Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 476 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! I’m excited about this episode not because I hope it brings you comfort as it did me. Comfort in an uncertain world right now. Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot we can be certain about but there’s a lot of uncertainty too. If you think about it, that’s always the case isn’t it? It’s more about what you focus on than anything. Your peace or lack of peace comes from what you give your attention to.
It always is. There are always things you can focus on that will make you anxious and there are always things you can focus on that bring you peace and comfort. I know some of you may roll your eyes and say it isn’t that easy to just not focus on something bad that’s going on in my life when that’s my reality at the moment. And I get it. I really do. But we cause ourselves so much more pain than necessary Our peace or lack thereof is all about our focus and how we focus on it. We can be dealing with something that is hard without making it the end of the world, it’s a real practice on managing our thoughts.
A lot of times our lack of peace comes from within because we beat ourselves up over mistakes we’ve made or things we’ve done that we are ashamed of or embarrassed by. We dramatize things and make them worse in our heads imagining all of the awful things people are thinking about us or dwelling on how hurt we are or how we hurt someone else and we tell ourselves we will never forgive ourselves. “We’ll never be able to move past it”. We imagine we’re worse than everyone else. I’ve been there.
The one thing I can say without a doubt is the people that have some sort of faith or some sort of relationship with God or the Universe have a comfort that those without that relationship don’t have. But the good news is, that relationship is available to everyone at any moment.
I grew up being taught that God was a jealous God, that he was an angry God. That he was a punishing God. That didn’t feel right to me but I also didn’t know anything other than that so I just have lived for a long time in a sort of state of confusion until recently since Ive bee reading Eckart Tolle, Wayne Dyer and John Marks Templeton. I realized through reading them that I’ve been kind of trying go it alone my whole life. When people would talk about God, I was uncomfortable and just shut down or stepped away because in my heart I wanted no part of a jealous, angry, punishing God, he wasn’t there to help, he was there to keep an eye on me and judge me more and more I’m coming to realize that that’s not true at all. That was a story created by a religion who wanted to control. Fear is the most powerful tool you can use when you want to control a group of people, and it works really well. So the God they described, I wanted nothing to do with. He didn’t sound comforting, he sounded scary. As I have grown as an adult I realize that what I was rejecting wasn’t God. It was the idea that someone else put in my head about God. So because of that I felt I have been sort of going it alone, just managing the best I could without really tapping into that higher power. Now I am a born optimist and so my life is really good I think due to that super power of being an optimist. I mean if you’re not going to have the ability to lean on a power greater than yourself, you better be pretty able to adapt and look for the positives in life. But NOW I’m tapping into that power that comes from recognizing I don’t have to go it alone and ultimately I never was and neither are you. It may just not look the way you were taught it should.
In the book Im reading now called the “laws of Life”. John Marks Templeton wrote a paragraph that started with “Nothing in your life should be foreign to prayer.” That really hit me like a freight train because I feel like everything in my life has been foreign to prayer because I thought God was judging me because I’m so not perfect and I thought that prayer only meant when you actually close your eyes and have a conversation with God intentionally but that again is just a belief I held from a doctrine I know longer practice. When you meditate, when you walk in nature appreciating the beauty, when you practice positive thoughts and loving feelings…these are all likened to prayer, just in different forms. I am so happy to know that. You see that’s the trouble with sticking so tightly to beliefs, sometimes they’re wrong and only when we educate ourselves do we grow and sometimes we realize we’ve been praying all along. He ends the paragraph with “In truth, you cannot afford NOT to pray”. When you pray, you move away from outer human personality into the great individuality within, which is the real you”.
I haven’t been going it alone for the last few years, I just didn’t realize that. I was talking to my trainer about life and how imperfect we all are and how sometimes it weighs on me, he sent me a bible verse saying that Jesus didn’t condemn people who sinned, he simply said “go and sin no more”. He forgives but says “hey don’t go repeat it”. He also said anyone who wants to condemn someone who has done something they consider to have sinned, to only be the first to cast a stone if you have never sinned yourself which of course they had.
The comforting thought is that we’re not alone. We all make mistakes, none of us are perfect. Where we get in trouble is when we keep repeating them or we don’t grow from them. And the trouble generally comes from consequences that get harder the more we repeat the mistake. I said in an earlier podcast that if we would learn the first time, it’s a lot less painful and that’s so true.
If you’re going through a hard time right now. Keep going. There’s something you’re meant to gain from this. Focus on what that would be, when you do that you’re tapping into your higher power. When you search for what good can come from this you’re tapping into your higher power. When you train your mind to focus on positive thoughts, you’re tapping into your higher power. So meditate, focus on positive thoughts and feelings and yes, if you’re so inclined, speak directly to God in prayer…he’s just waiting for you to talk to him so he can help you tap into your higher power.
That’s my challenge to you this week. No matter what you’re going through, if it feels too much for you to bear, give the hardest part of it to God through prayer in whatever way that means to you. I had a friend say he feels the closest to his higher power when he goes for a run in nature. Find what that looks like for you and make it a daily practice. You will be forever glad you did. Share this with 3 people who may have a burden to share. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
