Are you in a complicated place right now? Are you searching for answers and desperate for healing and life transformation? Join your host Christin Collins as she interviews David Essel about the state of mental health and finding the spark within through discovering yourself and elevating consciousness. David is a number one best-selling author, counselor, master life coach, international speaker, radio/tv host, and minister whose mission is to positively affect 2 million people or more every day. Success requires more than just positive thinking. You have to take action. In this chaotic world, you must be aware of what area of your life needs healing and that one thing you have procrastinated most on. Tune in for valuable insights that could help you navigate this life full of uncertainties and challenges.

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The State Of Mental Health: A Guide To Healing And Mental Well-Being With David Essel

Welcome back to the show. It is always a pleasure for me to connect to someone who is helping me find my spark within. The point of this conversation is to stir that curiosity within you so you can connect with who you are and why you are, especially in all the noise and the uncertainty of what’s going on around our globe. With that, I have a very special guest who inspired me to go ahead and do a podcast, the one and only David Essel. David, welcome to the show.

Christin, we have talked a couple of times, and our energy is so in alignment. It’s not even funny. I love being with you. I’ve said this multiple times. Whenever I get a text from you, I feel like I’m texting myself because that’s the way I respond. I’m so honored to be with you. The passion and energy that you bring to this world is matching.

The world needs this more than anything. You mentioned that before. We are in a place that is unparalleled. No one has a clue of what to do even now. We’ve been in it for a few years. You and I talked about mind, body and spirit. There are so many people that prior to this experience that we’re going through, had routines and rituals and felt secure and grounded. In the last few years, people have lost their groundedness.

We can put statistics out there in a little while, some very powerful ones, just to prove how ungrounded we are. We need this show that you’re doing. We need them because people can be lost. Without guidance, steps, and all the things that you and I might take for granted in our own lives, and even though we’re struggling in many ways like everyone else, we need those guidelines to be reminded of what you know to be true that maybe you have not kept following. It’s that kind of stuff. That’s why we’re in such alignment. Thank you.

It is my honor. One of the cool components of me connecting with you is that you have been in this space of healing, motivation, empowerment, and transcendence for quite some time. I have dabbled unknowingly in that space but understood that it is my purpose. Having you as the guest and being able to take us from a perspective of longevity is vital. We’re going to talk about the state of mental health and how that aligns with our physical health, emotional health, and spiritual health. I’m super excited because you can help support, in essence, what you just said because you’ve been doing this for decades.

Many of us were chugging along, super type-A, super getting it done and wheeling our way through a head-based existence and very successful. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it has been this disruption of what we are in control of, what matters to us, and re-evaluating. With that, David, I would love to ask you, based on your historical lens, what are some of the most eminent challenges now that people that had it together are going, “I don’t know how to handle this any longer?”

It’s those people that do what they’d rather not do that create success in times of turmoil and peace.

A lot of us are so strong that over the years, we’ve relied on ourselves to get through challenges and it has worked, but the pandemic is not your normal challenge. The pandemic is not your normal anything. The number one thing I say is if you’re trying to move through this alone and you’re struggling, that’s our number one mistake. We have to get vulnerable and ask for help.

I have a team of people who have been with me for a number of years. They’re unbelievably strong. I might get emotional here. I sent a text apologizing because I had three weeks of COVID with fevers. I could barely move and think. I couldn’t do anything. That wasn’t that long ago. When I came out of it, I started to realize that I was sending the same messages 2 to 3 days in a row to 6 people without even realizing it.

I’ve got such a great team of people. No one ever said anything until I went back and said, “I sent this email on Monday and then I sent another email on Tuesday about the same topic with different parameters. I then sent an email on Wednesday with the same topic, with different parameters again.” I reached out and said, “I am so sorry. I just recognized.”

In the way I usually work, I don’t think. You know this. We’re channeled through. When we’re doing the work we’re supposed to do and we are in joy and service, we don’t even have to plan and think half the time. We come on to something like this. You and I didn’t write a thousand notes and questions because it’s who we are.

Because of COVID brain, which I’m finding out is a real thing, I’ve had to back up and slow down. When I say ask for help, that might be apologizing for something that I’ve done. That’s asking for help. That’s saying, “I’m so sorry I did this.” A lot of type-A’s have a real hard time apologizing, especially to someone who isn’t their equal or above them. We have to recalibrate. We’ve got to look at it now.

