HORMONE HARMONY

Life coach David Phillips beat depression and found happiness by hacking his neurochemicals - here's how you can do the same

- Dominic Bliss

David Phillips had everything going for him. A successful coach, author and public speaker with major international clients such as Google, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle and HP, he was happily married with three kids.

Then, suddenly, in 2016, enormous work stress took its toll, and he was hit by deep depression, confined to bed for two months, wishing he could sleep forever. “I realised I didn’t love anything or enjoy anything,” he tells MF. “I couldn’t relate to what people said in movies or the way my friends saw the world.”

Phillips’ depression became so bad that he felt suicidal. “That was constantly on my mind,” admits the 47-year-old. “How to [take his own life]; when to; where to?” He describes his state of mind back then as being one out of ten, where ten is “the happiest person on Earth and one was darkness.”

Encouraged by his wife, Phillips began researching ways to find happiness again. “I became obsessed by the idea of happiness,” he says. He struck upon an ingenious method that involves harnessing the power of the mind and optimising the body’s factory of neurochemicals. He calls this ‘selfleadership’: learning to choose your own emotions and your own mental states whenever you wish to.

His method completely turned his life and mental state around. Now, on that same oneto-ten scale, he says he quite often reaches ten and, on a bad day, drops down only to six. “I’m so far away from being down at one,” he says. “I’m not even close to it.”

Wishing to help others tune into his method, this year Phillips published a book, High on Life, which pinpoints the six hormones holding the key to happiness: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, cortisol, endorphins and testosterone. Just as recreational drugs increase the occurrence of these hormones in our brain, Phillips has developed a way to boost these naturally and harmlessly.