He found the best response was sometimes to detach from a situation, even if others did not always understand the tactic. He wasn’t doing it out of a lack of care, he says, but because he needed to preserve his positive energy and keep moving in the right direction. While he says he didn’t lean much on others for advice, his grandfather recommended a number of helpful books. “A lot of it had to do with astrology and stuff like that,” Brown says. “Finding out what you’re made of. I had to remind myself of who I was. That was good for me.”