Tag: compete

Living Your Best Life…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

5-30-people-jumpingI’m sure you already know this by now, but our time on the earth is frightfully short. What seems like forever when we are twenty quickly turns into forty, fifty, then enter our sixties and beyond. And even though us believing types can look forward to the opportunity to live forever, life on this planet is short, damn short. We have a finite number of days to live this life and more importantly to enjoy our time here. For this reason alone, we owe it to ourselves to live our best lives now. What will it take for you to be living your best life now?

It seems near the top of our pursuits is built into us the desire to be happy. We all know and love how happy feels, yet we aren’t always happy. We let circumstances and people and unresolved situations get on top of us and rob us of our enjoyment. We get caught up in things that don’t help us nor lead us to our own personal fulfillment. We waste days and months and years being afraid of things and doubting ourselves from sunup to sundown. In short, we don’t cooperate with our own selves to do the things that bring about our best lives, being the best person we can be in each category of our experience. Instead, we work at cross purposes with ourselves and work against our own best interests. We don’t properly honor ourselves nor give ourselves a chance to get it right. We judge ourselves, berate ourselves, punish ourselves and hurt ourselves. We live amidst a perpetual state of seeking, yet not obtaining; striving, yet not making progress; attempting, but failing and never actually arriving at the place we see so clearly in our hearts. And, the million dollar question is why?

I think the main reason this happens to us is because we refuse to take on the central issues of our lives. We know we desperately need more money, but don’t do the things required to make more money. We live with some negative aspect of our personality, yet never take it to heart and resolve ourselves to repair it. We settle for less than we deserve across a multitude of spectrums. We know the changes we need to make in our relationships, yet spend a lifetime playing the victim, instead of speaking up and saying what it is we really need and want. We know very clearly the changes that are needed, yet are loathe to make the changes. We have all the excuses in the world and we stand by them. And, if we are honest, it usually isn’t our whole lives that need revision, but instead a few pivotal themes that hold us back from being the person we know to be. For this reason, we owe it to ourselves to take on the challenges in our lives and win the fights. Our best life is waiting for us to do it.

There is still another important variable in beginning to live our best lives and that variable is time. The competition we are all in means at times things will challenge us and confront us and even in some cases, assault us. We are in a fight; a fight between good and evil. When we are winning the fight, we will be living our best lives. When we are losing the fight, even temporarily, we will not be living our best lives and will instead be succumbing to fear and misery and defeat. Whole lifetimes can be lost to fear; to guilt and self-judgment; in circumstances that appear beyond our control or ability to impact. Yet, that is when we are being deceived. There is always something we can do to remedy situations because God is on our side. And most importantly, the time to fight back is when you are in the fight. Waiting and waiting to take on areas of your life you know are defeating you is simply prolonging your own happiness and joy. You may not know all of the variables yet, but you do know where you struggle. Once you become more clear concerning the brevity of life, the more important it will become to you to deal with and resolve the issues of your life. And as much as you may not want to hear it, you have to fight back. You have to quit assuming you were dealt a lousy hand; didn’t get the advantages that others enjoy; have suffered more than your fair share of difficulties. All of those things may be quite true because we have a cruel opponent, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot overcome and ride on the high places of the earth. Living your best life equals having a willingness to take on those areas that cause you suffering and to take them on now!

Living our best lives is being happy and enjoying our experience of life. Life is to be enjoyed. All of that striving and working and pressing and grinding, though it may lead you somewhere, is the tell-tale sign you are trying to do it without God. You are driving yourself to the bone to obtain something God would freely give you if you let Him. Sure you must work, sure you have to supply effort, sure you need to engage yourself with your whole heart, but your best life will be found when you stop trying to control every aspect of your own life and let God do what He promised He would do. You cannot control the world, other people or the adversary for that matter. But, you can control your thinking and stop allowing those negatives to shape your life. You can choose to stop allowing your opponent to define the narrative concerning what you must have; what you must have accomplished; who you must be in order to be happy and instead define those things for your own self. You will find that your personal happiness and fulfillment will come as a result of making your own way in accordance with the things that matter most to you. Your best life is your happiest life, your most enjoyable life. What things take away your happiness? What obstacles impede your ability to enjoy life? What things are you doing and saying to yourself that limit you and cause you to settle for less than the best; God’s best? That my friends is the best place to start and you need to start right now!

