Mental Health is Your Superpower and Path to Triumph: 3 Ways to Own It, Use It, (and Wear the Cape!)

Your Mental Health is a your Superpower! Join me, Bruce Schutter, as I share my journey through the turbulent waters of bipolar disorder, anxiety, alcoholism, and PTSD. Learn how I used my superpower (Mental Health) to become a Mental Health Warrior, reclaim control over my life and triumph over my life's challenges. become a Mental Health Warrior. This episode unpacks the three ways your superpower can shape your lives and how mastering your emotions can lead to immense personal growth and triumph.

Tune in to discover actionable strategies for empowering your inner Mental Health Warrior. Find out how creating your personal "secret fortress" can offer a sanctuary for reflection and recharging, much like a superhero's hideout. We discuss the transformative power of sharing our emotions with friends, family, or even pets, to gain new perspectives and deepen our understanding. As we face life’s increasing challenges, these techniques will help you take control of your present and build a more fulfilling future. Get ready to unlock the hidden potential of your mental health. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing Mental Health as Superpower
• 8:04 Empowering Your Mental Health Warrior

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everybody, bruce Shooter here with the Mental Health Warrior Program podcast, no Surrender. Now, today, I want to talk about how mental health is your superpower and I want you to own it. I want you to use it and, by all means, I want you to wear the cape each and every day, because we know every good superhero seems to have a cape that announces they have that superpower and we can do the same. Now let's jump into this and we're going to talk about three benefits you get and three ways you can get those benefits in your life each and every day by using mental health as your superpower. Now I want to jump back though, before we get started here, just in case you're wondering, and maybe you disagree with me, and that's okay right now, because I think you'll see that mental health and you'll come to the conclusion that mental health is your superpower, just like I had to do, because, again, sometimes we can be hard-headed, and I certainly was for a long time. Now I have challenges such as bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, alcoholism where I tried to drink away and hide from my emotions and PTSD from my time as an EMT with a local rescue squad, from the things and the experiences I went through. Now, that's a lot of challenges and unfortunately, or fortunately, they were centered around emotions, but unfortunately I didn't take action on that. I didn't know how to handle my emotions, I didn't know how to process them and I certainly almost really wanted to just avoid those tough emotions because I didn't want to deal with them. I thought I could just weave my way through them and get through the day. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize I was doing was I was relinquishing my power of my life to those challenges. Each day I was giving them more and more power. Now, on the outside I was making progress and along my life I kept making progress and getting jobs and moving forward in life. And on the outside you might say, boy seems like he's in control. But I wasn't. I was actually giving up more and more control to these challenges as the years went by and after 20 years of these challenges basically, and after 20 years of these challenges basically eventually controlling my days, controlling my life, I got to a point where I felt so powerless and certainly didn't see a way out of those challenges or past them, that I wanted to end it all and I tried to. Now, luckily, I got a second chance, and it was at that point I set out and I finally realized that the very thing that had caused me to feel powerless was the answer mental health, because it has that much power in our life, and that's what's exciting, because that means you and I can never lose this superpower. Now we may avoid it, and you may be doing. What I did for many years is not tapping into that superpower. Now we may avoid it and you may be doing. What I did for many years is not tapping into that superpower, but I'm here to tell you and this is why I'm so excited is at any point, you can get back, resurrect that superpower, bring it back into your life, and then you can do some amazing things. You can triumph over your challenges that you have in life, and these could be life challenges as well as mental health challenges. You can also handle new challenges and you'll be able to build that future you really want, and those things can all come true. And the path to doing that which I created for myself, but also for everyone else, and where we can tap into that power, is to become a mental health warrior.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Yes, I'm sure you guessed it. If you're watching the video. You see, I'm wearing it on my shirt, so it wasn't much of a surprise. You're listening to the audio. Obviously. You know the name of the show too, so probably not a big surprise.

