A Yorkshire man who lost his brother to suicide says social media allowed him to create a "false sense of reality" when he was struggling to cope.
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00:00 I ran downstairs screaming. I went outside and found that he'd hung himself on the balcony.
00:05 He'd taken his own life.
00:06 I'm not gonna lie to you. There's not a day that goes by where I don't think about it.
00:12 I have nightmares about it. I always think about it. It was awful. I wouldn't wish it upon anybody.
00:18 But one thing I will say to you is, if that would have not happened to me
00:23 eight years ago, I would not be stood here right now talking to you lovely people.
00:29 And that is how you should see life. Life isn't easy. Life has never been easy and it never will
00:35 be easy. But once you start seeing life happening for you instead of to you, your life will change
00:40 in an unprofound way. And the other thing about social media that I think I hate the most
00:45 is bullying. I've been a victim to bullying in the past. It's awful. It's one of the worst
00:50 feelings that can ever happen to you. Bullying in person is bad enough because it f***ing hurts.
00:58 Bullying online is even worse because when you say something to somebody in person, it goes. It's
01:04 not there. It's not tangible. When you say something to somebody online, it's there. It never goes away.
01:10 And that person that you've said something to is constantly reminded of the hurtful thing that you
01:14 have said. And like I said before, the person with the biggest smile on their face can be the one
01:19 struggling the most. So they put a kid in a classroom with a marshmallow and said, "There's a
01:24 marshmallow there. If you eat it, that's fine. But if you wait half an hour, you can have two more
01:29 marshmallows." And because he didn't want to delay that gratification for a bigger reward, he ate the
01:34 marshmallow straight away, but then was disappointed with himself because he knew if he'd have waited
01:38 half an hour, he could have two more. And that is the difference between instant and delayed
01:42 gratification. So practicing resilience, this means that when you have a difficult day,
01:50 it means not giving up. Not giving up at the first sight of hardship. Not giving up at the first
01:56 failure. Making sure that you are getting to the end of the day and you keep fighting and you keep
02:00 pushing. That is mental resilience. But like I said in the talk earlier, if we focus on our health
02:06 and we focus on our happiness, making sure we're doing the foundations right every day, we're eating
02:11 right, we're exercising, that's going to give us far much more energy and it's going to give us
02:16 far much more mental resilience to then overcome life's challenges and life's adversity. I am
02:22 grateful for my partner. I'm grateful for a roof over my head. I'm grateful to be able to speak in
02:27 front of you today because I absolutely love it. I'm grateful for clean water. I'm grateful for my
02:33 health. Those are just a number of things that I will tell myself every single day I'm grateful for
02:38 because I am focusing on what I've got. I'm not focusing on what I don't have. And like I said,
02:42 when we focus on what you've got, you always have enough. When you focus on what you don't have,
02:46 you never have enough. Like I said, the richest person in the world is the person who has enough.