Connect with us

Life

5 Strategies To Reach Success While Battling Depression

Published

on

battling depression
Image Credit | Joel Brown

Depression is a challenge, it can affect everyone from your everyday person to celebrities. It’s not a choice to suffer from depression, but there is a choice in how you react to it.

Ernest Hemingway eventually chose suicide. He decided he didn’t want to confront the demons of his depression any longer. Sometimes even the strongest can fall.

Depression isn’t a joke and it’s certainly not a weakness. It can wrap its large hands around your neck and strangle you into submission. It’s not fun to suffer and you can’t “just get over it.

It’s a battle, a war. You may not be able to switch your moods with the snap of your fingers, but you can choose to drop your gloves against this crushing illness.

Depression can help create mystical stories like Edgar Allan Poe’s. It can help create awe inspiring paintings like Vincent Van Gogh’s. It can help create beautiful music like Beethoven’s.

Many have suffered, in many professions. Actor Marlon Brando (of The Godfather) suffered from chronic depression his entire life. Billy Joel checked himself into a hospital after a failed suicide attempt. Becoming the “President of The United States of America” while suffering from major depression is even a possibility, like Abraham Lincoln did.

Unfortunately, most people who suffer deeply enough turn to drugs and alcohol. I turned to alcohol. The reason drugs and alcohol are the dark alleys people linger down is because it’s a form of self-medication. It’s no different then the guy who comes home after a long day of work and drinks a six-pack of beer while watching mindless television. He’s self-medicating himself to avoid the issues — loneliness, job dissatisfaction, stress, etc. — that are being presented directly to him.

The list of famous people who suffer or have suffered can go on and on. What needs to be understood is that you can be very successful while getting punched and kicked by this bully that invades your mind.

As you can tell by Poe, Van Gogh, and Beethoven, depression can carry certain benefits if you are a creative artist such as a writer, a painter, or a musician. You just have to be careful you don’t get too deep like Hemingway and Billy Joel.

But what if you’re a CEO or everyday worker? Can you still live a successful life while dealing with the daily grind depression can bring?

In a society where power and hiding from your vulnerabilities rule all, hiding from depression is a common problem. Success can come with glorious benefits, but certain fears also tag along. It all depends what your goals are, what YOU are about. If you are about respect, compassion, kindness, and love, you are on the right track, and yes, you can become a wealthy person living by those traits. If you are solely about power and money, a laundry list of insecurities will clench onto you, potentially leading you down a disastrous path.

You can be anything while suffering, it’s been done. A powerful CEO or a single mom working two jobs to get by. The key is to fight back and never give up.

Here are some ways to fight depression while living a successful life:

 

1. Keep Up With Your Health

You don’t need crazy workouts to be healthy, that’s just a myth created by the fitness industry. All you really need is a sensible diet and some regular activity that gets you moving. Go for a long walk, do some simple bodyweight exercises, or enjoy an activity that gets you sweating. You don’t have to squat 400 pounds to be ‘fit’, that’s just macho, ego talk that persuades people to be scared of fitness.

Self-medication is a dangerous outlet when it comes to mental illness. Alcohol was my form of self-medication. For many celebrities, hard drugs is an addiction they fall into to escape the reality of their mental demons. When money and access are not a problem, it becomes far too easy to believe drugs are the best way to forget about your struggles.

Drugs and alcohol can kill. They can be used as a form of delayed suicide. Be conscious if you’re falling into that trap and seek help immediately if you are.

 

2. Read…A lot

I recommend a minimum of an hour a day. Read stories about people who have suffered, read strategies you could use in your life, read some good fiction. Keep your mind working.

Letting depression force you into a dark corner is far too easy. Sometimes you’ll feel as if you have no control, but you do. It may be a moment to fight, but reading good books can help teach you and inspire you to keep going.

 

3. Live Aggressively

Facing our fears feels harder than climbing Everest. It’s scary. Fight the urge to stay in your room and go out to dinner with a friend. Start building momentum, understand depression doesn’t have to hold you back.

Living passively is the worst way to handle depression, it keeps you tied down. When I first started talking openly about my depression I was scared. Just the thought of sharing my feelings caused my body to pour sweat. I aggressively worked through my sweat drenched clothes and talked. It helped. It actually speed up my recovery because, whether people understood or not, they knew how I felt.

I could be who I was. It was freeing. If I had a bad day it was easier to acknowledge it, and work through the day with it.

Living aggressively doesn’t mean taking an axe to everything in your path. It’s not a violent or vicious path. Living aggressively is living intently. Simply intend on moving past your depression and get to work.

