Letting Go of an Arrival Mentality

Is an arrival mentality infiltrating your thinking and actually hindering your healing and freedom journey when it comes to your mental, emotional, and relationship health? I find myself, over the decades, addressing the hinderance of an arrival mentality. It is one I have had to address in my own thinking. What I have learned has unlocked a lot of freedom and empowered my life greatly. Today I want to address how this arrival mentality works against you and keeps you from the beauty of a journey mindset.

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What Is an Arrival Mentality?

It’s a mindset of Christians treating themselves as though they should be manifesting their life as a finished product. You hold yourself to a perfectionistic standard, believing you need to be a certain way or be at a certain place in your journey. If you’re not there, you condemn yourself, shame yourself, and get really discouraged. You fall into a lot of despair because you’ve come under an unhealthy expectation of what this journey actually looks like.

Because it is a journey.

Now, there’s a finished work of Jesus Christ. We talk about that doctrinally, and we’ve embraced it. But many of us get confused because we’ve not allowed ourselves to realize that the grace of Jesus Christ has given us an opportunity to walk a journey of learning what we received.

You’ll spend the rest of your life learning, discovering, and practicing what it means to live in His love—to walk in truth that sets you free, to experience the power of His grace over your life. But an arrival mentality doesn’t give you room to do that. You’re constantly putting pressure on yourself that you should be past that issue, really by yesterday. Why am I still struggling with this? And so you fall under a deep sense of condemnation and shame.

It’s discouraging so many people.

How This Plays Out

Let’s talk about mental health. You have some kind of mental health battle—anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, mood issues. You get real frustrated that you’re struggling with it. You get mad, you get angry, you start beating yourself up over it, and you have this sense of, I’ve got to get past this struggle as soon as possible.

People write me questions all the time:

Mark, how do I get past this and live the life I’m supposed to live?

Mark, how do I just overcome this so I can put it behind me?

Mark, how can I get away from this?

The language we’re using reveals this arrival thing—this belief that I need to get to a place where this is no longer a battle and I never struggle with it ever again. You have an expectation that you should overcome something and never have to deal with that issue again.

How Christians Perpetuates This

In all honesty, there are things we do in the church that perpetuate this mindset, because Christians talk like this:

“In 2017, I was completely healed from depression.”

It’s wonderful to know that you had breakthrough, but I also cringe a bit, because it can create an unhealthy expectation. Others say, “God will completely deliver you from depression”—but there’s an underlying mindset that you’ll never have to deal with depression ever again.

I’ve dealt with tons and tons of people who’ve talked like this: “Mark, I don’t understand why I’m having depression, because God completely healed me from it ten years ago.”

Well, you need to have a journey mindset. You have an arrival mindset. You thought you were supposed to be completely free, which meant you will never have to deal with it again.

The truth is, there’s something within us that wants to get free, and what’s on the other side of freedom that we want? Comfortability.

I don’t want to be anxious anymore, because then I’ll be comfortable.

It’s an unhealthy expectation.

The Problem with Crisis Mode

You need to learn to grow through your anxiety battle so that you actually get stronger, more resilient—you mature, you grow deeper. Because when the battle comes up again with an arrival mentality, you’re panicking: Oh my goodness, I’m regressing. I’m going backwards. Now you’re adding on more bondage and more condemnation to what you’re already struggling with.

A lot of times I have to remind people: this isn’t about going backwards. It’s about going deeper. Because you wanted a quick fix. You wanted a way out. A lot of times when we have battles, we go into crisis mode and just want to hurry up and feel better. But we need to buckle up for the journey.

People come into my channel, my email box, my community—they come in “hot” with intense expectations of desperation. They have all these issues and just want to get free by last week–that kind of intensity and pressure. I have to spend a lot of time redirecting people: It is important to get settled into a journey. A journey of learning, practice and continual healing and freedom.

That frustrates people at first because they’ve been taught an arrival mentality. You just pray—boom—done.

I’m not saying you don’t have breakthrough moments. But the expectation is, I had a breakthrough, and I’ll never have to deal with it again. And what do we do? We kind of just want to go back into our comfort zone.

Then it kicks up again. And you know what? That’s a signal. It’s a reminder. Number one, you’re on a journey. And number two, what you practice and what you learn needs to be continually practiced and continually cultivated, because it’s time to go deeper.

A Prayer That Changed Everything

I had times with intrusive thoughts where I was like, Whew, I’m doing good. That stuff isn’t bothering me anymore. And I would just kind of go back to old ways or old patterns. Really, I would just go back to wanting to be comfortable.

But there was a day where it changed for me. Where my prayer changed.

My prayer wasn’t, God, just take this off of me. Get it away from me.

My prayer became, God, help me to be more comfortable with the uncomfortable.

I’ve got to learn to develop a resilience that I don’t currently have cultivated in my life. I’ve got to learn how to practice tools that become a part of my journey.

So in my life now, I’m not afraid of my intrusive thought battlegrounds showing up again. Because I don’t have this expectation that I need to be free from all patterns and all things. I have a journey mindset. So when things pop up, it’s like, Okay, I have tools. I have things within my arsenal I can apply to this. I don’t have to hyperventilate over it, and I don’t have to condemn myself.

Many are living in self-condemnation because they haven’t found themselves in an arrival place.

Even Paul himself said, “It’s not that I’ve attained…”

We have this arrival mentality that is working against us.

Embracing a Journey Mindset

Where do you find you need to make an adjustment here and embrace a journey mindset?

You’re on a journey. So whatever battle you’re facing, if you look at it and say, I’m on a journey—

If you have OCD issues, intrusive thoughts, scrupulosity: I’m going to have to learn how to relate to thoughts that arrive at me that make me compulsive.

If you have anxiety: I have to learn how to grow deeper in the love of God that casts out fear—in power, love, and a sound mind. Faith, hope, and love.

If you have depression battles, mood issues: I have to learn what it means to approach those things with greater love and compassion, but also building a sense of resilience. I’m on a journey of that. That’s my journey.

If you have that mindset, now you’re more gracious to yourself. You get out of this I need to be free so that I never have to deal with it again thinking.

Instead, you lovingly and graciously remind yourself that you are on a journey–a beautiful and often messy journey of learning, relearning, healing and growing. And God is patient with us all along the way. So be patient with yourself.

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free