Month: June 2022

Enthusiastic Living!

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

enthusiasmLife requires energy to live it and your level of energy is connected directly to your thoughts. Children seem to have an almost unlimited amount of enthusiasm, but children also don’t waste too much time thinking about the wrong stuff. Adults do that. There is a competition that rages daily and that contest is for the allegiances of your mind. You spend or reserve your energy by the thoughts you are choosing to entertain. Positive thoughts, happy thoughts, hopeful thoughts, anticipating thoughts and indeed all “just some good thoughts” lead to the energy to do, which life is requiring. Negative thoughts, fearful thoughts, anxious thoughts of the future and anxious thoughts of the past serve only to deplete your energy culminating in you not having the energy you need to do you; to live your life successfully. Have you found yourself lately not having the energy or the enthusiasm that your life requires? Have you been running on empty, as the saying goes. Have you lost some or all of your enthusiasm for living? Does your life sometimes feel pointless? Well, not to worry my friends as there is always a solution if you are willing to hear it.

One of the things I enjoy best about my relationship with God is that He faithfully provides me with little insights and clues about how to live my life. He does not condemn me, nor does He judge me. Instead, He answers my questions and makes my cloudy spaces clear. Energy and enthusiastic living happens to be one of those private lessons. At one point in my life, I recognized that I just felt like I didn’t care about anything anymore. Nothing excited me and honestly it felt like I didn’t have anything to look forward to in my life. I had more resources than I had ever had before and also had all of the things you would expect to make up an excellent existence. But, I wasn’t blessed and I knew I needed some answers. Don’t get me wrong, the answers I needed didn’t show up overnight, like many things in our lives, as typically it has taken some time to bury us in our dilemmas. But, one thing was immediately clear to me. Something or someone was interfering with my day by day happiness and in doing so was robbing me of the blessings God wanted me to have. The first and usually most insidious blocker of happiness is fear. Fear sucks the life right out of you. Fear, which is almost always future based, paints unpleasant pictures of loss and defeat. Fear tells you that perhaps you will never get the thing you so desperately need. Fear proclaims that the pain you are experiencing will last forever and that you must resign yourself to some chronic, severely limiting condition. Fear threatens you and accuses you and just sort of sits there mocking your life, stealing from you and ultimately blocking your forward progress. If you have a profound lack of energy and enthusiasm for living, the odds are that you are harboring some fear in your life.  Oh trust me, it’s there. You simply have to take the time, be honest with yourself and recognize what it is that has you so afraid. Banishing and eliminating fear is step one! Fear, as crazy as it seems, is a choice you are making. You are giving it space, mind time (lots and lots of mind time) and you are refusing in some capacity to let it go. Trust me I have been there. But, I have to say this, nothing is going to change until you finally let that shit go. People live today chock full of anxiety trying all sorts of things to mitigate the feelings without ever getting to the bottom of it. Anxiety is fear also and it is blocking your enthusiasm for living.

Next on the learning train, you have to get back to living one day at a time. Deal with all of today’s assaults while it is still today. Take it on today. Don’t skip past it, move ahead, ignore it or let it go. If you think about it, you aren’t afraid and anxious about today. You are afraid of tomorrow and the things you cannot see yet. Failure to take it on today leads, just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, to deeper and deeper problems inside your head. Wrong thinking carves a groove in your thought processes and like any good rut, will drag you back in as soon as you endeavor to venture out. A general sense of malaise and depressed, tired thinking is the direct result of not taking on the things regarding your life that you needed to address. But, hey, who hasn’t been there? Your job, my job is get back to living in the day and only in that day. You cannot live in your future and you cannot live any longer in your past. One hasn’t arrived and the other is long since gone from earth, existing only in your memory. You can take on the requirements of today. You can go for a drive or go for a walk and get things straight. Take whatever time you need to get things straight. Think about whatever is bothering you and get it cleared up, resolved. It is an epidemic in good old America for people to let things go in favor of the next thing to distract us. Get things straight. If you find yourself unhappy about how you are acting or what you are choosing to do, make some adjustments in the day you are in. Save your long self improvement lists for another lifetime and master the day you are in. I get up and write my, “Morning Pages” every morning where God and I take time to get things straight. I unpack, He whispers clues. Enthusiasm follows those answers!

Finally, there is another little secret for enduring happiness and enthusiasm that you may have not considered. You have to choose to be enthusiastic in your mind. You have to treat other people with enthusiasm and a happy perspective. Think of those times in your life when you were so absolutely blessed and excited about living your life. It may have been circumstances that spurred it on, but even then you chose the enthusiasm. Can’t you see it? You chose the enthusiasm based on your perception of what was going on. In the same way, you can choose enthusiasm no matter what is going on. Once you have settled on your enthusiastic mindset, notice what little things come up to steal away your new decision. Pay attention to your mind’s reasons why you cannot be enthusiastic. There, right there is your fight. The opponent’s lies never center on today, but always on some pending future doom or difficulty to talk you out of today. People are defeated one day at a time as well. I hope you really, really think through what I am telling you. You can choose enthusiasm for living as you refute those things trying to take it away. And the best part, God is right there in your enthusiasm and right there rewarding your excited anticipation. Once you finally let the negatives go, not in naivety, but because they are usually future based and temporal, you walk right into the light where God has always wanted you to live your life. In that place, your enthusiasm will know no limits and all of your paths will be peace.

