The Ultimate Secret to Happiness

BM: It is our privilege today to introduce you to Dr. Winn Henderson. He is a retired medical doctor who has a radio program called "Share Your Mission," and also has written a book that we’re looking at here today by the same title, "Share Your Mission." Dr. Henderson, welcome to Life Quest.

WH: Bob, it’s great to be on your program today. I’ve heard a of lot of fine things about your program and I’m sure that you’re doing a lot of good for a lot of people in this world.

BM: We appreciate having you here. You actually live just a few miles north of us here in the Knoxville area and for years, have been a practicing physician here. Talk to us about your own personal spiritual journey.

WH: Bob, like you said, I practiced for many years here in Knoxville and at the end, was practicing addiction medicine. I found that many of the people who came into my practice with complaints like anxiety, depression, and other kinds of psychological symptoms wanted a quick fix for their problem. They thought they would get it either through psychotherapeutic counseling or medication.

I found out over the years that this didn’t work...... not the secular type of counseling........ and that medication didn’t work for solving any problems. It actually kept them from getting to the basic cause of the problem and doing something about it. I found out from talking to my patients that what we were dealing with was a spiritual problem and not a problem that could be solved with drugs or secular counseling.

BM: Dr. Henderson, did you grow up in a spiritual family?

WH: Yes. I was brought up in the Baptist church in Florida.

BM: I think a love for the Lord gives you a sense of compassion, but sometimes I have found in various professions, we get a little frustrated because many of the people that we work with, are Christians yet have addiction problems.

WH: That’s true. Being a Christian per se, doesn’t necessarily give you the information that you need in order to break out of the problem that you have with compulsive, addictive behaviors that aren’t doing you any good.

I wrote a book called "The Four Questions," that addresses this problem, and I’d be happy to give a free copy to any of your listeners that would like to read the book. We can talk about that later.

There are four spiritual questions that one first needs to be able to answer and then to be able to apply in order to be happy and content in this life. They are: Who am I, Where did I come from, What am I doing here, and Where am I going when I’m done? If you can answer and apply these four questions, you no longer have a need for alcohol or drugs, bad relationships, overeating, gambling, or any of the 22 different addictive behaviors.

So that’s how I go about helping people. I help them find the basic cause of why they’re unhappy and why they’re engaging in these behaviors that aren’t doing them any good.

BM: Your book, "Share Your Mission," which are the stories or the responses of people .....is really an outgrowth.......

WH: "Share Your Mission" is an outgrowth of “The Four Questions" which is my basic primer on addictive and compulsive type behaviors. "Share Your Mission" developed from the third question: What am I doing here? This is the most important question you can ask relating to whether you are happy with your life.

I believe God has given each of us a mission to accomplish and that’s why we were created. That’s my personal belief. I found that if one can get in touch with what it is that God put him or her here to do and then start doing it, they will be happy and won’t have any problems with addictions. If for any reason they never gain the understanding of what they were created for, or even if they do and then don’t pursue it, they’ll never be happy.

BM: So one of the challenges that you face in working with..... one of the things that you learn through addiction medicine is that in people thinking about themselves and having a sense of mission, or I guess a sense of lost ness that drives them to these various kinds of addictive behaviors, and if somehow they can get a sense of mission and purpose that they can be freed from their addictions.

WH: Absolutely! That plus the fact that relationships are also important. For example consider the first two questions: Who am I, and Where did I come from? If you understand that you’re a child of God and came from God, it makes you look at yourself differently and value yourself differently than you would if you thought that you were here merely as a result of, or the product of a union between your mother and your father.

BM: I was trying to understand earlier because sometimes, what we’re saying, if we say well, What am I doing here?........I can be a completely secular person, no religious convictions, no concept of the cross, no concept of God or God’s love for me, and still have an answer for that.

But when you put the first two questions in there, Who am I ? and Where did I come from?, those Christian roots begin to come into play and make all the difference in the world.

WH: That’s right, the four question work together. In my opinion, they’re the most four important questions that you’ll ever ask yourself.

BM: OK. Now let’s take somebody that’s having struggles with let’s say, alcohol. They are in a bar drinking. Are you suggesting to sit down and start talking to them across the bar counter about these questions?

WH: It’s never too early to talk to anybody about the problem, regardless of where you find them. Sometimes they’re not receptive and if they’re not receptive, you can’t do a whole lot, but God sometimes allows us to sink into such low depths in our lives that things are so uncomfortable and so painful that we’re willing to do anything to stop the pain and suffering. Sometimes it’s only at this point that one is willing to say, “I give up, I can’t do it myself. I’m going to rely on God.” When someone gets to that point, I have the answer for them.

