Mental Health Training

4 Life Hacks for Improved Emotional Health

Did you know that experience at least one emotion nearly every moment that you are awake each day? That’s a lot to manage, but we have four life hacks that will help. When you adopt these daily habits, you will learn to become the master of your emotions in no time.

Number one, name What You are Feeling. The most important habit that can help you improve your emotional health is being able to understand your emotions. This starts by naming what you are feeling. Identifying your feelings and understanding the nuances between, say, apprehension and fear, helps you to recognize patterns, identify triggers, and determine which emotions are causing you to make which decisions.

Number two, Practice Mindfulness. Becoming more mindful allows you to pay closer attention to what is happening in the present, which enables you to be more aware of your feelings, thoughts, and physical responses to these. Mindfulness teaches you to accept and acknowledge these things rather than become overwhelmed by them. This means you are managing your emotions better, which can make you more self-aware while enhancing your ability to concentrate.

Number three, turn Negative Self-Talk Around. Self-talk is the voice inside your head that is narrating your life. When your self-talk focuses on what you did wrong, what is wrong with you, and how you need to improve, it affects your emotional health and well-being. Changing that negative self-talk into more positive affirmations is essential for improving how you feel.

Number four, become More Curious. Curiosity is a hallmark of the emotionally healthy. When you are curious, you are open to ways to keep learning and growing in your life. This leads to continuous improvement and development. When you are curious about yourself, you become more self-aware and pay more attention to your needs, as well. Asking questions of yourself and others keeps you open to new perspectives and ideas, which helps you develop better empathy, too. 

Conclusion

While the significant, grand stories are exciting to read about, and it's always interesting to find out how people got to where they are today, there are some important things to remember from tales like these:

Not everyone starts in the same place. Sure, it may be easier to take risks and do great things when you come from an upper-middle-class background, but no one knows what goes on in a person's life. You cannot see all the scars. We all have our hurdles to cross, some more than others. But that doesn't have to stop us from making our big dreams happen.

Everyone has had setbacks outside of their control – whether it was being born poor, into a dysfunctional or even abusive family, or into an era or place where talent was not appreciated enough. If you want something badly enough, if you have the passion of these now-famous people, you too can make big things happen.

How many times should we be willing to fall on our face before we give up? Just think back to the stories outlined in this eBook. If anyone of these people had given up one setback before, we wouldn’t know who they were. None of these people gave up. Did you notice that in many of the inspirational stories, once the subjects knew what they wanted to do, their lives got harder, not easier? But rather than give up because they were at a disadvantage or because they’d failed one too many times, they kept going.

We all have a small, still voice inside of us. The great people whose stories I’ve told here heard that voice and took action on it. They could have focused on the hard road they’d had, but they didn’t. They looked inside themselves and trusted that they had what it took to make their dreams come true. They had no reason to believe, in most cases. Many of them had no one who believed in them. But because they listened to their intuition and trusted it, they are the people we look up to today.

Whatever setback you’re facing, remember these simple truths.

Wherever your starting point is it doesn't matter. Whatever your past – it's merely that. Your past. It's your future that counts.

 You can change your environment and overcome some setbacks that are within your control. No, you can’t fix the economy of the world around you, or maybe not even in your zip code right now, but you can change how you view your world. Look for the opportunities. Think outside the box. Figure out what you CAN change – and then go about changing it.

 Focus on what you are grateful for, not what you don’t have yet. You won’t be able to keep on going if you concentrate on the things you lack, and others have.

·       Never, ever, ever give up. We all have a purpose for being here. Once you know what yours is, give everything you’ve got to it.

There are many more stories than what I've told above waiting out there. Every day millions of people do inspirational things. Maybe not as big and grand as some of the things you’ve read about here, but things that impact the lives of those around them.

You can be one of those successes, and you might already be someone’s hero.

It’s just a matter of going out there and showing the world who you are.

Vincent Van Gogh

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk was born in Babruysk, a city in what was then the Soviet Union, which is currently Belarus. His family moved to New York when Gary was three. He and eight others crammed into a single studio-apartment in Queens.

When he was little older, they relocated to Edison New Jersey where his father opened a liquor store, Shopper’s Discount Liquor. Gary had an immediate flair for entrepreneurship. At the age of 7, when most children played at having a lemonade stand. Gary had a franchise of lemonade stands and hired other kids to run them.

At the age of 13, with a thousand-dollar loan from his father, Gary began buying and selling trading cards, earning thousands of dollars back, proving his flair for business, and his quick mind for how to make something profitable.

