Run for Rethink Mental Illness at Youth Enterprise Live
In 2011, I ran 52 marathons for my charity, Rethink Mental Illness. The people from AXA saw me speak to a group of small businesses and asked me to come along to Youth Enterprise Live and talk to people about goal setting and motivation and really kind of turning the negative into a positive and making you the person that you are. I'm motivated to run like I do because, unfortunately, my dad took his own life. And I want to get out there and talk to people about challenging yourself, and I want to lead by example.
It took me a little while to get over the self-pity, which I don't think was a problem. But after that, I wanted to make his death worthwhile in some way or some form. So I decided to use myself as an example to try and encourage others. I saw a friend who I went to school with and instead of talking to me, he actually crossed the road to avoid me and it was at that point where I thought, actually, I need to get people talking. So I decided there and then that I was going to do something different to really bring this into the fore and make people sit up and look at what I was doing.
I run for the charity Rethink Mental Illness, who do a whole load of work with people who have mental health issues, anybody who might have attempted suicide through to self-harm. They do incredible work, and without funding and donations from people, they wouldn't be able to exist. Suicide and mental illness carry taboos because they're injuries that you can't see. They're things that people won't talk about because it's just not cool to do it. Especially young people, they really feel like if you can't see something that's wrong with you, it's not a real illness.
I don't think I was born a positive person. I think I've become a pragmatic person. I was quite selfish when I was younger. I was very into sport and that drove me an awful lot. After my dad's death I re-evaluated what was important to me. And as a result, I realized that every negative can have a positive. So using his death as a positive to encourage people to talk about mental health is the way I want to go forward. I can't bring him back to life, but I can make his life worthwhile to others.
I think everyone has the ability to achieve something and I think everybody has the responsibility to achieve something. It's not enough to survive through life now, you need to make the most of what you have. It doesn't matter how many barriers you come up against, you can succeed if you try hard enough and you want to do it. My seminar is based around my life story and it's based around just how you can overcome challenges that have come into your life, it's going to be funny, it's going to be quite daunting.
There's some issues in there that are quite cutting and deep. But ultimately, I want people to leave inspired and feeling like they can achieve anything they want to achieve. I think a lot of the time we are bogged down and told that we can and can't do certain things. We are the only people that can determine exactly what we do in our own lives and we have to take responsibility for our own learning, our own development and therefore, I think that we can achieve absolutely anything.
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