I ask everyone to follow this one example. Which area of your life is creating the most chaos now? Which area have you procrastinated on the most? Which area do you not want to take care of? Which area are you waiting for someone else to save you with? Which area are you waiting for the pandemic to end so we can get back to normal? Which area are you avoiding? Even though other people may have said, “It seems like you’re drinking and eating a little too much? You’re rough on your kids. I’ve never seen you like this. You have no patience in traffic. I’ve never seen you in road rage. You’re going crazy.” What area have we avoided, denied, delayed and procrastinated on?

 

In 1996, we created what I’m talking about. It is called the one thing theory. The one thing theory states this. At any given time in life, there’s only one goal to go after, the one you’ve denied, delayed and procrastinated on, the one you do not want to do. Here’s the magic. Once you put in an hour a day for 90 straight days minimum for that one goal, and you start to see improvement, every other area of your life automatically raises to the next level.

What most people do is they take their to-do list. At the very top is, “Buy chocolate.” It’s the easiest crap in the world, and then we get down to number 27. It says, “Quit drinking,” or we get down to number 25 and it says, “Quit procrastinating on paying your bills.” What we say is to bring that up to the top of the list. I know it’s a pain in the butt. I know you don’t want to do it, but it’s those people that do what they rather not do that create success in times of turmoil and peace. We’re in the most incredible turmoil I’ve ever seen in my life. I avoided COVID for three years. When I got it, I was extremely healthy.

I had no idea for three weeks that I would be on my back crying like a baby because the fever was so intense. I come out of that, and now I’ve got to ask for help. I do and I ask for help every day. I have a very deep spiritual program. I have a courtyard every morning that I sit in for an hour and a half to two hours. After I got out of my fever-based experience, I’ve been able to get back in. It’s getting back into that and creating that space for that oneness, that connection, whatever you want to call it, universal energy, sacred Earth or great palm tree.

I don’t care what you call it. Get in touch again. Create that space for creativity to flow. A number of years ago, a couple of friends of mine used to say to me, “You are just downloading constantly.” I’m not a tech person. I had no idea what they were saying, but when someone changed the word and said, “You are being channeled through every day,” I understood it. How are we channeled through?

We are channeled through if the channel is clear. I was an alcoholic and a cocaine addict for 30 years. My channel was minimized for 30 years because I was using something to alter my brain chemistry. It might be food addiction, sex addiction, spending addiction, or a righteousness addiction for all of you people that are always correct. Whatever it is, we’ve got to realize it. Look in the mirror and attack it.

This is what people do, the one thing theory. What’s the one thing you’ve denied, delayed, procrastinated, and you don’t want to work on? I guarantee you. That is your path to freedom. That’s your path to success. You’re going to have to get humble. You’re going to have to look in the mirror and say things that you don’t want to say. When I looked in the mirror and said, “You are a raging alcoholic,” years and years ago, I didn’t want to say that.

Get in touch again with the world and create that space for creativity to flow.

I had said I was going to heal myself because I’ve helped other people. I don’t heal anyone. I’ve helped other people get sober for years and years. I couldn’t do it myself. I checked into a 30-day treatment center. I hired a therapist for 52 straight weeks when I got out of that treatment center. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever accomplished.

My dad died in January. Father’s Day sucked worse than anything. I had the most amazing connection with him. Sometimes, I’ll tell you a story that will blow your mind. I’m going to tell it briefly now and go back to my dad. I got to my dad a couple of hours after he died. I was crushed. My mom and dad were in hospice for four years. The only thing my dad asked for was for his children to be there when he passed. My mom passed last January. Exactly one year later, my dad passed. It’s not uncommon. They were both sick for years.

My father, when he passed, I got there a couple of hours late. I was able to do something very few people get to do. I was able to lay with my father for two and a half hours after he passed. I was able to open my heart and soul. I told him so much. I told him everything. I screamed and cried. I was like a child to him. I told him that I was going to carry on his legacy that I had never mastered. His patience was beyond imagination. His love, he shared in the deepest ways possible. He was a quiet man. He was so wise and benevolent.