Oddly enough it was his father who derailed his success. When he was 14, he was brought in to work at the liquor store for $2 per hour bagging ice. Overnight he went from earning a couple of thousand dollars a week to nearly nothing.

Not one to accept a setback, and realizing that his only way out was up, he sat down with a book about wine and learned everything about the product he was selling. Soon, he was on the sales floor, selling the bottles and by the time he was 22, he’d taken over the family business that was now making a couple of million dollars each year.

In the mid-1990s, Gary took a long look at the emerging internet technology and began thinking how to apply that to the business best. He created one of the first e-commerce sites and renamed the liquor store The Wine Library. He did this despite repeatedly being told that the venture would fail and no one would buy wine over the internet.

Furthermore, in 2006, Gary started a VLOG or Video Blog that covered wine topics. Every day with a different podcast, he leverages another marketing method that again left the naysayers looking down their noses at him.

They did not look down on him for long. By then he’d taken the $3 million per year company and created a $60 Million per year e-commerce giant.

In 2009, Gary felt that he’d proven his point and left the wine industry to capitalize on the knowledge he’d gained from his experiences and created VaynerMedia, a digital ad agency with this brother, AJ. Among his clients are PepsiCo, General Electric, and Anheuser-Busch. As of 2016, VaynerMedia became a $100 million agency.

Since then, he’s bought PureWow, a media company, invested in Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, and other social media outlets.

Gary himself is worth more than $160 million, quite the change from the poor kid in an overcrowded apartment.

Gary is still very active as a lecturer and entrepreneur. He’s started companies representing professional sports figures and been part of a reality TV show assessing application programmers looking for investors. He also connects with his fans, answering questions on the #AskGaryVee show, where he gives inspiration to the world through a variety of social media outlets.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a prime example of someone who had early success. But someone who didn't understand what Gary was doing forced him onto a different path. Rather than being derailed, Gary went on to find success where he was. He knew where he wanted to be and proved that we don't have to be ruled by or even defined by our setbacks, nor should we listen when told something that's new must by definition fail.

All that makes Gary Vaynerchuk one of the grittier inspirational figures today.

Lucille Ball

Born in August of 1911, Lucille was the daughter of an electrician Henry Ball who died from typhoid fever when Lucille was three years old. At that time her mother was pregnant with Lucille’s brother Fred. She would later state that it was this that formed her first real and significant memory.

Her mother then went on to marry Ed Peterson, who was not particularly fond of children. While Fred was packed off to live with Lucille’s mother’s parents, Lucille went to live with Ed’s mother, a grim and stern woman who had little money to spare for a granddaughter not genetically hers.

At the age of 11, she and her brother returned to Jamestown NY to live with her mother and Ed Peterson. By now, Lucille had dreams of the spotlight and convinced her mother to enroll her in a drama school. Within a year, she was kicked out. The girl was said to be too nervous and tongue-tied to perform. The school wrote to her mother saying that Lucille was wasting not just her time but the school’s time, as she was too shy to try.

Undaunted, and certainly not ready to give up that easily, Lucille began working as a model under the name of Dianne Belmont, first for clothing designer Hattie Carnegie and then for Chesterfield cigarettes.

In the 1930s, Lucille moved to LA and proved she was no shy flower when she became one of 12 “Goldwyn Girls” promoting Eddie Cantor’s Roman Scandals. She found bit parts and small roles, and in the 40s earned a reputation as “The Queen of B Movies.” Two of these, Dance Girl, Dance, and Too Many Girls introduced her to a young man named Desi Arnaz. The two fell in love and soon married.

As the 40s came to an end, Lucille faced a dead-end career. Desi encouraged her to try broadcasting, and she landed the role with Desi in a radio comedy My Favorite Husband. CBS wanted a similar show but did not want Desi. Lucille refused and walked away from the contract rather than work without him.

Ready to find success on her terms, she instead turned the show into a vaudeville show, and they took it on the road. It was a huge success, and CBS returned with a contract for the pair of them.

Lucille again exerted her independence when she stated she wanted the show shot on film, much more expensive than the standard kinescope. To procure that, she and Desi agreed to take a pay cut on the provision that they retained the rights to the show. That saw the creation of Desilu productions that when went on to manage the show.

I love Lucy ran for six seasons, four of them in the number one slot. Playing the wild, zany Lucy proved to the world in general that whatever shyness she’d felt as a child was long past. Her offbeat humor and willingness to put herself out there in crazy situations proved that she was a comedienne worthy of note. During the episode where little Ricky was born, they captured a 71.1 rating, far exceeding even President Eisenhower’s inauguration.

