Latest / Life Rescue with Lisa Dwoskin / Empowering Teens & Young Adults, Lawrence's Journey From Trauma to Purpose
Transcript
- Lisa Dwoskin: Harris? Harris. Harris. Okay. All right, here we are. Welcome to Life Rescue with Lisa. I'm so excited to have a guest on today, my second guest, because I've been doing this by myself, educating, inspiring, and motivating all of you. And today, Lawrence Harris is with us, and he's going to share his story and motivate and inspire all of us. Mainly teens, but now you're motivating and inspiring adults as well, correct? Yeah, it's the stuff I talk about is kinda universally applicable. Yeah. So welcome, thank you so much. And you're twenty years old, right? Yeah. So kudos to you because you s started young when you were like sixteen, right? Yeah, I I took all the things I went through with my mental health, hopped on the internet and said, I can't be the only one dealing with this and decide to start helping other people. I love that. And you know what? We help ourselves when we help other people, right? It's all about what goes around comes around. Yeah, it reminds you how far you've come by helping other people take the next step. Yeah. Okay, so let's get into this because for all of you watching, we have spoke maybe for less than five minutes. I don't know his story. I don't know anything about him, although he reached out to me on my email. And don't forget, those of you who want to share your story, 754-222-4413. Call in. You have a voice. Share your story. I was so impressed by this young man who started at 16. Now he's four years later doing podcasts, helping people. So let's hear about how you started, what motivated you. Share your story. I wanna hear it. So what motivated me to start doing this was my own painful journey. As a child I grew up getting severely bullied and didn't really have anyone I could say was a close friend until the age of maybe twelve. And ironically at twelve years old, my dad became abusive to me and my younger siblings. Being the oldest one, you know, I wanted to protect them, but not really much you can do at 12 and the cops weren't doing anything, the legal system was taking forever. So by the time I was thirteen years old, he just kicked me out the house. And that only made things worse because COVID pandemic, now I'm stuck at my mom's house for two years, twenty-four-seven pretty much, and it's just depressing because. I have all these emotions and these thoughts and these feelings and I don't know what to do with it. So thanks to a lot of therapy and self-reflection and so many things, I decided that instead of me just bottling all of this up, I'm going to take the little bit that I learned at that time and get on the internet and try to inspire other people. And this is when you were 13 or 16. ⁓ when I was 15, I started ⁓ just making like TikToks on the internet and hopes of like somebody might see that and go, This guy's going through it too. But he figured out how to get out of bed, how to clean your room. Like it was the most surface level, simple things ever. And over the years it developed into Me going more in depth, me going into here's how to believe in yourself more, here's how to make real change, and I found what I loved and have been doing it ever since. I love it. Okay, let's go back to when you were fifteen around that you started with TikTok. So when you would push play, what would you tell you were mainly talking to kids your age, teenagers? How would you tell them to get out of bed, clean their room? Like how would you inspire them? With what? Sometimes I would describe it as like it sound kinda silly when I think about it, but it works so well. Imagining yourself as a video game character and everything you do is a little achievement. So it makes it like it makes your life into like a little game and you're the main character of it. So when you're like sat in bed and you're super depressed and you can't do anything. It's not as challenging to get up when you're thinking about I'm about to check something off my task list. I'm about to achieve something and I'm going to just get the ball rolling. Yeah. It was just me trying to share what I found would work well and People resonated with it and it just started simple. Yeah, but I love that because when you say that to others, pretend like you're in a video game. So what that does is it takes the person out of their own persona into a video game character and now they can be like a superhero or someone else. Yeah. And then My favorite saying is fake it till you make it. Which is true. You have to do that until it sticks. Okay, so that was fifteen. Now fast forward to sixteen, seventeen, now you s 16. You start really taking this more serious. You're inspiring teenagers to be overcome depression, mental health awareness, you're bringing it to the forefront. How did you do it then? Honestly, I just decided that hey, rather than keep feeling ashamed and hiding what I've been through, I'm gonna throw it out there. Yeah. I had really no plan on how I'd make it work at the start. I just had an idea and I was willing to give it a shot. So I started off by doing a lot of research, testing out things to see okay, I found this thing that worked really well for me and I would live my life, learn something, look back and put it on the internet. So hey, when you're really stressed out, try journaling. Hey, when you don't know how to talk to your parents about your emotions, try this. And I would just go layer by layer, learn a little bit, share it. Learn a little bit, share it. And wash, rinse, and repeat that. For four years. Wow, and you did it all on social media? Yeah, because when you're sixteen years old and you have this idea that hey, I want to go and speak about mental health to these schools and organizations, legally, they're not letting you. It's a legal restriction for obvious reasons. But YouTube, you can go in there and share your opinion. Instagram, you can share your opinion. And because I was speaking from my own lived experience, I knew what worked firsthand and the things that early on didn't resonate well, or people would point