Here is the full transcript of Jake Heilbrunn’s talk titled “How to Replace Anxiety With Purpose” at TEDxEncinitas conference.
Jake Heilbrunn’s TEDx talk, “How to Replace Anxiety With Purpose,” is a deeply personal narrative detailing his transformation from a college student suffering from severe anxiety and depression to a fulfilled individual living with purpose. He describes how his struggle with chronic urticaria and mental health issues at Ohio State University prompted him to question his life’s direction.
Jake’s journey led him to take a bold step of traveling to Guatemala and Nicaragua, where he embraced mindfulness and disconnected from social media, finding peace and connection. Through his travels and experiences like practicing Tai Chi, meditation, and living without a phone, he discovered a passion for storytelling and a desire to share his journey. He highlights the alarming rise in anxiety and depression among youth, emphasizing the need for a shift in educational and societal norms.
Jake advocates for the pursuit of individual passions over societal expectations, underlining how passion can replace anxiety. His message is a call to action for young people to listen to their inner voices and have the courage to follow their true desires.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
A Day That Changed My Life
Exactly two years ago was a day that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I was 18 years old and waiting to board a one-way flight to Guatemala. I had just a backpack; I had never traveled alone before, other than “hola” and “gracias,” I spoke no Spanish, and I had no cell phone.
Sitting in the airport, surrounded by all these Guatemalans, I wondered where all of them were headed. I felt this sense of anxious excitement, but also a sense of calm, despite the unknown. And sitting there, I thought to myself, how did I end up in this position? It brought me back eight months prior, where I had a much different experience with anxiety, an experience that led me on the path that would change my life.
My story began three days after arriving at Ohio State for my first semester of college. I woke up covered in hives and rashes all over my arms and legs, and it felt like my skin was on fire. Day after day, I woke up with these hives and rashes, having no idea why. I saw doctors, immunologists, dermatologists; I had the pills, creams, the test tubes, but these doctors didn’t know what was wrong either. So, they diagnosed me with chronic urticaria, a fancy name for saying your skin’s freaking out and we don’t know why.
The Struggle with Anxiety and Depression
I started to develop severe anxiety, and up until this point, anxiety was just a word to me. It now became this dense ball that would roll up my chest and constrict my throat, making it difficult to speak, like this hyper tension, and I had no idea why. I remember feeling so alone. I felt like I was the only one going through this. Other than my parents, who were pretty concerned, almost nobody knew that I was struggling with anxiety and depression.
At the time, I didn’t know that one in four teenagers experiences some sort of an anxiety disorder. I didn’t know that anxiety is the most common mental health diagnosis on a college campus. With everything I was going through, I started to question the why in everything: Why am I in school? Why is this happening to me? What is the purpose of life?
I felt really conflicted, investing myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially down a path that I had never even really questioned. I was just living the script that society had for me. I remember there was this 21-year-old girl who was killed in a car accident off campus. Thinking about her death, I wondered, what if that was me? Would I go out knowing that I was living a life true to myself?
I’ve always been fascinated by other cultures, and I started playing with this idea to take a semester off and travel. I would lay in bed at night, imagining myself trekking in foreign lands and meeting people from all over the world. I would get so excited I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins and my heart pounding in my chest. Of course, I’m just laying in bed looking at the ceiling.
But then a voice of fear would settle in and say, “Jake, no one else is doing that. You have to stay in school and stick to the path that’s been set out for you.” For months, I battled back and forth with this anxiety. Do I just continue to stay in school and do what everyone expects me to do, or do I listen to this true inner voice and travel?
Then one night, everything changed. It was the first night back for the second semester, and Ohio State was in the national championship football game, and they won. People went crazy, like thousands of students swarming through campus, lighting up bonfires and fireworks. In a moment like that, what do you do? You whip out your phone, take a picture, and post it to Instagram. That’s what I did.
I remember waking up the next morning, grabbing my phone, and seeing all these likes and messages from people saying things like, “Congrats on the game, Jake. You must be so happy.” Reading each one of these messages, my stomach twisted, because I hated the fact that I was portraying my life as happy and perfect, when in reality, I was really struggling. I was anxious. I was depressed. And I wanted to share that side of me. Laying in bed that morning, feeling stuck, I decided to call this career counselor whom I’d seen a couple of times the first semester. She knew what was going on in my life.
That day, she asked me two questions.
First, she said, “If you do take leave from school and travel, what is the worst thing that could happen?” I started to think about it, and my mind went to the most awful places. I thought, if I did this, I’d become a
huge failure, probably be on the streets for the rest of my life, never amount to anything. Saying my fears aloud, I realized they were just fears. Then she said, “If you keep focusing on the worst thing that could happen, what is the best thing that could happen?”
Embracing the Unknown
“Now boarding flight 5864 to Guatemala City,” the loudspeaker grabbed my attention, and I jumped up, put on my backpack, and started walking towards the gate, feeling excited but nervous. After getting to Guatemala City, I had to get on a nine-hour bus to a rural town where I was going to volunteer and teach English. The homes there had no addresses, there was almost no Wi-Fi, and they didn’t have a phone. I didn’t know how it was all going to work out.
My second week in Guatemala, there was a big party for Semana Santa, one of the holiest holidays in Guatemala. The whole town gathered, blasting Spanish music and dancing like there was no tomorrow. Despite my awful dance moves, I was moving and grooving, having the time of my life. That night, lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, it wasn’t because of anxiety. It was because my reality was better than my dreams.