Lucille and Desi divorced, and Lucille bought his share of Desilu, making her the first woman to head a major television studio. Under the Desilu banner, they created such shows as Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, Mission Impossible, Mannix, The Untouchables, and others.

While Lucille Ball might not have looked like much as a child and had been told time and again that she was not wanted (first by her mother, and again by the school where she wanted to train), she proved herself worthy, far beyond the expectations of those around her. Where she had been told by the world to give up, she instead thrived and built a career and a name for herself, with a body of work that is still recognized years after her death. Never did she let rejection get her down, nor did she allow the world around her to define her. Lucille Ball was merely …herself.

And that was quite enough. 

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Tyler Perry

Emmitt Perry was a mean father to have. Tyler Perry was born in 1969 and learned fast that his father, a carpenter, had a stock answer to everything – if he didn't like what you were doing, he'd "beat it out of you." Living with a man like that was difficult at best – to the point where Tyler twice attempted suicide to remove himself from his father’s influence. So desperate was he to escape his father's influence, that at the age of 16 he legally changed his name from Emmitt Perry Jr. to Tyler Perry, to distance himself from the man.

But his father wasn’t the only one to hurt young Tyler. Four people had molested him before the age of 10, and he later discovered that at this time, his father had molested his friend. It was with some relief that he found out years later Emmitt Sr. was not his biological father.

Though he did not complete high school, Tyler did earn a GED credit. But it was hard to find direction in his life after such a rough beginning. In his 20s, he was still adrift and looking for something to hold on to after suffering his childhood trauma. An episode of Oprah Winfrey influenced him greatly when a guest of the show described the therapeutic catharsis that writing can have on the soul. Thinking that writing sounded like good therapy, Tyler took up writing as a career and began a series of letters to himself that eventually became I know I’ve Been Changed.

In 1992, while living in Atlanta, Tyler put his life savings, $12,000.00 into producing the play. It bombed. The first run of the musical ran one weekend to a total of 32 audience members. Tyler didn’t give up though. For the next six years, he rewrote and re-tooled the play, to a continued series of failures. He kept working odd jobs, sleeping in his car, homeless, and still working on the production.

The seventh run hit a chord with audiences and slowly began gaining a cult audience. Since then Forbes magazine estimates that he’d sold more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in recordings of the show and another $20 million in related merchandising.

From there, Tyler raised $5.5 million to finance a movie: Diary of a Mad Black Woman. That movie made a profit of nearly $50 Million. Afterward, he went on to create many more and his character, Madea, has become an iconic comic staple of movies.

It took stamina and a belief in his dreams and a certain amount of stubbornness to go from an abused kid to the man Forbes called the highest-earning man in the entertainment industry in 2011. Tyler Perry is an example of someone who was able to take the rough circumstances of his origins and turn his entire life around to fulfil his dreams beyond his wildest expectations.

The coolest thing?

Tyler has never forgotten what it is to struggle, and he’s still known today for being incredibly generous to those in need. 

Bethany Hamilton

Born in 1990 in Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany, like many girls in Hawaii, began surfing at an early age. But right from the start, Bethany was a natural talent. She began competing at the age of 8, and before she was 10, she’d received corporate sponsorship. After that, the girl was unstoppable. Before she was even a teenager, she was winning competitions against much more experienced competitors.

One would think that is her success story right there. After all, although she spent hours practicing, she was succeeding from a young age. What could go wrong at this point?

Her problems came from the last place she expected – from just below the surface of the very ocean she loved so much. At the age of 13, while Bethan was lying on her surfboard, her left arm dangling in the water, a tiger shark came up and took her left arm just below the shoulder. Her life had changed in an instant. The people she was with towed her to shore where her father improvised a tourniquet and rushed her to the closest medical facility. By the time she arrived, she’d lost over 60% of her blood.

When news of this attack broke out, a fisherman showed pictures to investigators of a shark he'd caught and killed a mile from the attack site. He said the shark had surfboard shards in its mouth. The fact that he had captured and killed the shark responsible for the attack was later confirmed.

Bethany spent some weeks in the hospital. By the time she came home, she was impatient. As soon as she was allowed to go, Bethany was back on the water, teaching herself to surf one-armed. There was no way something so small as a shark was going to take from her the very thing she loved best.

At first, she needed a thicker, longer board, but Bethany was soon competing again with standard short, lightweight boards. She came in first place at the NSSA National in Australia and came in first again the next year in the US.

