12 Ways I Optimize My Mental Health Journey

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] well hello everyone welcome to this broadcast welcome welcome welcome mark dejesus here looking forward to sharing some great content with you today especially if you are passionate about experiencing greater mental emotional health in your life in your journey and i don't know about you but as a believer i think how we relate to god how we relate to our thoughts and how we deal with relationships shouldn't that be a main emphasis of what we talk about as believers with each other so i don't think mental health is just some category over here by itself by any means and i found in my pastoral work and even when i would speak at churches that when i would talk about subjects that related to my journey of healing and freedom when it came to mental health that people would say man i relate to what you went through some would say i have exactly what you've been through um others would say well i don't i don't i didn't really go exactly through what you went through but what you're saying we really need this [Laughter] so don't let the subject i use the term mental health but really this is all about learning to enhance how we think and learning how we relate to each other i think it's so much of what the apostles wrote about under god's the beauty of his grace and love how to relate to each other in a healthy way in a fruitful way because i believe that our relationships and how we do relationships is so important so today what i'm going to get into is 12 ways i optimize my mental health journey that's what i'm going to get into i could i could put more than 12 i could probably put a hundred but i narrowed it down as best i could to some practical things i want to be to your help into your journey as i look back what are some mindsets and some places where i could park and say you know what this has been a real help to my life and to my journey now i have a very important question to ask you before i get into the teaching it's a very very important theological spiritual question and it is this it's a very serious question so no joking around okay nobody joking it's a very serious question should i have a breath mint when i'm doing a live broadcast does it matter if i have bad breath or not when i do a live broadcast or film a broadcast just wondering does anybody have an opinion on that just wondering because sometimes i go oh i'm speaking and i put a breath in my mouth i'm like no one's here no one's here but doesn't it help your talking if you know your breath is fresher it allows the holy spirit to move better maybe i don't know we'll have to see but i pray anyways today's broadcast is a blessing to your life and your journey if you feel like the materials you that you listen to and hear our blessing to your life go to mark dejesus.com we've got tons of resources podcast materials and if you're like man i got a question uh you can you can contact us and and send us your questions um i'm gonna take more time to address questions in in future episodes and stuff like that um but um go to martijn.com you can search and if you find a topic though that you're like i'm hoping that he talks about this then search it first that's what i would encourage you search it search it and check to make sure that i haven't already addressed it because i may have and you just go to my website and there's a there's a little search thing that's there and put the topic in there and i i know you'll you'll be encouraged and you'll be blessed in some way in some dimensions so i use the word optimize okay optimizing mental health and that word optimize it means making the best of it could also mean making the most effective use of i made a decision in my life and my journey okay i want to value that my mind and my emotions and how i relate is in a journey of being enhanced developing growing maturing i want god to have maximum impact in my life in those areas so i want to pay attention to certain themes that are needed in my life now the things i share and the things that i that i give to you they're really needed when you're when you're ready because i don't force what i'm saying on people we really need to be hungry humble and teachable hungry meaning like i want this this isn't like somebody else forcing it on me i want this two i'm humbling myself to be teachable because otherwise i'm always going to be arguing and debating and what about this what about that right i had there there's such power when we humble ourselves it's such a biblical principle of exchange when you humble yourself what you need will arrive to you and then that teachability really goes into the the humility because you're you're willing to be taught there's things that in your life that need to be unlearned there's things in your life that need to be learned and the more you position yourself to keep learning and keep growing it's going to be a great asset for your life and for your journey so if i was to look back and look in my journey and let's say i'm going to kind of compact the past 15 years and i'm going to dial it in and kind of bring out 12 things i found to be very very helpful um the first thing that i would definitely emphasize is what's really helped optimize my journey is daily this is a daily thing this isn't like i'm going to go to a conference or i'm just gonna you know just one time or i'm gonna daily learn what it means to truly experience healing love and what it means to interact with god's love in a way that impacts my heart and my life in journey i am very firm in my conviction that our battles our mental health battles reveal places where we need a greater experience of god's love for us to love ourselves with that love and let that love flow through us to love our neighbor as ourselves i think that experiencing love in a powerful way is often neglected in the mental health journey and it's something god has said from the beginning of time and has and and provides in the covenant that we have in jesus christ is his eternal love for us and i found that i didn't know what love was i didn't know how to experience love and i when i looked at my life i attributed love as doing stuff for god doing stuff for people doing stuff for god doing stuff for people doing stuff for god and doing stuff for people doing you could just put a beat to that right and it's just doing stuff for god and doing stuff for people but doing stuff for god and doing stuff for people doing stuff for god and doing stuff for people and i had no idea how to receive love i had no idea how to be comfortable with being loved in the midst of my brokenness and flaws now i could connect with you in my strengths but what about when you see me and my weakness and my vulnerabilities what if my thoughts are off what if my emotions are not rotten place what if my behavior hasn't been that great can i connect to love in that moment and for so