out, hey, that doesn't really make that much sense. I would get their feedback, learn, adapt, and find a more effective way of sharing my thoughts. That's beautiful. You were open. To constructive criticism of how you can grow and do this. I love that. So you did this on you do you have TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, all? ⁓ LinkedIn. I was putting it anywhere that people would listen. Yeah. Now do you have your own podcast or are you going to start your own? I have my own one. It's called it's called Limitless Mindset. ⁓ I love that. So how do people find you if they want to watch you? ⁓ they can find me very easily by just searching Lawrence C. Harris into Google, into YouTube, into TikTok. I'm I'm very easy to find. Okay, so do you have a ton of followers on TikTok? Well, I wouldn't say like a ton. I think it's like six thousand. So that's good. Yeah. But they engage with you, I'm sure. And that's a very good point, a side note I want to share with all the people watching. If you have a million followers or six thousand followers, it doesn't matter. It matters how many people are engaging with you and actually liking, trusting, and sharing your story. Don't you agree? ⁓ absolutely. Because it's always like this exact same people who support my videos. It's as if I can remember these people by name, because I see them so much. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about depression. Teenagers. Right now you're twenty, so your generation. Let's talk about fourteen to twenty one. Okay, like that age group, especially with COVID hitting. So COVID you were what, fourteen? Yeah, I was fourteen. COVID lasted like almost three years, so it stretched from fourteen to seventeen. So wasn't that like very trying on your mental health and everyone around you? Because, you know Being around people is a biological need. Yeah. If you go too long without socializing, it actually has major problems for your mental health. It's I remember reading a study that isolation is actually worse for your health than cigarettes. Yeah. And three years of that was a lot to deal with. For sure. For sure. So During those three years is when you were doing the video. So let's talk just about depression. How did you cope with depression? And how maybe give us a couple of pointers on how the viewers watching, the younger viewers, let's start with them, how can they start to cope? I you already said journaling, which I teach as well. I love that. So what are other key factors that you use that you could share with others? One for me personally is move around. Like, it sounds the way I used to describe it was sadness, it's okay. It's hard for sadness to hit a moving target. So that might be you do some push-ups, or you go for a walk or a run, or even just jumping around in place in your bedroom. It looks really silly, but it works. Because now you're out of your bed. You got your blood running. You're you're excited. You're just feeling your emotions instead of bottling it all up. Because it's really easy for us to when we're sat stuck in place all day, it's easy for us to feel mentally stuck, physically stuck, emotionally stuck, like man, life is just falling apart and my room is dirty and we just see all these problems. But you throw on some music and start Dancing around in your bedroom, you'll feel a little bit better. And from there you get the ball rolling. I love what you just said because I'm a fitness instructor. That's what I teach. So my whole thing is movement is the key to life. And hearing it from you, who's a 20-year-old who started so young at 14 to teach this to people, I love how you put it. 'Cause I'm always like, all right, people out get out there, go to the gym, go walking, go hiking, get in nature. But that's like coming from a fitness professional. You said it so beautifully. Like get up, do push ups, dance around. What I always say. Raise your energetic vibe. Yeah. And then you're going to be up here and not like down here, you know? But I love how you said it. I love that. Yeah. ⁓ Another thing that I used to find super duper helpful is if you have a hard time getting out of bed, count down from three and throw yourself. It's like wait, where are we where are we supposed to throw ourselves? Throw ourselves throw yourself out of bed towards your family. As long as you're not on a bunk bed. I thought throwing yourself against the wall or something. Because what's going to happen is like once you get your body to do that. your automatic reaction is to catch yourself. Yeah. Now you're out of bed. So you got past the hardest part. Yeah. I love that. You can again, make your life into a bit of a video game where you give yourself these little checklists and these tasks to do and you just find ways to make life more fun, you know. Make sure that you're not stuck in a dark room all day. It's kinda like ⁓ there's a term called a depression room where it's a room where it's just filthy, it smells bad, there's trash and clothes everywhere, and it's just you can tell that you can tell a lot about somebody's mental health by how dirty that room is. So here I'm laughing because my son is nineteen, my daughter is twenty one. I told you a little bit about her before we started. Yeah. ⁓ he's nineteen. H now my son is the least depressed person. He's like me, very up, very positive, very high vibing. Of course he has his days, just like me, just like all of us. But his room is disgustingly dirty. It's all black. There's black and silver because when we bought our house, it was the woman's like closet that She had a bedroom as a closet that big with chandeliers. It was really cool, but he loves the color black. So it's black, it's dirty, it's I'm like, Aren't you depressed? He's like, No, I'm very comfortable. Like, how could that be? Because I agree with you. I mean, teenage boys, we we kind of naturally are a bit dirty. Yeah. I don't know if there's something like in our brains or what if Almost every single teenage boy you'll find is has a bit of a dirty room or has a stink to it. That's funny. That's funny. Okay, so depression. Now what about do you feel that mental health, the necessity of helping people today, two thousand and twenty-six is at the highest high that it's ever been? I would say that. It's one of the highest highs, you know. We start thinking about all of the worst of the worst times, like World War Two. I wouldn't say it's as bad as that. But with the exception of wars, then yes, it's at the highest. And we can find the data that backs that up. