Sit Down Comedy … November 29th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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I thought I would sit down and talk to you dear hearts about the It’s Fits. There are three of them.

It is a trio of common phrases uttered to relieve pressure, take away criticism and often to become overly optimistic.

If we begin to believe that these “it’s” have any capacity whatsoever to bring solution, we will certainly find ourselves in fits.

1. “It’s not fair.”

Whining is never attractive. We are completely repulsed by the fussy, teary and defeated profiles of others.

“It’s not fair” is like twirling around in every direction and pointing a finger at all the culprits who have prevented you from receiving your best.

Could it be your children? Maybe it’s your wife plotting. Your husband is nothing but a barking dog. Your company is insensitive to the needs of its employees. Or there must not be a God, because if there were a God, He would never have allowed this atrocity to occur.

Because we’ve been convinced that nurturing one another is the way to say “I love you,” we have babied all the human “house plants” into environments where they cannot stand to actually live outdoors in the sun.

Endurance

This word is necessary for human life: Without endurance, we give up, begin to blame others and become erratically annoying.

The truth is, it may not be fair, but it is learnable. The Earth has its ways and if you study them, you can change your whiny to win.

2. “It’s needing more time.”

Failure arrives to inform us that our direction is not favorable, but instead of learning from the correction, we decide that if more time were given—using the same plan—things would most certainly improve.

Sometimes the Earth speaks.

That’s why we need this second phrase in our journey:

Common sense

In other words, if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. Pressing harder or selling more doesn’t change anything.

The Earth is good to us by telling us quickly when something is shitty.

3. “It’s not my fault.”

Everyone has been in a meeting where a failure is dissected—all participants slicing at one another to be guilt free, punctuating their summary by saying, “It’s not my fault.”

Actually, the more quickly you take responsibility for your part in the failure, the sooner the pain goes away and the healing begins.

It leads us to a third word:

Responsibility

An irresponsible person is unstable in all his or her ways. Ultimately, such a person can get nothing accomplished.

So I realize you want to nurture your husband, your wife, your children and your closest friends, but the best way to do this is to encourage their endurance instead of accepting their excuses.

It is to praise their common sense instead of standing watch while they continue to hit their heads against the walls.

And finally, it is to demand responsibility instead of allowing people to slither away like snakes in the grass to hide in their holes.

• It’s not fair.
• It’s needing more time.
• It’s not my fault.

These are the “It’s Fits”—which keep each one of us from the endurance, common sense and responsibility that allow the second go-round to be drenched in good cheer and fueled by wisdom.

 

 

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1 Thing You Can Do This Week That Will Always Make You Seem More Successful

 

Stop Announcing

Put down your trumpet.

Cease clapping your hands to your own beat.

Let the braggart be silent.

Don’t share your plans

Why?

Your plans are susceptible to chaos, the natural order or the fact that you may sleep through your alarm clock.

Hush. Please don’t tout your prowess.

There’s always someone better than you.

There’s always someone more talented.

Endurance and Humility

What makes quality rise to the top is its endurance and the blessing of humility, which allows other people to lift it up instead of needing to put it down because it’s pompous and arrogant.

And please, for the love of God:

 Stop proclaiming your purpose

Your purpose should be obvious as the fruit of your work. Telling people what you intended to do does not qualify for actually doing it.

If you simply stop announcing your great battleplan for your life, then you will be able to acknowledge the small victories instead of having to win every single conflict to prove your point.

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Cracked 5 … September 22nd, 2018

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Jonathots Daily Blog

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Excuses Some Football Players Give for Enjoying Beating Up Women

 

A. Skin is soft and doesn’t scrape their knuckles

 

B. Don’t hit back very hard

 

C. A quick way to build up body strength and endurance

 

D. Draws other crazy women their way

 

E. Game suspensions give time for travel

 

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Dear Man/Dear Woman: A Noteworthy Conversation … April 9th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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Dear Man: So what did they tell you?

Dear Woman: They told me that women are beautiful, but very emotional. What did they tell you?

Dear Man: I was told that men are handsome and strong.

Dear Woman: Well, since “beautiful” and “handsome” are literally in the eye of the beholder, that leaves emotional and strong.

Dear Man: That it does. And what do those two words mean?

Dear Woman: Well, emotional means having lots of feelings.

