Being Different Is A Good Thing

Why is being different a good thing? Become if you want to actually turn a dream into reality, you have to be a little different. If you want to change something in your life then you have to change the way you approach it, you have to think a little differently, act a little differently and just be a little different.

I used to think I was born to be alienated by the world around me, I felt from an early age I was different. In school other students and teachers didn’t want anything to do with me. The teachers would sit me in the back of the room, I didn’t have any friends, until high school and then my friends we outcasts ( people that were shunned for the way the acted) but at least we had each other.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten

Tony Robbins

After height school and everyone got married and moved away. I tried to fit in, doing what everyone else did and trying to act their way. That didn’t last very long. I began to think I was actually born on another planet. Everyone avoided me like the plague.

Later I discovered i had talents, back then I would have never even thought that I could write, I had always wrote short stories once in a while. But never being to help people with it. I learned to embrace being different.

If you keep doing and thinking what everyone else does, then you’re going to continue getting what everyone else has. I sure didn’t want other people had, I had different dreams. There’s a popular quote that’s floating around attributed to Einstein that says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Even though Einstein didn’t actually say that, it’s a valid point; if things aren’t working for you you’ve been doing, then maybe it’s time to start doing them differently. I learned it this way if you keep running around the same mountain over and over, there’s something your not doing or learning.

The Magic of Possibility

When you make it a point to start , thinking and being different, you’re giving yourself permission to explore. There comes a time when you have to start being your self and enjoy it. Pushing the boundaries of that safe little comfort zone you’ve created for yourself and expanding your horizons. You’re giving yourself the gift of the unknown, the unusual, and unexpected. And anything can happen.

So long I’ve just went with the flow, because I didn’t want to stand out. I knew I was different from everyone and I was not comfortable being like other people.

This is important to think about, we are beginning a new year. A New Year of endless possibilities. Look over the months ahead, do you want to be the same as you are? Trying to fit in. There is a magic to being different. And feeling like you have nothing to hide, you can actually be yourself, it’s up to us to take the potential of possibly and transform it into reality.

Beyond The Fear

So how do we do that? How do we just be different! We can start by allowing ourselves to be who we are rather than trying to make ourselves fit into the box called labeled “ What everyone else think we should be. We do it by taking deliberate conscious step to try new things and embrace new ways of doing things, even when they scare us or we’re not sure that we can do them.

I started by setting my own boundaries. Telling my husband this is what I want to do and be. I was ready for a argument. I wanted to be a person, that was there for people. I wanted to help the elderly, the soldiers, the be a Bible believing Christian. At first he complained when I wasn’t at his beck and call. All I knew is I didn’t want to clean house and cook for the rest of my life. I knew there were didn’t things I wanted to do.

I’ve tried painting, making things out of clay, it didn’t bring me joy so I stopped, I tried being in the Choir at church, nope not for me. I found out what I truly wanted for my life to be full and feel that void I felt. I chose to help soldiers and disabled Veterans, help individuals recovering for drug abuse and writing. It may not work for some but it works for me. I am full and happy, happier than I’ve been in years.

Obviously, if everything in you is screaming NO! then trust your instincts and don’t. But if there’s anything in you that thinks that particular “something new” that you’ve been contemplating sounds exciting, inspiring, fun, or otherwise positive, then work path your fear and give it a go; it might just be the best thing you do for yourself this year.

Trust The Whispers

There is always a election of risk in making life changes, in crafting a vision and building a dream. Taking something out of the realm of fantasy and turning it into reality requires looking past everything you’ve been taught, ignoring what everyone else does and or tells you to do, and trusting that little whisper within that tells you it’s time to expand and grow. And it requires a certain amount of bravery and daring to do that.

I’ll tell you a little episode that happened to me a few years ago, my dear husband has always picked my vehicles as well as my father. I was scared to tell them what I really wanted. A few years back, I told my husband I wanted to trade my car in. Well, of course he told me no, that I owed to much money on it. I was at the dealership getting my car serviced. I found a vehicle I really wanted, I could either want and discuss it with him. (I knew how that would out. So I traded it in. When he got home from work there was a shiny new SUV in the drive way. To my surprise he didn’t yell, or complain he just told me it was ugly. I was full of fear, but I did it anyway. The feeling like I was in control of something felt good.

Take The Risk

You have to be willing to be different and move out of your comfort zone. You have to risk being seen and attracting attention. That’s really hard for a lot of people. Myself I hated attracting attention, I would have rather be unseen. There is safety in just being just another one of the flock after all. But you’re not a sheep; your a uniquely talented individual with a wealth of experience, insight, and strengths. And it’s time to bring those gifts out and share them with the world. It’s time to let yourself shine and embrace the idea of being different, being you.

