0:00

You know how you win the battle? Listen now.

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You and I have the opportunity to walk in victory, to claim the victory,

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to experience the victory that is already ours.

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Because I know I have something to offer.

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Go where you have never gone before.

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That's what you got. Keep moving through the pain. Keep moving forward.

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Music.

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Do what you've never done before so you can be the woman you know yourself to

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be. I live my life playing to win. I'm after something.

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So much in you. I'll keep on playing.

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We have the victory. Hey, Purpose Chasers. Welcome to another episode of the podcast.

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Today in the guest chair, we have with us Dr. Gary Lawrence.

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Dr. Gary and his wife, Sylvia, have spent their lives successfully leading others

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to identify, isolate, and eliminate the root cause of the emotional turmoil in their lives.

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Over the course of 23 years serving as the founder and director of the New Life

1:05

Dynamic Christian Counseling Center and 20 years as the host of his own show,

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Life Mastery Counseling with Dr.

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G, Dr. G has personally met with and coached more than 6,000 clients and has

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has overseen the counseling of another 10,000 clients.

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He has inspired thousands more on radio, television, and stayed. After retiring, Dr.

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G took the opportunity to refocus on the timeless principles of his Amazon bestselling

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book, Rejection Junkie. In this guide to recognizing the damaging effects of rejection and the way in

1:43

which this trauma manifests. Constantly throughout all phases of life. Dr.

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G helps readers to recognize that people, places, and things,

1:53

and circumstances hold us hostage, keep us stuck, and make us bitter.

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A true freedom coach, he offers powerful and practical steps to unplug from

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these emotional energy thieves.

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Let's welcome Dr. G to the show. Dr. G, tell us more about your journey.

2:14

Well, my wife and I, we had our own live radio talk show here in Phoenix for 20 years.

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It was called Life Mastery Counselor at Dr. G. It was a live radio talk show.

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And that's how I fed my counseling center here in Phoenix.

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And we retired in 2003. And it took us six weeks to uncover the fact that we

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had lost over 65% of our retirement portfolio in the stock crash.

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And it's like, oh, Lord, this is not supposed to happen, right?

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I mean, I'm 65 years old, Jonte. And so anyway, we lived on what we had left

2:45

for the next five years because I didn't want to go out and get a job working for somebody.

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You know, I've always had my own ministry. So we and I, we ended up going through

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bankruptcy foreclosure in 2008 when the Great Recession hit.

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And that was so frustrating. It was a hard time. Well, you talk about having your faith exercise and an opportunity

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to really trust the Lord. Well, that's when I met a group of real estate investors. investors,

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and I decided at the young age of 65, I'm going to re-educate myself,

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and I'm going to learn how to become a successful real estate investor.

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And so I took my education to heart, and you know, Shante, my first 14 months,

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I generated just under 200,000 profits, but I helped a lot of people stay in

3:28

their homes, and that's the blessing of it. So anyway, though, things are going great. I'm back on the radio,

3:34

helping people learn how to gain their financial freedom, as well as their mental,

3:38

emotional, spiritual freedom. And in January of 21, the last week of that month, I had a very serious stroke.

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And I was in the hospital for, well, I was in Mayo for three or four days and in rehab for seven days.

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And I told Sylvia that I said, you know, I refuse to live without a purpose.

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Well, what can a 76-year-old man that has come to that place in his life, what's he going to do?

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Well, I decided I'm going to become a life coach because, you know,

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I've got my doctor's degree in ministry and pastoral counseling and a master

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MA. But anyway, I thought, you know what?

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I'm going to help everybody I can as long as I can.

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Anywhere I can, however I can. And my faith demands that.

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And that's why you and I are talking today, Chantel. What a joy it is to get

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to meet you. It's a joy to meet you too, Dr.

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G. And I can tell already that you have a wealth of knowledge that is definitely

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going to help and excite my audience, our listeners.

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We call the listeners on this show Purpose Chasers because we're always pursuing after our purpose.

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Oh, I love that. I love that. That's exactly where I am at this time of my life too.

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That's where we all should be no matter where we are in life.

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Would you agree? I completely agree. I completely agree.

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Now, Dr. Gary, your journey with the New Life Dynamics Christian Counseling

5:01

Center has been transformative for many.