many of you anxiety panic attacks depression ocd your assignment is not first to like fix your problem to fix your broken brain that you think you have no it's to heal your broken heart and it needs a receptivity of what love means so i had to daily tune my senses to say the problem is not the problem the problem is at the root system of love what does love mean in my life so when you do this you start to develop what some would say is a being a compassionate witness to your journey are you a compassionate witness to your journey or are you your worst critic your worst enemy are you under constant pressure are you under this constant need to fix yourself perform figure out all these arguments and things and get it all just right and it's a big change and it's a big shift to move from being your biggest critic to actually being a compassionate witness so that you look at what you're going through with love my mental health struggles revealed i didn't know what love was i didn't know how to receive love and i was uncomfortable with unconditional love and a lot of that honestly is reinforced in a lot of christian culture i say these things not to bash churches or bash christian culture but to awaken us we tend to say god loves you right as you are when we lead people to christ right in your sin in your struggle in your body he loves you as you are and people say i want you know say the sinner's prayer or they they come to receive christ and then for the rest of their journey it's like get your act together you got to do these things you got to do like the unconditional love kind of drifted and we were worried oh if we teach unconditional love it's going to lead people into lawlessness they're going to think they're going to do whatever they want to that's not love either and it is interesting that in our brokenness we think freedom means going to the other side of an extreme so i i realized and this is my humbling experience i don't know what love is i don't know how to love i don't know how to be unconditionally loved and i need to open up my heart to daily learn what does it mean to be loved by god and i allowed him to use any avenue possible you see when you when you have a focus of a theme on your life and for most of you a theme is what is love and what does it look like to be loved when you get that theme then you look for it this is the power of focus because so many of us in our brokenness we look for our broken filters so if you feel like you always get the short end of the stick then that's what you're going to always look for if you're obsessive compulsive about a certain subject that's what you're gonna always look for and you get stuck in those ruts and you can find verification you can find verification i've been anxious i'm always anxious i'll always be anxious i'll never stop being anxious you can find that in everything and things never work out for me i'm not growing people are always against me if you have that as your focus you will find verification for it this is a very important thing in mental health what you focus on grows what your what your story is based on will grow because you look for it and seek and you will find never thought of it that way did you right what you seek for is what you're gonna find so if i seek for learning what it means to be loved i'm gonna find it if i allow that to be the focus of my life to discover what does it mean to be loved and what does that look like for me to receive it i had a sneeze didn't get a chance to mute that so if that sneeze blasted through your ears my apologies so in that journey i learned a loving unconditional loving acceptance of god in other videos i call it tula t-u-l-a total unconditional loving acceptance god you you love me unconditionally right now right where i'm at and it led me to understanding the inviting love of god that he invites me and brings me in that that definition i talk about agape in my series on where i talk about what it means to receive that invitation and then there's the patience and kindness of god uh lord willing and the creek don't rise i'm gonna do a whole session on the transforming healing power of patience that you and i yes you you right there looking at me hey pay attention you you need the patience of god's love over your life in your journey i'm going to talk about that and and learning how to be patient with my journey you know so many people will come to me and ask me a question and like a couple days later go i don't know i don't think it's working and i literally want to start laughing and i don't mean i don't mean to laugh and chuckle but it is funny to me how we've been conditioned that love is just like in three days gonna just just gonna change everything and now you're a whole different person it takes time when you've not learned something and now you need to learn and you need to unlearn and relearn this is this is a journey of patience of the heart but tuning into god's kindness the voice of his goodness you see once you understand his love for you and get just a glimpse just a picture of it you start to tune it's his goodness it's his kindness that leads us to the turnaround to use the biblical word it's his kindness his goodness leads us to repentance that repentance is actually speaking of you move from one way of thinking into another that's what it is repentance is not [Music] that's not repentance and repentance is not you're a terrible person shame shame shame shame no many of you have to learn renewal of that repentance comes out out of experience of the goodness of who he is it it brings you to a place of letting go of those things that that seek to counterfeit or interfere or block or or could bring confusion into the beauty and purity of god's love and grace for you so i learned in that the flow of love so this set me on a whole new trajectory of my life and my journey which in fact caused me to leave a staff position at a church that i had cultivated many years of developing and could have taken that portfolio down a whole path i just left it it started from scratch because i was like this love is so important and this healing power is so important we are spending so much time talking about and arguing through and emphasizing all these things that are just disconnecting us from god's love and grace over our life how did we get here well very easily because there's a war over you and i experiencing the depth of that love so daily so every day in my life to this day i learn more and more about in my journey so that i can experience that over my heart over my relationships and over the current battles that i may have in my life in my journey which leads me to the second part of this which is number two i got the number two which also is the peace sign they're learning to learning to engage the peace of god's presence i will easily admit that in my journey i did not know how to peacefully rest and even relax in god's presence the idea