I hit rock bottom

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Yes Theory
2. 9:00 – 12:00: Superpower
3. 12:00 – 15:00: Helena Bragg, Yes Theory
4. 15:00 – 16:39: Yes Theory

Notable quotes from "I hit rock bottom"

• This project that we've dedicated our entire adult lives to, Yes Theory, has been in pure survival mode for the last few years and honestly barely making it through. And in the middle of all of this, I was trying to heal from a broken.

  about Yes Theory · at 0:43

• Sick. We as Yesy actually had an opportunity to invest in a company called Superpower that agreed to sponsor my personal story here today that I believe is moving the needle in…

  about Superpower · at 9:12

• Telling on here and will continue to tell. There is no yes theory without Helena Bragg. And I'm so proud to have trusted her early encouragements for me to chase my own…

  about Helena Bragg · at 14:22

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Helena Bragg — Person · 1 mention · first at 14:27

Companies & orgs

• Yes Theory — Company · 3 mentions · first at 0:45
• Superpower — Company · 3 mentions · first at 9:16

Full transcript with timestamps

0:11 The last few years have been the hardest of my life by far. And today, I still feel like I'm picking up the pieces. Learning how to smile from a genuine place again. learning how to trust and let go and learning how to feel hopeful after living through such hopeless times. In 2023, my mother was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer which took her life at the end of 2024. This project that we've dedicated our entire adult lives to, Yes Theory, has been in pure survival mode for the last few years and honestly barely making it through. And in the middle of all of this, I was trying to heal from a broken heart after a very painful and confusing breakup. I look back at footage from a few years ago now, and sometimes it feels like I'm looking at a stranger, a person whose life I no longer have. Some friends and girlfriend whose relationship got broken, and most importantly, my mother now gone.

1:23 My presence on YouTube has been incredibly confusing to me because at the same time as it's been a source of stress and anxiety, telling positive stories about humanity was also one of the few things that kept me hopeful during this difficult time. Seeking light within the darkness became a way for me to prove to myself that despite all the pain, there is still good in this world. By going through all of this myself, I've become fascinated with how humans overcome hardships because when my mom was first diagnosed, I couldn't cope with it and I could not possibly accept it. And although I will be the first to admit that I am still struggling at times today, I do feel over the last few years that I've learned some of the hardest but also most meaningful lessons of my life, which is what I would like to share with you today.

2:25 The first hard truth I had to swallow during this process is that as much as I wanted it to be, life sadly is not and has never been fair. Wanting it to be or wishing that it was unfortunately leads to a lot of anguish and wasted energy. My mom, out of all the people that I know, seemed like the least fair to become sick. And this feeling of injustice led me to have to grapple with a lot of difficult emotions. I wanted to do everything I could to protect my mom. But the enemy we were currently facing was an invisible one. These emotions, more than at any other point in my life, led me to feel like I was standing at a massive fork in the road. I've dealt with challenging emotions in the past, but the intensity of these emotions for the first time in my life felt like they were totally swallowing me. I started to develop health issues from all of the anxiety, and all I wanted to do was to

3:31 hide and run away. I realized in this moment that I had been given the biggest opportunity in my life to choose who I wanted to become. I can easily let this pressure crush me, turn me bitter and angry for the rest of my life. I can run away, escape, or numb myself. Or I wondered what would happen if I turned around and instead faced this darkness. There's a quote I love from Tim Grover who was the mental coach of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant who says, "If you go visit the darkness that you've been running from, you'll have the opportunity to leave a better person. You'll have a better understanding of yourself. You'll have a better understanding of your purpose.

