31: Resilience: G.A.M.E.S.

[00:05] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 31. We’re continuing our Resilience series with a look at appreciation. And today we’re talking about the acrostic, G.A.M.E.S, it will be lots of fun.

Hello, Father.

[00:33] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Here we are again.

[00:36] Stephanie: Here we are again. And I’m excited that we’re featuring an acrostic I like. But before we dive into the episode, I wanted us to talk about the other very exciting conference coming up this week.

[00:48] Marcus: We’ve got a great conference. We try to do a free conference every year. Last year was Neil Anderson, Karl Payne, and myself on spiritual warfare. This year John Eldridge is joining us. Friday night I’m going to be teaching on the neuroscience of joy and how that all works. And we’re going to be talking a little bit about building bounce just from an emotional capacity perspective. And then on Saturday John’s going to lead us through some exercises and also some input from his new book, Resilient.

It is really focused on helping us build the resilience we need to cope with all of the anxiety, despair, and frustration in our world. I mean, let’s face it, mental illness and mental health issues are really at the forefront. Learning how to build our emotional capacity is key. John played a big role in my own journey and I love his material and the stuff that he’s developed. We’re really excited to be partnering on this conference this weekend.

[01:51] Stephanie: It is fabulous. So if you register for the conference but you’re unable to attend live or if you’re listening to this after the fact, fear not, you can watch the recordings. So go register for this free conference at our Deeper Walk website and we hope to see you there.

So today we’re continuing our look at the first of the ABC’s of bounce and that is appreciation. So, Father, do you want to give us a recap of appreciation? Anything from the last episode that you want to clarify or expound on before we unpack our acrostic?

[02:22] Marcus: Yeah. At the heart of the idea of building bounce is when we talked about the image of a depleted ball that’s lacking air. The air that really fills up the ball that allows it to bounce is joy, and  if we don’t run on joy, we’re going to run on fear. The more fear we run on the more deflated our ball gets, right. You can have a ball that doesn’t bounce quite right, you can also have a ball that just goes flat, and it kind of splats when it hits. And I’m sure we have listeners in all categories, right?

People who are bouncing around  like life’s an adventure, this is all good. We have people who are just sluggish and it’s not bouncing back quite enough. And people who feel like, yeah, somebody punctured my ball and it’s just laying there, it needs repaired and it needs refilled. And so what we’re talking about here is, are there practices we can do and habits we can develop that keep our ball more filled with the air of joy? So that’s kind of what we’re focusing on here.

[03:21] Stephanie: All right. And how does appreciation factor into this?

[03:23] Marcus: Appreciation is the fastest way for the brain to grow joy. If you want  an injection of joy, appreciation is the fastest way to get there, with the possible exception of hugs from a toddler. The  feeling of being in love is actually joy too.  I have so much joy and I’m so happy to see this person and they’re so happy to see me.

[03:49] Stephanie: Relational happiness.

[03:50] Marcus: Relational happiness. Right. So there are ways to get those infusions but we’re talking about things you can control, like on demand. Appreciation is one of those things where we can kind of choose to do things to enter into that place of appreciation, and not have to wait for something to create that reaction in us.

[04:10] Stephanie: Very helpful. So one of my favorites of your acrostics (you have so many acrostics) is the word G.A.M.E.S. Gratitude, Anticipation, Memories, Experiences, and Singing. What a fun combination of things.

I’ve drawn upon this acrostic when I’m alone as a means of finding appreciation, and also when I’m in a group helping with Deeper Walk seminars, or women’s retreats and such. I know I’ve heard of some people who will go around at their Thanksgiving table and go through each letter as a family or as a group.

So sometimes this is a nice exercise to do. I’ve helped lead some of these at the Deeper Walk seminars as we’re coming into the session or as we’re leaving the session. It could be good for a small group as well.  Anyway, I’m babbling, but there’s so much good potential here.

[05:06] Marcus: It’s a podcast. You’re supposed to babble.

[05:08] Stephanie: Oh, okay.

[05:09] Stephanie: Okay. Good. So if you want to talk about how you came up with the acrostic, that’s always fun.

