Sit Down Comedy … November 1st, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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“It’s simple.”

Remember when that was a positive statement?

Fear, anxiety or nervous energy might grip your soul, and someone would come along and reassure you that what you were about to do wasn’t terribly complex, and had certainly been done many, many times before.

Then…something changed.

I don’t know exactly what it was—you can sit around with your friends and develop all sorts of conjectures on what caused us to devolve from creatures who were grateful for simplicity to a more pompous, edgy and cranky configuration that seems to prefer difficulty and struggle.

Matter of fact, play a game.

Sit down and watch some television—the news, dramas and comedies—and count how many times you hear:

“Life is complicated.”

“It’s not gonna be easy.”

“Somebody just needs to grow up and realize there’s lots of twists and turns.”

“We need to be ready to take on the battle.”

Maybe I’m lazy, but I don’t like to work harder than I need to.

Maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t want to learn things I don’t have to learn.

And maybe I’m immature, but I believe life was bestowed upon us to find happiness, not to fester despair.

So if you’re in the mood to escape an overly tangled web, let me simplify things:

There aren’t thousands of different cultures, millions of different personalities and billions of unique individuals.

Human beings fall into two easy-to-understand categories:

1. I am looking for a world which will adjust to me.

2. I am learning to adjust to my world.

And when you meet people, you can tell immediately which of the two philosophies they favor.

Nervous energy, a tinge of anger, wringing hands over the problems in the world? This is a person who believes the world has a responsibility to adjust to him or her.

On the other hand, people who are easy-going and relaxed are travelers who realize that all the adjusting has to come from them—because the world was in business before they were born.

You can feel free to find another explanation. You can assume there is a possibility for eight billion pathways on this planet that has 27,000-mile waistline.

I would not criticize you or stand in your way. After all, it is your journey, not mine.

But for those “Simple Simons” like myself, who would like to find a more concise explanation, I offer the two-category primer.

So what will it be?

Are you going to keep seeking a world that will adjust to you? Or will you learn how to adjust to the world?

It is not an issue of good and bad. It is not an issue of righteous and evil, but rather, a simple determination on how many smiles you get to sprout in a given day.

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

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PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant … November 30th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3141)

In Charge of Fate

Here I sit and fitfully wait

He always seems to be so late

So left to my own thinking

Sleepy, my eyes are blinking

What is taking so long?

It’s painful to remain strong

Does it care that I am weary?

Fearful, angry, sad and dreary

As each second dribbles away

Impertinent, wasting a precious day

Why am I being rejected?

The only soul seemingly affected

Do they possess some care for me?

Are you too busy to look and see

That I have lost my childlike dream

Abandoned my hope of a heavenly scheme

My soul may need the patience I know

But I require some harvest to grow

Here I sit, nowhere to be

There it is, ignoring me

Is there a purpose, perhaps a plan?

Or just a random mistreatment of man

I should be kinder to their name

But right now I need someone to blame

For the place I’ve landed, ordained by me

Only my willingness can make me free

Yet truth is such an abstract thought

Can’t be cajoled, stolen or bought

Am I the one in charge of fate?

If not, why is she so goddamn late?

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

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Three Reasons to be Kind … June 26, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2275)

1. Mean is a major commitment. Kind, on the other hand, allows room for adjustment.

2. You never know who you don’t know—knows.

3. Joy is not about what we do, but the feeling that remains after we do it.

I don’t have time or energy to maintain a sullen, suspicious or fearful profile. It is exhausting.

If there is no god, then the world needs my help even more. If there is a God, how I treat people is what I think of Him.

I want to be happy.

To achieve that, I must avoid regret and grudges. There are no guarantees … but being kind is safer than being mean.

 

 

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

After an appearance earlier this year in Surprise, Arizona, Janet and I were blessed to receive a “surprise” ourselves. Click on the beautiful Arizona picture above to share it with us!

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.

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ProbOne … November 1, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2053)

Problems are the difficulties that come our way which tend to deflate us instead of invigorate.

Why?