of prayer the idea of connecting to god's presence was something i felt i had to do but it was it was often filled with a lot of discomfort a lot of like oh my goodness i don't pray enough i was so hyper aware of my sin and when i wasn't like fully immersed in sin patterns or not a good enough patterns i felt like god tolerated me i feel like he loved me i feel like he tolerated me all right mark all right you could sit here you can hang out but i always felt like other people were just much more spiritual than me do you feel that in your own journey the way people talk about their experiences with god many times i know this because i i work behind the scenes and i see i see the deeper what's what's going on often we present our spiritual life like it's so glowing you know because we want people to think we're very spiritual i started to just get honest like i can't i like i'm a pastor i i've been involved in ministry for many years and i just readily admitted like i don't feel i don't i don't know how to connect to god and his love for me like prayer is a drudgery it feels it's it's it's it's very unfruitful i feel exhausted by it i don't feel like he's listening and that's what really led me to unlocking what i call rejection roots in my life because rejection is that root system of thinking that creates that sense of separation so all of you that are going i can't connect to his presence i can't connect to who he is i can't connect it's that rejection root that convinces us god is disconnected or he's just he's just not there he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't step in for us he doesn't he's not there for us when we need him and i felt too i shared this with somebody this morning i i felt that god was like okay with me and my you know stick with my devotion make sure i do all those things but i but i constantly failed because when you live under that law and performance-based mindset you're always going to fail it's just it's it never but it gives you enough of a hit that you think you're on the right track i did my devotional i feel good today and people say that like christians when they say this they say you know when i'm doing my devotions and i'm close to god you know things go well it's like time out you're in performance trap but that's why it's a trap how does it lure us in we get that that hit that dopamine hit that rush and like ah you know i had to i had to reset all that to realize god is good god is a father and he absolutely loves me and i am feel disconnected from all those things how is it i'm just asking a question this is my journey if your journey is different then your journey is different how is it that could be in the body of christ as long as i have raised in the church my earliest memory is the hardwood of a church pew how is it that i would feel disconnected to the love of god for me so if you struggle with that you're not alone it's a plague and i had to realize i don't i don't know how to connect to the peace of god's presence i don't even know how to sit still let alone sit in that piece and i realize that on a daily basis i just need to prac as an act of love and and as an act of kindness towards myself i had to learn how to practice just being with him not giving him a hundred things not praying through a million things just learning to sit in the silence and i had to detox a lot of things i was very compulsive very obsessive spitting out about a lot of things and i um listened to a lot of condemnation it was it was a guiding force in my life and i didn't learn how to detox that god's not in that he's not condemning me he's not shaming me i also realize and this might be a new thought for some of you i had to reset that the basis of my relationship with god the basis is not him correcting me many of you your relationship with god is based on him correcting you like every interaction with god is him fixing something with you listen if you had a friend that acted the way that you approached god you would ditch that friend if i sat down with you and every time we sat down i was just correcting you first of all that's an abusive relationship but we've we've tend to teach people like a relationship with god based on him just pointing out things and it just puts the weight back on us the pressure back on us and i had to learn i i think transformation comes best when we first admit the problem and two tune into the learning in a in a compassionate way here's the problem i can't commit to i can't connect to god's love i can't connect to his peace okay that's the honest admission that's good now let's empower that because that's a place of vulnerability humility where god can begin to teach you and so for me i just i didn't let it defeat me here i am been in the church most of my life and i don't know how to connect to the peace of god well i'm going to start learning one of the areas has been a long season and journey and i continually practice this this is stuff that's in my it's in my portfolio today is number three is giving myself permission to process i talk about this in my videos processing emotions processing through the difficult emotions that i face what are those difficult emotions usually anxiety anger depression sadness grief disappointment those are those are kind of at the top of the list you know i'll include hurt in that what would you include in that list those difficult emotions like of course i'd want to experience happiness and joy and fun oh this great you know or the great emotion of peace and but i realized that often the journey towards experiencing the fruit of the spirit in greater ways and experiencing the emotions that i longed to have in my life would lead me through the valley of facing some of the difficult emotions of my life the difficult things that i need to face now in my makeup how my personality got formed and my way of approaching things i was constantly trying to fix those emotions fix those thoughts so if i felt anxiety my number one goal was how do i get rid of the anxiety when i felt angry being feeling angry actually frightened me because i would feel oh my goodness what's this anger gonna do i didn't know how to deal with angry anger no one ever taught me no one ever worked me through it i had zero references and tools to actually effectively process through so i just got afraid oh you'd feel it and it would actually you ever get angry and you start shaking like an anxiety comes over you right at the same time then there's those disappointments and those deep heartaches in life they kind of just like you push them down skip through them just keep moving forward right just keep moving forward stay busy right that's what we do that's what we do because we are people that just keep going and go from one thing to the next and then we're wondering why we're running out of steam because we're not robots i had to begin to learn how to approach my emotional life and embracing hey