[05:17] Marcus: Sure. This particular one came when I was asked to do a webinar on Thanksgiving and they wanted me to teach on appreciation. I just started listing off the ways that you could practice appreciation. I started with past, present, and future and I was just going to go with that.  What is appreciation of the present? It’s gratitude. What is appreciation in the future? That’s anticipation. And in the past is memories. All of a sudden I had G.A.M.

I  had just learned from Dr. Wilder that singing was one of the best ways to bring your right and your left brain together, so now I’ve got G.A.M.S, and  I didn’t want to go with GAMS. Now in my generation that meant one thing, but I don’t know if it means anything today.

So you realize that there are things that I can do to create experiences. I can plan some things. Maybe I’m going to do crafts, or I’m going to do gardening. I’m going to do some things that create joy. So all of a sudden G.A.M.E.S  was just sitting in front of me, it was pretty easy to put that together. Gratitude is, “what is there in my present?” Anticipation, “what’s there in my future?” And I look at it this way, “what is in my present that made me smile in the last 24 hours?” What am I looking forward to that makes me smile thinking about it?

In fact, one of the things you find  when people are really struggling with depression and despair, is they often can’t think of things they’re looking forward to. When they go back into their memories they can only remember the bad stuff about their memories, even the joy is almost painful, because it’s not there anymore.

So what you have to do is, (and let’s quote Juni Felix here again, right?) – you have to use these “tiny habits” sometimes and get “tiny wins” instead of looking for the big win. Because too often we’re looking for something that’s going to change my whole demeanor or change my whole outlook on life. This is going to fix everything, I won’t be depressed anymore and I won’t be anxious anymore.

It’ll all be over if I can just have a good enough experience of appreciation right now. That’s not what we’re talking about, that’s not realistic. What we’re talking about here is having little wins, little celebrations, little things that we can do along the way, this begins to train our brain that pain isn’t the end of the story. That there’s something else going on here that’s so good.

[07:34] Stephanie: Yes. And Juni would definitely encourage celebrations anytime you do a small little win.

[07:45] Marcus: And for those who don’t know, Juni Felix is on the Deeper Walk speaker team. She is a radio personality in the Moody network and she’s written a book called, You are Worth the Work. And she is a friend of the family.

[08:02] Stephanie: She is one of my prayer partners, I love her very dearly. So let’s settle into gratitude and this appreciation in the present. Could you give us an example of an average person who is not struggling with deep depression and is not just bouncing off the walls. Just like a normal day of gratitude?

[08:25] Marcus: So like right now we’re sitting next to a window. Looking out the window  I see that it is a perma, gray sky. Some people may look at that and they’re like,  oh no, not another gray sky, I can’t be happy on a gray day. But for me it makes me think of Scotland and Ireland and fires and whatever. I like the ability to look through the branches of a tree when the leaves aren’t there. And there’s just a feel to it that makes me feel like, okay, I can’t wait to make a fire.

And so in my present I can appreciate what there is. Plus, there’s a pine tree and other trees. Then maybe I look more closely at the tree and I’m like, you know I’ve never really noticed how symmetrical this is, or how that leaf does that. You study things.

And what always pops in my mind when I talk about this is a scene from The Last Samurai. Where, what’s the guy, the leader of the village? Anyway, I can’t remember, but the leader of this Samurai village is about to go into the battle of a lifetime. He’s on the verge of losing everything but he’s taking a walk among the cherry blossoms and he’s studying them, looking for the perfect cherry blossom.

But the idea here is that what he used  to calm himself in the midst of all these big things going on in his life, was the practice of appreciation in the present. Being focused on that there’s something here that is good.

In the midst of everything else, look at the beauty of this one beautiful cherry blossom. So whatever that is for us. If you need a jumpstart you can pick your favorite food, like, “I’m gonna get a piece of cherry pie here,” or whatever it is. And you say, ”Oh, I just really like this,” allowing yourself to kind of settle into that and stay with it for a little bit. That’s the idea of gratitude in the present.

[10:24] Stephanie: It makes me think of when I was in junior high or early high school that I got to write and publish some devotionals, and they asked for our bio. I’m like, what do I put in a bio? I’m a high schooler?