Living your best life is loving and appreciating this experience we call life and learning how to do it in the best way. We are all on our own personal journey with warnings and signposts along the way. Pay attention to things and carefully note those aspects of life that curtail your enjoyments; take away your peace; severely hamper and impede your progress and set about to defeat them. Take things on with God’s loving help along the way. The God who invented life knows exactly how to live it and He wants you to discover that for yourself. He dislikes religion and obligatory activity even more than you do. You won’t find your best life listening to everything people say is wrong. You’ll find it when you begin to trust your own heart and do the things that lead to your own personal fulfillment and happiness. You can be everything you always wanted to be in every aspect of life, if you’ll just get serious about getting there.

This life we are living is frightfully short, but won’t you be glad in the end that you found happiness and love along the way? Live your best life now. You owe that to yourself!

Just some good thoughts…

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The Great Human Experience…

On By Papa TonyIn life, Thought2 Comments

wall-700x465The experience of life and indeed, human beings is a fascinating study at best. Trying to understand how one can travel from lost and confused to focused with clarity often within the same twenty-four hour period is a conundrum reserved for a mastermind. We, the people, are literally all over the place. We ride one day on the high places of the earth and the next day subdued in the misty flats. In the quiet of the morning, our thoughts are gentle and expectant only to turn harried and pressed by the end of the day. And all of this can only be defined as the great human experience.

Sometimes when you are a writer and you know you have something to say, you find yourself intoxicated with the notion of communicating some idea, some ideal way to think and be that will enable your brothers and sisters to live only on the high road in the space of clarity and with undisturbed peacefulness. Yet the words, however earnest, elude you because that isn’t the way of life. It’s just not that simple. Soon you begin to realize that life isn’t found exclusively in the victory, the challenge overcome, but in the learning that accompanied it; the thoughts and considerations that finally brought you there. To fantasize that you could arrive without the challenges isn’t life, but a false expectation that you might get something for nothing and somehow gain the prize absent the exertion! Such is not life at all… Such seeks to  cheat the great human experience.

If ever you may finally get to the place where you accept how life is, your trophy, your purse, your joy and your fulfillment arrive in concert with your decision to learn how to compete. Once you discover the competition taking place and learn how to see it as such, you begin to zoom in on the details. It’s the subtleties, the little things that shape and round out your existence, not the big moments and flashy circumstances. Your body, your mind with its five senses registering and if you have believed, your spirit, all work in concert to play out and reveal a grand drama in which you are the lead actor. Every registering sensation, feeling or insight begging for a decision, a conclusion, a judgment. How you vote determines how your life proceeds; how your year goes; how your day plays out! When you feel subdued and defeated, wandering in the low places, you’ve likely failed to register the appropriate scintilla and cast your ballot amiss. When you’re enjoying the ride on the high road; when you are the head and not the tail, you have discerned properly and made the right choices. You’ve challenged the lie, the error and seen through the false threats and with perfect equanimity rose above the challenges of the day. Such is the great human experience.

People often imagine how their lives might have turned out if they made some different choices early on. They pine for what might have been had they lived in another locale or chose a different partner or discovered their passion; their gift earlier. But, that’s not how life works and constitutes a futile reminiscence. You chose what you chose when you chose it because for you, in that moment of time, it was the right choice. Now that you’ve grown and progressed does not negate your earlier choices, but rather demands that you adapt and change to match your present condition. The capability you enjoy today was not your capability of ten years ago. You are where you are that you may continue to learn and continue to grow. To think that growth and learning are reserved for the young serves only to cut you off from the sweetness of life. It seems many elders have acquiesced to a limited view of life, no longer seeking to delineate their experience, but voting based on what they already know. Yet life and circumstances have changed as you would expect within the great human experience.

Have you ever considered that the challenges you face exist not because God has placed them in your path, but rather because there is some aspect of your experience, your previous learning that needs modification and as such is exploited by a hidden enemy fully aware of that deficiency? Instead of whining against the circumstances; ever begging for a changed existence, your duty, your obligation, your absolute requirement is to discover how to overcome! Each piece of darkness that prevails does so by some ignorance of the truth concerning it. Every affliction, every anguish, every burden, every discouraging aspect of your present life exists only until you finally uncover the truth concerning it and change your vote accordingly. Your belief of the truth; your full persuasion concerning that which is right; your unalterable determination, is the only course to victory in the great human experience.