When he retired, he became an altar boy in the Catholic Church at 72. For ten years, he was an altar boy seven days a week in the Catholic Church. I tell you all this because of what he said to my brother. He said this to my brother 100 times. He never once said it to me. He said, “The greatest accomplishment your brother David has ever accomplished is not money, books or houses. It’s sobriety.”

I have chills all over my body. What’s resonating for me was you were talking about doing that one thing, which in this case for you was sobriety and how pleasing that is. You’re someone in this mental health space and an incredible leader in this space, and yet it was something you were so challenged with. Often many of us share from that place of knowing because of our personal experiences. What keeps us in the loop of that procrastination and that inability to face that one thing that would make all the other things fall in place? What holds us back from that?

It’s the magical question. I’m blown away you asked it because so few people don’t even go there. We are the thing that keeps us in that place. We are the ones that created it. I’ll give you an example of addiction. There’s all this talk about addiction like alcoholism that it’s genetically based. That’s a bunch of crap. It’s 100% crap. I go up toe to toe with doctors every week telling them, “What you’re doing is you’re encouraging your client to be an alcoholic for life.” Twelve-Step programs, you’re encouraging your clients to be alcoholics for life because they say things like, “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. It’s not your fault. It’s your genetics.” BS.

 

Multiple sclerosis is a genetic disease. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease. Alcoholism is a choice. I’m a person that got sober, not from any medical intervention, pills, surgery or anything to do with doctors. I got sober because I made a choice to go to places with people who could help me understand what I couldn’t understand myself. I was diagnosed in the treatment center with an undiagnosed generalized anxiety disorder that I had as a child, ADHD and depression, which I never knew I had.

That makes sense. You’re an alcoholic. You’re trying to self-medicate. I found out all of this stuff about me that I had no idea. I had to start working on all of this stuff. Here’s the thing. Alcoholism has nothing to do with genetics because we are the ones that put it in our mouths. There’s no gene that comes out that forces you to put a drink down your mouth. You don’t drive by a store and the gene takes over and pulls you into the driveway. There is a genetic link. I have a ton of alcoholism in my family. My aunt died a horrendous death of alcoholism.

There’s a link, but you must drink to turn the link on. Your first choice can be your last choice as well. Your first choice to drink can be your final choice to not drink. Sobriety is not recovery. This is huge. Just not drinking, just not being a sex addict or just not spending emotionally are not recovery. That’s sobriety. You have to start by stopping the addiction. That’s the first one. After you stop your addiction, the sobriety part is 10% of recovery because it’s not about the substances. Addictions are caused by low self-confidence, low self-esteem and peer pressure.

They’re caused by trauma, emotional abuse and neglect. It’s caused by emotions that we don’t know how to cope with. That’s what causes all addictions. It can be caused by a role model in the family that encourages us to eat dessert when we’re good boys and girls. All of a sudden, at sixteen, we’re 100 pounds overweight. We then looked at mom and dad being overweight. We said, “It’s genetics.” Ten percent of people who are obese have a genetic link. A University of Florida study said 6%, but I’m going to bring it up to 10%.

The rest of it, can it be physically related? Sure. There are different metabolic syndromes and different things we need to look at to see, but mainly it’s a choice. Every addiction is a choice. We choose to escape reality. That’s what addictions allow us to do. We get out of reality. Someone who’s addicted to arguing over politics is out of reality for the period of time they’re pissed off. If you want to argue over the vaccine, go next door. I’m not listening to your crap. That’s an addiction. It’s the same thing with religion. Your way is the only way is called righteousness. It’s an addiction.

What we want to do is realize that all of this is self-chosen. Here’s the next thing I want to mention, Christin, about your question. Why do we keep repeating it? That’s the power of the subconscious mind. The conscious mind says, “I think we need to drink.” The subconscious waits for a pattern. The conscious mind says, “It’s Friday.” The subconscious goes, “Friday.” The conscious mind says, “Saturday is a birthday party.” The subconscious goes, “Party.” It starts off with we create the pattern because the subconscious only can regurgitate what the conscious give it. Whatever you give it, the subconscious mind is to repeat it. That might sound like the subconscious is evil. It’s not. It’s just following your lead.

Multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis are genetic diseases, but alcoholism is a freaking choice.

Let me give you another example. If you’ve ever had children, you start teaching them to brush their teeth at a very young age. Most children will hate it, “The toothpaste stings my gums. The brush hurts my teeth.” It’s every excuse in the world. They’re not going to do it. Once they get into a habit of it by the age of fifteen, they don’t have to put a note on their school books saying, “Go back and brush your teeth.” There’s not a note on the dashboard saying, “Go back.” That’s the power of the subconscious with a healthy habit. You put it in. The pattern is put in. We are in complete control of our crap and our greatness. It’s us. There’s no one else. It’s not your parents, partner, next-door neighbor or your kids. We choose.

David, you just took us exactly where I was hoping we would go. That is, we are in control of our own destiny based on this patterning of our subconscious mind that we’ve created. I had a big awakening if I could share it with you. I was doing some work with someone who is helping me tap into the subconscious and do some releasing. While I have had a major trauma in my youth, that is something I’ve worked a lot on releasing and feel very comfortable with. This is what came up for me.

Why I’m sharing this is to express those things that can impact your behavior, like that uncle that you love who said, “Eat dessert.” It’s a positive scenario, but it did create a negative effect of 100 extra pounds. I came into this awareness when my little brother was born. He is by far one of the most spectacular humans on the planet. I love this guy and I’m four years older than him. Through hypnosis, I went back to a memory of when he was born. It imprinted on me that I had this immense, awesome responsibility to back up, protect him, and take care of him.

I remembered that scenario in my life of him being born and the joy I felt, but I never remembered that I shouldered everyone’s safety, happiness and pathway. I have been asked throughout my life, “Why do you push so hard? What are you chasing? What are you going for?” I realized that I needed to reprogram my subconscious mind that I was safe, my brother was safe, and that I didn’t need to perpetuate through my subconscious imprinting. That’s all I got. There’s so much more I want to understand.

Walk us through. You are a multi-bestselling author time and time again. You bring so much opportunity to the globe for people to do this work and to look within, whether it’s through one-on-one, group, seminars, podcasts or certifications, which I want to touch on later on. I have a couple of your books that I have had the pleasure of reading. One of your latest is Helping Americans Heal. I love this conversation because the state of mental health isn’t just for folks who have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder.

Each and every human on the planet now is having a challenge with their mental health. Talk to us a little bit. I highly suggest you pick this up for a very amazing read on how I support my own mental well-being. Walk us through a little bit of it. I know awareness is one, but what are some other tools we can use to support our mental health?

 

One of the hardest things to do is self-diagnose. You know that. It’s almost impossible to self-diagnose. Let’s go back. I’m a huge fan of writing. I always say to people that when you put something in the physical world, it becomes real to both the conscious and subconscious mind. If you want to change something, this thing has got to get woken up. One of the ways it’s woken up is by writing down, “What is it that I’m challenged by?”

Let’s say you’ve become extremely impatient with your children, your partner, in traffic or whatever. You would want to reach out to an accountability partner and say, “Can you help me figure this out? I’m not being myself. I used to workout all the time and found that I’m procrastinating.” I want to make this statement. We believe that through the pandemic, procrastination has become part of a mental illness, without a doubt.

We happen to live in the same city, Christin. I work with a lot of people in town and a lot of very big business owners. You would not believe the number of very large business owners from our town over the last few months coming to me with a huge spike in alcoholism. I mean massive. These are people running huge companies. They’re going, “What the heck is going on?” They could only diagnose that they’re arguing more with their partner and that they’re both drinking more together.

They could diagnose the action, but they couldn’t diagnose the why like, “What’s going on? I have all this discipline before the pandemic. I would limit myself to two drinks on Friday night or whatever it might be. Now it’s seven days a week.” When you were looking to try to identify, that’s where the help of a professional needs to come into play because it could be a variety of things. It might be that when his father was young and was laid off, he went drinking. The guy saw when he was twelve, when his dad was struggling, he started drinking more.

