Real Growth After Depression: Jason Davies' Rule of The Power of Two

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Emotional man Weekly podcast. It is the third and final mini series with Jason Davey our handsome medical sales rep and speaker and thought leader on the three stages mental health, recognizing, reconstruction and real growth. And so today, that is exactly what we'll be talking about real growth.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Now last episode.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Jason, go ahead and just recap for us what you went through. How did you reconstruct, and we can segue into what are you doing now, what and how you're thinking, how you're feeling, what you're doing. Build real growth so that we minimize the chances of us going downward slopes again.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Yeah, gosh, it's great to be back. First off, I absolutely love my time with you. You are such a great advocate for us and families, so thank you. So, rewinding a little bit, yep had a first episode, the back slide, recognizing oh my gosh, all these things are becoming unbalanced in my life. And then a full mental breakdown and recognizing there is help needed and going through therapy, getting on medication, starting to rebuild myself step by step, creating those anchors or things in my life that I tried to do daily, that I couldn't miss, and coming out of it now and where I'm at now. That's a big part of my life. That's rebuilding those pillars of physical, spiritual, mental and work emotional, if you will, social pillars in my life to balance, to keep that balance and hold me up as a person of who I am. I call them non-negotiables and I know that's a term that many have used before and I love that. I love the term non-negotiables as what are you doing every single day, or trying to every single day? To small and simple things to keep you healthy physically healthy, mentally healthy, spiritually healthy and work, social healthy as well, because that's where I have built those back up and it's been.

Speaker 2: 2:28

I said on the last episode I mentioned, it took me over a year to come out of that and it's a day by day process. I created this. The Power of Today is where my website and social media things are at the Power of Today and I named that. I chose that specifically because I sat back and said how did I do this? How did I rebuild myself? And it was a day by day process. I mentioned on the last episode time. Time is a healer in more components that I think we give it credit to. It took time and patience and I remember saying a couple months into my breakdown gosh, I wish it was a year from now.

Speaker 2: 3:15

I remember saying that out loud and just gosh, I wish I felt like myself again and people around me, especially my wife, they say, hey, there's you can, you absolutely can, and here. So here we are again, but it's not the same person. That's a caveat I want to throw out, that it's I'm different in a good way. I'm different in and I hope that's where everybody finds themselves being a different person in a good way. And I say that because that's where that growth, that whole again comes from, that real growth comes from. Why do we have grades in school? It's because we take that step by step process of learning right. You don't go from first grade to sixth grade in a year. Maybe some there's some really smart people out there, but most of the time we have those step by step processes and so I liken to that in that real growth element of this.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Now you said something interesting. I want to draw this out. Yeah, and that is there are some real obstacles in the post reconstruction stage.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Yes.

Speaker 1: 4:25

And I think the solution is, of course, focusing on the power of today, but what's the opposite of that? What is the obstacle and the challenge in this stage? Of life, do you think?

Speaker 2: 4:38

For me personally, living in the future is not taking care of the present day. Living in oh my gosh, this thing I need to do next week, this thing I need to do in two days, focusing it on my mind in the future and not taking care of not truly being in a present state of mind. I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls. And talking to other men around is gosh, I'm just so worried about this. I'm so worried about that. This is one of the things that my dad really pointed out to me, and Sherry helped as well in talking about all these things. They were like Jace, you are so worried about the future, why? And I was like why? Because I have this and all these goals and all these things.

Speaker 2: 5:29

But it wasn't the goals that was stressing me out, it was I wasn't working on the things now to help me take work towards those goals in the future. It was like those goals were all I saw. But how do I get there? I'm feeling very scrambled. A ball of yarn is how I felt. Just all jumbled up. And so I think one of my favorite quotes out there is tomorrow hasn't even happened yet. And when I heard that, for me personally, I was like tomorrow hasn't even happened yet. What? And when you sit and think about that philosophy, when you sit and think about, sadly, some of us won't have a tomorrow, and that deeply affected me in a way that was like, wow, it truly is in today, where we live, it's in these moments, it's in the small and simple things that truly make us who we are. In three months, six months, whatever that duration is.