Why Hitting Rock Botton Is The Best Thing That Can Ever Happen To You.

About 6 years ago I hade a flat-out hit rock bottom, mentality, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. The crash was very painful in every way, I had lost the love for my husband, I had no money, I prayed all the time, to no avail, I was emotionally and mentally broke. I had nothing and nowhere to go. I felt my life was over, nothing mattered anymore. So where do I do from here, two thoughts entered my mind. End my life, or go until I could go no further. I finally had no choice but to face myself brutally, painfully and honestly.

I had nothing to lose, but as hard as I tried it didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. I looked back on the decisions I had made and the times when I tried to commit suicide and the time I was near death in the hospital and the Doctor told my family that I was clinically dead when I arrived. I woke up three days later in Intensive Care, no know what had happened or even where I was.

I realized I had immense gratitude for the numerous gifts that I had bestowed upon me. Every bad decision, every dangerous event that I had brought on myself. All the close calls. Why was I still alive? T instilled in me a deep trust that a higher power actually did have my back, contrary to external appearances and bank balances.

You might think I’m crazy for saying this, but I’d do it all over again, for the incredible insight and growth I gained through what we’re my definitely darkest hours.

Through my life it seems I was destined to fail. But, I have learned some solid lessons and with the wisdom to share from having survived the falls.

I believe everyone will hit rock bottom in their life. But it’s what you do with it, that matters.

There are reasons that hitting rock bottom is a good thing:

Reflection and Realization

At the bottom, you will realize just how far off course you were, and that your life choices were not sustainable. It’s in those darkest moments of despair that your anger and frustration becomes so great and you declare once and for all never again to accept mediocrity from yourself or from others.

Seeing you dysfunctional behaviors

At the bottom, all your dysfunctional behaviors are finally revealed. If you never hit your lowest point, the dysfunctions continue to go unnoticed and unchecked, playing out under the denial radar and inevitably create bigger dysfunctions and a harder fall down the track. Until your bubble bursts, you cleverly delude yourself into thinking everything is just great and your life ends up built on a big fat lie and a false foundation.

Gaining Fresh Perspective

Hitting rock bottom is the beginning of questioning everything that you’ve ever thought to be true. You question you motives, your beliefs, your fears, why you did thongs, why you didn’t do things, why you were attracted to certain people and circumstances, why you succeeded, why you failed. The very fabric of your life is turned upside down and examined in raw detail. It’s from this point that you start building again from the ground up, with a fresh perspective based on your renewed sense of clarity.

Self-Awareness of Bad Habits and Behaviors

At the bottom, your disempowering patterns and behaviors become glaringly obvious, and the triggers that kept you repeating those behavior patterns come into sharp focus. You realize that hitting rock bottom was not only inevitable but necessary, because those behaviors were simply not conductive to your growth. On top of that, and perhaps more importantly, a,k the roles you’ve been playing pop into your conscious awareness. It become clear that you’ve been a kind of a puppet playing a role over and over, creating the same dynamics over and over, like a well-payed actor in a soup opera. It’s not until you break the mold and start the journey ack to your true self that you stop playing the old useless cassette tapes, or scratched record player and begin to create new conscious outcomes.

Trusting in Life

You realize at the bottom that you were, in fact not where you thought you were in life. You let your ego run the show and grand ideas about what you could do not knowing you didn’t yet have the foundation to successfully accomplish those things. Ego’s death grip loosens when you come to this realization; you start to trust life and choose to live in the moment more often. As you surrender to your higher self more and more, you align with your right purpose and right life path. And it feels good.

Humility

You gain humility. You see that life is not just black and white and that you don’t know everything. If fact you realize you know very little, and you decide to become a student of life rather as a juror.

Compassion

You gain compassion. You understand what it’s like for people in the depths of despair, shame, guilt and fear. You can’t help but come back from the bottom feeling of true empathy with the human condition.

In my starting from the bottom up, I have hopefully helped many people that are where I have been. And treated them as a living soul inside of just someone you walk by in Walmart.

Letting Go

You’re able to let go of everything because nothing is working anyway. Letting go of the old creates space for the new and soon new ideas, people, opportunities, talents, and gifts start to flood into your experiences. As you empty your cup, so to speak, you fill it back up with stuff that you actually want instead of accepting what was unconsciously passed on to you. Life gives you a fresh cup of reality.

Take Responsibility

After you the rocks and bricks have hit you, perhaps for the first time begin to accept full responsibility for all the outcomes in your life, this might feel scary at first, but you’ll see that blaming is fruitless, that complaining is dumb, and that making excuses is for the unenlightened. You realize it was you who created all the good and all the bad in your life. You dug the hole that trapped you, and only you yourself can dig yourself out, in order to become whole.

