It was the early 1960s, and beloved country singer Willie Nelson was struggling.

From a very young age, he had dreamed of being a musician. Now, living in Nashville, he was trying everything he could, but nothing was going right for him. He was teaching music lessons instead of getting gigs. He was selling other people his songs instead of playing them himself. The big record labels weren't interested in him. He was drowning his sorrows in alcohol and struggling with his mental health.

One night, things got so bad that, drunk on whiskey, he attempted suicide by lying down in the middle of the road waiting to be struck by a passing car. They all swerved around him.

The next day, one of his friends, a drummer named Paul English, stopped by to visit Nelson, who was hungover and still despairing that he would ever find a way to make it in the music business.

English told him to celebrate how far he had come and encouraged him to keep going, saying:

"I'm thinking of how these fools [record labels] are going to feel when you start having hit songs left and right. That's when they'll eat their hearts out for paying you no mind when they could have bought you for a nickel and nail."

With a friend in his corner, Nelson persevered. In fact, shortly after this conversation, he got his big break. He became one of the most successful country artists of all time, and at the age of 90, is still playing live shows to this very day.

Paul English became his longtime drummer, and they spent the next fifty years traveling the world and playing together. Writing about their friendship in his ​recent book​, Nelson described how much that support meant to him:

“It was good being with someone who seemed to believe in me more than I believed in myself. He really believed in a rosy future at a time when I couldn’t afford to buy my wife a dozen roses.”

There will be terrifying moments in all of our lives. What helps us to be braver? Knowing that someone else believes we can get through it.

Paul English believed in Willie Nelson. You have had people who believed in you. And you can believe in other people. That's what we're here for. That's how we get through the scary times: together.