 As many of you know by now, Garrett Watts is officially back, maybe, and he's taken a few breaks from YouTube, and each time he says he's gonna come back for real. In this video, I wanna discuss depression, how it affects all of us, and maybe what we could do about it. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I like to do is take a look at what's going on in the YouTube community and try to see what lessons we can pull from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you're not yet, make sure you're following me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul because my brand new book, Rewire Your Anxiety, is coming out very soon, and I'm giving away a bunch of free copies. I'm getting input from all of you on what you want me to cover in the book. And it's coming along amazingly, and there will be an audio version as well, so make sure you're following me on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. All right, cool. Let's talk about Gareth Watts. So full disclaimer, I don't know Gareth Watts. That may come as a surprise to some of you. I do not know Gareth Watts, all right? But a lot of us have been watching him for a while, and something I try to do is like, we watch YouTubers because we can relate to them, all right? And I know I can relate to Gareth Watts. So another quick disclaimer. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a psychologist. I am somebody who has been diagnosed with depression, a generalized anxiety disorder, and I've had to find a lot of tools to use just so I can function in life. So I like to look at other YouTubers, kind of get context, see if I can relate, and share some of my experience, which will hopefully help some of you beautiful people out there. All right, so the first video I covered on Gareth Watts was when he cleaned his house and he had a problem with hoarding and things like that, and like Shane Dawson came over and Ryland Adams came over and Morgan and Andrew came over and everything like that. And like, it was amazing. It was phenomenal. And I loved making that video, just discussing all the things that we can learn from it. Like a lot of you really like that video. Like I love making it because there were so many just things that we could pull from it. But something I talked about in that video was that Gareth talked about how he wasn't really recording because of his house, right? Because it was a mess. And there was other things. There were friends because of his house. And something I said is like, yo, let's keep Gareth accountable. Like let's hope he makes a video like at least once or twice a month, right? And Gareth actually replied to that video like, check it out. Look, he replied to my video, right? And yeah, he made another video a while later about getting his ear pierced and then Gareth gone, right? But Gareth was still kind of around, you know, he pops up in Shane Dawson, like pictures and Instagram and he shows up in Ryland's videos that he's posting and everything like that. But anyways, yeah, he just came back with his brand new video about waking up at 5 a.m. every day for a week, all right? And I made a video covering that and seeing what we can learn from it. But something I just wanted to discuss was like that feeling that I can definitely relate to where Gareth talks about, he's not going to give the same old spiel about how this time he's back and he's going to make more videos and be more consistent, everything like that. He talks about how he's been going through a rough time. So I don't know what that means for Gareth. It could be a slew of things. I don't want to assume what's going on in his life, but I know what that's like for me on a few different levels. One of them is that I struggle with depression and sometimes it'll just hit seemingly when everything is all right. And I don't think some people get it, right? As one reason why I talk about it and try to create awareness and hopefully you like you share these videos to create awareness because like it's easy to look at Gareth Watts and be like, okay, this dude has everything, right? Like, why, why would he be depressed? Why would he not be doing that thing? Like, I know as a creator, like I look at it and I'm like, man, if I had the skill, the talent, maybe even the good looks of Gareth Watts, like, yo, I would be creating videos all the time, right, to get views and all these other things, right? But the reality is when depression hits us, it, it kills our motivation, it kills our creativity, all these other things, right? And then what happens to a lot of us is, is when we start down that road of not doing things, not creating, it just gets worse, right? Because next thing you know, it's been three days, it's been four days, it's been a week, it's been two weeks, it's been a month, right? And then we're beating ourselves up for what we haven't created, and then it makes us even more depressed, right? So this is a thought trap. And this is one of the reasons why I try to preach like meditation and mindfulness, because I now know when this stuff's happening, right? Like all mindfulness is, is paying attention to what's happening right now, all right? And if you start meditating, you train your brain to do that more often. So like, I have developed a skill that I'm much better at now, where I can catch these, these bad thoughts that are coming in, you know, that are telling me to not do anything, to not create anything, to not be motivated and you already screwed up and everybody probably hates you and all these other negative voices, right? Like I can catch them, right? And then I could start doing something about it. And this is one of the reasons why I recommend therapy to everybody. Like, I absolutely love my therapist. Like, when I was talking to her, not this last session, but the one before it, but anyways, like I was talking to her and she knows that, you know, I like to laugh at myself. So that, like, that's the only reason why she laughed too. But anyways, like I was just talking to her and I was telling her about the craziness going on in my head and she starts laughing and I'm like, what's so funny, right? I'm sensitive. And she's like, do you hear what you're saying? I'm like, oh my God, I do hear what I'm saying, right? And there's something about, you know, having somebody like helping us acknowledge these toxic thoughts that we're having, right? These thoughts that are not being useful to us. You know what I mean? And frankly, like, this is why I always recommend like, hang out with people who tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Like, I know sometimes we just want to be coddled and have people feel bad for us and everything like that, but something that saved my life multiple times was having my friends call me, text me, walk into my house, walk into my room and pick me up and be like, yo, we're getting out of the house