The Only Way Is Up

The good news is, once you’ve hit rock bottom, you know you can’t possibly go any lower. You realize the bottom is actually a great springboard to push yourself up to the surface- away from the darkness and back toward the light.

Trusting Yourself

Hitting rock bottom wakes you up to how you were relying on externals to make you happy. Instead of needing outside validation, you begin to trust yourself and start the journey within to find your own sense of self, your own sense of purpose, and your validation. This new inner sanctuary becomes the foundation for you happy and meaningful life.

Gratitude

After hitting your lowest point possible, you become enormously grateful for a,, you have from that time forward. And your situation can only get better from here. Simple things like a smile from a stranger, fresh food in the fridge, warm clothing and a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head become treasure p. Your existence is a constant prayer of gratitude to the higher power and yourself for having the courage to move beyond the hard times and choose life when could have chose a number of other options that would have made the pain go away.

As someone who has been there, there is a way out of that pit you dug for yourself and it can be the best thing that ever happened to you,

Run Towards The Roar.

Today in Church my pastor was talking about the evil and danger in our world, and how we need to stand in the face of it.

As I was listening to Him, I vision came into my find about how we supposed to run to the danger. Or what we think is danger.

I saw the Savanna in Africa on one side I saw the Lion roaring and on the other side we the lioness’s waiting patiently and quietly getting ready for the kill. When the male lions get old their teeth start to rot and they aren’t able to kill animals as easily.

According to scripture, our enemy is like a “roaring lion.” But if we look at it from this angle, what does that say about him? To me it says that he is a deceiver who has bad teeth and a big roar. All he can do is lie to us, just like an old lion. In fact we would be better of running toward the roar- the very thing that frightens us- rather than away from it.

I feel this is what’s happening in American right now, everyone is running away from the roar and we are in danger if we do this. The government is trying to shut a party down and we are falling right into their hands. We keep quiet and don’t do anything because we’re afraid.

Over and over Jesus told His followers not to fear. It was one of His most popular commands. And the Bible further tells us that any spirit of fear we experience is not from God at all. (2 Timothy 1:7). While we should pay attention to what our fears communicate to us (that there is need for caution, that we need to trust the Lord, that we need to pray,) if we believe what God says in His Word, we done have to let those fears determine our direction. He’s pointed us to and know that He’s with us all the courage we need in any battle.

The truth is that Jesus has threw Satan down already, and through His victory, we are also victorious. All our enemy can do is lie to us and sees us running in the wrong direction. Today try running “toward the roar” and face what the enemy wants you to fear. You have God’s strength, power and victory locked in already, so rest in knowing that he’ll take you beyond the enemy threats of the enemy- the older tooth-decayed lion.

Listening To Yourself

You can listen to you friends, your mentors, your teacher, and your spouse, even to the blogs you read. But you should always listen to yourself first.

Do what resonates with you. If you feel it’s right in your heart and soul do it.

Have the strength to say to yourself I’m doing what I’m doing. And that’s okay. You have to live with the choices you make, not them. My friends can’t give me permission to do something you thing is wrong. We have to come to a point where we know in our heart what has to be done.

This is not saying that support isn’t essential, but it is, it’s very essential to our well being. But support and advice are not the same things.

I listen to my friends and I ask them advice. But I always they are not me, feeling what I am feeling and not in my unique situations. Only I am me, and you are you. We can only make the best choices for ourselves.

I know people have told me to break up with my husband, you’re in a unhealthy relationship. But no one can make that choice for me. As it is I’m content where it’s at, it might not be right for everyone, but it’s right for me. I know how to listen to the depths of myself.

We need to feel it for ourselves. It needs to be time for us, and when it’s time it’s something we know. We can listen to others, but that listening won’t mean anything until something inside of us shifts. We hear a story or have an experience, and in that moment something inside of us awakens, and we know the truth for ourselves.

Only when we know our own truth can we make the choices that are best for us. This is why when you make a decision and spend hours analyzing whether or not it was the right decision.

Only when we are in alignment with our deepest self can we make choices that we know are what we need in that mom and live with them without second guessing. We can acknowledge our hearts desire that things could have turned out differently, but that desire doesn’t inform our decision. We acknowledge it for what it is; a desire, a yearning for control. And we are able to choose what’s best for us.

A lot of people get confused about whether or not that are doing the right thing, making the right choice, doing what’s best. When we feel that confused it’s a clear sign we’re out of balance, we’re to much in our own heads.