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Can you share a story that particularly stands out to you where you help someone

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identify and overcome a root cause of their emotional turmoil and help them

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lead them towards God and their purpose? Yeah, I sure can.

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I was speaking in, it was Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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And after the conference was over, I had a young lady come up to me.

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I say young lady, she was in her mid-30s, but that's young to me.

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But anyway, she was very angry at her spirit towards me. She didn't like some of the things I said.

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And so I listened to her complain for a while. And then I said, may I ask you a.

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She said, yes. And I said, what was your relationship like with your father?

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And she said, oh, my father, he was a mean person. He was a critical person.

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He was angry all the time, put me down all the time. He was very demanding and very critical.

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And I mean, she went into a spiral on him for about the next five minutes.

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And I said, well, has anybody ever told you you're just like your father?

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And boy, she blew up. She said, I'm nothing like my father.

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My mom says that all the time. And I said, well, tell me about your children.

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She had two kids, and she told me that she had two boys, and how frustrating

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it was to be a mother to them. They were out of control.

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And one boy in particular had a real problem with his anger.

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And I said, well, Margaret, I know that you have been offended by some things I've taught tonight.

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What I'm about to say may offend you more. But you've spent so much time in

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your young life focusing on your father's weaknesses.

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You've become an exact duplicate of your father's personality.

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Out. And boy, she said, nothing like you unless you broke out crying, Shante.

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And I said, now stop and think about this. You told me your father has a hostility problem.

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Has anybody ever told you, you have a hostility problem? Yes.

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And that someone has criticized you for being quick with words,

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that you have abusive words that you use with them. Yes, that's me.

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Here's what's happened to you, Margaret. I'd say you have spent so much time

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trying not to be like your father. You've become just like him. You have developed what we call an emotional focus.

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And when you have that emotional focus, you will become a carving copy of that

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person that you resent so much.

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Does that make sense, Shante? Yep, it does.

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What causes that emotional focus?

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May I take a few minutes and tell you a little bit more about Sylvia and I?

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Of course. Well, we met in Bible Colleges in Springfield, Missouri.

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I was 22 years old. She was 20. And she came from a very strict Baptist home.

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They were in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, always in church.

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When she was from ages 7 to 12, she was dying of tuberculosis.

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And that's when her father began to sexually abuse her. Her mother was a very

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angry, narcissistic, abusive woman.

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When Sylvia was nine years old. She was being so bad one time,

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she couldn't even get up and walk afterwards. There was a lot of abuse, a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of hostility in that

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family. So anyway, we got married.

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Well, what I did realize is that Sylvia had formed emotional patterns of being an escaper.

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She handled her abuse by hiding under the basement stairs to get away from her

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mother. And I handled my views by becoming a survivor.

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I say it like this. In every marriage, it goes like this.

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You're attracted to the opposite person. And then you begin to attack the opposite person.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. Then you attack, then you retract.

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In every marriage, there's a parent and there's a child.

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It has nothing to do with gender. In every marriage relationship,

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one personality is more dominant than the other.

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And so when you have this, I am attracted to a person, then I attack that person,

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and then you retract, you pull away from each other. Does that make sense?

9:04

Yep, definitely. Well, that's what was happening to Celia and I.

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And God was blessing my ministry in a tremendous way.

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We moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and started a church.

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We didn't know a person there. In six weeks, we had 170 people in our congregation.

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In three years, we bought five acres of land, built a 450-seat auditorium.

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So anyway, my ministry was being greatly blessed.

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And we were seeing a lot of people saved.

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I had a weekly radio program. I had a once-about-the-television program.

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So God was blessing our ministry greatly, but my marriage was in shambles.

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Now, at that time, assuming I'd been married about eight to ten years,

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and she decided the best way to handle that was for her to leave me.

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See, there she is. She is escaping again.

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My method of handling that was I'm going to control her. See,

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she needs someone to be controlling her, and I need someone to control.

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In every marriage, you have that parent relationship.

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Somebody's the parent. Somebody's the child. So I promised her,

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if you don't leave me, I will find the answer.

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Now, Shanti, we believe the Word of God has the answer to everything.

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Then I decided I'm going to get into the Word of God and find the solution.

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Now, in Hebrews 12, verse 15, the Bible says, Look diligently,

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lest any man fails or misses out on the grace of God.

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Lest any root of bitterness spring in a trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.