4:27 But if you don't take that trip and the darkness comes visits you, it's a guest that will never leave. That is exactly the fork in the road that I felt I was standing in. I either face my demons or I get swallowed by them because sadly pain can cause all sorts of reactions in people from addiction to depression. And I realized in this very moment that if I didn't choose how I wanted to cope with all of these emotions, then I would not make it through. I understood during this chapter that an emotion as strong as anger can actually be harnessed because an emotion ultimately is energy inside of our body. And a lot of the time we let that emotion lead us. However, the energy that an emotion is creating can also be transformed. It's like we can perform emotional alchemy to use all of this energy to serve as the largest catalyst for change that we've ever experienced before. I understood that

5:33 for me to do this, I first had to accept that the emotions that I refused to feel existed. I let the tears run. I admitted that I wasn't doing well. And I went as deep into intimacy and into deep conversations with my mom as I'd ever had before. Acknowledging these emotions eventually gave me the strength to use this anger from the powerlessness I was experiencing to become the person I'd always known I was capable of becoming. Most days are still a battle with myself. And I failed at this massively and I've stumbled many times. But I feel that overall I've been able to make the harder choice of sitting with these emotions rather than running away from them. I realized during this time that happiness was a very flawed goal to aspire towards. Happiness ultimately is fleeting and most of the time is very dependent on what happens in our surroundings. What I did learn on the other hand is that my energy, both

6:42 mental and physical, is a much better goal to invest time into. And to get more energy, I had to master the basics of self-care. I've been neglecting my physical health for a long time. And although prioritizing it at this point seemed almost silly in some ways, I realized while trying to keep up with all of the stress and pressure that also being physically unhealthy made my anxiety skyrocket. I couldn't sleep and I would get sick a lot. I understood that I need to have energy to give her for me to truly be able to serve. I decided to become a different person. I decided to become the person that understands that health is a powerful source of energy that we can then use to be at the service of others. And so although building a habit of going to the gym a few times a week at this point seemed almost selfish, in reality it helped me show up so much more present and energized. What I learned is that while

7:49 being in the service of others, we only ever crumble if we completely forget to also be in the service of ourselves. I changed my nutrition to be much more aligned with giving me energy throughout the day. I dialed in my exercise routine. I quit drinking for a while. And as much as I could, I prioritized my sleep. Now, the reality is that on most days, I still had to completely prioritize my mom's needs. I was certainly not living in a perfect routine at any point throughout this time. Progress isn't always linear. It's normal for it to be messy. It's normal to fail at being consistent and fall back into despair. That's okay. This is what hard feels like. And right now, this chapter is hard. What's most important is to get back on the horse and to keep going, to stand up again after being knocked down and to move forward for another day.

8:50 It is clear to me today that we have a thousand problems in life until we get sick and then all we have is one. Health had always been high up on my priority list in my life, but never as high up as it is today. And I believe and hope that the future of medicine will be in preventative care rather than in medicine once the person is already sick. We as Yesy actually had an opportunity to invest in a company called Superpower that agreed to sponsor my personal story here today that I believe is moving the needle in the right direction. Both Amomar and I are now users and found that it made a big difference in our understanding of our own health. Currently, getting detailed blood work feels like a privilege reserved for the elites, often costing thousands of dollars wherever you look.

9:38 And I personally never felt like it was worth the investment. But Superpower is hoping to make that much more accessible by allowing you to do over a hundred different lab tests at only $1.99. Your results then all land in one place where you have access to your health concierge as well as the ability to schedule an appointment with their medical team. Prior to doing this test, I thought that my health was in a good place, which for the most part it was. But I did learn that my unhealthy cholesterol was actually quite a bit higher than would be a healthy amount for someone my age.

10:10 And so with some small lifestyle adjustments that their medical team advised me to, I was able to get those numbers back down to a much healthier place. And I now feel much better as well. Going through this process definitely made me feel like it was a no-brainer of an investment rather than playing guesswork with my health. I believe more than ever that we have to take our health into our own hands. And even though Superpower is a brand new company that has unfortunately only launched in the US so far, I hope that they will soon reach the world. And so, if you live in the US or you're planning on traveling there, click the link in the description below or go to superpower.com/yestair to get your detailed blood work done.

