Your Transformation Station - 78. Mental Health Issues and The Transformation

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Your Transformation Station, an introduction to Season 3. If you're living with trauma? How can you become the leader and take control of your life? https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/s3e78 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in, in yourself? Join your host, Greg Favaza, as your voice on the hard truths of leadership, your transformation station connecting clarity to the cutting edge of leadership. As millennials, we can establish change, not only ourselves, but through organizational change, bringing transparency that goes beyond the organization and reflects back into ourselves. Extracting. Actionable advice and alternative perspectives that will take you outside of yourself. Are you motivated?

I'm fucking motivated. I'm motivated to get my old life back, but improve that old version of myself into the version that I'm trying to get to. and then by that time, I will have a new individual idea that I want them to be. What about you? What are you doing? That's why I'm here. I'm here for it to be your mentor. I'm here to guide you, to push you, to tell you everything you're doing, and to reinforce

you if it's right or if it's wrong or if I don't fucking know, I'm going to find out what it is and give you that information. That's why you give me the trust to listening to this podcast. And I have my trust in you that you will apply it. But if you want more out of yourself and you're looking back 20 years later from now wondering why you live your life and regret, it's because you didn't make that decision now here, this moment, as I tell you that you should probably start implementing something of a structure that will put you in the direction you want to be rather than just settling for what has already came. Are you?

Are you just settling? You should be okay with being open about yourself. I'll share all my fucking wounds. Will you? No. A lot of people won't. And I don't understand why. If you do, you feel in the moment because you're not inside your head trying to avoid the conversation when it gets uncomfortable.

We need these conversations. You need these conversations. I need these conversations. You got to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say no fucking photos. Why? Because you are the fucking star of your life. You are the leader that people are looking up to. Because there's someone around you that's taking it in, that's watching, that's learning, just as you are right here on your transformation station.

Okay. Because what I came to terms and understood that a lot of people, they can't make that step. is because they suffer from past experiences, whether it's trials and tribulations, through social upbringing or just, frankly, trauma. I mean, me, I've experienced trauma in my life, a horrible situation that I wish no individual to ever go through. And to this day, I can see it on anybody's face. They can put on a smile. They can pretend like it never happened.

But only I know, I'm sure anybody else, has been in my shoes would be like, I know what you've been and I'm sorry that you've been through that. Got it. And I can tell with people who have been through those kind of things. And that's what holds a lot of us back. But how do we get past that? How do we rise above that? Now that comes down to bringing your emotions that are attached to that previous experience

because that previous experience has locked in your age, has locked in your mindset. Have you noticed a 47? year old boy child or man child well that is linked to that but in order to get past that issue that we're that we're suffering from right we have to look at it from a neutral perspective eliminate the emotions and purge that shit you have to get it out otherwise if you keep it in it's it's just going to keep you at a halt you're you're plateaued you're peaked you're ain't going any further in life. In fact, it's all downhill. I still believe in if we aren't improving, we're degrading. There's no stagnation. The reason with anxiety is because they do air

on the side of caution. They're afraid to display themselves. That's why we wear, it's what they call in a sociological perspective is a social mask. We usually wear three to four different ones, ones for occupation, one's for our peers, ones for our family. And then we have no mask. It's our intimate self. And we rarely ever show that with people. And people that do show that are the ones that are very successful because they've learned to harness all of these abilities and these talents and just embrace their vulnerabilities

as their authentic self, as I always say. We're in a global information era where it's digital information now. We need to develop the motivation, but also maintain the commitment to continue to move forward. Because now we don't have people telling us what to do anymore. We're relying on ourselves. Relying on our spouses or what motivates us from the very beginning. If it's not core values, it's going to be your children. It's going to be you have bills to pay.

I mean, whatever motive, that's what we're relying on now. So people need something that can give them the edge so they can focus and connect the clarity to their life. That is the root of everything, is the trauma that's been instilled. I mean, and if it, once that's cleared out of the way, which will take a lifetime to do. But once you get a hold of it and you can live with it, then you have to. And you have to relearn the fundamentals because everybody that grew up without the trauma, they learned the basic math skills, education. Well, with somebody who is suffering with a very, very intense trauma where you can't sleep

at night, you can't focus and you just dread going home every day. You'll do whatever it takes to stay at school. Right. You don't even remember a damn thing you've learned. What can I do to help me? because that's really what it comes down to is not what other people can do. It's what I can do. And one is being able to reflect in the moment and feel what I'm feeling and then understand it.

Don't ignore it. But learn to thrive often. I use it as ammunition to go further, to go harder. That's how I operate. At that point, once they can get to that next level, then they can understand why things happen. If they want to know why it happened now, they're not going to understand. They need to rise above this first without trying to understand. But just to know that me moving forward, me getting to this next level, it will lead to a better outcome.

