10: How to Be Yourself: The Holiday Edition

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 10. Today, we are continuing our conversation about acting like ourself in the holidays. Hello, Father.

[00:08] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:09] Stephanie: Good to be with you.

[00:10] Marcus: Here we are.

[00:10] Stephanie: I changed into something a little bit more festive. I’m a little green.

[00:14] Marcus: I stayed the same. This is literally my only Christmas outfit.

[00:20] Stephanie: Yeah, this is my favorite green. I like it. So, yeah, we were having a good conversation about all the things.

[00:29] Marcus: I almost borrowed Ben’s Santa hat.

[00:30] Stephanie: Yes. Off camera here we’ve got — oh, oh.

[00:34] Marcus: Here it is.

[00:36] Stephanie: Oh, no, you’re gonna mess up your hair.

[00:39] Marcus: All right, we’re good.

[00:40] Stephanie: Oh, yes. Our producer off the camera has thrown a hat at us.

[00:45] Marcus: It’s our Merry Christmas edition.

[00:49] Stephanie: All right, well, on that note, Merry Christmas!

[00:52] Marcus: Merry Christmas!

[00:53] Stephanie: Merry Christmas!

[00:55] Marcus: A very rare Christmas to you.

[00:57] Stephanie: Yeah, that was where I was going. So, we were talking about how to act like yourself, and last episode, you know, we were kind of continuing our pockets of pain discussion and looking at pain. But now we want to talk about how to have a rare Christmas. And if you have been part of the Deeper Walk —

[01:22] Marcus: If this doesn’t make Christmas rare, I don’t know what will.

[01:26] Stephanie: He’s pointing at his hat for those who are just listening. Yeah, we — oh, I totally lost my train of thought. So if you are part of the Deeper Walk family for an extended period of time, you are probably familiar with this acrostic, R.A.R.E., which is the core of the book, Rare Leadership, that Dad wrote with Jim Wilder. And this idea of R.A.R.E is how to remain yourself. So let’s just unpack that real quick.

[02:02] Marcus: So, yeah, the idea of R.A.R.E leadership is mature leadership. So another way we could say it is, “How do I stay mature this holiday? How can I be my mature self as much as possible?” And so the story behind R.A.R.E, honestly, is when I was first getting to know Life Model — Life Model and Thrive were actually part of the same organization back in the day.

And they would talk about things like, remain relational, act like yourself, return to joy, suffer well. And I’m like, suffer well? You know, I’m sorry, but I’m interested in pain avoidance, not in how to suffer well. It’s like, what are you guys talking about over here? And so to explain the teachings of Life Model Works and Thrive to other people, I summarized it with the word R.A.R.E.

And it was just because I kept hearing these phrases over and over again. And rare is R.A.R.E. R is remain relational, and A is act like yourself, and the second R is return to joy. And the third, not the third, the E — it’s not a third R — the E is endure hardship well. Honestly, that was going to be suffering well, but RARS just didn’t have the same — you can make it work, but R.A.R.E just felt a little bit better.

So we took suffering well and turned it into endure hardship well, and the idea is that you can actually organize these like an equation, you know, this plus this plus this equals that. And so endure hardship well is what we are after. That’s the goal. How do you endure hardship well?

And so the well part of that is defined by, I endure hardship well by remaining relational, even when I’m going through hard things, by acting like myself, even when I’m going through hard things. And by recovering, returning to joy when I lose it. You know, let’s get back here quickly. So if I’m not perfect at remaining relational, acting like myself, I’ve lost it. How do I get it back?

That’s kind of the third idea there. And again, this isn’t about how do I not feel emotions, how do I not feel any fear or any anger or anything like this, it’s when I do feel fear, when I do feel anger, when I do feel shame, can I remain relational anyway? Can I act like myself anyway or does it force me to turn into somebody else?

Can I recover quickly even while I’m still feeling that fear or whatever the emotion is? Can I return to joy quickly means, can I get back to remaining relational and acting like myself anyway? And so that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about R.A.R.E.