We have one life. Don’t allow depression to keep you down.

 

4. Be Better Today Than You Were Yesterday

It’s okay to struggle, but it’s not okay to quit.

How you improve at anything is through constant tiny steps that eventually turn into one, gigantic success.

It’s the same with battling depression. You have to work at it. It doesn’t just disappear. You have to work through your issues and make small improvements as you go.

“I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.” – Christopher Hitchens

Depression will knock you back down along your journey, that’s guaranteed. The key: to get your ass back up. I used to let depression knock me out for weeks, sometimes months. It was horrible. Once I started working on myself, I was able to start making a little progress and feeling a little better.

Then, I was better. It didn’t happen on a scheduled date, it just happened. I just believed I was better, and I was. I don’t really have an explanation for it, that’s just the way it happened for me. After years of tiny improvements, I finally felt like I had just defeated my enemy.

But it starts small. Sometimes just getting out of bed is that small step. Do it. Throwing off the covers and sliding out can be a successful day while you’re fighting. Create a positive mindset around that success and begin building momentum.

 

5. The Search For Personal Greatness

Being in a deep depression allows you to laser focus on the present. Every thought about your life is on display and available for analysis. A major factor in overcoming depression is coming to grips with who you are.

This can be life’s greatest struggle. Most highly successful people lose their way in the search for more money or more power; however, we must remember, deep seeded happiness comes from within, not from materials. Yes, materials and ego boosting delusions that associate with money and power help, but that happiness is only as strong as the current feeling towards your material items or ego. If they crash or lose intensity, so does your happiness.

Being successful doesn’t mean being a millionaire, it means being happy. Battling with mental illness will be the hardest fight of your life, but it’s a fight worth putting your full effort into. As you claw out of your personal dark dark valley you’ll find new aspects of yourself and accept that person.

The law of impermanence reminds us we will one day pass, be gone from this life. Focusing on material and ego based power is dangerous and could lead to disaster. Experiencing life and learning about your true self  will lead to a successful life filled with happiness.

 

Mental illness can ravage a life, but you don’t have to let it. The stigma surrounding mental illness is an incredibly dangerous one, keeping many quiet about their struggles. That’s why I write openly about mine. We must let people know that it’s okay to struggle, but it’s never okay to quit.

Daniel is a writer who struggled with both depression and anxiety for many years. His mission is to crush the stigma related to depression and build awareness that it's okay to struggle, but it's not okay to quit.

Advertisement
65 Comments

65 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Entrepreneurs

The Brutal Truth About Entrepreneurship with ADHD (And Why Most Advice Is Making It Worse)

Published

on

Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

You’re not lazy. You’re not undisciplined… and you’re definitely not broken.

You’re an entrepreneur with ADHD, and right now you’re probably sitting on 19 unfinished projects, 47 open tabs, and a brain that feels like it’s running on 12 different radio stations at once.

You’ve read the books. You’ve tried the planners, the Pomodoro timers, the accountability groups. You’ve even hired coaches who promised to “fix” your focus. Yet here you are — brilliant ideas, massive potential, and a business that still feels like it’s one step away from collapsing under the weight of your own mind.

Here’s what almost nobody in the entrepreneurial space will admit:

The real struggle isn’t your ADHD. It’s that you’ve been trying to run a neurodivergent brain inside a neurotypical business model — and then beating yourself up when it doesn’t work.

Most advice for entrepreneurs was written by people whose brains work differently. They preach consistency, routines, long-term planning, and steady execution like those things are universal truths. For the ADHD entrepreneur, those “truths” feel like trying to swim upstream in cement. You can force it for a while (and you have), but eventually your brain rebels, the burnout hits, and you’re left feeling like a failure who just needs to “try harder.”

That cycle is quietly destroying more talented founders than cash flow problems or bad hires ever could.

The deeper layer most people never reach is this: your ADHD isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a different operating system entirely. And when you stop trying to install Windows on a Mac and start building everything around macOS, the game changes completely.

The Hidden Addiction That Keeps ADHD Entrepreneurs Stuck

You already know the surface symptoms — time blindness, rejection sensitivity, starting strong and fading fast, shiny object syndrome.

But the real trap is more insidious.

It’s the addiction to chaos and novelty.

Your brain is wired for dopamine. New ideas, big visions, last-minute sprints, high-stakes pressure — these things light you up like nothing else. The boring, repetitive, systems-building work that actually scales a business? It feels like torture.

So unconsciously, you keep your business in a state of controlled chaos. You say yes to too many things. You chase the next exciting opportunity. You avoid building the boring infrastructure because “I work better under pressure anyway.”