Dear Man: And for simplicity, strong means having lots of muscles.

Dear Woman: So I guess the thought is, when feelings are needed, women are handy and in everything else, men have the edge because they can lift the weights.

Dear Man: Here’s my question–can anybody achieve anything without emotion? Can the football team win the national championship without great feelings and energy to propel them?

Dear Woman: And can anything be accomplished as a human being without utilizing strength? For instance, can a woman actually go through the difficulty of puberty, struggles in the economy, birthing and raising children–without possessing tremendous physical fortitude?

Dear Man: Of course not. But we’re led to believe that I’m emotional and you are strong. So if you decide I’m overly emotional, you can just beat the crap out of me.

Dear Woman: Well, I personally wouldn’t do that…

Dear Man: I know that. But deep in the recesses of your primeval brain is the notion that you could take me down.

Dear Woman: And equally deep in your evolution is the information that you may only be able to get what you want by crying and expressing your feelings.

Dear Man: So what’s the truth?

Dear Woman: Well, that’s easy. None of us can live without emotion and strength. To be a human being, you must know how to tap your emotions, and be able to be strong in the hour of trial.

Dear Man: Exactly. So maybe the problem is the words we use.

Dear Woman: I’m listening.

Dear Man: What I mean is that emotion without purpose and direction is useless. If you add purpose it becomes passion.

Dear Woman: And strength without the willingness to include endurance is just macho energy because it doesn’t hang in there and last to the end. So what I’m saying is that an emotional and strong football team doesn’t win the game.

Dear Man: No, it’s a passionate team–one with great endurance–that lasts through the fourth quarter and takes the day.

Dear Woman: Do you realize, there’s no Bible for the boys and another for the girls. There’s no Constitution for the men and another one for women. In our higher forms of reasoning, we already understand that we need to be human beings and not just genders.

Dear Man: Well said. So maybe the best thing we can do is teach our children–and maybe ourselves–that women are not emotional and men strong, but instead, that human beings are learning to use their passion with endurance.

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Jesonian: Reasonable (Part 14) Living … March 6th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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She had found her place.

She was satisfied.

She had substance and purpose.

Then, all at once, life, which had promised only good, interrupted with pain.

She was bleeding–not excessively. Just continually. Everything that was once pure became tainted by the introduction of this new evil.

Her sense of solvency was challenged. Now her money had only one purpose:

“Heal me. Stop the bleeding. Give me back my life as I knew it.”

A change was necessary. She went from having a life to needing to live.

For to live is finding a way to continue your life when it threatens to depart.

• She sought cures.
• She studied.
• She examined.
• She trolled for possibilities.

Expensive.

For twelve years, she struggled to find a treatment while simultaneously growing weaker as her affliction drained away the essence of her will and her finance.

Life had turned on her. Unfortunately, her passion and efforts to live also failed.

She remained sick as the doctors got rich.

She found herself languishing in poor health.

Her instinct to live left her bankrupt and teetering on death.

What now?

What do you do when life turns sour, and efforts to live are foiled?

There is one choice that remains: move towards living.

Go where there is still the energy of loving and pursuing. Escape away to any living possibility.

Because living is endurance. It is deciding to add joy to the process so as not to grow weary in such well-doing. She decides to leave nothing untried.

She hears about a “giver of life.” The rumors are mixed. Some deem this miracle man to be a savior, while others insist he is the son of hell.

But living is not a guarantee–rather, a desire to continue in hope.

So she makes a plan.

Planning makes her feel better–it helps her to realize that she still has some control.

She will touch the hem of this healer’s garment, with the anticipation that mere proximity to his virtue will grant her a cleansing from all sickness.

Her idea is childlike.

Her organization, tenuous.

But her faith, willingness and joy–persistent.

She pulls her plan off–and amazingly, it works.

She is whole.

She is free to go back to life, or to return to her city to live. But it seems ridiculous to merely pass time when living is available.

So she curls up in prayer, thanks God for His intervention, and allows herself … to be born again.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

 

Three Ways to Parent Your Money… September 11, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Money is much like the disgruntled, snotty teenager who decides to get even with you by running away from home because you told him or her that the pair of shoes the young’un desires will have to be put off until the next paycheck.

Also, money will embarrass by going out during this little misadventure and humiliate you, overindulging and even getting in trouble with the law.

