Essential Oils: The Beauty of Just Trying Stuff

We have been conditioned to think about wellness and sickness in a certain way in our culture.  Generally when we are sick we go to a doctor, or some other kind of an expert, they prescribe us something, we take it, and a certain amount of time later we experience relief of our symptoms. We are generally not encouraged to think about why we are sick, or what lifestyle changes we could make that may help to keep us from getting sick in a similar way in the future. Just take a pill and feel better. Then if we get sick again, we follow the same process.  Most of us that choose to take a more integrative approach to healthcare tend to look at this process with suspicion and disdain. We have abandon the "traditional medical model" for a better way! We have taken responsibility for our own health! We no longer strive to eliminate symptoms only, but rather to address that actual problem that is causing the symptoms! We are not going to be roped into taking medicine for the side effect of a side effect of a side effect of a drug that we started taking for something completely unrelated to our current problem.  We have been changed from the "Take two of these and call me in the morning" route to wellness! But have we really?

Often times, even when we begin to transition into a more natural way of thinking, we still bring some of the same old thinking with us in the process. We see this in the essential oils community when we constantly see questions like, "What is the regimen for this sickness?" "How do I go about treating my child's this or that?" and "What would you recommend for someone who has this disease?" These kinds of questions abound in our discussion groups and our business builder groups, and they are all good questions.  There isn't anything necessarily wrong with any of them.  The problem is that they demonstrate that often times we approach essential oils in the same way that the traditional medical community approaches medicine. We use oils when we're sick. And we need to find the perfect combination for our specific problem.  But this isn't the way that natural wellness works. Oils may help your body overcome sickness, disease and other impediments to wellness, but the goal of using essential oils is not to just relieve this symptom or that symptom.  The goal of using essential oils is to help your body achieve optimal wellness and avoid sickness as a whole. 

This brings me to my point: the beauty of just trying stuff. I love to answer a question with a question.  I believe we are often to quick to answer questions, and as a result we give bad counsel because we don't have all the necessary information to give a good answer.  So when people approach me with specific questions about how oils may help with this problem or that issue I usually respond with an important question of my own. What oils do you use everyday? I actually don't so much care what oils they use. What I do care about is that they use oils every day. Often times they don't.  They use oils like drugs.  They "take" them to relieve a certain symptom. Drugs are synthetic compounds designed to address a specific symptom. Essential Oils are organic compounds that are designed (by God) to work within your body to achieve optimal wellness. STOP THINKING OF OILS LIKE DRUGS! Oils do not "cure" "diseases" both of those words have been co-opted by the medical model. Only the FDA can say that a product cures a disease. The goal of using essential oils is not to cure diseases. The goal of using essential oils is achieve wellness.  Sometimes, that means helping sick people become well.  Sometimes that's  helping people who are generally healthy achieve a higher level of wellness.

With all of that in mind I want to encourage you to start doing two things today: First, start using oils every day. I have three oils, a blend and a meal replacement that I use every single day. I rub Frankincense around my ears and along my jaw line every day, because over the last two years I have discovered this oil helps me to think more clearly, and it helps me not to be dizzy. I also put a drop of peppermint in both hands, rub them together and then spend 5 to 8 minutes with my hands cupped over my nose heavily breathing in and out. I use Goldenrod every day for men's health purposes. I put a drop of Thieves under my tongue every day to help build my immunity  because I work with people who have all manner of sicknesses through out most of my day. Finally, I drink two ounces of NingXia Red every day to help with general health and well being.  In addition to these 6 things I use every day, I also rotate three new essential oils in every week. On Mondays I pick three new oils to use for the week, and I use them in completely random ways throughout the week.  If I find one to be incredibly helpful in a certain way then I will incorporate it into my daily activity.  This is what I do every day. I'm just trying stuff! In addition to my every day routine, if I'm sick, or have a problem, then I do seek out how oils may be a remedy to my problem.  I'm not saying that there isn't a place for seeking out a regimen for specific issues, and learning how oils may have helped others with those issues, but what I am saying is that when cases arise where you need to do these kinds of things you should add them to whatever you are already doing in your daily life to achieve optimal health.

Second, I want to encourage you to start thinking of oils in terms of helping you achieve wellness, and not in terms of curing sickness and disease. Your bodies immunity system is an incredible blessing from God, designed to protect your body from sickness and disease. Think of essential oils as tools to help build your immune system, and to help contribute to the overall proper function of your body. The essential oils themselves do not cure anything. They only help your body do what God designed for it to do. If we think of essential oils as tools to help with our wellness then we will approach the way that we use them, and the way that we communicate about them in a way that promotes wellness, and not just in terms of sickness and disease.

Start today. Use your oils everyday. Talk to people about your oils everyday.  But do so in a way that celebrates them as God's gift for promoting wellness, and not in a way that is shackled the traditional medical models way of thinking. 