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I thought, there it is, that root of bitterness. Now, Sean J.,

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bitterness is not a happy word. Bitterness is not a friendly word. People don't go around and say,

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hey, I'm bitter. I'm not excited about that.

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Well, bitterness is one of the most misunderstood words that there are in the English vocabulary.

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And I remember Sylvia and I, we were going back from El Paso,

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Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and this was when we moved back to the States.

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And I said, you know, Sylvia, I've decided I'm going to file for a divorce.

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I said, I'm not angry with you. I'm not mad at you. I'm just tired.

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What are you tired of? I'm tired of living with a woman that is emotionally

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crippled. You live in fear.

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You're 100% indecisive.

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You're 100% withdrawn. You're 100% nonverbal.

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And then she said this, Shante, but I'm not like you.

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And I said, what do you mean you're not like me? Well, I'm not mad all the time.

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And I don't get angry like you do. I said, Sylvia, you're absolutely right. You're not like me.

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That's why we attracted to each other. Opposites attract.

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But Sylvia, you have a very wounded spirit, okay?

11:45

Well, what do you mean? I said, when your father sexually abused you,

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he wounded your spirit. When your mother verbally abused you and physically

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abused you, she wounded your spirit. You have a very wounded spirit.

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That's the root of bitterness. It's deep in your soul.

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And I'm telling you, Shante, she just broke out sobbing and crying.

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For the first time, she realized, as sweet as she was, as kind as she was,

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she was a very wounded, bitter human being.

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And I always get a kick out of it when I go to conferences. And I say,

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how many of you can identify with what I just said?

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Just about every hand will come up. And I'll say, you know, you may be very kind.

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You may be a very nice person, but you're just a very kind, nice, bitter person.

12:31

So let me say it like this, okay? Bitter is an inward resentment.

12:35

You show me someone you have an inward resentment towards, I'll show you someone

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you have bitterness towards. Bitterness is a sense of guilt. You show me someone that feels guilty all the

12:44

time. you've got a root of bitterness there. Bitterness is a sense of avoidance. To show me someone you avoid being with,

12:50

guarantee you've got a root of bitterness. Bitterness is a sense of betrayal. You show me someone that has betrayed you,

12:59

I'll show you someone you have a root of bitterness to. And so bitterness really puts the individual and defiles many people.

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Does that make sense? Yes, that does. Wow.

13:10

So Margaret had that root of bitterness towards her father. And all these years,

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she was in her mid-30s, and all these years, she spent so much time focusing

13:19

on her father's weaknesses that root of bitterness kept her attached. She became disloyal.

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By the way, by the time she was in her mid-30s, she had been divorced and remarried three times. Wow.

13:32

Well, she could never find a man that made her happy because she was so bitter

13:37

towards the male species. Wow. That is something that I think we don't look at enough.

13:45

What is the root of the issues that we are having?

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And I think that's so very important to get down to the root of it.

13:54

So then we can deal with the behavior, but sometimes it's so hard,

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and sometimes you need that other person to help you look introspectively to

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see what the main cause is.

14:08

Yeah, I agree with that 100%. And unfortunately, your relatives are usually

14:13

the least qualified to help you understand the root cause of your conflicts,

14:19

because they're usually critical too.

14:21

That's the bottom line. but you know here's the thing a lot of it was my fault

14:26

uh you know both of my parents were extreme alcoholics uh there was a lot of

14:31

physical and verbal abuse in my family i'm the fourth of four children and my

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father we my mother got pregnant by another man so i was always the outcast child,

14:41

and when i was 16 years old i said you know i'm not taking this anymore and

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i began to literally physically fight back well see there i was i'm going to

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be the survivor i will survive this abuse, Sylvia C. Cater abuse.

14:54

And it was so much fun when we began to learn from the Word of God,

14:58

about the root of bitterness, how it had defiled us as individuals and then

15:03

defiled our relationship. And we developed a technique, learning how to get free from the past and learning

15:11

how to break those negative emotional patterns.

15:14

Wow. So as a result of that, I resigned as a missionary and came back to the

15:19

States and started my counseling practice. Wow. Now, somebody may be listening to you and listening to our conversation

15:27

and they may feel that, you know, a lot of what you're seeing is resonating

15:33

with them, but they don't know how to deal with it.