[10:45] Marcus:  I climbed Mount Everest when I was ten.

[10:49] Stephanie: But I wrote something in that bio that surprised me when I wrote it and has just felt right and has stuck with me. “I enjoy finding the epic in the ordinary.” I think this is the first time I’ve really kind of connected that to gratitude in the present.

Yeah, just like you were saying as you were describing the leafless trees, being able to see the sky through the trees is one of my very favorite things. And I love gray skies and clouds, I get giddy with happiness. I’m a weirdo but yes, I love to find that epic in the ordinary. I also like to find the ordinary and the epic, figuring out how things come together. Anyway, there we go.

[11:37] Marcus: Well, that’s true, that’s what appreciation and present is all about. Finding the epic in the ordinary is such a great catchphrase. That’s kind of what we’re doing, looking at what there is and finding that there’s always something to appreciate in the present if we’ll just focus.

[11:53] Stephanie: Very good. Do you want to then talk about gratitude in the more desperate situations?

[12:01] Marcus: Well, if I’m desperate enough, I’m not gonna get there. What I need in the more desperate times is what we call extreme quieting. Extreme quieting is when I have to shake up my nervous system a little bit. I will just throw out a list of things that I’ve heard people do. Keep your head still, take a deep breath, and blow out like 5-10 times.

Then with your head still put your eyes up towards the ceiling and then down towards the floor. Then turn your eyes to the right and then over to the left and just repeat it. Moving your eyes but keeping your head still. And part of what that does is it distracts your brain out of that thing.

It can also be jumping jacks or exercising can help. You want to do things to distract yourself out of your anxiety and get your focus on something else. One of the things that I like to do is, I’ll sing “Happy Birthday” to myself. “Happy birthday to me,” right? It always makes me laugh.

There are different things that you can do. The key thing here is that I’m trying to distract my body out of the state that it’s in a little bit, so that I can then go into the regular quieting things of soothing, tensing, and releasing. Trying to win the battle of my mind from, what is it that I need to be thinking of here, instead of what I am thinking about that’s driving me nuts.

[13:30] Stephanie: Very good. So let’s move on to anticipation, appreciation for the future. I’ve been gone from Kentucky for a month now and I’m about to go back to start my  final semester of grad school, mind blown. I have many happy things to anticipate, but what keeps making me smile right now as I’m anticipating the future, is there are three little dogs who live above me. They are so cute and so happy. And I just know that if they’re out anywhere and have any freedom to roam when I get home, they are going to be racing to the deck greeting me as I am walking into my apartment. Yeah, that just makes me smile.

[14:24] Marcus: You can already feel the joy now as you think about waiting for it and that’s the beauty of anticipation. And you talk about people planning vacations and how often the anticipation of the vacation is actually the most joyful part of it. And there are times when I can anticipate something that doesn’t even happen, but I still had the joy of all the anticipation while I was looking forward to it.

And talking about dogs, I know I’ve heard of psychologists who actually prescribe to people who are struggling with their depression to buy a dog. Because it’s both calming and they’re always happy to see you, so it’s a really cool connection on both fronts.

[15:06] Stephanie: Well, and I can just continue pushing that connection because the dogs are owned by two very wonderful people, who just have a very peaceful, happy, loving home. And so there’s that relational joy of, “Oh, I’m coming home and I walk into my apartment and my roommate might be there.” She has a cat whom I love and I get to see my roommate for the first time in a month in person. And anyway, lots of relational joy.

[15:28] Marcus: Exactly, and this is why we separate this out. It’s important to have things to look forward to. So I tell people to stop thinking in terms of what am I looking forward to in the next 24 hours? It doesn’t have to be life changing just something that’ll be pleasant and that’ll make me smile.

Something I’m looking forward to this week, next month, or later this year. We all have things. And I know people who got through work because they kept dreaming of retirement. But having something to anticipate with joy helps. The more of those you can layer on top of each other, right?

[16:03] Stephanie: Yeah. I can say that in my first semester of undergrad I had severe attachment pain. I literally sometimes felt dead inside. I loved the people I was with, I loved that I was there, and it was all good, but I was just depressed. I was like, “What is happening?” And at that point I think Mom was working at the library and she had Thursdays off, so almost every Thursday that semester she drove up to have lunch with me.