This is a purely subconscious pattern. It only came up to him because he was in the same position as his dad. The subconscious didn’t say to the conscious mind, “Don’t go down the same road as your father.” The subconscious doesn’t know good or bad. It really doesn’t. All it knows is observation and input. If we see it enough, it becomes who we are. In this case, we want to have someone else help us diagnose the origin. This is a crucial point. When we find the origin of our depression, anxiety, emotional spending, increase in food or alcoholism, now we have logic. With logic, we can start to change.

Wishful thinking, hopeful thinking, and positive thinking won’t do a thing to a pattern that is bringing us down the roadway to destruction and elimination of good habits. We have to sit down and look at the origin. This is one of the things that surprises me all the time. Many people are based strictly on emotions, “This feels good. Let me do this more.” They don’t stand back and say, “This feels good but it’s pure sugar. Should I be consuming it?” That’s emotional, “I feel good. I want more,” instead of, “I feel good. Is this good for me?”

If you want to get sober, you have to make a choice to go to places with people who can help you understand what you couldn’t understand yourself.

We could say that for anything, “Saks Fifth Avenue has this great sale. I can get three pairs of jeans for the price I normally pay for one.” That feels great. Is it logical? Does it make sense? I don’t care about how much money you make. Is stuffing three more jeans in your closet going to do what? It’s going to clutter your brain. We know that clutter in your physical space clutters the brain, which could lead to procrastination and a bunch of other stuff. When we get to the origin and go, “That’s why I want to buy more things, drink more, and argue more,” we need to find the origin in order to create a pathway with solutions.

It’s the root cause. Thank you for that. Many of us, me inclusive of that, have just wheeled our way through strong will and ego like, “I can get it done.” The foundation is getting crumbly because of its weight. My body gave out from me, wheeling my way through life. This is the part I love. While it may be showing up or you may be coming into awareness through, “My credit card bill is jacked. What am I doing?” If I willed my way through reducing my financial debt, that’s only fixing that one problem from a very egocentric place.

When you go from the inside out and heal from the inside out, never mind your finances and the three new pairs of jeans that you didn’t need and can’t fit in your closet anyway. It dissipates, but then you also lose weight and are in a better relationship. You’re not so mad at work. To me, instead of band-aiding it with lipstick, bubble gum and Band-Aids, let’s pause and get to the root. I love what you said about identifying what that inner thing is.

It doesn’t have to be a time-intensive experience. You get with a great counselor, therapist, coach or financial planner, whatever your issue is. You get with someone really good. It might take us in our work. I’ve been doing this for many years, so there is an advantage to experience. Normally, it doesn’t take more than 3 to 4 sessions to get to the origin of anything. I mean that sincerely. I don’t get to the origin. Here’s something I want to talk about in the world of therapy, coaching or whatever.

The role that we should be playing is asking the right questions for our clients to do the correct homework so that they come up with their own answers. When they come up with their own answers, they can heal. If you say to them, “You had an abusive childhood. That’s why you’re doing X, Y and Z,” it may not be. We’re making a judgment out of some things they said. Maybe their childhood means nothing to them, but something happened in college at 22 that they’re carrying forward. We give them all of these exercises to do in writing.

Within a short period of time, we can find right away, “Was this person modeling mom, dad, grandma or grandpa in regards to always being anxious?” We can pick up anxiety just from the environment we live in from 0 to 18 and carry that anxiety as if it’s genetics when it’s not at all. We had role models that every day were anxious about something. I remember a story of when I was a kid. I was born in the ’50s and grew up in the ’60s. We had party lines. For people that aren’t familiar with those, it was a real phone. It had the receiver.

 

To save money, you shared it with multiple other families. You would pick it up and if someone is on the line, you got to hang up right away. You then pick it up five minutes later. I don’t know if you remember that. Here’s the crazy thing. Whoever woman in the neighborhood that had the most gossip was the queen of that neighborhood. She was revered. It still is that way nowadays. Nothing has changed regarding gossip. The person that knows the most garbage about whatever is going on TV or the neighbor down the road is cheating with someone else or whatever is still revered.

This is the type of insanity that we run. That thing that I’m talking about back in the ’50s and ’60s, even though the phones have changed and we don’t have party lines anymore, it’s still that same phase in the subconscious like, “Mary, are you serious? How many times was she sleeping with Chad?” It grows and grows. It might be for some people reading this now that your number one issue is gossip. Why do people gossip? People gossip to be on top of the hill. They want to be on the highest hill. They want to know more than everyone else. They want to have sensationalism as their middle name.