15:37

They don't know how to check themselves, let's say, to see if it is that root

15:43

of bitterness that they have. What advice would you have for somebody who's saying this, this is really hitting

15:49

home what Dr. G is saying? Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to get my website. They can go to my website

15:55

and it's rejectionjunkies.com, J-U-N-K-I-E-S, rejectionjunkies.com.

16:02

And on my homepage, there's a quiz. Are you a rejection junkie?

16:06

And it's a simple quiz and they can answer those questions and submit it to me.

16:09

And what I will do is I will arrange for an absolute no cost,

16:13

no strings of gas, 30-minute evaluation of their situation and give them some

16:17

personal insight that's going to help them begin to resolve those conflicts.

16:23

It's not an easy journey. As Christians, most of us have a problem with pride.

16:27

And none of us want to admit that we're bitter. None of us want to admit that we're wrong.

16:32

And so I heard an old saying that goes like this, swallow your pride. It's non-fattening.

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You've got to get to the place where you're going to make yourself number one priority.

16:42

And one of the questions you ask, how do I see the role of faith playing a part

16:47

in that journey towards emotional healing? Well, I tell everybody the two tools that I depend on in my life coaching practice,

16:55

is the ministry of God's word and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

16:59

Because as I talk to men and women, I'm dealing with that which is unseen, the emotional aspect.

17:05

Let me try to explain it like this. Man's a triunity. You know,

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the word of God says that we were created in God's image. Would you agree with that?

17:13

Yes. So if we're created in God's image, God's father, God, other than God,

17:17

the Holy Spirit, well, we are in his image.

17:20

So we are a body, we are a soul, and we are a spirit. Now, that spirit part

17:24

of us, when we get saved, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us,

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okay? Is the Holy Spirit perfect? Yes.

17:30

If the Holy Spirit dwells in us, yes. Then our spirit is perfect, okay?

17:34

How many times have you been told you need to get closer to God?

17:38

How many times have you heard, right, with God? Have you heard that a few times? Often.

17:42

Right. Did you know that's a lie? Did you know there's no place in God that

17:47

you can get close to God? God, if the Holy Spirit dwells in you and the Holy

17:51

Spirit is perfect, how can you get closer to God?

17:54

We need to realize that our relationship with the Lord is based on our position, not our performance.

18:00

So women come out of their backgrounds, men too, performing to gain acceptance from other people.

18:06

And the more they can perform, then the more value they have.

18:09

And that is heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking. That is very, very true. True.

18:13

I know that a lot of times and with, you know, the people and the women that

18:20

I talk to, they feel that their relationship with God is based on the performance.

18:27

It's based on making sure that they go to every single service and they're there

18:32

to volunteer and they spend all their time in the house of the Lord.

18:36

And I liked how you said it is position over performance that That makes a difference.

18:43

Right. That makes it legal. Right. Yeah.

18:46

Legalism says perform so you can gain acceptance.

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Grace says you are accepted. Now you can perform.

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I'm going to write that down. Okay. Want me to say it again? Yep.

18:56

Legalism says perform so that you can gain acceptance.

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Grace says you are accepted. Now you can perform. I love that.

19:05

That's why I wrote the book Rejections. You see, let me back up. I should have probably started the interview out with this.

19:12

Here's some truth about every human being. By age eight, 80% of our emotional patterns are formed.

19:18

By age 18, 100% of our self-image is formed. So as we go through our 20s and

19:23

our 30s and our 40s, well, we may be getting older.

19:26

Our bodies are changing. We may have a better education.

19:29

We may make more money. But the older we get, the less opportunity we have to mature emotionally.

19:36

So let me say that again for the audience. By age 80, 80% of the emotional patterns

19:41

are formed. You're 30 years old, Shante.

19:44

That means 80% emotional patterns that you have right now were formed in the

19:49

first eight years of your life. Wow. Okay.

19:52

80%. But now by age 18, 100% of your self-image is foreign, okay?

19:57

It's a proven fact and the American Society of Psychologists did a poll on this

20:03

probably about 20 years ago. But the fact is that the largest percentage of people do not feel at peace with themselves.

20:12

There's something else they need to do accepted by someone else. Does that make sense?

20:17

Yes. Wow. But here's the thing. When you come to the Lord Jesus Christ,

20:22

he accepts you unconditionally, but you're so programmed to feeling rejected and being rejected.

