Open Up Before It's Too Late - MEN Need To TALK!

Can a conversation save a life? Join us as we tackle the urgent and often overlooked issue of male suicide, with men making up the majority of these heartbreaking statistics in both Australia and America. We explore the profound sense of hopelessness and isolation that many men experience, feelings that can make them question their very purpose and self-worth. It's time to break the silence and encourage open conversations among friends, mentors, and colleagues. Sharing burdens can be a powerful first step toward healing and connection. This episode is a heartfelt call to action: every life lost impacts us all, and seeking support is a vital step in battling the darkness many men face.

We emphasize the profound importance of taking even the smallest actions to initiate change. Whether it's reaching out to a friend or participating in activities that bring joy, these steps can enrich your life and fortify your connections. By engaging with the content on our channel, including our candid video "Dead Man Walking," you can gain deeper insights into the challenges faced by men today. Your willingness to embrace change and take action can spark transformative shifts, paving the way for a more fulfilling and connected life. Listen in and discover how you can make a difference, both for yourself and those around you.

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Mentoring - Management - Consulting

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Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Did you know that last year in Australia, 3,249 people lost their life to suicide? 75% of those people were men? Men are disproportionately shown in statistics around suicide all around the world? In America, for example, 78% of all suicides are men, and men are four times more likely, in both countries, to take their life than women. There's a massive problem going on in our society when anybody wants to end their life. We clearly have a multiplied problem going on with our men that so many men are killing themselves. Thinking about it, contemplating it, and we've got to dig deeper into the answers about why this is going on.

Speaker 0: 0:48

I would like to suggest to you that one of the reasons why men are killing themselves at such alarming rates and so much higher than any other demographic, is because men, more than ever in history, are reaching a point of desperation that comes from hopelessness. I don't know if you've ever felt that feeling like I've felt it, where you get into a situation and you feel like there's no exit, there's no answer, there's no solution and very, very quickly the darkness and the walls start to close in around your thinking, around your emotions, around your heart. Your perspective goes out of whack. You start to close in around your thinking, around your emotions, around your heart. Your perspective goes out of whack, you start to misread your circumstances, you lose your lens on what people are saying. Everything gets very, very overwhelming very quickly. This is what's going on with our men. They are hitting the wall, so to speak, and hopelessness is descending on them like a cloud. When any person, especially a man, gets to a point in his life where he believes that tomorrow will probably be worse than today, in other words, he runs out of hope.

Speaker 0: 2:00

When a man gets to that point, things get so dark so quickly and he starts to ask himself very, very difficult and heavy questions why am I even here? Would anybody even care if I wasn't here? What's happened to my dreams? Why do I hate my life? Why do I hate my job? Why did my family fall apart? Why have I lost connection with my friends? What will my legacy be? Will I be unhealthy and disconnected in old age? These are tough questions to answer, even on your best day, let alone when you're trying to grapple with this stuff that is so core to our humanity and you're doing it on a day when the walls are closing in, the clouds are coming down and things are getting dark and heavy around your thoughts and around your life. I don't know if you've been in this situation. Maybe you're watching this video today and you're in this situation, or you've been there and you've come out, or you're fearful that you're tracking towards that kind of scenario. If that's you, you're the person I'm speaking to today. I want to reach you with my words. I want to give you some measure of resonance that you're not alone. In fact, there are so many men that I talk to that I've had experience with helping with coaching, counselling, mentoring, guiding, walking them through their challenges.

Speaker 0: 3:31

So many of our men, just like you, just like me, are facing these battles on a daily basis. Sadly and very scarily, many of our men are doing it in isolation. They're going to work, maybe to a job they hate or where they feel unproductive and not useful. They're fighting through traffic. They're trying to win the war, to provide and protect and empower those around them, scraping by paying their bills, realising that the dreams and the strength of their youth are perhaps fading, and they're staring down the dark barrel of heading into the third third of their life, uncertain about whether their family will stay together, whether they're going to make a difference in the world, which all of us want to do so desperately, and what's going to happen as they begin to age and things separate even further. It's a scary place to be and if you've been there or you are there, I'm calling out to you to do the first thing that you need to do.

Speaker 0: 4:30

When hopelessness tries to get that vice grip on your soul, the number one thing you must do is you've got to break the silence and talk to somebody. This is simultaneously the most powerful step and sometimes the most challenging step for us to take as men. You see, a lot of our struggle, although coming from real circumstances and real situations, the heaviest part of the challenge lives in here and and in here. When we go home and we lay awake in bed at night or we drive alone in our car and our mind and our thoughts are going at a thousand miles an hour and we're coming up with so many questions that we don't have answers to. If you're doing that alone and in isolation, the struggle and the battle you're facing is exponentially harder, and that's why I say the first thing we've got to do if we're ever going to get out of this thick, dark fog of hopelessness, we must take the first steps to break the silence and talk to somebody.

Speaker 0: 5:37

Now my hope for you would be that you've got at least one friend. Maybe you've got a brother, biological or otherwise. Maybe you've got a mentor that you used to talk to. Maybe you feel like you've got nobody and you just have to reach out to the guy at work, the guy who works on the job site next to you, the person that you chat to on the train going to work. Each day, somebody within your reach will listen to you and help you to find help if you will break the silence and talk about the struggle that's going on in your head.

