Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Emotions - Excerpt from January 5, 2011
Dear God,
I feel full of doubt about the institution that is the church and the religion that is called Christianity. I feel like I am in the wilderness and I am having a little difficulty figuring out which way I should go. I love you, and I want to be in close relationship with you. I thank you for all that you've done for me, all that you're allowing me to do & have given me the ability to do for myself. I know that I don't talk to you everyday; some days I feel mentally disoriented because I have so many thoughts flowing through my mind at once, fighting for my attention. But no matter what I am doing or how I feel physically, I never forget that it is because of your grace and your presence that I am sustained. Thank you for the mental clarity that allows me to view a situation with precision and fresh perspective. Thank you for the revelations regarding the last eight years of my life. I am excited about my human experiences to come. At this very moment now, I feel a renewed sense of confidence that while I may not know everything, I know more than what I did before, and that eventually I will know which way to go, because you are leading me.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Four Questions
Well the last four weeks of life have been interesting. I have never been more aware of myself at any other point in my life than right now. My self-awareness has brought me to make an interesting summary about life (maybe just American life)...
We spend our lives gathering evidence to answer "Yes" to the following four questions:
Am I intelligent/wise?
Am I beautiful?
Am I humorous/fun?
Am I strong/powerful/influential?
I think how a person acts (conscious) and reacts (unconscious) to situations and people says a lot about what a person believes of themselves regarding the above four areas. For example, a person is more likely to go to college if they believe they are intelligent, and their diploma is evidence of their intelligence. A woman is more likely to pursue a career as a model, for example, if she believes herself to be physically beautiful. People constantly praising her physical beauty, her face plastered on a billboard or magazine ad would be examples of evidence of her beauty. A man who believes himself to be physically strong will push himself to bench-press a higher amount of weight; if he believes himself to be strong in an influential sense he is more likely to network and continue to make connections, start a business, or take more financial risks in his respective industry.
Buying homes, making and raising children, taking vacations and maintaining various types of relationships are examples of proof to back up the "yes" answer to the four questions.
A lack of action works the same way. If your boss is a bully, you are more likely to say nothing if you don't believe yourself intelligent or humorous enough to deflect your boss' bulldozing ways
Everybody wants to be intelligent, beautiful, fun and/or strong (or at least be perceived that way!). Those attributes give us something to be confident about and something else to believe in. Most of us will do and acquire things as actual evidence of the above. Some of us will only do just enough to simply be perceived as the above, as the saying goes "fake it til' you make it." Either way it goes, I think that if a person finds themselves at a point in life where they feel lost and lack direction, all they have to do is ask themselves the four questions above, and if the answer is "no", then determine what action needs to be taken so that the answer will be "YES!"
We spend our lives gathering evidence to answer "Yes" to the following four questions:
Am I intelligent/wise?
Am I beautiful?
Am I humorous/fun?
Am I strong/powerful/influential?
I think how a person acts (conscious) and reacts (unconscious) to situations and people says a lot about what a person believes of themselves regarding the above four areas. For example, a person is more likely to go to college if they believe they are intelligent, and their diploma is evidence of their intelligence. A woman is more likely to pursue a career as a model, for example, if she believes herself to be physically beautiful. People constantly praising her physical beauty, her face plastered on a billboard or magazine ad would be examples of evidence of her beauty. A man who believes himself to be physically strong will push himself to bench-press a higher amount of weight; if he believes himself to be strong in an influential sense he is more likely to network and continue to make connections, start a business, or take more financial risks in his respective industry.
Buying homes, making and raising children, taking vacations and maintaining various types of relationships are examples of proof to back up the "yes" answer to the four questions.
A lack of action works the same way. If your boss is a bully, you are more likely to say nothing if you don't believe yourself intelligent or humorous enough to deflect your boss' bulldozing ways
Everybody wants to be intelligent, beautiful, fun and/or strong (or at least be perceived that way!). Those attributes give us something to be confident about and something else to believe in. Most of us will do and acquire things as actual evidence of the above. Some of us will only do just enough to simply be perceived as the above, as the saying goes "fake it til' you make it." Either way it goes, I think that if a person finds themselves at a point in life where they feel lost and lack direction, all they have to do is ask themselves the four questions above, and if the answer is "no", then determine what action needs to be taken so that the answer will be "YES!"
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