Bethany’s story is far from over. Since then she has grown up and married. Now she has a boy of her own, but she is still competing all over the world.

Losing an arm to the teeth of a shark would convince most people to stay out of the water entirely, but Bethany’s passion and drive overshadowed her experience. She didn’t give up on her passion. Hers is a story of someone who had early success, lost it, and then had to start over again against impossible odds. What is impressive, is that she found a way not only to take back her passion but her championship status all over again. Bethany Hamilton never gave up – even when it would have been easier to do just that. How inspiring is that?

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Theodor Geisel

Theodor "Ted" Geisel might have been born to a particular privilege. But starting comfortably in life doesn't mean you won't have difficulty in realizing your dreams.

Having grown up in Springfield Massachusetts, Ted attended college at Dartmouth and worked on a college paper called Jack-o-Lantern where he eventually became the editor-in-chief. However, he was caught drinking gin with friends in his room. As prohibition was in full force at that time, school officials demanded he must cease all extracurricular activities, including the paper. But since writing was his passion, Ted found a way to continue to serve on the paper; he merely signed his work with his mother's maiden name and his middle name: Seuss.

After Dartmouth, he went to Oxford to pursue a degree as an English teacher. There he met Helen Palmer who encouraged him to go in a completely different direction: drawing. Sadly, the world wasn’t quite ready for his vibrant and innovative drawing style and after several rejections, he’d made only a single sale to the Saturday Evening Post for $25. 

Not daunted by the setbacks, he persisted in sending his portfolio everywhere he could. The reward eventually came with the offer of a job as a writer and illustrator at a humor magazine called Judge. Feeling like he’d ‘made it,’ he quickly married Helen and settled down in New York, eventually signing his work for Judge as being by “Dr. Seuss.”

But life wasn’t easy. The world changed, and suddenly the Great Depression was upon them. At a time when poverty was becoming the rule of the day, Ted struggled to stay afloat through his artwork. But amazingly, he was able to support himself and his wife through the Great Depression with his artwork and stories alone. He managed to do so well that he was able to live comfortably, at a time when few did.

Later, while on a ship he was inspired by the rhythm of the ship’s engine to write a children’s book called 'And to Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street.' It was the story of a young boy who dreams up an elaborate fantasy of comings and goings he’d seen (at least in his mind).

It was the start of the landmark work that would define his career forever after. The book was rejected though, not just once, but dozens of times. He’d already struggled hard to make a living by his craft. But, the very thing he’d evolved into as a writer was not something the public wanted. Ted was on the way home one day to burn the book in frustration. He intended to give up on children’s literature entirely. If not for a chance meeting with an old college acquaintance from the Jack-o-Lantern days, that book would no longer exist.

This meeting would go down in history as the start of not only a new career but a change in how people viewed children's literature. Vanguard Press published the book, and it was to become the first of many. Four more books were written and released before America entered WWII, with approximately sixty more books following in the years to come.

Children’s books would never be the same.

Theodor Geisel is an example of a life lived without compromise. When told he couldn't live by his art, he found a way to make it happen, despite constant rejection. The fact that Theodor succeeded in a time when few did, only goes to show his tenacity, even when the world around him was one where success ought not to have happened. He was the very embodiment of what it is to stay true to yourself, despite criticism. Indeed, he is a person worthy of being thought of as inspiring.

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester “Sly” Stallone was born in Hell’s kitchen. During birth, his mother suffered from complications, and his birth was “assisted” with the use of forceps. The forceps accidentally severed a nerve, causing partial paralysis in his face.

On the left side of his face, part of his lip, tongue, and chin were paralyzed, giving him the trademark snarling look and giving him the unique style of speech, starting him out with what many would consider a handicap to overcome – and he wasn’t even a day old yet!

Unfortunately, things didn’t get a whole lot better from there. He and his brother endured their parent’s hostile marriage and subsequent divorce. His father moved the family to D.C. when Sly was 5. He remained there with his father after the divorce. The adjustment was difficult. During this time, he was expelled from several schools and suffered severe depression and emotional distress.

He eventually moved, going to live with his mother and her new husband. He wound up attending a high school for “troubled youth” in Philadelphia. Afterward, he spent two years in Switzerland and returned to go to college in Florida. Restless, and feeling like he didn't fit in anywhere he went, he eventually returned to New York to pursue acting.

Stallone didn’t get very far. Acting jobs were few and far between, especially for someone often described as "talking funny." While trying to get his foot in the door, he worked in many other, less glamorous jobs, such as cleaning lion cages at the zoo, ushering at a movie theatre, among others. Life looked pretty bleak.

