Well I have been a little, and though my intellect, my mind tells me to chill, sometimes the emotions and the body react. I hope I am not alone when I say it is so easy, rather unthinkingly to take the stressed out emotions out on someone else.
That can happen, don’t flay yourself over it. I now watch this with a certain curiosity of ‘why’ and ‘how’. The intention is to pay attention to the triggers, to catch them before the emotions erupt, before relationships become strained, friendships threatened. And sometimes it may be simpler to identify our body’s reaction before recognizing our emotions, like the tense shoulders, the trembling heart, the shaking hands, the jiggling feet… so many of our emotions manifesting in our body if only we would ‘listen’. What does your body do when there is sadness, anger, fear… Perhaps the next time you feel compelled…
I’m tired. It’s been a long year in many ways. Many years ago, I went through a phase like this. At that time, I had a good support system in place. I was heavily involved in ministry. The type ministry and how many types don’t matter.
One night there was a gathering of the church leadership for prayer. We divided into small groups in the sanctuary, and within the group, each one of us had to pray for another person, and pray specifically. My partner was the youth minister and worship leader I had help bring to the church.
My problem was I didn’t know how to say no. I was the young and willing man in the church as well as business. In church if you are in your 30s your consider one of the young folk, that can even extend into the 40s. This inability to say no and wanting to help ended up with a very frazzled and sick Ronovan.
The youth minister prayed for peace to come into my life. The next week I was leading the youth on a concert trip to see Steven Curtis Chapman, arguably the king of contemporary Christian music. He sang a song that night, and I knew it was no coincidence.
Ever sense that night, one of my life verses has beenPsalm 46:10
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
We forget sometimes and worry about things way beyond our control. Stress hits us from every angle. Do you ever think, after the fact, of how insane some of the things we worried about were? Life is too short to worry about everything. What the Psalmist means is to remember God is in control of the ultimate outcome of the world. Bad things happen because of bad people and being in the wrong places at the wrong time. Put your eternal life in his hands. Nothing can take you from the hand of God once you give yourself to Him. When you pass own, you are with God. Nothing here on earth can stop that. Hurt me, harass me, do all types of damage to me, and I will still end up fine because I know God has me.
I may stress for a moment, but then I center myself, shake the stress off, and get back to my core.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Jesus never said life would be easy here on earth. He never said that to his disciples or anyone that ever heard him speak. He said the exact opposite. Christians would be persecuted because of him. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Matthew 5:11. As part of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, you know it must be serious.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
I try to take away something good with every situation. My son and I were throwing the baseball a couple of weeks ago, as I am sure some of you saw the picture. Man did it get bad. I never got upset. I thought it was funny. I even looked at it as a learning experience I could use for my writing. I never had a black eye before. I now knew the pain of it, the coloring, and all of the things that goes with having a black eye.
My lack of stress helped with my son handling it as well.
Working on a positivity habit is tough sometimes. Habits take time to acquire. Eventually they take. I’m almost back in my zone now, and can breathe again. Now for the creativity to start up and have fun.
I don’t often speak about my faith here on the site lately. Life’s been busy. I do try to live my faith through what I do on my site. My faith is important to me. It’s important in every aspect of my work I do. Even in books I either plan to or have published, my goal is and was to put out something that has a core to it that will show the humanness of people and the war they wage with life and how sometimes they can’t win alone but need upbringing they have had, lessons they have learned, to turn to that will help them succeed.
Have a great Sunday, week, month, year, life, and eternity.
Haters are going to hate no matter what, sometimes they just spin their tales in an attempt to make you look bad. I found that out recently. As I fumed for a few minutes I slowly let it go, made sure their attempts were futile and carried on with my positively motivational positive day.
Not every day will be pain free of pain in the necks showing up. Having lived with it for so long I know to deal with it and move on. I had to deal with it quickly because of my son. We’re having a good day.
How often do you hear the phrase “live life like it’s your last day on earth” as a motivational gimmick?
Um, yeah, that sure motivates me. Think I’ll go write that book I always wanted to, or go and get married and have a kid. People have different reasons for using that expression above but hopefully you’ll never read those words from me as a way to attempt to get you to do something.
Instead, I want you to live each day to be the best possible person you can be on that day of your life. Today, smile at people—it freaks them out. Here in the South we expect smiles. It’s a cultural thing. A “nod and a smile” is what I’ve called it in the past. No, we’re not flirting, we’re saying you’re good, we’re good, just don’t either of us mess it up. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, or what economic level you are “a nod and a smile” is expected.