20:29

That you can't rest in the peace that he gives you. That was my issue. That was my problem.

20:34

I had no relationship with my earthly father. How in the world could I trust

20:38

the relationship with my heavenly father? Yes, yes.

20:41

It's an emotional pattern. So man's a triunity. You are a spirit.

20:45

Then you're a soul. Now listen carefully. Our soul is comprised of three elements.

20:49

It's our mind. That's what we know to be true. It's our emotions.

20:53

That's what we feel to be true. And it's our will.

20:55

That's our response to life's circumstances.

20:58

Now, when what you know and how you feel are in conflict, then your will is damaged.

21:04

For example, I know God loves me. I don't feel like God loves me. I know I'm successful.

21:08

I don't feel like I'm successful. I know I'm valuable, and I don't feel like I'm valuable.

21:13

And when you have that conflict between what you know and how you feel, then you have problems.

21:17

You have patterns of feelings of insecurity, of feelings of inadequacy,

21:22

of feelings of depression. Oh, Oh, depression is a popular word today, isn't it? Everybody's depressed.

21:28

Well, have you ever listened to James Dobson, focused on the family radio program here in the States?

21:34

No, I haven't. Have you ever? Yeah. Well, James Dobson says that depression

21:39

is nothing more than anger turned inward.

21:42

And so you show me someone that has a problem with depression,

21:48

I'll show you someone that's been programmed to abuse themselves mentally and

21:52

emotionally. They're rejecting themselves. And as long as you're focused on rejecting yourselves, you can't expect other

21:58

people to accept you. So it all comes out to a common equation.

22:02

Wow. Wow. It does. Now, you mentioned earlier that, you know,

22:06

you wrote the book Rejection Junkies.

22:09

Just tell me a little bit about why you chose that title.

22:13

Well, because I tried to decide, should I use the word junkie or rejection addicts?

22:20

You know, the word junkie is, hey, he's a junkie. She's a junkie.

22:25

What does that tell you? They're addicted to something, right?

22:27

And so I thought I'm going to use the title Rejection Junkies. Okay.

22:32

Overcoming, learning how to overcome the hidden addiction everyone suffers.

22:37

Now, my wife, there's two different levels of rejection.

22:39

There's covert rejection and there's over rejection.

22:42

Covert rejection is very subtle. For example, the lack of praise,

22:47

the lack of positive reinforcement, the lack of positive verbalization,

22:53

that's covert rejection, okay?

22:55

The lack of affection, the lack of hearing the words, I love you,

23:00

the lack of hearing the words, you're valuable, okay? That's covert rejection.

23:05

Overt rejection is very obvious. It's physical abuse. It's verbal abuse. use.

23:10

It's all kinds of outward signs of rejection, okay?

23:17

So when you have someone that's suffered from covert rejection,

23:20

getting involved with someone that's had overrejection, boy,

23:25

yeah, the fight is on, old Christian brother, okay?

23:29

So for example, I would tell my wife, I love you. Then I would say, you're so pretty.

23:35

And she would look at me, Chante, and she would and say, the only reason you're

23:40

saying that is because you're my husband. And that's what husbands are supposed to say. Well, why was she calling me?

23:46

She was calling me a liar. And I said, you don't believe me when I tell you I love you.

23:52

So guess what? I just quit telling her I love her. You see, unconsciously,

23:56

we were playing that game. I'll reject you before you reject me. And then the fight goes on.

24:02

So how do we shift ourselves from playing that game?

24:08

Because I think it's something that we tend to do in life, not just in our romantic

24:13

relationships, but sometimes in the workplace, sometimes with friendships.

24:18

So how do we stop playing that game? Okay.

24:21

Well, first of all, it's not going to happen overnight. It's a process.

24:26

I've got four steps to my life coaching. First thing I do is I identify the

24:30

underlying problem, not treat the symptoms.

24:33

Hostility, depression, anxiety, fear, guilt, feelings of inferiority,

24:40

feelings of inadequacy, those are all symptomatic behaviors.

24:44

So I'm going to identify the underlying problem.

24:47

And what I do is I administer the Taylor Johnson Temperament Analysis Profile.

24:52

It's a series of 180 questions.

24:54

And what it does, I'll tell you, it gives me a printout of nine areas of where

24:58

a person is emotionally. I call it the emotional staff shot.

