On November 1, 1995, I sat on my bed, in the psychiatric ward of my local hospital. Three months prior to that day, I had been diagnosed with type two bipolar disorder and I was now in a deep depressed state. I had become a danger to myself. All I wanted was to die.

Every day, I was served a cocktail of pills, my life was strongly framed, I had to go to group activities where you are supposed to learn from each other. Mostly, I learned that I was not the only pathetic person in the hospital (my feelings at the time). Then, they enlist you in self-confidence building activities in the hopes that you will discover your self-worth. The fact that you are depressed means that you think you are not worth much in your own eyes but this is a chicken and egg situation. Nobody agrees on which one causes the other.

Almost eight weeks later, on Christmas eve, they let me go home. I had my pill prescription and I was feeling better. This lasted for almost five years.

In January 2000, I met a man who wrote poetry. I had a two hours talk with him and it was a lot of fun. That night, however, I was thinking back to that conversation and started thinking that maybe my perspective on life was skewed. I had a long talk with my sister the following weekend. To my question about my perspective on life, she said this exact phrase: “Martyne, how do you expect to see everything. You are on meds that take away anxiety. For the past few years, nothing has been big enough for you to fear or worry about. It might be better for you if it keeps the suicidal ideas at bay but don’t expect to see things clearly.”

The following week, I asked my local church for a meeting with a priest. As a general rule, I don’t go to church. The Catholic church has been a deception for me more than once and while I still believed in God, I had lost faith in the church. This priest agrees to meet with me but his only recommendation was to go to church and engage in meditative prayer. He defined meditative prayer for me and told me that the further away from the church you stay, the worst your life is.

I’ve never been one to accept what others say as truth. I even question medical doctors. I did take into consideration his advice about meditative prayer but the prayer part did not work well for me so I research meditation. Once I knew what this was about, I asked my psychiatrist to wean me off the anxiety pills. He agreed, with reservation.

In March of the same year, I was totally off those anxiety pills and suddenly, life was different. For the first time since I had landed in a psych ward, I was afraid and worried. My meditation teacher explained that fear is in the human mind, there are no monsters out there, they are all in you. I worked on that for about a month, twice a day, every single day, for 30 minutes. I walked away from most of the fears and all of the worry. This led the way to thinking that there had to be more to life. There had to be more to being here than just going through the motions. I had this ah-ha moment during a meditation session where this thought came up: “I don’t know who and what I am. My view of life is wrong but not because of the pills, because I don’t know what life is.”

I went on a quest, in search for the answers. It took a long time but I found fabulous teachers. Guy Finley, from who I learned to let go and how to lead a fearless life. Alan Tutt, who forced me to examine my belief system and to shed those that were no longer serving me. One of those beliefs was that I needed the pills to keep me from hurting myself. So, I enlisted my psychiatrist to get off the anti-depression pills. He did not want to help at first but he wanted even less for me to do it on my own so he finally agreed.

I found other teachers like Mike Dooley with his Totally Unique Thoughts, his adventurer’s club and his notes from the Universe; Bob Proctor from whom I learned that I was born rich, inside me was a treasure that was here to serve the world; Tony Robbins, who taught me that it’s in serving others that you find happiness; Dov Baron got me lessons in striving for excellence; And Brandon Burchard for the three most important questions we should ask ourselves every day: Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?

Throughout that time, I found lessons upon lessons but I had to apply them into my every day life. So, I started to develop tools for myself. I kept the meditation because this was such a great thing and it made me feel so much more powerful about my life. I wrote myself some mantras and posted them where I could see them every day. I have but one picture that I always keep near me: a gold fish jumping from a small fish bowl into a bigger one.

Also, I started to monitor my thoughts and emotions. Every time I would catch myself having negative thoughts or feeling bad, I would IMMEDIATELY change the thoughts or improve the feeling. In order to do that, I created switches in my head. I found things that made me feel good, images or pictures of situations. Every time I would need them, I would bring them to the forefront of my mind.

For every bad feeling, I would take a few seconds to look closely at the situation I was in or the thoughts I was having. Sometimes, bad feelings are your intuition telling you something, other times, it is showing you a belief that you have. This, of course, was a moment to moment work at first. But, as I eliminated beliefs, my view of life changed and it became a habit so it went on autopilot.

I also made a three breath rule for myself. This was so I could not get caught in the manic phases. Every time I felt this “Go, go, go” feeling that manic phases bring on, I would ground and center myself, close my eyes and take three deep breaths. Most of the time, the feeling would passed after the first one. If that didn’t work, I would ask myself questions until I was sure that the feeling was passion driven, not manic driven. It takes a while but after doing that for about two months, I knew the difference in feeling between passion and being manic instantly.

I found that a manic phase is much harder to avoid than a depression phase. The main reason for that is that it feels so good. However, it is also much easier to control. Depression has a tendency to suck you in slowly without your knowledge. A manic phase, you can feel instantly.

My daily practices included all the actions I took to be a better me so, I followed passion feelings, I directed my imagination to where I wanted it to go, I monitored my thoughts and I meditated. When I got stuck, I had the chance to have a wonderful person show up in my life. Larry Agresto is a life coach and he reminded me of the one lesson I had forgotten because I was so caught up in every day life: Choose what feels good. I still hire Larry from time to time because, as we grow, we reach glass ceilings that we need to burst through. You can reach him at larry (at) larryagresto.com.

My life keeps getting better every single day. I still read the same books: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho; Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom; You were born rich, by Bob Proctor; The essential laws of fearless living, by Guy Finley; Choose to believe, by Alan Tutt and Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, a text book for first year Quantum physics students. I find new stuff with every read.

Here is what my life looks like now: I own a business that produces business plans to help local businesses get loans and government subsidies so they can expand; I optimize web sites for online businesses and take care of client relationships for retailers by keeping in touch with their customers (sending them birthday cards or asking them for referrals, for example). I do not worry anymore and I’ve eliminated almost all of my fears.

Last year, I wrote a novel. The book is still in editing mode But should be out in April and will be available on Amazon. I have put most of what I learned into my characters and made them fun and magical. There is a witch, a fairy, demons, warlocks, deities, gnomes and a whole band of preternatural creatures(Imagination needs an outlet). But most of all, there is a lot of love, kindness and compassion: the triad of the foundation of life itself. I am now happy and feel like I belong here. Harmony has become my middle name. I value the people in my life, even the ones I don’t agree with. I have what most people strive for: happiness, love and financial stability.

If we could teach teenagers that they are, in fact, a parcel of God (the Universe, the One, the Goddess, whatever that may be for them) and have inherited the power of creation and the ability to be happy no matter what life throws your way, I think we could make this world a better place. At least, they might remember who and what they are and use their free will and their freedom to act a little more wisely. Some of them might even choose to leave a legacy so they still matter a hundred years from now. You don’t commit suicide when you have a purpose in life.

Martyne Gagnon
Author of The Magic
Coming to Amazon in April 2010