Three Ways to Conquer Despair… December 11, 2014

  Jonathots Daily Blog

(2440)

Despair comes into our lives when the pile of what we need seems to be bigger than the pile of what we have.

It’s an issue of perception.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small child in India or the Son of God, struggling in the Garden of Gethsemane, suddenly overwhelmed by the task ahead. You still want to screech, “Take this away from me!”

Despair is hard to escape. The classic remedies of prayer, counseling, positive thinking or even medication are all limited in their scope, based on faithfulness to the process.

Let’s be honest. It is very difficult to be faithful when you’re scared.

If you’ll allow me, here are three ways to set in motion a process to conquer despair by not allowing it to wash over you in the first place:

1. Don’t ignore your moods.

You are an emotional person and merely quoting scripture, uttering your mantra, finding your yoga position or trying to ignore the problem is not going to make it go away. Our moods are powerful to us because they project the symptoms of a condition existing in our soul, which requires our attention.

Stop perceiving yourself as “moody,” and realize that you are actually symptomatic. There is a tendency in our society to try to douse the emotions and limit their value. This is the worst thing we can do.

Deal with your emotions–they are telling you something important coming from deep within your soul.

2. Find a human mirror.

You will consider yourself irreparable until you realize there are other people in your same situation, and you can see your problem or apprehension in the face of another human being. This is why rehab surrounds you with addicts instead of people who have never taken drugs sharing their insights on self-control.

We all need a mirror.

I can’t change my life if I’m looking at people who have never had a life-changing experience. Look in the eyes of someone who suffers from the same despair that you do and draw strength from his or her struggle.

If you surround yourself with people who appear not only to be stronger than you, but also let you know how much stronger they are, you will only deepen your anguish.

3. Find a friend to note your progress.

Yes, you will need to be honest with someone. For a moment you will have to stop trying to be Superman or Superwoman, and admit you’re Clark Kent or Diana.

You will make progress. You’ll have a tendency not to ignore it because your expectations are too high. Get someone who understands your pursuit and can tell you how many steps you’ve made from where you started.

There are those who want to make depression and despair an illness, and perhaps in a handful of souls, it is.

But most of us become trapped in a cave of misunderstanding and worry, and soon find ourselves nearly immobilized–unable to function.

At that point, if you will simply give place to your moods, find other human beings who reflect your need, and get a friend to encourage you in your steps of progress, you can actually win the day and bring despair under your control instead of allowing it to make you an inmate to its prison.

 

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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