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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Allen Lloyd

The Two Emotional Attributes Necessary for Transformation

Today we're gonna be talking about flourishing.

And in fact, 1 of the guests that we had on our show when you actually see this series on the Hope Channel, I'll just start out with Mackenzie.

In fact, she could have been on the front page of any model magazine.

She was a girl that had a vivacious personality, but she was a girl that was hurting from within.

And her pain started earlier in life, but at age 13, she was abused sexually.

And by age 15, she was going from 1 boyfriend to another.

And by age 20, she was a pharmacy technician at a pharmacy.

And the head pharmacist, who was 8 years older than her, 8 to 10 years older than her, noticed her beauty and her personality and started a relationship with her and invited her to vacation land in Cancun, Mexico.

And the first day there, as her boyfriend is out at the pool, she's going through the iPhone, his iPhone, and recognizes that she is not the only 1, clearly from the pictures that are there on the iPhone.

She recognizes some girls in that iPhone and can see on the dates that this is recent stuff.

Her negative feelings, she's on 5 different medications at this point for her mental health.

And her feelings start to go down significantly.

This is just 1 my life story is this type of arrangement.

And so 1 of her medicines to keep her anxiety under control was Klonopin, a potent benzodiazepine.

And so she takes a large amount of Klonopin to end her life in Cancun.

They don't have the greatest medical care, necessarily, in Mexico.

And he sees her comatose, sees the Klonopin bottle empty, and takes her to the emergency room.

And fortunately, they are able to intervene, even in Cancun in that situation.

And a couple of days later, she's out of the hospital, discharged to his care.

And she is upset over the fact that this did not work.

She looks at her 5 remaining medicines, and she knows 1 that will work.

Now, clonidine is used sometimes for its side effects in regards to mental health, but it's actually a very potent blood pressure medicine, 1 of the most potent blood pressure medicines known.

And so, she takes a huge dose, the entire bottle of clonidine, to end her life.

And she now is in a coma again, this time blue and almost breathless as she's brought to the hospital.

And this time, they're not sure she's going to live.

They finally contact her parents and they tell her that she's going to die in the hospital there in Cancun.

And they can't get down because they don't have a passport.

And you know how it is with homeland security these days and passports, you can't get them right away, even with emergency situations.

And so, she's down there by herself because he is so fed up with her now that this is his second attempt that he just leaves Mexico and goes back to the United States and leaves her there all by herself in this hotel.

Mackenzie, fortunately there's an aunt who does have a passport and goes down with her, and Mackenzie actually survives about a week she's in this hospital.

Her parents and this aunt line up for her to be discharged into the care of Weimar for our depression recovery program.

And on her way to the airport, she passes out.

And the airport people say she's not getting on the airplane.

But she recognized if she was hydrated, et cetera, she may be able to get out of Mexico.

And so she, after waking up, drank some water, et cetera, wiped off the perspiration, and they actually let her on the airplane.

And she flew into Sacramento, and we met McKenzie a short time later.

Now, as the timing would be at the first day of depression recovery program.

How can you take an individual that's on Abilify and Depakote and antidepressants and Klonopin and SSRIs, suicide attempts, abuse, all sorts of baggage that she's carrying, and have this individual be transformed in 10 days.

But I can tell you without going into the stories, although Mackenzie wanted to end her life on day 3 of this program again.

And she is a very energetic, healthy, mentally healthy, stable individual who's now applying to pharmacy school.

And she hasn't had to her own resistance.

In fact, we told her she needed to be BP.

That means boy proof when she left there.

And that means she even needed to change her wardrobe.

Because of her appearance and things, she could easily be a magnet for the wrong types of guys.

And 1 year later, I saw her in Dallas last weekend.

She was there at the Emotional Intelligence Summit.

And this girl is completely mentally stable, happy, without boyfriends.

She has given her life to the Lord, and she's on just 1 medication now, and it's not an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety medication.

And so if the Lord can do that for Mackenzie, I can tell you he can do that for anybody.

And the Lord wants us to not only be depression and anxiety free, he wants us to flourish.

And that's what this presentation is about today, flourishing.

Part of the, it's kind of a new researched field.

In fact, last weekend at the Emotional Intelligence Summit that we hosted in Dallas, our keynote speaker was Dr.

Robert Emmons, prior to 15 years ago, he was the first person to measure in a controlled way the effects of gratitude on the life and put a gratitude intervention where you actually take a group and you randomize them for a gratitude intervention and those that don't get randomized to a gratitude intervention.

And he found out there were so many positive effects of gratitude in so many different measurable ways.

People that have the gratitude intervention are more likely to exercise.

They have more happiness, less depression, all sorts of benefits from a PPI.

Now, that's what it's called in the positive psychology world.

It's not, you know, as a gastroenterologist, PPI means proton pump inhibitor.

But in the psychology world, a PPI means a positive psychology intervention.

And there are a number of different positive psychology interventions that can, that actually enhance the frontal lobe of the brain, as well as result from enhancement of the frontal lobe.

There's 2 essential components, originality and adaptive, making a positive contribution to the life of others.

And by the way, in order to be Truly creative, studies show you have to have an above average IQ.

Now below average IQ people can be very successful in life.

They can copy well and they can adapt and things of that nature.

And they can have very high EQ and be very, very successful.

But to be truly original, where no 1 else has come up with this concept or thought of it before, and it helps the well-being of others, requires above average IQ, which also requires an enhanced frontal lobe function.

Interest is part of a, you can have a positive psychology intervention called interest.

Now, it's fun to interact with someone who is intrigued by everything, but a book that has summarized a lot of these studies on character strengths says, if curiosity can be cultivated, no 1 need ever search for interesting experiences, 1 will simply have them.

And that means that even if you're confined to a room like this and nobody else is there and you have to be here for 6 or 8 hours.

If you have this character strength, you'll find something in this room that's highly intriguing and that you can study for hours on end and get interested in regards to that.

Other character strengths, judgment, critical thinking sometimes it's called, which feels good, It leads to good decisions and also leads to a coherent view of the world when we have good judgment.

And by the way, this is, thinking of that, We are told through inspiration and also many other avenues when you compare scripture with scripture.

Sometimes there's a text that is misused a lot in the Bible on the Sermon on the Mount when Christ says, Judge not.

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The Two Emotional Attributes Necessary for Transformation

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