My Mental Health Story (What Worked & What Didn't)

I started meditating when I was 17 years old.

Not because I grew up in a conscious household, not because someone pointed me in the right direction but it was actually because I was a teenager deep in conspiracy theories, smoking a lot of weed, and I stumbled across a blog page that mentioned meditation.

That's genuinely how it started.

Before that, my teenage years were a bit of a mess.

My parents split up when I was young. 

There was no united front at home during formative years of my life which meant I had free reign for most of my adolescence.

I dropped out of school in grade 10.

I was drinking, getting into trouble with police, always part of the wrong group.

And I could see myself heading down a path I didn't want...  my dad's path.

He's been addicted to alcohol my whole life and I could see the same patterns forming in me at 16, 17 years old.

So I started meditation at the beach every morning for 10 minutes.

Just me, my breath, and the sunrise. That was my first meditation practice.

No teacher, no app, no community.

Just something I'd read about online and decided to try.

It changed everything. And also, it didn't fix everything. That's an important distinction.

The Decade I Spent Conscious but Still Chaotic

Meditation gave me a level of awareness I hadn't had before.

I remember riding my bike to work one morning after a session and being struck by how vivid everything looked... the blue of the sky, the green of the trees, the way the light was flickering off the water.

Total presence.

Pure expansion.

I didn't know it at the time, but that was what people call a "glimmer"... the opposite of a "trigger".

But consciousness doesn't automatically solve your problems.

Through my 20s I kept drinking and kept doing drugs.

I knew what I was doing wasn't in alignment with me but I was still gripped by my vices, bad habits and addicitons.

I traveled to 50 countries and all seven continents.

Got into a long-term relationship, cheated on her in a blackout, lost the relationship and a job at the same time.

Went to Antarctica on the savings I had left, trying to tick off a bucket list goal.

And I remember standing in the middle of a street in Argentina after that trip — hungover, no girlfriend, no job, no money — after what should have been one of the greatest moments of my life. Just completely empty.

Depressed.

That was the moment I decided to go sober for a full year.

The Year That Changed Me

I stopped drinking cold. Didn't taper, didn't do a program. I just stopped.

I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't drink for 12 months while I was still in South America.

I came home and went clean through the end of 2018 and 2019.

That year was the first time in my life I felt like myself.

For all the meditation, all the travel, all the self-development... nothing hit like getting sober.

I wasn't being run by compulsions anymore.

I had actual self-control.

It was the first time I genuinely felt like I was someone who could choose how to live.

After that I moved to Sydney, got into environmental work, then when COVID hit I came back to the Sunshine Coast and moved onto an organic farm.

I lived in a camper trailer, worked a few days a week to cover rent and spent the rest of the time alone with myself (and nature).

That time on the farm is where the direction of my life became clear.

I'd been meditating for nearly 10 years at that point, but always as a personal practice.

It never occurred to me to do it professionally.

Then I had the opportunity to do my meditation teacher training, ran my first class in January 2021, and within a year it had evolved from classes to workshops to courses to coaching.

By 2022 I'd built Mind Launch, met my wife Missy, got married, and had our first daughter Coco.

It's 2026 now. We've got two kids, a son about to turn one, and I've worked with over 300 clients.

This is the first time in my life I've done anything consistently for five years. Before coaching, I never held a job for more than a year.

What Actually Works When It Comes to Your Mental and Emotional Wellbeing

I take a no-nonsense, training-based approach to mindset and mental health.

When you work with a personal trainer, they give you a program. You show up, you follow it, you do the reps consistently, and you get results.

Your mind works the same way. It's not a muscle, but it responds to training in a similar way a muscle does.

The problem with how most people deal with anxiety is that it's reactive.

Something goes wrong, anxiety spikes, and they reach for a tool, breathwork, a therapist, medication, scrolling.

They're using their tools as an escape hatch. Something to get them through the moment.

That doesn't work. Or more precisely, it works just enough to keep you stuck.

What does work is building the capacity before you need it.

You practice breathwork when you're calm so that when you're activated, your nervous system already knows how to come back.

You meditate daily not to fix a crisis but so that the crisis doesn't send you into a spiral in the first place.

You get your habits, your routine, your lifestyle sorted so that anxiety becomes something you're equipped to handle — not an emergency you're constantly reacting to.

Here's something most people miss: overthinking is rarely just a thinking problem.

If you're caught in a loop, there's usually unprocessed emotion underneath it. A feeling you haven't sat with. Once you start asking not just "what am I thinking" but "what am I feeling beneath this thought" — that's when you start to get real traction.

And feelings can be trained. A 30-minute walk in the sun lifts your state. Twenty minutes of meditation done properly makes you genuinely calmer. Breathwork done with consistency changes your nervous system baseline.

None of this is complicated. What's hard is the consistency.

What Doesn't Work

Blaming others. Trying something for a week and quitting. Looking for the shortcut. Managing instead of changing.

There are people who spend decades coping. And they survive. Life goes on. But the quality of that life stays flat.

They don't experience real growth because deep down they know they haven't actually changed anything... they've just gotten better at managing the problem.

I'm not here for that.

I'm not interested in helping people survive.

I'm interested in helping people who know they have more in them and are willing to actually do the work to access it.

The program I run is three months minimum. Not because I want to lock people in, but because that's actually how long real change takes.

Studies show measurable brain changes after 21 days of consistent meditation practice. Muscles don't change in a week. Neither does your brain, mindset or identity.

If you struggle with consistency, that's not a willpower problem, that's an identity problem.

The belief that "I'm just not someone who sticks to things" is a story you can change. I've watched hundreds of people change it.

Why I Started This Podcast

I wanted a space to share what I've seen work and what I've seen people waste years on.

I've worked with 300+ clients, held over 50 five-star Google reviews, and I've also lived every version of what I teach.

The drinking, the running, the searching, the breakdown, the slow build back.

I'm not someone who discovered wellness from a position of privilege or ease. I found it because I had to get my shit together.

The Mind Launch Podcast is for business owners, professionals, and parents who want more than just a calmer mind.

It's for people who want to build a life they actually enjoy across all fronts. Mind, body, business, family, relationships.

No shortcuts, no guru nonsense. Just what I've seen work after 15 years of living it and 5 years of helping other people through it.

Thanks for being here.

You got this.

Josh

🎙️ Listen on Spotify.

Watch on Youtube ⤵️

---

 Josh Holliday is a meditation teacher and mindset coach, and the founder of Mind Launch.

He works with business owners and professionals to build mental and emotional mastery through 1:1 mentorship.

Learn more at mindlaunch.com.au