Tag: thankful

Keeping Your Head in the Right Place…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

road-sign-words-welcome-you-right-place-blue-sky-background-36449742You ever have one of those weeks? You know the kind where you’re having some kind of mental turmoil going on but you can’t put your finger on the ‘why.’ Well, I had that very week. There were no disasters or dramas at work. The economy didn’t collapse and no crazy people were elected President. It wasn’t trouble at home or in the neighborhood or abroad. It was nothing you could readily define at all. Just a week of scattered thinking, agitation and distress. So, something was up; something worth understanding…

A long time ago, in similar fashion, I was going through some serious stuff. I had grown so accustomed to my happy life with God where things always worked out for me. But, something had gone astray. Something had changed and I hadn’t gotten the memo. I spent lengthy prayer sessions begging God to turn things around. I just couldn’t figure out why He had changed towards me; why He didn’t seem to be there for me like He was before. And I can tell you, I spent way too damn long in that space. That was until one fateful day when I finally figured it out. My problem was never with God, my problem was with me. God never changed. I did. What I once enjoyed because I believed, I stopped enjoying because I stopped believing. I foolishly allowed well meaning people to talk me out of the simplicity of what I had, in favor of something impossibly complicated. In short, I failed to keep MY head in the right place!

One thing you should always know and never forget is that God does not change. His love for you is constant. He’s seen all of your dirty bits and loves you regardless. His favor towards you isn’t and never was based on what you do, but instead based on who He is. When things have gone south on you, God didn’t move, you did. And to get back to the life that’s worth living can only happen when you come back to the right place.

The right place is all about what God says is true. Sure there will be people who speak otherwise. There will be circumstances that appear and threaten. You’ll see news reports and pending world disasters. And worst of all, there will be subtle thoughts, almost imperceptible that chip away at you; gently nudging you to a different place; a place where heaven’s brass. And, once you get there it’s damn hard to know what happened. So, I’ll save you some time and drudgery. When things are going bad for you, you are in the wrong place.

The wrong place has many beguiling disguises; one of which is yourself. When your life becomes all about you, you are being deceived. When the number one priority is your happiness; your satisfaction; your stuff, the game is on and you are losing. As ironic as it sounds, life was never meant to be lived that way. Just as giving away somehow makes you richer, choosing the happiness of others first, leads to your own. So, how do you know if you are in the wrong place? When life is all about you…

Another counterfeit mental space comes in the form of doubts, worries and fears. How could you ever be afraid of anything if Almighty God is around? Spending your days worrying and dreading some potential future outcome is a waste of your life. Usually the thing you fear so ardently is out of your control anyway, right? Or else you could solve it. But, you can’t because it’s beyond your ability and so you worry and wither away. Getting back to the right place means giving something to God for Him to handle and by God, letting Him handle it! So, how do you know if your head is in the wrong place? When your fear has become bigger than your God…

The third and arguably most common fake, mental vacation rental shows up in a profound lack of gratitude. Everyone wants more, more, more. You want a bigger house, a better job, a new spouse, never considering just how outrageously grateful you should be for what you already have. Like my wife said today, there’s people that would think they went to heaven by living in our house and here we are complaining that the living room isn’t big enough to entertain more guests. What you have may not be your ultimate, but I’m guessing it might be someone else’s! You’ve watched so many political ads promising to make America great again that you’ve forgotten just how great it is already. You live a comfortable life in a free, safe country where your major concerns center around what to have for dinner; that you take from your freezer; that you purchased at a store; that you drove to in your car, that just left your 3 car garage, attached to your big house. And you’re not grateful for all of that? You’re not just breathtakingly thankful to live how you get to live? Boy oh boy… So, how do you know that your head’s on vacation? When you’re not sublimely grateful for the life you already have, pregnant with unlimited possibilities…

Although the examples could be endless, suffice it to say that the only one responsible to keep your head in the right place is you! Don’t get mad or frustrated with God; He’s never the source of your difficulties. There is another source, but you can easily thwart him as you make it your number one priority to stay in the right place; that place where God says what’s true.

My confusing week from hell is over now and you know why? Because I remembered that it is MY job to put my head in the right place and that no-one could do it for me, but me. Man, how grateful I am to be God’s son! I’m not sure how I could ever navigate this life without Him. Do the right thing by getting to the right place in your mind; the place where God is. That’s where all the blessings are! The more than abundant life is real and waiting for you.

I love you Papa…

Just some good thoughts.

 

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Cleaning Out Your Closet, One Thought at a Time…

On By Papa TonyIn believing, bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, love, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized2 Comments

pohlig_builders_clean_closet_art_career_wardrobeDid you know that your mind (emphasis on YOUR mind) is not supposed to be full of fear, anxiety and stress? Oh sure, most people are living that way, but it’s not supposed to be that way. The problem is that we have become so accustomed to living that way and feel like it must be the norm. If you notice we say things like, “welcome to life” or “life happens” and even, “shit happens!” And, by saying that, we are openly declaring or admitting that we have accepted something, namely –  that’s just the way life is… Well, what if that’s not the way life is? What if you have been seduced into a mindset that, once setup, goes on defeating you for years and years? What if there is something out there operating within a vast network, secretly, to convince you and me of a gargantuan lie?

Believe it or not, that something or other does exist and is presently working within the systems of the world to do just that. Everything around you is negative with subtle fear trappings behind it. And, the more you buy into it, the more fear you experience; the more anxiety; the more stress, which are all more or less alternate names for the same thing.

