My Journey to Happiness ????????

I’d like to tell you a story.

This is the story of one boy’s journey to happiness.

The story begins on the 2nd September 1992.

But we’re going to jump forward 22 years to the 26th May 2015.

On that night I could never have told you that was the date.

That date will always have significance with me, but it already did before that night.

If you knew why you’d understand the pain and anguish the date of that night caused me for a long time afterwards

But the truth is I couldn’t see anything there was so much pain within me.

But it was that date.

Anyway…

I woke up.

The light was on, but it was dark.

My head feels heavy, I can’t see and my body feels anxious and tense.

I roll over at look at my phone.

The time says 1am.

I’ve been asleep since 5pm.

You see sleeping was my escape.

The escape from my pain.

I knew it was going to another one of those nights.

Another night tossing and turning, my mind going crazy and then trying to find the strength and energy to go to work the next day with no sleep.

No way.

I’m not doing it anymore.

Fuck it man.

This is it.

I’m finally going to do it.

I’ve been pushed past my threshold.

I jump up out of my bed with the most energy I’ve had in 6 months.

I throw open my wardrobe.

I’m not sure what to wear.

This isn’t something I’ve ever dressed for before.

Ironically I throw on a t-shirt that says

“Tough Mudder”

But I wasn’t tough that night.

That was the night I gave up.

That was the night I lost all hope.

I ran down the stairs, grabbed the car keys and left the house.

I jumped in the car.

This wasn’t one of those drives were you don’t know where you’re going and you’re just trying to clear your head.

Oh no

I knew exactly where I was going

I knew exactly what I was going to do

You see this was the night I was finally going to kill myself.

I was going to attempt suicide.

I headed for the motorway.

I drove on to the M8 motorway at the Livingston junction.

I drove towards Hermiston gait, done a U-turn and then came back on myself towards Livingston.

This was it.

I was on the final road of my journey.

10 minutes and it would all be over.

I got closer and closer and finally in the distance saw the concrete barrier that I was going to plough the car into.

I got the point where I had to make a decision.

Do I take the exit?

Do I follow the road home that I’ve taken hundreds of times over the years.

Or do I go straight on and hit the barrier at 80mph?

With absolutely no hesitation I continued straight.

I wasn’t going home.

I was ending my life.

I entered no man’s land.

The point of no return.

I had one final moment of opportunity to slam on the brakes and maybe get out badly injured.

Instead I put my foot on the accelerator and increased my speed.

This was actually it.

I shut my eyes and waited for it to happen.

BANG

I hit it.

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls.

My name is Josh Quigley and I am a suicide survivor.

You might think I woke up the next day in hospital with no memory of the night before and many broken bones and physical injures.

But I never.

I can remember it all.

I wasn’t even knocked out.

I never had a single injury or the tiniest bit of pain.

I hit the barrier, heard a loud bang and the car was filled with a white light and I could hear a ringing sound.

I thought I was dead.

We’ve all seen the movies and films of what happens when you die.

You see the white light and the stairs come down.

I genuinely thought thats what had happened.

I was in no pain and could only see and hear the white light and ringing sound.

There was 5 or 10 seconds were I really didn’t know if I was dead or alive.

I felt my face.

Touched my arms.

Looked in the mirror.

I felt real.

I looked real.

I was alive.

How did this happen?

I never had a single injury or experience of pain.

I’m not going to lie.

My first thought is what a joke I was.

I couldn’t even kill myself.

What a pathetic excuse for a human being.

A bit startled and dazed, I stumbled out of the car and just lay down on the tarmac beside the car waiting for the police and the ambulance to arrive.

My police transcript shows the ambulance worker asking me why I done it.

My answer?

“a million reasons”

I believed I had a million problems.

A million reasons to end my life.

A million reasons to die.

I got to the hospital and the next day they done lots of tests on me and they all came back saying there was no damage or injury.

No internal bleeding

No scratches

No cuts

Not even a bruise.

I remember sitting in my hospital bed thinking

“What the hell has just happened here?”

“Have I actually just came out of this completely unscathed?”

I had

I really had been so lucky

I got up out the bed and walked along to the hospital chapel.

I sat there that night and reflected on what had just happened.

I’ve never been religious, but it just felt like something magical had happened that night.