Now I knew what it felt like to be living with passion instead of anxiety. A couple of weeks later, I was sitting at dinner with my Guatemalan family, and suddenly I realized I had absolutely no idea what day or what time it was. Living in this town with small homes and very basic electricity, people lived simply but happily. It was contagious.
I decided not to bring my phone on my travels because I was constantly comparing myself to others, feeling like I always had to share everything and be checked in. Social media and I were in an abusive relationship, and we needed to take a break. Living in this town without my phone, my focus was on the world in front of me and the relationships I was building. I wasn’t distracted by anything else. Instead of receiving Instagram hits and dopamine hits from Facebook likes and checking my phone 70 times a day, I was fueled by lasting energy, fulfillment from the connections I was making face to face.
A couple of months later, I found myself living in a spiritual community on an island in Nicaragua. Here, I was exposed to mindfulness meditation. At first, I totally thought the whole mindfulness meditation thing was super weird. I imagined monks in orange robes sitting in the Himalayas, humming. It seemed kind of weird to me. On top of mindfulness meditation, there were things like breath techniques and eating breakfast in silence, like every morning, 15 of us just eating our food slowly, nobody talking. Seemed a little weird.
But after a couple of days of experiencing these new things with an open mind, I began to feel a sense of peace, calm, presence, and connection that I didn’t even know was possible.
Discovering Mindfulness and Purpose
It brought me back to being eight years old and seeing people do Tai Chi in my local park with their eyes closed, kind of moving their hands like this. I thought they looked kind of funny. But now I’ve got it. Tai Chi was a vehicle for these people to be more peaceful and present, calm, and connected.
And meditation, mindfulness, and eating breakfast in silence, these were vehicles allowing me to be more peaceful and present, calm, and connected. Sitting on the airplane coming home after four months of traveling abroad, I began to see how all the dots in my past were starting to connect. Being at school with severe anxiety and a skin condition, it was almost like my inner GPS was telling me something was off, that I kind of had to reroute. This led me to start questioning everything.
I got in touch with this calling, this inner voice telling me to travel. And when I finally mustered the courage to answer that call and take that leap of faith, everything changed. Living in this town in Guatemala without my phone and experiencing a different way of life, then going down the mindful path and learning about mindfulness and meditation in Nicaragua. As I was traveling, I kept a journal and I was always journaling and sharing my experiences.
The Power of Storytelling and Awareness
I realized I had this passion, this love for storytelling. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to write a book about this. I have to share my journey going from anxiety and depression to peace and purpose.” Being home and speaking at high schools and colleges around California, it is shocking to see that what I thought had been unique to me, severe anxiety and depression, is something that millions of young people are experiencing around the country right now.
This is insane. This is insane that 5,000 young people take their lives each year, a rate that has tripled since the 1960s. This is insane. Anxiety and depression rates among high school and college students have shot up five to eight times more than just 50 years ago.
Why are depression and anxiety rates skyrocketing among youth today? I get so fired up about this because I remember being there in my dorm stairwell, in tears, so angry, upset, and confused. I get so fired up about this because I remember feeling trapped and scared of that unknown path. And I get so fired up about this because I know if I could shift from anxiety and depression to peace and purpose, then the millions of other young people around this country can as well. We all can.
And that’s why I wrote my book, “Off the Beaten Trail.” The solution, though, isn’t dropping everything and hopping on a flight to Guatemala. That was part of my story and what my inner voice was telling me to do. There are millions of students and kids around this country that we’re funneling down just one path. And while that traditional education system may work for some kids, that’s great, but not all. Because what fascinates Chandler might bore Peter, and what lights up Nikki might have no interest to Bella. And that’s okay.
This disconnect is due to a misalignment with how we’re living. And this disconnect, which I remember feeling so vividly, is causing anxiety and much worse. We feel this intense pressure to be something that we’re not. We’re immersed in this culture where we’re forced to memorize information and dump it on a test, where our value is defined by letter grades and numbers.
We feel this intense pressure to be a 5.0 student who’s the president of four clubs that cure cancer and has 100,000 Instagram followers. And what if we pursued what we were truly curious about? What would that look like? What would that feel like? When we have the audacity to pursue what we truly want, not what mom or dad or cousin Eric or Steve want, but what we truly desire, passion replaces anxiety.
Embracing Mindfulness and Courage
Passion replaces anxiety. So what can we do? What can we do as students and as parents and adults and educators? Be conscious of how you’re using social media. Social media can be this great tool that can connect us and help us solve problems and create solutions and bring us together, but it can also do the opposite, isolating us and making us feel alone and unhappy. At the end of the day, social media is just a tool, and we have to be conscious of how we’re using the tool and not letting the tool use us. Embrace mindfulness.
Embrace calm and peace and presence and connection. And last but not least, have courage, courage to listen to your inner voice, courage to follow it, even if it leads you in an unknown direction. My favorite quote is by Steve Jobs: “You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future.” What do you truly desire? Close your eyes. I invite you.
What is that thing or that dream that calls out to you? What makes you come alive? What lights you up? And how does that feel in your heart, in your legs, in your stomach, your arms, in your chest? If you listen to this inner voice, what is the worst thing that could happen? And if you listen to this inner voice and follow it, what is the best thing that could happen? Thank you.