Three Ways to Be Valuable Without Being Used … December 4, 2014

  Jonathots Daily Blog

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For every reason you can give to encourage people to be generous, open and expansive, they are fully prepared to counter with a hundred excuses why such benevolence never works.

It is usually accompanied by some well-rehearsed horror story, when an attempt was made to share heart, soul, mind and body with another human being, only to be used or abused.

This leaves you standing there, holding your rejected virtue, sheepishly walking away, dismantled by their aggressive dismay.

But somewhere along the line, the human race must be caring enough to include one another, or we very well may resort to eating one another.

So how can we be valuable without being used?

1. Invest in people, but do it in three phases:

(A) Start by offering your ears. If you listen to folks, and realize they are either crazy or unwilling to heed advice, you might want to keep that relationship on the back burner. But if you discover that these people are not just hearers of the word, but might actually become doers, you can move to phase two of your investing.

(B) Time. Never give people time if they’re not listening. It’s a waste of … well, time. And since you have limited quantities of that, you may not want to be too extravagant. If you discover that investing your minutes in people is fruitful, then you can consider the generosity of money.

(C) Yes, some people are worthy of a financial risk. But never pursue them if they aren’t listening.

2. Don’t be in demand–just available.

You may think it’s cool to be popular and bombarded with requests, surrounded by those who need your care, but it gets old really fast, and the personal benefits aren’t obvious. To make sure that you’re not in demand, but just available, learn how to say no.

Yes, every once in a while, when you sense that people are taking advantage of your soul, choose to pass on the present opportunity. It will balance things out and will let them know that when you are involved, you’re in it all the way.

3. Use hope for your own dreams and common sense for the dreams of others.

If you believe you’re going to be a millionaire, that’s absolutely fine. But if you’re gathering around a candle, holding hands and joining in the belief that someone else is going to be a millionaire, you’re an idiot.

Your hope belongs to you because you can sustain it with your own faith and survive any failure in your own way. But you cannot maintain the faith of another person, nor control his or her disappointment.

So when people share their dreams with you, be enthusiastic, but also ask the logical questions that cause them to think, instead of getting generally “goosey.”

If you pursue these three approaches, you can avoid being a doormat … while still becoming a door.

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Populie: Education is the Answer… August 6, 2014

 

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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“Knowledge is the doorway to understanding.”

It is a popular belief.

It moves on the premise that the more we know about any given subject, the better our chance of participating or being tolerant. Here’s another statement:

Pursuing knowledge is the way to achieve understanding.

It sounds right, doesn’t it? Matter of fact, might even sound the same. But it is a populie.

It’s based on the notion that human beings are mind and body creatures, and therefore, if we learn, we can do.

Truth is, if our race consisted of a brain that learns and a body that enacts the information acquired, then spreading the gospel of education would truly save the world.

Unfortunately, we aren’t just mind and body. We are heart, soul, mind and body. And if you’ll notice, the list begins with heart.

Yes, the human emotions are the doorway to our sanctuary and also the exit to the world around us. Everything comes through the emotions and everything departs the same way.

The question is, what do we do with the education, knowledge and discoveries which come our way when they try to gain entrance to the door of our emotions? For if I could actually hear something be convinced of its veracity, accept it without contradiction and apply it into my life in purity, then I would never need to consult my emotions and I could be Mr. Spock from Star Trek, floating on the peaceful Sea of Tranquility.

But I do have emotions and because they are often at war with my thinking, I require a Spirit–a soulful part of my being–to act as a buffer between my fluctuating feelings and my logical thinking.

What we want to do is renew the mind–update old-fashioned concepts with more enlightened and scientifically viable alternatives. The reason there is a reluctance with the ideas which come our way, desiring to take flight is that we’re often grounded by emotions which are uncertain, and we’ve deadened our spirits, thus generating a battle between heart and brain.

By no means am I suggesting that education is not important. I’m just saying that if you want education to be effective, you must plow the field, purify the emotions and use your spirit to soften the fear of transition, allowing the mind to be renewed.

Mind over matter not work. Likewise, mind over emotions is equally as futile.

So even though politics wants to pursue a path of promoting ideas, thinking that will be sufficient to overcome difficulty, and entertainment contends that the more variety of lifestyles they present to the human brain, the more open-minded we will become and even religion purports that “studying the Bible” makes good disciples, we must understand that as emotional creatures, if we do not learn to take what we feel, be truthful about it, allow our spirit to soften our hearts and then welcome the new information to change our minds, we will never be able to enact a plan that makes us more creative and gentle to each other.

Education is essential.

But we must allow people to purify their emotions by spiritually opening up to the possibility of newness of life.

As long as we contend that we are mind and body and have somehow or another overcome our emotions, and do not really have a soul, we will be conflicted in our decisions, overly cautious in our adventures and will end up with stalemate and gridlock.

Thus the American culture.

“Out of the abundance of the mind the mouth speaks?” Absolutely not.

Long before the brain has the chance to filter anything, the emotions are yapping away.

So it is a spiritual issue: the brain is transformed as the Spirit becomes the mediator with our emotions.

 

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