That will get you a lot of attention. It might get you a lot of acquaintances, but gossip is negative. Your acquaintances are going to be the same thing you’re gossiping about. This might be something that someone says, “I have an opinion about everything. I know what Biden should do and shouldn’t do. I know what Trump should have done to get re-elected.” It’s all gossip because there’s no solid information that you have, no matter how smart you think you are. I’m not putting anyone down. I’m just being real. No one knows what really goes on behind the insane doors of Washington DC. No one has a clue.

We’re making assumptions and all these projections, but it’s based on what? No one knows. Was the COVID created by men to destroy men? Is that true? How do we know? No one has that answer yet. Even when we have the answer, it probably won’t come out as the truth. We live in a world of untruth. That’s why, other than a few things, I am so apolitical. I’m disgusted with politics. I probably should run for some office because I’m so disgusted.

A very good friend of mine, Scarlett Lewis, many years ago, her son, Jesse, six years of age, was massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Regardless of anyone’s opinion, I don’t care. The fact that we have Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Texas, and the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the last two all happened within the last couple of months or so. We are supposed to be the smartest country in the world, and we’re one of the dumbest countries in the world as we allow assault rifles, which I call machine guns, to still be on our streets.

If Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell’s great-grandchild was slaughtered in a massacre with an assault rifle, we might get politics and politicians to look at it a little differently. Greed and money are so powerful as you and I know. Nothing’s changing until something terrible happens, as if something terrible hasn’t already happened. I just gossiped, if you want to say gossip, but this is true. I’m not going to stand and see another twenty children massacred in an elementary school. I wrote an article on our blog and asked these questions, “How many mass murders have happened with pens, hangers, scissors, knives, swords, bows and arrows, and handguns?”

Addictions are caused by emotions that we don’t know how to cope with.

I was on a New York television station not long ago. I called Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell out and said everything I’m saying now. I have a handgun. I am not anti-guns. I have one for my own protection. If I walked into an elementary school, I would have to be a marksman to kill twenty kids, and the amount of time it takes a machine gun spray to kill twenty kids. They are running all over the place. You would have to be an incredible shooter. What’s wrong with our country? Do we need assault rifles for rabbit hunting? Is that what we’re doing? Are we going to use it for trout fishing? You shoot a deer with an assault rifle. How much venison is left?

I normally don’t go political, but I am so passionate. Christin, you’re a part of a brand new website we created, MentalHealthHealing.org. We have you there. Why? It’s because I believe in you. I believe in your message, just like all the other people we have up there. We have Gabby Giffords up there, shot in the head by a gun, the Congressman from Arizona. We have the Brady Foundation. We got all of these organizations not just for gun control.

Racism is a mental illness. We’ve got organizations up there for that. Can David Essel change the world? No. Can David Essel and Christin Collins start to make a dent? Yes. Can we stay passionate and grounded enough in our work to make a profound impact on this world? The answer is only if we desire to. It’s a choice. Sobriety is a choice. Fighting for rights is a choice. Fighting for a better world is a choice. You can’t sit on your hands and see anything change.

I love that. That brought me full circle to there’s something wrong everywhere. What is truth? Everyone has their own truth based on their own biases and lens, so it gets overwhelming. It can be very heavy. What I love to work towards is my introspection so that I can be the best human I can be in a world where most of the things, I can’t control. I’m not going to get up every day and spend a lot of energy trying to control outside of me things that I don’t control.

Like you said about gossip and judgment, I spent many years judging others and being very vocal about how I thought they were wrong or they should do it differently. I’ve completely realized for me that they have their own right to be who they are. My job is to know me, love me, take care of me, and be a lighthouse for what I believe in like you are. You attract like-minded people. Here’s where I want to go with this as we come to the end of this amazing opportunity to find the spark within.

If working on self, knowing self, and loving self can be foundational to elevating consciousness and all this chaos, you offer unbelievable ways for people to introspect, look within, find the root cause, and do the subconscious healing and not Band-Aid on the top, but help support all of the different facets so they can thrive. I love that you’ve taken an additional step. I want to express gratitude for this.