Things got you down in this life? Are you struggling to find your joy? Do you wish you were the man or the woman you used to be? If so, take the time to learn the lessons. Eliminate all fear. Live today and today only. It is your thinking, your mind where the arena of competition is waged. Win the fight, not by cursing the darkness, but by cutting it off instead. Get your brain over to the light and stay there. Refuse the illusions and decide what or who you are going to be. Enthusiastic and excited living is God’s will for your life. Prove it to yourself.

Just some good thoughts…

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If You Move I Move…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

truHealth+Chiropractic+Take+ActionYou know there are many people in the world that pray, yet for many nothing seems to happen when they do. It seems reasonable that if God could hear what you are saying and He is very interested in you as a person, surely He must be willing to help you if He had the power to do so. I think you will find that God is always able and willing. The primary cause for your unanswered prayers is typically a lack of belief as demonstrated by a lack of believing action on the part of the one doing the praying. If you believe there are a hundred dollars laying in your driveway, I’m sure you would walk over and take a look. You couldn’t imagine remaining in your chair while begging God to bring the money into the house. The problem with praying amiss, if you will, is that all of the time you are waiting on God, God is waiting on you. Sometimes there may be nothing left you can think of to do, but even then your job is to keep saying what God’s Word promised you and keep moving ahead. Whenever we stop in our tracks, for any reason, we end up keeping ourselves further away from what we need. When you pray; when you believe God when you pray, there will always be something you need to do in alignment with whatever it is you prayed for. In other words, believing is a verb and that verb signifies an action on your part. In this God’s message is thus, “If you move I move.”

When you pray and pray and sit around wishing God would do something for you, you end up spending a lot of time sitting around. You wait for God as if He is somehow withholding something from you. I can absolutely assure you, God is never the problem. The problem is that you don’t really believe God will do or wants to do something about your dilemma. Life itself informs you that if you want something, you have to invest the time required and pursue it. If you are not chasing anything then you won’t find anything. God has not complicated the process with formulas or mysteries. People add that. If you believe God will help you find a new job, waiting all day by the phone or waiting for the answer to show up in your mailbox is not how life works. You have to start applying for jobs. And, even then, when you pray for a new job you have to become specific about what you want, or at least have some of the basics. This whole notion of praying, “God send me what I need” without articulating what you need is like dumping your coffee into the pool in order to get it to warm up. The reason people pray this way is because they are afraid they cannot actually get what they want, but instead have to settle for whatever whenever, then call it a blessing. Your job, my job, is to get as clear as possible about what it is that we need. When you get real clear about what you want, pray about it and then take any actions you can think of to get it, you are now synchronizing yourself with God and when you move, He moves. 

How frustrating it must be to God, (if God gets frustrated) to hear the multitudes praying to Him for a need, yet not taking any action concerning their need. When you get serious about getting your needs met, especially those long standing chronic issues that have tortured you over the years, you will begin to make some progress towards those things you so desperately need. ‘Hope so’ prayers yield nothing. One man put it this way, “you have to get clear and concerned about what you need. Get clear about what is wanted, then become concerned about getting it.” If you really need something to happen and you are very clear about what that is, you need to become concerned about receiving it; concerned as in taking some action, making some moves, getting yourself out there in the world. I muse sometimes that much of what we need is going to come via those people we keep avoiding or situations we do not want to put ourselves in. Which is worse, getting out there in life and taking uncomfortable action or sitting at home in desperation over unmet needs? What is it that you really, really need to happen in your life? Don’t limit yourself or aim low. What do you need in order to make your life complete? Once you are clear about it and honest, get damn serious about it coming to pass. Remember, God is not withholding anything from you. He would like for it to have happened yesterday as well, but He is not going to overstep your free will. Get serious about what you need and make some moves. “If you move I move!”   

As I look around me and participate in my own life as well, it becomes obvious that the adversary has the whole place all screwed up. Bad things happen to good people and injustice often prevails. Life is not fair and people do not always get what they deserve, especially those that endeavor to live for God. Time and chance happen to them all. Yet, God has made a way out for us. God has promised His unending love and care for us, so there must be something we need to do in order to access it. The thing we need to do is not to overly concern ourselves in being better or repairing in ourselves that which we do not have the power to repair. Instead our only requirement is to believe God. Believe what He did for us in the life of His son. Believe in who He made us to be instead of consuming ourselves in everything we are not. Believe that He hears our every prayer and move out taking bold action towards the things we so desperately need. If you want God to move, then you move first. Go get it. Look for it. Find it. Don’t stop looking for it until you get it. When you get to that place in your mind and heart, you will find that God has always, always been more willing to answer your prayers, than you are to pray them. After all, if you move He moves…

Just some good thoughts.

