Last post, I presented the first six things we need to remember as we embark on this journey known as "the year ahead". Here are the remaining six truths to remember for 2022...
7. Sustainable Happiness Is Found Within.
Your happiness and peace comes from the inside out, not the outside in! How many of us and others you know have made a lifestyle out of expecting things or people outside of themselves to "make" them happy...or "give" them peace? Forget it! That's not reality; that's the codependent crazy trap lifestyle! We all need to choose happiness, peace, calm, serenity...which begins within our own hearts and spirits. If ever there was a time to re-introduce yourself to the things of God and what it means to be a spiritual being---this would be it! Get back to church, synagogue, temple, mosque...or at least begin to explore your options in re-discovering and practicing your own spiritual world view. Your own personal and private emotional landscape is not someone else's responsibility to manage for you! Didn't you learn this funadmental truth yet? Well, it's never too late to learn it now!
8. Your Mentality Shapes Your Reality.
Whatever you think and believe to be absolutely true about everything and anything is what you will rarely, if ever question. This isn't a good thing. What if you believe you're a pain in everyone else's backside? What if you believe you are not genuinely worthy of love and respect from others? What if you believe that everything you touch turns to sh**? Grant it, I am presenting this here without considering the sociopaths, active addicts, and degenerates (criminals) reading this now. In their cases, they are correct and need to do a lot of work to turn their lives around and come up out of the pit they currently inhabit. However, for the rest of us....consider allowing 2022 as the year you began to truly question your mentality and how it has shaped your reality for the worst! I am reminded of so many women I know who are like dogs on a bone when something "negative" happens within their social group. It's like a feeding frenzy with the sharks in the ocean I am not kidding! "Did you hear?! So and so had a massive stroke! He'll never walk or talk again!" "Yes, she may have lost all that weight but it's just a matter of time and she'll gain it ALL back!" Blah-de-blah-blah! Your mentality really does shape your reality. Choose wisely, along with the relationships around you which feed or starve that mentality you currently nurture!
9. The Present Moment Is All We Ever Have.
No doubt. You can't go back in your mind (to the past) and re-live or re-create it. It's done. You can't go forward in your mind either and live in La-La land (fantasy) or freak yourself out every day over your catastrophic fictional scenarios of the future either! Live in the now. Learn your lessons from the past. Make realistic plans for your future. You can do those things...but to stare back or ahead for no other reason than wasting your present moments is pure dumb! Don't be dumb!
10. If You Can't Be Kind, At Least Don't Be Unkind.
I'm not going to lie. This is challenging for me when I am in the presence of seasoned indecents. As in indecent people. However, I also realize that no matter "who" we are challenged by---speaking the truth with grace together gets you further than mere truth telling with a stinger attached! We are all worthy of basic respect, even if what was just said to you, done to you, or witnessed by you is both vile and abhorrent to you. People who lack self-awareness and respect in general will reduce themselves down to acting out like savages when triggered. We have seen plenty of this during the past two years of the pandemic. Don't be unkind. You can speak the truth, but do so as if speaking to an unruly child. Why? Because underneath, anyone who is seasoned in their indecency is still an unruly child underneath it all....
11. Failure Will Only be Final If You Quit.
There's a reason why the saying "Never Give Up!" is so popular in western culture. When you stop, when you quit, when you give up on doing all that was necessary to achieve your personal or professional goals...you fail. That's it. Basic Reality of Life 101 in a nutshell. Don't give up. Keep going. Persevere. Regulate and manage yourself when things get uncomfortable. You won't die. You won't faint. Keep moving forward. When you quit, your decision has made your failure final. Too bad.
12. The Love You Give, Is the Love You Get.
Everyone wants to receive love and be loved...but how many of us know how to give love without any codependent strings attached? Not many, I can assure you of that fact! It is easy to love those who love you in return. Try loving your frenemies, your enemies, and/or strangers or acquaintences you don't know well at all. Whatever you are about in this regard will circle back to you...or not. Don't be stingy with your time, talents, energies, and other gifts. To love others, is to love the God who created you. Don't attach strings to your love. Love freely and often...and watch what happens to improve the quality of your own life!
Until next post...