In this episode, Nick talks about how imperative it is for us to actually start talking about our mental health. Not just with other people but, first and foremost, with ourselves.

What to listen for:

“I’ve spent a lot of time just living in my head. Can you relate? Can you feel what that feels like to just live in your head and to worry?”

“Everybody has some mental health situations, some things to go through. We have judgments we place on ourselves. We have situations that happen every single day where we interpret the ways that things are happening to us. We feel like our minds are attacking us or we think too much. We have anxiety that comes from things that maybe we really don’t need to have anxiety from, but we do.”

“It’s time that we actually start talking to ourselves about mental health. It’s time that we stop just accepting the noise of social media and actually having these conversations. In previous episodes, again, I’ve talked about how you can’t just manage your mindset. You have to understand the context and the traumas and the situations that have happened to lead you to be who you are today.“

About Nick McGowan

I’m Nick McGowan, entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose.

As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous life, by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own.

Throughout my career, I’ve built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I’m leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do.

I’m also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial, error, and breakthroughs so you can fast-track your growth, and master your mindset on your pursuit toward self-mastery. 

With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I’ve mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, or a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet.

So, what message are you here to share?!

Resources:

Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Send Nick an email or schedule a time to discuss your podcast today!

[email protected]

Thank you for listening!

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

00:05

Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today I wanna talk about us all talking about our mental health. Over the course of my life, I’ve spent a lot of time just living in my head. Can you relate? Can you feel what that feels like to just live in your head and to worry?

00:31

and to interpret the way that people are looking at you or thinking about you and how they’re judging you. And think about the different times that you’ve had really tough situations that have happened. It’s time that we talk about our mental health. Now there are a lot of people that talk about mental health. They talk about it and they talk about talking about it. But this is an episode for you.

00:59

And this is going to be a relatively quick episode to be able to encourage you to just have the fucking conversation with somebody.

01:08

No matter what you’re going through, no matter where you’ve been at in life, no matter what situations happen to you, for you, around you, through you, etc., how we handle our mental health can really affect everything else that we go through. You may have listened to the previous episodes where I’ve talked about the traumas affecting the way that we manage our mindset and how traumas affect us, not only in our bodies but in our minds.

01:37

talk with somebody about your mental health.

01:42

Talk to somebody that you either know and trust or somebody like a professional or reach out to me, a professional, who can walk you through the ways that I’ve learned how to manage my mental health situations and the things that I understand that tie into it like trauma, past experiences, and having the willingness to be able to be open about your mental health.

02:08

There are some people that say, I don’t have any mental health problems. I don’t have any at all. I’m just gonna step out and say, that’s fucking bullshit.

02:17

Everybody has some mental health situations, some things to go through. We have judgments we place on ourselves. We have situations that happen every single day where we interpret the ways that things are happening to us. We feel like our minds are attacking us or we think too much. We have anxiety that comes from things that maybe we really don’t need to have anxiety from, but we do.

02:46

But that’ll typically come from traumas, and that’ll come from previous experiences. It’s not always that experience right then and there. It’s something that happened before. I had a situation with a friend of mine years ago who didn’t talk with people, and it led him to a suicide attempt. Thankfully, he was able to get help, and he’s still with us today. But it led him to addictions. And those addictions…

03:14

removed his motor skills and made his traumas even worse. It made his mental health even worse and got him to a point where he felt so hopeless that he felt the only thing he could do was remove himself from the existence that we all have. And that’s sad. I’ve been there. I’ve had suicide attempts.

03:36

I haven’t been able to manage my mindset. I haven’t been able to manage my mental health. And it took me having conversations with people. It also took me having conversations with myself and being open enough to be able to talk about my mental health.

03:51

So with this episode, it’s not just about talking with other people about your mental health, it’s you being open to talking to yourself about it. So I always ask the question to all of my guests, how did you manage your mindset? How did you handle this situation? How did you manage your mindset? How does that tie into your daily work? And how do you manage your self-discipline and your self-mastery and your pursuit to self-mastery, which is ultimately just discipline? A lot of it.

04:21

doesn’t start from, but it incorporates your mental health and your mental well-being. If you’re in a really, really bad spot and you’re having a shitty day or shitty week or shitty experience with things, it’s going to taint the way that you look at other things. And it doesn’t have to.

04:39

Now I’m not trying to say that on a very surfacey or bypassy level. It just straight up doesn’t fucking have to. It doesn’t have to ruin you. It doesn’t have to ruin your situation. Doesn’t have to ruin your day, your life, or anything. But it takes you being open and willing to have conversations, tough conversations. Starting with yourself and then being able to open up outside of yourself.

05:02

So it’s time that we actually start talking to ourselves about mental health. It’s time that we stop just accepting the noise of social media and actually having these conversations. On previous episodes, again, I’ve talked about how you can’t just manage your mindset. You have to understand the context and the traumas and the situations that have happened to lead you to be who you are today. This is an encouragement for you to have those open conversations.

