system to provide more customized support. I'm really, really, really excited about what's next because I feel that most people can find mental health stability and balance through lifestyle interventions like our product protocols. set of a system. I think nutrition, fitness, mindfulness, meditation, therapy, that makes up the greater system that people need to engage in to really balance out their lives. The thing I would also say is that I'm all for pharmaceutical interventions and the like.

By no means do I think that what, you know, what we do is a replacement, but there are solutions and opportunities that provide support in many circumstances that, um, that we provide in lifestyle interventions provide. Hey, I'm a fan of Amino's. I'm a fan of what you're doing. I think, uh, we need more voices, more place to go to, more resources. When you are struggling in life, it feels like it's intractable. Yeah. It just feels like it's so far out of reach. And when we can make it simple, like what you're doing, it's just such a great resource. So I'm stoked to, to, you know, to be in this conversation

with you and thank you for sharing and going into some of the hardest things in life to ever talk about, which are the personal struggles and the traumas that we go through. And thank you. As a last question, Zach, if there was a master of craft that you could sit down with

and ask a question, who would that master of craft be? And what question would you want to ask them? Well, that's a fantastic question. Well, I would say, you know, he's no longer living. But I have the utmost appreciation for Dr. Oliver Sacks. I would ask him, what's the single most important thing that you found over the course of your life relating to your sense of happiness? So that's for Dr. Oliver Sacks in terms of a living person. So it's a very specific one and it relates to biases, but it would be Dr. Daniel Kahneman. So I'd ask this specific question.

How can we be productive in thinking about our own personal biases when it comes to living a happy life? There you go. I know that's a very specific thing, but I would really like to hear from him how we can use bias to our advantage to be happy. That's very cool. Because there's a shortcut in the bias. If you're unaware and you've got these biases, but they are unstable, then it's a problem for enduring happiness

and you're suggesting that what are the biases and that i'm employing that i can actually create some stability around for deep joy and happiness yeah how can we establish productive biases focused around happiness? Epic. Thank you, Zach. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. Thank you for the time. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for, you know, obviously your intellect and your heart are lined up and I'm wishing you the absolute best. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to be on. I really, really appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community.

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