“No” Your Limits

The Key to Not Losing Your Mind

One of the greatest experiences of my life came when I had the opportunity to speak at a leadership conference in Santa Clara, Cuba in February of 2015. The landscape was beautiful and the people we met were amazing, which reminded me of a Norman Rockwell painting from the 1960s, when life was much simpler.

Surprisingly, they had beautifully paved roads and sound structures to bridge waterways, even though the vast majority of citizens will never be able to afford a car in their lifetime.

The roads leading into the cities even had the painted yellow lines. We all know that you should never cross the solid yellow line because you would be heading into oncoming traffic. Somehow that minor detail had escaped them. If you have ever ridden in a car or bus in a developing country, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

As the missionary was driving us back to the camp one day, I remember sitting at a T-shaped intersection, waiting to turn left. There were no traffic lights or stop signs to assist you. To further complicate matters, there were three “lanes” wide in each direction (on a two-lane road) of cars, trucks, bikes, motorized scooters, horse-and-buggy travelers, and pedestrians traveling at all different speeds.

I thought I could have panic attack as I watched this scene. If I was driving that day, I think we may still be sitting there waiting to turn left.

The Battle Starts in the Mind

It occurred to me recently that our lives can start to look an awful lot like this sensory-overloaded mishmash of objects flying in all different directions. We are so overwhelmed with obligations and commitments that we feel victimized by our schedules. Without traffic lights, stop signs, and other safety measures to direct traffic, our daily lives become marked by a level of chaos equal to trying to cross six lanes of traffic on a two-lane road in Cuba.

Schedule overload may seem like a simple problem of having too little time, but the battle starts in our minds. Our calendars don’t clutter themselves. The root of this problem is what we deem to be important to us.

Whether we realize it or not, our mind is our battlespace. Our actions, attitudes, and motives originate here. Any project that we complete, event that we plan, goal that we reach, or structure that we build has to be created first in our minds. For every success there are a thousand other plans that are shot down in our brains (pun intended) before they can materialize.

The idea that there is an ongoing battle for control of our minds is a foreign concept to most Americans but is spelled out very clearly in the Bible. It can freak people out when we start talking about strongholds, and taking our thoughts captive, but consider this: What is mental illness? Why do some individuals develop antisocial behaviors? What is the root of anxiety and depression? It all starts in the mind.

If we are to Live Free from fear, anxiety, and guilt, we have to increase awareness of how to protect and defend our battlespace. Throughout this book we will explore both offensive and defensive practices. Let’s look at a few.

Take a Defensive Position

I remember when MTV first came out in 1981, back when they still showed music videos. I used to watch it for hours and hours at a time. One time, when my father was passing through the living room, he stopped and said, “Amy, doesn’t watching that junk all day long affect your mind?” I assured him that it did not and that I could handle it. After all, what thirteen-year-old couldn’t?

Fast forward 40 years. I don’t know about you, but nothing causes me more anxiety than when I have engaged in discussions about religion or politics on social media platforms. I don’t do that anymore.

Research tells us that the average American checks their phone every twelve minutes (that comes out to eighty times a day)!The impulse to look at our phones is so intense that it has been likened to a drug addict’s cravings. Recent studies are showing that the blue light from our phones is a culprit in the startling increase in insomnia cases, resulting in hospitalization. And that too much screen time is linked to a reduction in brain power in children ages eight to eleven.

Go on the Offense

Preserving and renewing our minds, however, is more than just a matter of limiting our exposure to social media. It has to do with feeding ourselves the type of information that will build and renew, not tear down, our cerebral capacities.

One of the most impacting exercises that I have ever participated in is the memorization of scriptures in the Bible. Starting when I was in high school and continuing as a young mother who had a lot of time on her hands, I committed hundreds if not thousands of verses to memory.

The remarkable thing is that even though I often can’t remember what I had for breakfast; I can recall scriptures that I memorized over thirty years ago. This discipline has served me well throughout the years when faced with situations that threatened to bring more than just a healthy dose of anxiety.

I have also invested hours upon hours of reading books and articles in a variety of different subjects. Not only will reading make you a better conversationalist, but lifelong learning has been connected with staving off dementia and other forms of cognitive decline as we age.

It wouldn’t be right to conclude this section without mentioning the impact of diet on our minds, not to mention our bodies. There is an undeniable connection between our mind, body, and soul. Nutrition is not my area of expertise but can tell you that too much sugar and fried food messes with both my hips and my head. The concept of Living Free includes freedom from self-imposed health conditions resulting from poor diet and too little exercise.