BM: I’m looking at this as a question of reality. It’s the core belief of who I am. That’s probably a struggle for a lot of people.

WH: Yes, I’ve talked with a lot of people who haven’t agreed with the answer that I found to be the one that ultimately makes us the most fulfilled in this life and closes that empty hole that you talked about.

BM: It’s like one theologian said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in each of us and until we allow God to fill it, we’re going to be hungry. We’re going to be empty. We’re going to try to seek to fill that void with something.” The idea you’re going with here is to try to help people with that emptiness in a healthy way and understand what they’re really hungering for.

WH: Exactly. I believe truth is what works and I know that this works.

BM: We’re talking today to Dr. Winn Henderson about “Share Your Mission.”

Dr. Henderson, we’ve been discussing the four vital important questions: Who am I, Where did I come from, What am I doing here, Where am I going when I’m done?

You’ve mentioned that people with addictive behaviors and addictive thinking have problems with the third question, What am I doing here? which seems to be the most difficult one to wrestle with. How do we get other people and ourselves.....maybe I’m talking a little more personally than just ‘‘those people out there.’’ How do we get to know the answer? How do we get to that point where it’s not just head information..... something that I write down in a Day Timer planning session.....but something I really am fully committed to?

WH: I would say the answer to that question is that once you have accepted the fact that God has created you for a special purpose, and you would like to know what that purpose is, that you pray to have it revealed to you. Then you meditate and wait for God to answer your prayer.

Specifically, a question that you could ask and think about is, “If I had no limitations in life, not educational, not financial, not intellectual, not any kind of limitation, and if I didn’t care what my parents thought, my children thought, my business associates or my friends thought, what would I do with my life that would make it the best I could do in service to others..... for love? What would I want to have as a legacy, to be known for when I’m dead and gone? What would make me the happiest as far as fulfilling that type of desire?

Then you wait and God will answer that question. He’ll put something in your heart that will say, “This is what you ought to be doing.” When you get that feeling, go with it! Actually you have no limitations other than what you believe to limit yourself.

BM: If you take that seriously, it can be revolutionary and really disruptive in a sense, can’t it?

WH: Yes, it would be. If everybody started thinking that way, the whole world would change.

BM: Let me review this a little bit. I’m going to pray. I’m going to wait, and I’d like to ask some questions. If I had no limitations in life.....if I didn’t care what those significant others in my life thought.....(Mom always wanted me to be a professor. What should I do?) What kind of a legacy would I want to leave behind.

You’re really suggesting that God has wired each of us for a purpose and if we ever discover how God has wired us, it becomes a passionate driving force. It’s the thing that we will want to do.

So many of us think that, well, if I do what God wants me to do, I won’t be happy. You’re suggesting that if I really understood how I’m wired and why I was created that I will be happy, content, joyous, and have peace of mind.

WH: That’s the only way you’ll be happy. It’s just the opposite of what many people think.

BM: I suppose for many of us, that kind of changes the sense of really trusting and waiting on God, because many of us have this idea that God is really wanting us to get to the point where we will allow Him to make us miserable.

WH: God wants us to be happy, not miserable. He wants us to do all sorts of wonderful things. God knows that service to others is the thing that elevates one’s self-esteem more than anything else and it’s self-esteem, or lack of it, that causes people to look for all these things in society [addictive behaviors] that distract them from their purpose and make their lives miserable. So if you understood the relationship that you have with God and what He wants you to do with your life and you find out what that is, and you do it, you’re going to be the happiest person on the planet.

BM: You’ll even walk around with a smile.

WH: Absolutely!

BM: Now talk to me for a little bit, in you own personal journey......I suppose this dawned on you as you were working with addictive medicine patients?

WH: Yes. There was an epiphany for me in the 1990. At that time, I decided that conventional medicine wasn’t getting it, giving people pills and trying to counsel them secularly like psychiatrists and psychologists do wasn’t getting the job done.

When I finally asked God for the answer to the problem, He gave it to me in a dream vision resulting in the first book called "The Cure of Addiction," and as a result of that, I’ve been on this quest. I’ve been passionately living my mission, and I’ve dedicated my whole life toward trying to promote this message, because I feel that’s what God wants me to do with my life.

My mission is to help other people find theirs. Most all my time is devoted to this calling, and I’m one of the happiest persons on the planet. I never get depressed about anything. Every day I’m grateful to be alive and to be able to make another step of progress toward achieving my goal.