And every time the pressure gets too high, you crash, swear you’ll get organized next quarter, and repeat the cycle.

Meanwhile, the neurotypical advice keeps telling you to “just build better habits.” As if your brain is a poorly trained dog that needs more discipline instead of a high-performance race car that needs the right fuel and track.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s neurology.

And until you stop treating your wiring as something to overcome and start treating it as your greatest strategic advantage, you’ll stay stuck in the same exhausting loop.

The Identity Shift That Changes Everything

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who finally break through don’t “fix” their brains.

They redesign their entire business to work with their brains.

They stop trying to become the consistent, routine-loving founder the gurus talk about. Instead, they become the architect of a system that leverages their natural strengths — hyperfocus, pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, relentless drive under pressure — while outsourcing or automating everything that drains them.

This is the layer most ADHD entrepreneurs never reach because it requires something terrifying: accepting that you are never going to be “normal” at entrepreneurship… and that’s exactly why you can win bigger than most.

Your ability to see connections others miss. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your capacity to go all-in when something lights you up. These aren’t liabilities. They’re unfair advantages in a world that rewards speed, creativity, and bold moves.

The shift is simple but brutal:

Stop trying to manage your ADHD. Start designing your business around it.

How to Actually Build a Business That Works With Your Brain

  1. Stop fighting your energy cycles — weaponize them. Most ADHD entrepreneurs try to force 8-hour focused days. That’s insane. Instead, track when your brain actually works best (for many it’s 10pm-2am or random 4-hour hyperfocus bursts). Build your schedule around those windows. Protect them like gold. Do the deep, high-leverage work then. Use the low-energy periods for admin, calls, or recovery.
  2. Build “chaos containers,” not rigid systems. Traditional project management tools feel like cages. Create loose but effective structures that give your brain freedom. Use tools like Notion with massive flexibility, or body-doubling (working alongside someone virtually), or even hiring a “chaos wrangler” — an assistant who thrives on turning your scattered ideas into executable plans.
  3. Turn your rejection sensitivity into rocket fuel. That intense fear of letting people down or looking stupid? Channel it into creating ridiculously high standards for your customer experience or product quality. Use it as fuel instead of letting it paralyze you.
  4. Outsource the parts that make you want to die. The execution, follow-through, and maintenance phases are where most ADHD entrepreneurs lose. Hire or partner with people who love the details. Your job is vision, strategy, and big swings. Let someone else own the spreadsheets.
  5. Create external pressure on your own terms. Deadlines and public commitments work wonders for the ADHD brain. Use them strategically — announce launches, create beta groups, or work with coaches who understand neurodivergence instead of fighting it.

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who are quietly crushing it right now aren’t the ones who finally became “disciplined.” They’re the ones who stopped apologizing for how their brain works and started building empires that are specifically engineered for it.

They have teams that handle the boring stuff. They have systems that flex with their energy instead of fighting it. They’ve turned their “flaws” into the exact reasons their businesses stand out.

Your ADHD brain is not the enemy. The enemy was trying to play the game by rules that were never designed for you.

The moment you accept that and start designing everything… your calendar, your team, your offers, your processes — around how you actually operate, the struggle doesn’t disappear… but it becomes manageable, even exhilarating.

You were never meant to fit the mold. You were meant to break it and build something better.

The world doesn’t need another cookie-cutter entrepreneur. It needs the chaotic, brilliant, all-in, slightly unhinged visionaries who can only operate at full power when the game is built for them.

That’s you.

Stop trying to fix yourself. Start building the business that was always meant to be run by a mind like yours.

Your next breakthrough isn’t going to come from working harder or being more consistent. It’s going to come from finally giving yourself permission to work differently.

And when you do that? Watch what happens.

The same brain that once felt like a curse becomes the exact reason your business becomes unstoppable.

You’ve got this. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it.

If you want to learn more from me or send me a personal message I’ll respond to you on Instagram at https://instagram.com/iamjoelbrown speak soon!

Continue Reading

Health & Fitness

The Health Planning Habits That Support Long-Term Success

Published

on

Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

Most people think about health planning only when something forces them to.

A medical bill arrives unexpectedly. An insurance issue appears during treatment. A diagnosis changes how future care needs are viewed. Suddenly health planning becomes urgent instead of preventative.

The problem is that long-term health stability is usually shaped by smaller habits built quietly over time, not just by major decisions during emergencies.

That includes physical health habits, of course, but it also includes how people approach insurance coverage, preventative care, financial preparation, and long-term healthcare planning before problems become immediate.

The families who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often not the ones avoiding every issue entirely. More often, they’re the ones who built systems early enough to make difficult situations feel more manageable later.