What I’m saying in a nutshell is that money needs parenting. Without parenting, it begins to run your household with its bad attitudes, making you cringe in the corner of your bedroom, fearing a knock on the door.

So let me offer three ways to parent your money, making sure that you are still in charge:

1. Always be prepared to give an honest report.

Not only does money fail to grow on trees, but it never sprouts through lies. Pretending you’re something you aren’t is the quickest way to poverty. Failing to recognize the signs of difficulty is not optimism, it’s just stupidity with a smile on its face.

The best way to get in control of your finance and welcome money into your life is to assess your situation without becoming giddy with potential or suicidal with the facts.

2. An organized plan.

Give yourself the greatest gift you can–stop insisting that you’re not an organized person. It’s like taking a dagger and sticking it in your heart and reaching for the band-aids. Life without organization, a plan and clarity to your actions is like walking on the edge of a cliff blindfolded. It is much easier to be organized than it is to put out the brush fires ignited by too many spontaneous choices.

3. A slower pace.

It is a lie that the race goes to the swiftest. It doesn’t. The most important attribute in success is endurance, followed closely by foresight.

Slow down.

If you need five hundred dollars by the end of the month, try to make fifty dollars by the end of the week and see where it takes you.

Life is a much better teacher than opinion. So learn from experience.

And to do so, slow yourself down so you can enjoy the scenery and see the berries hanging from the trees as you go by, and never be hungry.

Just like a teenager, money will try to run your life if you don’t develop a sense of humor and know that you are in charge.

Teenagers don’t have to be insufferable brats. But to stop them, just like with money, you have to make it clear who’s boss.

 

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The Sermon on the Mount in music and story. Click the mountain!

 

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Populie: It’ll All Work Out… July 16, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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It’s popular to encourage one another–yet a lie sneaks in when we tell people things will get better without their involvement.

Thus the populie, “It’ll all work out”–it, in this case, normally referring to God, country or destiny.

Religion loves “Happy Heaven travelers.”

Politics adores happy voters.

And the movies certainly favor happy endings.

What’s wrong with that? Is it bad to believe in a positive outcome instead of dwelling on the negative gloom and doom that threatens the horizon?

No. It’s just an issue of how we get there.

If we get there through deception, then we’re not only going to be disappointed, but defeated and ill-suited to take on tomorrow’s adventures.

I do believe in the power of faith and the notion that things can work out. It’s just that I honor a three-step process–because God, my country and certainly a destiny which is failed to be written in the stars can’t guarantee me anything without me showing up prepared.

For things to work out:

1. Nothing happens without a person or people.

I have found that my prayers are much more effective when they’re linked with both supplication and the intelligence of others joining me. I have discovered we have a better country when we include everyone and take others into consideration instead of bullying them because they’ve fallen out of favor. And my destiny is achieved based on how well I handled today, without worrying about tomorrow.

2. We need to get started in order to receive inspired ideas.

Even though we like to believe that every vacation should be paid for up front, each project should be endorsed and funded and our relationships guaranteed for a lifetime, deep in our hearts we know that’s not human.

Inspiration is given to those who are inspired to do something now. The minute we take it to a committee, we’ve already decided not to do it. If you don’t believe me, just look at Washington, D.C.

3. Endurance is knowing when to change and when to continue.

I run across people who think they’re doing a good thing, while they repeat the same mistakes, mistakes dashing their hopes.

And I run across individuals–including myself sometimes–who pull up one block short of completing the trip.

Endurance is what is necessary to save us from calamity, but it is acquired by being inspired with ideas on the move and finding out whether those notions are encouraging us to evolve, or press on with the same path.

• God is not a solo act. He travels, unites and bonds with human beings to perform His will.
• Our country is “we, the people” instead of “we, the whim.”
• And since there is no tomorrow until we create it out of free will, destiny is a modern-day Mother Goose created to comfort folks who have decided to give up.

Watch out for this populie. It’s sneaky.

Sometimes you might feel like the ogre under the bridge, scaring off all the little children by being realistic. Yet we have to speak the truth with love.

Great things demand a person or people, inspiring ideas freshened by effort, and knowing the difference between keeping on and changing course.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

Click here to get info on the “Gospel According to Common Sense” Tour

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about scheduling SpiriTed in 2014.

Click here to listen to Spirited music