We want to have more clarity, more ease with our decisions, more confidence. To have those things mean that we need to do the daily work. We need to heal ourselves. We need to balance ourselves. We need to restore. We need to learn the difference between our ego and our authentic self. We need to know the difference in order to be able to live in accordance with our soul. We need to know how to be who we really are, how to live our healthiest lives, and how to put ourselves back on track when we slip off.

And that comes with knowing yourself. It come from exploring and experimenting and listening deeply to the voice inside, the voice that’s always been there patiently waiting for you to listen to it.

Are We Living In The Last Day’s?

I’m writing this, because a dear friend came to me, and told me that she was scared of what was happening in our Country. (I’m writing this From some teachings from Billy Graham. My friend said to me:

“I can’t help but wonder if we’re living in the last days. Do you think we are? There is so much hate, and conflict in the world, so much violence”.

We live in a world that is constantly torn by conflict and chaos and fear. We are in a development of nuclear and biochemical weapons of mass destruction, the world without doubt is the most Dan it has even been. In a Billy Graham speech he stated that Jesus warned that as the end of the present age approaches, in Matthew 24:6-7 Jesus says “You will hear wars and rumors of wars… Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

Jesus cautioned us against trying to predict exactly when He would come again or when the present age would come to an end. (From time to time people have ignored His warning, claiming they knew when Christ was coming-only to be discredited.) At the same time Christ repeatedly promised that some day God will intervene and Christ will come again to rule in perfect justice and peace. No wonder the Bible calls this “the blessed hope-that appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

In the midst of our chaotic world, take comfort in the fact that evil will not win, and someday Christ’s victory over evil and in injustice will be complete.

We must take comfort in the fact that when we know Christ (and have a committed our lives to Him), we have hope -hope for our lives right not, and hope for eternity.

Billy Graham stated that he didn’t think he ever had seen such a confused world as right then.

Are We Maybe Living In The Last Days before Jesus Returns?

Jesus did say that the world would grow increasingly confused and Dan before He returns. But when Christ returns, our world will no longer be plagued with confusion and conflict. Because He will rule with perfect justice and peace. It might be difficult for us to imagine- but never forget who Jesus is: the eternal Son of God, who even now rules in Heaven with power and authority.

And He will Rule on Earth. As He does in Heaven.

How To Stop Being A Control Freak

The desire for control is a form of perfectionism, and we can alleviate it learning to embrace uncertainty.

Are you incredibly efficient, super competent and always get things done and keep things moving? Does all this micro-managing cause you to feel stressed out? Have you family and friends told you to lighten up?

You maybe a control freak. Control freaks have these behaviors and can have some benefits, this truth is the control freaks often create the very thing they’re trying to avoid, which is stress.

Here are some idea’s to try if your a control freak.

Observe Yourself, in order to change a behavior you have to realize that you’re doing it. Becoming a more mindful witness to your own behavior is the first set to making any behavioral change.

You need to my a commitment to observe you behavior for a few days and write down anytime you find yourself micro-managing, over planning, being over critical, overprotective, or obsessively worrying or any behavior that feels like you can’t resist doing up. Observing yourself this way can be hard to do.

Figure Out What Emotion Is Driving Your Behavior

You might think that your stress is a result of how hard you’re working to keep everything under control, but it’s actually distressing emotions that are driving your behavior-and causing your stress. In order to change your behavior, you have to identify which emotion you’re struggling with. There are many emotions to choose from:

  • Love
  • Happiness
  • Fear
  • Sadness
  • Shame
  • Jealousy
  • Disgust

I will tell you mine was fear. The emotion that usually behind controlling behavior is fear. Feeling in control is a basic human need, and life inevitably shows us that we can’t control everything. It makes you feel fearful and uncomfortable. Then in order to feel less fearful and more in control, you try controlling everything around you- even things that have nothing to do with the part of you’re life that made you feel badly to start with.

Say you even found yourself reorganizing your closet when you were upset about a argument you had with a loved one. Or maybe you start exercise regimen after you lost your job. Sometimes just identifying the emotion can make it lose some of its power over you and then you can start to curb your behavior.

Identify the Distorted Thinking and Challenge it.

Emotions often cause us to think in inaccurate ways. For example, your husband does the grocery shopping and buys a few of the wrong brands and instead of acknowledging that he got more right than wrong, you think, that he totally failed at this task and clearly he can’t be trusted to shop. This is an example of a common distortion called discounting the positives.

The key in this step is to stop and pay attention to what your thinking when you realize you’re feeling distressed or when you notice that you’re about the engage in one of the controlling behavior you’ve identified. Stop and ask yourself what am I thinking right now? Does how I’m thinking about this make sense or is it distorted in some way?

Often realizing you’re using emotions, reasoning instead of logical reasoning can change your perspective, reduce the intensity of the emotion your feeling and help you resist the urge in engage in a controlling behavior.