I think that everybody’s going to do it differently, and everybody’s going to have different things that they feel that like God is wanting them to do with their lives, but it doesn’t really make any difference what you feel your mission is, as long as you’re doing what you think God created you for.......you’re going to be a happy, contented person.

BM: Now a person can do this while still maintaining their present job, their present…….

WH: Sure! You might have a lofty goal, a desire or something that is going to take you 20 or 30 years to accomplish, and you may have to do a menial job in the meantime just to be able to survive through this 20 year period. It makes any job easier to do if you’re pointed toward something that you feel passionate about.....something you can get involved in and you feel it is your purpose.

BM: One of the things that I like about what you’re saying here, and I think it’s a key difference between being called and being driven. I’ve known people that were passionate and driven and just not having fun. I guess you would classify them as workaholics. They became addicted to their work. Here you’re talking about something that comes from the inside. What am I doing here? What is my life’s purpose? .........and it’s more of a sense of calling. This is the way I’m wired. It seems like it would be a more joyful journey than someone who is driven, where the person just has to achieve this or that.

WH: All of the people that I have been able to counsel over the years who have accepted this philosophy and have applied it are joyful people now.

BM: I wanted to remind our folks that if you know someone that is looking for a greater purpose in life, if you know someone who has addictions of some sort, you might want to take Dr. Henderson up on his offer.

If you give us a call at 1-877-787-3127, you’ll get a copy.....a free copy of his book, "The Four Questions." Dr. Henderson, you also have a web site.

WH: Yes. Go to www.theultimatesecrettohappiness.com.

If they would like to call me, my toll-free number is 877-787-3127. They could E-mail a request for the book at: I’d be happy to E-mail them a free copy of my book, “The Four Questions: A Spiritual Guide to Happiness”. It won’t cost anything.

BM: Good! In your book "Share Your Mission," you have a number of people I suppose, that you’ve interviewed and who are living this out. Is that correct?

WH: Yes. We have celebrities, people you recognize every day, as well as people you have never heard about. Some of the people that I’ve had on the program are John Gray [“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”], Steve Allen [the comedian and renaissance man], Mark Victory Hanson and Jack Canfield [editors and co-authors of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”], Jayne Meadows, Michael Landon’s daughter, Cheryl, Father Girzone [who wrote some great books concerning Joshua], Ken Norton the boxer, Peter Lowe, [who had the biggest Christian business seminar in the world in 2000], Bernie Siegel [retired physician and author], Harvey McKay [author and business speaker of the first order], Paul J. Meyer [founded and developed Success Motivational Institute and a Christian philanthropist], Patch Adams [who set up a free medical clinic up in the hills of Appalachia, ....... just a whole bunch of people.

What I’ve found when talking to them, is if they don’t have a purpose in life, if they don’t have a mission, even if they are a celebrity.....even if they are rich....... they’ve got a miserable life. They’ve got problems. We could talk about that if you wanted to..... or the other way..... if they do have this philosophy, how easy their life is and how happy they are.

BM: We’re talking with Dr. Winn Henderson, author of the book "Share Your Mission" and also "The Four Questions."

The challenge that all of us face.....addictive behaviors.....all kinds of things really at the core, Dr. Henderson is saying is a spiritual problem. Understanding who we are, why we’re here, where we’ve come from and where we’re going when we die is the key to breaking the spell of addictions.

Dr. Henderson, you’re suggesting that there are a lot of people who are going through life putting in 20, 30, 40 years at work who never really have recognized their mission.

WH: That’s exactly true. If you just think about it and start asking questions like I have.....you ask somebody, “Why were you created?” The majority of them give you a blank stare. They don’t have a clue.

BM: Some of them might come back and say, “Well I wasn’t created, I evolved.” However that’s kind of empty, the evolutionary concept that you came from an amoeba and you’re going nowhere.

WH: We have a dual heritage. We’re not only physical creations but we’re spiritual beings too, and just like when your mother and father got together and formed a zygote and from that cell every subsequent cell in your body developed, you have a spiritual heritage that came from God and you have characteristics from God spiritually. So there is a dual heritage in each individual. You can see the one that’s physical, but you can’t see the spiritual one. However it’s just as real.

BM: Dr. Henderson, the sense of mission.....the sense of calling.....are there other things that a person can do besides just asking the question: What am I doing here? I ask this because some of us will say, “Well, I’m not doing much. My feet aren’t stuck in the mud, but I am. I can’t even see my way out.”

It took me a long time to realize.......I knew in high school that I wouldn’t be a farmer. I just couldn’t enjoy sitting on a tractor driving in circles all day. Some people love that. There were certain things that if I would have just paid attention to that I could have known about myself, if I had asked certain questions like: Am I a people person? Am I a project kind of person?.....just observing what you do that does make you happy, that does give you a sense of fulfillment, and what you’re involved in that really is frustrating to you. Those should be clues as to the way that God has wired you.

