We cannot be happy unless we are realistic and truthful. Moreover, reality and truth are God’s standards we must live up to. When we corrupt or compromise them, we destroy our happiness. Therefore, to be real, be true, and be happy we must think beyond our emotions. Here are nine situations to think about regarding your reality, your truth, and your happiness.
Organisms that create offspring through sexual reproduction have chromosomes that are XX or XY (female or male). This includes human beings.
Moms teach children how to connect with others. Dads teach children how to safely explore the world. Both show children how to love and trust. Therefore, moms and dads are equally important, and children need both.
Babies have survival instincts at least eight months before they’re born.
Church is people who serve God. A democratic government is elected people who serve to protect people including those who serve God. How then, can church and government really be separate?
God made people. Why do some people make themselves god?
Artificial intelligence is an unnatural mind.
Human bodies were created to move. Humans have more movable parts that can bend, flex, tense, relax, twist, turn, rotate, pivot, and stretch than any other creature or object. So, how can anyone think motivating people to not move, e.g. getting paid for not working, is a good thing?
History is a barometer that allows us to measure our improvements. How can we improve if we revise or cancel it? (Psalm 78: 3-4)
Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy, “Take hold of the eternal life.” (1Timothy 11-19) He’s telling us that to be truly happy we must start at the end. We must focus on our ultimate goal, our end game, or in other words, our final destination. The choice is simple – eternal joy (Heaven) or eternal misery (Hell). I won’t help you seek eternal torment. So, let’s look at achieving lasting happiness. See how to take hold of happiness and spread the Word!
Most of us are taught it’s better to give than take, butl at certain times taking is beneficial. For example, when you take medicine, take a trip, or take a rest, you enjoy better outcomes. Unfortunately, however, many in our society are taking the kinds of things that yield adverse results. We take advantage, take offense, take unearned money, take what doesn’t belong to us, and take things and people for granted. This self-focused way of taking results in fear, anger, and contempt, which cause anxiety and depression. It leaves a void of trust, satisfaction, peace, and joy.
Anxiety and Depression at All-Time Highs
Anxiety and depression have reached extraordinarily high rates among all age groups. Even taking a pill isn’t relieving the pressure. Indeed, there is no one answer to today’s enormous mood swings. But, the one indisputable fact is our loss of focus on the very reason we are here – God and His Word. We’ve taken God out of all facets of our society and our everyday lives. There is no longer a reverential fear of God. And, because of that, there is no reverential fear of parents or authority. “God” is used so much in our vernacular that we’ve diluted His importance. We’ve made God an adjective and an expression. The digital realm has abbreviated him as simply, “OMG.”
If there is no God, there is no truth, and if there is no truth, there is no happiness. There is only pleasure – the kind of pleasure that gives people relief from the anxiety and depression of a Godless existence. This pleasure may be sensual pleasure, risky behaviors, gluttony, acquiring material goods and power, or altering one’s reality through deception.
When you constantly seek pleasure instead of the truth, you lose sight of reality. Therefore, you don’t develop the skills to manage real-life situations, such as illness, loss, disappointment, and death. In addition, you don’t learn how to recognize all the good things in life and fail to develop an appreciation for all the gifts you and other people have.
When You Can’t Manage Reality, Other People Will
So, what happens when you can’t manage reality? Other people manage it for you. But, unless they have a reverential fear of God, these people will not do what’s in your best interest. They will make you believe what they say is the truth and they will not help you gain independence. Instead, you will be led by fear or pushed by fantasy. Accordingly, you’ll be blinded to the fact that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and everyone dies.
We all die. However, if you don’t think or believe in eternal life, you will live your physical life in fear and dread. You will continue to push God away and run from the truth that death is a part of life and that physical death takes gives us up to a spiritual eternal life with the King of the Universe.
Take Part in the Truth
Paul tells us to be truly happy, we must take hold of eternal life and start there. We must commit to achieving our ultimate goal, follow God’s commands, and be willing to serve others. Moreover, no one really knows what heaven is like. Therefore, we must maintain our faith. Paul warns us that we must “Fight the good fight of faith” since the fear of the unknown can make us vulnerable to temptation.