 

I’m going to be going through this program that you’re offering me. You are now offering a mental health certification for two reasons. One, we need more people trained to support the mental health of the globe. What’s also attracting me to it is that it helps me do the work for myself. Can you please share with us the birthing of that, what it looks like, and how people can go through your certification, not only to go out there and create a business line based on it, but they can also help them on their own journey?

If you could see my back, it would be filled with chills going down my arms and everything else. It’s so crazy what you said. I want to say this. Whenever someone goes to take our life coach certification on mental health, I tell people that the number one reason you’re taking it is for you. I want you to take it for yourself first. I don’t want you thinking, “When I get a client, I’m going to do this,” in the middle of the certification. I want you to ask yourself every time we go through anxiety or depression or we’re talking about dual diagnosis, how do you ask questions and not give advice?

One of the hardest things for people going through the certification when they get out is they want to give advice. We don’t give advice in our coaching program. Ninety percent of the time, our answer is a reverse question to their question. Ninety percent of the time, when they ask a question, we give them an assignment for them to answer their own question. Only 10% of the time do we tell them what to do. That’s only if they’re going down a pathway to hell.

If I see someone and say, “I think I’m going to do this,” and I know it’s going to explode in their face, I will say, “Timeout. Here’s 10% of me. I got to give you advice on this time.” What you said is true. It’s funny because someone coming to the certification asked me how she should be mentally prepared. I thought it was a great question. I’ve never been asked that. It’s like what you just said. I said, “I’ll tell you how to be mentally prepared. Don’t worry about coaching another person. I’ll teach you how to do that. Go through the course for you, and you will come out radically changed in 90 days.”

The weekend workshop is two days long or up to six months if they want to take it to the finish. Most people finish it in about 90 days. That 90-day period is a birthing period of the new you, the amazingly new grounded you, the aware you that has taken your awareness and put it into action. It’s not just being aware anymore. It’s like that magical formula. Awareness doesn’t mean anything until it’s put into action. Once it’s put into action, you are a healed person. You’re walking. It’s incredible. What you said is true.

I love it when people come in. We can say to them, “Don’t worry about others yet. Focus on you with every part of this course.” Here are some pretty cool things. I’ve been certifying coaches since 1996. There have been some cool things that people have walked out with. There will be people at the end of the course who go, “I never knew I had the strength to finish this work. I never knew I had this determination because I’ve got three kids at home and I finished your work, David.” It’s that feeling of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem.

One of the hardest things to do is self-diagnose. It’s really almost impossible.

If you want to do the course in 90 days, you read ten pages a day out of a book and do four pages out of a manual. In 90 days, you’re done. If you want to take six months, you read five pages a day, two pages in the manual, and you’re done. We set it up in such a way that people are structured. They don’t wait until the third month to go, “I’ve got books to read and things to answer.” The mental health course, first, it’s for you. It’s for whoever takes the certification. The very first thing is it’s for you.

Secondly, you get to apply the principles of either a full-time income, part-time income, or whatever you want to help this world heal. As you mentioned, we’re trying to create a small army of people because the government doesn’t have the resources. We know that. They don’t have the resources for our veterans. How are they going to have the resources for 300 million other people? We have to have private groups like ours that are out there on the frontline saying, “We’re going to help. We haven’t been asked to help. That’s okay. We’re going to help anyway.”

We’re self-selecting to help. When I went through my holistic coaching experience, what you said was exactly right. I thought I was being trained on how to give my brilliant advice. As I was going through this six-month program, it was the hardest thing to hold the space to let someone self-discover. I kept cracking up because I was like, “Who do you think you are that you have the answer for others?” What a rip-off for others because how many people get the work done because someone else told them to, or someone else told them how? No one.

Your best lessons are when you self-discover them. My maturation in holding space for others was to get out of this immature “I had all the answers” and now marvel. What it looks like for you and what it looks like for me are two different things. It’s supposed to. We are all wired differently. We’re supposed to be. I know who I am because there’s no me out there. It’s in that difference that I can wear a beautiful tapestry. Thanks to the amazing work you’re leading. We’re able to work towards sharing this planet with one another and with mother Earth. We can stop destroying everything, and we can co-exist by being interconnected.