here's some things i'm experiencing and allow god's compassionate love to meet me so i i found greater help when i would feel anxiety to experience god's loving acceptance he loves me in the midst of this anxiety and it's okay that right now this is what i'm going through and what i'm experiencing and i'm going to learn i'm going to learn and many of you i'm sure you have your thoughts and responses to that but i'm going to say this to you i know what it's like to be at 10 in anxiety so whatever you're facing in panic attacks i know i know it's like to be in a prolonged state of top level anxiety and still trying to function through the day by it's not even it's not even dinner time and i'm already out of adrenal exhaustion day after day after day so when you're like oh it's not yeah it's that anxiety is signaling a lot of things it's signaling a deeper need for love and faith and hope to have a work in your life but specifically love the kind of love that casts out fear i had to learn like even seasons of depression instead of like how do i get it off how do i get it off how do i get get this away from me get this away from me i go all right this is what i'm going through and it's okay and then i would actually see what was underneath the depression that allowed me to have a deeper more fulfilling relationship and interaction with god and myself and others how is profound and powerful same thing with ocd now ocd can be tough because you're focused on the subject at hand and it took me a little bit to realize that's not the problem i need every ocd sufferer has a vast disconnect with love in their life but you won't get the the the greater help you need unless you start learning and part of the distortion of ocd is that you have a difficulty processing emotions you interpret them in in disempowering ways you interpret them in ways that that beat yourself up and that's why i always say you gotta interpret it through faith hope and love interpret your thoughts through faith hope and love and many of those thoughts just need a nurturing pass on by it's not something i need to pay attention to i want to pay attention to what's building love in my life what's building my hope in tomorrow what's building a sense of me in faith stepping out right but i had to give myself permission because with many of you and you relate to what i'm saying in that you gave no room for those difficult emotions you just fix them fix them get them up fix it mark what i do mark what do i do about this right you're trying to fix it and what i encourage people is walk through it don't walk around it don't try to make it go away don't don't try to like you know use a can of of bad emotion spray and spray so you may have two one of two extremes that hinder your mental health when it comes to your emotions one is denial you just don't know how to like face them so you just like avoid them avoid them before you don't avoid them or you get stuck in a rut in them where it consumes you and you know how to function or maybe a combination of both i found myself in a bit of both of them so if you relate to that you relate to if you feel yourself stuck in a ditch all the time i relate to that too if you find yourself in some form of denial you i understand that too i it starts with permission say mark i'm sad today and you know what i'm sad because i'm not really a christian and i don't read my bible enough there you go there you go that is actually a form of denial think about this for a second that's that distorted interpretation is that really why you're sad or is there a sadness just there's some just healing love that needs to happen in your life in your journey because you going because i don't read my bible enough or i don't pray enough i know i use that example a lot it's just it's an easy one because many people have that so then you go around you go down the path of i need to read the bible more that's why i'm saying it's denial the problem is here in the root system your heart needs but you're off over here and what i want to do is i want to go be released of the yoke of that heaviness and get to what you really need because for many of you in your emotional just your emotional frustration you need the exhortation of jesus come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and people with mental health issues we are weary you are worn out your fight or flight your cortisol is cranked and you are heavy laden burdened down with something that jesus doesn't sit there and address all the burdens hey let me just talk about these burdens and these things he goes just let it go take on my yoke come walk with me my burden's easy my burden's light because when you're yoked to me you just learn he says learn from me i'm going to get to learning in just a second because that's a powerful powerful posture to take is to see your life from the lens of learning but he wants to remove that burden and he wants to take you into a different posture of walking with him and it's going to be allowing myself and for many of you you're crash landing okay it's time for me to face the grief that i've not grieved through the disappointment the lost relationship the lost job the lost thing the struggle the frustration the anger that's all pent up you actually need some nurture and need to process out with god with someone who could be helpful in your processing the fourth thing that i found helpful is compassionately discovering where i need healing and where i need maturing so those two words are very important because they go they go in line together because the healing process invites us into greater maturity god is raising us up as sons and daughters to mature us but but healing sets the stage for greater maturity i had to let the holy spirit begin to teach me now the first people say how do you know it's the holy spirit and all that that's a whole subject in itself but the holy spirit brings comfort he brings empowerment he reminds you of the power of what the master taught and jesus said you'll take of what i've shared with you and bring it to remembrance for most people they are under the teaching of in the tutelage of a law-based performance-based condemnation that will always always leave you defeated and so what happened is i had to i want to go on a discovery what does my heart need mental health battles reveal not just things our brain needs because when your heart starts to connect with deeper love and grace it begins to put these brain pathways into perspective you think you need stuff in your brain fixed you need your heart healed in love and so i had to compassionately discover i just start looking at myself graciously come back do you look at yourself compassionately and it's what led me to the discovery in the book i wrote god loves me to love myself this became a dynamic pivot in my personal journey and in even how i helped other people was learning how to compassionately look at my life in my