today. We're going to do something today. We're going to make something today. We're going to get something done today. We're going to hang out today. All right. Like you cannot just sit here, right? And that's why it's awesome that Garrett Watts has, you know, amazing friends like Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams and Morgan and everything like that, right? So that is very, very, very good, right? But when we see what Garrett Watts is like, like when I'm watching him, right? Like Garrett, you know, this is his job. This is his primary thing. And I get worried for him. Like I get worried seeing his lack of creation because that is his livelihood. And I like, even though it's none of my damn business, I'm like, yo, how's Garrett like paying his bills, right? Like he talked about like going to Japan for two weeks. I'm like, yo, how's he affording to go to Japan? He's not making videos. Like I get worried about that kind of stuff. But like that's the thing. And for the rest of us who are not, you know, YouTubers with millions of subscribers, like we have to ask ourselves that. Like how does our mental health affect our ability to work? Our ability to do anything? So using Garrett Watts's context, especially his last video where he had a goal every single day to just do something productive. And that's mainly why I wanted to make this video. Like if Garrett Watts, if you ever see this video, like this is what I would encourage you to do. But here's what I encourage all of you to do out there who are struggling with depression. Like as somebody who is struggling with depression, I can honestly say the worst thing I've ever heard anybody tell me as a part of advice is like just do something, right? Or snap out of it. But at a certain point, we have to, all right. And this is one of the reasons why antidepressants are so beneficial for some people. They get us to a baseline that'll just get us out of bed. But there comes a certain point where we have to do stuff even though we don't want to. Like something I try to teach people is maintaining good mental health isn't necessarily about what you want to do. It's about what you have to do, right. Like I made a blog post not that long ago about bathing every day. Every single day, bathe, shower, bath, whatever your thing is boo, right. And the message of that blog post was just like do something each day to take care of yourself, right. Some act of self love. Like for me, like I used to just be a filthy, disgusting person back in my drug addiction and alcoholism. So my one thing a day that I am guaranteed going to do to treat myself like a human being is bathe. That's just me, right. Maybe for you it's like putting on some moisturizer or like doing your hair or whatever it is, right. But we do something. But once we see that we can do something, not everything because doing everything could be extremely overwhelming. But if we could train ourselves to do something, at least one thing every day, the next week we can start doing two things every day, right. The next week we can start doing three things every day. This is how we build resilience. Resilience is one of the major, major components to improving our mental health. Because we start to recognize, our brain starts to realize, oh my God, I can accomplish something, right. And celebrate your successes, right. Like maybe Garrett's celebration was like going on his vacation to Japan, right. But if you like got out of bed that day, like treat yourself, right. Have a scoop of ice cream, pat yourself on the back, give yourself a gold star, whatever it is. Like a lot of other people out there who do not struggle with mental illness they will never understand. But for people like you and me, sometimes those really small things, that is a huge deal for us, right. And we need to congratulate ourselves for it. Because what we're doing is we're giving ourselves positive reinforcement, so that way the next time something comes up, our brain automatically thinks, oh wait, when I get something done it makes me feel good, right. And I don't have time to dive into the whole neuroscience of that, right. But we want to train our brain to see that being productive is a good thing. So for somebody like Garrett Watts who's trying to get back in the groove, like here's what I would say. And this is just unsolicited advice from Chris Boutet to Mr. Garrett Watts and anybody else that might benefit from this. Especially if you're creative, if you're somebody who likes to write or draw or paint or dance or whatever it is, right. Just do something. Just create something. Like I will say it until the day I die and I know I'm not alone in this. Like how awesome would it be if Garrett Watts just did a daily vlog. Not too edited, nothing crazy, but like Garrett has just such an amazing personality. And even though if he did a daily vlog or if he just did like a daily like journal entry, like a video journal entry or just how his day went, right, like it wouldn't meet the standards that he has because that dude edits like amazingly. I love his editing style. But anyways, like him just doing that, it would start to build that momentum of being productive. And then he could dial it back to once a week, once every other week and having kind of a bigger production. You know what I mean? But again, the goal isn't to do everything. The goal is to do something. All right, especially if you deal with anxiety and depression, doing everything can be overwhelming. So figure out something that you could do every single day to be productive. Like me, I'll share with you what I've been doing. I've been trying to do multiple things a day for my mental health, such as go to the gym, go to a 12 step meeting, talk to somebody in my support group, right? Have some leisure time so I'm not just working my freaking face off. You know what I mean? And trust me, there's many days where I just don't want to do it. But again, it's about what I have to do, not what I want to do, all right? But anyways, let me know your thoughts on this subject down below. What have you done? What do you do? What have you forced yourself to do, even though you didn't want to, just because you knew you had to do it to improve your mental health? Let's share our experience down below in the comments, all right? But anyways, don't forget to follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul because Rewire Your Anxiety is coming out very soon. I'm giving away a bunch of free copies and I have some other exciting announcements coming up. So follow me so you don't miss anything, all right? But if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And if you would like to help support what I'm doing here, get some other perks and benefits, like free copies of all my books, you can click the top right there, all right? Thanks again so so much for watching. I'll see you next time.