[04:44] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. So how would you — I’m very distracted by this hat. I’m sorry. Producer, is it okay for him to wear this hat the whole time? Okay, very good. Very good. I don’t have a good angle on you. Excellent. You’re bringing me joy. You’re bringing me joy.

[05:05] Marcus: That’s the goal.

[05:05] Stephanie: So R.A.R.E. We have Rare Leadership, right? I would love for you to unpack. This might be a sideways angle to get at it, but a lot of people I’ve talked to have questioned, “Well, should I read Rare Leadership? Do I need R.A.R.E. leadership? Because I’m not, you know, I’m not technically a leader.” But I think we all have the opportunity to lead, whether ourselves or in the communities where we’re in. What does it look like to show up as a R.A.R.E. person in a context, as in, you know, whether you are officially leading or not?

[05:44] Marcus: Yeah. So what you find is that in any group, there are R.A.R.E. people, and they’re not always the designated leaders of the group. I have a friend who, whenever a committee was put together at the church, he liked to ask, “So who’s going to be the adult in the room?” In other words, who’s going to keep this thing from exploding, from getting big, from getting overwhelming for everybody? And that’s what mature people do, is they kind of help to be that calming presence.

Dr. Wilder’s terminology is the bigger brain. Not in the sense that I’m better than you or I’m smarter than you, but in the sense that I’m not overwhelmed by all this. Even though everybody else is panicking and freaking out, I’m still remaining relational and acting like myself. I’m not getting overwhelmed by it. And so that’s kind of the sign of maturity, is how much hardship can I handle before I stop remaining relational and I stop acting like myself?

And this is also where it gets to triggering, right? Because when I get triggered, that’s usually the first thing to go. The first thing that goes when I get triggered is I stop acting like myself. I turn into a different person, and my relational skills go out the window. And so this is why we are saying sometimes I have to resolve the issues that are creating the triggering, and sometimes it’s about developing the skills that allow me to stay myself and to remain relational even when I’m under stress. And so the holidays are a good chance to practice.

[07:19] Stephanie: Well, and a lot of the things that we talked about last episode are good preparation work for doing that, for remaining yourself, remaining relational and acting like yourself, and then also for bouncing back to joy and returning to joy. I’m sorry, it’s not rave. Yeah, that’s good. So last episode, we didn’t quite get to talking about meekness, and I would love to talk about how, you know, the meek and —

[07:50] Marcus: The meek inherit the earth idea. Meekness is one of the fruits of the Spirit and part of acting like ourselves, and our best version of ourselves is always going to be manifested in the fruit of the Spirit. So if I’m remaining relational, I’m acting like myself, fruit of the Spirit is a good judge of whether or not that is happening.

One of the fruits of the Spirit that we don’t talk about a lot is meekness, and meekness is understood by some people as weakness. Now, weakness and meekness are not the same thing, even though they rhyme. So weakness is about, I am not a threat to anybody in the sense that I don’t have any power. There’s literally nothing I can do here. It makes me weak. So weak is, I have no power. I can’t influence this situation. There’s not much I could do.

That’s actually the opposite of meekness. Meekness is about, I am actually very powerful, and I have the power to do tremendous damage, but I am intentionally not doing that. I am using my strength to serve and to protect, and I am not using my strength to just get what I want.

And so a meek person, you can think of, like in the days of Jesus, as I have a gladius, a Roman sword, and I know how to use this thing. And I can handle myself in a battle or in combat, but I am a meek person, which means I am not going to use this just because I can. I am not going to use it just to get what I want.

[09:29] Stephanie: You’re a protector.

[09:30] Marcus: I am a protector, right? I am a protector. And if I’m going to be a protector, this is part of R.a.R.E. leadership, learning to be a gentle protector. If I’m going to be a protector, that means I use my strength to make sure the weak are taken care of. I don’t use my strength to make sure I dominate the weak. And that’s huge because the first people I need to protect from is I need to protect people from myself.

[09:51] Stephanie: That is so huge. Now let’s carry that into this idea of when — let’s suppose we are in a context of community, you know, whether it’s holidays or not. But, you know, especially in the holidays, there’s an uptick in people being in community with each other. What does it look like to be meek and R.A.R.E. and to lead well with that in your community?