10:54 Prioritizing my health helped me become much more adaptable during that time and has now just become a part of my life. Prior to this period in my life, I used to be a person that would try to solve all of my problems by myself. I honestly didn't know how to even ask for help. During challenging periods, I would just isolate myself and try to fix whatever I was going through before returning eventually to my friends or relationships. This process was no longer working. My amazing family made me feel held and supported, but most importantly, my friends would not let me go hide any longer. They pulled me out of my cave and showed me that despite all of the suffering, that it's okay to be sad. But most importantly that there is still light outside. There are chapters in our lives where I feel that probably a lot of us go into our own emotional caves out of self-p protection whenever the pain is just too great. But

11:57 then we forget how to find our way back out. We need someone or some people who still know the way out to show us. There's a reason why humans have lived in tribes for thousands of years. And I believe partially it's because it's just too difficult to navigate life on our own. Learning how to trust, learning how to be vulnerable, and learning how to be honest about how we feel, I believe, is an inevitable step in maturing and in growing up. I've learned now that this is in fact a sign of strength because it takes courage to admit that we are in pain and it takes courage to admit that we are lost. Before my mom got sick, she always used to tell me in the most comforting voice whenever I would feel overwhelmed, one step at a time. I've always been the kind of person who have enjoyed visualizing and planning far into my future. However, in circumstances with this much uncertainty, we can't. My mom taught me

13:05 that sometimes we have to go through periods in our lives where we don't know exactly where we're going. All we need to do is to take the next best step forward. That's all we can do. And that's okay. When time eventually comes, we'll get to rebuild our lives brick by brick. And we'll be grateful for those few uncertain steps that we took when we were still in the fog. It will not be the same life we started with. But it will be built by our very hands and we'll be given a new chance to discover who we truly are. Today, I still cannot make sense of everything that has happened. And I've come to terms with the fact that I will probably be grieving this period for the rest of my life. But what I do know is that it has awakened a new creative energy within me that wasn't there before. My mom is one of my biggest inspirations in my life and actually one of the biggest inspirations for this channel behind the

14:09 message of saying yes and being open to the world. And in my eyes, beyond the amazing work and leadership that she created in her own life, her legacy lives on through the stories that we are telling on here and will continue to tell. There is no yes theory without Helena Bragg. And I'm so proud to have trusted her early encouragements for me to chase my own curiosity and to chase my own creativity because without it, I truly don't think any of this would have existed in the first place. I know many of you watching this maybe have experienced loss or are currently going through a similar chapter in your life.

14:50 Oddly enough, in the last few years, I've been getting a lot of people stopping me on the street telling me that one of their parents or one of their siblings um are battling cancer or passed away in an accident and that watching yesterday videos was a way for them to stay hopeful or positive during this immensely painful time. And I was incredibly touched every single time that it happened. But I personally didn't have the strength or the courage in that moment to tell them that I was actually going through exactly the same thing at the same time. And I've taken these interactions as a sign that sharing this story is worthwhile. As painful as it is for me to sit here, I'm also hoping to do a sort of a free live Zoom call where we can all get together and just talk about our grief, talk about what we're going through, and see if we can just support each other because life is confusing as it is, and I really just

15:57 don't think any of us are meant to do this alone. And one of the most beautiful parts about doing Yesy the community that's been born from it. And I look forward to throughout time being able to discuss heavier topics like this, but most importantly to create a space for any of you that I know are sitting behind your screens that right now and maybe going through a very difficult period or feeling very lonely to hopefully be able to serve as a space for all of us to feel safe in and that we can all share and take care of each other. Thank you for watching. Beyond this video, we're going to be resuming more traditional Yes Theory travel videos, and I look forward to being back on the road.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "I hit rock bottom"?

In order: 0:00 Yes Theory; 9:00 Superpower; 12:00 Helena Bragg, Yes Theory; 15:00 Yes Theory.

What is mentioned in this Yes Theory episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Yes Theory, Superpower, Helena Bragg. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "I hit rock bottom"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 2,652 words in 17 timestamped sections.

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