Speaker 1: 4:00

But the neat part and the surprise today is we have this superpower that we can never lose. The only question is are we going to take action on it and use it each day? And I'm here to help you start to take action and tap into that power of mental health being your superpower, into that power of mental health being your superpower. So let's jump into some of these things because, like any good superpower, we want to apply it now. And I know again, just like myself, we get impatient when we face a lot of challenges. So the answer is how can I solve them? How can I solve them Now? We also know these challenges aren't going away and my challenge is going to be with me. They're lifelong challenges, but the trick is I have learned to manage them, managing my emotions, which gives me back the power to have that control over my life, and I know that's the difference and that's what can make the difference in your life. So let's jump into what we can do with our mental health warrior superpower. Now, the first thing we can do with this superpower is we recognize, like I said, emotions are so powerful.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Now, I've asked this question many times. I ask it to a lot of people but is there anything in life that doesn't involve emotions? And I ask that because I want you to think this through, while we're sitting here for just a couple seconds and saying, well, what about those things I have? They seem to bring me a lot of happiness. Or what about my job? Or what about the house I have? Or what about the cars? Yes, those things can all be important, but is there anything you can do with them, or any type of times you use them where you're not involving emotions? And the answer is no.

Speaker 1: 5:44

Emotions are interwoven into everything we do, Because if we're going to have some successes with our job, or maybe we take that car, go on a trip, we need the emotions in order to experience it. We need the tough emotions to be able to handle the challenges that come with taking the trip. So, again, we get the good, the bad, the in-between, but all those emotions are what make every experience in life and what really makes life worth living. So, again, those are just little inklings into how much power we have with mental health and how powerful it is. And again, as warriors, the first thing we want to do is we want to be able to triumph each and every day.

Speaker 1: 6:29

Now, I had mentioned I have all these challenges, so each day I'm faced with. How do I manage these challenges and how do I triumph over them each day? Because that's important, because what I'm doing is I'm not just getting through the day anymore, and that's really what I was doing before. I was just getting through the day trying to just weave my way and avoid every emotion dealing with anything, and I thought that would somehow magically get me somewhere. Of course it didn't, and today I take a different approach.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So the first thing you can do with your superpower and a way to unlock it is to each day I want you to give yourself and build in some time to process your emotions. Yes, I know that may initially sound like not a lot of fun and you may also think that doesn't sound very superpower-ish, but what I want you to think about is setting aside a little bit of time. It can be just five minutes, it could be 15 minutes time where you are not distracted and you can process through the emotions you went through. Now, if you're going to do it at the end of the day, you might want to set aside that 15 minutes and you can run through the day you went through. Now, if you're going to do it at the end of the day, you might want to set aside that 15 minutes and you can run through the day in your head. You can see what you learned, you can see what you accomplished. We can see where we struggled and all of those pieces. They are the key to triumphing over your challenges, because as we learn to see one what works, we can put that in our warrior toolkit and then we'll be prepared the next time it occurs, if we can process the emotions.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Let's say, a couple times throughout the day my anxiety ramped up because I had some challenges, or maybe it started to tell me I didn't do a very good job when I interacted with people. Well, I can sit back and see was that true? And if it was, how can I do better tomorrow? Again? If it wasn't true because I actually did a good job and I interacted I had a lot of fun meeting some new people today then I can see the win. I think you see where I'm going here this time.

Speaker 1: 8:35

To process emotions is what we are doing to allow ourselves to celebrate the wins, to see where we struggle. We are learning to work with and ally with, our emotions and we're learning from them, and they are giving us that power. They're giving us the power to unlock our superpower mental health by giving ourselves time throughout the day. Now here's my suggestion on that the best way you can do this is to simply find a little place for your secret fortress. I mean, any good superhero has their place they go home to in order to process things or to feel safe, and you can do that too. So let's say you wanted to be like Aquaman. You could go down under the water to your secret cave, or your Superman. I believe it was called the actual place of silence. I can't remember the name, of course, now, but it doesn't matter. The idea is, find a little spot where you can go in for your secret fortress to process your emotions. It could be sitting outside on your porch, taking a little time, a little music playing, just to give yourself that 15 minutes to run through the day and the day's emotions. I can guarantee you, it will make you feel better, it will give you that power and it will get you excited to face the challenges for tomorrow, because each time we do this, like I said, we are learning and building, which brings us to point two.

Speaker 1: 10:04

The second part of our superpower is we can handle increasing new challenges each day Because, again, we're not learning to work on and manage our emotions so we can sit still and go nowhere. We're not learning how we can interact with people in my case, dealing with anxiety and now wanting to meet people. Well, that's good, but I don't want to just meet people on a Tuesday, I want to meet them every day, which means I'm going to face more and more situations that will challenge me. Here's the best part with the second part of our mental health warrior superpower is we can handle increasing new and new, increasing new and new challenges. We say that again multiple times, as I just said, because we are going to be moving forward each time and challenging ourselves. And again, if you make mistakes like I just did, and maybe stumble a bit again, in the past I would have run screaming from the room and my anxiety would have had me in knots for days because I made a mistake, but as we go through challenges, we are going to learn to work through those things. So much like.