Because we are convinced that change is both unnecessary and unpleasant. (Matter of fact, it’s good that evolution is a slow, tedious process or we would resist it every step of the way.)

So our reluctance to view problems as vehicles to get us to a better place creates the first wall of resistance.

The second impairment is the persistent belief that our problem is unique.

After many years of travel, family life, counseling and living, I will tell you that all problems break down into three categories, and if you learn how to handle each category, your dilemmas will not seem nearly as problematic, but instead, doorways to new opportunities. Over the next three days I will talk about each one of these individually.

The first problem that faces all humankind is: “It’s not fair.”

Something happens or we find ourselves in a situation which is uncomfortable, unfamiliar or undesirable. Our first inclination is to cry foul. We complain to ourselves, our friends, our spouses or even our God. Our message is clear: “If life was right, I wouldn’t have to deal with this wrong.”

To escape the dark cloud of “it’s not fair,” I suggest you seek the answer to these five questions:

1. Who am I working with? The success of any project always hinges on personnel.
2. What needs to be done? Until all the personnel involved agree on the destination, everybody will have a tendency to go in their own willful way and therefore pull against each other.
3. Where will we need to work? After all, certain climates are more conducive to warming to great ideas. If I go to Antarctica, I will need boots and a coat.
4. When is the deadline? Is it negotiable? Is it arbitrary? Is it up for discussion? Ninety percent of the disagreements humans have with each other could be resolved by pulling out a calendar.
5. Why is it being done? Often in the pursuit of trying to resolve a tribulation, we may find that the resolution is not necessary at all, or that the trial we think we’re going through has been misrepresented.

There you are–ProbOne. “It’s not fair.”

Checking out the who, what, where, when and why of your surroundings will take away much of the sting of your oppression and replace it with some realistic ideas or a good laugh over why such a fuss was made in the first place.

So there are some ideas about how to handle ProbOne.  Try them. You might like them.

Which leads us to ProbTwo: “It’s not enough.”

See you tomorrow.

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

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event

The Fear Gear… October 31, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(2053) 

Happy Halloween.

Is that an oxymoron? I mean, is Halloween happy?

I do understand that great fun happens from dressing up, eating candy and having the fellowship of interacting with one another. But is Halloween rooted in the tradition of human warmth, or is it a delivery system for scaring people? And is there a difference between being scared and being fearful? Probably.

Yet fear is such a devastating sensation to the human spirit that sometimes I’m a little anxious to flirt with it by just scaring myself.

Fear is at the root of all of our problems. There’s no doubt about that.

There are seven attributes of great human beings:

• Love
• Faith
• Joy
• Hope
• Mercy
• Passion
• Creativity

Fear is a toothy monster, nibbling on the corners of each of them.

1. Love: the absence of fear. When I believe that nothing can separate me from the love of my Father, I don’t have to allow worry to conquer my heart.
2. Faith: the control of fear. Even though I have doubts, I intelligently branch out my belief in a direction of improvement.
3. Joy: ignoring fear. It’s a decision to have good cheer without denying circumstances, but instead, changing them by giving ourselves an attitude to succeed.
4. Hope: the replacement of fear. Yes, fear takes up space. It pushes out any notion that things can get better, and thus, must be evicted by a new idea.
5. Mercy: the insult to fear. When we step out of ourselves and express kindness to others, we are spitting in the eye of our fear of being rejected.
6. Passion: the remedy for fear. For after all, fear is when we cease to believe in what we’re doing anymore and start to accept that a certain amount of doom is inevitable. Passion is the only way to chase that demon out of our minds.
7. Creativity: the opposite of fear. When we continue to contend that we have the talent, ability, energy and initiative to make something out of what we have instead of standing at a distance and mocking it for its lack, we generate a counter-culture in the ruling class of fear.

I don’t have anything against Halloween. Matter of fact, the only thing I’m scared of is fear. Because when fear is perfected inside us, it makes us think that gloom is normal—and we lose the seven powerful precepts listed above.

At that point we are at the mercy of the dark kingdom—we are bled dry by the vampires and eaten alive by the werewolves.

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

Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event