Goodbye, 360!: Weighing Your Self-Esteem

By Patrick Sinclair Mayes

Say "Goodbye" to comparison, conflict, and a lot of other things that are keeping you from being the best you!

Are you tired of going through the motions? By that I mean the emotions of dealing with the same things repeatedly. Whether it is disappointment from the scale at the gym, relationship issues, or even looking at e

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685569082

Patrick Sinclair Mayes

Patrick Sinclair Mayes (P.S. Mayes) is the Campus Pastor at Pure Heart Church in Peoria, AZ. He has a heart to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with everyone he meets by the way he lives, teaches, smiles, prays, gives, and expresses worship. Patrick and his wife, Sharonda, being married since 2002, live in AZ with their two children, Elijah and Kaylah, son-in-law, Sam, grand girls (Autumn and Annah), Mom (Brenda), and Maltese poodle, Samson.

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Goodbye, 360!

Weighing Your Self-Esteem

Patrick Sinclair Mayes

Goodbye, 360! Weighing Your Self-Esteem

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by Patrick Sinclair Mayes

Scripture quotations marked AMPC are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-68556-907-5

E-ISBN: 978-1-68556-908-2

Acknowledgments

To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, my Heavenly Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Holy Spirit, You are my Creator, Savior, and Present Helper; with You, nothing is impossible! I love You!

To my one true love, partner, and woman of my dreams, Sharonda, you always encourage me to be the best man God has created me to be. I love you so much!

To our kids, Kaylah (Sam) and Elijah, thank you all for your sacrifice and love.

To the rest of my family, especially my mom, Arnetta, and Mama (my grandma), thank you for your prayers, love, and support in everything that I have ever done. I miss you, Mama!

To my church family, those who have been graced with hearing many of the messages and songs that God has placed in my heart and who have inspired me to keep pushing beyond the limits, I love all of you!

To all of my extended family and friends, thank you for the continual love, support, and prayers.

To all of the people who have ever bullied, lied, insulted, gossiped, falsely accused, hurt me, or broken my heart, thank you for helping me to build a good character in the face of rejection, intimidation, offense, and fear. I forgive and love you all (seriously)!

To everyone who reads this book, I want to say thank you. My prayer is that your life will be touched in a great way!

Endorsement

Courageous! Pastor Patrick is one of the most courageous leaders I have ever known. In 2020, I asked him to consider partnering with Pure Heart Church and me to become one church with two experiences. I knew asking a predominately African American church to partner with a predominately White church would not be for the faint at heart. My friend and partner in ministry went all in! One year later, our Peoria, AZ campus has one of the greatest examples of unity I have ever seen. Under Pastor Mayes’ leadership, this dream has become a reality. The pain has been real, but the outcome is beautiful! Unity is hard, so it requires courageous leadership. Now my friend has taken this courage and authored a book that will call all of us to look deep into our hearts and find the healing our souls long for. This will take courage, but you will have a courageous leader who will help you go there. I know you will be stronger after reading and applying this book to your life. The pain will be real, but the outcome will be beautiful!

—Pastor Dan Steffen Sr.

Pure Heart Church

"Reading Goodbye, 360! is an absolute must! Be ready to be touched and transformed as this first-time and soon-to-be bestselling author Patrick Mayes teaches you his life message of overcoming and freedom from the secret traps of low self-esteem. Say goodbye to the limits of yesterday as you journey to the future you were made to live!"

—Pastor Kenneth Albin

Author, Founder of Save the Nations

Foreword

Goodbye, 360! This book will change your life through revelations that will change your mind about the biggest challenge we all face…ourselves. Patrick Mayes has written an engaging, humorous but powerful account of his journey to wholeness that captures your heart from the first sentence. This is full of powerful truths that will transform the way you see yourself. I recommend this as a tool for people of all ages who want to be free and stay free. I have known Patrick for many years, and I can attest to the beautiful and joyous impact of his life on all of us who have had the privilege of knowing him. Thank you, Patrick Mayes, for sharing your life to change mine.

Blessings,

Dr. Shirley Arnold

Hello, 360!

Hello, 360! When I met 360, I was a late teen, seventeen, with my mother in a small doctor’s office somewhere on the Northwest Side of San Antonio, TX. I thought I was normal. The doctor came in after a series of tests and pretty much killed any hope I had of getting a girlfriend, marrying her, and having children of my own, or so I thought. Those details will come later on, but 360 and I became quite acquainted on that day. The name 360 is what I have given to what was my low self-esteem. If Oscar Mayer could give a first name to his bologna (that sounds all kind of wrong), certainly I can nickname the subjective opinion I had of myself.