If you have ever taken the time to monitor those wieldy thoughts of yours, you’ll see just how consistently this is occurring. But hey, who has time to monitor their thoughts? I mean life is sooooo busy, right? Well, I submit to you that it’s so busy because you have bought in. How much of that crap you do day by day do you really have to do? Look at our obsession with health (in America of course). You have to eat this and ingest that and add this and supplement that. After all, you don’t want to get cancer, right? You see, you bought in man. You became convinced that your only shot at living a long, healthy life was to do what the TV and Facebook and the media told you to do. And the clincher? You are doing it all out of fear. Now this doesn’t even account for the requirements to exercise. Gotta get your cardio; your weight training; your Pilates; your yoga or else you will surely die! The Bible says that bodily exercise does profit you of course, but the real source of your good health is God. Absent God, get on the fear train!

You can’t eat this or have too much of that. Sugar is outlawed and everything must be low fat. Butter kills, bacon kills, red meat kills, fried food kills, high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes and on it goes. Generations of people ate those things before us, but we are so much smarter now. I’ll bet you never considered that all that advertising wasn’t designed to make you healthier but rather  to make you buy something. And bought it, you did! (And I did)

So it is high time to get off the fear train and start cleaning out your closet. You feel the need to clean out your closet because it has become chock full of crap. So what about your mind? Chock full of crap. And like with your pesky closet, you can only start clearing it out one thought at a time. But even before you can start cleaning, you have to decide you want to. How many things in your life are sitting out there unresolved, cluttering up the background? It’s no wonder people feel overwhelmed. So why don’t we resolve things? We haven’t got enough time between the gym and Pilates and healthy food shopping and getting stuff done! No, I mean getting everything done! Today! Bought in…

Healthy thinking involves getting problems resolved. It means taking the time necessary to get on top of whatever is on top of you. If it takes a week, so be it. If it takes 6 months, so be it. Why put up with problems? You put up with them because you think you have to. I often wonder just how many health issues we face come directly from our own frenetic minds being pushed and pulled all over the globe and back.

Next we need some time to get quiet. Just get quiet. Whether it’s prayer or meditation or simply turning off electronics, just get quiet. You will be amazed how many thing come up when you give your mind a chance to get quiet. You may just find that thing you have been doing for the last ten years because you are disciplined really gets done because you are afraid. Here’s a test. Try to stop doing it. Just let it go… Seems to me that God can do His job pretty well without all my incessant meddling! When you stop doing all of that crap it is like you are saying, “Here I am and I have stopped running!” Indeed…

My good friend once remarked, “I find that my mind is at peace when I focus on right now and whenever I start to feel stress it’s because I have either gone back into the past or moved ahead to the future.” So, try to live just for today. Or better, try to live just for right now. Did you know that God designed life to be lived in 24 hour compartments? (God, not Dale Carnegie…)

In order to even have a chance of living that “good life” you have often imagined, you must first get control of your mind. Take the mental time you need to get things straight. If there’s something you need to say, say it! If something is undone and driving you nuts, do it. And, for goodness sakes, stop being afraid of everything! So, what if a disease shortened your life? Well, what if you are shortening your life by living in fear? You can only do what you can do, right? And the way I see it, the only thing you can ever totally control is your mind; or more specifically, your thoughts!

This short little go round the sun doesn’t offer you enough time to live another moment that way. Get God involved and stop trying to be so smart. He’s infinitely better than your best thinking and worth checking into (unless of course you are content right where you are…).

The “normal” way to live, though long hidden, is to be unafraid. The absence of fear introduces you to a world you only thought existed in childhood. But, as a kid, you knew you weren’t that smart. Hmmm…

You are worth the time…

You vs. You… Are You Winning?

On By Papa TonyIn believing, goodness, happiness, knowledge, love, spiritual, Thought, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Its_You_vs_You_151-3Who is your real enemy anyway? Some folks might say it’s the devil. The general population thinks it’s the government. The Liberals say it’s the Republicans and the Republicans say it’s everyone else. Racists ignorantly claim it’s every race that isn’t their own. Capitalists, communists, socialists all have some thoughts about what holds people back. But I submit to you that the only thing that can hold you back is you! Sure there is a devil working behind the scenes to screw you up, but even he can’t beat you without some cooperation on your part.

When you peel away everything external; every circumstance; every outside influence, all that is left is you and what you believe about yourself. You tell me what you honestly think about yourself and I’ll tell you whether or not you are going to be successful in life. Oh you can argue! You can talk about luck and favor and chance. You can whine about good breaks and bad breaks. You can blame your upbringing, foolishly concluding that someone, somewhere had a perfect one… But in the end, it’s you and what you think!

Don’t think for a minute that anything I’m saying excludes God or spiritual realties. Of course not. Rather, in the spiritual realm whether it be God’s wonderful goodness or the adversary’s despicable badness, both require your cooperation to either help or harm.

So, back to you… What do you think about yourself? Really! If you didn’t have to censor yourself to be socially acceptable, what is your truth concerning you? Do you think you’re smart? Do you think you deserve goodness in your life? Do you think you will live a long life? Do you see yourself living with abundance or struggling to get by? Those ideas you have in your mind; those beliefs ultimately define your life with minute accuracy and precision. Don’t think for a second that something outside of yourself defined those limits for you! You might have heard those limits; been schooled in those limits; been inundated with those limits, but those limitations only limit you if you cooperate with them and believe them. Write that in stone because it’s always true!