And then I think we eventually got to the point where we would just talk on the phone, but she would drive up to have lunch with me. There were times when I was just fixated on, Mom’s coming, Mom’s coming. And I would just anchor onto that anticipation of relational joy and the attachment pain getting helped. And so there’s an example of when you’re a little bit more desperate, but having that anticipation would help fuel me.

[16:58] Marcus: It’s a good example and it’s something we could all relate to. I remember when I was alone in grad school and I had left all my friends back in another town. It was the same thing knowing that I’m going to go back and see them in two weeks, that was a big source of encouragement. Having that to focus on could help to renew the joy.

A lot of times thinking about the future actually triggers memories of the past. You’re thinking, “Oh, Mom’s coming,” but then it can also lead into memories of joyful times when you were with her. Just like anticipating seeing the dogs can bring memories of the times with the dogs. And so it does branch us from the gratitude in the present to the  anticipation of the future, and memories in the past. I have talked to people who have said to me, “I have no happy memories.”  I have talked to somebody who said that it wasn’t that they had no happy memories, it was too painful for them to revisit because they were gone. They weren’t around anymore.

There is often some pain in going back in the past even in the happy memories. Sometimes we have to acknowledge the fact that not everything about this is happy, but here’s the part that was happy and focus on that. I know somebody who had terrible Christmases, but they could still remember two times when there was just pure joy at something that happened on a Christmas.

We could go back and say, “You know what, out of 50 Christmases in my past only two of them were happy,” and it can turn into this misery reflection. Or you can say, “But there were these two that were happy.” Then the question is, “How do I develop being able to focus on those things that did make me smile?”

[18:55] Stephanie: It’s like fear mapping the past versus joy mapping the past. The great thing about memories is that they’ve already happened, so we can collect them and we can rolodex through them. And I know the Coursey’s will talk about naming them so that you can quickly pull up a memory.

I have one that I call, ”Can we keep him?” When I was a senior in high school my little brother came in with his puffed winter coat and was cradling a kitty cat in his arms. And he said, “Can we keep him?” We did, and long story short, he was one of the greatest gifts ever.

And so now that memory is just slightly booby trapped because we lost him in 2022. And so I have some sadness now associated with that memory because of the loss, but it still makes me happy.

[19:48] Marcus: Yeah. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about. Some things bring back nostalgia and that’s still okay. Going back to nostalgia is a little bit like going back to a peaceful thing when it was a “good old day”.

So you can’t always remove all of the sadness out of all of those things. For me, for example, I was big into Bible quizzing for a while. One of my default memories that I like to go back to is that I remember being at a tournament one time, and everybody was getting really tense. We had a big quiz coming up and if we won we were going to the championship round. And so everybody was like, do we go cram, do we study some more, what do we do?

I was like, “Let’s go back to somebody’s house and watch Rocky.” We had like 2 hours till our next thing  and we went back and watched Rocky. We all came into the next thing going, “dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun,” Everybody’s doing their best Rocky pose and there was just joy and happiness.

I can refeel that joy just by going back. There’s memories like that, right, that we have. That’s what we’re talking about, are there things where you go back and it’s like, that was so fun, that was just the best thing ever. And I can re enter into that memory and re-experience the hormonal change in my body just from going back and being in there for a while.

[21:13] Stephanie: Memories are so good. So let’s move on to experiences and we can cycle back if we want. This kind of moves us out a little bit of our present, past, future, paradigm. Although experiences could still be something you’re planning for. And like you said, the thing doesn’t even have to happen that you’re planning for. You could just plan the experience. Talk to us about experiences.

[21:35] Marcus: Some people find a lot of joy in gardening, or they find joy in crafting, or they find joy in planning vacations, or they find joy in designing houses, there’s a lot of things. So part of this is knowing what kind of things bring you joy and to plan it into your day or your week, to make sure you get some time to do those things. So if you love to play basketball, make sure that you carve out some time to get a chance to do that. And then that becomes something you can anticipate, and eventually it becomes a memory that you can then go back and visit again.