Establish Limits and Boundaries

It has been speculated that firstborn children, and especially daughters, are prone to be people pleasers. I think many of us can attest to this. People pleasers tend to put the needs and even the wants of others ahead of their own. Even though people pleasing gets a bad rap, it isn’t all bad. If it wasn’t for even-tempered, happy-go-lucky, agreeable individuals who can mediate even tense situations, the United States would probably be at war with Canada. But the problem comes when we start to believe that we don’t have a choice.

We can start to feel such a strong sense of obligation to family members, bosses, and long-time friends that we think we would be a bad person to say no. The truth of the matter is that saying yes out of a sense of obligation means that we are saying no to someone or something else—our spouse, our children, our own health. We forget that if we don’t care for ourselves and those in our immediate realm of responsibility, we are useless to anyone else.

What Would Jesus Do?

It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that arguably the most influential man who ever walked the face of the earth (Jesus) struggled with this too. There is a rather obscure and even pedestrian passage that describes this dilemma. Jesus, at the peak of earthy ministry, is traveling from town to town (on foot, of course) preaching the good news and healing people.

When the general population began to realize that he would feed them and could heal their sick children, they followed him around like the paparazzi! Jesus was the original rock star. As he was preparing to move on to another city, he snuck out of the house to spend some time alone in prayer. The crowd followed him. 6 They begged him to stay in their town, but he explained that his mission was to spread the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns too. And he left.

What just happened here? Jesus essentially said to them, “Sorry, but I can’t help you.” He knew that there would be mothers waking up soon to realize that their terminally ill child would probably die because Jesus wasn’t there to heal her. He knew that the men who thought he was there to liberate them from the oppressive Roman government might think that he was a fraud. It could not have been easy—even for the Son of God—to walk away from helpless, abandoned, destitute people who so badly needed his help.

Why didn’t Jesus stay up until 2:00 a.m. to heal them and rise again at 4:30 a.m. to get everything ready so that he could still leave town the next day? That’s what some of us would do.

Jesus told them no because he was physically and emotionally spent. Look at his schedule over the past few months: Jesus went without food for forty days, came face-to-face with pure evil, was rejected by his own family, took a very long road trip, fought with some evil spirits, and healed tons of people. Jesus understood that he was human and subject to the same limitations we are, and that he didn’t have limitless energy.

So the next time you ask, What would Jesus do?, realize that He would—and did when He walked the earth—help when He could, but He also recognized when he needed to walk away.

Know the Difference

If we are going to truly Live Free, we must learn to control what we can control and let go of the rest. Is seems easy enough, but it’s not.

Are you familiar with the Serenity Prayer?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Truth be told, we do know the difference; the problem is that we don’t want to admit it. We think we know (and sometimes we even do know) what’s best for those we care about. We spend grave amounts of energy thinking of ways to make them, or at least encourage them, to do what we think needs done. At our best we seek to influence them, but at our worst we try to manipulate them.

This doesn’t mean that we should stop showing care and concern for others. But if we are truly concerned for the well-being of our friends and loved ones, it is critical that we learn to not interfere with their “process.” They, too, must learn to take full responsibility for their actions. We can express concern and offer suggestions, but we can’t make them see the light.

What exactly is inside our sphere of control? The answer is…not much and everything, all at the same time. We are responsible for everything in our lives—whether we caused it or not. But our circle of control can be rather small. Basically, all we have is complete control over is our motives, attitudes, and actions.

This may seem like an oversimplification of a complex problem, and it is. At the same time, it’s very powerful to come to grips with what we can and cannot control, and then act on what we can.

The Wrap-Up

Living Free means that we must learn how to offensively control and defensively protect our own battle space (i.e., our mind). This sometimes means saying no, even to well-meaning friends and family. Chaos will ensue if we don’t properly manage what is inside our circle of control and learn to let the rest go.

You Can Visit, but You Can’t Live There: Keys to Living Free from Fear, Anxiety, and Guilt is available on Amazon.

1 “ People Who Overcame Huge Obstacles to Become Famous,” Cracked.com.

2 Nora Battelle, “These Three Things Are Keeping Your Child Up at Night,” Thriveglobal.com, 2018,

https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/these-three-things-are-keeping-your-child-up-at-night/.

3 H. Shaban, “Study Links Restricting Screen Time for Kids to Higher Mental Performance,” Washingtonpost.com,

September 27, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/27/study-links-restricting-screen-time-

kids-higher-mental-performance/?utm_term=.a4844b4954d9.

4 “Creativity and Lifelong Learning,” American Society on Aging, 2018, http://asaging.org/education-

topic/creativity-and-lifelong-learning.

5 1 Corinthians 6:19–20.

6 Luke 4:42–43.

7 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Serenity Prayer,” 1951, https://www.allaboutprayer.org/serenity-prayer.htm.