journey the heart healing journey expresses this too because i talk about looking at yourself through that compassionate lens looking at yourself so that you can actually go through what you need to go through i was so unkind to myself so therefore i could not discover what i needed i'll say this for me i i don't want to say this just for you but i think it applies to most of us if i'm not connected to kindness i don't stand a chance at working through my mental health battles what i mean by that is all i'm doing is just beating myself up for having the problem i have a problem i have this anxiety problem this ocd problem i'm beating myself up for having the problem and i'm being harsh at every turn that's a setup for disaster and we got to stop as believers thinking that this is good that we're beating ourselves up i'm my own worst enemy stop it no you're not that's not god has not called you that is in that is in second nonsense chapter 4 verse 8 that you're your own worst enemy you're not you have an enemy it's not you it's not you it's not spiritual for you to be this like i'm such a terrible sinner that sounds nice everyone goes wow i want to interrupt that pattern and go heresy [Laughter] jesus died on the cross so i could sit here and beat myself up all day like we we need a reboot so i have to first and and this is kind of the theme so far i have to first look at myself through compassion so that's to this day that and and here's what i found this is what i discovered it was kind of weird when i began to detox all this stuff that i thought was god but it was just condemnation grace i mean um guilt not grace and shame and all that stuff i began to detox it i i started to have so much space in my mind i didn't know what to do with myself and it was like very silent it almost scared me because like wait am i ignoring something god is saying i realized 90 of my thinking was based on condemnation and fear and that's the case for many of you so when you start to clear it out you don't know what to do with yourself that's why god is teaching us how to think his ways in the midst of these toxic goofy thought patterns that we fall into he's inserting his ways because i learned if i removed every fear response in my life out like if god took it out of me somehow just removed it i wouldn't know i would turn into a blob and i wouldn't even know what to do because so much of fear was how i propped up my day so much of how i lived was in response to feeling guilt and shame it's how i i lived so it's cool that god meets us in it and he's beginning to fill us as he's detoxing the counterfeit but i had to compassionately i had to look at myself compassion so i could discover where do i need healing and would i need maturing maturing is so important because there's areas of my life that are immature and i need to grow up there are aspects of your life you might be 50 years old but there's certain parts of how you relate and think that are still 15. and god goes i need to i need to heal i need to bring healing to that because that that 15 year old aspect of your journey needs to mature and grow up the good news is that god's not telling us to hurry up but he's patient but he doesn't want us to take the next step and i found i was like for example i would at 25 years of age when i was 25 there were certain areas of my ministry work where i i lived like a 45 year old but in my walk with relationship bonding connection vulnerability intimacy i was still like 14 15. do you see what i'm saying so god had to heal that aspect of my life then he also had to show me too that that 25 45 was like a performance-based role that i lived in and really i had to relearn who i was so that's why in our journey god does like resets take us back to the beginning jesus when he when he talked to the seven churches repent go back to the first works right and it freaks us out oh maybe i'm not a christian maybe i'm not did he say that to the church of ephesus do you say go back and ask jesus into your heart all over again he goes no did he say he say everything you've been living for is is a waste no he exhorted great stuff but in order for change to happen we have to go back to the beginning it's like it's to use an american illustration in in college basketball there's a famous coach here in the united states at a university of california ucla john wooden very famous basketball coach and he was he was known for having many many championships year after year after year but his technique with his players was so simple it was frustrating you sit down at practice okay we're going to put our shoes on we're going to tie our shoelaces here's how we need to tie our shoe you know somebody go tire shoelace like what what does that have to do back to the he understood the fundamentals and some of you you know basketball gurus could could know this illustration even better than me this is a ball we're going to hold the ball okay we're going to stand and learn how to hold the ball wait wait come on come on we're gonna do we need to get our man-to-man defense set up we need to get our zone we need to no they're just gonna dribble you're dribble you're gonna dribble you're gonna dribble for an hour and a half or whatever right god is calling us back to the fundamentals constantly and that's going to bring about what you need for healing and what you need for maturing so many people go oh my goodness does this mean i'm a bad christian no he's always bringing you back to the fundamentals now what was very very helpful for me very transformative is number five allow myself to see setbacks as learning opportunities for most people that i interact with they see setbacks as failures as the end of the world for them it's the end of the world as they know it and they don't feel fine i i this one little adjustment helped me with my fear of failure with my procrastination with perfectionism is i had to see my life each day is a learning opportunity so if i have a setback let's say i was let's say i was victorious and i i'm not having panic attacks for months and months and i just rejoice in it then one day i have a panic attack i'll tell you what i would do i would pause and i'll go it's okay it's okay that i'm having this doesn't mean i've lost everything this doesn't mean i've lost all ground it's a new opportunity for learning you learn see this is the problem in christianity you haven't learned that the walk with christ is learned in the doing in the daily doing in the daily learning you think it's sitting down and getting it all just right and then i go and live no it's all about learning from the old to the new testament the bible is covered with people that take all your flaws and failures you can find some in the bible that makes that look like nothing mistake after mistake flaws sin failures mistakes all kinds of stuff that we try to avoid the learning is in that that's why i tell you five you know three steps forward