Here’s another way to look at it. What kind of things do you say to yourself? What goes on in that inner dialogue of yours? Are you kind with yourself? Are you patient with yourself? Do you love yourself or better, do you even like yourself? I went through a rather rough patch in my own life, religion induced of course, where I honestly couldn’t say that I liked myself anymore. Egads, right? I was so consumed with doing everything right; everything someone else said was right, that I no longer even liked myself. The problem with that garbage is that the people consumed with pointing out my flaws were just like me. And as long as I gave them a hearing was as long as I lived under their control. I didn’t realize that behind all of that judgment was the enemy, with whom I unknowingly cooperated. Was I a better person? Hell no! I was a defeated, miserable wreck. And there but for the grace of God I might still be.

My good friend Mark Wallace taught that we should never say anything negative about ourselves. Let that simmer for a moment. Imagine never saying anything negative about yourself… Think now, does saying negatives things about yourself to yourself ever help you get better? Really, does it? How could a focus on what’s wrong with you ever lead to what’s right with you? Let’s say you just did something bad.  (Haha let’s say…) Often your defeat doesn’t come from the mistake but rather your decision to linger on your mistake for days or even years. You vs. you and you lose! When you make a mistake you should immediately move on past it and not allow it another second of residence in your mind. The Bible backs this up, even though that religious guy told you otherwise.

So, how can you win? How can you turn this thing around and end in victory? You have to win the battle of you vs. you. You are the only you have got. You have one life, one opportunity, one chance to come out on top. Choose you. If you aren’t on your side, you cannot win. Decide that you are okay just the way you are. Sure you have weak spots. Sure you make mistakes and choose badly at times. But, I think if you are honest, the goodness that is you far outweighs the moments that you behave badly. Farrrrrrr outweighs! So again, choose you! Stop saying those horrible things to yourself. Stop voting for evil! Choose good. Change your mind; thought by thought until your thoughts favor you, the only you, you have! That’s not egotistical for goodness sakes, that’s truth!

We all want to live prosperous, healthy, love filled lives. All of us! Give yourself a break by getting off your own back! You don’t do anyone a service by hating yourself. In fact, it’s a disservice. You end up rejecting the awesome beauty that God gave you by giving you a life. Instead, decide right now that you really are a wonderful person. Decide that you can change the ending of your personal drama by changing what you think about yourself. It’s your one life and you are worth that!

That enemy you have been wrestling with isn’t the government or the communists or your parents. The enemy you are fighting is your own self and the things you have been believing about yourself. Choose love. Choose God. Choose you. If God be for you, who can be against you?

Win in the great competition of life!

Just some good thoughts…

Analysis Paralysis Dialysis For Your Brain…

On By Papa TonyIn believing, bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, love, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized2 Comments

rubiks_cube_by_alexandrelandry-d4p8s17Adults are fantastic problem solvers. In fact, if you want to appeal to adult learners (ala Dale Carnegie training) you have to give them a problem and allow them to solve it themselves. In short, we are ‘problem solving’ machines. But, with our keen ability to analyze comes our problematic ability to over-analyze, solve problems that aren’t problems yet or simply drive ourselves completely batty along the way. It’s like that damn Rubik’s cube!  The best I could ever do was maybe get one row all the same color. Not that I didn’t invest enough time, but rather the time I invested wasn’t productive because there was a pattern or a logic to the solution that I wasn’t aware of, yet… Often in life, the questions that paralyze us are the ones we attribute either to the wrong “cause,” or represent the wrong “time” to deal with it. So today I’m offering you some dialysis for your brain. Yes, you need this!

If you looked inside your brain during extended periods of churning over some event or situation, you would find a skinny hamster running fast on his wheel; working hard, getting nowhere. It’s not his lack of effort that is defeating him. It’s the reality that his chosen method of problem solving cannot possibly end with a good result because his starting premise is faulty. The wheel he is on doesn’t lead anywhere; never did; never will. But, he doesn’t know that it leads to nowhere so he persists hoping to breakthrough to a new area based on past analysis. If he knew in advance that the wheel led to nowhere he wouldn’t bother traveling on it, but doggone it, it sure seems to be leading somewhere! And oh my Lord, he can’t just let it go, he has to solve the problem so he can relax. You do realize that the hamster is you, right?

Enter scenario number two:  Usually triggered by something, you start to imagine some dreadful possibility in the future. Maybe you read something on WebMD. The more you think about it (hamster wheel, hamster wheel) the more real it becomes. “Oh my gosh! I have been feeling warm and my leg has been aching — I’m dyingggggggggg!” Now you hop back on to your hamster wheel and start cranking out a solution. Faster, faster; more analysis, more analysis – whatever will I do now that I know I’m dying? In effect, you’re not only spinning on a hamster wheel, you are spinning on a hamster wheel of the future; a future you haven’t arrived at yet.

Before we get to the dialysis for your brain, I’d like to clue you in on something you may not ever have imagined. All of that churning and spinning and exhaustion (yes, it is exhausting) is nothing more than a grand distraction from the life you are living now. How many days, weeks, months or years have you spent on that topic, always with the same futile lack of result? The problem isn’t solved or else you wouldn’t keep working your exercise wheel! The only real result is your life being wasted away on something. Enter misery, frustration and depression! If you could remove all of the shrouds you would see it for what it is; a grand illusion designed to steal your precious life away from you. The source of it has just three motives; to steal, to kill and to destroy! Numbers two and three haven’t happened yet, but number one is in full operation.