Down to no money at all and sleeping in a bus station in New Jersey, he spotted a flier looking for actors, leading him to work in a porn movie called A Party at Kitty and Studs. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the sort of film you’d brag about being in, but it was a foot in the door. Later, a part in a small independent movie called Lords of Flatbush gave him a better role, but the work still didn’t pay the bills. At one point, money was so tight that he had to sell his dog for $25. He was going nowhere fast.

During this period, he had an idea for a screenplay about at two-bit thug that dreams of being a professional prizefighter. In three days, he had the script for Rocky wrote out longhand. He began to shop it around. It received a lot of attention with many interested in taking it on but with a single condition: he was not to be a part of it. The studios wanted the script; they didn't want him.

To Stallone, this wasn't good enough. He believed in the story – but he also thought he could play the lead. At one time, he was offered $350,000.00 for the script, with the same caveat: They wanted Redford or someone with a recognizable name to play the part of the fighter. Still, Stallone refused. Acting was his passion. He held off, refusing to budge until he got the green light from two producers who gave him $25,000 for the script and a percentage of whatever the film made.

Rocky cost $1,000,000.00 to make, a paltry sum for a movie. But Stallone’s hunch paid off. The domestic box office was $117,000,000.00. It then went on to beat out films such as Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men, and Network to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

He’d finally made it. The best part of the story? With his earnings, Stallone spent thousands of dollars to track down and buy back his dog. They have never parted again.

Despite being born in such a way as to give him a disability, despite continued failure and being told that there was no way he could ever be an actor, Sylvester Stallone never gave up. He proved that “speaking funny” could become an asset. And that by sticking to what he knew was right, would payout in the end.

So it was, Sylvester Stallone pursued his dream, stuck to his vision and came out a champ.

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J.K. Rowling

Twenty years ago you never heard of her, though her creation, on the other hand, you might have if you had kids who liked to read. Now, even if you’ve never read a book, seen a movie or spent a moment in the toy aisle you’ve probably still heard of her creation – Harry Potter.

When Joanne Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she was inspired to write a story about a character named Harry Potter, a story, she started slowly and in secret. When her mother died, it was without knowing that her daughter was even working on a book – something she regretted so much that death became a major theme of the entire series.

Regardless of the somewhat dark storyline (or maybe because of?) Harry Potter series has sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling series in history. These books have also been the basis for a movie franchise and countless toys.

But life wasn’t easy for the award-winning author. At age 17, she was living with her mother who had Multiple Sclerosis and her somewhat estranged father who rarely spoke to his daughter.

She applied for entrance to Oxford but failed to be accepted. Instead, she attended the University of Exeter. In 1990, at the age of 25, while on a train, Harry Potter and his world entered her mind.

She started writing in secret, whenever she had a free moment, but shortly after, her mother died from MS, and she moved to Portugal to teach English. There she met a man, married, got pregnant with her first child, a girl.           

The marriage for J.K Rowling was not a happy one. Eventually, the stress of living in that abusive marriage became enough to drive her away. For a time, she remembers living in absolute poverty – not quite homeless, but not much better than that. Eventually, she moved to Edinburgh to live with her sister.

She later recalled that she considered herself a failure.

Divorced, a single mother, and Harry Potter merely three chapters along, she was diagnosed with clinical depression and suicidal tendencies. It took another two years for her to finish Harry Potter. She tried to sell the book for the next year but failed to find a buyer, with all 12 major publishers rejected her.

But thankfully she persisted. In fighting to finish the book, she also found herself. Another year along and a small publisher called Bloomsbury took the book and gave an advance of 1500 pounds.

That was the result of one of her first fans, the owner’s daughter, who fell in love with the story. Her hard work had paid off, and she’d been able to touch someone with her story 

From there success followed. By 2004, J.K. Rowling was the first person to become a billionaire through writing books.

J. K. Rowling is considered today one of the most successful people in the entire world. But none of that would have happened if she'd allowed herself to be derailed back when she'd married badly and lost who she was. Like many abused women before her, she'd come to believe the negative messages about herself, to the point where she wanted to give up entirely.

Depressed and suicidal, how many other women's stories tragically end there?

But J. K. Rowling fought to get free of both her past and the mental illness that tried so hard to claim her. Through her writing, and a lot of hard work, she not only found whom she was always meant to be – but the success she was capable of achieving.

Today there isn't a person alive who would call her a failure – something that could never have happened if she hadn't first recognized the successful person she could become – and then acted on it. And because of that, the darkness could not claim her. 

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