My name is Garrett, I'm 24 years old and I have found myself here, making this page and starting this journey after years of battling with mental health and my own mind.

Now I don't have the usual story filled with massive amounts of trauma or unfortunate life events that most life coaches or public speakers have. To be honest, I have had a pretty normal life in regards to what society deems as "normal." Part of me feels that is sometimes why I struggle.

I have felt empty and unmotivated my whole teenage and adult life, despite having a wonderful family, great friends, and all of my necessities taken care of. I have exhausted myself trying to figure out why? What's going on? How I can be like this? Often, asking myself every question in the book. 

I am sure this is something that so many other people relate to, but deal with in silence, it can be a very perplexing thing, sometimes it even feels taboo, which all make it very challenging to talk about. Questions like ("Wow, how can you not be happy with all of that?") ("You know someone would die to be in your position right?") start to come to the surface. You don't want to feel ungrateful or privileged but also cannot just ignore those feelings and thoughts.

It is a very exhausting thing being "good" in life, but not actually being good.  That exhaustion has brought me here, through all of my dark times, all of my good times, I have always had one thing throughout it all. That one thing was helping people. I always was ready to help others, whether that was just chatting about their issues, doing charity work, or simply just making people smile when they needed it. The deep feeling of compassion and humanity that I received, would calm any storm for me. 

I describe it as a radio playing white noise, it can get so loud that I can't function or focus, but the moment I am helping someone, the volume slowly goes down until its muted. 

I've always known deep down my purpose was to help people, but for whatever reason I never pursued it. It could only ever happen naturally is how I felt. 

Well either this is my natural progression or I am taking control of my purpose because I have finally decided to pursue it and try, even if it doesn't work, I will know I tried. I will have set an example for myself and others, that it is ok to talk about our issues, and that we are not alone. 

If you feel depressed, sad, behind or any type of feeling the doesn't feel right, or you're comparing yourself to others in anyway, remember that life is not linear. Every single person's experience is different, and everyone can feel those feelings no matter what has happened or hasn't happened to them in their life. 

My Self Growth Journey

Here is where I get vulnerable.

I feel that if I want to be the best life coach I can be, that if I want people to trust in me and choose me to help them, I need to lead by example. I have to show them who I really am, show them what I have gone through on a deeper level, and how I have used the knowledge I have gained, the perspectives I have seen, and the experiences I have had and been a part of, to not only become a better version of myself, but also help influence people around me to become better versions of themselves.

Physical Self

A good starting point would be with my weight and my physical transformation, as a young kid weight and my body were never a major issue for me. I was active, I played baseball, I danced and was always in gym class going all out, but the lingering problem was my diet, it was never good throughout that all. 

As I started becoming more and more depressed because of school (we will get to that) I stopped being active, I stopped playing sports, stopped dancing and became someone who actively avoided activity. I would sit in my room, and play video games all afternoon and night. I started putting weight on, and my self confidence started to decline rapidly, I got to high school and during my freshman year was at my highest weight, I was 220 pounds at around 5'10. Now I carried my weight well on the outside so I was always met with the "you're not fat!" responses from family and friends. But every single time I looked in the mirror I hated myself. 

When it got real for me at how truly out of shape I was, was when we would have to run a mile, and do a little circuit style workout, with push ups/sit-ups/pullups and other bodyweight exercises for gym class, the one class I was always comfortable in became hell for me. I couldn't even run half a mile without my asthma starting up, could barely even do a push up let alone even try to get myself an inch off the ground with a pull up. I was totally ashamed with myself, I started not showing up to school even more which was already a major problem for me. I even went as far as to get a a doctor's note so I didn't have to run in class.  

All of this compounded into me gaining more and more weight because I was also over eating junk food, a normal lunch for me was having 5 pancakes with Nutella smeared on them with maple syrup, then 2 little debbie oatmeal cream pies or nutter butters and then maybe throw a couple frozen corndogs in the oven, that was a staple lunch for me every day. Luckily my parents had always cooked pretty healthy meals for dinner, so I was able to at least get some whole foods in me at some point in the day, but then I would just undo any healthy foods I ate with a full pint of ben and jerry's after dinner almost nightly. I was probably eating upwards of 3,500 - 4,000 calories a day of just straight junk. 

This was rock bottom for my physical self and self confidence. I absolutely despised myself, and it finally all crescendoed when a girl broke my heart sophomore year, I remember laying on the floor in my room and having a moment where I just spoke directly to myself, I finally had gotten through to myself and I just said what was on my mind, how fat I felt, how out of shape I was, and that I needed to change. I got up and did as many push ups as a I could muster. 

From sophomore year on I started flooding my brain with anything and everything weight loss, I started playing basketball outside on a cement pad we have behind our house, I set up a punching bag in our basement and started boxing every single day, I did push ups, sit ups and any bodyweight exercise I could do. I stared cutting calories, cutting out junk and totally reshaped my diet. 