So how can we introduce some new blood into your system? By offering new problem solving techniques or better research tools? Nope! By suggesting that you work harder (run faster) get more sleep, take medications or drink wine? Again nope! Instead I’m offering Plan C… let it go! (Disney movie soundtrack playing in the background…) Let go and let God! Stop being so smart; so logical; so intellectual. Humbly admit to God that you do not know the answer; that you are sorry for being such a wise guy and that you need for Him to get you to the real cause and show you the real solution. This option presupposes that you are now done with your wearisome trek and ready for an influx of new life. Then, once you have done this from your heart, do not allow yourself to take it back again. Oh you are going to feel heavily tempted to get back on the hamster wheel because if you could just_____, or maybe find _____, surely you would see the solution! But do yourself a favor and remember that this issue you have been struggling with for the past ten years hasn’t gone away despite your incredible analytical mind. Remember the old adage, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” ~ Albert Einstein.  Thus, it’s clearly time to get on dialysis!

Once you finally let that “thing” go you are going to feel something wonderful. It’s called peace. Peace of mind is God’s way of showing you that you are on the right track. Formula: Agitated = off track, peace = on track. Get on track. And, in that peaceful state you are going to start seeing things you haven’t seen before. You will begin to recognize destructive thinking and its effect on you. Often you will find that your solution wasn’t even remotely connected to all of your analysis. Isn’t God grand?

Hamster wheels are for hamsters, not humans. Analysis is good to a certain point, but perplexity indicates something else may be involved which is a cue for you to get “Something Else” involved. Your life, my life is very short by comparison. Live out your days with alacrity of mind; in the present; in peace. Live your life in peace!

Just some good thoughts…

 

Seeing, Not Seeing is Believing…

On By Papa TonyIn believing, bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, love, spiritual, ThoughtLeave a comment

quote-Denis-Waitley-you-must-understand-that-seeing-is-believing-167789I’m often amused when I hear fellows say that they don’t believe in anything they can’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell. Imagine all of the undiscovered stuff that makes up our world and confining yourself to your own finite, limited understanding. Imagine… Your human logic with all of its breathtaking accuracy and precision is at best severely hampered by one key factor; it’s yours. You can only possibly know what you know and your entire system of logic must be based entirely on what you know or worse, what you think you know! We all make logical assumptions and seek a logical result. Yet, we often find ourselves perplexed when we applied our best logic and we still didn’t end up where we wanted or get what we needed. We worked really hard; much harder than the other guy, yet still didn’t get the promotion. I kept the most vigilant eye I could fathom on my child and he still got hurt, while the other seemingly careless parent’s kid never got touched. You did your best to live a healthy lifestyle, yet still got deathly ill while the other lady maximized her vices and lived to be a hundred. Why? Why, because when it comes to learning how to believe to get your needs met, seeing, not seeing is believing.

In order to believe to get the things you need in life, you have to be able to “see” them happening. If you can’t see something happening, it is never going to happen! Read that sentence again. If you cannot even picture yourself having abundance and instead see lack, clip some coupons or something because you are going to suffer lack. If you cannot imagine yourself happy and contented, discontent and restlessness will dominate your future. If something always goes wrong to thwart you from getting what you want, something will always go wrong to thwart you from getting what you want! Seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing. Enter your human logic… and you only know what you know! You think by your best analysis that you understand how things happen. You have been around a few years and sort of learned how stuff works. But, and ‘oh my lanta’ this is a large but, what if you got it wrong? What if the entire realm of the senses had been carefully manipulated to make it seem like things work a certain way when they don’t work that way at all? What if there was something you could with your mind that would totally revolutionize how your life turned out? What if? Well, there is of course, but in order to make it work for you, you have to defy your human logic! Egads!

When Jesus turned water into wine it defied human logic. When he fed the 5,000 with a couple of guy’s sack lunches, it defied human logic. Healing blind people defied human logic; not God’s logic, human logic. With believing you can cast mountains into lakes, so surely you can “believe” to get your personal needs met. Can you see it? (pun intended) Believing means completely removing those self-imposed limits you have placed on your thinking. I mean, come on, let’s be honest, that “one-day” thing you have been working aint working, is it? I know, I know, if you just stay at it, right? Hmmm… Give yourself a much-needed break from all that toil and learn to believe. That professional athlete you admire so much, who is living the life, believed to do so and made his work match what he already saw. That mega-star young singer with seemingly everything he ever wanted, got there first by believing and then followed it up with work. Believing is never about not working, it’s about working based on believing and not the other way around.

