•    Diet
•    Sleep
•    Exercise

You need knowledge about these areas so you provide time and expend energy to inform yourself of what is involved. Your interest is to act according to your knowledge.

There may be days when you are tempted, or even choose, to consciously behave in ways contrary to your knowledge. Then you renew your commitment to your goal and start over again.

If, on a daily basis, you do what is necessary, you are on your way to good physical health. No one else can do these things for you.

Likewise, if your goal is to build self-respect-or self-love, you also pay attention to some important details. You need knowledge, so you provide the time and energy to inform yourself of what is involved. Your intent is to act according to your knowledge. No one else can do this for you. Either you do this for yourself or it won’t be done.

If you neglect these areas, you will sooner or later sense a dislike of yourself and your neighbor.

The Bible gives some broad, basic instructions for wholesome living. Jesus said:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38).

How can you know if you love God that much?

Jesus answers that question:

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments (John 14:15).

If you seek physical health, you learn the fundamentals, get into shape, and strive constantly to stay in shape. The effort and the result is one of the delights of life. If you seek self-respect or self-love, you learn the fundamentals, get into shape, and strive constantly to stay in shape. The effort and the result is one of the delights of your life.

Jesus said there is another very important commandment:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

I have spent a lifetime listening to the stories of people who don’t like themselves. As a result, they have problems loving other people. If you don’t love yourself, you are out of shape and unable to love your neighbor as Jesus commanded.

The details of why my clients don’t love themselves vary, but gradually I’ve become aware of recurring themes in these stories as people tell me how they have chipped away at their own self-respect. This leads to personal anxiety and misery as well as trouble with other people in the following areas:

• Behavior
• Speech
• Reactions
• Thoughts
• Goals

To locate yourself–-that is, to determine if your performance in each of these areas builds up or chips away at your self-respect–-you need a standard to go by, a mirror. This post has used the Bible as the standard.

Hopefully, we have whetted your appetite to know more, and you will search your Bible to enlarge your knowledge.

As your behavior, speech, reactions, thoughts, and goals come closer to matching God’s commandments, you will have a growing sense of self-respect and a growing love for your neighbor.

This is the “Conclusion” from Dr. Brandt’s book, I Want Happiness Now!

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Experience freedom and healing from sin problems

In our society today, millions of people are suffering from chronic worry, hypertension, prejudice, guilt, hatred, fear, and the harassment of failure. Unfortunately, an alarming number of people suffering from these ailments are professing Christians! The person who knows Christ as Savior is not immune to mental or emotional problems. He is as susceptible to tension and anxiety as a non-Christian working beside him at the office or plant or living next door.

If you are struggling with a difficulty, you are not alone. That is, you are not the only one facing a problem, even though you share your inner conflict with no one.

“My problem is so simple,” you say. “How can I talk about it? I can see that I’m mad at my wife. But when I think of the inconsequential things over which I’m mad, I get confused. Why should I lose my temper over a misplaced pair of socks, or why would I leave the house upset because she disapproves of my bowling teammates?”

“But the way I am–my reactions to life at home, at work, at church, with my relatives–cause me to lose sleep at night, to lash out at the children, to say things I don’t mean. I think thoughts that surprise me. I tell myself, ‘This can’t be me.'”

The struggle for peace is just that–recognizing and dealing with the sin that causes your problem. Paul Tournier, a Christian psychiatrist in Switzerland, says everyone experiences guilt feelings and seeks to escape them by self-justification and repression of conscience. “To tear men from this impossible situation and to make them capable once more of receiving grace, God must therefore first of all awaken within them the repressed guilt” (Guilt and Grace, Harper and Row, p. 142).

Sometimes, Tournier explains, this arousal comes only through severe dealings, which are necessary to lead men to the experience of repentance and grace. He writes, “For a man crushed by the consciousness of his guilt, the Bible offers the certainty of pardon and grace. But to one who denies this it bears terrible threats in order to make him introspect himself” (Guilt and Grace, p. 145).

Tournier then refers to God’s words in the Book of Jeremiah: “I will bring judgment upon you because of your saying, ‘I have not sinned'” (Jer. 2:35). The aim of “operation severity,” Tournier says, “is not the crushing of the sinner but, on the contrary, his salvation. For that, God must pull him out of the vicious circle of his natural attempts at self-justification” (Guilt and Grace, p. 146).

In coming to terms with yourself, you must consider your relationships to the people and events in your life. Because mental health is related to your attitudes toward people, it is not a matter primarily for the physician. The Bible–not medical books–holds the key. God’s Word deals with one’s relationships with others, with standards of conduct, with emotions, with the deep issues of life, with the heart of a man before God. The struggle for peace is a spiritual matter, involving your soul or spirit and how you react to the things that come your way. The source of peace involves your relationship to God.

This information is an excerpt of Chapter 1, “Mental Health – Whose Problem?” from Dr. Brandt’s book The Struggle for Inner Peace currently available as an e-book.

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