It's Never Too Late: From Mental Health Battles to Self-Forgiveness and Rising Above Challenges

Struggling with the weight of my own mental health battles, I, Bruce Schutter, found an unexpected ally in the power of self-forgiveness and transformation. Now, I'm here to share with you the raw and powerful lessons of the Mental Health Warrior Program, recounting personal tales of rising above bipolar disorder, alcoholism, anxiety, and PTSD. It's a testament to the notion that change is not only possible but within our reach, a mantra that pulses through each story I tell with an unshakeable conviction. If my journey from being shackled by my past to standing tall as a warrior has taught me anything, it's that it's never too late to change the trajectory of your life, no matter the depths from which you must climb.

Let's face the truth: embarking on a journey of self-improvement and battling against mental health issues requires both courage and tenacity. This episode isn't merely a narrative of my struggles and triumphs; it's a blueprint for anyone who's ever doubted their strength to fight back. From the darkness of my days as an EMT to the enlightenment fostered by never giving up on the chance for a better life, I dissect the mindset shifts that are essential for anyone looking to become a warrior in their own right. Join me and discover how to turn your greatest challenges into your most powerful assets, and how to keep moving forward with the unwavering spirit of a warrior.

-----
Bruce Schutter & the Mental Health Warrior Program:

After struggling with Bipolar, Alcoholism and Anxiety Disorder for over 20+ years, I reached a breaking point where I attempted suicide. But with a second chance at life, I set out to find an answer to my life’s challenges. I discovered that Mental Health is the key to triumphing over any challenge in life!

Armed with this knowledge, I created the Mental Health Warrior Program. A new self-help approach, centered on mindset and lifestyle changes, so you can triumph over your life’s challenges!

For you are a Mental Health Warrior, and “The Power to Change Your Life is within Your Grasp!”

Bruce Schutter 
(Creator and Daily User of the Mental Health Warrior Program and Challenge Coin) 

Chapters

• 0:01 Never Too Late to Change
• 7:35 Never Too Late
• 17:26 Believe in Yourself and Keep Going

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hi everybody, bruce Shooter here with the Mental Health Warrior Program podcast, no Surrender. Now today we're going to talk about that part no surrender. In this episode. I want to talk about the point and people have said this and I want to disprove it and I also want to show you what happens when you don't put the energy into believing this. So one of the things and the big point I want to make today is it's never too late to change your life. Now I want to let that sink in just for a second. I'm making a pretty big statement here, but I'm making it based on my personal experiences.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Now I will tell you I did not, and I'm going to be honest here. I did not believe that at the beginning. I believed that with my challenges. So the challenges I have bipolar disorder, alcoholism, anxiety disorders, some PTSD from time as an EMT and some of the things I saw. I thought once I experienced those, I had locked in a course or I was locked in because I had a diagnosed challenge. I had a diagnosed disorder and that put me on the path where I said I can't do anything about it. And you know what? I'll be honest I ran with that. I ran with that idea to my detriment, and certainly did not get to experience life during those times to the extent I could have, because I felt like I already knew I was destined to go off that cliff. And that's the attitude I took. Now, in certain respects it allowed me to go after things, which is kind of ironic. It allowed me to push the envelope a bit and maybe try things, because I also thought what's the point? Because I have these challenges or I'm at this point in my life and I haven't been able to fix it since then. And again, let's break that down because there was a little bit of good in it, but mostly it was bad and it kept building on each other.

Speaker 1: 1:58

So when I started struggling early on in high school and college, the anxiety, the stress, the depression that would creep in because I was getting thrown into that by bipolar a lot of times. Well, a lot of times I got worse and worse and I started to then move on in my life move into an IT career, move into doing more adult things, and again I'm bringing that baggage of. I'm on a predetermined course. There's nothing else I can do about it. It even became a reason at that point with. The only thing I know that works is drinking.

Speaker 1: 2:38

So let's bring alcoholism into the picture, or my problem with not being able to manage that and seeing that as a short-term solution that I thought was successful. Now you can see that is not a good path and at this point, that belief in such a simple concept, that belief in the ability to be able to change my life, which I thought I did not have well, it sent me as a runaway train down a path that was certainly not good. And again, you can still make progress. On the outside and even other people, it seemed like I was making progress, but inside I was self-destructing. Inside, my challenges were winning every day and I certainly kept feeling what was the point, if you will. So I want to let you know. If you feel that way and if you're struggling and you think it's too late, I'm going to say it as blatant and straightforward as I can. It is never too late and I'm going to tell you why, from my own personal experiences.

