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Transcript

Episode 85: The Road to Self-Acceptance: Overcoming Life's Challenges with Resilience · Voices for Voices®

• 0:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: Prologue.
• 0:01
  Justin Alan Hayes: Option 1.
• 0:03
  Justin Alan Hayes: Immediate release to face an uncertain future.
• 0:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: The second I cleared the heavy industrial glass doors of the hospital.
• 0:13
  Justin Alan Hayes: Option 2.
• 0:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: Voluntarily admit myself into a psych ward for an unspecified length of time to begin the treatment for my newly diagnosed mental illnesses.
• 0:26
  Justin Alan Hayes: It was after midnight on November 10th 2017, in the Akron General Hospital emergency room where I, next to my new wife of just six short months, was presented two terrifying options that, no matter which one I chose, would alter the course of my life forever.
• 0:47
  Justin Alan Hayes: I was being forced to choose between a path of uncertainty or a path of uncertainty with professional guidance.
• 0:55
  Justin Alan Hayes: Like that was any better?
• 0:57
  Justin Alan Hayes: Like they knew me and what I was going through my personal nightmare.
• 1:02
  Justin Alan Hayes: I've been living for years, a story that they had literally just become main characters in.
• 1:08
  Justin Alan Hayes: Perhaps more accurately, do I simply accept a responsibility and own what was happening to me, or try to ignore it and hope to God I don't end up right here in a hospital gown once again?
• 1:22
  Justin Alan Hayes: Clearly, this was a life-threatening time for me, which had only intensified to an overpowering level in the last few months Leading up to that dreaded day in November 2017, the magnitude of the situation, albeit invisible, still was able to engulf anything else in my life.
• 1:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: No manual or self-help guidebook can inform my next step here.
• 1:49
  Justin Alan Hayes: Until that exact moment in time, I was my own hero.
• 1:54
  Justin Alan Hayes: I firmly believed that I could correct any situation that had gone awry.
• 2:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: I could solve any problem based on the facts of a life lived up until that point, ruded in what I knew.
• 2:09
  Justin Alan Hayes: I could help myself in a way that nobody else could.
• 2:12
  Justin Alan Hayes: And so this one time I quieted my mind, my bullhead in this, my heart in heart, my ego trying to push its way through and dominate yet another situation.
• 2:26
  Justin Alan Hayes: I listened In the stillness of the sterile room, between my shallow breaths and everyone's steady eyes on mine.
• 2:35
  Justin Alan Hayes: I accepted that I wasn't ready to die.
• 2:38
  Justin Alan Hayes: I finally accepted that I needed help.
• 2:41
  Justin Alan Hayes: I chose the second option.
• 2:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: Think about the purpose of life and what life means to you personally.
• 2:48
  Justin Alan Hayes: Really think about it for a second.
• 2:50
  Justin Alan Hayes: Ask a family member or friend what they think.
• 2:54
  Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe your answers will be similar.
• 2:56
  Justin Alan Hayes: Communicate it with alternate words that hold the same meaning.
• 3:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe they'll be so drastically different that it will spark a discussion of opinion and learning.
• 3:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: Those differences, no matter how subtle or glaring, inform our unique point of view and ultimately make us each who we are as humans.
• 3:17
  Justin Alan Hayes: Even as I sit here today writing these words and as you sit months, years into the future reading them, I am still no closer to finding the answers to life's questions, but I am much closer to defining the purpose and meaning of my life.
• 3:36
  Justin Alan Hayes: I've found my prescription for living.