and five steps back is still progress no mark that's negative two it's progress i'll tell you why it's progress you took a step in fact you took three steps you stepped into new territory so what it knocked you back a little bit you took a step now we're going to do it again you got you you got you got five steps forward that you took or i'm sorry was i again three steps forward five steps back sorry you took three steps forward you see in mental health problems we're trained to focus on the five steps back so you don't think negative two you actually think negative five see how distorted we get in our journey so you can't appreciate the progress that you've made in your life you i just said that a little bit canadian progress [Laughter] those of you that are from canada you're having an effect on me eh we're having some progress in our life i i had to start seeing my journey through a different lens many people will say and i've said this in my anxiety course many people say i'm going around the mountain going around the mountain i'm going around the mountain oh i just going on the same pathway all the time well sometimes you need to go many times you need to go around the same path until you learn you got to experience it it's like if you wanted to be an amazing you know you want to be amazing at archery and bow and arrow the way you live your life many of you is you take the first shot go i missed oh i missed what what would be the typical response like oh okay wow i got a lot to learn so i'm going to learn and i'm going to practice and i'm going to practice in the doing you're going to get up one day and you're you're going to feel you know anxiety or you're obsessive or your depression or whatever it is and you're going to go it's all right i'm going to lean into it i'm going to learn today i'm going to learn i'm going to let this day be but i feel so you know we just want to get rid of the pain want to get rid of the discomfort as quickly as possible and i said i'm just going to lean into this because the more i fight it the more frustrated i get i start releasing control and start releasing this pressure i put on myself it's okay to go around the mountain because that's how you learn that's that's not how you and i were taught like you're going around the mountain same time good good clue what's matter with you that's what that's what my inner critic sounds like [Laughter] so i i took i took areas that seem like setbacks it's not setbacks it's all learning everything's learning well i lost a marriage i did this god's redemptive he could take anything and use it for the glory of what he's doing in your life and the beauty of what he's doing in your life i also number six i've learned this in a very personal way sometimes we feel like there's nothing i can do but there's one thing i can always do i'm never without one choice this one choice the decision to set my compass what do i mean by that it's the the ability to decide where i'm pointing now if you take three steps forward and you have five steps back number one i celebrate because you took the steps number two your your compass is pointed in a new direction that's amazing and that's one thing i can always choose because then it sets i can set my compass to what i want my attitude to be because maybe say well i feel terrible having to okay it's fine it's fine it's all right i wake up and i have anxiety on me been there been there been there wake up with the darkest doom imaginable on me before i even know what day it is it's okay i'm gonna set my compass and i'm gonna take steps into that because sometimes we get so introspective and and i i i talk about introspection i i renounced it from my life because i found it's just not useful it's not helpful that like spinning and navel gazing and looking in looking in looking and looking in transformation doesn't happen with you staring inward and trying to find it that makes so many ocd sufferers like tilt off the rails like what are you talking about what if god is speaking what if he's saying something nah revelation revelation comes to you it empowers you truth sets you free well what if god's trying to god is not sitting around the corner like i'm hiding and i've got this correction over here and you might miss it oh you missed it oh you missed it oh you missed it god it's not going you should supposed to turn left post turn left oh you missed it you missed out on everything i have for you that's how he kind of approaches ways right i had to let go of that introspection because it prevented me from what looking up and taking the next step that's what you need one step in front of the other one step in front of the other into the new territory i got anxiety but i'm learning to be loved learning to build my confidence learning to overcome learning to let this mental health subject give you clues to what you need that goes back to compassionate discovery you like why bipolar people write to me about pi bipolar maybe sometime i'll i'll get to that subject right which is like a mood regulation disorder and it can be involved with manic highs and and and and then it's combined with deep depressive kind of states there's different levels of it right so what does it highlight highlights is a battle over mood right so that's an important thing to understand of setting the compass for mood i realized in my life that i was very all over the place with my mood wake up feel this way one way like just all over the place and whether i was diagnosed with whatever i it doesn't matter it just revealed to me i have struggles with my mood so what do i need i need to know how to walk one step in front of the other to receive nurture to be nurturing to myself to know how to regulate my emotional journey to practice it each day right to learn how to walk that out if you've got any generalized anxiety it's revealing what you need to set your compass you need perfect love to cast out fear if you have depression there's probably some things in your life that that have brokenness have emptiness that things that that your your mind your body can't take it anymore and it's creating this like almost crash landing and you just want the depression feelings gone but it actually needs an awakening to some things that need that need some attention so then i could set my compass for me this is where i need to be pointed every day and for many of you need to discover the theme over your life what's the theme that god is working i'm sharing a lot of stuff here so it's worth re-watching it's it's it's worth take take notes on what sticks out don't obsess with having to get every point take with sticks out then you come revisit this at another time and you'll you'll have another aspect that gets revealed to you to set my compass because i need to set my compass to decide this is where i'm headed and every day i decide this is where i'm at and this is where where i'm headed to now today may be a