Speaker 1: 3:38

I didn't get diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I had some of the other ones diagnosed a little bit earlier, but they were in my 30s, not until I was 40. I didn't even come to terms with my alcoholism until I was 40, 41. And you may say, oh my God, that's too late. But it wasn't. And again, that's just the beginning of the journey. That's a turning point. But now I've been doing this for 16, 17 years as a warrior and succeeding. But that didn't mean along the way that there were times again I felt like boy. After learning all I could. In the first couple of years there were new challenges, new experiences, because again, as we start to take charge of our life and stay in control and realize we can make change, we keep expanding and we are able to do tougher things, take on new experiences. So again this can reoccur, like it did for me. Then I get to be 45. Then I get even older and I'm thinking, oh, I've missed all this. Or I put down what I'm working on now because I didn't start it sooner. And again we run into this cycle, this cyclical nature that if we start believing it's too late to change your life, we put ourselves in that no win situation. So one of the things I like to do to get me out of this and then I'll tell you a couple more stories, but I'm going to look through the book here and grab this, because it's one of the first 10 mindset rules which are part of the warrior tools and part of the program. So I'm going to throw a little blip in. The Mental Health Warrior Program is at BruceSchutercom and it will teach you, and there's a free book there to get you started on what we're talking about here today.

Speaker 1: 5:24

To stop this nonsense that is too late to change your life. Just stop that negative thinking that says I'm sorry, I'm locked in because I have a diagnosis or something else. That is just a problem I cannot conquer. And one of those things is mindset rule number six. Now, these are a reminder of a truth that will rock your world and help you stay out of trouble and get you out of trouble. So this one says forgive yourself for not knowing the things you know now. That is a powerful statement and I'm telling you that helped me break this cycle of it's too late. It's too late to change. I've been doing this for too long.

Speaker 1: 6:02

These solutions are the only solutions I have, those poor choices. I can buy my way out of depression every time by spending more and more money that I don't have. I can drink to avoid depression, to avoid PTSD problems, to avoid those terrible experiences I went through or those emotions that just linger of failures or things. And again, I don't get a little hyped up here, but that's because I get so excited I wanna break this. It needs that energy to tell you it is never too late and you can change your life. And then when you start to change, you need to remember that rule. You need to forgive yourself, because life is a learning process and the things we're learning today, we do not judge them. Why didn't I do this 20 years ago? Why did I believe that even then? Because that will put you back in the cycle and we do not want to do that. So again, I'm standing here telling you and I have seen people do this in front of me and that means I've seen people successfully change their life at ages even older than me and at ages younger, and that's okay because we're all on our same path.

Speaker 1: 7:09

But the key is, at some point we take that power. And I'm here to tell you you can take that power by being a mental health warrior. And this is a self-help approach that is built on the other key keywords self-empowerment, because when we're empowered and we can manage our emotions. Well, you know what. We can triumph over any challenge in front of us, and I have found that to be true.

Speaker 1: 7:35

The things that stop me today, and a lot of things that put me in that cycle of saying it's too late, I can actually glide by. Today I can actually have the tools and the mindset and a new approach to get through those so that now I can face the tougher challenges. Things like we're doing right now doing talks and videos, doing talks to groups of people talking about mental health openly, doing talks to groups of people talking about mental health openly Things that to me only occurred in the movies or only in some dream in my head. But today I can get them, I can make them happen, and so can you, but only when we firmly understand and believe it is never too late or there is too many challenges to change your life. Because as warriors one of the great things, as part of our principles again we have a lot of tools and warrior weapons and things and components of being a warrior, but we also have some guiding principles, and those principles are kind of like a neat game plan that we can use every day for life and keep us on that warrior path.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Now, we've talked in the past. One of those was mental health is a strength, not a weakness. Obviously, that's number one Very key point. But there's another one and it says never let challenges tell you there are no answers, especially mental health challenges. Challenges tell you there are no answers, especially mental health challenges. And again, I'm being forceful in this video today because I want to tell you flat out if you think your mental health challenges and you listen to them and they say there's nothing you can do about them, they're wrong. They are flat out wrong because there is always something we can do and as warriors we can always find more and more tools to explore and then find the right ones for our life. Now that is a winning formula and it has worked for me. And as I grow and as I get stronger in areas, I'm going to be challenged more. But the amazing part is then I can find new tools and new warrior solutions. But again, it comes from a very important mindset that it's never too late.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Now, again, I'm going to use this because some of the challenges I faced and some of the things that you think would set me back occurred after I started becoming a warrior at age 40. Because at that point this house of cards I had been built with our finances and we had built and we had some rental properties in this kind of called the house of cards, with multiple cars and things, it fell apart and we went into bankruptcy. There was other things that I had put off or delayed taking action on that had to be dealt with. There was issues where I had to deal with and come to terms with some of the things, like being committed for psychiatric holds. I never really processed those for a weekend, but I had to deal with them and accept they were going to be part of my story. I had to learn to deal with the foolishness of encounters with people when I was drinking or the time spent going into jail for a weekend Again, nothing I'm proud of, but they're not going to go away and they're all part of our story.