Life in all of its varieties and manifestations has been programmed by its Source to prevail. You can learn to live above the distractions, the heartaches, the troubles of life as you consciously decide to learn what the experience; what the circumstance contains for you. Instead of frustration leading to fear, start paying attention to recurring dramas, to issues resembling other issues, to chronic problems and then believe God to show you the solutions, indeed the way out! If you were smart enough to have done it on your own, you would have done so already. You are only as stuck as your dogged pride has determined you to be. Believe to see. Accept that you do not know already. Admit to your need for assistance. No-one wins at life on their own. If you do this, you will, like the blind man who God gave back his sight, at last see and in seeing, change…

This is the only way to master the great human experience…

Just some good thoughts…

 

Complacency is Not Your Friend…

On By Papa TonyIn God, goodness, knowledge, Thought, UncategorizedLeave a comment

ComplacentMy wife and I were privileged to spend the weekend with our good friends Bob and La Detra White at their beautiful home in North Decatur, Georgia. We were there to celebrate Bob’s 50th birthday milestone and what a celebration it was! We socialized at the hotel; enjoyed a catered Georgia brunch; were entertained by a fantastic singer with accompaniment in their home; traveled in the deluxe party coach to do some wine tasting and enjoyed a delicious dinner gathering in a private room. And that doesn’t even include the special times we enjoyed with their family and friends who were successful in their own rights.  I remember walking around their incredible home with Bob as he explained the various wood choices they made and the details they chose for the ceilings and walls. Then there was time we spent with La Detra as she explained her consulting business and how she learned to compete and demand the best for herself and her family. And in the midst of all this, I couldn’t help but think to myself, wow – these folks got it going on!

Successful people seem to have one common trait amidst a hundred competing ideals. They refuse to settle for what life begrudgingly offers and choose rather to seek out the best. It’s as if they have learned to discern the dividing lines and limitations people put upon themselves and consciously seek after things beyond those illusionary boundaries. They told La Detra she could never go Harvard and now that same Harvard grad is living the life; a life she chose and not one that was chosen for her! Did it take hard work? Absolutely! Were there hard times? Of course, as anything worth having has a payment required to achieve it. But one thing her success didn’t include was complacency…

You might not have seen it clearly enough yet, but complacency is not your friend. Complacency is marked by words like, “good enough” which in themselves aren’t bad but will never get you to your full potential. I mean have you ever wondered what you might accomplish if you pushed past those imaginary lines and went beyond those self-defined limitations you have put on yourself? What could you really do in this life? Curtis Bunn, published author, and my riding buddy on the party bus told me that it took him seven years to write his first book. Yet he rose above whatever held him back and wrote that first book! Now with a number of books on the market and a publishing contract for more books in hand, he enjoys his own success by refusing complacency and pressing toward things that matter; for his own life that he has chosen for himself.

We all start out in life with a hidden treasure of skills, aptitudes and abilities in our hearts; waiting, asking, begging for expression. And when we were young we heard those urgings distinctly and sought to pursue them. Then, something got in the way of those ideals and we started to hear those promptings less and less. We found out that we could get to “pretty good” quite easily and settled… I mean, after all, we are doing pretty well compared to some people, right? We have our basic needs met, don’t we? Why should we supply more effort if 60-70% got us this far? Why??? Because if 70% got you this far, imagine where you could go if you bumped that effort up to 90%. Imagine what you might bring to the world if you decided to go all in instead of saving something for later? Imagine what you might be able to do if you stopped being afraid to try?

Complacency is, therefore, the great killer of hopes, dreams, ideals. It moves in with stealth like a burglar and takes away your confidence; your passion; your enthusiasm, and does so without you even being aware of it. It convinces you day by day that how you are living is okay. It gets you to rationalize away your God-given talents. I mean who are you to seek so much? What have you done to deserve that life you’ve always imagined? And what does “little-ol” you have to offer? I’m guessing far more than you have even contemplated to this point!

Most folks are waiting for some inspiration. But here’s the funny thing about inspiration; inspiration is waiting on you! Inspiration isn’t something that comes to you by fate when the stars align or when good luck finally turns in your direction. Inspiration arrives when you are ready to receive it; when you have finally decided to do what you know you are capable of doing. And in that moment; that blessed moment, it floods in like a torrent and suddenly the day has no end.

This life is far too short to waste away your days on the couch wondering what you could have been. Why not push yourself out of your comfort zone and see what you can do? Your age isn’t a factor, nor can it be when you have unrealized dreams in your heart. Instead you owe it to yourself and our Great God that gave you those talents to reach beyond yourself and accomplish. Go all in, heart, soul, mind and strength! You can do it; you must do it!

Complacency is not your friend, but success is and she is waiting for you on the other side…

Go get it my friends, it’s waiting for you!