[10:18] Marcus: Well, this can look a lot of different ways. To introduce one more acrostic here, the key way we teach people to remain relational is C.A.K.E. It’s a remember-to-eat-your-cake kind of idea. The first and most fundamental way in which I remain relational is curiosity. One of the first things to go when I lose my ability to stay relational is any curiosity about how you feel or any curiosity about what you think.

And oftentimes that happens either because I don’t care about what you think or what you feel or because I think I have you already figured out. And so I’ve lost curiosity because you’ve been spouting off how you think and how you feel for so long, but curiosity pushes a little past that and  looks into other things. So —

[11:13] Stephanie: And I would also tie that into the V.C.R. that we talked about last episode too, where if you are curious about people and why they think what they’re thinking or the emotions they’re feeling, it’s going to help you be able to follow the V.C.R. practice of validating and comforting in the correct order. Because if you jump straight to the comforting, it feels like you’re trying to fix a problem, and people feel like they’re the problem instead of feeling like you care about them and then address the problem.

[11:39] Marcus: Yeah, no, you have this down pretty well. So it’s a time for practicing all the things that we teach about what R.A.R.E. living looks like. And the first part of remaining relational is to stay curious. And if you lose your curiosity, that’s where you’re saying, “Okay, I gotta return to joy.” Returning to joy looks like I gotta find some curiosity. I gotta get back to that part of my brain, that part of who I am that is a curious person. And so one of the signs that I have lost my curiosity is that I tend to lose eye contact. Yeah, exactly. It’s like I’m looking all over.

[12:20] Stephanie: I looked away from him, for those who are just listening.

[12:23] Marcus: We’ll look all over the place, but not necessarily at the other person. So C.A.K.E., just to put it all in perspective, Curiosity is C, A is appreciation. That is, I need to constantly remind myself there is something that I like about this person. There is something about them that I appreciate even if I dislike what they’re doing right now, and even if I generally dislike something about them. I’ve got to be able to focus on what it is that I legitimately appreciate. So I’m not flattering them and coming up with nonsense, I’m actually thinking about things that are genuine when I practice appreciation.

[12:58] Stephanie: And this is a great thing to prepare with if you know you’re going to go into a context where you’re like, I just know I’m going to get triggered by being around these people. It’s kind of like an anteater solution, which we also talked about in our beliefs thing, where you have the replacement thought for that automatic negative thought.

When you are locked into that triggered mode and you’re thinking, I remember this bad thing and this bad thing and this bad thing and this bad thing, it is very helpful to have in your pocket and also remember this good thing that you are not in the mindset to remember right now. And yeah. Anyway, sorry, continue.

[13:35] Marcus: No, that’s all very true. And so the K there of cake is kindness. And again, this is the idea that when I’m acting like my true self, I’m generally a kind person. And I would slide in here too with the idea of kindness, meekness fits in here very well. And that is that I am the sort of person who uses my strength to help situations.

And sometimes that means standing up to bullies. Sometimes that means I’m going to put myself out there to try to make this safer for the people who have less strength by being that strong presence that, you know, changes the subject when the subject needs to be changed.

[14:17] Stephanie: Meekness does not mean being a doormat.

[14:19] Marcus: It does not mean be a doormat. The Bible never calls us to be a doormat. So to be a servant is about how you use your strength, and to be meek is about how you use your strength. To be a doormat is the absence of strength, and the Bible never calls us to that.

Now, there are always going to be situations in which we have very little strength compared to the people that we’re up against. And in those cases, you know, we want to still act like ourselves, but it might look a little bit different because sometimes you’ve gotta have boundaries up there in order to keep not only yourself safe, but other people safe as well. So —

[15:05] Stephanie: And then E, actually depending on which book you’re in, is different, but go for it.

[15:13] Marcus: So, in the original Rare Leadership book, E is envelope conversations. And eventually I said, you know, we should probably just make envelope conversations its own thing and take it out of there. And we changed the E to eye contact because that’s really key to relational skills. So the second edition, Rare Leadership in the Workplace, has C.A.K.E. with E as eye contact.