Speaker 1: 10:47

But again, we have to be careful because if we don't remember, we can make change and change our life at any time and the challenges are always going to be there. We could easily fall back and, like I said, I started on this warrior journey and I got hit with some really big life challenges and those challenges and these struggles. They actually showed me an amazing thing that I could handle things I could only dream of before. And again, it was important because at that point the mindset was becoming more powerful and saying that it's never too late. I realized it's saying it not at a specific point. It's saying we continue to learn and grow and it's not too late because, as warriors, we can continue to build our power each and every day, and then we can keep learning about ourselves, we can keep learning about what we really want and we can actually take our life in a new direction, even and we can certainly take it in a direction where we're in control, not our life's challenges, but we can also take it in new directions for pursuits, professional, personal interest, different activities that we want to take part in. And that's what's exciting.

Speaker 1: 12:03

And this all stems from understanding that it is never too late and the challenges are never the answer. They never. We have answers Now, hopefully. I made that clear. I know it gets a little bit kind of mixed up there, but it's almost like we're saying two things. But we're saying, most importantly, no matter what age you're at, no matter how many challenges, there are answers to the challenges and it's never too late to take action. I think that's a little bit clearer there. So thanks for being with me as we kind of sort this out as we talk there. So thanks for being with me as we kind of sort this out as we talk. But again, isn't this how it really works when you experience emotions and once we experience life? Just like this video, I have it planned to go a certain way and it veered, off course, there a little bit, but that's where we actually learn something new and exciting and that's where I've learned to actually work differently. I've tried other careers, other paths of careers. Today even I'm writing books and I'm giving talks.

Speaker 1: 13:06

And this is from a guy who before listened to his anxiety, who would say you can barely get through a small presentation at work or a small luncheon with people because it's scary, because that's what anxiety wanted me to believe. Or the same guy who would listen to depression sent me into depression and again I would see no way out. So I'd sort of take that fatalistic viewpoint and just say, well, I might as well just drink, or I might as well just not care about things. Why go after things? You're just going to be disappointed. You can see a very negative mindset takes hold and then we relinquish that power. So, again, what I want to reassure you throughout this video is by using my examples and saying, even here today and where I'm at in life, that again we can learn from it and we can build and grow, and you can even grow faster if you have all those experiences.

Speaker 1: 14:09

So sometimes having a handful of life experiences or having years of these experiences makes for stronger motivation. Because I'll tell you, one of the things I like to do, and it's important to do, is to be aware of what occurred in the past and not sugarcoat it, not put it to rest and never talk about it, because the motivation to take action today is found in not repeating those mistakes of the past and continuing to move forward that way. And that's really exciting because it's like a double win. It's really neat because every action we take today is showing us hey, look at how different I am, look what I'm doing in a positive form and look at how I'm not falling back to those old traps or that old way of thinking where we said the challenges are there, so I have no choices. That's not how we view it today and that's not how you have to view it as a mental health warrior. So I think you get some of the excitement of why I was so jazzed and so excited to bring this message to you. It sounds so simple, but again, it's these simple turning points that we practice every day that can make life-changing events and being a warrior that life-changing actions they can make them possible.

Speaker 1: 15:29

So let's right now talk about, just in case you know, the Mental Health Warrior Program. It's at BruceHugercom. We've got books, we've got a challenge coin, we've got a free book. So there's lots of resources to get you started and I'd love you to go check those out. You'll see all the links below. The reason being is, if you're still thinking the old way, if you're still thinking it's too late or had too many challenges, go there and you can hear even more about my story, because I'm using that as proof of concept, because today I am excited about meeting challenges and today I'm actually living life and one of the goals is in living life.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I want to bring this to the people around me and to you guys, that there are ways to triumph and there are ways to triumph over mental health disorders and again, we've talked about that. We can turn them around, reframe them, use them to be our strength. So I'm going to leave you with that positive statement and I'm going to leave you with a challenge. I'd like you, if you're struggling with things, to think about taking that chance. Take a chance, and I call it that 1% chance, because I can guarantee you the path and I took this path before had 0% chance of success in telling me the challenges and listening to my challenges, where they said there are no ways out and by saying it's too late.

Speaker 1: 16:57

When I listened to that, I was really on a path of 0% success. But then I took the 1% chance 1% that this might work. Maybe that's not true. And by opening that crack in the door, all of a sudden I unlocked a whole bunch of power and I saw it wasn't 1%, but it was 100% that we can triumph over these challenges, we can find ways to manage them, we can find ways to change our life.

Speaker 1: 17:26

So now that is exciting and I want you to join me and take that 1% chance on yourself and believe, and then tomorrow you'll believe even more and, as a warrior, you'll gain power and you can get excited and you can start really living life, and together we're all going to be warriors and do that and we're going to keep talking about it, so you can keep coming back to the podcast, too, to keep that motivation going. Thanks for joining me and I appreciate you putting up with me being a little excited and making this powerful statement, because I really believe it's one of the core things we have to accept and learn. This new mindset is very powerful. You can make change at any time and you can defeat any number of challenges as a mental health worker. Thanks, and we'll talk to you more later. Bye.