Tag Archives: personal growth

Growing, mindfulness, Personal, Suffering, Uncategorized

Challenges Come And Challenges Go!

This past Sunday, I shared a message entitled ”Speak Blessing!” The message was basically an encouragement to realize there is power in our words and we need to choose them carefully. I do my best to practice what I preach, so my goal was to live a positive life and only speak blessing this week. Great goal right?

Of course you know what happens whenever you get committed to living a positive life? Life seems to throw as much negative as it can and before you know it, your best intentions have become paving material for a road to you know where…

Live life long enough and you will discover that this is in fact life. Just because you are thinking, living and speaking positivity does not mean that you won’t have challenges, disappointments and frustrations. Life is made up of ups and downs, mountain tops and valleys, success and failure.

I’m not going to go into detail of all that has gone wrong this week, but I will tell you, I am doing my best to stay positive, upbeat and teachable. There are a few things I have to keep reminding myself about and I’ve become very fond of the saying: ”What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”

Here are a few good reminders for you to remember when you’re trying to keep in the positive lane of life, even while it seems that everything and everybody keeps trying to force you into the negative…

CHALLNGES GROW YOU LIKE NOTHING ELSE CAN!

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her classic on ”Death And Dying” said: ”If you shield the mountain from the wind storms, you never see the beauty of the carvings. There is a purpose to your pain. This does not make it easier, but it helps to know and remember that it’s not all for nothing. We are continually being shaped, grown and developed and this is what we call living.

GROWTH AND HEALING ARE A PROCESS!

We are born into this human experience as a baby, but we don’t stay a baby, we grow, develop and learn, but it takes time, because it’s a process. When we fall down and scrape our knee, as it heals, it gets a very ugly scab, which we are tempted to pick at and remove, but it is actually our bodies way of healing and healing takes time because it’s a process. This life is a process, so nothing, no matter how bad it may seem is ever final, not even death.

THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO LEARN!

The question we need to always run to is: ”What is this trying to teach me?” The quicker I learn the lesson, the quicker I get free to live the positive life of blessing I was created for. What is life and the challenges you face trying to teach you???

Uncategorized

Unload Your Truck!

At my core, I’m just an ole country boy. I love country cooking, country music and riding around country roads in my Dodge Ram pickup truck. I love my truck. It’s not anything fancy and it has a lot of rough miles on it, but it’s mine and it’s paid for. I’m not really sure how it happens, but every so often, I have to take some time to clean out and unload the back of my truck, which us country boys call the “bed” of the truck. Some how, trash, bottles, cans, tools and an assortment of other stuff always seems to accumulate in the bed of my truck and it drives me crazy, until I take the time to clean it out.

I have found that the very same thing happens with my mind. It accumulates thoughts, many of which serve no real purpose, other than taking up space, rattling around and making me crazy. I have learned that every now and then, it is important for me to take time clean out and unload my mind.

It’s not very difficult to figure out how this happens. We think one thought until another thought comes a long and takes it’s place. We don’t really release the first thought, we just throw it in the back with all the other thoughts that we think we have moved on from. The problem we face now is that we have all these thoughts rattling around, making noise, competing for our attention and sometimes this makes it very difficult to get anything accomplished.

So, every now and then, it is very necessary to take some time to unload the truck. The way we unload our truck/mind is by taking and making some time to meditate, pray, practice devotion or sit in solitude. This time allows us to take advantage of the tiny spaces located between our thoughts.

We have no real idea where a thought comes from. What we do know is that it comes out of silence. When we have a thought, there is a very brief moment between the letting go of one thought and grabbing hold of another. This brief moment is a time of silence and space. You can call it whatever you want to call it, the important thing is to realize it exists and offers us an opportunity to exercise some control, so that we might have a little more say about what comes and goes.

There is an old Zen saying that says: “It is the silence between the notes that makes the music.” We train ourselves to listen to the sound and usually ending up missing out on the power of the silence. This is why we need to empty the truck/mind every so often, so we can learn to hear, appreciate and learn from the silence. Music would be impossible without the silence and so life becomes impossible when we allow ourselves to be overtaken by our thoughts and all the noise they produce.

At the very heart of a thought is the act of creativity. The creativity happens in the silence, moment and space between our thoughts. You were created in the image of your Creator and therefore you are a creator yourself. So, I want to encourage you to take some time to get still, to find comfort in silence and discover your place of creation. Once you are there try to do these three things:

– Unload and clean out your heart, mind and spirit!

This does not have to be complicated. I like to use a journal, there is just something about pen and paper that help me to get my thoughts out and organized. It makes it easier to know what to hold onto and let go of. The important thing is to take the time on a regular basis to do the work. A little work every so often, saves you from a lot of work and usually some pain later on.

– Learn to enjoy solitude and silence!

For most people, taking time to get away from all the distractions and sit in silence is a challenging task. It’s not easy, but with a little practice, consistency and discipline, you can do it and you will be glad you did. Start with just five minutes a day, focus on your breathing and practice letting go of your thoughts by every time one comes into your head for attention, shifting focus off of the thought and back onto your breathing.

– Embrace your creativity and have some fun with it!

Once you begin to start unloading your truck/mind, you will discover what a difference it makes in all aspects of your life and you will look forward to the time and the creativity that it unlocks to flow from your life. You may want to use this time to write, draw, color, paint, work on some kind of craft or whatever? Just find some sort of output that allows you to express the creativity that has been freed up, because you will be amazed at how this will grow into a blessing for you and others.

The Bottom Line: This is your life, do what you have to do, what you want to do to enjoy it, because you were created for so much more…

Uncategorized

What Do You Want?

There is a pretty simple question we have to ask and answer, if we really want to experience the blessings we were created for. WHAT DO YOU WANT? It is surprising to me, how many people have not taken the time to really answer this question. Looking back on my own life, it is humbling to think about how many times I have failed to ask and answer this simple, but powerful question.

There is great power in INTENTION, but to figure out our intention we have to ask and answer the right questions and then follow up with action. We need to ask and answer the “What Do You Want” question everyday and often, multiple times throughout the day. There are a lot of different varieties of the question, but they are basically asking for the same thing. What do you want? What is your dream? What is the main desire of your life? What will make you happy? What is your intention? What inspires you? What are you passionate about? What do you want to create, manifest and make reality in your life?

This question is important, because it drives our thoughts and THOUGHTS ARE THINGS! The things we think about become our reality. The Scriptures teach that we were created in the image of our Creator, which means: WE WERE CREATED TO CREATE! The question is: “What Are You Creating?”

There are two worlds, one we can see and one we can’t see. One is physical and one is spiritual. We live in between these two worlds in what is a beautiful dance of co-existence of back and forth between the two. We are spiritual beings living our human experience in a physical body. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:1 – “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This means that what is seen, begins it’s manifestation in what is unseen. We live in both places and in between and this is why asking and answering questions is so important and necessary.

Take some time today to ask and answer the question: WHAT DO I WANT? And think about the steps you can take to manifest and make reality what simply begins as a thought. You may just be surprised at the power you discover that has been placed within yourself to do the supernatural. And once you discover and tap into this CREATIVE power, this human experience takes on a whole new meaning as you begin to live in the blessings you were created for…