Prox - Armor Your Mind: Master Mental Resilience in the Face of Adversity & Conquer Your Ambitions with Confidence

To my beloved wife,

Daria Prox

You are the most selfless, caring, and hard-working woman in all of existence. Who you are inspires me to be better in every aspect. I am beyond blessed to share this life with you as your husband. I love you with all my heart!

Life doesnt get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient.

STEVE MARABOLI

Heres the one fact that everyone knows life is hard.

Its full of problems, setbacks, crises, challenges, and everyday ups and downs. The funny thing is, if it wasnt like that, we wouldnt be talking about life at all, but about a blissful slumber that never requires us to get out of bed. Lets face it that isnt living and we dont have that option, thankfully.

I imagine that you know how it feels to be down, unable to get up and go on. You may be physically exhausted, mentally fatigued, or emotionally drained. You could have been dealt one of lifes hard knocks and feel wounded, traumatized, or scared. It may be that your confidence is at rock bottom and your self-esteem is non-existent. Stress, anxiety, and even depression could have taken over as the dominant forces in your world. Negativity and a sense of helplessness may be keeping you in a very dark place.

It can be so, so difficult to get out of these cycles, especially when you really just want to throw in the towel, give up, sit down and cry, or worse.

I know how that feels because Ive been there.

Growing up, I had to deal with a lot of issues, and they had an extremely negative effect on my self-confidence. Talking to you about it now is easy, but that wasnt always the case. A few years ago, I couldnt even have a conversation with myself about how I was feeling, never mind with someone else. Everything was just stuck inside my head and I really couldnt deal with a lot of the problems I was facing, let alone confront what I had experienced when I was younger.

For as long as I can remember, there had been turmoil in my life, beginning when I was around four years old with my moms severe depression. Any one of you who has been in that position knows how scary it is to see one of your parents turning into a ghost before your very eyes. By the time I was seven, she had developed schizophrenia, which made her very erratic and unpredictable. I often didnt know what state I would find her in when going home from school, but I do have one particular recollection of her drinking an excessive amount of wine one night, and then becoming extremely aggressive and paranoid.

My dad wasnt around that much due to his work, and I often felt very insecure, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. That insecurity was compounded during my early school years as a victim of bullying and I developed a terrible stutter around that time. My schoolwork suffered as a result, and if you had a similar experience while at school, you would know only too well how being a special ed kid can leave its stigma on the psyche. Feeling that you are stupid does absolutely nothing for your self-confidence, and you even begin to believe that it is true after a while.

Looking back, I can rationalize it all and sympathize with myself, but that feeling of hopelessness and low self-esteem had a profound effect on me while growing up. There are some things that I found very difficult to talk about for many years, and one of those was the fact that I was also sexually abused by a family member when I was 10 to 11 years old. Anxiety, shame, and guilt became my middle names, and these were issues which I dealt with alone as I grew older. Before that time, I was living in the mountains with my family and happily enjoying the outdoor life. I loved climbing trees and exploring nature, something which I still get a lot of enjoyment from, thankfully.

Luckily for me, I found an outlet in wrestling at school thanks to my friend Anthony, who introduced me to the sport. This led me to meeting my wrestling coach, Stan; and if it hadnt been for him, I dont know where I would have ended up in life. The chances are that I would have ended up becoming involved in petty crime, joining a gang, or worse. By the time I got to senior year in 2008, the market crashed and my family lost everything, forcing us to move. However, I was determined to stay on at school until wrestling season was over. So, when my family members finally left, I stayed behind.

The next few months were spent couch-surfing at friends houses and I even had to sleep on the street a few times. Luckily, the parent of a good friend of mine named Julio was kind enough to open up his home to me, and I lived with them until the wrestling season finished. Possibly, during that period, I got a small taste of what it means to believe in yourself and to make decisions based on that, as well as seeing what the consequences of that could be. I always had my dad as a good role model and knew that he had sacrificed spending a lot of time with his family to earn a living, so maybe in some way that gave me the courage to go on.

One thing I NEVER thought would be of any help to me was reading a self-help book. So, when I did begin looking into it, Ive got to tell you that I was completely overwhelmed by the number of books out there on self-confidence, resilience, mental strength, and so on. Youve probably read quite a few of them yourself and may have, like me, concluded that many of them say the same things but in different ways.