Paul tells us what to do as we take hold of the eternal life. He reminds us to: Think, Accept, Keep, and Engage.
Think more to know the truth and reality and reduce negative emotions. We must think to do what Paul directs – to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
Accept Jesus Christ into your heart. Once you receive Jesus, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit, which is your constant guide.
Keep Jesus’s commands and know God’s Word, which is the truth. And the truth will set you free.
Engage others by sharing, serving, and spreading the word so that they will “lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”
Take Hold of Happiness and Spread the Word – Send a Bible for FREE
Give someone or yourself the truth for complete happiness! I invite you to take hold of happiness and spread the Word. Send a Bible to someone you care about or to yourself. It’s FREE. (Jesus already paid.) Just choose a Bible, fill out the form, and the Bible will be sent.
Blessed be you always – Mindy, the Happy Therapist
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Most adults, teens, and children own or use some kind of device that’s labeled “smart.” Clearly, calling a manufactured device “smart” slipped by the Woke aficionados. Addressing an inanimate object as “smart” is insulting to human beings. Could the message be people who use smart devices are stupid?
Even if there’s no intentional insult, I bet you know a lot of people, and you may even be one, who’ve done some foolish things while using or because of a smart device.
Back in the day, we were more conscious about doing things. For example, watching TV required intentional thought:
You walked over to the TV to change stations or adjust the volume.
To change the channel from 4 to 11, you’d think about the most efficient direction to turn the nob.
You had to figure out the antenna position that got the best reception.
Nowadays, you can use voice commands to change TV channels and volume, turn on your lights, regulate your temperature, hear the weather report, or listen to specific kinds of music. In addition, “smart” washing machines, dryers, ovens, and cars require less thinking. It’s all to make your life simpler.
In truth, all this “smart” stuff is making us simpler-minded. When you don’t have to think, you don’t activate your thinking brain. And, when your thinking brain isn’t active, you lose functionality. Your problem-solving skills become dull, you have less rational thought, and you do less critical thinking. This lull in logic allows the emotional brain to flare up. Now, do you wonder why we’ve become such an emotionally charged society?
Emotions are the antithesis of intellect. Emotions by themselves are irrational, transient, and variable. Intellect by itself is logical, long-standing, and fixed. When one mind is more active than the other, we get off balance, and chaos ensues. Therefore, if we’re thinking less, we’re emoting more.
Unfortunately, emotions that occur without thinking are our natural ones. They include fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. Therefore, we can also say that “smart” devices make us unhappy.
Happiness comes from thinking. We make a conscious choice to have peace. Gratitude, which brings us joy, comes from evaluation and reason. Conscious awareness leads to satisfaction. And contentment is a deliberate commitment. This mindfulness is the smart way to be happy.
We should appreciate the devices that make our lives easier and provide us with entertainment. But remember, human intelligence created those devices, and God created human intelligence. So, don’t rely on someone else’s intelligence to think for you. Instead, activate your brain: Go back to remembering phone numbers, send handwritten notes, talk to each other and make eye contact, limit and structure your time on social media, constantly thank God for what you have and that you can do your own thinking. Be smarter than your “smart” devices and you’ll be happier!
When I was a young girl, and someone (like my brother) did something to hurt me, my mom would tell me to forgive him. I didn’t know what that really meant, and Mom didn’t detail it. So, I developed my own idea of forgiveness based on what I thought and what I heard. As a result, I knew I couldn’t do what was required to forgive. Consequently, I grew up not learning and not practicing forgiveness. My ignorance led to widespread dissatisfaction, an absence of peace, and counterfeit joy. I became a grudge holder and scorekeeper, which cheated me out of complete happiness. Through constant prayer, profound thought, and deliberate study, I figured out how to stop cheating myself out of joy. I learned how forgiveness creates happiness. Keep reading to know the truth about forgiveness and how forgiveness makes you happy!