25:02

Emotionally, if I were to do the profile on you, I would know you better than anybody alive, okay?

25:07

What it does, it measures how nervous you are versus composed.

25:11

How depressed you are versus is lighthearted, how expressive you are versus

25:15

inhibit, how sympathetic you are versus indifferent, how hostile you are versus tolerant.

25:21

And what that does, that gives me a printout of the underlying problems that you have. Okay?

25:27

Now, once we've identified the underlying problems, we're going to isolate the underlying problem.

25:31

That's where I take a person's life history. I literally sat down and I have a series of them.

25:36

About 100 questions I ask my clients that will help me identify and isolate

25:41

those negative emotional patterns that you have formed in your whole life.

25:45

My third goal is I'm going to eliminate that underlying problem.

25:48

I'm going to position you to finally get free from the past.

25:53

I'm going to position my clients to break that emotional bondage to the past.

25:57

Every person, everything, every experience that has them connected to the past,

26:02

if they follow through with my coaching, they will break that.

26:05

Wow. Okay, I understand. Let me tell you this story. I had an 80-year-old doctor come to me for counseling,

26:12

and he and his wife had been married about 55 years. She was about 76.

26:17

And when he heard me say, by age 80, 80% of our emotional patterns are formed,

26:21

he interrupted me, Shante. And he said, well, Dr. G, what you're telling me is I'm an 80-year-old,

26:27

8-year-old. I said, yeah, that's correct. And his wife leaned over and patted him on the leg and said,

26:32

see, sweetheart, I told you you act like a little boy.

26:35

They went through the counseling at that time and their whole relationship changed.

26:40

I get this. They had been married almost 55 years.

26:44

Not one time did he ever tell her, I love you.

26:48

Not one time did he ever say, I am so grateful to God that you're my wife.

26:55

You see, he was never able to express his emotions when he was a child.

26:58

So why should you testify when he's an adult?

27:01

People who are inhibited, and maybe this might encourage someone,

27:06

people who are inhibited and withhold their emotions and are not verbal,

27:10

there's two things they lost in their child, their voice and their choice.

27:15

And if you don't have a voice and you don't have a choice, then you don't exist.

27:19

You're a not entity. So why should you try to prove yourself to other people that you have value?

27:27

It's a losing battle. It's a losing contest. Well, I encourage them,

27:31

if they're serious about wanting to find out about themselves, just go to my website.

27:36

Follow through with that simple quiz. Are you a rejection junkie?

27:39

And I'll give them an absolutely no cost, no strings attached,

27:42

30 minute evaluation of where they are in life right now.

27:46

That sounds like a deal. I'm retired. I don't have to make money off of everything I do.

27:54

That's a nice place to be. Now, I'm listening to you and I'm listening to you

28:00

when you're telling us about how we emotionally evolve by the age of eight.

28:07

I know some of our listeners are parents.

28:11

I am a new parent. I have a nine-month-old. How do I ensure that she develops

28:17

great emotionally during her childhood between nine, well, now, and eight years old?

28:25

What are some things that I can do to ensure that I'm helping her so that she

28:29

doesn't face this rejection junkie lifestyle?

28:34

By my book. That's going to give you the answer. To give an answer to that question,

28:39

first of all, your child's only nine months old, but congratulations.

28:42

God bless you. The best way you can make sure that your daughter does not become

28:46

a victim of the rejection syndrome is to make sure that her mother is free from

28:52

her past negative development,

28:54

that you do not carry the the expectations of other people into your relationship

29:01

with you and your daughter. Okay. Just for an example, my mother-in-law was a very abusive person.

29:10

The boy, she was in church.

29:13

Well, as our boys were growing up, on Sunday evening when we were in Canada,

29:19

there would be hockey games. And I would let my boys go to the hockey games instead of coming to church.

29:25

OK, and oh, my goodness, my mother-in-law did like that. But you know what?

29:30

Sylvia and I decide we're going to raise our boys based on grace and acceptance, not performance.

29:38

And here they are, my younger son's 52, my older son's 55.

29:41

Both of them are very, very dedicated to living a scripturally sound,

29:46

healthy, spiritual and emotional life with their family.