I took a pen and wrote a message in the book along the lines of.

“I don’t know who or what it was, but someone or something saved you tonight Josh. You have been given a 2nd chance. You’ve been kept alive for a reason and it’s your mission now to find that reason”

I knew there was a reason.

I knew there was still something I hadn’t done.

But I didn’t know what.

You might think at this point I took control of my life and the rest was history.

But it never happened straight away.

I actually just went back to living my life how I used to and was still as miserable and depressed as before.

But then I read a book that changed my life.

I’m not sure what made me pick it up but something within me wanted to change.

The book was called “Success Principles” by Jack Canfield.

The first chapter of that book was titled you are 100% in control of your life.

Was I?

It didn’t feel like it.

The theme of that first chapter changed my life.

Jack spoke about the need to take responsibility for our lives and stop blaming other people and events.

The event in your life, plus your reaction equals our outcome.

Event + Reaction = Outcome.

Are you a victim or a survivor?

I was a victim

Life isn’t about what happens to you.

It’s about how you respond.

I had to take control.

I had to stop blaming others and the events in my life.

I used to say that if I never went through a certain event, I would have been happy and life would have been good.

But it was bullshit.

Just another excuse.

So I decided to take control and 100% responsibility for my health, how I felt and my future.

I knew something had to change and I had to get away from Scotland.

Maybe Scotland was the reason I felt the way I did.

Maybe I couldn’t be happy in Scotland.

I had a few ideas on what I could do and came up with some mental plans.

Then I had my epiphany.

I was out running one Saturday night in September 2015 and I can remember the exact blade of grass I was standing on when it happened.

What if I was kept alive to tell my story?

What if I was to do something to raise awareness of mental health and inspire others?

I then decided I was going to attempt to cycle around the world.

Cycling around the world to raise awareness of mental health and inspire others that anything was possible.

I wasn’t a cyclist, I had never ridden more than a mile on a bike since I was a kid.

How hard could it be I thought?

Then on the 26th May 2016, I got on the bike and started my attempt to cycle around the world.

This was the 1 year anniversary of my suicide attempt. I done this to provide a symbol of hope to others.

Leaving Scotland I was still majorly depressed, suicidal, overweight and unfit.

This was my last throw of the dice. If it never brought me happiness I was going to attempt suicide again.

I never had much leaving Scotland.

But I did have one thing.

I had a burning desire within me to find happiness.

I wanted to find happiness more than anything in the world and I was prepared to do everything in my power to achieve it.

I took 100% responsibility, I took back control and I was ready to change myself and my life.

7 weeks later I got to Sweden.

I’d cycled to Sweden.

From my front door in Scotland.

I had made a huge transformation in such a short space of time.

I had my dream.

My dream was always happiness, and I always imagined it looking like this.

Me camping by the water, alone, and being able to be completely happy alone and the source of my own happiness.

Then on my first night camping, 7 nights in.

I done it.

I had read many books and in particular the art of happiness by the Dalai Lama and understood what happiness is and how we can achieve it by creating the conditions for it to exist.

I’m not going to waste any time on the definition of happiness.

When I say happiness you know what I mean, you know how that feels.

In Scotland we may call it

“feeling pure dead brilliant man”

A crucial component of happiness is Love.

Love for ourselves.

Love for others

Love for the World.

When I was in Scotland, I hated myself.

I hated myself for mistakes I made and people I hurt.

Every day I had to look in the mirror at the boy who ruined my life.

But then I learned to forgive myself.

I fell in love with myself again.

I had grew a beard and long hair and it helped me look at a new person in the mirror.

But I was ready to be me again.

I was in love with Josh again and it was time to bring him back.

So I went and got it all cut off.

I sat in the chair and piece by piece, hair by hair, strand by strand.

I slowly started to see the person I loved staring back at me.

I loved myself again.

And I loved others.

I left Scotland thinking the world was a horrible place.

I was in pain and running away.

Until that night I camped, I was hosted by a family every single night in 6 European countries.

They took me in.

They gave me food.

They gave me their time and most importantly they showed me love.

They showed me that we’re all the same.

Human beings.

We’re all the same.

There are 7.5 billion of us on this planet.

We are all spread out across the globe and look different and do thing differently.

But we all want the same thing.

We all want happiness.