In this post, you will learn:
Myth vs. true definition of forgiveness
What forgiveness requires
Why it’s so difficult to forgive
Outcomes of unforgiveness and forgiveness
Repentance
How to forgive when someone asks or doesn’t ask for it
How forgiveness makes you happy
Misleading Ideas about Forgiveness
Growing up, I was told to forgive others, and I read about its importance in the Bible. Moreover, I mentioned it to God every night in my prayers. But I just didn’t get it. I didn’t know how to forgive or what it meant. Most likely, it was because of the misinformation given to me about forgiveness. Here are some of those distortions:
“You have to forgive and forget.”
“I can forgive, but I won’t forget.”
“Just don’t think about it.”
“Put it behind you.”
“Hug, kiss, and make up.”
“Say you’re sorry and shake hands.”
You have to forgive and forget; I can forgive, but I won’t forget.
These statements are contradictory and counterintuitive, which makes them confusing. For example, my mom and dad told me to forgive and forget, and then I heard my mom say, “I can forgive, but I won’t forget.”
Our subconscious brains remember painful experiences for self-preservation. You don’t forget the painful burn from a hot stove or the pain of a break-up where you got burned. These reminders make you more cautious. The sting of punishment makes us remember not to be disobedient.
It’s easy to forget things that aren’t important to us. But, it’s difficult to forget when the event, the person who caused the pain, or the injury is significant.
Just don’t think about it.
Try not to think of warm jelly donuts. What happened? When you try not to think of something, you think about it more in an attempt to not think about it. People try not to think about things by distracting themselves with other thoughts or activities. Distraction only works as long as you have something to distract you.
Put it behind you.
When I think about putting the pain someone caused behind me, it becomes a pain in the behind. How many times have you or someone else called someone or something “a pain in the butt?” The sound of this makes it more comical and less serious. However, less severe issues can linger and become provisions for more severe problems.
Hug, kiss, and make up.
In truth, the last thing I want to do when someone has caused me great pain is kiss or hug and make up. Hugging a person who just stabbed me in the heart pushes the blade in deeper and causes a more severe wound. So now, I have to recover from a more severe injury.
Say you’re sorry and shake hands.
How sincere is a forced apology? In addition, when you add a “good sport” or handshake (what people frequently did before the Covid fiasco) indicating respect to it, that’s adding insult to injury. Similar to the kiss and make up situation, there is no genuine repentance.
When You Don’t Understand Forgiveness, You do What’s Natural
When you have misperceptions about forgiveness, you become confused and frustrated, which doesn’t help you disengage from the pain and the pain-maker (wrongdoer). This attachment to pain is a constant alert to the danger you must survive. Therefore, you spend your time in survival mode, and you’ll do what’s natural. You’ll rely on your natural emotions, so you’ll experience the additional pain of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. You must understand forgiveness to practice it.
Definition of Forgiveness
Like me, many people struggle with forgiveness because they don’t know what it means. One of the best definitions of forgiveness comes from Charles Stanley’s book, “The Gift of Forgiveness.” Dr. Stanley defines forgiveness as “the act of setting someone free from an obligation to you that is a result of a wrong done against you.” He goes on to explain, “…a debt is forgiven when you free your debtor from his obligation to pay back what he owes you.”
Offenders Debit Victims’ Accounts
When someone hurts you, the offender takes something from you. The person debits you. People can rob you of material goods, wealth, health and well-being, innocence, or joy. Or, they can cheat you out of an opportunity. According to Christian and civil laws, the offender must atone for or pay back the deficit imposed on the victim. But what happens if the wrongdoer doesn’t get caught or confess to his crime? Furthermore, how do you determine how much someone owes you if he stole your innocence or cheated you out of an opportunity?
Payback is easier to collect when the perpetrator gets caught, and the offenses are quantifiable, like damage to property or stolen material goods. But, how do you get compensated for damage done to your soul, heart, mind, values, or livelihood? Even if the judicial system punishes the perpetrator by putting him in jail, the punishment isn’t a direct payback to you. Conversely, it’s another debit because you help pay for the wrongdoer’s prison stay if you pay taxes.