Stay Lit…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought2 Comments

visuals-000261330935-AoWJX2-t1240x260All people have difficulties, problems, setbacks. All people have been subjected to sickness, to chronic health issues, to pain. All people find themselves mentally challenged at times, lost, confused, bewildered and afraid. Yet despite all of the negatives we face in life, some folks find solutions, find answers, and overcome. Some people have learned how to tap into a power greater than themselves. There is nothing that will ever come your way in life that is greater than God and His ability to deliver you. The challenge does not reside solely in the issues you face, but rather in what you choose to do with your mind in the middle of the challenge. In order to win you have to remain in the light. You have to stay lit…

Every single negative aspect of life is engendered by darkness. Every heartache, every headache, every trouble, every illness, every problem, every conflict, every apparently insurmountable obstacle begins in darkness then plays out in our lives. Darkness works behind the scenes plotting, scheming and engineering circumstances designed to drive our focus to the darkness. As long as our focus resides in the darkness, we cannot win. Problems dwelt upon and rehearsed, issue in more and more problems. Even prayers, no matter how sincerely they are delivered, if uttered in fear and desperation have little impact. God hears the prayers, every one of them, but is hindered in helping by the mindset and expectation of the one praying. You cannot pray in the dark and expect an answer in the light. Prayers are answered when the one praying comes to the light where God is. Stay lit.

Evil most certainly can be overcome in this life. No matter how terrible or desperate a situation appears to be, God always has an answer, a solution if we could but hear it. Oftentimes we do not hear it because the evidence that has been placed before our eyes says it cannot be. Our senses minds, severely limited in scope and understanding, cannot apprehend it. In order to break free from the chains of darkness we have to be able to look at something greater than the darkness; greater than the portrayal we are witnessing; greater than the mounting evidence to the contrary. Darkness, the author of fear, is always an illusion. It is successful because we believe the lie. We believe the facts instead of considering the truth. We go by what men say instead of what God says. The problem with other men is that they are stuck in the same trap from which we wish to escape. Jesus healed every one that came to him irrespective of the various facts involved. It’s impossible for a man born blind to be able to see, but Jesus healed him anyway. It is impossible for a man with a withered hand to stretch it forth, but Peter told him to stretch it forth and he did. Healing is not dependent upon the severity or lack of severity of the problem, but rather on the belief of the one that has the need. There is no fact, no circumstance, no medical condition chronic or otherwise, no diagnosis, no mental condition long in the making or recently developed, no so called impossibility, that cannot be overcome when the light is introduced. Stay lit.

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. God dwells in the light. If you want to find God, though He is everywhere present, you have to get yourself to the light. You get to the light by changing your thinking from darkness to light. You have to stop dwelling on how much it hurts; how hard it is; how impossible it seems and get yourself over to the promises of God. You have to stop complaining about your unmet needs; being frustrated by your unmet needs; getting pissed about your unmet needs and put your focus back on God who promises to meet your needs. To think otherwise is to dwell on the darkness and dwelling on the darkness won’t bring forth the light. Can’t you see it? The reason you continue to struggle is because you haven’t yet been able to get your thinking to the right place. Darkness is a liar and accepting its claims leads only to defeat. God does not want you to suffer. God is not withholding any good thing from you. God is not upset with you. Thinking so is listening to and believing the darkness. Evil does not define the terms. Darkness does not dictate what will and will not happen to you, though it claims vociferously otherwise. You are in a contest. You are in a competition. It’s damn hard at times, but you can always win. It is God’s will that you win. Stay lit.

I think if we ever stopped to consider how important it is to control what we choose to think, our lives would be changed immeasurably. It is so much easier to see what is going on when the lights are on. The solution to being engulfed in darkness is not to try and understand the darkness, but instead turn on the light. All darkness flees when the light comes. Thinking and considering and rehearsing and evaluating darkness or ideas promoted by darkness is a trap and no matter how smart you think you are, you ain’t getting out of that trap. It’s a trap because darkness is counting on your cooperation in order to prevail. Don’t be that person. Get to the light. Stay lit.

It does not matter what obstacles you are facing, God will help you learn how to win. There is no temptation that has taken you that is not common to man. There is a way out. There is an answer. There is a solution and the way out, the answers, and the solutions are found in the light. God sent His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. Tap into the power that is greater than yourself. Tap into the power that always overcomes. Find the light, then stay lit. You won’t be sorry, you will be set free.

Just some good thoughts…