I looked up and researched everything to do with diets, and junior year I keyed in on what is called Intermittent Fasting, a system of fasting for a set period of time and then having a specific window to eat within, usual time frames are 16 hours of fast and 8 hours of eating. It worked perfectly for my schedule, I would find myself at school during lunch which was at 12 pm not really wanting to eat because when I got home at 2 pm I could eat a full enjoyable meal in a comfortable setting, so I just stopped eating anything during school. I became obsessed with testing myself, friends offering me food became a way to show myself I had discipline and will power, it became a staple part of my identity. 

To this day, I haven't ever broken those eating windows, not even by minutes, some would say it is an unhealthy obsession with how strict I am with it but it keeps me disciplined and keeps me knowing I have that will power inside to do whatever I set my mind too.

I ended up losing over 60 pounds in total and became happy with myself for once in a long time, I could look at my face in the mirror and actually feel confident. 

Keeping myself in relatively good shape has been a top priority for me since then, I have learned even more about diets, workouts, and nutrition just by researching and listening to podcasts. I went from being able to not do a single push up, to setting and completing challenges like doing 100 push ups a day for a month, I went from not being able to pull myself up off the ground with a pull up to now being able to incorporate 3 sets of 10 pull ups in my workouts and still being able to do more throughout the day. 

I am now embarking on a journey of trying to get stronger, learning how to feel comfortable eating more and really focus on growing muscle while minimizing fat gain which has been successful so far. 

Looking back on my weight loss, I do have regrets that I have learned from, I used a crash diet (typically classified as a diet in which you cut your calories to a very minimal and at times unhealthy level so you lose as much weight in as shortest of a time as possible.) I cut my calories down drastically and worked myself to the bone, and as a result I lost a lot of muscle mass. Since then I have been working on gaining that strength back and finding a healthy relationship with food and my weight, my greatest fear for awhile was eating more to "bulk" (put on muscle in a calorie surplus) but gaining fat as a result, but have learned that as long as you are doing it in a thought out approach and understanding your body, it becomes very simple.

(I will put pictures of my progress for reference below.)

Mental Self

We can now get into the mental side of my journey. For my whole life I always labeled myself as the odd one out of my family, I enjoyed sleeping till 2 pm, gaming till 3 am, staying inside, didn't like going anywhere, hated school and always did what I wanted to do. As I was growing up there was a lot of friction caused because of those differences within my family. My sister (Nicole, 5 years older than me at 28) set a standard for me unintentionally that I absolutely could not live up to, she was the straight A genius, who loved school, loved waking up at 7 am and going places with my parents, loved camping and never got in trouble or questioned anything. This set me up with some massive shoes to fill that I spent most of my middle school and high school years tripping over.

 I hated the idea of school, being forced to spend all of my day learning things that I would never need, when would I ever use the quadratic formula? Do I really need to know what happened in ancient China? Those were some of the reoccurring thoughts that would pop up in my head daily.

 I was always liked in school, both my my peers and by my teachers and school staff, I was able to slip through the cracks often, barely putting effort in and realizing I could just not go to school, I would act like I had belly aches or headaches to get out of having to go or be able to sleep just a bit longer and then eventually be forced to go in late. 

Middle school was easy for me, I could get crappy grades and then when report cards rolled around, I could focus up and do all of my work that I was missing and end up passing with a bare minimum grade or some how make honors. I always felt like a smart kid I just wasn't being offered something I actually enjoyed or wanted to apply myself in. 

High school is where it got rough, I went from being the popular kid that everyone liked and knew in middle school to being in a big fish tank where my normal friends all found other people and friend groups and I was stuck feeling like I had no one. That loneliness, my self confidence and weight issues mixed with the habit that followed me of not showing up to school lead to a whirlwind of depression. I felt like an outcast, and at this point my family dynamics started to diminish as well, my parents started to realize how badly of a mental state I was in. 

As time went on I started slipping even more, I stopped managing to keep my grades above failing like I had done previously, I started to shut down, call it karma or whatever but I actually started getting migraines because I was so stressed out and depressed. Just to make it all worse, I had a very close friend who was starting rumors about me to climb the social ladder while I wasn't at school, he would tell people I was lazy and just played games all day when I was at home, but the true reality was that I was actually just laying in bed with debilitating migraines, some days in tears because of how I felt about myself, this broke my heart and gave me even more anxiety when I would show up to school after missing days or would come in late, I felt like everyone was looking at me and judging me. On top of all of this, during that time a group of girls had gotten an intimate picture of me and sent it to people around my grade, so the days I would show up, I would be met with that.

All of this was incredibly painful for me, it all seemed like a giant spiderweb that I was stuck in, no matter what I did I was trapped. I didn't tell my parent any of this, I would just lay in bed silent, I would exist within the household and never speak a word about anything that was going on in my life. My dad is someone who's family is his life, he wants to fix every problem that's going on, and gets overwhelmed when he can't fix something. He has always wanted the best for me, but during those times he was just as stressed as me and didn't understand how to go about the situation. 

