Things Papa Taught Me Last Year…

There is nothing like a birthday to give you some pause in order to consider what happened over the course of the past year. Personally, this past year was a period of almost unequalled and unparalleled growth. God taught me so many important lessons, some very personal, others just to bless me. My Morning Pages time produced a perfect environment to seek and always receive such great clarity and insight. I think one of the things I love most about God is the clarity, the illumination. God knows everything and I can’t think of anyone better from which to seek guidance. So, I’m going to share some of the lessons I learned and hopefully they will help you as well. Things Papa (God) taught me last year…

Papa showed me so many wonderful things about how our thoughts work. We are literally fighting the good fight every day with the thoughts we choose to think and even more importantly the things not to think. Much of our distress, if not all of our distress comes from the thoughts we entertain. Read that sentence again. We do it to our own selves. Oh, we are not the source of those wrong thoughts and there definitely is a source. Instead we house the battleground. In its simplest form, thinking things that do not help you; thoughts that serve only to diminish you; things that cause you pain or worry or fear or anxiety; thoughts that seek to make you into less than you are; things that ridicule you or embarrass you or want to take something from you, are the thoughts to no longer think. This endless stream, this pack of wolves exist only to chip away at you until you fold. They are flies in your ointment. And the incredulous kicker? We are the ones doing the thinking. Whether you know it yet or not, you always have a choice. Thought comes in. You quickly analyze it. Decide if it’s useful. Keep it in or kick it out. Don’t you get it? You are the one choosing. You have to learn how to fight back. And to throw in a little neuroscience, you are programming your brain to function in a certain way. You write the program for your mind by what you think AND continue to think. If you harbor the thoughts listed above, you unknowingly add them to the program. When the program is written, the brain can now run on autopilot, like it prefers to do for efficiency sakes. Some people wrote a bad program and then ran on autopilot for the rest of their lives. Just never dawned on them that they had any control. Conversely, if you take on those thoughts, challenge them and then put them out, and think thoughts that are for you instead of against you, you write a new program, one that you would happily run on autopilot! With the learning comes the practice. I managed to spend whole days refusing certain thoughts. Sometimes, for the first time, I recognized gnarly demeaning little lies that had apparently been living inside for some time. Put those bastards out as well. And you wouldn’t believe what happened. I was so dang happy and blessed about life I could hardly contain myself. Enthusiasm returned, fresh new insights appeared, a real zest for maximizing this life marched back in. Have I mastered it now? No. Do I still slip back and try to patch old patterns? Of course. But man, thank God I’m on to something. Papa showed me that I have control. I can decide. I can be for myself instead of against myself. Can you relate? Thank you for the depth of that lesson Papa.

I learned so many things about myself. I saw some of the hidden causes. I even learned more about my own marriage. (Don’t worry honey, mums the word.) Here’s the funny thing about marriage. Your thinking is heavily involved there as well. What are you thinking about your partner? Are you viewing them with fresh eyes or are you too running an old outdated program filled with half truths, wrong perceptions and downright bad conclusions? Same principle. Same idea. You carry around all these things about your partner, what they do, what they don’t do or worse, how they are and apparently always will be. More error compounded. You can’t lug around this litany of complaints about your spouse and see anything except just that. Not because that is how your wife is or how your husband rolls. No. Because that is what you have made them into. I wonder how many things you think your partner is thinking about you, they are actually thinking about you? Your perceptions, not theirs. Your own insecurity creeping up to the surface. No folks, you have to play the game differently. You have to take that mind of yours and stop letting it barf all over your significant other. Stop those damn thoughts. Turn off the programs you built. And like is good to do with self, give a little compassion. Extend a little grace, you know? I’m guessing you have your fair share of behaving badly. Maybe this is why God says, He that loveth his wife, loveth himself. In marriage, you have to write new programs, many new programs. You are both changing and hopefully growing. You are not the same person you were ten years ago. So how could you expect that old tired program to still work? Silly really. And here is where it gets even better. If you keep all of that junk out and choose to think well of your person; you seek out their good bits; you extend them some grace, before you know it those old love feelings come back. The love is always there, but the love feelings, that’s another level. Things get kinda sweet. Again, the kicker? You didn’t have to change them, you had to change you. You had to stop contributing to your bad situation by running the dead program. How could we ever expect to get what we want by dwelling on what we don’t want? Again, silly really. And, my friends, this applies to all relationships. What lessons Papa, what lessons.

So many lessons, so little time. Looks like a part two is on the horizon. Stay tuned…

Just some good thoughts.