BIPOLAR TOOLS: Changing THIS Could Change a LOT!

welcome back polar Warriors today we've got a really important topic and it's going to send around what you value your beliefs and above all what you're focusing on stay with me [Music] [Applause] [Music] here if you're truly doing something about the way you feel and you want to change your life that's why you started watching this video in the first place right it might be a longer video but once you've started something it's always best to finish so please turn your phone on silent take a deep breath with me suck in some of that awesome oxygen just for a second and be present with me for just a little while today making these videos takes a lot more time than watching one let me tell you and I still do it because of my values and belief beliefs I value helping others more than anything and I strongly believe that I'm helping myself in the process also do you value becoming better do you believe with the right tools that you might be able to at least feel a tiny bit of improvement in your daily life I really want to be outside right now enjoying life and having fun but if I don't first value or believe in getting over the hurdles that are preventing me from doing the things that I want to do in the first place How can I realistically expect to get there so once you figure out that you value or you believe in something the next step is focusing on the things that you can do to get there I mean really focusing with all your heart and not just thinking well it's a nice idea to not be depressed all the time or not crashing so often I'm talking about making a conscious effort every day to focus on moving in that direction I'm going to be giving you lots of tools to do so on this channel and probably only about the top 1% of people that watch this and I really hope you're in that top 1% are going to take notes write stuff down and realistically apply it to their life every single week or as often as they can so be a polar warrior with me and over time something really cool is going to happen you're actually going to start creating new neural Pathways in the brain you're actually going to start creating new habits of behavior that are going to make your life full of more enjoyment and less suffering but as long as you've been alive you've been programming your brain in your mind and creating these certain connections or neural connections and paths and memories and reactions to life that have conditioned you to be a certain way and we need to undo some of that conditioning we need to get to the core of what's going on inside of us so let's get to it in addition to being severely bipolar I have extreme chronic fatigue from getting mono a few years ago and basically never recovering from it it's horrible I spend so much of my own life focusing on being sick and depressed or feeling like crap and I end up feeling depressed and sick and and like crap and uh it it really the the depression just gets unbearable now the feelings are so strong it's hard to focus on anything else when the volume is up so loud on these feelings when I'm crashing it can get so bad where it really feels like I can't be reached or focus on anything and at those times I just need to be gentle with myself let some time pass to where the feelings shift a little and then come back now that could even apply to you watching this video so if you're crashing right now and it's really bad you could be in a mental state where no matter what I say whether it's really good advice or positive or anything it's still just going to sound like so if that's the case and you don't feel like you're getting any benefit from something like this right now uh you might have to change the energy go on a walk do something different and then come back and try and reapo it again you really do want to be in a good state where you're open when you watch these videos especially developing tools uh so you can learn new things and apply these things and change now this especially applies when you're new to the journey it could seem almost impossible to focus on anything else but the sensation of suffering it isn't easy to start retraining your brain and recreating those neural connections uh cultivating that awareness is truly changing what you focus on or what you value truly changing it you know working on it every single day and it takes a polar Warrior to do that even if you have to go to the bathroom mirror when you're depressed and use your fingers to literally push a smile up on your face at least that's a start that's a step Beyond doing nothing or focusing on the suffering now that might seem dumb or silly but just a little Act of doing something that small when you're suffering starts slowly rebuilding our confidence back up and those connections in the brain that I was talking about another way is to recognize when you're focusing on I feel like crap I feel depressed I feel sad and ch that that thought cycle to positive incantations like I'm going to get better I'm going to get past this I am not going to feel like this anymore and it takes tremendous strength to do this especially when we're suffering or when we're crashing and it takes time to reprogram our brains you can't just do it once and say it didn't work the video was wrong that guy sucks he can't help me come on you have to change your focus your values and your beliefs over time which requires a huge leap of faith in yourself and awareness to do so but that's why we're here I'm ready to not feel like all the time aren't you as Polar warriors were on a journey to retrain our brains whether it's through the help of medication uh therapy or things we can do ourselves like watching these videos now there's a few primary emotions that are Masters at drawing that very important Focus away from what we want or how we want to feel one of the primary ones of course is fear or pain uh whether it's physical or mental um I experience both a lot or worrying about crap that we can't control the body can do some serious mental gymnastics to get our attention to these Sensations because uh of that Primal fight ORF flight response that's in all of us that's been built into us since the the caveman days and it's not going away anytime soon so you could be in the middle of watching a show and have to rewind it because the mental noise from these distractions is so strong that you even missed what was just said so the next really strong one would be uh addictions that a lot of us have like craving nicotine or drugs or craving a drink uh basically the desire for immediate gratification or pleasure or distraction from the suffering it's amazing like I remember when I used to drink I