He wanted me to go to school and wanted me to get passing grades as he saw I was slipping, but he didn't know what I was going through, he thought I was just not wanting to go and giving up. So the only way that he knew was to try to yell at me to get me to go, there were countless screaming matches between us, I was someone who was stubborn and felt like I didn't need to tell anyone anything, felt like I can do this myself just leave me alone and he felt like this is a thing you have to do, everyone has to go to school and if you don't you are just going to prolong your suffering. We would argue and yell and it usually ended in one of us crying and going into shut down mode, where we would totally tune out. We wouldn't acknowledge each other or even act like each other existed. Sometimes for a day sometimes for days. 

This was obviously unhealthy and did not help either of us, so my room became my solitude, my games because my solace. I would spend every hour of my day after 2 pm gaming. I avoided all my issues with gaming. They at least held me together enough that I had something to look forward to everyday. My parents would try taking me to a neurologist for my migraines, would try taking me to a therapist, would try everything they could. I wanted none of it.

 I managed to drag myself through the year until I got my final grades back from a social studies class, ancient China got its revenge. My teacher emailed my parents that he would not be letting me pass even though I would have a barely passing grade if I submitted my last assignment. He stated he did not feel comfortable letting me slip through the cracks and just coast, he saw in me that I was a good and smart kid and needed to be challenged. I was always allowed to slip through the cracks until that moment, and I found myself angry at him, but it was a lesson I needed to learn. 

On a more positive note towards the end of my freshman year I confronted my friend who had spread rumors about me and made peace with that. I had also made peace with what happened with the girls. I ended up having to retake the full class sophomore year and it taught me that I couldn't just let myself slip fully, I had to keep my grades up so I would at least pass classes and those failing grades were a big reason to what was causing a lot of the issues within my family so resolving those would help that situation. 

My attendance still wasn't great but through sophomore year I really learned how to manage my grades, I finally had realized I was smart enough to get through school and actually get good grades if I just put effort in, I realized I had to stop fighting the system and lean into it to get out of it eventually. I actually got high honors one of the semesters which was a shock to me and my family. I started making more friends and finding small bits of confidence in my mental state. This momentum pushed my family and I to start talking about things more and making little bits of progress. When everything started changing with my weight and body I gained a new perspective. I opened up more and was beginning to find myself, I finally stopped caring about what people thought of me. I started to accept who I was, accept my situation and actively start controlling the thoughts inside my mind. The rest of the year and into junior year my life started to really change for the better, I was popular again, had friends in every class, my grades were good, my attendance still not so much but everything was on the right path.

My dad and I were finally able to understand each other, I finally realized that my dad was just trying to help in whatever way he knew how, whether that was the right way or the best way is hindsight, he loved me and was trying to make sure I was ok. I couldn't have expected him to understand because I never spoke about it at all. 

We had a breakthrough in a conversation where we were ending one of our screaming matches both balling and I finally was able to get through to him that yelling wasn't the solution, it never helped either of us, our moments of ignoring each other didn't solve anything, expressing our feelings and emotions was how we make progress. 

From that night on we made it a point to be honest and open. We stopped arguing, we stopped yelling, we were able to talk to each other about our problems and issues, if things were bothering us we could bring it up without it exploding into something more. My mom was finally able to hear what was going on in my life, finally able to see into my soul, see into why I was the way I was. It was a year of healing and forward progress for everyone in my family.

Senior year only got better, I grew into myself even more and actually began enjoying school when I was there, I actually ended up graduating early, getting enough credits faster than most and being able to finally make that walk on graduation day putting all of that behind me. Finally being free of school and that whole entire part of my life. 

Don't get me wrong life after school hasn't been sunshine and rainbows, I have been through many depressive episodes, have felt like a loser at times, have been through heartbreak and hardship. Everyday for me is a battle to get up, everyday I have to find motivation to live. It is the backpack I have to carry throughout my life, I can either let it, and all of the things that I have been through or go through weigh me down or I can use all of it to get stronger and push myself further and further. 

That is what life is about, as my dad says, "picking yourself up off the ground, dusting yourself off and continuing on." 

I strive to be the voice for the people that have felt what I have felt, I strive to be the person people can count on to show them how powerful their mind truly is, and to make sure they don't give up on themselves. 

Throughout everything I have always been so self aware and conscious of how deep my mind is, I have always been intrigued with anything to do with life, philosophy and psychology, because of that and the experiences not only I have gone through but my family and peers have gone through, I have learned a ton about the human mind, the human condition, family struggle, personal struggle, societal struggle, discipline, life experiences, mental health, physical health and so much more throughout my life and I feel like I have a duty to share this knowledge and help people. Since I was a kid people have always said that they feel I have a gift given from wherever it comes from, whether it is god, the universe or if it is just in me, that gift being experience, "an old soul" as people refer to it.

I am finally embracing that. 

So that's my story, there is my vulnerable side opened for everyone to see. Hopefully I can lead by example and make it a point that there is no need to hide these things or be ashamed of our experiences. I look forward to any and every opportunity that is available for me to speak with someone, help someone or even just be there for someone. This is a part of me that I will never push away ever again and hope that this becomes something for me. If you are reading this and you, or someone you know feels these ways or is going through things. Please reach out to me and I will gladly be there.

Thank you all 

- Garrett