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As the new year is here, it’s a good time to reflect back on the goals you set for this year. Where did you want to be at this point in 2017? Did you abandon some of the goals? And if so, which ones and why? There may be some good reasons or, could you have modified them? Did you quit too soon? What might have happened if you had persisted? Remember the hare and the turtle?
It’s also a good time to set goals for 2018. Remember, they need to be S-M-A-R-T goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. Why not set 4 or 5 goals for yourself that meet these criteria. Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, suggests you write them on a 3×5 card and read them every day. This way your conscious mind and your unconscious mind get paired together and they become easier for you to accomplish. I did that several years ago, two years in a row, and I was amazed at what happened.
Why not head into 2018 with a game plan to run on all 4 tires and be amazed where you can go? Persist!
Have a happy and blessed New Year!
Peace, John
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While I am generally not a fan of Sigmund Freud, the above quote certainly has value. What we feel needs to be identified and accepted. Perhaps the easiest way of doing this is to discuss them with someone close to us, i.e. someone “safe.” It’s important when sharing feelings that you choose healthy people, ones who will listen, not judge and not ask why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. Others’ acceptance of your feelings helps create the environment where you can accept them too.
Painful feelings could be “repressed,” i.e. pushed out of conscious awareness by our psyche which is attempting to protect us from something that is usually traumatic. More often, painful feelings get “suppressed.” This means we are aware of them but we try to make believe they don’t exist or they don’t bother us. Notice the mask in the picture above. This leaves us working against ourselves and is not productive. It may also contribute to depression.
If what you’ve been doing with your feelings hasn’t been working, why not stop burying them alive where they will come back to haunt you? Instead simply try to name and accept them. No need to fix what isn’t broken, just like there’s no need to bury what’s still alive! Remember, you don’t need to approve or like something to accept it!
Your feedback on this post, and willingness to share it would be appreciated.
Peace, John
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I used to think that I wanted to pray like a fella in my prayer group. When I shared that with him, he set me straight. He told me that my “talk time” with God was not supposed to be like his. He then told me whatever I had to offer to God in prayer was 100% acceptable to God. It took a long time of thinking about that and coming to believe it.
Sometime later I spoke with a trusted spiritual guide. I shared with her that I felt guilty for not taking the time to pray the way I thought I should. She asked what I meant and I told her that I had good intentions of setting aside time but then I got caught up in the things of the day, my work and didn’t get to it. I did tell her that I prayed in church and sometimes with certain clients. She asked me if I had conscious awareness of God throughout my day. I told her yes, that often I think of Him in the “inter-stitches” during the day, times between activities, times when I’m in my car, and times when I’m in transitions. She simply said to me, “That’s prayer!” I was taken aback, but as I reflected on it, I realized she was right. She also told me not to worry about the structure and the amount of time. She also asked how God communicates with me. I told her in different ways – sometimes an idea in my head (“aha”), sometimes something from my reading, sometimes in a song or the words of another person, sometimes in what I see and, at times, just a sensation in my heart. She also pronounced this as fine and told me I was on the right track. I was relieved, but it still took me a while to work this through and to let some of the guilt dissipate for not doing it “the right way.”
“The power is in the One who hears it.” The receiver has all the power. He is a better listener than I! He hears and knows everything, even my weak and sometimes infrequent attempts to communicate with Him. He loves me just as I am, with all my shortcomings, blemishes and character defects – I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one! He doesn’t judge – He just loves me for who I am.
Be mindful of God’s presence in your life and you are already praying. Your prayers are not wasted. Be humble, contrite, thankful and ask on behalf of your self, and others. When in doubt, to paraphrase Mother Teresa, “Pray anyway!”
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Feelings are a part of us, just like our thoughts and behaviors. When we are awake and conscious we are always feeling. Sometimes it is calm, and the waves are minimal. At other times the sea is rough, our feelings more intense and the waves pounding. Much of the time our feelings are somewhere in the middle. Our feelings give us valuable information about ourselves and our surroundings. When we become aware of them, we need to discern what they are telling us. We need to accept them and not reject them or try to make-believe that we’re not feeling them. This is particularly true of the feelings that our thoughts would label as “bad.” Feelings are neutral, neither bad nor good. Our feelings never get us in trouble. What gets us in trouble is when we try to get rid of them or fake what we are feeling. When we do that, we are denying a part of ourselves – this causes us internal conflict. Just because you know what you are feeling doesn’t mean you need to share it!
Waves play out on a beach. What makes a beach a beach are waves. Feelings are incessant as they play out on our lives. We would do well to choose which feelings to surf, knowing full well that soon they will play out on our beach. When you hear “surf’s up” choose wisely which ones you are going to dwell upon.
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This goes out to all of our friends working a 12 step program of recovery. I thank Aggie for recently sharing it with me. There’s wisdom in those 12 pieces of advice. For instance, statistics tell us that people in recovery can not do it on their own. As a matter of fact the first word in the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous is, “We!”
If you are unfamiliar with the 12 steps, I’m putting them at the end of this blog entry for you.
Many people don’t know this but the word “alcohol” occurs in the 12 steps only once and that is in the first step, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol –that our lives had become unmanageable.” The 12 steps are an excellent way to live life. Recovering addicts have used them to bring sanity and serenity to their lives. Which item above provides you with the most challenge today? What step can you use to meet that challenge?
The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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Visitors – sometimes you know ahead of time they are coming and sometimes they invite themselves and, unannounced, just knock at your door. Feelings are like that. When we’re awake and conscious we are always feeling. To get in touch with what you’re feeling at any point in time, say to yourself, “I’m feeling______” Fill in the blank with a word or group of words that describes your experience. Feelings are inside. Feelings are like a kaleidoscope – one pattern leads to another pattern, leads to another pattern, etc. Sometimes the kaleidoscope turns slowly and other times more quickly. Whoever said, “feelings aren’t forever” was probably right. Specific feelings are not forever – your feelings-life evolves and you may see some patterns that you saw before.
When the above quote says “let them come and go” it tends to imply that one has a choice. I’m convinced they are going to come and go and you have little control over their coming and going. For many people, letting them go seems to mean getting rid of them. This won’t work. A better alternative is to just accept them and their comings and goings. Be aware of them but also understand they are only one part of you. You are responsible for what you think about them (thoughts) and do with them (behavior). Trying to get rid of them will only make them stick around more. Two feeling rules are: #1 identify what you’re feeling (see above) and #2 accept your feelings as part of who you are right then.
How are you handling the many visitor feelings that show up daily in your life?
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Procrastination gets you nowhere, fast! Remember, “not making a decision IS a decision!” Making decisions is challenging. There’s a time to decide and a time to wait. Waiting too long can leave you passive (passive-aggressive?) and not an active participant in your life. When you’re in the river and drifting, you’re going wherever the river takes you. If you want to be in charge of your life, you need to set a goal and make conscious and deliberate decisions to go in that direction. Once a decision is made, the real challenge often becomes implementing it. What frequently holds us back is our negative projection, our fears of not being able to achieve it or carry through with it. It takes a lot of faith but I have found in my life, once the decision is made, the above quote is definitely true. For me the people, resources and ideas do materialize. Please fill in the following blanks:
What has stopped me from making healthy decisions in the past is: __________________________________________________
Where/how did I learn to make decisions about my life?
__________________________________________________
What decisions can/should I make today? This week? This month?
__________________________________________________
If I do, how might my life change?
__________________________________________________
And remember… “EVERY TIME!”
TOUCHPOINTS, from Personal Growth Concepts, Inc. 