Theology and Essential Oils: Rethinking the Secular and the Sacred

Part of what it means to have a biblical worldview is to examine every topic through the lens of God's Word. Since we believe that the Bible is the Word of God it is therefore the standard by which we go about judging all truth claims. This means that we must constantly be asking ourselves everyday how the various truth claims that we engage on a daily basis line up with what the Word of God says.  This concept is grating sometimes though.  We live in a world that likes to separate, distinctly label, and categorize every activity, thought, and idea into distinctly specific different spaces with no room for overlap between them. There is family, there is work, there is church, there is play, and they are ALL separate. And we are taught that in order to have true balance in our lives we have to have the correct combination of all of these categories. But while we need all of them, it is also important that we keep them separate and distinct from one another. In this way of thinking, the Bible is relegated to church, and MAYBE family. The problem of course is that while this thinking may be consistent with the narrative that is constantly pushed on us by the culture, it is exceedingly inconsistent with a Biblically consistent Christian worldview. For Christians God is a part of every aspect of our lives, indeed He should be the center piece of all that we do. And since He is the center piece of all that we do, His Word ought to govern our thought in every aspect of life. There is no distinction between that which is secular and that which is sacred in the Christian worldview. God is at the center of all of it. We strive to worship Him in all that we do.  We may distinguish the way that we go about worshiping Him in different contexts such as for example, corporate worship, verses family worship, verses worshiping in the context of work, verses worshiping Him through intimacy with our spouse. Clearly not all of these elements of worship share propriety in all settings, BUT none the less, for Christians they are all worship.

So, what does all of this have to do with Young Living and Essential Oils? Three things. First, our thinking regarding Young Living and Essential Oils needs to be governed according to Scripture. As part of our walk with God as Christian we must have a worldview that is deeply rooted in and informed understanding of the Word of God.  This is accomplished by fully immersing ourselves in the study of God's word, in reading good books by good authors (R.C. Sproul, Voddie Baucham, John Piper etc.) that teach us truth about God's word, and surrounding ourselves with fellow brothers and sisters that have the same passion for God's Word that we have. One of the functions of this kind of worldview is to determine truth according to the Word of God. In other words, as we grow in our understanding of God's Word begin to learn how to think FIRST according to what God's Word says, and then evaluate other materials. In the case of essential oils this thinking would include a discussion of God's created order, the purpose for which God created plants, the impact of the Fall in Genesis 3 on creation, and a general biblical understanding of what human wellness looks like.  

 Second, we need to evaluate claims made regarding Young Living and Essential Oils against the Word of God.  There are lots of materials published about Young Living Essential Oils. Some are published by Young Living (Product guides and advertising materials), some are published outside of the company (Healing Oils of the Bible, and Chemistry of Essential Oils by David Stewart), and some are published by distributors (Blogs such as this, and ebooks that can be found all across the web). These resources contain a wealth of excellent information regarding the history, chemistry, and use of essential oils. The problem is that there also can be a dangerous mixture of truth AND error in these resources.  As the saying goes, error mixed with a little bit of truth is the most dangerous kind.  Specifically, the New Age Movement is very heavily involved in the Essential Oils industry in general, and in Young Living specifically.  This doesn't mean that we can't use and promote Young Living, but it does mean we need to be vigilant about the way that we go about reading, and repeating this material. We need to evaluate this material against the Biblical worldview that was discussed above. Is it consistent with what the Bible says about God? Is it consistent with what the Bible says about man? Is it consistent with What the Bible says about Creation? Is it consistent with what the Bible says about the Gospel? To clarify I'm not saying we need to walk on egg shells, or spend hours weighing every word whenever we write something about Young Living. I'm simply saying that we need to be thoughtful as we read and repeat the material that is out there. Specifically, we need to evaluate the claims made against the Word of God before we receive or repeat them.    

Third, building our business should not be an end in itself, its should be a means to the end of brining Glory to God. This one is actually the most important of the three. We all have a lot of "why's" for building our business. Knowing why we do what we do is an incredibly important element of building a business. There can be any number of reasons that we are building our own business, but for Christians the ultimate "why" is always the Glory of God. Making sure that the Glory of God is our first and most important why will change the entire way that we go about building our business on a number of levels. For the purpose of this blog, prioritizing the Glory of God means striving to please Him in every element of the way we go about building our business, and NOT compromising our faith, EVEN when our faith gets in the way of our business. It's important to remember that God is the ultimate provider of all good things. (James 1:17) God will use your hard work to bring about your success, but ultimately your success does not depend solely on you. It depends primarily on Him. It is incredibly freeing to know that you work for the Glory of God when you realize that the results are ultimately in His hands. 