Speaker 1: 11:17

For step one, we have our secret fortress where we can process our emotions. For number two, where we're going to handle these new, increasing challenges, we're going to use mindset, rule number three, which says talk about it. Yes, that dreaded word. I want you to learn to talk about your emotions and this is a perfect opportunity because it will strengthen you and build that superpower. So, in my case, what I do is I talk it through with a friend, a family member. Yes, sometimes I even talk it through with the cat. Yes, I'll just bring it up. And again, it's almost like a rhetorical question. We know the answers, but we need to say it out loud. It becomes more real and it's simply another way to process through your emotions and to also make plans and see what works, filling our warrior tool belt with the tools so we can keep handling those new challenges.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Now this is where it gets really exciting, because our superpowers are starting to come together and, yes, even talking with the cat, as I mentioned, talking out loud is important because, again, talking to anybody and getting it out loud makes it real. So now we have started to process our emotions and we are building, going after new challenges Very exciting as we move forward on our warrior path and you're using mindset rule three, talking about it to help you deal with the anxiety, the stress, the challenges themselves, what comes with them, and being able to find your warrior solutions. Now the third part, where it really gets exciting is we are going to be able to build the future you really want. And I want to focus on those last couple words because a warrior is not just building any future. You are building the one where you're in control and you're setting the direction, which means you can't lose. That's really over the top exciting and powerful because with this new warrior power as our superpower, we can choose let's use the analogy of the superhero we can choose to fly to the mountains.

Speaker 1: 13:30

We can choose to dive to the depths of the ocean. We can choose to go into outer space. We can do all those things Now, within reason, as a mental health warrior, we can choose to take our life in the direction we want to go. We can make sure we want to take our job and go after those personal or professional pursuits in the direction we want to go. We can make sure we want to take our job and go after those personal or professional pursuits. In the ones we're interested in. We can learn to handle the challenges of moving forward and interacting more with people as we move forward in a job, in a personal place, moving forward and getting to know a new area. We can move and move to areas we want to be in. All things we can do as a mental health warrior in building that new future.

Speaker 1: 14:12

And that is the third piece of how we use our superpower. And you do that by remembering here we go, we're going to stay in today. That's right. Focus on today and today's actions, today's emotions. And yes, as you can see, I'm kind of bringing you back to what we started with in step one of building this superpower of mental health being our superpower and warriors using mental health as our superpower and running through that, we first, in our fortress of solitude or our secret fortress, we learn to process our emotion each day, maybe a couple times a day, so we get comfortable with them, learn from them, and then we use that power and apply it each day where we go and triumph over our challenges by again, managing whatever life throws at us. And we're doing that with mindset rule three. We're talking about it and making it real and taking action.

Speaker 1: 15:09

And the third piece is each day. I want you to remember that what you do today and what you're doing today is building your tomorrow and you're in control. And I emphasize that a lot because before, just like me, when mental health challenges run your life, we are not in control and they start sending us in whichever direction we want, not a good situation, but today we are in control and we are building, step by step, each day. Build that block for tomorrow and we're building the future we really want. Now. That's how I see us using our Mental Health Warrior Superpower three steps you can apply today. Hope you're excited to start using it Again. I hope you're excited to become a Mental Health Warrior.

Speaker 1: 15:55

And if you're just learning about this, remember you can go out to BruceSchutercom. You can learn all about the Mental Health Warrior program there and you can see all the resources we have. So not only do we have this podcast, there's a free book to get you started when you sign up for our newsletter. There's also plenty of other podcast episodes you can watch and then you can see the nine books that will outline various ways in lifestyle mindset changes you can make on this new self-help approach of being a mental health warrior. Where we take charge of our mental health, we triumph over our challenges. And let's not forget that third one build the life we really want. That is exciting, so please go check out all the resources and I hope to see you there. Hope you're excited to be a mental health warrior and remember, just like I said at the beginning, start wearing that cape each and every day. Well, maybe don't wear it to work, but you can wear it around the house. Sounds good. Bruce is signing out. We'll talk to you more later. Bye.