real struggle in in stepping into it seeing the fruit that i'd love to see but i'm taking one step in front of the other pointing my compass and that's my choice so if a flood of opposition hits me today or if i've got resistance or this stuff doesn't go well i have the ability to choose where i'm pointing my compass and that's a simple empowerment so you're never without power you may feel like you're you are without it but you're never without the ability to decide what am i gonna do with this i've also found number seven the power of celebrating small victories if you have battles that you recognize emotionally mentally in your life you are going to have to learn to celebrate to document the smallest of victories if you have just a little bit of peace if you connected just a little bit of god's love in a deeper way if you just have a couple good thoughts write them down i encourage everyone have some kind of journaling process i don't i don't mean you have to sit there and say dear diary today was filled with many emotions that were overwhelming it doesn't have to be a novel sometimes just one statement maybe just keeping track of how how you know things things that are helpful and things that you learn document them and when you have victories document them because you're going to need to revisit them on your tough days so much of the bible is what people writing down what if they went i'm not going to write it down we wouldn't have them we wouldn't have the bible write the vision make it clear document have some form of documentation now my ocd at times was so bad that i would feel so disconnected i could have like maybe a little victory then i'd feel like i fell into it i totally feel disconnected to that victory for some of you it'll make total sense what i'm saying so i came up with this i think i just i just experimented with it i had an old you know the the i think it was like a flip phone it was before they had smartphones it was more like a dumb phone a simple phone right and it had this audio recorder you have to kind of click click back into the menu and and i also had one of those um actual like i think it was a tape one or maybe a digital one they think they were just like you know like like audio recorder and i would take it and i would record this to myself mark today this mark this is mark today i had some breakthroughs and you're gonna need to know that you're gonna make it and you're gonna be okay and today i was able to connect to just a little bit of that and i say this to remind you because you're gonna need it when you're having a tough day that's it and when i'm having a tough day i'd pull that recorder out and play it those words would remind me and anchor me back because when you're having a tough day you almost feel like dominoes like nothing's working just kind of over everything but i had to learn to celebrate and document those small victories connect to gratitude gratitude is a great asset for your life not thanksgiving number eight is practicing letting go and because my history involved a lot of ocd kind of battles letting go is one of the most difficult and challenging things but every single day and it's become a galvanized practice in my it's become a part of me is learning to let go of a lot of things to let go of thoughts i don't need to pay attention to to let go of burdens i don't need to carry to let go of worry-filled thoughts to let go of condemnation-based thoughts to let go of pressure to let go of the intense burden of pressure that i'm tempted to put on myself learning to let go of other people's problems other people's issues that can kind of come on my shoulders and i feel like i gotta carry them and and carry that for them and as a guy who's emotionally connected and and sensitive i have to be aware i need to learn how to let go i got to learn how to let it go let it go easier said than done i know i got to learn to let go of things i could get hung up on i learned to let go of anger and gently compassionately process through it but let it go let go of little details that i don't need to fuss over let go of control because i realize i'm not in control of a whole lot of anything it teaches me to rest more in the love god house for me gets me out of that hyper vigilance gets me out of that that constant go go go that survival mode let me let go so i can rest in the arms of who god is in me number nine is developing an overcoming spirit and resilience i realized god was calling me to upgrade my identity that i'm a son of god i'm a believer but he's calling me to live as an overcomer how are you going to live as an overcomer unless you have something really challenging to overcome and some of you are in the depths of battles what you need to understand is there's a call in your life to overcome that's why this thing seems so insurmountable because you're on a journey and what you're going to learn experience is going to be your deposit for future generations and i had to learn how to develop a sense of resilience what is resilience means it means the capacity to recover from difficulties that's what nurture brings like i have a bad day bad week bad month whatever learning to recover from it so i get back on my feet and take another step again i learned that my my overcoming muscles were pretty weak and many of you can relate to that in your mental health journey that you realize your overcoming muscles are weak you're always asking god to take it away and god just do it and just just take it off of me and god's going i want to walk with you through it and i want to teach you how to develop a tenacity in your life i want to teach you how to stand in the midst of these storms and just stand and let my love and let my grace become more evident in the midst of it most of most of us were not trained how to overcome but the people who make the most difference in this world are the peoples whose lives have the odds stacked against them and so if you feel like you just have so much against you take hope because there's a thread of a new story that's meeting you god's building an overcomer in you it's not about it being your fault it's not about you being not good enough this is your assignment to learn to heal and overcome and share it with others and get through the last few but i had to learn number 10 every day i practice a renewed and empowered self-talk i talk to myself i talk to myself out loud i talk to myself quietly in my thoughts i embrace a compassionate graceful self-talk i talk to myself through the lens of faith hope and love i love myself i encourage myself i edify myself you ever read that in the bible where it talks about you being edifying edifying yourself he talks about the spiritual gifts and things like that worship tongues thing all this stuff like that and what it means to edify the body edify a believer edify yourself i learned to be kind to myself and have a better relationship and i let that now these