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I mean and not only mental health but obesity and and physical health, the field. I'm in both mind and body. So they're both at the forefront, ⁓ the highest it's ever been that we see. Of course, now there's GLP drugs that everyone's taken to lose weight, but who knows what they're putting in their body. And that's a whole nother subject. But the whole mental health is just really scary nowadays in the world. And I know you will talk a little bit about adults compared to teenagers. But I really feel that our younger generation needs as much help as possible. So the fact that you're doing this is such a beautiful thing. Now, are you getting out there and doing like speaking engagements as well? Yeah, I've done this stuff for churches, mental health organizations, schools, ⁓ libraries, literally anywhere where people will have me. ⁓ I love it. You look at not just adults but teens too. The data it's pretty much that about last time I saw it was around seventy-seven percent of teenage girls deal with body image issues. Then you have young men who think that money and success and status are the only thing that matter, and then you got social media on top of that, then music, movies. magazines, everything all at once is pretty much saying that if you don't have a certain thing, look a certain way, come from a certain place, then you're not good enough. And if you were raised in a world where every single day this gets shoved in your face, it's no wonder why the teen mental health crisis is so out of control. Yeah. I think what you said is key, the social media and these young women and men, boys and girls, wanting the likes, wanting the popularity on TikTok, Instagram, all these things. And then if they don't get it, they feel terrible about themselves. Social media, technology, the phone, the computer, I mean, people walk around like this, they're not even looking. Yeah. Around. It's so sad. So how do we change it? When you go and speak to groups of people, how do you encourage them to not be like this and be like this? Look up, look at the clouds, look at nature. I love what you said about not being alone, socialize. So what are tips you would give them? How do they start doing that? Find a hobby that you really enjoy. So that could be art. It could be music. It could be a dance club. For me, it's fishing. You need to find something that gets you outside and into the real world so that you realize that social media is only inside the phone. Most of the stuff you see on there is fake. Fake. So fake. Fake like I'm older than you, so I'm more into Facebook than Instagram. fake book it's called. I mean it's ridiculous. It's so true. And I agree. And and that leads to another question and you'll elaborate it more on the social media if you want, but how do we get our younger generation to be more true and authentic within themselves? Well that's something that also applies to the older generation too. And the answer is that we have to give them the Freedom to realize that you don't have to be what everyone else wants you to be. Yeah. That's a bit of a dual-edged sword because it means that. How do I put this? A child may have been raised in a family where you have to believe a certain thing. This is how we dress, this is how we talk, this is how we live. And to allow them to truly be themselves means that they have to know it's okay to not go to college. It's okay to not worship the same way we worship. It's okay to not. listen to the same music we listen to, dress the same way that we do. You have full freedom to be your own individual. And that's a bit of a scary thing because when I first decided that I was going to wear the clothes I like, sometimes I walk I like wearing these bright purple suits just because I feel like it. I love going fishing and I'll be on the train or out in public walking down the street with fishing rods and People stare and they have questions about that. They're like, Why are you being different? But you have to give not only young people but yourself, whether you're fourteen or forty eight years old listening to this, the freedom to be outside the box and know that other people's opinions of you don't matter as much as you think they do. So it's something that you have to Not just you but your child or whoever has to sit down with themself and ask underneath everything that I've been told I should or have to be, who am I really? What do I like? What makes me happy? What makes me sad? So it's not really something that we can tell them just be yourself. We have to encourage them to figure out who are you not? Who are you underneath all of the shoulds? I love that. And how we can help them is getting back to what you said about journaling. Because, like you, I tell people journal because when they write in there with no judgment, whatever's on their heart, they get to really know themselves and learn about themselves, who they really are, what you just said. And then another couple things you said was. W my favorite author who passed away, but I still read everything he ever put out, Dr. Wayne Dyer. His quote was, It's none of your business what anyone else thinks of you. And it's so true. It's only your business how you think about yourself, how you see yourself, how you feel about yourself. So I love I'm with you on everything you said. And yes, I agree with you a hundred percent. It's not just kids, it's adults. But I guess I'm focusing on the younger generation because that's where you started and that's where you're teaching and that's where I really want to hear from you because you're in that generation and you can really help all these kids who could relate to you who are around your age going through everything that