I imagine there are things like that all over the world. Maybe in some places a nod and a smile is the equivalent of “let’s throw down and kick some hind parts”. When you wake up each day do so with the plan to nod and smile to some people you meet. No, I’m not giving you a number of people. That’s self-help mumbo jumbo and although I like to help people, I avoid things like that as much as possible.
You can’t help but feel something good when you smile. There is something scientific about it. Smiling actually releases dopamine.
“Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional responses, and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them. Dopamine deficiency results in Parkinson’s Disease, and people with low dopamine activity may be more prone to addiction. The presence of a certain kind of dopamine receptor is also associated with sensation-seeking people, more commonly known as “risk takers.”~Psychology Today
Not only will you increase your social network and reputation as a nice person but you will be making yourself healthier as well. I watched a Ted Talk not like ago which stated one smile is like eating 1000 bars of chocolate. Give a smile a try right now, a big one and notice that feeling you get. There is a change. Crazy as it seems, smiles are medicine and more.
Caught in a trap. Can’t walk out. Cause I . . . wait, um, let me start this again.
What is a Free Blogger?
We’ll get there, if I remember.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you can’t walk away from something because of responsibilities? I’m not talking about relationships, but you can probably take this along that same line.
When you have been blogging for a period of time something will happen. That something is called inspiration. You will develop these ideas, then–there you are—commitment.
You get these ideas that would make great blogs, great community building ventures. You see a support blog that NEEDS to be created.
These things are all well and good, whatever that means, but count to a million aloud and then see if it still sounds good. If it does, hold your breath to the count of a million.
The great authors and creators of the world do something I find interesting. When an idea comes to them, they don’t write it down. If in six months the idea is still with them, they go with it, if not then it wasn’t that great of an idea.
If you spread yourself too thin you become just that—thin. Your blog content becomes weak and your ability to connect with people suffers. I’ve been fortunate that in my one main inspired venture, Lit World Interviews (LWI) has a team taking up my slack. You see, I love authors. I mean LOVE them. I am one, and I know the agony of feeling you are alone and searching for help. Thus LWI was created and now a sister blog Authors Supporting Authors (ASA).
LWI runs because of that team, not because of me. I don’t even need to exist for it to be there. And it is a way for the Team members to have another outlet and help people once a week. ASA runs when people tell me they have a need. I just realized that as I wrote it. I had felt badly about how slowly ASA is moving. It has a good number of followers for such a young blog, but the activity is not that great. And now I am fine with it.
But the problem comes when you commit to an endeavor that takes you away from the love of what brought you to blogging. One thing to always ask yourself—if you don’t love blogging, then why are you still here? That means if you are doing all these different things and are feeling pressures you are now doing a job, and part of blogging is to get away from pressures. I know some do blogging as a job or to build a platform but that is a bit different.
One thing about LWI is that it’s a volunteer thing. The members write when they like to write. Two of them have somewhat of a schedule they keep. I’ve given them days that are theirs. That means only they can post on those days unless I have something that needs to go out. But no other team member can post on those days. But if they don’t post, they don’t post. If they don’t post, I worry, but I’m not concerned about there being no post, just the fact they always do and I am worried something is wrong.
Having so many blogs going on, and guest posts to do will cause a major problem. That problem is you find you don’t have the mental energy and at times the physical energy to do things on your personal blog that you want to do. I’m into cartooning a bit now. It takes a lot out of me physically in many ways. I feel guilty because of commitments I’ve made in other areas, and that is part of the strain on me mentally. And no, if certain people are reading this I’ve agreed to guest post for, I don’t mean those guest posts.
Be a free blogger.
That means:
Don’t get tied down to anything in blogging that will take away from the release blogging gives you.
If you want to do something like LWI or ASA, become part of something that exists already.
Groups are a great thing. The more you have the less each person has to do.
The less each of you have to do the more you can do on your own blog and still have that sense of helping in something else.
You are thinking that you like to control things or you want it done your way.
Start in a group.
Learn.
Discover if you do want to do this for the long haul.
If so, then do one of your own.
Excitement is great in blogging, but you want to keep that excitement. One sure way to lose it is to use it up like a super nova. Much Respect
