Mike Kirby
Former Canadian Senator, Order of Canada, founding Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada
Wayne and Karen Kinch
See how the NEXT Program For Couples and Families saved our marriage, our family and our happiness.
“Jesse, what’s wrong?” asked my mom.
“I see myself… hanging from my ceiling fan, motionless. Mom, I see my dead body hanging in my room.”
I was 16 years old.
It all started with a very simple question, “are you happy?” when I was in 6th grade. The next year I started seeing a therapist who put me on medication to reduce the frequency of “going down the rabbit hole.”
The medication made it so that I felt emotionless and neutral about 99% of the time, and extremely sad the rest. I never used alcohol or non-prescription drugs because, frankly, I wasn’t cool enough to be invited to the parties.
Shortly after my darkest moment when I saw my dead body hanging in my room, my parents helped me enroll in the NEXT training.
NEXT is not a solution to every problem you will face. It is a toolkit to help you recognize what your brain is doing that you don’t want, stop it, and make an active decision about what you want to feel, think, and do instead.
I found this different from therapy and CBT because it was much more focused on long-term brain patterns compared to just trying to stop you from going off the deep end.
NEXT has been an invaluable tool for me. After I completed the training program, I went on to college and then to work in Washington, D.C, where I am currently a data analyst for a political organization.
I am still on medication, but feel much less reliant on it to ensure my safety. The difference in the way I behave and who I am has a person has changed tremendously since grade 12, allowing me to move much closer to who I want to be.
A great example of this is the relationship I have with my mother. Growing up, I developed a pattern of relating to her like there was something wrong with her. I would often make snarky comments that led to a strong tension between us. When I told her how angry she made me at times, she always said she would try to do better, but nothing really changed.
One of the things you’ll learn about using the NEXT System is how to resolve resentments and regrets. We learn to actively recognize the brain patterns that underlie the resentment, the damage the resentment has done to you, to the other person, and to your relationship, and how to rewire the brain patterns and resolve the resentment. I was skeptical about this, but I used NEXT tools the way they are designed, and it worked better than I could have hoped. The relationship I now have with my mother is strong and wonderful. This is just one example of the practical effects the skills and techniques learned in the NEXT program can have.
Jesse Freedman (Age 25)
“I wanted to be able to tell my children that mommy had tried everything.”
They were ages 2 and 4.
My husband had checked out of our marriage.
He was uninterested and disengaged, barely going through the motions. He didn’t speak to me. He didn’t smile. He was like a zombie.
I felt undesirable, helpless and confused, annoyed, angry and frustrated. I was constantly “walking on eggshells” in my own home!
I viewed him as being lazy and selfish. The resentment between us was like a mountain and it was like we couldn’t even see each other anymore. We had tried “marriage counselling” but that was a weekly 1-hour waste of time where we would play a mean game of he-said-she-said, pointing fingers and never resolving anything. We were both so unhappy… but I still loved him and wanted to save my marriage.
Going into the NEXT Program, we both knew that we felt sad and resentful, but we were confused about how and why we were feeling that way. These feelings had just kind of compiled over time and we really had no idea where they came from. On paper, we looked like a perfect couple. We weren’t fighting and there wasn’t a particular incident that led us to where we were.
Our first few sessions with NEXT were definitely different than marriage counseling. We actually attended sessions separately!?!
I started to work on myself. With guidance, I was able to take a step away from myself to truly look at my part in the breakdown of OUR marriage rather than simply pointing fingers at my husband and accusing him like it was all his fault.
I was able to honestly take responsibility for my part in our breakdown. This was a relief because I learned and realized that if can take responsibility for something, then I have the power to do something about it. It also took some of the burden of it “all being his fault” off of his shoulders.
NEXT taught us a system to understand how our brains and how to train our brain patterns to improve our performance. My brain is powerful! if I chose to believe that my husband is lazy and selfish, throughout my day, I would find numerous incidents to back up this notion as evidence to this negative thought pattern. We had to figure out about where our negative emotions came from. Using tools in the next system, we rewired the negative stuff and then wired in positivity, teamwork, love, commitment and productive parenting. We still use the next tools on a day to day basis to stay positive and aligned.