We all want to feel loved, to spend time with our families and do things we enjoy.

I realised that I had to change my world view.

I had to open my eyes and see all the love and kindness that was out there.

I believe that happiness is our core state of being.

We all have happiness within us.

But what we do is we get stuck in our head.

Our thoughts and our mind is a result of our upbringing, our conditioning, our environment and the way we think and our outlook on life.

We have to work to change whats going on in our head.

Then we have to get out of our head.

We have to get out of our head and into our heart.

We have to access the love and happiness that is within us all.

We have to start looking at the world through our heart instead of our head.

We have to see all of the love, beauty and kindness that surrounds us.

It’s all there.

What you see is a reflection of who you are.

The world is as you see it.

There are 7.5 billion worlds.

What world do you see?

Happiness isn’t something you can get instantly, it’s a skill that you have to work to develop.

Here’s the brutal truth about happiness.

You are about as happy as you decide you want to be.

It won’t come right away, it takes time.

But you can decide to work towards it.

Happiness is based on your outlook on life, how grateful you are, what type of thoughts you have and what action you take, how you live your life.

People want to blame everyone else, their parents, their boss, society, the Government.

We need to take responsibility.

Our set point for happiness determined by our genetics is no more than 25%.

The outer conditions of our life are a further 10–15%.

That means 60–70% of our happiness comes from us.

What we focus on, our gratitude, our sense of perspective, our mindset, outlook, attitude, behaviours and voluntary activities.

But what about people with depression.

People with depression are in a state of depression.

I believe we should stop talking about depression as illness.

That might be controversial but I’ll tell you why.

Illness has connotations of something you have no power over and can’t change.

Something you just have to take medication for and hope it goes away.

Depression doesn’t work like that.

Rather than spending my time getting people to understand depression is an illness and remove stigma surrounding it.

I’d rather try give people the knowledge to actually overcome it.

When you are depressed of course it feels like a real illness, because it is.

But when you want to overcome it you have to let go looking at it that way or you’ll probably never overcome it.

Depression is a state of mind, done unconsciously by people as they don’t have the knowledge or tools to do otherwise.

It’s not their fault,

This isn’t about blame or fault.

It’s about recognising whats going on.

You are the person you are today as a result of everything thats happened in your life up until now,

Your upbringing, your conditioning and your thoughts and actions.

It’s not about how you got here.

It’s about where you are going now.

What are you going to do to change your life?

If you’re not happy now, thinking like you’ve thought your whole life isn’t going to get you where you want to be.

Doing what you’ve always done will get you what you’ve always got.

So if you want something new, a new state of being, happiness, a new mindset then you have to do something different.

Something has to change.

We can’t change other people, can’t change the government policy, can’t change the weather.

We can only change one 1 thing.

Us.

I believe in changing us.

I believe we should still campaign and talk about this to put pressure on government to do more and help and support people.

But for us as individuals we have to take responsibility and help ourselves.

So the first step is admitting their is a problem.

I have had depression.

Then you have to say from this day longer, I will no longer feel this way and commit unconditionally to making happiness the number 1 goal in my life.

Once you make the commitment it starts getting exciting.

Taking responsibility, accepting 100% responsibility and giving up blaming others is the first step.

Then you no longer identify with the fact that you have depression.

Stop saying

“My depression”

“My anxiety”

“My condition”

You are personalising it, owning it, giving it a name, giving it power and making it bigger.

To overcome these things you have to understand the language you use.

The limiting beliefs you set and the limits you place on yourself.

If you tell yourself you’ll have to manage your depression your whole life.

Guess what?

You will.

You get what you accept.

You get what you settle for.

You get what you tell yourself.

Change what you think.

Instead of saying I’ll have to manage my depression my whole life.

Change it to…

“I may be in a state of depression right now, but I know that in the future I can change the way I feel and achieve happiness”

There is so much to be gained by such a small change in language and what you tell yourself.

These were huge lessons for me formed the core of my philosophy.

Then I realised what human beings are capable of achieving.

I cycled to the Nordkapp.

The highest part of Norway and the last piece of dry land before the North Pole.

I cycled 105 miles in one day.

12 weeks earlier had never done more than 10.

I realised that human beings are capable of anything they want in this world.

When they have the desire and when they are prepared to take action and do whatever it is they can to follow their dream.