In order to make this believing thing work for you, you have to let go of all of your preconceived notions about life and become like a child again. You have to be open to the possibility of what might be rather than closed off with “your” ideas about what is… Remember, you only know what you know and you just might be wrong! The doctor isn’t the only one that can heal you and even the doctor simply endeavors to remove causes so your body can do what it was supposed to do. Plus believing is a lot cheaper! LOL And, when you embark on this wondrous journey with real believing in your eyes, be prepared for the onslaught of contrary information to thoroughly talk you out of your decision. If you are looking for healing, your hurt areas will appear to get worse. If you are believing to prosper, something will come along to convince you that you better let this fantasy stuff go. If you are planning to get promoted at work, don’t be surprised if you get chastised for doing something wrong. Point is, the adversary, ever working to manipulate the senses realm, is going to work tirelessly to talk you out of your new ideas! He has to because when you tap into believing you will eventually be able to believe to remove every strangle-hold he ever had on your life. Again, egads…

Don’t allow yourself to be reduced to the level of the beasts by only accepting what appears to be true. Be a successful, godly human and know better. Your life has always been within the realm of your control and just because you didn’t know that before never made it untrue. What is true is what God says is true. Wine from water anyone?

Learning to see and believe what can be rather than believing what appears to be is the crucible of human experience. Your heart already knows this is true and is still waiting for your mind to catch up! Don’t just see, really see!

Just some good thoughts…

 

 

Winning in the Great Competition of Life!

On By Papa TonyIn bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, love, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized2 Comments

victoryIf you have ever seriously competed in a sport, you know what it feels like to expend a lot of effort and take the victory. I don’t mean something like playing checkers, I mean a tough competition with a worthy opponent that challenges you to exert the extra mental energy required to come out on top. I say mental energy because at the end of the day it’s your thoughts that propel you to victory. You can have the strongest, most athletic body on Earth, but if you don’t win in your mind, you won’t win on the field!

Your life, my life is lived amidst a great competition. And whether we choose to compete or not, we are in it! The way that we compete is by the thoughts we think. That’s right folks! Your thoughts lead to your beliefs and your beliefs determine how your life turns out. As I’ve said many times before, don’t get it twisted…life doesn’t happen to you, you happen to life. If you can grasp this one idea, you can revolutionize your life.

Most people pay very little attention to the thoughts they are thinking. It’s like automatic pilot. You are thinking things, evaluating things, feeling things and blowing right by them as if it’s just a part of life. Oh I get why it happens. It happens because your belief system has informed you that thoughts are just thoughts and have no impact on this thing called, “your life.” But that, my friends, couldn’t be further from the truth. And like choosing not to compete in the competition of life, it really doesn’t matter because you are competing and your thoughts are how you are competing – like it or not!

When things are going badly for you; when circumstances seemed stacked up against you; when nothing seems to be going right, the first place to check is your thoughts. What are you thinking about? What are you focusing on? Where are you expending your mental energy? What have you accepted as true that might not be true? What time period are you in? The future; the past or right now? To think that you can maintain a sour, negative outlook and still get a good result may be the height of insanity. If you were in a physical race and all you thought about was not losing the race, chances are you lost that race! Run your own race! If you were playing basketball and all you could focus on was not missing the last shot, I guarantee you missed that shot. Take the shot!

In life, I imagine all of us have hopes and dreams about how this thing is supposed to turn out. We’re happy. We have enough money. We have a great job that allows us to use our talents to the fullest. We have great relationships with people that we love. We’re peaceful and content. But, how often do we entertain those thoughts? Not much! Instead we want to focus on everything that isn’t right and worse, bitch and moan in detail about it. Crazy…

In the great competition, we have an opponent. That opponent is always up for the challenge. He works in the systems of the world to make sure you don’t get to live out your dreams by influencing your thoughts. He counts on the fact that you don’t realize the importance of what you are thinking. In fact, he is the mastermind of distraction and lies and wields them both with breathtaking accuracy. The moment you make up your mind to change something or get something better, you are deluged with other ideas about why you can’t; don’t deserve it; aren’t be realistic; fooling yourself…on into infinity (almost). But instead of sticking to your guns and strengthening your resolve, you get fainthearted, lose energy and get back in line with the other billion people.

So what can you do about it? How can you finally win? Well, first of all you have to learn to start paying attention to what you are thinking about. Then, and here is where it can get pretty gnarly, you have to fight back. That’s right! Instead of recognizing that you feel bored or depressed or sad or weak and just living with it, you have to fight back! You have to make up your mind to take that thought on. Just because you thought something does not make it true. Again, JUST BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE! (YELLING) That has to be one of the biggest con jobs that ever happened to mankind. It’s a thought and it just invited you to compete. Okay, so you are tired today and don’t feel like fighting. But, if a scary, masked man just strolled into your living room and threatened your child, you’d feel like fighting, right? It wouldn’t matter if you were up all night, you would fight. Well, it’s the same with your thoughts. You may not want to fight, but if your peace of mind is at stake, you have to take it on. In fact, if that thought threatens anything you hold dear, you have to take it on.

Intentional living is really about intentional thinking. Decide what you want for your life and rigorously exclude any thoughts that aren’t in agreement with what you want. Hey man, they’re your thoughts… If you find yourself feeling negative or grouchy or upset, decide to stop it. Oh you can stop it alright. Change your thoughts. Think about the good things; your blessings; what you are grateful for; who you love, something. But for Lord’s sake don’t stay in the misery pit. No one gets out of the misery pit by choosing not to compete. They get out when and only when they decide to!

Some folks sadly never learn this lesson. Don’t let that be you! Take charge of your life by taking charge of your mind. It really is the only thing you are ever in complete control of…Hmmm, that alone should make you think (haha).

3…2…1, he shoots and it’s goooooooooooood!  The Blazers win, the Blazers win! (Go Damian Lillard)

Winning feels so good!

