Hi everyone. Welcome back to the New Vision and podcasts with your very own Shawn Maguire. And today I want to say thanks for joining us because this is the podcast where we want you to be set free from any of the issues that are holding you back from living out the best life God has planned for you. And part of what we do is we help you lower the bar of entry, going to counseling, help you see that there’s so much information and opportunity through OKC Christian marriage counseling and the resources to set you free to move forward, to accomplish God’s best for you and your family. So start today with that process of change. Well, this podcast podcast number five is going to be on how to defeat depression or defeating depression in three steps. Or my buddy clay Clark would say how to defeat depression and three moves. So the first move is get help get help.
So many people stay stuck because they don’t seek help and they try to navigate this beast, overcome this monster of depression on their own. And guess what? That is an overwhelming, daunting task to which many of us could not do. And so instead of feeling awful about yourself that you’re weak or you know, people will think that I’m stupid or I’m not good enough, or allowing those lies to keep you in prison. I know there’s second listen acknowledged, except that we all have struggles and God made no provision for any of us to do this. This Christian life is life on this earth without people or the body of Christ and those that love us around us and OKC Christian marriage counseling or your pastor or a friend. The next logical or the next step for you is, is, is the step that will begin your journey towards freedom and hope.
Now, I don’t know how long your journey is, but I know that you are not designed by God to do it alone on any level. So I want to, I want to just release you and the freedom and love and nonjudgment and encouragement that getting help, it’s not a sign of weakness. It’s not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of strength because the strongest amongst us or authentic, the most powerful men and women throughout all of history are those that have allowed themselves to be vulnerable enough to change the world. Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Paul in the Bible, Jesus Christ, look at these, these pillars of history that have done amazing things and it’s through their sacrifice and their labor of love, they’d been able to change. You know, the second move, the second step is removed. You say remove. I thought you just told me to get help.
Yes, yes I did. And the person that you get help from, if you came to New Vision OKC Christian marriage counseling and Oklahoma City or Edmond, we would help you remove, remove what you ask. That’s a great question. Well, if I go into, let’s say I came to your house and you are a teenager and this is not a common practice, but let’s say I came to your house and you were a teenage girl and you struggle with low self esteem and I looked at your walls and I see them crowded with posters and images of, of people that are superficially beautiful, Facebook, beautiful makeup, beautiful airbrush, beautiful, how they would beautiful clothes. Rich is Glam. Well no wonder why you feel awful about yourself. You have all these fictitious pictures of people who are images constantly telling you that you are not what good enough, you are not good enough and interesting fact is before the advent where normal people could have mirrors because before that mirrors are only for those that had a lot of money.
People didn’t care nearly as much about what they looked like. They cared more about character. If he lead it and read anything from before where mirrors were not as prevalent to the normal class citizen like us, then you would discover looks combing your hair. It wasn’t nearly as valuable and warm, as important as the quality of character for the people as it is today. So that’s one thing. Another way to look at it is what social media are you looking at? How often are you engaging in social media? This is a really big deal because social media basically let’s everyone put their best image for the world to say c and then spin a narrative of their creation. True or false, to let you know what they want you to see of the life that they want you to believe that they live. I can just tell you as it, from a OKC Christian marriage counseling counselor’s perspective, if I see the Facebook page of a client, a lot of times it does not give the narrative of what I see behind closed doors or even with my friends.
You know, I hear them talk about their kids. You know, I have some friends that are rather charming and the way they communicate about their families and lives and man, you would think their kids are just these peaceful kids. Never fight. I remember I went to this one friends house, we did dinner with him and my wife and I love this guy’s a great guy and their house was complete and utter chaos. It was so stressful being there that I had to hold their newborn baby to just kind of bed the baby, just to kind of give myself a sense of peace because it was so pandemonium life and so just removing images, TV, not watching it as much. If you’re watching a lot of news, removing that news, maybe just read a little bit and pray about it will help scale down the influx of negativity into your life.
Another area is who are you surrounding yourself with? What people do you give access to? Speak into your life on a daily, weekly, or even monthly, sometimes basis because those people are having a tremendous amount of influence. I mean, just like if you watch a certain show every day, if you’re watching like, I dunno, whatever a bad show is today, that lowers the bar, like a story about mob bosses or story about people taking advantage of women. Then you’re going to lower your, your, the way you see and value women or you’re going to lower. If you watch movies that are dark, you’re going to feel kind of dark. If you’re a Batman person virus versus a superman or a captain America, it’s kind of a dark versus light, even though he’s both are supposed to superheroes. So really be aware of those people and look, even if it’s your family, your sister, or sometimes in a season of depression, you may even have need to evaluate your proximity to your spouse if they’re toxic.
And if they’re not, they’re not bringing life said they’re taking their life. Now this is a real, another area to remove his sweets and sugar and you say, are you kidding me? That’s the only way I survive as sweets, sugar, chips, carbs. Yeah, I know. The only problem is they have an inverse effect when you live on them on a daily consistent or even weekly basis. And this sugar, it may take you up for a minute, but it takes you down the rest of the day at some level. So just be aware and, and that’s again, you might get a nutritionist, you might go online, he might have some friend of yours that’s really good and big and health kind of partner with you and love you well so that you can move forward in that vein. All right, the third move to defeat depression, the third step to defeat depression.