WH: Yes. We each have a purpose and that purpose can change. It doesn’t have to stay the same forever. God will let you know what your purpose is if you’ll ask Him and if you’ll be receptive to the answer.

BM: Dr. Henderson, are you finding that there are people that are religious, have been religious all their life, but they still don’t have this sense of a God directed purpose?

WH: Absolutely. I see in the church, addictions, not the same kind of addictions in the same percentages as in the secular community, but addictions with things like negative thinking for example.

BM: Don’t start meddling now. Some of us call that reality.

WH: God wants you to be the most creative that you possibly can, have the best attitude, be the most optimistic, look forward to the best in everything.

BM: All right. Keep preaching now. I think somebody’s listening here. But don’t you think that this is something, what you’re talking about, these four questions, this book that you wrote, isn’t this really something that should be incorporated in shepherding the message of pastors everywhere?

WH: Yes, I believe so. I think that every church should be talking to their people about these four important spiritual questions, and if you think about it, quite often you’ll realize that these questions never come up, at least that directly.

BM: We are willing to discuss points of theology and other things, yet here’s a fundamental concept that can make a difference in your life’s satisfaction and your understanding of God’s will. This gets down to some of our basic beliefs about God, about ourselves, and about life itself.

Doctor, some of the people that you interviewed I’ve listened to for a long, long time like Dennis Waitley and others. How many years have you been interviewing people?

WH: I’m into my sixth year and have interviewed for the radio program, over 340 different people.

You mentioned Dr. Waitley. I remember a story he told me. He was on his way to a speech in Chicago on an American Airlines flight. He got up to the gate, but they had just closed the door. He was a little late and he said, “Put me on the plane, put me on the plane, I’m Dr. Dennis Waitley.” The gate attendant said, “I’m sorry, we can’t put you on the plane. Our policy says, once the door is shut nobody gets on the plane.”

He started ranting and raving, was really possessed of himself and his ego, and he thought that he could bully his way in, but they still wouldn’t let him on the plane. So he turned around and stormed out of the terminal, got in his car, and started back to his house. An announcement came over the radio, “Flight 191 out of Chicago has just crashed and all people aboard were killed.”

He told me that was a turning point in his life. He learned something from that experience that changed his life forever.

BM: We’re talking to Dr. Winn Henderson about your mission. Your mission in life can change your life. We’re talking to the doctor about the importance, the vital importance of having a sense of mission in your life.

The title of the book that I’m looking at here is “Share Your Mission.” You can get a free copy of “The Four Questions: A Spiritual Guide to Happiness” by sending an E-mail to: drhenderson7@mchsi.com. If someone just needs to talk to somebody about the program Dr. Henderson has given a number here. It’s a toll-free number. He said you can have a free consultation. That’s 1-877-787-3127. His web site is: www.theultimatesecrettohappiness.com.

Dr. Henderson, you know if you talk to various people, you mentioned the story of Dr. Dennis Waitley and others, as you have interviewed many of these people and of course, you still work with people that are confused and lost about their life and are crawling into chemicals and all kinds of different kinds of behaviors and addictions and things.

Have some of the people that you’ve interviewed, sometimes we think these people that are motivational speakers and whatever, that they’ve just always had their life together. Have some of these people had a difficult row to hoe and been able to walk through those valleys of doubt without beating themselves up with negative self talk and so on?

WH: Yes, some of them have and some of them haven’t made it yet. For example, and I don’t think that he would care for me telling this because he wants to change but he hasn’t been able to yet, but Larry King, who is a very well known interviewer who has done over 40,000 interviews has a problem with question number four, Where am I going when I’m done?

Larry is agnostic and doesn’t know that when he dies he’s going home to God. Every morning his greatest fear is that he’s going to die that day, and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen to his soul. This fear controls his life. He can’t be a really happy individual because of that ongoing fear.

Each of the people that I interview either have now or have in the past, not been able to answer one or more of those four questions, and a result of that, they have not been able yet to have a happy, successful, satisfying life.

BM: Those four questions seem to be pretty vital. They don’t seem to be....... they are. When we stop and think about the reality of it, I suppose many of us as Christians, could give a trite answer to it. But you’re talking about wanting us to go down deep inside and really believe this. There’s a difference between giving a trite answer, the right answer, what we think you want to hear, versus what I really deep down inside believe.

