just getting through the day was tough enough.

I'd recently launched a new business

that had totally thrust me out in front of people,

the last place that you wanna be

when you're grieving, right?

Well, on top of my emotional pain, I had physical pain too.

At nighttime, my entire body would be in agony.

I could barely move.

My doctors believed that during the day

I was able to keep it at bay but at nighttime

when I let go of the structure of who I was,

my body went into physical shock to try and heal itself.

Whichever way we deal with a devastating setback

or ongoing pressure that feels like

it's just never gonna let up,

we must comprehend that whatever we do and however we behave

we're creating and establishing new neurological pathways

that either teach us to continue to stay that way

or break the pattern and choose a different path.

Those pathways simply become stronger and stronger

the more that we go down them.

The more that you grieve,

the more that you establish it as a behavior

on how to react when something goes wrong

subconsciously or not.

Your mind takes on the identity of a wounded person

and that's how you start to behave

but thankfully, you have a choice

when you're aware of what you're doing.

Take the negative, wounded path or the path of strength.

Now, I eventually did choose the second one

when I became more consciously aware of what was going on.

To do so, before I gave up,

I had to apply a few simple strategies.

This included three daily habits.

The first one, every night before I went to bed,

I'd write a list of 10 things I was grateful for

for that day and more importantly,

what I was looking forward to for the next.

This is simple and it's designed to retrain your brain

to look for the good when it had spent a considerable

amount of time ruminating on the bad.

Secondly, each day,

I'd revisit a list of my past achievements,

everything from buying my first home

to reaching a fitness goal.

I'd remind myself that I was more capable

than I'd give myself credit for

then I'd add something else to that list for the day.

These were goals that if I was a 16 year old

looking at what I was yet to achieve

would get my 16 year old self excited about the future

thereby once more disrupting certain thought patterns.

And finally, and this is my favourite,

I took on a sad song and movie diet

and it's exactly as it sounds.

I removed any triggers that would send myself

back into a spiral of negative thoughts and behaviours.

The easiest and fastest thing you can do to break a pattern

when you're in the midst of negative emotions

is hitting play on some music

that you used to listen to as a teen

that would make you smile.

For me, yeah, I admit it,

it may have been the Spice Girls or Britney Spears but hey,

I'd love to see what your favourite song was back in the day.

Anything that sends you back to a time

in which everything was okay is by far one of the best ways

to interrupt those negative patterns.

Keep this up for a while and you'll begin to not only forget

what it was that you were worrying about

but you'll also uncover the psychological resources

that you need to keep going when you feel like giving up.

(upbeat music)