I had a dream for happiness.

I got it.

This day helped shape my philosophy for positive mental health and happiness.

It has 3 pillars.

1. Every single human being has the potential for and deserves happiness.

2. Every single human being has everything they need for that happiness within them

3. But it takes hard work. Happiness isn’t easy. If it was easy everyone would be happy. You have to put in the work.

It takes time.

But you can make the choice.

They say it takes 4 weeks for you to notice a change in yourself,

8 weeks for your friends and family

12 for the rest of the world.

But it only takes 1 second to make the choice.

1 second to make the commitment to change.

1 second to choose happiness.

Then you have to work towards it.

We live in an instant gratification world.

You want a movie, you have it in seconds on Netflix.

You want a pizza you have it in seconds on the Domino Pizza app.

So when you want happiness you think you can get instantly.

That you just take a pill, just take a drug and thats you.

These drugs don’t do anything to develop happiness, they just numb the negative feelings.

We need to stop looking outside for happiness.

Start looking within ourselves.

Everything we need is within us.

Happiness is an inside job.

In 2017 I learned just how important our actions and behaviour are.

The biggest determinant of your mental health is you.

The biggest influencing factor is what you do, how you live, what you think, what you eat, what you drink.

I gave up alcohol and made my health and fitness my number one priority in my life.

As a result I experienced the greatest levels of health and happiness I’ve ever experienced in my life.

Everyone is so focused on what’s going wrong in mental health.

Everyone keeps saying that there isn’t enough help and support.

Let’s look at the facts.

There’s never been more help or support.

There’s never been more mental health awareness.

Never been less stigma.

Never been more opportunity in the world.

If you are depressed you have access to millions of pieces of information online about depression.

If you type into Google.

“How to overcome depression”

There will be thousands of articles, blogs and documents.

If you type this same question into Youtube

You will see again there are thousands of videos.

This stuff is all free.

You can access all of this stuff anywhere at any time.

In your home.

On the bus

On your lunch break

All the help and support is there

It’s your job to go and find it.

Let’s forget about mental health awareness for just 1 second and let’s start talking about what can YOU do to change you mental health.

Start looking at your life and how you live your life.

Stop expecting the government and the NHS to make sure your mental health is ok.

You have to put in the work to change how you feel.

It’s just my biggest belief and one that I’m going to keep talking about until people can start to understand just how much opportunity there really is.

The result of all the work I was putting in meant I got to a stage where I was just so happy and healthy and all I cared about was sharing this stuff with other people.

I got to 10,000 miles, I was in the south of France.

I wasn’t spending my time in the best possible way.

My dream was always happiness. I got that.

But now I’d found my passion. I’d found my purpose.

My main passion lay in teaching this stuff to other people and sharing what I had learned.

It was time to go home to Scotland and start helping others go on the journey to happiness.

I realised that Scotland wasn’t the problem and it was always me.

We can be happy anywhere and I learned that.

So I came home to start The Tartan Explorer Foundation. It’s our mission to help others go on the journey to happiness.

My vision is for a world where every human being has the happiness that they are capable of and deserve.

True lasting inner happiness.

It’s now my job to teach everything I learned and share it with the world.

I can’t help anyone become happy.

I can only help you help yourself.

I can online provide you the knowledge, the information and the inspiration.

You have to do the work.

As Jim Rohn once said

“You can’t pay someone to do your pushups”

It’s my job now to inspire that moment within you when you think

“I’m going to do this”

“I’m going to take 100% responsibility for my life and commit to happiness”

I started to create levels of gratitude and perspective that meant it was impossible for depression to exist within me.

My happiness and mental health has came through many lessons and things I’ve learned along the way.

But one of the most important influences has been my level of gratitude and perspective.

I want to share something with you that I keep at the front of my mind every day and allows me to feel as happy and healthy as I do.

I have created a theory which has been massively inspired by the many teachers and people I’ve spent time consuming over the past 18 months as well as my own experiences and lessons along the way.

The 5 W’s of Human Life and Happiness.

1. What are you?

You are a human being.

A human being.

Who has evolved over millions of years to have language, a mind, a brain, the ability to think and act.

To our knowledge we are the only planet to ever have this intelligent life form.

Listen to this and understand it fully and completely.