Just some good thoughts…

 

 

 

 

Are You Blessed?

On By Papa TonyIn bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, love, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized2 Comments

blessedlifeI have been feeling very blessed lately, so I thought it deserved some blog action. ‘Blessed’ is one of those words that means a lot of things to a lot of people. There’s the traditional ‘blessed’ which usually refers to factors in life that almost everyone experiences like, “I got up today” or “I have a home to live in” or “I’m alive.” Call me cynical but it seems like folks who utilize the term in this way usually don’t seem very blessed. Oh sure they are alive and living in a home, but not exactly blessed! Then there’s the blessed that is always associated with doing the right thing and since folks seldom always do the right thing…well, you get the point. Finally there is the ‘blessed’ that I believe aligns more closely with the biblical definition which refers to good ol’ fashioned happiness and contentment. It’s that inner sense that everything is going to be okay and if anything might not be okay, God is going to fix that in a hurry. It’s a quiet confidence; an internal knowing, joyfully complete with a full anticipation of an awesome tomorrow! That is what it means to be blessed and that’s the only kind of ‘blessed’ I want to talk about…

Now, you might have thought the title of this blog was a setup whereby I was going to point out how ‘un-blessed’ you are and prescribe the “way’ to get blessed according to me. Nah, not so much. Instead I want to explain what I have been doing different lately that seems to have led to all these blessings I am experiencing right now. That’s not to say you aren’t doing these things, but instead simply a happy guy wanting to share that happiness with others.

Let’s start by debunking a few myths. While it is marvelous to be alive and have some food and maybe a place to live, that’s not exactly blessed. Something to be thankful for? Sure! But being alive is something we sort of had no choice in, right? Lots of good-hearted people are plugging away day by day with absolutely nothing to look forward to. Life was never intended to be a perpetual chore to be survived. Nor was life supposed to be a daily struggle for existence and a few shekels. We have all (myself included) had periods where we felt down and lackluster and felt like tomorrow would probably be just like today was (blah blah). There’s no criticism in that. The criticism would come from acquiescing to that life and not getting serious about solving that puzzle.

Next, and probably the most perplexing myth is feeling like there is a never-ending list of things we have to do to perfect ourselves before that blessed day comes when we finally get what we want or get to fulfill our dreams. There is no hamster wheel like that one! The harder you try to be ‘good’ the more you fail at being good or the more you realize how much better you need to be in order to be considered good. Trust me on this one, your life is going to seriously suck if you get caught in that trap! Add to that the outrageous myth that purports that God will only bless you if you are good. You’ll notice that in that scenario the one judging your goodness is usually some other person/leader who most likely isn’t even doing the things he is asking you to do! Don’t get me started! Follow that logic for a minute here. If God only blesses you or protects you when you are good, you’re going to spend a lot of time not being blessed or protected. That is unless you have deluded yourself into thinking you can earn your way into God’s good graces. Egads… It’s myth folks!

God, as your real source of blessedness (happiness), does not bless you because of how good OR how bad you are. He blesses you when you do one thing and one thing only ~ believe. Therein lies the key to my recent blessing trail. I finally stopped cataloging my faults and shortcomings and stopped focusing on what I oughta do; shoulda done or shouldn’t have done and moved my focus back on to the source of all my goodness ~ God! I got my head back into God’s Word, to make myself good? Heck no! To be reminded about what it is that I should really be believing. Did you know that the purpose of God’s Word is to give you right doctrine (how to believe rightly) and reproof (how to get back to believing rightly) and correction (how to get unstuck from habitual wrong believing and get back to believing rightly)! Your life is truly all about what you are believing about yourself; your life; God and the world. It’s so easy to get off track (believing wrongly) and to stay off course absent any true doctrine. But, once you start believing again you will find that all the wrongs become right and life returns to that sweetness you (hopefully) once knew.

So what happened to me? I didn’t get a new job or a new car. I didn’t move into a new house. I didn’t come into a pile of money or receive some tremendous award for human service. Nah… I got my head back on the right track. By becoming sinless?  LOL well those of you who know me would dispute that one! Instead, I remembered that in order to receive anything from God, I had to believe and believing is easy once you learn (or relearn) the right things to believe!

Am I blessed? I think you know the answer to that one!

Living the blessed life…

Uncomplicate Yourself!

On By Papa TonyIn bible, God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, love, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized1 Comment

002_bibliography_pfalI remember many years ago; 1982 to be exact, taking a class called, “Power For Abundant Living.” For me (and many others) it was just the greatest class in the whole world! In that class I learned the great simplicity of a life with God and how to believe to get the things I wanted for my life. But, as the years waned on, I began to complicate what was once uncomplicated. I added (or maybe I should say, learned to add) conditions and rules and expectations. Instead of cleaving to the truth that I could believe God for anything I needed, I began to doubt what I had learned and as a result began to fall prey to fear. And this, despite my thorough understanding from the class that fear was also believing, negative believing, which always led to failure and difficulty in some capacity. Instead of simply accepting who God said I was, I allowed others to define me according to my behavior which seldom was good enough. The more I worked to get good enough to receive from God, the further I got from Him and the less I actually believed for anything. Instead I accepted that my notions of tremendous freedom and liberty were really just notions and that the way to get the good things in life was to live a difficult existence where everything I did was under scrutiny. Being a guy that always loathed religion, I somehow became religious and the judgment others were leveling on me, I leveled on everyone else. So where exactly did I go wrong?