But let me explain an envelope conversation really quickly. And that is if you do find yourself in an argumentative situation, you find out there’s a problem here, and we’ve got to solve the problem. The goal is how do I remain relational with a problem on the table? Do I ignore the problem or do I deal with the problem? And so the goal is to deal with the problem in a relational way.

And so you lead with something relational, and then you go to the problem and you conclude with something relational. So it’s like a relationship sandwich, you know, two slices of relational bread surrounding the problem. What they can look like is, “Hey, you know what, we do this every year. We get together, you know, as a family every year. And, you know, but we’ve got a problem. And here’s what this problem is. I’m hoping we can find a solution to this where we’re all happy to be together again next year, and we can keep doing this for years to come and be happy about it.”

And so what you’re talking about is what’s important here is the relationship versus what’s important here is the problem. And that’s what we’re trying to convey with this. And too often what happens is instead of starting with the relationship and keeping the relationship bigger than the problem, we start with the problem, and we start with our upset emotions about the problem.

So the opposite of an envelope conversation would be where it’s like, “Okay, you’re really ticking me off now, and I’m not going to put up with this anymore. And we’ve got to do something about this problem now. And what is wrong with you that you are always bringing this up, and you are always doing that, and why are you even here? What is going on?” And you just throw the relationship out, and you lead with your frustrated emotions and you lead with the problem, and it leaves people with nothing to do but be defensive, right?

The only reaction to that that you’re going to get is people become defensive and they will become countercritical, right? Like, “You just criticized me. Guess what? You have things I can criticize” Now, they’re going to come after you, and this whole thing is just going to escalate. And so to have any hope, to have any hope of that going well, the envelope conversation says, let’s keep the relationship bigger than the problem. Let’s talk about, you know, what is good about this relationship.

Let’s say, admit that there’s a problem that needs to be solved, but with the hope that, hey, you know, we’re going to solve this and still be happy to be together when we’re all done. And that’s what we mean by it’s like sticking the problem in the envelope of relationship. That’s the other way of looking at it. That’s why we call it an envelope conversation. I want to stick this problem in the envelope of relationship by keeping the relationship bigger than the problem.

[18:21] Stephanie: Very good. So, goodness, we could just keep going and going. But I think for the sake of time, I’m going to ask for your final thoughts now, and then I want to give some updates on where we’re heading in the future and close out in some prayer.

[18:43] Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. So again, as we go into the holidays and all year round, we want to be as mature as we can be, which means we want to practice remaining relational, act like ourselves, you know, keeping some of these practices in the forefront of our thought about how to have envelope conversations, how to handle things in emotionally healthy ways so that I endure hardship well and so that I can help other people endure hardship well.

And so what happens is the more maturity I bring to the table, the more I’m able to help the whole group kind of feel a little safer. And that’s kind of what we’re after is how do I be a gentle protector this holiday? How can I make things a little bit safer for the people around me as well as keeping myself safe and keeping these skills and habits of R.A.R.E. and C.A.K.E. and V.C.R. and envelope conversations? Keeping all of these things in the forefront of our thinking can help to make the holidays a little bit safer and a little bit happier.

[19:41] Stephanie: Huzzah! And I’m going to direct us to one, a free gift that we have for you. We just went through a whole bunch of acrostics, and there are more where that came from. So if you have not yet downloaded your free access — we have, there are different sizes for posters that you can put on your fridge or on your wall. There are different sizes for your phone or your laptop backgrounds, but we have a couple of Deeper Walk core acrostics all on a nice little digital file that you can access for free and that will be in the description.

[20:20] Marcus: I feel like I need to say too that I got some comments that I use acronyms and not just acrostics and want to admit that we call everything acrostics, but I know they’re an acronym. An acrostic for those people who are curious, what is the difference? Okay, an acrostic spells a word, and an acronym does not.