It’s Easy to Remain an Anti-forgiveness Victim
Victims can be disappointed in a perpetrator’s punishment or lack thereof. Moreover, the victim’s deficit can leave her financially crushed, physically impaired, and emotionally distraught. Now, she’s confronted with the choice to restore herself or remain a victim.
For someone who feels cheated and defeated, restoration can feel overwhelming. Therefore, it’s easier to remain a victim. However, people who choose the victim lifestyle are chronically dissatisfied. It doesn’t take long before these poor unfortunate souls develop an aversion to forgiveness because it’s more convenient for them not to forgive.
Forgiveness takes away a victims’ excuses for failure. It means they must be accountable and held to specific standards. Forgiveness takes a person out of the victim role. Therefore, she no longer gets pity or what she views as tender loving care.
If a victim chooses to restore herself, she must forgive. And, to forgive, she must be willing to experience more discomfort.
What Forgiveness Requires
Forgiveness requires willingness, determination, strength, courage, and faith. To forgive, you must be willing to experience additional pain. Moreover, you must be determined enough to endure it, strong enough to confront the unknown, and courageous enough to humble yourself. All of this comes from faith in God.
The kind of pain that occurs when you forgive is a good hurt – like the kind you feel with a deep massage on tight, sore muscles. This pain comes from giving up hope, surrendering control, and lowering your importance.
Surrender and Submit
Give up hope: Hope keeps us going. It’s the last line of defense against depression and defeat. Therefore, we don’t want to give it up. To release someone of a debt, you must be willing to give up all hope of getting what a debtor owes you and rely on your hope in Jesus Christ.
Surrender control: When we think of surrendering, we think of defeat and submission, which oppose our nature to dominate. To forgive, you must surrender the need for control you developed from constantly reliving the event and imagining an outcome you can control. After a while, your need will deepen, and you’ll need to control people and situations so you can create effects that suit you. To give up control, you must be strong enough to know you can handle unpredictable outcomes. This strength comes from faith and trust in God.
Lower your importance: When you let go of a significant situation in which you were involved, you lower its importance and your own. It’s scary to make yourself less important, especially if you have low self-worth. But, this lowering is not the same as devaluing yourself, which means you disrespect, discredit, and dislike yourself. To lower yourself by relinquishing the major role you had in a significant event gives you no status. It can make you feel like you’ve submitted to the enemy. But in truth, it allows you just to be you – humbled.
The fear about being humble is that you won’t get the attention you need. The fear of being unnoticed is inherent. As infants, if we don’t get noticed, we won’t get cared for and fed. We mitigate this fear by giving attention to our Lord and Savior and emulating His courage and humility.
Humility and Forgiveness
Instinctually, we want justice and revenge, which oppose humility and forgiveness. People tend to associate humility with meekness and associate meekness with weakness. On the contrary, humility requires love, strength, courage, and faith, which require purposeful thought. Humility occurs when you think then consider your emotions. Reason and emotions create a stronger foothold for decision-making, especially the decision to forgive. Humility leads to wisdom, and wisdom leads to happiness.
On the contrary, justice and revenge are led by emotions and followed by thoughts. This natural order for resolution results in pride – the nemesis of humility. It’s easier to feel than think. Thus, it’s easier to fall into pride than rise into humility.
Pride: The Nemesis of Humility and Champion of Sin
We develop pride when we lack pride in ourselves. It grows from insecurity and feeds on fear, anger, and contempt. Pride is the nemesis of humility and champion of sin. The haughty spirit and stubbornness characterized by pride, at first blush, can make a person appear confident. But a closer look will reveal the absence of trust, which is the foundation of confidence. Moreover, pride steals one’s joy, prevents peace, and puts conditions on love. “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2)
Pride destroys the glory of forgiveness. But, it isn’t only one obstacle for giving and receiving the gift of forgiveness.
Why It’s Difficult to Forgive
Here are eight reasons why it’s difficult to forgive.
No understanding: If you got contradictory information or didn’t learn what forgiveness really means, you won’t know how to forgive.