would even if I felt like crap and I was exhausted I would get up get in the car and the debt of winter drive all the way to the store and spend money that I didn't have just to get a bottle of alcohol just to get that immediate fix or that immediate satisfaction it was really unhealthy but it was incredible how much motivation we can get when it comes from our addictions but it's hard for us to get off the couch or just to even SM smile uh or even watch a video like this it's amazing it can be a really nasty cycle and add addiction takes our Focus away from the present moment faster than probably anything another huge one is um external distractions like other people's drama or suffering uh it's so easy to get sucked into that because for a moment it might make us forget our own suffering but we're still absolutely focusing we're focusing that's the key ke word here on something that is not going to benefit our lives in a positive way just look at some patterns in your life I mean what do you watch on TV at night and how does it make you feel do you have nightmares a lot like do you watch uh just horrible negative news all the time are you watching uh murder shows that show how somebody killed their wife and how the police caught them uh are you watching uh something that is just not good for the neural Connections in your brain or do you you listen to really angry music a lot um or do you sit there and and listen to someone toxic just do an emotional driveby and uh just unload on you uh that's just living a life of reacting to negative stimulus or uh reacting to people or your environment instead of cultivating your environment instead of focusing on creating a better reality for ourselves so how do we work on fixing this on changing our focus and our values I'm going to use an analogy from my life and my experience to get there so stick with me uh try to stay focused um so I used to teach karate and I remember to this day walking up the stairs to my first lesson ever when I was 10 years old and my first class for some reason I ended up sparring uh uh for the first time my first night there because one of the assistant instructors didn't know that it was my first class and for those of you that have never taken karate sparring means basically practice fighting with someone else and I only knew a couple of basic blocks that I was shown at the beginning of the class and I was doing my best to apply them when I was sparring and and this was somebody intermediate that I was sparring up against I mean it just wasn't fair but that's life right uh when I was done the assistant said you know don't worry in about a month you'll totally know what to do in a situation like this and I thought there's no way hell I'm going to be able to react like that so quickly and he said let me give you some advice and this is something I'll never forget he said the reason why it's so uncomfortable right now is because of the fear of getting hit or pain basically or not feeling in control and knowing what to do uh you could learn every single punch in the world but without quickly developing a defense or blocks you might as well just stand there and keep getting hit and what a fantastic analogy that is for life I mean we all do so great in an environment where we feel in control or when we're manic or uh when we have some tools to know what to do in an unfavorable situation like when we feel like crap or when we're depressed uh we need tools to help us focus and change that's why we're here like like just like I said uh it's it's when we're standing there and we're just getting hurt and not knowing what to do that we lose control control of the direction of our lives and our fear can cause us to end up in the gutter so to speak or that endless cycle of just depression feels like it's impossible to get out of so I asked this teacher uh basically I asked him how to get good at blocking so quickly and he said you have to absolutely focus on what is going on in the present moment the second you start worrying about getting hit you're already reacting too late that's just I love that I'll never never forget that and just like in life the second when we start worrying about the horrible things that happened in the past or the horrible things that might happen in the future we start getting beat up mentally and it takes cultivating huge awareness to keep yourself in the present moment and as many and many tools to do that we're going to get into lots of them on this channel for example uh one of them I've already uploaded was a video on bilateral stimulation which is just a kite try and get your mind back to the present moment anyways uh right now I work for a company that teaches people how to fly and it's amazing how many students will focus on a tree and they end up flying right towards it so it's like whatever we focus on that's the direction that our mind and our life is going to move in every time it takes tremendous strength to break that habit especially after so many years of focusing on the bad feelings or the depression again to create these new neural Connections in the brain that focus on healing or focus on little things that we like about ourselves instead of what we dislike or to cultivate enough Focus to put our hand up firmly and say stop to the negative wave of emotions uh before they spiral out of our control we are extremely strong people as bipolar individuals much more so than people who have an easy life or everything handed to them and Perfect Balance it's not not easy to get your black belt but nothing I've ever achieved in my life that I'm extremely proud of was easy to achieve you have to start out as a white belt when you first realize that you're bipolar and every single block that you learn is a new tool to stop getting beat up by life tools like walking up to the mirror and making that smile when you don't want to to push your face up you know or uh changing the focus of depression to Healing now don't get me wrong the feelings are aren't magically going to disappear just by wishing or focusing them away but over time with practice you can learn to block some of the blows everyone learns at a completely different rate and based on their experience or their severity of their bip bipolar experience and my life changed the moment I decided to walk up those stairs and take my first karate lesson and that was so many years ago now your life can change in the same profound way by just starting to switch your focus consciously and by even watching videos like this you're already walking up those stairs you're already taking your first lesson a little bit each day is uh is really important it's just like practicing uh a few