And once I get there, then, only then I can understand why this happened. Because when we look back at our traumas, we don't even account for the fact that we're rationalizing with our adult mindset when that shit happened as a kid. because, I mean, if you look back at my work from season one, that was all for my own progress. I mean, if the listeners listened to it, fantastic. If they didn't give a fuck, fantastic. Because I look at it as I grew from every experience that I recorded with who I encountered with. What was the difficult part when you started to negotiate this character when you came in contact with people you've known and your past as you were changing your identity.

And that is the question, right? Like, that's a phenomenal question. Look, here's the reality. And one of my mentors taught me this. And it really rings true. Like, to get what you want in life, you're going to have to give something up. You're going to have to. And a lot of times, it's the people.

And that's not to say those people don't bring value to you. That's not to say you don't love those people or cherish those people. But, you know, if you want to change the world, you're not going to do it at happy hour. You know what I'm saying? Well, so we can illustrate an understanding that a leader needs to know himself that much that he can go out and find an identical representation of himself through somebody else. Everything I just explained to you, you can't even comprehend, but it makes sense to me. and you should acknowledge it, but they wouldn't. It's just, it was a bunch of nonsense and a waste of time,

but I feel like I was able to get those emotions out and express it. If they don't take it, I mean, fuck them. Yeah, it's for you, really, Greg. Your healing is always for you. It's not for the other person. Part of becoming more emotionally intelligent and compassion towards yourself is accepting that harsh reality, that in changing yourself, other people will not be able to accept that you're changing. And they won't remember what you remember. They won't remember it the way you remember it. They won't remember

aspects that come back to you in segments over your lifetime. And they may not also take accountability for causing harm to you. that generation does not understand the implications that they caused. And me trying to rebuild those relationships, there's no point. There's really no point because they don't understand what they do. And then you're looking at it from a younger version of yourself's perspective when you've gone back, you've done the work. And it's just there's no point to try to rebuild those relationships.

Yeah, I agree. I agree to the extent that what I share with my clients is when you start your journey through healing and it's an ongoing process, most times there's a transformation that happens within yourself that does not occur concurrently with the people that you want to help transform with you. But I wanted to talk about your TEDx talk about five years ago. Wow, that is inspiring right there on how you are able to turn negative situations into quotes and then live that so you don't continue to go through trial and error. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Well, I do. I was able to I was able to see the value in negativity and it is the same

I look at it as if negativity I don't even look at it as negativity because it took me to go to jail 20 times over 20 times before I was 21. It took my mother to get hit by a drunk driver. She was told she'd never walk again. My dad got hit by a drunk driver

put him in a coma. My uncle was found dead two days before Christmas on December 23rd, shot right here in the middle of his head. And my eight and five-year-old, they're my cousins, but we was raised in the house to treat each other like brothers and sisters. So I called them my sisters. They drowned each other by accident at the age of eight and five. And then my other little sister got killed by a drunk driver at seven. So I say all of that to say. Many people may say that's negative. It's not something that I asked to happen, but it happened. And that's what life is. You know, it's not a matter of if you're going to die. You're definitely going to die. So you might as well appreciate your existence while you're living. So if I never went to jail, what would I had

wrote about in my 83 books? What would I have, I wouldn't have had my mom to talk about. I wouldn't be doing this interview with you. You know, I would have never gotten to TED Talk. They only asked me to do the TED Talk because of the story that I had. So I was like, shoot, only way you can appreciate the light is if you've seen darkness. And so en route to success, you have to pass darkness. But the problem maybe with a lot of people is they run out of gas in the darkness and they just sit there and stay there in depression. Me, I know I still battle with depression, but the thing is now I just know how to manage it. As soon as it hits, I go get a massage. I go get a manicure. I celebrate my birthday on the 19th every month. I start, I celebrate

Mother's Day on a 10th every month, I start making sure my family is happy. You know what I'm saying? And that makes me happy. That's how I come out of it. Like right now I'm going to get a haircut. You have to do things for your, you know, you have to be, you know, in this world, they teach you not to be selfish. But I teach the opposite.

And I'm going to make it make sense. Like, why should I love your mother more than I love mine? Why should I help your dream more than you help your own? No, I'm selfish. I'm going to focus on me first. I want to give myself love. so that I can give it to you. I want to put myself in a position so that I can help more people.

People may not just like the coin or the word selfish, but the opposite of selfish is selfless. Why should I think less of myself to upgrade someone else's ego? And that's what the government has really taught people to take, everything they work for and give it to them. And you see it even when you get your check, you pay them before you pay yourself. Exactly.

Yeah. You know, what I'm doing right now, it's not a black or a white thing. It's just more so like, you know, I want to see good people win and I want to see good people be successful. You know, and we, you know, I've grew, we fought the race thing a very long time. I think at this point in the universe and in life, it's a great time now to, you know, maybe attempt to come together because fighting definitely hasn't worked. And we've been fighting a long time. It ain't working.