Speaker 0: 6:12

You see, the reality is every single person loses. When somebody takes their own life, the person clearly loses, but everybody around them suffers so much loss and collectively, we all go backwards as a community. It's never just a matter of oh, did you hear about so-and-so? Sadly he took his own life and then we all move on. No, we go backwards as a community, as families, as individuals, whenever anyone, especially a man, gets to that breaking point where he concludes it would be better for me, it would be better for my family and friends and the world if I wasn't here.

Speaker 0: 6:56

Every time I hear about these stories, my heart breaks for the families and the friends who are left behind, asking themselves unanswerable questions why didn't we know? How could we have done more? I should have done more, I should have known, I should have made that phone call. We have the chance to help one another, to decrease these statistics, to diminish the impact of men reaching a dead end of hopelessness, where they conclude it would be best if I bought my own life to an end. Right now, again, if that's you, or maybe you chatted to a mate or a friend or a brother or somebody at work recently who's in that space? Please, I'm begging you, I'm appealing to you don't lose your connection with them. Text them regularly, ring them regularly, go by their house, check in on them. If we can learn to break the silence number one, let people into our space to help us.

Speaker 0: 8:00

You see, even the strongest of strong men, whether they admit it publicly or not, every single one of us reaches a point in our journey where we feel like the story's over, we've lost our dreams, we lose hope for tomorrow, we feel like we're failing at home and at work and in the community, and we get to these dark conclusions that perhaps the end of our story has already come and we should hasten the closing of the book. All men get to that point sooner or later, even those that you have looked up to and looked at and you've perceived them to be super strong. I've been there myself. The truth of the matter is none of us get through this stuff unless we break the silence. None of us get through this stuff unless we break the silence. We get connected with others and we let people in.

Speaker 0: 8:51

Next time somebody says to you how are you going, are you doing? Okay, Don't give them that default answer and go yeah, pretty good, not too bad, I think I'll be all right. If you know you're in pain and you're struggling, if you've had that experience recently that I'm describing, this thick fog of hopelessness is surrounding your mind and heart, please, I'm urging you, as soon as somebody makes contact, even someone casually saying how are you? You've got to take the risk to open up your heart, open up your thoughts and stumble and stutter those words out of your mouth that say actually I'm not doing great. Let them respond to you and say what do you mean? What's going on in your world and take the second step and the third step and the fourth step to say I'm really struggling. Actually, I'm struggling in my thoughts. My self-talk is dark. I'm coming up with some pretty scary conclusions about my future and about my life. I need help, guys. If we don't take this risk, if we don't break the silence around this stuff, if we don't have that tiny seedling of courage that says I am going to step out, I'm going to try, I'm going to take a risk that somebody out there cares enough to help me. If we don't do that, we're not going to see any change in these suicide rates around the world. In fact, they're going to keep on going up. How do I know this?

Speaker 0: 10:22

Because the state of our world is conducive to environments around our men that are multiplying the impact of the struggle that's going on. Men are under more pressure than ever in our world. They are attacked more than ever in the history of humanity. More is expected of them and less is given to them. Men are under the pump, trying to pay their bills, provide for their family, be a good man, be a good mate, and the struggle and the challenge to do that is getting harder. On top of that there is immense pressure on men to simply put up a mask and pose. Pretend to the world I've got it all together. Buy this latest thing, dress this certain way, put up these highlights on your social media. Talk the right game. Associate yourself with the right kind of characters. Talk the right game. Associate yourself with the right kind of characters. So much pressure on men to succeed and if you can't succeed, fake like you're succeeding. Men, this is killing us on the inside. We have to help each other to put that stuff down and bring it to an end, otherwise those skyrocketing suicide rates are not going to drop and we've got to do something to get them to drop and go lower.

Speaker 0: 11:34

And it starts with breaking the silence, which becomes the key to breaking through hopelessness. I'm going to say it one more time before today's video concludes If you're in that situation, if that's you, you've just been there. Maybe you're right there. Maybe you're scared that you're about to go there. That hopelessness has descended around you like a thick fog and you're making some frightening conclusions, saying I reckon it would be better if I wasn't here tomorrow. If that's you, then I'm calling on you, I'm appealing to you, that you actually take the steps to say I've got to do that. You actually take the steps to say I've got to do something about this, because the truth is, even though it's pretty dark now, it can get worse.

Speaker 0: 12:18

We don't want that for you.

Speaker 0: 12:19

I don't want that for you.

Speaker 0: 12:21

Perhaps you want to drop something in the comments and say Andrew, what do I do?

Speaker 0: 12:24

How do I make a change? Can you give me some advice? I would love to respond to you. Maybe you just need to do that thing that you've already decided Ring that friend, go to that gathering, go out and do that thing with that mate who's been asking you to spend time with him. Do something, please. And if you really want to get more in touch with the heartbeat of what we're talking about here on this channel I'm sharing messages all the time about the heartbeat of what's going on in our men. You can subscribe to the channel so you never miss out on an episode. But also, if you'd love to take this thought further, to get really in tune with the heartbeat of this discussion, I want you to click on this video right here called Dead man Walking, which is heavy and it's challenging, but it talks about the truth of what's going on in men's lives everywhere. I'm glad you took the time to watch today. I'll see you in the next episode real soon.