blocks each day eventually you'll be ready to spar with the depression and not get hit so much so another basic example let's say you haven't exercise a day in your life and you go to the gym for two days um it's going to take more time than that to build up strength and flexibility and endurance to be able to change the bad momentum or the bad experience or habits and everything that youve formed in the past into positive momentum moving towards uh really good habits or to CH a change in perspective or focusing on the future your mind is exactly like this it's just like building up these muscles you have to keep taking your mind to the gym or continue to watch videos read books seek out a therapist and constantly focus focus focus on heading in that direction just like the pilot that focuses on the tree and'll crash into it other Pilots will focus on The Perfect Landing and they just nail it and I've seen this happen so many times where there has to be something to it when it comes to the way our minds work with what we focus on so back to my karate story uh amazingly enough a month later I was sparring the same student that I did that first night and I really held my own just fine and uh I couldn't believe it I was a really wrecked shy introverted kid um that that already dealt with depression even at that time and the same thing actually happened with depression in my own life you know I got so tired of getting beat up and hit that I slowly started changing my focus to developing tools to spar with my depression and now I'm kicking its ass or well at least enough to be able to make videos and share some of these experiences with others now don't get me wrong I I've been hospitalized so many times I can't even remember I've cut myself I've taken way too many pills I've uh even been homeless and I wasn't always like this and the idea is to basically minimize or to try and at least reduce the amount of times that these kind of situations happen it took took me years to get my black belt and you know or or a master at my trade and I would still get hit sometimes it would just happen less because I had more tools to prevent that from happening and I'm still working on getting my black belt and bipolar because uh I mean I'm focusing on that as my goal and it's making a huge difference in my life just by focusing on that that's my interest I want to conquer this I want to get better I don't want to suffer like this and anymore and I'm focusing on that that's why we're all here and hopefully you are too hopefully watching videos like this on this channel can do that for you or at least make an impact if you're tired of getting beat up start learning some blocks and then practice them you have to practice them change your focus as the channel grows it's going to be full of lots of different types of tools or blocks that you can use I had to practice every day to get as as good as I was at karate but I was so driven and focused because that's what I valued and that's what I believed in if you truly want to live a life with less suffering even if it's unbearable sometimes those are the times that you're going to learn the most by cultivating your focus it's like a test uh it was like sparring that intermediate student on my first night it was really hard but I learned a really valuable lesson uh and especially like when I'm at my lowest or struggling the most if you spend just 15 minutes a day trying to change your focus eventually you're going to get to 30 minutes a day and 30 minutes a day over a year is 182 hours if I did my math right can you even imagine what 182 hours of training can do to you in just one year if you just change what you focus on or what you value in your life by wanting to improve and and actually doing something about it focusing on it for just 30 minutes a day day so that being said I want to invite you to walk up those stairs like I did and start learning your first blocks even though it's scary I was so scared to walk up those stairs and do something new and different for the first time to go into Uncharted Territory with my mind and body and you might rather spend your time watching the news or your favorite drama but how much do you want to end some of your suffering that's why you're here with me right to get some tools to see things differently or to make life a little bit more bearable when it gets nasty please keep coming back to Polar Warriors for more bipolar karate lessons uh it could really be worth it so the next time you find yourself with mental noise that is so strong that all you hear is I'm depressed I'm depressed I'm depressed change your focus change what you're focusing on uh even the word depressed if you break it down it sounds like deep rest change your focus on even even what that word means when you hear depression think to yourself I am in a deep rest right now my mind and my body is just really low and be okay with that be gentle with yourself and then start focusing on different thought Cycles start reprogramming and recreating those neural Connections in your brain by saying I'm getting better this will pass it's not that bad I'm going to get stronger I'm going to get through this even if you don't really feel the things that you're saying your mind is subconsciously going to pick up on this positive thinking or these different thoughts instead of life sucks life sucks I hate myself I'm depressed if you can just make that Focus or that that shift in focus to change that constant thinking that we all do that negative thinking that is so self-destructive into something positive you you really have a chance at becoming a black belt in bipolar or to uh join the polar Warrior Club so uh thank you so much for being strong enough to be here with me for taking the time to even make it to the end of this video that really shows that you're in it for the long run that you're here to try and make some positive changes in your life and I encourage you to keep coming back there's going to be a lot more really good videos so please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of those and it also shows your support for what I'm doing with this channel uh really does help motivate me when I see that people are uh moved by or encouraged by what I'm doing and and and all the time I'm spending here so thank you so much for being here with me and I'll see you in the next [Music] video

Channel: Polar Warriors

Views: 106,314

Keywords: Bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, Manic Depression, Bipolar Help, Bipolar Tools, Bipolar Advice, Depression, Help With Depression

Id: eHqTMeWtcEs

Length: 21min 52sec (1312 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2017