So like an acrostic would be R.A.R.E., it spells a word, whereas V.C.R. does not spell a word or S.S.S. is not a word, it’s an acronym. So acronyms don’t spell words, or they spell made-up words; whereas acrostics spell real words. Just so you know, we know that’s true. But you get both acronyms and acrostics on this special poster, a special gift to you.

[21:00] Stephanie: Yes. And then I also just wanted to throw out the idea there that if you are still looking for some last minute Christmas presents or what have you, we’ve got some excellent digital products that you don’t even have to worry about shipping like our Freedom Course and our new Identity Course and all of that.

[21:21] Marcus: Premium Library.

[21:23] Stephanie: Yeah, Learning library. So yeah, just throw that out there. And then I wanted to give you the chance to once again just cast a vision for our dreams for 2025 and the end of year.

[21:38] Marcus: Well, and we do. So 2024 has been a year of breakthrough, and our prayer for people has been this would be your breakthrough. For 2025, our theme is rise above and that is we’ve all got things going on in our lives we need to rise above.

And as we look forward to Deeper Walk of 2025, we have three dreams, and your end-of-year donation helps make these possible. Dream number one is we want to see more people trained by our School of Ministry, more prayer ministers certified to go out there and help people. We’re adding some advanced training to that to help with complex issues. So, it’s a very important part of what’s going on. Dream number one, more prayer ministers in the world.

[22:13] Stephanie: Huzzah!

[22:14] Marcus: Dream number two, we want to put the international in Deeper Walk International by expanding what we’re doing and working on continents around the world where we’ve seen more and more people coming our way. We want to be more intentional about coming up with strategies to make as much free for them as possible and to get things into their hands as much as we possibly can. Just for example, we’ve been able to help some people in the Middle East where bombs are falling and things have been going on and they’ve been reaching out to us for help and we’ve been able to give them resources to help with resilience and to help with healing and things like that.

The third thing we want to do is we want to finish our heart-focused discipleship curriculum. People have been asking us for years, can you just lay out the path and just give us a path that we can walk through to go through the heart-focused discipleship process? And that’s what this is. It’s a complete system. We call it the F.I.S.H. model as it walks people through freedom, identity, spirit and heart-focused community as the foundations for building a deeper walk with God. So yeah, your end-of-year donation will help with all three of these dreams.

[23:22] Stephanie: And not to just like add to the waterfall, but I’m going to add to it. You said this year has been breakthrough. Next year is rise above, and we actually are continuing our name-your-own price free conference in January, the Rise Above Conference, which we’ll tell you more about at the turn of the new year. But I just want to put that on your radar.

[23:40] Marcus: Yeah, get it on the radar. We’re going to have a conference that’s going to include Jim Wilder, Marlene Allen from Life Model Works, and I’m going to teach. And we’ve invited a special friend, Eric Scalise, to join us, who for years put on the conferences for AACC, which is the largest Christian counseling association in America and is now the president of Hope for the Heart, and so we’re excited to have him too.

[24:06] Stephanie: That’s going to be awesome. Well, and on that note, this is going to be our final episode of 2024, and we’re going to take a couple weeks off over Christmas and New Year, and we’ll be back in 2025, and we’ll be picking up our breakthrough series again.

Marcus: I probably won’t be wearing this hat.

Stephanie: Probably not, but you’re delightful. And on that note, Father, would you just pray us out?

[24:31] Marcus: Father in Heaven, we are thankful that you bring us breakthroughs all the time in a variety of small ways. Sometimes they’re not the big breakthrough we’re looking for, but we don’t want to miss all the things that you do for us. And we want to start with gratitude for all of the various breakthroughs that you have brought to us at the ministry level at Deeper Walk, at an individual level, at the family level, and God we are aware too that there are going to continue to be challenges where we need to rise above. So I ask that you will give us grace for each new battle that arises, grace for each new day and the challenges that it holds. I pray for your peace to be with each one, that there will just be an anointing for the events that are about to unfold, that you already know full well what is coming and what we need. You’ve already made provision. You’ve already made plans. And I just pray that full grace will be at our disposal as we head into this new year. In Christ’s name, Amen.

[25:37] Stephanie: Amen. Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend and do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer – thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.