Consistency Matters More Than Perfection

A lot of health advice still revolves around extreme change.

Perfect diets. Aggressive routines. Complete lifestyle overhauls.

In reality, most long-term health success comes from consistency people can realistically maintain for years instead of months. Small preventative habits tend to matter more than dramatic short-term efforts that collapse under pressure.

That principle applies financially too.

People often spend more time researching investment strategies than understanding their healthcare coverage or preparing for future medical costs. But healthcare instability can disrupt long-term financial plans surprisingly quickly when households are unprepared for how expensive even routine care can become over time.

The practical side of health planning is becoming harder to separate from overall financial planning now than it used to be.

Preventative Planning Reduces More Stress Than People Realize

One overlooked benefit of health planning is emotional stability.

People who understand their coverage, maintain preventative care routines, and think ahead about healthcare decisions often describe feeling less overwhelmed when unexpected situations happen. The goal is not eliminating uncertainty entirely. That’s unrealistic.

The goal is reducing how chaotic healthcare decisions feel under pressure.

That’s one reason broader conversations tied to healthcare and health insurance have expanded significantly over the last several years. Rising costs, changing coverage structures, and increasing healthcare complexity have made long-term planning more important for average households than many people expected.

Healthcare is no longer something most families can comfortably approach reactively forever.

People Underestimate How Quickly Healthcare Costs Compound

One reason health planning habits matter so much is that healthcare costs rarely arrive in one dramatic moment alone.

More often, they build gradually:

  • recurring prescriptions
  • specialist visits
  • ongoing treatment plans
  • insurance deductible increases
  • long-term care considerations
  • unexpected procedures layered on top of existing expenses

Families often absorb these costs incrementally until they realize how much financial pressure accumulated over time.

That gradual buildup is part of what makes proactive planning valuable. People who think ahead about coverage structures, emergency savings, provider networks, and preventative care tend to adapt more smoothly when healthcare needs eventually increase later in life.

The difficult part is that many households delay these conversations because they feel healthy right now.

Healthcare Decisions Have Become More Complicated

Another challenge is that healthcare systems themselves continue evolving quickly.

Insurance structures change. Telehealth expands. Employer-sponsored benefits shift. Prescription pricing fluctuates. Patients now carry more responsibility for understanding deductibles, provider networks, and out-of-pocket exposure than previous generations often did.

That complexity creates decision fatigue.

Even relatively organized households sometimes feel uncertain about whether they’re making good healthcare choices because the systems themselves are difficult to navigate confidently. A lot of current health insurance trends discussions reflect this larger issue, healthcare planning is becoming less about isolated medical events and more about long-term sustainability across entire households.

People want predictability, but healthcare systems increasingly feel harder to predict.

The Most Effective Health Habits Usually Feel Boring

One thing people rarely admit is that good long-term planning habits are often not particularly exciting.

Scheduling preventative appointments. Reviewing insurance annually. Building emergency savings slowly. Staying physically active consistently. Maintaining realistic routines instead of dramatic cycles of burnout and reset.

None of those habits feel dramatic at the moment.

But over long periods, they create stability that becomes incredibly valuable once life gets complicated. The people who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often the ones who built ordinary systems early instead of waiting for perfect motivation later.

That applies financially and physically at the same time.

Why Long-Term Success Depends on Adaptability

Health planning is ultimately difficult because people’s lives keep changing.

Careers shift. Families grow. Aging parents require support. Medical needs evolve. Financial priorities change over decades in ways nobody predicts perfectly in advance.

That’s why the strongest long-term health planning habits are usually flexible rather than rigid.

The goal is not building a flawless plan that never changes. It’s creating enough structure, awareness, and preparation that future adjustments become manageable instead of overwhelming.

Most people cannot control every future health outcome. They can, however, build habits that make uncertainty easier to navigate when it eventually arrives.

Continue Reading

Life

Why Moving to a New City Can Change Your Mindset

Discover how moving to a new city boosts neuroplasticity, builds resilience, and reshapes your mindset

Published

on

How relocation changes your mindset

Relocation is always a challenge. Rebuilding and restarting your life requires you to step outside of your comfort zone. (more…)

Continue Reading

Change Your Mindset

The Hidden Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent

If motivation keeps failing you, the real issue isn’t discipline. It’s the identity shaping your habits and long-term success.

Published

on

Identity-based habits

Success often looks like a time-management problem. You buy a planner, set reminders, and hope that next week will be different. For a few days, it works. Then stress hits, motivation drops, and old patterns return. (more…)

Continue Reading

Trending