I went wrong by allowing the truth of the Word to become cloudy in my mind and instead started relying on others to define the rules of the game. And here’s a newsflash for you, once you let other people start defining who you are what you can and cannot do, you slide down that slope at an alarming rate! Sadly, however, you become unaware that you are sliding down that greasy path and start thinking just like everyone else does. You conclude that fear is just a part of life. I mean look around, who isn’t afraid? What you don’t realize is that you cannot believe positively and have fear at the same time. And that, my friends, sums up most people’s condition today.

No matter what people may have told you before, God is minutely interested in your happiness and well-being. It’s not, as some people foolishly say, selfish to pray for yourself or to pray to get your own needs met. God is certainly not too busy with world events to hear your requests either. Do you have any kids? Well I’m guessing that as a parent you are pretty dang concerned about your children getting their needs met, right? Well, God loves them even more than you do! The trouble is that God will not overstep your freedom of will. In order to get your prayers answered you have to believe. If you don’t believe what He promised or have fear involved, you are NOT going to get your prayers answered. Praying and praying and wishing won’t get the job done. Only believing, really believing is going to do it. Here’s a quote from that pretty, little orange book.

“We are what we are today because of our believing. We will be tomorrow where our believing takes us. No one ever rises beyond what he believes and no one can believe more than what he understands. We believe what we believe because of what we have been taught. We think the way we think because of the way we have been led.” ~ Dr. VPW (PFAL)

Your life, my life is a product of what we believe. We can start off fantastically well, then digress into fear and defeat, but the basis of it all is the things we believe good and bad, and the things we have been taught! We can learn to expect the best and we can learn to fear the worst. We can become educated about the reality of the life God intended for us or we can be educated about the complexity of life with God and eat crap for years! Oh me? Yeah, I’m a believing guy that ended up eating a lot of crap. But, praise the Lord, I’m finally starting to see with my spiritual eyes again and remembering the simplicity and beauty of life with God.

Your life is so intricately connected to the things you believe, that you really owe it to yourself to learn what and how to believe. Don’t believe for a second that believing is tied to someone else’s definition of morality. God doesn’t answer your prayers because you are so good, He answers them when you believe. In fact, God has so arranged life that anyone who truly believes, receives, regardless of their religious or non-religious background. The folks you observe enjoying success have believed for it and the people you see perpetually struggling are afraid (not unrighteous before God…just afraid!).

Don’t get it twisted people, life is not complicated. Error is complicated! Religious observances are complicated. The more than abundant life God promised in His Word is there for the taking, if you can simply believe!

I believe (again). Won’t you?

Just some good thoughts…

Focus on Your Good Bits…

On By Papa TonyIn God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, love, Thought, Uncategorized1 Comment

fokusIf you are like me and I prefer to assume you are because then I will like you more :-), you have learned to focus on those few areas that you need to improve rather than all of the things that make you awesome! It’s sort of like a sickness isn’t it? You spend 16 of your waking hours doing what you are supposed to do and 5 minutes saying something you shouldn’t have said and then spending another hour ruminating on why you said it and that you really shouldn’t have said it. Sound familiar? Wouldn’t it seem reasonable to applaud yourself for 16 hours of solid effort and to pay little attention to your one mistake? Indeed!

The world we live in, rife with media input, has done a masterful job of tricking you and me into obsessing over anything that may hint at imperfection. “My belly is too fat!” which discounts  the fact that the ideal “belly” belongs to a 16-year-old with the metabolism of a racehorse. Or my hair or my eyes or my feet are too large or my cankels etc., etc. Whether it be physical imperfections (assuming there is “physical perfection”) or problems with our character or a propensity to sin (so-called) or just plain ol’ ability to actually make mistakes, we have universally bought into a gigantic scheme that gets us to focus on what’s wrong with us instead of focusing on our good bits…

So you might be asking, why does it even matter? Well, it matters because incessant focus on what is wrong with you leads to one perpetually long, unhappy existence. “I’m no good” “I’m not okay” “Why can’t I be like such and such” all presume a condition that may not actually exist. What if you are very, very similar to most human beings? What if the things you think and say and do are remarkably like the things most people think and say and do? What if, huh? What if that hour you just wasted obsessing over the “dumb thing” you said at the staff meeting was forgotten by everyone at the staff meeting 5 minutes after it ended? Pointless me thinks…

But here is another thing to consider that trumps even a wasted unhappy life. If it’s true that what you focus on expands, then focusing on what is wrong can only lead to more and more of “what is wrong!”  Chew on that for a moment… If, unbeknownst to you, the things you focus on in life are conspiring to come your way, then it seems focusing on what you don’t like can only produce more and more of “what you don’t like.” Are you beginning to see the large-scale scheme I was referring to earlier? Let’s say you are a pretty good person, according to your own estimates, but you have a few weaknesses. So you spend inordinate amounts of time working on your weaknesses. Sure, it seems noble because you are, after all, working on them. But, here’s a thought, have you ever known a successful person that spends more time working on their weaknesses than what they are good at, who remains successful? Probably not, right? Successful people, while fully aware of their weaknesses, choose rather to focus on the things in which they excel. Obsessing over weakness serves only to exemplify weakness. How many good-hearted people have you met that can’t go 5 minutes into the conversation without telling you something that is “bad” about themselves? Or conversely, how many people have you met that even dare to mention something they are good at? World-wide sickness, my friends.