The NEXT System is truly life changing. It saved our FAMILY. We appreciate and are thankful for each other. Seven years later, my husband still thanks me for “forcing” him to do use the NEXT System! I cannot imagine where our family would be or how things would be for our children had we chosen the path to end our marriage. My husband and I are so thankful. What would you invest to be authentically happy? There is no price. We are forever grateful.
Karen Kinch (Age 39, at the time of her NEXT training)
“After my parents’ divorce and the death of my husband, I believed my life would never be okay.”
After losing my grounding in my teenage years when my parents divorced, I developed a powerful facade to hide my internal turmoil. I had friends, I was active, had good part-time jobs during my studies, graduated from law school, and went on to have a successful law career.
However, I struggled to create healthy intimate relationships. My relationships were mostly superficial until I met my husband. We had our daughter shortly after we got married, and two years after that, he died abruptly of leukemia. The years that followed were difficult and unspeakably lonely. Looking too far ahead was overwhelming; I survived by looking at my life one hour at a time.
I believed harsh things would continue to happen to me. For a long period of time, my heart would turn upside down when the telephone rang, always believing something bad had happened to my daughter or a family member. I was fragile.
I was determined not to stay there. I continued to see my talented therapist of a few years on a fairly regular basis until I felt ready to re-partner.
It was incredibly difficult to re-partner. Patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting from my past recurred constantly. My pattern of “things are not going to be okay for me” fired constantly, especially if my partner disagreed with me or had different opinions, which in my mind, was evidence that things would not work out between us. The occurrence of these patterns made me defensive, which I know was difficult for my new partner.
Then I implemented the NEXT System. This is where I was able to see the impact of old brain patterns that were never addressed. I was able to rewire these patterns and create new healthy patterns that enabled me to radically improve how I felt on a daily basis and create – literally design and build – a deep, loving, productive relationship with my new partner that I always wanted.
I was also able to transform myself as a parent, from over-protective and over-indulgent to empowered and effective. At 17, my daughter is wonderfully self-confident and independent while being a close part of our blended family, responsible, a 96% student, a sports star with more medals than her wall can handle, and a humanitarian, spending her spare time working in the community with some of our population’s most vulnerable. My law and public speaking practice is flourishing and I am the healthiest and happiest I have ever been, by far.
Nathalie Boutet (Age 53)
“You don’t expect to suffer a near-death fall during a slow pleasure-ride on a sunny Saturday afternoon.”
On October 15, 2016 I woke up in the hospital with 11 broken ribs (3 separated from the sternum), separated AC and SC joints (collarbone), a broken shoulder blade, and a punctured lung.
“Healing starts now” was the pattern that fired in my brain seconds after my bike slipped off the path and my chest hit a tree stump. It was a NEXT pattern I had been working on to heal myself from illnesses and minor injuries.
The doctors told me that the injuries were inoperable. It would take time – years – and patience. They would manage my pain with drugs to aid my recovery, and I would never be the same.
People I know who had broken ribs prepared me for intense pain that would last for months, even with drugs.
I told them “I have a better idea.”
During the first 3 days, I used the NEXT System to rewire my pain responses and re-set my SC joint, creating a mental and physical “platform” for rapid healing.
The doctors were incredulous.
I was able to resume work on day 4 (from the hospital). I went home on day 6, was in the gym on day 8, and was substantially pain free by day 20. I flew for business on day 32 and was fully recovered for my annual two-week Rocky Mountain ski trip on day 72.
I have great home movies of the whole thing: My Recovery Videos
It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either. The NEXT System enabled me to reduce the challenge of rapid pain-free recovery to a series of brain-based sub-problems that I could easily address by creating new healthy patterns and daily routines.
David Folk (Age 59)
Watch my video to find out why I am emphatically in support of NEXT as the transformative technology to usher in a much needed paradigm shift in human performance.
Ted Kaiser
Vice President Innovation and Technology – Kids Help Phone
Watch my video to find out why every young person needs to know what the NEXT System can do for them.
Lizzy Whelan
Professional Runner, Millennial
and The NEXT System are registered trademarks of NEXT Integrative Minds Life Sciences Ltd.