The Irony of Life | Tahj Shand

Deana Brown Mitchell: Hello, everyone, it's Deana at the Realize Foundation. And I'm here today with Taj from Jamaica, I can't wait, I keep having to push our Jamaica trip back. And so it's may now, but hopefully, I'm gonna be back there soon. But anyway, so we have Tasha here today, and I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit about what he wrote his chapter about. And once we, once we get through our questions, I'll tell you a little bit more about the foundation and the book and why we're doing what we're doing. So welcome Tahj.

Hello, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be on board with the project. And just really excited with everything that you guys are doing. I've worked with you on a couple things, you know, here and there. But getting into this book and actually writing something, which is the first thing that I've actually written that will be published in this format. So I was pretty excited about that.

Deana Brown Mitchell: Yeah, that's, that's really cool, too. And tell us a little bit about what you talk about in your chapter. Like, kind of an overview, if you will.

Yes. So of course, mental health is something that is very important to me, as with you, and most likely anyone that's really watching this, but I'm certain things, especially as guys, we don't really speak about these things, and what have you. And the chapter that I wrote, was about the irony of life, which was really based upon a speech that was at my high school graduation. And so many things could go wrong in life. And as with everyone, definitely a lot has gone wrong in my life. And even just before this interview, for example, the I'm at work here. And as you can see, I'm in the vehicle right now, because I literally just ran out of oil, Samaya crisis, our tech guys on leave, and I'm the backup, if you will, and we lost all power, all the registers, everyone, all the customers are in the place, and they're all looking at me, and I was up the roads, I literally ran back and set this whole thing up to get it working. So it's kind of on topic, right before I do this interview that things are gonna go wrong in life. And that was really the gist of the the chapter in the sense that, you know, when I left high school, or all my life, I always had all these plans of how I wanted everything to go. And the irony is nothing really goes to plan, but enjoying the journey of life. And I'm at a pretty good place in life right now. And I had to go through some horrible things in order to get there. And even thinking back before all those events that I wrote about in the chapter, what have you, if something like this happened today, I'm supposed to do an interview. And literally minutes before all the power, everything goes out, I would have been a total mess right now. And the right before I started this, I was doing some slow breathing and just regulating it and bringing it back. So I'd be leveled and be able to deliver something that makes half sense. And little things like that is what I've learned over the years. So just be able to summarize that, to the best of my ability. I was just very excited to do that. Because definitely, I think everyone had a plan for their life, and most likely, it did not go perfect. I'm not, you know, 99.99% sure whoever's watching this, your life did not go exactly to plan and I'm living proof and testament that things can still work out for the best and enjoying the irony of everything and enjoying the ride. And that's what the chapter was all about.

Deana Brown Mitchell: Well, thank you Taj. I know a lot of people are gonna relate to your story. And, and how you I know you didn't, you didn't specifically say this, but I know anxiety has been a big deal for you, in your, in your journey. And for me, too. And so I think anybody who is dealing with that, you know, or just uncertainty maybe would really get something out of your out of your captor. I mean, I think everybody can get something out of everyone's chapter. But we try to like, kind of highlight some things that are really prevalent, because sometimes people might read a story that they think they have nothing in common with. And then they walk away with some idea or some coping mechanism or something that really helped them. So it's one thing to mention that. So my second question for you is, like, what was your experience writing your story, and preparing it for public consumption?

It was a learning process. It was therapeutic, in a sense, trying to summarize all this up into a cohesive manner, because I speak about things like this all the time, but having to condense it in a way with, you know, a beginning and end and the actual goal for the format was interesting. And going through that whole process. I actually dug up some things that I wasn't even ready to deal with yet. And so it was it was very, it was very interesting. And, you know, so as much as I'm hoping to help someone with what I wrote, I can say writing it actually helped me, you know, going through that whole process, getting it out and thinking through that and basically going through that again, reliving all those emotions was very therapeutic for me personally.

Deana Brown Mitchell: Awesome. I hear that From a lot of people, so I'm glad, I think I said earlier on another interview is like, we all think we're writing our story to help someone else, but actually ends up helping us to, which is good. And I think the people who are reading the book and just starting to process something that they're going through that, you know, think about be writing your story in one of our books one day, because, you know, once you, once you process things for yourself, and are able to talk about it freely without being so emotional, I know, I went through that, once I got through that part, and wrote my story. It was super healing for me that and it was also, I was glad that it could help other people. But sometimes we're not fully healed from something, we need to give ourself a little more time. And I learned that firsthand the last couple years as well. So thank you so much for sharing. The last thing I guess I want to ask is like, what advice would you give to anybody that maybe been through some similar things other than what you said, like, it's specifically with anxiety? Because I know you and I have talked about that a lot.

Yeah, anxiety, the best way I could summarize that, and from all the research, and everything I learned about it is it's focusing on something negative in the future. And, you know, usually it's imagining some sort of worst case scenario, as if it is happening, and you're feeling all the emotions and everything as if that is the reality of your present state. So the best thing that I have found to really understand anxiety is for one, just throwing away everything that you misconceptions that you might hear about anxiety, because 99% of anything that is just spoken casually, about most mental health things are just incorrect. So just doing a little research on it, I thought was very beneficial to me. And even in the chapter I mentioned, a book that really greatly helped me, which is the 10, best anxiety management techniques ever. So just being able to understand and it manifests itself very differently in everyone, it could be OCD, for one person, a panic attack for another person, it could be crying, it could be, you know, so many different things. And most people might be going through it and not even understand that the reason why they have cravings for sweets in the middle of the night is anxiety. So just understanding how it could show up in you know, multiple ways is just really beneficial.

Deana Brown Mitchell: And that is so true. I've experienced all of the above. And I think that most of my life, I've suffered from depression and anxiety, but I never knew what it was. And I didn't understand it until I was much older. So I think hopefully that will be helpful to someone as well. Because sometimes we think we're just stressed or we're just, you know, tired or something but really anxiety or depression or something else might be exacerbating whatever your you think you're feeling. So I think that's helpful. So I want to just let everyone know that the realize foundation is responsible for putting these these books together. We also do virtual events. And we are all about suicide prevention in a different way. We talk about human connection, and that's about conversations and community and personal story. And meeting people where they are they know they're not alone, having them connect with someone in our community that has maybe been through something similar, or shares, you know, a location or a job or whatever it is that people have in common, where they can connect, know, they're not alone in their own situation, and come into our community and find the support that they need to get through whatever it is. And so that's kind of what we're all about. So our book launch will be on September 22. It'll be at one o'clock Mountain Standard Time, which is 12 Pacific or three, Eastern. And it'll be virtual for about two hours, you'll meet all the Arthur's you'll get to meet people in the in the Zoom Room, we'll get some breakouts, we'll do some exercises that will hopefully be helpful to you. So it'll be a lot of fun. And I've been saying on every video though, the worst thing I've ever had to do is hit end on that first book launch because nobody wanted to leave. And so we're looking forward to another great event on September 22nd. And you can register at the realizefoundation.org which is at the bottom of the screen and just go to our events tab and you can see all the events we have coming up. And you can always register for our events for free. Or you can also make a donation which would be greatly appreciated so we can keep doing what we're doing. And we hope to see you at the event.