29:50

Okay so uh let me

29:53

emotional energy thieves uh from

29:56

the past is what controls most people in their

29:59

present uh let me give an example two two guys

30:02

were playing golf harry and george they wanted to get out to the golf course

30:05

for an early teal it was six o'clock the sun was just coming up and uh so anyway

30:10

uh george didn't get home till about seven o'clock that night when the sun was

30:14

setting and his wife said what in the world took you so long you're never home

30:18

this late And he says, well, sweetheart, on the first tee, Harry had a heart attack.

30:22

And so after teeing off on the first tee, it was tee off and drag George,

30:27

drag Harry. Tee off and drag Harry. Okay?

30:30

And so there he was playing golf. He was dragging Harry's body to every hole.

30:33

That's the way a lot of people are with their past. You're living in the present, but you're a prisoner to the past,

30:39

which prevents you from developing a healthy future.

30:43

Let's say this here, it's loud and clear. Learn how to get free from the past.

30:48

So you can enter the present, so you have the ability to create your future.

30:53

And so many people, they're in the future. They worry about what's going to happen.

30:57

Well, the Bible says, Both not thyself tomorrow, for you know not what a day may bring forth.

31:02

Our is not here. All we have is right now.

31:05

The last week of January, I had that stroke. That made me face my mortality.

31:10

It made me realize this life may be over for me. But thank God I have recovered.

31:17

God has blessed me and I'm still helping people learn how to get free mentally and emotionally.

31:22

God has surely blessed you and he's surely given you a wealth of knowledge.

31:27

If you could speak directly to the listeners who have been listening to you

31:34

throughout this interview and they are inspired by what you're saying to look introspectively.

31:40

If you can, before we go, give them three tips on what they should do next in

31:48

order to start working on this process.

31:51

Of course, we know that it is good to your website, which I will link in the

31:56

show notes so that you guys who are listening, you just click on the link.

32:00

It'll take you to his website and you can get started there.

32:03

What are three tips that you can give sum up what we have been talking about? out?

32:09

Well, I would say focus on who the toxic people are in your life.

32:15

It might be mom. It might be dad. It may be your brother, your sister.

32:18

It may be an aunt and uncle. The sooner you break relations with toxic people, the quicker the opportunity

32:25

you will have to become healthy emotionally. Now, you know, you cannot drink a cup of poison and wait for the other person to die.

32:32

It's just not going to work, okay? And if you let other people's toxicity impact your life to the negative,

32:39

you will never enjoy the fullness of the life that Christ died to give you.

32:44

You will never be at peace yourself. So number one, eliminate the toxicity in your life.

32:50

Number two, learn how to love yourself unconditionally as God does.

32:54

Now, we're not talking about a selfish, egotistical level of self-love.

32:58

We're talking about a healthy acceptance and acknowledgement of how God made

33:03

you and who you are in Christ Jesus. God loves you. He loves you unconditionally. And when I came to that point,

33:09

I realized that in spite of all my weaknesses, in spite of all my failing,

33:13

my Heavenly Father accepted me 100% unconditionally.

33:17

Then I could begin to love Gary. So, ask me what I think of Gary Lawrence. What do you think of Gary Lawrence?

33:24

I am so glad you asked. I love Gary Lawrence, and I accept him unconditionally. He's God's child,

33:32

and the Lord loves him and accepts him unconditionally.

33:34

And because I love myself, then I'm able to love my wife.

33:39

I say it like this. A man's ability to love his wife is the overflow of his own self-esteem.

33:46

If a man does not have a positive self-image, he has nothing to give to his wife.

33:50

So now that your audience is mostly women, I would say the third thing is,

33:55

if you're going to get involved with a male and try to build any kind of relationship,

34:01

do your best to try to be sure that that male has a positive self-image.

34:07

If he is self-critical, if he's self-condemning, if he's always negative about

34:12

himself, guess what he's going to bring into the marriage relationship? Negativity.

34:17

Toxicity. It's that simple. I don't know if I answered that question the way

34:21

you wanted me to. Dr. G, those were some amazing tips.

34:25

Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

34:29

I know the listeners have taken a lot away from all of the advice that you have shared.

34:34

Guys, as you know, if you want to connect with Dr.

34:38

G, his information will be in the show notes. Please connect with Dr.

34:43

G through his website, through all the social media platforms and let him know

34:49

that you heard him on the Pray, Plan, Slay podcast.

34:52

Have a great week and we'll see you next time for another episode of the podcast.