A wise man named Eric taught me long ago in a conversation about child rearing, that the way to get your child past their problems is by highlighting the things they do well! Think about that for a moment. Your child is sitting there quietly watching TV and you don’t say a word, but as soon as they get rambunctious, you want to give them a lecture, thereby reinforcing the behavior you don’t like!  What works for children works for adults, except adults no longer have their parents to guide them in the way in which they should go.

So the solution, weary travelers is to decide to stop focusing on what is wrong with you. The Good Lord, who knows everything, is well aware of your imperfections and loves you just the same and always will! He’s not unhappy with you, so you owe it to yourself to follow suit. Focus on the best parts of yourself. Focus on the good things you have in your life. Focus on the miracle that is your life and in so doing can begin to appreciate what you do have and not obsess on what you don’t have.

If you will become determined to focus on the good, then you will find the good has actually been pursuing you all along. Let that good catch up to you by being so grateful for the life you already have.  And for an added bonus, try focusing on the good in other people as well. Shoot, you may just find yourself surrounded by a lot of wonderful people.

Focus on your good bits!

Just some good thoughts…

Loose Threads…

On By Papa TonyIn God, goodness, happiness, knowledge, living in the moment, spiritual, Thought, Uncategorized3 Comments

Quotation-Marilyn-Brant-day-rest-Meetville-Quotes-143182You know what you need to do with those loose threads, right? Snip ’em, burn em’, yank ’em, do something, just don’t leave them there dangling, annoying you all day. Funny how something so small and insignificant can make such an impact on your mind. Similarly, loose thoughts; thoughts that we sort of let hang around, dangling, uninvited yet apparent, impact our lives in a profound way. We often find ourselves out-of-sorts, anxious or restless with no earthly idea why. We know we don’t feel peaceful, satisfied or assured, but the cause escapes us. And to make matters worse, we start looking for the cause in our surroundings or in our spouse, job, house etc. But in so doing, we miss the mark by a hundred miles. The real cause is likely a loose thought or number of loose thoughts we failed to snip, burn or yank out.

Assuming you’re not drunk, it’s likely you are somewhat aware of the thoughts going through your mind. I mean you are the one doing the thinking after all. And, for a thought to have any type of impact on you it has to have registered at some level. So, it’s not so much what you thought but rather what you did or failed to do with those thoughts. Intentional living is all about doing something with those rogue thoughts. Amazingly, three or four unchecked vagrant thoughts can alter your mind and your mood in a subtle yet powerful way. Imagine you just woke up and a number of ill-defined thoughts are running through your mind. Your throat has been sore lately and since you smoke cigarettes it’s likely to be throat cancer. I mean you saw that Terri lady talking through that talk box. Randomly leading to, “It’s good that we have the money to make our patio an awesome place and wow, once all the flowers and bushes are inside the curbing it will be a showplace. But, it won’t matter much because shortly after you start inviting people over to enjoy it, you will be dead.” Followed by, “Things have been going very well lately. It’s shame that such a tragedy is coming!” As strange as this sounds, this was me yesterday morning. When I finally got up I was irritated. I drove to work talking to God about why I “always” seemed to feel restless and pondering why I couldn’t relax. I arrived at work still melancholy, still restless and wondering if something at work was bringing me down. And I began to work. Several hours later, while taking a mental break, it hit me like lighting a candle in a dark room. “Remember this morning Tony? You pretty much assigned yourself a death sentence. Who is happy and relaxed if they think they are going to die soon?” Ahhhhh, loose thought, unsnipped! So, I snipped that mutha******* with some good thoughts (that always involve God)!

As incredible as it sounds, it really is that simple. But, when your living the unsatisfied life, it never seems that way. Some folks have been victim to their own unchecked thoughts a lifetime. And worse, some will even argue adamantly that “we don’t need no thought control!” Well, you do need thought control my friend, at least enough control to kick out the occasional intruder. You do realize that just because you thought something doesn’t make it true right? Thoughts, even incredibly believable, strong thoughts are still just thoughts. And when those thoughts are against your best interests; your happiness, they must always be annulled. Failure to check them; failure to address them leads to stolen days and ultimately stolen lives. It’s that serious and it matters that much.

I think, if you are honest with yourself, you will recognize that whenever you let your thoughts “run wild,” or have one of those days when you take a mental vacation, you are never the better off for it. Ever have a weekend where you had absolutely nothing to do and did absolutely nothing? You know that a weekend like that was stressful at best. It’s not that you needed to be busy or overloaded with activity, but rather that you still needed to pay attention to your thoughts and still needed to check them if needed. Ha…you thought you were just feeling bad for being lazy. Lazy in activity maybe, but lazy in watching your thoughts, that’s what got you!

All of us, no matter what has happened in the past; no matter how we thought and what we let go and didn’t let go, can only live in the time period called, now! Now is always all we have folks. So, why not decide right now to pay better attention to those troubling thoughts. Decide that when you are feeling bad, no matter how that shows up, you will take the time to track down those rogue thoughts and handle them as the lies they always were! Your life; your day to day existence is worth that my friends. Contrary to the philosophers you don’t have to give up your happiness for even one minute. Life isn’t full of ups and downs, it’s full of thoughts, checked and unchecked.

Chickety check yourself before you wreck yourself!

Just some good thoughts…