Speaker 1: 6:35

It's interesting In some of the clients I coach. Some of the people I work with are fathers who are in the thick of scaling their business. They're trying to balance their families and overwhelm and anxiety. Now, if you look at the pattern for overwhelm and anxiety, overwhelm is commonly associated with the thought it's too much, and anxiety is all about the inability to control the outcome. There's all of these different outcomes and you don't want a lot of those outcomes, so you try and do everything you can to ensure the outcome that you want.

Speaker 1: 7:14

And the thought error is, if I don't worry about the future, that all these negative outcomes I can think of will happen. Therefore, and the thought is, if I worry about it, I can stop it from happening. Oh yeah, and the problem is, what do you do when you're overwhelmed and anxious? You spin in your thoughts and then you're like, oh my gosh, there's too many outcomes to control for. And then you feel overwhelmed. And when you feel overwhelmed, you're shut down or you don't like feeling overwhelmed. So you try to do something easy to make yourself feel better. And guess what? You don't do anything to make the future any better.

Speaker 2: 7:58

I just got chills because that's been my experience. You nailed that. It's so true and it comes from people who you have talked with and coached and worked with. Those are real life examples. That's exactly what I mentioned that ball of yarn. That's how you start to feel because you're just so worried of multiple outcomes. You said it, you nailed it and all of a sudden you're paralyzed because you can't control that.

Speaker 1: 8:26

So the power of today, that is the social Talk to me, how did the power of today help you go from the thought that we can bleed, we can control the outcome? The fact that if we think we can control the outcome, it's what leads to this assumption that we can control the outcome, it's, I think, the most detrimental lie we can tell ourselves.

Speaker 2: 8:48

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Because the truth is, we can't control the outcome, but we can control how we show up to the outcome. So talk to me. What was the pivot from thinking? If I worry about tomorrow, I can prevent bad things from happening? How did he go from that habitual way of thinking to the power of today? What does that look like in your mind, what does it look like in your emotions and what does that look like in your day-to-day actions?

Speaker 2: 9:20

Yeah, yeah. So the pivot moments. One of the pivotal thing that I did was I was actually given a book as a gift and, believe it or not, the book is called the Power of Now and I encourage anybody who has this anxiety created issue of they call it projecting into the future. You sit there and you project and you miss out now. You miss out on the literal hour that you're living. This book, the Power of Now, and putting some things into practice, such as when you're feeling just so overwhelmed and so anxious. Take a step back, realize that all you have control of is now and start to breathe it out. I love doing box breathing. If you've ever, I'm sure you're very aware of box breathing, given your background in service, because a lot of servicemen utilize it four seconds breathing in, holding four seconds, breathing out four seconds and then pausing for four seconds and just slowing down.

Speaker 2: 10:26

Because from what I learned from the Power of Now, that book is that our mind is geared to do this. Our mind is geared to just think well, what's it thinking about? Anything it wants to, and one of the things I try to do now in trying to live in the Power of Today is I catch myself. I'm mentally aware of, hey, I'm thinking about some stuff that's causing me anxiety. I literally sit back, I'll be on a drive in my car and just be like whoa, like, why do I feel anxious? And my heart start has been beating and I'm just feeling a little bit off and I'll say, jace, what's stressing you out? Mentally, I'll just say, hey, jace, what's stressing you out? And I'll start to think about what has been on my mind that morning or that afternoon. And it's been things of the future and it's been things of I was worried about or things I need to do that just not necessarily had any impact on what I was doing in that moment. And so just telling yourself, okay, I can't control those, being aware that what you're thinking about is controlling your present, and saying, okay, I need to.

Speaker 2: 11:39

For me and it could be different for a lot of people For me I was just like, I will put that in a different compartment of my mind and I will come back to that because it doesn't pertain to me right now. So being I think one of the biggest things is being aware of where your thoughts are. What are you thinking about? Is it things that? Hey, I need to take five steps down these stairs. Right now Is it being present? Hey, I need to get in the car and I need to drive this car, and right now I'm listening to my favorite music. Is it literally in the now, or is it an hour from now? Or is it a day from now, or is it something that has not even come to fruition yet? Again, like you stated so perfectly, things you can't even control are Taking up your present.