And if we looked at fighting equivalent to how we ran. a business, right? If you lost a million dollars for 1900 years or 2,000 years, would you keep doing the same thing? Agreed. And to caveat that also the business, as far as it started off by a piece of scratch paper, which is known as the mission statement, that's an outlook. It's the, it's the philosophy of the business. So everybody within that business should maintain that outlook regardless of what race you are, who you are. That's how it operates and works effectively. That's amazing, man. What type of people do you normally interview? So I interview anybody that resonates within me. I just have a gnat for certain types of people. People that are selfless that have

something much more inside them that goes beyond what they illustrate their purposes. It's the, it's the integrity, it's the character and everything they display. That's what I relate to from being in the military. And that's what I'm trying to bring on station is people like you, people who've been on TEDx, people who, because they've suffered, they've seen the darkness. They've been through trauma of their own as a child. And they never learned how to become an adult properly. And now they're having a kid on the way. And they're doing everything they can to learn to become that man so they don't repeat a

generation. I mean, here's just one way. I would say maybe bring these things together. And maybe it goes back to something we mentioned at the very beginning, which is telling your story. Yes. That question of who are you? It's the classic thing at a party.

Who are you? Most people define themselves as a role. And most people define themselves, as we said, as a skill. A little bit more sophisticated people talk about their experience. Maybe they talk about a key experience. All I was to do is suggest is to shift that and talk about what drives you. Because we all can get on the mic and we can say, you do this. your life will be better. I think, I agree. I've done it. I was that person that was nothing to doing

something every day for five and a half years straight. Life gets in the way. When you're a parent, when you're a full-time student, when you just have an outside life, what if I can't make it consecutive? Then I feel like I fucked up and I need to start over. How do I know it's a delayed outcome? Beautiful question. The reality is life is messy and like some people's lives are more complicated than others. It's a daily, sometimes, minutely conversation that I'm having with myself of. Like, all those self-doubts I'm putting aside and I'm choosing the other, the angel on the shoulder versus the devil on the shoulder. I'm choosing to listen to this little cartoon

character, you know, like, and in order to love the process, we really need to love ourselves. and that's by embracing our vulnerabilities as our authentic selves. But it's making your bed. It's flossing your fucking teeth. It's washing the bottom of your feet. It's doing all those things, trimming your nails, making it shaved. You have a fresh haircut once a week. All those things ripple out.

What it does is it makes you accountable in yourself. It displays conviction that you hold yourself to. to such high regard and you execute whatever you tell yourself. So when you say you're going to do something, you're more likely to do it because you're consistent with your word internally that it happens automatically externally. When something is put together too perfectly, I call BS. All right.

Yeah. I'd rather see your warts and all. I'd rather see your battle wounds, your scars, because then I can relate to you. You worked with a lot of different people, a vast culture of people. Was there a common theme of obstacles that people encountered? It was always fear-based, afraid of something, right? And everyone has different fears. So some people, it's fear of fear or some sort of a relationship with money.

and there's this constant like, but I need more money and I need more money to do all this stuff. So I can't like quit my job to do this other thing. Right. So it could be money. It could be fear of failure because if I give up my current secure blanket and do this other thing that's unknown, then what if I fail?

Right. there's also for some people it's just relationships with their parents and being accepted by their parents and fear of if I do this thing my parents will disapprove so it's always some sort of a fear but it just depends on the person I just had a thought and I just wanted to share it like for people that hit the certain age and they start to experience this midlife crisis it's just a fascinating subject on why this occurs and Like they do, but they, for those that do, they just do it. And that's what I did with myself. I mean, I hit 30 and I realized that I'm going to be a dad. And I'm also fathering two children that aren't mine. I have a blended family. So I had to make a decision, well, Greg, what are you going to do?

Well, we can't stay in this apartment. So I went out and bought myself a house. And now do I continue to podcast? Do I go back to school? how am I going to support them? I don't know, but I'm just going to do it. That's the decision. It's are you going to do it or are you not?

And then when you don't, you're going to have to do it later. And it's just like after the emotional breakdown or before. A hundred percent agree. And I always use the- I want to stop you because usually when thoughts are flowing, we got to hit it. Otherwise, I lose it. I just want to understand if we're going through that, what's missing. And I've noticed that I can connect this with the midlife crisis topic that a lot of people aren't embracing their vulnerabilities as their authentic selves.

Yes. And that's why they kind of feel like something's missing. Like I have the job. I have this. But why do I feel like I'm missing something? And it's because you were afraid of allowing your guards to be down. You choose to wear a social mask. You wear your occupational mask when you're at work.

And then you barely show your loved one your real self. I could not agree more with you. And it's, yeah, I had masks on and I was protecting myself. And I had like different personas. And I mean, part of it is also I just didn't know who I was myself. I mean, like anything in life, if you want to do something, you just need to set aside the time and make the commitment. and that comes at a cost always.

There's a cost of the things that you're saying no to. And of course the financial expense of making it happen. But everything's got its price. And those who are willing to pay the price for things like climbing, get the rewards in turn. You've been listening to your transformation station, your voice on the hard truths of leadership. We hope you've enjoyed the show.

We hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Make sure to like, rate, and review the show. Remember, your transformation station is on all major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube at YTS, The Podcast, and visit the website at YTSThepodcast.com. Till next time. Hack season. And at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers.

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