Finally, why do I keep beating this drum? Since I started writing blogs on this topic some have accused me of being nit picky, divisive, and annoying. I actually can appreciate where these people are coming from. I mean aren't there enough issues to worry about with adding this whole other layer? But the reality is that I'm not addressing new issues here. Accusations have been persistently raised against Young Living and Christians who participate in Young Living regarding the New Age Movement. At this point I have spent HOURS defending the legitimacy of Christians participating in the Young Living both in public forums as well as private conversations. I fully believe that Christians can participate in Young Living with a clear conscience regardless of some the New Age Theology that is out there within Young Living.  However, if Christians are going to participate then we have a responsibility that comes along with our participation. That responsibility is to see that the Gospel and the Glory of God does not get draged through the mud as a result of our participation. We need to be aware of the dangers, we need to point out the dangers, and we need to be able to differentiate truth from error. We have the responsibility to make the distinction between our approval of using Young Living Oils and our disapproval of New Age Theology. We have the responsibility to see to it that the Glory of God remains supreme in all things, including our Young Living business, even when this means a little extra work and vigilance on our part.

Soli Deo Gloria

Three Keys to Better Reaching Your Network

One of the greatest mistakes that network marketing professionals make early in their business is  attempting to be someone they are not.  This is done in the name of being duplicable. They see someone who is growing their business by leaps and bounds by writing a blog, so they start a blog.  The problem of course is that they have never written a blog before, and are not particularly good at writing.  But because someone else is having success by writing a blog they think writing a blog is the absolutely key to being successful. On the other hand, they see someone else who is being successful by teaching classes.  So they begin steps to start as many classes as they possibly can.  The problem is that the other person is particularly gifted at public speaking, and the budding Network Marketing Professional is terrified of speaking in front of people. The point here is this, just because someone is having success with one form of communication does not necessarily mean that you will have success with the same method.

Key 1: Know Yourself
If you want to be successful at recruiting and prospecting, you have to know yourself. Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. If you are terrified of speaking in public then teaching 101 classes in person may not be your best strategy.   If you don't enjoy writing, then starting a blog may not be the best strategy for you.  You don't have to do all the things that your upline is doing.  Being duplicable doesn't mean you have to match their talent or personal strategy.  We are not attempting to reproduce every aspect of each leader; we are reproducing a process. How you go about prospecting and recruiting does not necessarily have to be the same as the person who is coaching you.  If your coach is a incredibly good at public speaking, but you are a master of social media then you should consider doing your 101 classes online rather than in person. It's okay to prefer social media to person to person. It's also okay to prefer one on one to groups, or groups to one on one.
Know your strengths. Focus on your strengths first.  Start your business by doing things that you love to do! Grow in your strengths.  Practice them and get better at them.  Find other people who are using the same things that you love to grow their business and look at how they are doing it and follow their example.
Know your weaknesses. Understand that you may be able to start your business on your strengths, but eventually your going to have to improve your weaknesses. You may not be great at public speaking, but eventually your probably going to want to address your whole team at one time in person. You're going to have to work on this area.  You don't have to make it your favorite thing to do, but you do need improve yourself by stepping outside of your comfort zone. If you don't want to grow as a person then you probably shouldn't be a business owner.

Key 2: Know Your Network
This may not seem like a very profound statement but it's true, and it's important to say so here goes: YOU KNOW THE PEOPLE THAT YOU KNOW. Your network is made up of all kinds of people whose life you influence in some way.  These are friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers and business associates who all have at least one thing in common: they all know you. You are in the best position to communicate to them how your product can positively affect their life. Since they are your network, you are in the best position to determine how best to reach out to them. If your network is primarily made up of computer geek hermits who hate to leave their house, an in home 101 is probably not the best option for reaching them. On the other hand if your network is made up primarily of stay at home moms who can't wait for a chance to get out of the house, a 101 class in your home may be GREAT! Don't just try to match what's working for someone else.  Strive to do what works for you, and for your network.

Key 3: Know Your Upline
Know several generations of your upline. Seek them out and listen to what they say.  Strive to follow their leadership and model them in their process. It's important for you to understand that their success depends on your success. They are there to help you be better.It's also important for you to understand that they are paying attention to their entire downline. They often see the 10,000 foot view which means they know what's going on in general, and they are more aware of what's going on in the company in particular, but they may not be aware of your specific situation.  So you are going to need to seek them out. My wife and I have a very specific policy in this area.  We don't chase people down and try to coach them.  We coach people who are committed and seek us out for coaching.  Also understand that part of your uplines job is to help you be a better team member.  Sometimes that means your upline may strive to help you see how you can solve the problem yourself. They are doing this to help you be better, and to help them better manage their time. Any good upline has as their primary goal in all of their interactions with you to find some way to help you be better. If you allow them to influence you in this way it will usually be to your benefit.

Seeking to have a better knowledge of these three areas will require effort on your part.  It will require thoughtful consideration and time commitment. But you will be better because of your commitment to grow as a business builder.