Speaker 1: 12:27

I love it because you've mapped this concept and it's been around a long time how we move from Simplicity to complexity. Yeah. Act of simplicity yeah, if you think about your experience growing up children, very good at being in the present. They're so good, they're great and but the problem is that they they're prefrontal cortex had had. It hasn't happened, so they can't anticipate possible outcomes.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Ah you don't think of cause and effect. But then we start developing this ability to comprehend cause and effect, and Then we overuse it, we start projecting, we create all this complexity in our lives way to and.

Speaker 1: 13:11

Then we come to the realization. Wait, all I can do is Right now. So the question that is and then this is this, I think, is the question that leads to work life, balance, two relationships, and that is how do you handle the tension of being present it's still being proactive To create the outcome you do desire, while balancing this concept that we have influence but not control outcome. So so what is that for you? How does the power of today help you with that tension?

Speaker 2: 13:53

Yeah, it's truly taking understanding and it's taken some practice of understanding. I Can only control what I can control today. It's truly like you said, finding a balance between my, my, what I do today, realizing that if I don't send an email, then this project won't get done. If I don't go visit this customer, then they won't potentially become a customer of mine or continue to be. If I don't, there's things that I can. The things I do today will impact my tomorrow and I feel like we think about it backwards sometimes a lot of the time. All these things are thinking about in the future. We can't, we can't grasp those things, we can't affect those things. Let's come back to Okay, step by step.

Speaker 2: 14:43

When I, for me, I write down a list, I have a notebook of Today's tasks for work. Let's just take work, for instance. Right, because it's such a big one for work, providers, as seen as providers, as men, and so you make it a task list. If that task list stresses you out, don't make one try something else in terms of, hey, this hour I have this meeting, that's where I'm at, and it takes practice. It's something that's not going to. You're just gonna flip this switch and start thinking differently. It's a day-by-day process. It's me literally Focus focusing on this is today. Tomorrow has not come yet, and so I need to control today's tasks and things I need to do and accomplish physically, spiritually, mentally and at work, every social aspects and Come what may, and yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:40

I love that painting this picture in my mind of the power of today is that it can build tomorrow, but we, and that's how we need to approach it what do we need to do today to reach our desired outcome? But that's not thinking about all of the outcomes that we need to prevent. That we have to do today, I think. I think that's the difference is that the worry and anxiety comes from recognizing there's no enough time in any day to prevent every undesirable outcome we don't want tomorrow and close now.

Speaker 1: 16:16

But what we do have is the time we have right now that can help us build towards a desired outcome. And if we just focus on that, I think that's the balance is that we recognize that tomorrow builds off the day, but we recognize that we can't predict what tomorrow will bring because there's so many variables outside of our control. But we can always have control of how we show up now. I love that. That's beautiful. Jason, this has been fantastic. I feel like you've helped me connect some dots today that. I'm really excited about.

Speaker 2: 16:50

Hey, you as well. I don't think it was a one-way street. I have absolutely loved this or conversations. Some of the stuff that you have said to me I have compartmentalized and writing down, so it's been such a pleasure of mine. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Now, if there are men out there who feel like they can really connect with you, who want to talk to you about your experience and kind of could use someone walking by their side, how can they get in contact with you? How can they learn more about you? Where can they go?

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yeah, great question. So I, just as I've just started this journey over the last month, have a website that it's live but nothing's really on there yet. So that will be coming the power of two days with a number two. Those are also my social handles. Direct message me.

Speaker 2: 17:37

Like seriously dropping into those DMs is what all those kids are saying that's still free to reach out to me and it's again at the power of two day, with a number two Two day and I am here to be a resource, to just to be with you, to be with us, to be with men.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Love it Okay At power today. We'll make sure that is in the show notes and comments for everyone who can want to find you. Jason, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great pleasure.

Speaker 2: 18:12

My pleasure.