05:32

with yourself even, when you can step outside of yourself in that calm moment, just a moment of just being calm at the end of the day or in the middle of the day and just saying, why do I feel this way? Why am I having these tough situations happen?

05:51

Why am I having these experiences that happen over and over? Why am I feeling so irritated, even just irritable throughout the day? And really starting to ask yourself the questions that have the deeper conversations about your mental health and understanding where it’s all coming from. And it’s not a matter of…

06:13

you being judged by anybody else or you judging yourself. It’s a matter of just being open to having the conversations. So again, this is really just an encouragement for you to start having the conversations. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, what the fuck, dude, I have these conversations and it still sucks. I get it. I absolutely get it. There are times where I feel that way. There are a lot of times where I felt like this doesn’t make any fucking sense to me. And it might be something

06:42

you need to change up a little bit, just to pivot a little bit.

06:46

There are certain things that work for people like therapy might be great for some people and terrible for others Acupressure may be great for some people and terrible for others process work may work on certain people and not really work for other people It may be a mixture of all of it. It may be different therapies to go through and Understanding back to the core of things how did you get to this point? But the first step of that is at least being open to having these conversations

07:16

many of these episodes or this is your very first one, understand that having the openness and the willingness to be able to have conversations about the tough shit that you’re going through doesn’t make you less of a man or less of a woman or less of anything you identify with. It makes you more of a human.

07:40

and you get to be in control of what you go through and how you go through it and how you handle it. But it’s a matter of being open and willing to having those conversations. So please take this as an encouragement. Reach out to somebody, talk to somebody, reach out to me, talk with me, talk to somebody on our team. Check out what we’re doing and the programs that we have that can work through this with you. But please.

08:07

Please have these conversations or at least start down the path of having the conversations. And as you start to move down that path, understand that there may be things that get in your way. I’ll give you an example. Several years ago.

08:22

I knew that I needed to get into therapy again. One of the things that I knew I needed to do was sit in a room with somebody with four walls and a door behind them, knowing that I couldn’t get the fuck out because I needed to have a conversation with somebody about some really deep stuff I was going through and stuff that I’d already gone through. It took me about a year.

08:41

to actually get a therapist. I remember at one point somebody was like, oh, we don’t have that person available for another six or seven months, but we have this other person. And I just said to him, fine, just give me a human that I can talk to in a room. And I thought about that afterwards and was like, what the fuck, that sucks to get to that point where you’re like, I just fucking want a human. Just give me somebody to talk to. But even to start at that point and to work through the months and the year to be able to get to that point.

09:11

It can be really difficult to do that, but I encourage you to have those conversations be open and willing to be raw and honest and just have the conversation and at least start with that conversation. I’m gonna let you in on a little bit of a secret, sort of pre-production sort of secret in a sense. Every guest that comes on, every single one of them, I tell them…

09:36

The episode that we’re doing isn’t for the masses of people that listen to this show. It’s for that one person. That one person that’s listening and going, fuck you guys, or fuck you people, you girls or whatever. Fuck you. I’ve heard all this stuff. I don’t want to hear this anymore. I know what this stuff’s about.

09:55

But they get to the point by listening to the episode because there’s something that intrigued them and something that tied them in with either myself or the guest that they go, you know what? I need to have a conversation with somebody. I at least need to talk about this. I at least need to start and have an open dialogue with somebody about this thing. And I tell the guest, as long as we do that and we get to that one person, it doesn’t matter if nobody else listens to the episode because that one person is what we’re aiming for.

10:25

We’re trying to help as many people as we can. We really wanna make sure that we get through to that one person. And some people are going to relate to different guests. There are certain people I’ve.

10:38

I’ve heard from that are like, I couldn’t stand that guest. There are people that have reached out to me and they’re like, I can’t stand you. And on the other side, there are people that say, I absolutely love that guest, or I love the way that you’re talking about these things. Those don’t really matter. The good and the bad doesn’t really matter. It’s how effective we are in being able to help people. But it’s because we’ve started having these conversations. So again, this is an encouragement to you. Just start having the conversation. Reach out to somebody.

11:08

reach out to anybody that can actually help you with this. And if you don’t know who to reach out to, reach out to me.

11:20

I’d love to be able to help any way that I can, and at least maybe point you in the right direction of a solid resource and be able to help. Because having the open conversation about your mental health will also help you figure out what your purpose is in life. It’s a piece of it. And if you’re not fulfilled in life and you don’t feel like you’re following your purpose and you’re not living a purpose-driven life,

11:49

and your trauma and the experiences you’ve been through that are pulling you away from this or blocking you. But you’re not broken when you deal with any of this. You’re typically just blocked. So please, I encourage you to have a conversation with somebody. Reach out to myself, a therapist, somebody that can help just so that you can start to have these conversations and no matter what, start to have these conversations within yourself. So thank you for listening to the episode today.

12:19

out. If you’d like to learn more about how to actually ask yourself the right questions and how to start having conversations, even if there’s a lot of trauma and everything else goes around it, please reach out. But thank you so much for being with me today.