The odds of becoming a human being are the exact same as this

2 million people getting together, entire population of San Diego. They all roll a trillion sided dice and they all get the same number

When you understand that it’s impossible to be in a state of depression, as you fully appreciate how lucky you are to be alive.

2. Where are you?

You are on planet earth. Which has existed for 14 billion years.

The only reason we can exist is because over the 14 billion years the conditions are now ready.

For hundreds of millions of years it was too acidic and we wouldn’t be able to survive. Understand you are on a perfect planet designed exactly for you.

It has everything you need. Growing food and water that keeps you alive for decades.

If we were a tiny tiny bit closer to the sun we’d die. A tiny bit further away we’d die.

Do you understand how lucky we are to have this perfect and incredibly beautiful planet?

3. When are you here?

It’s 2017.

2.0.1.7

The single greatest time to ever be alive as a human being.

If you were alive 10,000 years ago you would have had to hunt your own food.

500 years ago people were burned alive for being witches, hung and executed on the street.

Neighbouring countries would invade your county, kill all the men, rape the woman and children and burn the whole town.

80 years ago all the men were rounded up and sent to battlefields in France and killed.

Like it’s 2017.

At your fingertips you have the world’s information.

There’s more information created online every 2 days than from the entire 14 billion years from the beginning of earth until 2002?

Free information and books on any subject, wealth, health, happiness, Absolutely anything you want to know is out there.

You have a house with lights, running water and electricity.

1 billion people live on a dollar a day and you are from the United Kingdom.

One of the most advanced and privileged societies in the world.

There’s never been more technology, better education, healthcare, science,.

4. Who are you?

Understand who you are.

What is the burning passion in your life?

What do you think about all the time?

You can do whatever you want with your life.

It’s not 1950.

You don’t have to work a job you hate.

You can actually get paid to do something you love every single day?

Do something you love.

5. Why are you here?

Now this is the most important one.

The one where things start to get really exciting and allow you to create a life beyond your wildest dreams.

why are you here?

We all have a unique gift.

There’s only one person in the world at being you.

There is no one on in the entire world better at being Josh Quigley than me.

We all have that.

We all have something that no one else has.

A unique talent.

A unique gift.

If you don’t know what yours is it’s your job to find out.

Your job is to find your purpose.

So what are you going to do?

Your time is limited

Every second you ponder, procrastinate, moan, complain is a second closer to your death.

Find a purpose. Select a reason your here that is based around your passions in life and live your life to the max each and every single day.

One life.

One chance.

On your deathbed you don’t want any what if’s?

What if I started that company?

What if I tried to run that marathon?

What if i did visit India?

Wait.

Why did I not?

I was scared I’d fail?

Scared for who?

Other people?

Society?

What do other people’s opinions mean to you on your deathbed?

Are they going to keep you here?

Nope

Create something.

Do something with your life.

Create something worth living for.

What do you have to lose?

Fully understand and accept that theres only one person in your life that can make it happen.

That can change your life.

That can shape your future.

Stop blaming everyone else for how you feel.

It doesn’t matter what’s happened to you.

The worst event of my life became the greatest.

The most painful time of my life helped me become the person I am today.

The more pain you are in.

The worst your past is.

The more opportunity you have to grow.

I never gave up hope.

The night I attempted suicide I believe even then that I never gave up.

Why did I wear my seatbelt?

Was it a habit.

I don’t believe so.

I believe it was me from the future.

I believe it was the me of today.

The me who found my true purpose in life.

The me of today was within me even then.

When I jumped in the car that me of today said to me

“Put on your seatbelt Josh, we still have a job to do”

And that’s now my life’s work.

I believe every single person has that future them within them.

You just haven’t found it yet.

I found myself.

I found my purpose in life.

I now have a true calling in life.

I once told an ambulance crew that I had a million reasons to die.

A million reasons to attempt suicide.

Now?

I have a million reasons to live.

Millions of things to be happy about.

Millions of opportunities.

Millions of things to be excited about.

Millions of people I want to help.

This was my journey to happiness.

This journey was my last throw of the dice.

I’m lucky I rolled a 6.

My journey is far from over.

It’s just starting.

But it’s now my life’s work to help others start their journey to happiness.

Thank you

The Tartan Explorer ????????

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