are the last two but they're not least in importance number 11 i learned to care for my physiology and my routines let me summarize this now i can get into a lot of things i could talk about your sleep eating well your movement here's what i want you as a take as a takeaway besides the compassionate love of god the second big takeaway i want you to take is be strategic be strategic in your daily routines of what's going to help empower you the most so for example the biggest areas are how you wake up how you go to sleep right bookending your days in empowering ways how can you set up your start of your day and the end of your day not performance not pressure what will be most helpful for you so for me because i had chronic anxiety at massive levels on a daily basis when i would wake up i would i would i would have it before i even knew what day it was for me optimizing my morning was when i wake up my first thought needs to be get up put your feet on the floor get in the shower get get the day moving now you might say well that's is that is that a performance base no no because normally i would sit there and just introspect and spin and get into discouragement but i know for me the the the anxiety battle's hitting me before i even know what day it is so i've got to begin taking the steps into new territory so that's not that's not going to be my moment to open my bible that's i gotta get into it so for me for me at the time it may be get in the shower get dressed get some coffee get state of mind primed into a better place okay now we're gonna start engaging some of the things of god right another example is nighttime how do you go to sleep do you crash land when you go to bed do you cultivate a greater atmosphere and environment right those are just some examples do you take a break in the day right right do you take a break in the day to just be still or you're always busy you're on your phones in your brain take a break to just take in the beauty of god's creation to take in be present in the moment just extract the moment that's in front of you to teach yourself to not be in the spinning right to let your lunch time or dinner time be a moment where you pause take a moment to go for walks those kind of things what does your daily routine look at your day and say what would it look like to not only help my mental health but to empower my journey that i could connect to the power of greater is he that is with me because that's what i want to connect to more i want my awareness of that to be maximized towards that so last i'm going to share this in closing is real simple every day i find ways to bless others with what i'm learning and where i'm heading now this is this is going to lead into a lot of different things because this set me free from having to do ministry or put on a sermon my commitment to you is everything you'll hear from me are things precepts mindsets responses of things that have flowed in and through my life that i am on my way in my own journey now listen carefully if you notice none of that is saying i've arrived i've arrived in this place i'm going to tell you nope i'm on my journey i'll forever be on my journey and i will be a guide to share with you what i've discovered on the journey and what has been helpful in my life and what i what has been illuminating and helpful so i never have to perform anymore i just share with you the goodness and flow out of what god's done in my own life so it helps you to not feel like you're you're being a hypocrite or you've got the imposter syndrome sometimes people say well they'll say this to me i can't wait to get healed so i can bless others i want you to bless others right now what do you mean what what have you discovered so far share that with others take where you're at share with others stop this i have to arrive someday in order to be a blessing or i have to have some ministry title you may wait your whole life for that authentic ministry is just taking who you are where you're at where you're going and let it be a blessing to others here's what i'm going through but here's what i'm learning and hey this might bless your life and your journey isn't that so much more relaxing than what we've been taught in our project together our sermons and let me put this presentation and god's so great and an angel came to me and i had this thing and god led me in this beautiful place and i was like that sounds so beautiful and so wonderful it's like you just have ice cream and whipped cream and it's just beautiful just toppings all over it and every day how about that tough day i want to hear about that tough day you had that's what i really want to hear about oh no i don't want to share that because all these things and really i'm uncomfortable with sharing those things and i'm let's put an end to all that be yourself where you are but where you're headed let it be a blessing so i first share those things with my wife and my marriage and i just share that's how i lead my home here's what god's showing me hey what do you think this is what i learned today what do you think let my kids see that let them learn from it i take my journey and when they ask me questions i say well here's what i've learned here's some things i've discovered let it flow and then i flow out to my neighbor my literal neighbor those who live around me i could be if i can be a blessing i don't force it on them i don't yell it out don't try to change them just share when the doors open i'm ready when the doors are when they ask the bible says right and i want to encourage that authentic ministry in your own life and in your own journey i pray this is a blessing to your life which one stuck out to you the most which one to you stuck out the most that says this is the place i need to begin if you want some a little bit of a road map to the heart healing journey get the book the heart healing journey it's a passionate writing that's that's laid out you can do it and you can do it one at a time you can skip around in it you can read it all the way through it comes with prayers it comes with questions let it be a blessing to your life and your journey the cool thing is i've got a giant two volume online course that goes along with and the first one the volume one is free and you go through it there's just great great stuff that's there but in all things i pray this was a blessing to your life to your journey i pray it encourages those that you are talking to and let this episode be a conversation piece of encouragement and i look forward to seeing you all next time i love you it's great to be your brother from another mother and lord william from the creek don't rise we'll see you next time thanks so much blessings [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 965

Rating: 4.9452057 out of 5

Keywords: Mental Health, Emotional Health

Id: BL5PECD7p6A

Length: 66min 15sec (3975 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021