To avoid pain: We subconsciously remember the pain we’ve experienced so we can avoid it and continue to exist. Likewise, we can consciously avoid pain if we deny the existence of hurtful events.
Hooked on Adrenaline: Our memory of pain also activates a natural negative bias which raises our adrenaline. As a result, some people get hooked on higher adrenaline levels. Therefore, they hold onto the pain of adverse events for the adrenaline high.
Confused: When someone hurts you, it doesn’t make sense. So, you can’t comprehend the person’s actions and rationally resolve the issue. Therefore, you don’t know what to forgive.
You thought you already forgave the person: Perhaps you acknowledged the violation and even prayed or talked about it with someone. But in truth, you just packed it away and continue to divert your attention away from it.
Fear: I’ve had several clients tell me they’re afraid to let go of hurtful situations because they’re scared of repeating the same mistakes and get reinjured.
Emotions take priority: Our emotions develop long before our intellect. They were the first to come, so they are often first served in that people give them priority over their thoughts. Therefore, people don’t think wisely.
Subconscious memories are triggered: Our subconscious mind takes in 11 million pieces of information per second. So, when you recall details of a catastrophic event, some portions of information don’t get transferred to the conscious mind. After you’ve recovered, you may experience something that awakens some of the information that didn’t transmit. This information triggers the original painful memories, thoughts, and feelings.
An Example of Triggered Subconscious Memories
Say you’re involved in a horrible attack where you struggled against someone. You’re aware of the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes in your immediate view, but your subconscious mind collects information from the surrounding area beyond your conscious awareness. Now let’s say it picks up a song playing in the distance that you don’t consciously recall. You recover from the attack and feel better. A long while later, you’re walking through a store and hear the song. Your subconscious reminds you of the pain and alerts you to danger. So, you have a panic attack.
It’s difficult to know how many pieces of information didn’t transfer. You might experience something years later that triggers the painful memory. Therefore, you may have to forgive someone more than once.
Forgive Seventy Times Seven
Forgiveness is not for the faint of heart. It also requires forbearance. Think of the agony Jesus was in when he forgave all who wronged him. Since memories of hurtful events can randomly pop up, the pain associated with those memories also recurs. Therefore, you might have to forgive someone over and over. Jesus gave us this message when Peter asked him how many times we had to forgive someone.
My Personal Seventy Times Seven
Many years ago, I loved a man whose emotional issues eventually evolved into violent and abusive behaviors. The situation became so dangerous that I had to get out. So, I got divorced. Even many years later, and after my ex-husband passed away, memories popped up and sent me reeling with fear, resentment, anger, and contempt. I’d become irritable, short-tempered, impatient, and bitter. Finally, I told God I needed to forgive entirely and asked Him what to do. He told me to pray for my ex-husband. Admittedly, that is not what I had in mind. But I did it. I remember my first prayer. It felt like a volcanic eruption in my soul as I held onto the arm of my chair and grunted out, “God help him!”
Relieved that I did what God told me, I asked Him again the next day. Thinking he would suggest I contribute to my favorite charity or something like that, he told me again to “Pray for him.” And, so I did. I prayed every day for many, many days. Maybe it was seventy? As the days passed, I prayed with more ease, the memories faded, and the pain ceased. Because I genuinely forgave him, I no longer felt any negativity towards my ex-husband. Instead, I feel sorrow for him. My mind is at peace, and my heart is soft with compassion. My soul rejoices.
Outcomes of Unforgiveness
When there is no forgiveness, there is no peace. If you find joy, it is tenuous at best. Love becomes conditional, and freedom is a farfetched luxury. Any satisfaction is imaginary, and contentment is undetermined. There is no real happiness.
Results of Forgiveness
When you forgive, you release the pain and the pain-maker from his debt to you. (It’s like pulling off a tick.) It may seem like the offender gets off without the pain of punishment, but in truth, you are the one set free. You no longer carry the burden of hatred, self-blame for not adequately protecting yourself (or others), and the desire for vengeance. The result is a cleansed conscience and refreshed soul. Love will fill your heart, and your mind will be clear. You’ll be physically healthier. Moreover, when you let go of the debt, you give it to the King of the Universe. And He’s got it covered.