And so that’s just part of it. It’s like if you don’t have something you’re already anticipating, create something. That’s the idea of experiences. Once you start going down this path you begin to realize that there are way more things to appreciate in life than to be afraid of. But we have to train our minds to go there.

[22:31] Stephanie: Yeah. And find the safe people that you can create those experiences with. Okay. I could go off, but let’s go to the final of our acrostic, singing. So specific father, but I love it. Explain why singing and then we can talk more.

[22:54] Marcus: Again, singing came from something Jim Wilder said and I think it was actually a conversation. He just said that – ”Singing is one of the few things that brings the right and left brain together, it synchronizes them well.” We’ve known this for years sort of intuitively. We were just talking about The Sound of Music.

[23:17] Stephanie “A Few of My Favorite Things”.

[23:18] Marcus: Yeah, “A Few of My Favorite Things.” I started to sing, “whiskers on kittens.” But that was just good advice in that song. Everybody knows that learning to set your mind on the things that you like and then turning it into music, putting a little dance to it and singing, that there is something life giving about that.

Sometimes even going through YouTube and finding some of your old favorite songs from the past, taking a little time to do a trip down memory lane and actually singing along, creates engagement. That can be very helpful.

[23:53] Stephanie: Yeah.

[23:54] Marcus: And then of course singing hymns or praise songs.

[23:58] Stephanie:  Sometimes especially when I’m alone I’ll actually just sing prayers to God, because of the left and right brain coming together. It just feels like there are pieces of me that when I sing, everything kind of comes into focus, and it taps into creativity. It just helps me feel more relational with God sometimes.

I have a friend in undergrad that I used to drive down to the airport all the time. It was always very stressful like, “Oh, there’s construction, something’s gonna go wrong” or it’s just a long trip. And without fail by the end of our car trip she would be singing hymns every single time. It would help distract her from her anxiety and also help her focus on God. And that always just stuck with me. And so sometimes I’ll do that too when I’m feeling some anxiety, I will sing.

[24:57] Marcus: I know it triggers a memory for me too. In my early twenties I got stranded in downtown Chicago at a train station. I found out that I was at the wrong train station and had to walk six blocks through a really not a good neighborhood to another train station. To the point where a guy started walking toward me from the other direction, saw me and ran away.

I don’t know what he saw, but it’s like everybody was a little nervous in this neighborhood. But I remember singing hymns about the faithfulness of God and things like that. And there is something comforting about it. It’s like what Paul and Silas did when they were in the Philippian prison, there’s something anchoring about it.

[25:43] Stephanie: Indeed. This has been such a rich discussion and I hope you can see why I love this acrostic so much. Good job. It’s like your spiritual gift is acrostics.

[25:53] Marcus: Yeah, it’s in Romans I think, the spiritual gift of acrostics.

[25:57] Stephanie: Next week we’re going to continue on going deeper into the ABCs with a look at beliefs. But for now, any final thoughts on this episode?

[26:07] Marcus: You know, it’s interesting because I find that you can beat yourself up about almost anything, right? So when you start saying, “I’m going to do a better job of building joy, I’m going to do a better job of building this habit.” When you miss a day or you miss another one, or you do it and it doesn’t seem to be working, what we really are talking about is creating a habit over time.

Something we have to learn is to celebrate the little wins along the way and to show ourselves some grace as we’re going through this journey, because it takes time. If I’ve never studied piano I’m not going to sit down at the piano and suddenly play Rachmaninoff. Right? I just want to say show yourself some grace as you’re going through it, it’s going to be okay, and it will get better.

[27:07] Stephanie: Thank you. And thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a nonprofit organization and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do. Some are on the trail with us as official Trailblazers who commit to donating $25.00 or more per month. Because of our Trailblazers we are able to provide free or discounted resources like this free podcast, or our video streaming the Learning Library Basic.

Also the free January conference for John Eldridge from Wild at Heart will be joining Dad to speak about emotional resilience. That is coming up this week on the 27th and 28th. So as we close out today, we invite you to consider becoming a Trailblazer. You can do this very simply by visiting our website, https://deeperwalk.com/trailblazers/. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk podcast and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.