Why did I choose the name 360? That number not only represented the number of pounds that I couldn’t seem to get under any time I stepped on the scale, but more so the hamster wheel of recurring thoughts, behaviors, and patterns that came as a result of the interactions you will hear about in each of the following chapters. Going around in circles, I had been dancing for over thirty years, waltzing my way through a life where fear of rejection, failure, and even the fear of acceptance kept me from being all that God created me to be and using every gift that He gave me earlier in my life. I moonwalked away from my dreams and nearly missed an opportunity of a lifetime. One day I got fed up and said, Not anymore! I gave the call for the last dance! I was not going to have any more of the self-pity salsa, fearful trotting, or tear-filled tangoing (I really can’t dance)! I declared the dawn of a new day and that I would jive to a new rhythm! Juju on that beat, 360, goodbye!

After leaving the doctor’s office that day, I was faced with a different reality, one I did not ask for. Those birth defects, at least that is what I considered them to be, with help from bullies, a big belly, a bountiful supply of blunderings, a bad breakup, and Beelzebub (the devil) all had a part in the birth, nurturing, and growth of 360. Then there was me. It is easy to point the finger at everyone else, but I ultimately had a choice to accept what people said about me. I could give in to what I told myself about myself, or I could believe what God said about me, which was a statement I heard so much growing up in church. I felt like Samuel in the Bible; I was always in church (not at, but in). The bottom line is that I had a choice, and I chose to live my best life while I still could. Goodbye, 360! Listen, if you have struggled or still have battles with your self-esteem, the next pages will change your life! If you have never had low self-esteem or battled with what you think about yourself, read it anyway so you can help someone else who might be. Every chapter you read will begin with a part of my life where the regard I had for myself was put to the test. In each situation, there was a lesson learned that I will share with you in hopes that you, too, will win the war going on inside of you. After you finish, you will say goodbye to whatever is holding you back and bring it on to the things trying to keep you from being all that you were born to become. Just don’t name them 360 because that has already been done away with!

Chapter 1

Self-Esteem

It was about 6:15 p.m. when I arrived at the Arizona State University, West Campus. Class started at 6 p.m., and I was rushing from work, nearly thirty minutes away, to get there. When I arrived, I knew it would be another hour to get to class from the long journey through the concrete wilderness (the parking lot). When I finally made it to class, I stood at the door and peeked in to see where I could go to be seated and not interrupt the professor, who had already begun giving instruction. I felt unusual anxiety and started asking myself questions that I did not even think about before. I was rarely, if ever, this late. What are people going to think when they see you coming in the door? I asked myself. "Where can you sit without hitting people in the back of the head with your belly, Klump? Is your shirt too tight? What do you smell like? Am I sweating? The only seat is by the cute girl; OMG, you cannot sit there. Why not? Wait, what time is it? 6:30 p.m. I am already too late. I am going to go home. What do I tell my wife?" Needless to say, I left that day, stopped at McDonald’s (go figure), drove home very slowly, and I won’t tell you whether I lied or not to my wife about class being canceled. What made me stop going through that door in the first place? Why did I even question myself? My low self-esteem, 360, made me do it.

Self-Esteem

Considered one of the most important factors in the psychological makeup of human beings is our self-esteem. It is our opinion about ourselves. Everybody has one, and most recognize it early in their childhood stages. Teachers, doctors, and parents spend hours trying to help students, patients, and children boost their mental metabolism or self-esteem. All types of things impact what we think about ourselves, from age, weight, and height to culture, social and financial status, disability, how people react to us, what they say about us, and much more. Our relationships and people who are in our lives, parents, siblings, teachers, friends, etc., are important parts of our cognitive being. All of these things help to determine the degree of value we place on who we are and what we can do. Self-esteem, in my opinion, can really be a measure of how much we honor ourselves. It is the source of who we are, what we become, and why we do what we do every day!

There are varying degrees to measure esteem: low, high, and healthy. People with low self-esteem will, oftentimes, talk themselves out of things, focusing on what they perceive to be weaknesses, giving themselves little benefit of the doubt, becoming timid and shy, fearing failure or acceptance; in their own minds thinking themselves not be good enough, weak, inferior, and convinced that everybody else is more qualified. I was that person. I refer to it as bony self-esteem. I stole that name from the nickname my grandfather gave me when I was just a lad sitting by his side every morning eating egg sandwiches and drinking grapefruit juice. He would ask me weird, off-the-wall questions like, Bony, do you know your Roman numerals? When I said, Yes, sir, he would ask me to give them to him up to C. When I finished, I would ask if they were right, and just to hear him say, Yep, was all I needed to know I was approved. It’s not healthy to give in to those negative things that eat away at you so much that you become weak and slowly progress in your life’s purpose or anything for that matter. As a matter of fact, one of the greatest men in our world’s history, whose name was Moses, at one point in his life showed signs