“Repent! The End is Near”
During the 1960s, a familiar cartoon picture was a scruffy cloaked old man holding a sign that read, “The End is Near.” The cartoon poked fun of the street corner preachers and profits who warned passersby with signs that read, “Repent! The End is Near.”
In truth, that’s good advice. We should repent because we don’t know the end time for us or anyone we’ve offended. When we repent, we regret what we did that hurt someone and ask for mercy. We ask for forgiveness. It’s difficult to ask for forgiveness, but it’s even more challenging to give mercy. Both are risky. Therefore, each party must be strong in faith, love, and trust.
How to Repent
Many people give disingenuous apologies. Those do not promote reconciliation. To make a genuine apology, the offender must express his regret (“I’m sorry.”) and acknowledge the effects of his offense (“I must have really disappointed you when I ….”). At which point he may ask for forgiveness (“Will you forgive me?”) or make the statement, “I hope you can forgive me.” Then the victim can confirm or deny the request.
No Mercy, No Relationship
What happens when someone withholds mercy? This very thing happened to me a few years ago. I unknowingly offended a friend of mine. After she brought it to my attention, I apologized in earnest and asked for forgiveness. She answered by shaking her head, “No.” As much as I wanted to continue the friendship, I couldn’t. You can’t reconcile with someone who isn’t willing to release you of a mistake. Instead, you would spend your time trying to prove yourself worthy of someone who doesn’t trust you. The relationship becomes a winless competition.
Forgiving People Who Don’t Ask for It
Many clients who’ve recovered from horrible situations and forgave the perpetrator get the urge to tell the offender that they’ve forgiven him. I discourage this because it doesn’t yield a good outcome.
People’s consciences let them know when they’ve hurt someone. If they don’t repent, they don’t have a conscience, or they deny the pain they caused as a way to handle the shame and guilt. Someone who doesn’t have a conscience lacks empathy and could be a sociopath. These people are a menace to society and will see your forgiveness as superiority, which they can’t handle. Therefore, they could pose another threat.
People who have a conscience, but don’t listen to it, deny their guilt. Their constant battle to ignore their conscience causes them to live in constant denial. Soon, they lose sight of the truth. In addition, their shame and guilt evolve into anger and contempt. These folks become unapproachable. They’ve closed off their receptors to anything good. Therefore, if you try to give them something good, like forgiveness, they will resist and spew it back on you tenfold to make you go away. How dare you remind them of the truth?
Forgiveness Makes You Happy
When you forgive, you utilize all the spiritual gifts God has given you. Moreover, you love with your heart, soul, and mind, which is God’s command. Finally, the courage to forgive builds your confidence and faith and brings you closer to God.
Forgiveness gives you joy, peace, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment. It makes you happy!
In the 1954 movie White Christmas, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney sang Irving Berlin’s “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” to help ease each other’s worries. The song’s sweet melody and lyrics are calming and comforting. Moreover, the piece offers excellent advice for achieving happiness. So, even if you aren’t worried and can sleep, you can still count your blessings and add up your happiness!
Why People Recount Their Problems Instead of Their Blessings
Why do so many of us claim we want to be happy but constantly worry and recount the bad things in our lives that make us unhappy? Here are five reasons people hold onto their troubles:
We are built to have a natural negative bias to preserve our existence. This bias makes it easy to think in negative terms. Moreover, it intensifies our reactions to adverse events giving us an emotional rush.
The need for control. If something terrible happened to you where you had no power, you might develop a need to control your life and the lives of others to ensure safety. Consequently, to sustain that need, you must seek negative things you can handle.
Some people believe they must consciously remember bad things so they won’t make the same mistakes.
There is no resolution for harm or injury caused by another person. If someone causes another person injury or harm and there is no restitution, the victim will hang onto the hurt to punish the offender just in her mind. Sometimes people spend years plotting revenge. Therefore, they hold onto dreadful events so they can imagine a satisfying outcome.