I kind of liked the word move over depression, but that just could be because I liked this guy named clay cart from thrive time. He’s in Tulsa, we’re in Oklahoma is telling, but you got to spend some time with him and you talk about this guy is exact representation of what we’re going to do next. The third move is what we bring into our lives, being very tensional to add the elements we need. So I go to this guy, Clay Clark’s business called thrive time coaching. This has got a great podcast. It’s fantastic, it’s super helpful. But I show up and I walk in the door and there is writing all over the walls, all over the walls, all these quotes from Jesus to Martin Luther King Solomon to Rockefeller. To Henry Ford. He’s got these, these examples of this guy, Henry Ford, he went bankrupt I think eight times or nine times before we actually succeeded.
And he has these two Ford cars here represent the overcoming of failure. If you persevere and then you even, you’re going at the urinal and there’s these quotes of success and overcoming. And that’s really like what he did is what we need to do is we need to find elements to bring into our life that speak life even if we don’t feel like it. Look, if we get feelings, the seat of control and our life, that’s like giving a dictator without a brain whose only ruled by what they want in the moment, by the experiences they have in the moment, control of our life. Look, feelings don’t have a brain. They just react on, on experiences, whether they’re internal or external. That’s the only thing that controls feelings. And so never give them authority to rule and reign. Give them a place, but it’s a seat behind authority, not in front of it.
So my experience, this guy, Clay Clark, and I said, man, what’s the deal? Why do you have writing? I mean I’m, I’m not just talking like he’s got like a hobby lobby. Cool frame up. Know this guy from urinal to ceiling to boom box where he records his podcasts too. When you sit on the desk everywhere there’s writing high, low I level under eye level and just this vibe of positivity and this lettering, positive music just going, that’s really upbeat. And I said, man, what is the deal with all this? I love it. It’s great, but how did this come back? Well, there was a guy that came that he was going to coach and he came in and the sky was laid and he created all kinds of pandemonium. Instead of accepting responsibility for being late, he started blaming everybody and showering criticism everywhere and Clay’s top coach went and got him, was trying to calm him down and introduced them to clay.
Clay Clark walks up to him and the guy starts complaining, no, what about this? And he starts just getting after him and clay Clark said something like, I’m done with this meeting or I’m done with you. Turned around, walked away and went about his day and left that guy and the dust. Now guys, that may seem harsh, but that’s the level of decision making that you need to be willing and able to start executing on to those things that create or suck life people and things. You’ve got to be able to turn and move forward so that you don’t get stuck in the past because if you say you want to overcome depression, then these are the kind of steps and moves that you need to take moving forward. And then when you do that, you can go, clay could only go and he spent, listen to this all night and Bobby, this guy’s intense all night writing this stuff and and on chalk and ink and doing it because he needed this place to be so overwhelmingly positive that negativity could not, could not survive.
And I seen it, I’ve seen it firsthand, but people come in that don’t agree with his Christian ethics, that don’t agree with his values, that he supports America, that he’s just a great guy. Then they don’t want to stick around and you need to be the same level of tolerance for your life and then bring things like healthy food, bring things like exercise and people that are willing to keep you accountable to exercise into your life. Also, the books, the podcasts, the people, and we talked about ridding yourself and living away from some. Now I want you to reach out just some of your friends who are really positive and energetic and I want you to start talking to them about what they do, getting some book recommendations. You know, for me, I love coaching and I love being coached and I loved being counseled and so I would encourage you to get counseling professional help at whatever level you can afford.
People sometimes will complain, you know, about how offensive OKC Christian marriage counseling is. I said, look, counseling is way cheaper than any inpatient hospital. It’s way cheaper than being on Prozac or Wellbutrin or something like that the rest of your life. And so take these steps to start and it look, I mean, I can do 50 50 podcasts on overcoming depression because there’s so many specific steps to take that would be amazing for you to journey into with somebody at your side. Hey, I hope this was incredibly helpful you guys. I hope the one thing that you take out of every podcast, that idea is that better is possible when you follow God’s plan for your life. And you know, even our mission statement, a New Vision Counseling and Edmund in Oklahoma City is we help you discover what better looks like for you and then equip you with the tools to accomplish it.
How cool is that, right? We help you discover what better looks like for you and then equip you with the tools to accomplish it. And today, if you’ve got a few more tools in your toolbox, I like you, if you’ve really enjoyed this, and then go to our Facebook page, go to our Instagram page. They’re both nuvision counseling, Okc and follow like us. That really helps people to engage with what we’re bringing because we have a Christian counseling practice, nuvision counseling, and we serve the Greater Oklahoma City and Edmond area, and really the whole state and through consulting other states. And we’ve even had people come in from Nigeria and South Africa asking for counseling and consulting. So we want to be a part of your life in a way that makes it better. So that’s one way. If you want actual counseling, we would love to partner and see what we can do to help you go to a new vision. counseling.org there’s a contact form there. You can watch videos and testimonies of people that we served and the life experiences they’ve had because of OKC Christian marriage counseling and just being encouraged until our next podcast. Again, create an amazing day. Take care.