WH: You remember Jesus was about believing. He said if you believe enough, you can move mountains. Figuratively, literally speaking, whatever, it’s the belief that’s important. There’s a way of believing it in your head intellectually, and then there’s a way of believing it with every cell in your body, in your heart. If you really believe something, then you’re going to do it. If you’re going to do it, it’s going to be transformational in your life. You’re going to change forever.

BM: The vital role of Christ in the context of these questions, Who am I, Where did I come from, What am I doing here, and Where am I going when I’m done, makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?

WH: It sure does. You remember when Jesus was talking to a group of common people, He started His prayer with, “Our Father,” He didn’t say, “My Father.” He said, “Our Father,” which indicates to me that He believed that the spiritual Father of all of us is the same, that every individual out there on the planet was like He was to God. If we know that God is our Father, that’s such a valuable relationship to understand. If you really believe that in your heart, you can’t do things to yourself any longer that are going to hurt yourself. I remember before I had this experience and was transformed myself, I’d just get in my little sports car and drive down the road and not think about it.

Afterwards, as a result of learning and understanding the answer to the first question, Who am I?........which is that I’m a child of God, I couldn’t get into that car any longer and go down the road without putting on my seat belt. It was absolutely necessary because I knew how valuable I was because of that relationship.

BM: You’ve titled this book and your radio program as well, "Share Your Mission." Why did you add the word ‘‘share’’ on the front of it?

WH: I wanted these people to share their mission with the world. The majority of them have a mission and I wanted to give the world a positive example of how having this mission has kept them from being distracted by the things in society that distract people who don’t have a mission.

Whether we’re talking about alcohol, drugs, tobacco, pain pills, tranquilizers, shoplifting, over-eating, under-eating, criminal behavior, workaholism, pursuit of power, greed, sexual problems, and like I said, negative thinking. There’s a whole list of things that will pull you away from a goal, from a path, a higher path that God wants you to be on.

BM: Isn’t it true that this “pulling away” sometimes results from other people’s input who don’t understand your goal?

WH: That’s right because other people will pull you away and will give you every reason in the world why you shouldn’t be trying to do what it is that you feel like you should be doing There’s any number of reasons for that including their own addiction.

BM: Sometimes our lower nature, as Paul described it, our passions, the desires, the things that the world wants to feed on, tend to distract us and pull us from our mission. So we’re caught in a kind of struggle. I think a lot of us flounder around because it’s not clear why we’re here and what God’s purpose is for us, what we’re wired for, what our life mission is. Yet you’re suggesting that God has a life mission for every one of us.

WH: That’s right. We’re each unique, special, and different from every other person that was ever created. We have different talents and different abilities and we have different missions.

BM: How do we decide what is our mission? People are funny. They can get all kinds of ideas, some of which may be goofy. I have a one woman in one of my churches who said she wanted to be the church organist. Unfortunately she couldn’t play the organ and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Some people want to do this, they want to do that, they have a vision, and yet you wonder if they have any talent.

WH: You don’t necessarily have to have talent. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I didn’t have any training for, nor did I go to school for, but I was able to do them anyway starting from ground zero.

It’s a matter of whether or not you truly believe that this is what God wants you to do and you’re willing to do whatever it takes in order to learn or get the experience or make the commitment to do it. If you have that stick-to-it-ness, that you say, “I don’t care, I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it until I get good enough at it, even if it takes me the rest of my life.” Then you’re going to be happy. That lady could have been the organist. She didn’t have to have talent or carry a tune. If she really believed in her heart enough, Jesus said anything is possible.

BM: You mentioned a couple of attitudes here that I think are so vital in this pursuit of our mission in the sense of being a learner and this element of being committed to it. However it may take some time.

WH: It could take you the rest of your life, or you may have your life cut short, and you don’t quite get there, but if you’ve been working on it the whole time, you have a chance, and you’re happy in pursuing your goal. If you had said, “Well I can’t do it, I’m limited,” and you never made the first step, then you have no chance.

BM: I read an interesting story last evening about this classroom that they had a burial service for “I can’t.’’ His brothers, ‘‘I can’’ and ‘‘I will’’ and ‘‘I’ll try’’ were around their brother when he was buried. The words ‘‘I can’t’’ are so limiting to us.

You’re challenging us, from what I’m hearing here, and whether we have addictive behaviors or we’re just kind of floundering around or don’t have a deep sense of mission, there are a lot of things by God’s grace, that we can do.....kind of like Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” If we know that this is what God wants us to do and zero in on it, there’s all kinds of energy and ability are available to us.

WH: Absolutely!

BM: Dr. Henderson, thank you so much for being with us today.