 Hello, his microphone is working, so we can start. Alright, we can start. Good. I'm good. To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is no blur in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against the sea of troubles and by opposing ending to die, to sleep no more. That thing was solidically from hammer intrigued me, but now that I'm doing a lot of work in the mental health arena, I sort of fell to it by accident, because I work in the construction industry. I teach emotional intelligence and people skills to construction workers and engineers and contractors. And unfortunately, over 5,000 people a year decide that they don't want to be in that industry. 5,000. Suicide kills more people in the construction industry in the United States than all construction-related accidents. Five times more. Five times more people die from suicide than construction-related accidents. So we've got a big problem here. And by the way, 70% of all suicides in the U.S. are committed by white males of working age. 70%. So I've started to really get into this arena, and it's been a real weird journey for me, because I had this mental illness thing in my head from when I was a kid. My grandmother, Big Mama, that's her name, Big Mama, she was the youngest of 12, and she was born in 1904, and then when she was a little girl, she was picked cotton to raise, to have money for the family. Her dad was a sharecropper. And she had a lot of sisters who had mental health issues, but we didn't call it that at the time. We either made fun of them or we ignored them. We either said they were loony and crazy and put them in the nut house and they were a couple of fries short of a happy meal or it was a joke that we made. Or we ignored them completely and put them away. In fact, my grandmother at age 60 found out she had a sister that she had never met. They had committed her to an insane asylum before my grandmother was born. And at age 60, she found out about this sister and went to see her before she died. So that's my journey with mental health. And it's really difficult in this industry because it's a hyper-masculine industry. You can't be vulnerable. You can't ask for help. You cannot say that you're struggling. That's a problem. Plus, they have an emotional profile that's low emotional self-awareness, low empathy so they don't understand others, so they don't understand themselves, don't understand others, can't express their emotions well. That plus the hyper-masculine work environment is a recipe for disaster for suicide. So we're working to change that. We're working to destigmatize that. I have a program I've created called Primal Safety and we talk about lifestyle choices, you know, stress and sleep and nutrition and what you put in your body and exercise and those kind of things that contribute to mental, physical and emotional well-being and high performance. So that's what we focus on when we're in this arena. The uniting thing of everything that we do for mental health and construction folks is connection. Connection. How do we connect as human beings? How do we learn to be vulnerable to each other so that when we are struggling we can say that and for it to be okay to not be okay? That's what we focus on. And we do that in a number of ways. A lot with applied improv. Here's something we start with usually. Story of your name. It's a really easy way to start for these folks. So we say, you know, tell the story of your name, first name, middle name, last name. It's a very intimate thing. It's a very vulnerable thing but it seems very low risk. So we start with story of your name and then as we progress with this maybe the next exercise, maybe the next time we meet is tell a story about when you were a child or a kid, how you overcame a difficulty, a difficult situation. So they've already practiced telling a story with their name and now they're telling a hero's journey story where they're the hero. So it seems a little less problematic for them because they've overcome something. They've triumphed with something. So that's another way we do it. And then we do, I have a whole 52 weeks of, every Monday we have on the job sites a safety meeting and these are about how we connect with human beings. So we'll do things like turn your backs to each other, remove some safety piece of equipment like your glasses or ear plugs or something and then turn back around and the person has to tell what piece of safety equipment did you remove to see if they're connecting with people. Another thing we have in the list is a story to your partner about what it would be like if you didn't go home today. If you died today on this project, what would it look like for your family and your friends? Tell that story. So we really get into getting them to connect as human beings. And I wonder, think about how many AI Applied Improv concepts can you think of that connect people, right? So we pull out the stops, we use as many of those as we can. It's very important that we focus on that connection part because once you get connected as humans, that vulnerability is less problematic. The stigma is diminished or goes away completely. And we start having some real discussions about our mental health and about our lifestyle choices. So here's the thing about to be or not to be that I started with, think about it. That was a soliloquy. Hamlet was by himself. What if he was with a really good friend of his or a mentor or someone that really knew him well? That discussion would probably go much differently, my guess would be. And that's what we're shooting for is that connection. Because the thing about connection is you have to start with yourself. And I looked this up and every religion has this. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that implies self-love, right? It does. And every religion has that. Even my atheist friends, they told me that's probably a pretty good idea. You know, to love your neighbor as yourself. But you have to love yourself first. So let's do a quick exercise. I want you to get a partner. Everybody get a partner. You can do three. I want you to tell your partner, number one, something you love about yourself. And number two, something you're really good at. Love about yourself and something you're really good at. Go. All right, start wrapping this up because I'm short on time. It is only 15 minutes. I'll give you 30 more seconds. Okay, stop wherever you are. Stop, please. All right, listen up. So when we're in isolation, when we're in isolation, we tend to tear others down and we tend to tear ourselves down. So it's about connecting and maintaining those connections, right? The next thing that I've thought about with all the religions is love your enemies. And all religions have that as well. I haven't asked my atheist friends about that one. But that's a little harder. There's some pretty unlovable people. But there's some great compassion exercises where you can talk about how that person, just like you, they crave love. And they crave acceptance. And they have problems. And they have struggles. And try to make it where you can connect with them on some level. And love people even that you don't like. And always have, this sticks in my mind, I don't like that person. I need to get to know them better, right? Because if you really try to connect as a human, you'll find a way to connect as a human. It's all about the connection. So I've got a ton of resources if you guys want it. I'm going to end with an exercise. First, I have this Hafiz quote that I love. I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. We all have that. Even those people we don't like. So I'm going to give you the gift of letting go for the next, let's see how much time I have left, for the next three minutes. I want you to get in a comfortable position. Close your eyes if you want. There's nothing to do right now. There's nothing to learn. There's nothing that you need to do or know or be. All I want you to do is focus on self-love and how you're connected with everybody in this room and everybody outside of this room for the next three minutes. Again, there's nothing to do, nothing to know, nothing to say, nothing. Just empty out. Think about how much you love yourself and how you're connected to every human being in this room and on this planet for three minutes. Let everything go. Let go of all effort. Go. Come back to us, please. Know that you are loved, you are valued, and you are more than enough. Celebrate yourself and celebrate others and connect. Thank you very much.