Bourdain & Spade - Two Tragedies in One Week

Wow, last week was a rough week. I was in Dubai when I heard the shock­ing news — twice.

It is shock­ing when some­one you know, or know of, dies — even more so when they decide to end their own life.

• I did not know Kate Spade or Antho­ny Bour­dain per­son­al­ly, but I know and admire what they accom­plished in this world.
• I did not know their pain nor their strug­gles, but I know the sto­ries and strug­gles that oth­ers expe­ri­ence who are mak­ing their own big impact on this world.
• I do not know their log­ic for end­ing their lives, but know it would have been log­i­cal to them.

I’ll nev­er for­get the moment when I was 7 years old and learned that Elvis Pres­ley had left the build­ing. I became obsessed with under­stand­ing why and have been try­ing to under­stand how peo­ple that have it all by West­ern Stan­dards decide that life is no longer worth liv­ing. As a kid it made no sense to me – and as a teen and young adult I was still perplexed.

My new book, Your Oxy­gen Mask First, was inspired by watch­ing and learn­ing from the strug­gles that high­ly moti­vat­ed and suc­cess­ful peo­ple have as they make a big impact on the world. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the impact back on them can be devastating.

As I watched Kurt Kobain, Michael Jack­son, Amy Wine­house, Robin Williams and oth­ers all quit the game of life, it astound­ed me. I judged them. I saw them as weak and cow­ard­ly. I did not understand.

Men­tal Health Continuum

Final­ly, a few years ago I was intro­duced to some­thing called the Men­tal Health Con­tin­u­um and how all peo­ple move between zones: Green (healthy), Yel­low, Orange and Red (very ill). There are dif­fer­ent symp­toms in each zone that peo­ple will expe­ri­ence and/​or exhibit.

What I now under­stand is that the pains and chal­lenges of life (which we all expe­ri­ence on a reg­u­lar basis) can take their toll on us and weak­en our men­tal state. This hap­pens to every­one. And, when we have a few very impact­ful things hit us hard at once, we can (pre­dictably) slip into a real­ly bad place. For some, that bad place gets worse and worse until it is unbear­able. They lose faith that it will get bet­ter — ever. This is the deep dark red zone of men­tal health.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when we lose faith in our abil­i­ty to regain our men­tal health and well-being, we are mis­tak­en. But, we are in such a bad place that we can’t see that.

Since my aware­ness of Men­tal Health trig­gers and symp­toms, it is much, much eas­i­er to see this with the CEOs and Lead­ers that I work with every day. I now know the impor­tance of talk­ing about Men­tal Health (and the Con­tin­u­um) and what to watch out for and what to do. I have dis­cov­ered that in doing so, more hon­est con­ver­sa­tions are happening.

The most shock­ing part is some of the most suc­cess­ful, high-achiev­ing peo­ple that I work with are just as sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting worn out and knocked down men­tal­ly. These are the smartest, strongest and most resilient peo­ple on the plan­et. If they can get worn down and into the Orange and Red zones men­tal­ly — all of us can.

My cur­rent belief is that the hard­er you push and more you achieve on this plan­et, the more like­ly you are to crack men­tal­ly — at least a few times in life. It’s bet­ter to be pre­pared for an inci­dent than live in denial until you find your­self in a mess and are unsure (or unclear) of what to do.

Best to be aware and prepared.

So, my advice:

1. Under­stand Men­tal Health and the Men­tal Health Con­tin­u­um.
2. Learn to spot the warn­ing signs of men­tal health issues (for your­self and others)
3. Do the things you know that help keep you in a bet­ter men­tal state (exer­cise, nutri­tion, social­iz­ing, and deal­ing with issues that come up)
4. Have a plan of what to do when things get bad or weird — the answer is always to seek the help of a pro­fes­sion­al such as a psy­chol­o­gist. You would not try to fix a com­pound frac­ture your­self, so don’t think you can be of much assis­tance with a men­tal health issue either.
5. When you start to slip men­tal­ly, talk to some­one about it.

Life is beau­ti­ful and always will be.

The chal­lenge, is that when we get knocked down by life and don’t eas­i­ly get back up again, our men­tal state gets affect­ed. And with­out a lot of the right assis­tance, life can go from beau­ti­ful to bleak…in our minds.

It’s not that the world actu­al­ly changes, but our inter­nal world and per­cep­tion of the exter­nal real­i­ties does.

And for some rea­son, when we are in this state, our nat­ur­al reac­tions usu­al­ly make the sit­u­a­tion worse for us. And worse…

In the end, we can’t con­trol the actions and beliefs of oth­ers. What we can do is ensure that we pro­vide the best sup­port and resources to those that we know need it. Some­times, that is ourselves!

Make it a great week.