Mental Illness In The Workplace

According to www.nami.org, approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experience mental illness in a given year. Only 41% of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year.

As a leader in my organization, it has become clear that mental health in the workplace is something that affects your culture, employee happiness, and even success as a business.

With 1 in 5 adults experiencing mental illness in the past year, you have to address the situation without overstepping your boundaries.

According to the World Health Organization, work is good for mental health as long as it’s not a negative environment.

I recently experienced a few employees who were going through a hard time and I felt compelled to try to help. Before I get into some solutions that may help your employees, let me tell you a little about my journey through some hardships and how positive thinking completely changed my life.

I experienced some hardships where, mentally, I was not in a good place after college. I had a life saving surgery and the pain I endured completely messed up my mind. I was in a very dark place, where I thought I was better off dead. I was still professionally young, so I didn’t have the support system in place I have now. No one ever introduced me to positive thinking methods.

What I am talking about saved my life, while also accelerating my professional career. The first thing you have to remember is that people project their fears into the future. By doing this, they live in a state of panic – and they are never truly happy.

Instead of projecting your fears or even your desires, you need to start to understand how to live in the present. I tell all my employees that you MUST fall in love with the process, not the outcomes. If you watch an artist paint, they might have the end in mind… but they are living in the moment. Every stroke of the brush is the most beautiful creation they have ever made. This mindset is not easy to just introduce to someone; it needs to happen over time.

If you look at how American culture or society functions, we are driven by consumerism/ Most of us believe that when we get that car, job, or house, we will finally be happy. What happens is the wiring of your brain to latch on to the next thing you want, instead of falling in love with the job you have now (which will get you further faster).

I believe that this way of thinking and falling in love with life is something that can be taught much earlier in our development

As I mentioned earlier, I therefore of stumbled upon meditation, hypnotherapy, and controlling my mind.

I am going to walk you through some solutions and strategies that helped me break through into sustained happiness. I do not lose my cool ever due to my understanding of my brain.

Think about how beautiful it is to see a child get lost in something, when they are young just sit there,playing with toys or paint. They look so free and they are truly living in the moment. As you get older, this liberating freedom of your mind is slowly stripped away by school, friends, family and just plain how our society teaches you to live.

First you need to understand that the thoughts in your mind help create the reality you live in. So if you are constantly saying, “I am going to fail,” you will fail. I read this quote by Virgil, “They Can Because They Think They Can!” This quote came right after college when I was at my worst and it opened up my eyes to a brighter future. I know what you are thinking: this sounds like so hippie shit; but it’s not.

Second you have to understand that the only thing that will ever make you happy is yourself. The exterior elements that you try to latch onto for happiness will never bring you to the promiseland of sustained happiness. You must stop living for other people and start to find yourself. Finding yourself doesn’t happen overnight. If you are aware of your ego, and the fact that you have to undo years of negative thinking, you are in a better position than most people.

“When ego is lost, limit is lost. You become infinite, kind and beautiful.” — Yogi Bhajan

There are so many different experiences that led me to a much happier place than most… and I want to share them with you.

First:meditation.
What is meditation? According to Merriam-Webster, it’s to engage in contemplation or reflection, also to engage in mental exercise for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.

Here is my theory on this. You are meant to speed up your body, in order to be healthy right? You should work out a certain amount of minutes per day. With your brain, you need to do the opposite. You should once per day slow it down to the point where you are not thinking at all. This allows you to start to control your subconscious and to control your mind. I always say, if you control your mind, you control the world.

I was reading this article on Huffington Post just last week and it listed the 8 ways meditation can improve your life:

1. Meditation Reduces Stress
2. It Improves Concentration
3. It Encourages a Healthy Lifestyle
4. It Increases Self-Awareness
5. It Increases Happiness
6. It Increases Acceptance
7. It Slows Aging
8. It Benefits Cardiovascular and Immune Health

Here is the article if you want to read more

I know this may seem like voodoo or even too tall of a task to start; but it’s really not. Eight years ago I started meditation because I was always open to self improvement. I started with just 5 minutes per day. If you close your eyes in the morning or at night, you can use Youtube and set it to a certain mood you want to create in your mind. If you are sad one week, meditate towards happiness. If you are anxious meditate towards relaxation. All you have to do is search in Youtube and find a meditation that stands out to you. There are also apps like headspace.

Next is what I am really excited to share. At my worst, I was very open to finding solutions that would help me start to live a happier life. What I experienced completely changed my life for the last 7 years and sent me down a path of self-improvement and enlightenment.

It’s called hypnosis and this is the definition: hypnosis is the induction of a state of consciousness in which a person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction. Its use in therapy, typically to recover repressed memories or to allow modification of behavior by suggestion, has been revived but is still controversial.

When I was young and stupid, I made one smart decision. What did the most successful athletes, entrepreneurs, and CEOs do when they experienced hard times? I actually googled a bunch of concepts and found executive coaches and hypnosis as the top solutions. It interested me. Since I was aware that my brain needed to be fixed, I went with hypnosis.

What I experienced during this time set my mind free. When I first went to this doctor, I was open to getting help, but was also skeptical of hypnosis. My first session we spoke about issues I was experiencing, identifying blockages I had in my brain. The doctor explained to me that ia scan of my brain you would portray patches of red over certain parts of my brain, from past traumas and experiences. He said that after a certain amount of sessions (everyone is different), if you scanned my brain, those red spots would start to turn yellow or green.

If you want to know this specialist’s name, please contact me directly, email

The science behind that really started to open up my mind and I decided to go twice per month for one year. During this time we focused on traumas that were holding me back and also focused on who I wanted to become in the future: a successful entrepreneur.

After a year of hypnosis, I saw extreme transformations in the way I thought. It felt like I went from looking at life through a telescope where I was very narrow minded in my approach to seeing the world in 360-degrees. During this time, I started my second company, with my business partner Andrew (who is still my business partner today) and began to focus on living in the moment. I stopped projecting my fears into the future. The traumas I experienced in the past were fading each week.

This doctor set me on a journey that I am forever grateful for, and this is why I am sharing such a personal story with a bunch of strangers. I truly believe the world would be a better place if we all meditated and used hypnosis to control certain parts of the brain that you would have otherwise struggled with your entire life.

Seven years later and I am still going strong. I have been through so much personally and professionally over this time, but I always come back stronger and stronger. Life is not easy… we have tons of professional responsibilities, and personally, we have so many challenges that we need to learn how to control our reality.

Now that I have set out to be a positive thinker, I can experience a happy existence. I am free to live in the moment. I am a better leader because of this. I am a better friend and business partner because of my experiences with hypnosis and meditation.

Let me just say that in no way am I a mental health expert. These methods and strategies helped me and my friends, as well as employees along the way. That’s why I wanted to share. If you are experiencing mental health issues, I strongly recommend going to see a doctor.

I truly hope this helps start a conversation about mental health in your workplace. No longer can we ignore the fact that people are struggling mentally. As leaders or co-workers, we need to be open to trying new things; medicine is not always the answer. It can be for some, but there are natural alternatives that can be just as effective.

Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you want some specific meditations or tips. email

Thanks for reading! My goal is to inspire people to think differently, to live a productive happy life, and transform years of abuse on their brain.

All the best,

Patrick J Peters III
Chief Marketing Officer
JUMP450.com