ELLA:
Tell me something. You used to be utterly filled with anxiety. I don't mean to make it sound like it's over. The internet likes to make it sound like things are over the moment you have a different thought. No, we just learn how to manage our natural states. What I understand from you is that your natural state deferred to anxiety and worry. I think some people will find that very relatable. Can you share some tips with us on how to manage oneself when we are in fact prone to those as our natural states? How do you stop from spinning out, Tony?
TONI POWELL:
I think the key for me has been to create new neural patterns, to be deliberate, to go to certain places on a regular basis so that I have a pathway. Because when I was first trying to come out of depression, people would say, you know, you just need to be positive. And I'd be like, I'm being positive, fuck off. It's counter to the truth. The truth is not positive here. Can't you see this and this? And so. But that felt dishonest to be positive. And it wasn't until I kind of started to realize that we create these patterns in our brain and then we default and live them constantly and that you could break a pattern. and train your brain to come into a different headspace. So when I first was trying to, actually the very first day, I tried to step out of my negative headspace because I'd started realizing enough brain science to know that this was a choice I could make. Regardless of how I felt, it wasn't really anything to do with how I felt. I tried to step out and find a positive thing. I couldn't find anything because I didn't have, I wasn't attuned to good things.
ELLA:
You were literally blind to it?
TONI POWELL:
Blind to what was good. Blind in my life. I started with one minute of the color blue. So I realized that our brains are governed by what we focus on, our existence, our reality, our whole experience of life is what we focus on and that you can change the ease of which you focus on something different. I'd got into a pattern that it was super easy to focus on anxiety or to focus on depression or focus on those or my rage, my self-pity or whatever, all the fun things that I was doing. Once I realised that we ourselves create the neural pathways in our brain, that we are actually the architects of what happens in our head, then I had this little mission like, okay, well, I'm going to change this. I'm going to find one good thing and I'm going to focus on it for a minute. And so I built up and I got myself out of depression in just over a month.
ELLA:
Tell me what you mean when you say you started with a color blue.
TONI POWELL:
What I realized is that I was focusing on all the bad in my life. When you're depressed, you can't find any good. So I just had to think, what is possible here to enjoy? Is there anything in this room? I was in my little, I ended up living in a little shed. I was living in this little shed. Like I was trying to write gratitude journals, but I'd be like, I'm grateful for my shed. I'm living in a shed. I wasn't very grateful. I wasn't very good at gratitude journals. So I just started with, OK, what I can enjoy here is this one colour that was painted on a wall. And for a minute I focused on that. And so then I would just find something else for a minute and focus on that. And I started doing it everywhere. So I'd be in a line in a supermarket and instead of being like, I need to get out of here. I'd think, oh, what here can I focus on that is good? And it might be a child playing. It might be just what I would just keep finding. So I just set out with this mission to go find one good thing next, find one good thing, find one good thing. And within a month, my brain had started to open up and go, wow, there's other good things. There's all these good things everywhere. It was a bit like that you'd been living in a mansion your whole life, but no, you'd never turned the lights on and that you'd been kind of feeling around in the dark. And then when you turn the lights on, it's like tapestries, amazing. Like it's suddenly there's all this beauty you didn't see before that appears. But I was just blind because you find what you look for.
ELLA:
You find what you look for.
TONI POWELL:
That is honestly the big revelation of my life, is you find what you look for. And those six words have the ability to change any minute that I have.