David, keep shining. I am so grateful that you and I have crossed, even though we’ve lived near each other for decades. I wasn’t ready for you. Thank you for saying yes to spending some time. I know that we’ve done some other work, and we haven’t even begun doing the work we’re going to do together. Folks are going to be lit up from your energy, messaging, and the opportunities you afford them. How can folks best plug in with your work?

We are all over. The best place to go would be the website, TalkDavid.com. You’ll find out there about the MentalHealthHealing.org and Helping Americans Heal. Along with the book, we have a free online program. We’re giving away 500,000 memberships. The minute they sign up, they get our number one bestselling book on positive thinking. The second you sign up, you get Helping Americans Heal.

 

It is free. You get the book first. Every Monday, you’ll get all kinds of resource information. The other thing is you can work with me one-on-one from anywhere in the world. We’ve been doing that for many years. The last thing we have coming up, which we’re super excited about, which I’ve mentioned to Christin, is the mental health certification that came out of this idea.

We’ll be doing a Tuesday a month, two-hour, very condensed, intense, inspirational seminar. You can join us via Zoom or in-person in Florida on different topics like pandemic fatigue, what are the answers to get out of it, anxiety, depression and PTSD, how we move forward in life, weight gain via the pandemic, and what’s the first step to long-term weight loss. We’re picking topics that are so concentrated and dense. We’re going to put two hours into extreme fun and inspiration. Those are a few of the programs that we have coming out. If we talk more, there will be two more.

You are just downloading. You’re such an open vessel, and it’s touching so many lives. I am completely honored to be able to be in space with you and for my own personal development, growth and understanding, and also to be a conduit to support a like-minded community. David, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your vibrancy, authenticity, and willingness to serve in such a bold capacity.

Christin, you are so welcome. I had a blast with you. I can’t wait to see how many different things we’re going to do together because it’s limitless.

Thank you, and thank you all for taking some time to read. I hope that this conversation has reminded you that all you’re looking for is already inside of you. It’s a matter of being here now and reconnecting with the love that you are, that you will find your unique, purposeful life and do that healing work so you can thrive and rock this life out. Until next time, David. Thank you so much.

 

Important Links

• David Essel
• Helping Americans Heal
• Could Dark Movies and Video Games Incite Killings
• MentalHealthHealing.org
• Brady Foundation
• TalkDavid.com
• Marriage.com
• https://Twitter.com/davidessel
• https://www.Facebook.com/davidessel
• https://www.Pinterest.com/davidessel/
• https://www.YouTube.com/c/DavidEsselNOW/

About David Essel

David Essel, M. S. O.M., is a number one best-selling author (12), counselor, master life coach, international speaker, radio/tv host and minister whose mission is to positively affect 2 million people or more every day, in every area of life, regardless of their current circumstances. Celebrity Jenny McCarthy says “David Essel is the new leader of the positive thinking movement”. David’s newest top selling books are “HELPING AMERICANS HEAL: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO HEALING DURING THESE CHALLENGING TIMES” and ” THE ULTIMATE GRATITUDE JOURNAL: 52 WEEKS TO A NEW YOU!”

His previous book, “Love and relationship secrets….that everyone needs to know!”, has been labeled as the “New bible on love and communication”. His 10th book book went #1 bestseller in 3 months, a mystical romance novel set in the Hawaiian Islands called ” Angel on a Surfboard”, which offers the 6 keys to deep love. Another #1 best seller ” FOCUS! SLAY YOUR GOALS…THE PROVEN GUIDE TO HUGE SUCCESS, A POWERFUL ATTITUDE AND PROFOUND LOVE”, was recently selected by the influential blog BOOKAUTHORITY.ORG as one of the top 100 GOAL SETTING BOOKS OF ALL TIME!

David’s work of 40 years is also highly endorsed by the late Wayne Dyer, “Chicken Soup for the Soul” author Mark Victor Hansen, as well as many other celebrities and radio and television networks from around the world. He is verified through Psychology Today, Theravive and Therapy Tribe as one of the top Counselors and Life Coaches in the USA, and is verified through Marriage.com as one of the top relationship counselors and experts in the world.

David accepts new clients every week into his 1 on 1 programs from around the world at www.davidessel.com