you've been through. Now, do you feel that you're still on this journey and you'll be on this journey forever till The day you go? ⁓ yes, because you realize that you're never actually done. You're you understand yourself more, you learn more, you experience more things, and that means that you now have more to teach. It's like nobody you nobody hits an age where you know it all and then you're done and then you just ride out the rest of your days. Yeah. You learn something new every single day if you're open to learning. Yeah, it's so true. You know, last night or the night before, I went out with my two kids, 19 and 21, like I told you. And we were going to the restaurant, the three of us were driving, and my kids were both saying, God mom, when we were in high school, we couldn't wait to get out of high school. Then when we couldn't wait to be 18. We couldn't wait to be this. Now all we want to do is go back. My son made me laugh so hard. He's like, Mom, my biggest stress when I was 14, 15, because he's your age, went during COVID was how can I play Fortnite and not have to go to sleep? And and he's like, ⁓ my God. And now he's they both chose not to go to college. So they're both working full time. They're doing really good. They're great kids. But they're like, This life is hard. And I tell them it's a roller coaster, up and down, all around. It peaks and valleys and you're always on the journey. But remember that with all the negatives, there's so many more positives as long as you can learn from all the negatives. And it's a journey. It's kind of like when you were describing that, I started thinking about how when I was 16 and I got my first job, I realized how taxes work. And I'm like, wait, so the government gets my money before I do, and then at the end of the year, I have to tell them how much I owe them, but they can't just mail me a bill. Yeah. And if I'm wrong, I go to prison. Yeah, exactly. So it's like in life, the thing that we worry about change, and we have to be open to the fact that Not only are you never done living, but even in those challenges in the thing that we complain about, like, you know, a lot of people might complain about their job or how much they hate it, and understandable, but you can be blessed in the fact that I have a job. I might not like the place where I live, but I'm not homeless, and you become grateful for what you got. But also not complacent and get lazy. And one thing I want to circle back on about the point of social media before we're done is that you mentioned it's fake book. So I'm going to describe this in a way that's gonna appeal to both younger people and older people. You go on social media and everybody has a perfect life. Nobody has problems. You know, you go on there and you see a family and their five beautiful kids. Husband and wife, white picket fence, they got the minivan and the cars and the dog. They look like they're living the American dream. Behind closed doors, they have crippling credit card debt because that car is on finance. The house is about to get repossessed. They're behind on bills. The kids are acting up in school, but you don't see that on Facebook. They just post the one good picture. Yeah. Or you are scrolling through Instagram and you see An 18-year-old multimillionaire driving a Lamborghini in Miami. That car is rented. That mansion is an Airbnb. Like that life is not that's not what it is. Yeah. And the only reason why people believe that is true is because you keep seeing this over and over and over and over again, and it kind of makes you forget that wait that's probably not even real. Yeah. And you start to compare your actual real life to the stuff that somebody is picture perfect highlight real. No, it's so true. It's so fake. I know. It and so for those of you watching us, get off of social media, stop doing this all day long. Pick up your head, get out in nature, move your body, feel good about yourself, raise your vibe. And before we close this out, gratitude. I love what you said. Because everything you said is exactly what I teach as well. I love it. Gratitude, faith, get up. I love the things that you said. I think you're brilliant. And I want you to again share with everyone how they can. Reach out to you to get you to speak or follow you on TikTok. Again, give all your info. So my social medias for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, they're all the same. Lawrence L A W R E N C E Letter C as in Cat Dot Empowers E ⁓ P O W E R S. That's phone YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. I love that. Looking to book me to speak at a school mental health organization or as a podcast guest, you can contact me at Lawrence at Lawrence Charris.com. That is my email address. Perfect. Perfect. And before we say goodbye to these beautiful people, don't forget all of you, if you need to reach me via text or messaging seven five four two two two four four one three and this will be on iHeartRadio Apple and Spotify and on YouTube so check it out so leave us Lawrence with some beautiful words for these people to really sit back and think about how they're going to better their life remember that you get one like And when you die, you're the only person going in that casket. You do not get to take your money, you don't get to take your cars, you don't even get to take your wife or husband in the casket with you. It's just you. So knowing that, while you have your time, enjoy it. Find something to be grateful for. Find something to be happy about. It might not be something major, but I'm pretty grateful that I'm not blind. I'm grateful that I have a roof over my head. I'm grateful that I am able to talk and articulate myself. So focus more on what you've got and not on what you don't. I love it. Yes. Peace, love, and light. So thank you everybody for joining. Follow Lawrence. He's great. Thank you so much, Lawrence, for being part of this. And keep up the great word. You got your whole life ahead of you to help the world. become a better place because of all the people in it. So thank you. You're welcome. I enjoyed it a lot. ⁓ thank you. And I will see you all next time. Bye.