People don’t understand forgiveness. We know we’re supposed to forgive others. However, many of us weren’t taught what forgiveness is and how to do it. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you accept or condone unacceptable behaviors. And, it isn’t as easy as the saying, “Forgive and forget.” Our subconscious mind’s alert system remembers what is painful so we can avoid it in the future.
Moreover, when someone hurts you, your brain takes in millions of pieces of information, including sights, sounds, smells, physical and emotional feelings, tastes, and thoughts. Even though you might consciously let go of an incident, you might have a sensory memory that gets triggered and brings up the painful event again. Every time this happens, you once again must let go of the hurt. Pain relief tip: The quickest way to get rid of your pain is to give it away – God’s hand is always out to take it.
Results of Counting Your Problems
Recounting painful memories does not make you feel good. In fact, it has adverse effects. I bet if someone did to you what recounting painful memories does, you would want revenge! Here are a few things that happen when you count your problems:
Like the proverbial fish tale, the more you tell a story, the greater the opportunity for embellishment. Therefore, each time you recount an adverse event, you enhance your negativity.
Soon, negativity will dominate your thoughts, words, emotions, and behaviors.
Replaying adverse events over and over keeps your corresponding thoughts and feelings alive. Therefore, your subconscious alert system never shuts off. This system overload causes anxiety and depression.
You’re a victim when something terrible happens to you. Keeping a constant tally of those sinister events keeps you in the role of victim. You become a chronic victim. Accordingly, you will live your life as a poor unfortunate soul.
Mulling over bad things that have happened to you does not change the outcome. It does not resolve the issues, and it doesn’t make you safer. Recounting unjust and hurtful situations is a form of negative meditation that spawns a plague of curses.
People meditate to relax their bodies and minds and to refresh their souls. But, meditating on bad experiences tenses your body, agitates your mind, and weakens your soul. Moreover, when you focus on bad experiences, you give them importance. So when you recount negative experiences, you value things that are less than zero. You spend valuable time on things that never add up to anything more than zero. Like something that’s been cursed, negative meditation is fruitless.
Curses vs. Blessings
When something is cursed, it loses productive benevolence. It has no benefit. Jesus cursed the fig tree, and it shriveled up. To curse someone, as opposed to cursing at someone, means to invoke misfortune or afflict him/her so that all their good things and happiness shrivel up.
It’s easy to curse someone who’s hurt you. But, if you remain a victim and seek revenge, you end up cursing yourself more – you give importance to painful memories when you recount them. Therefore, you value something that has no benefit and no worth.
It makes more sense (cents) to value things that have worth. Anything of worth is beneficial to the one who owns it. And, that benefit extends to other people, which brings everyone joy. Worthy things can be gifts, benefits, or advantages. They are blessings.
Definition of Blessings
Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary defines blessing as “A wish of happiness pronounced; a prayer imploring happiness upon another; any means of happiness; a gift, benefit or advantage.”
People have wished happiness to each other for thousands of years. Even before the first century, people warded off evil spirits by offering good wishes to each other. These good intentions evolved into blessings. It’s reported that during the plague in 590, Pope Gregory the first advised people to say, “God bless you” to anyone who sneezed as a prayer to invoke good health. What has made us continue this invocation for nearly fifteen hundred years? People feel good when someone they may or may not know implores the King of the Universe to bestow favor on them.
Webster’s definition also implies that blessings are physical and spiritual. Physical blessings include people, food, home, health, prosperity, talents, and success. Spiritual blessings are forgiveness, eternal joy, salvation, spiritual strength and peace, favor and grace, security, and freedom from fear.
Physical blessings allow us to enjoy a beautiful earthly life. At the same time, they are a means for us to enrich our spiritual gifts. Similarly, our spiritual blessings stir our hearts to be loving, merciful, and generous, which move us to share our physical benefits with those in need.
Blessings Come From God
Blessings do not exist without happiness. And happiness does not exist without God. Therefore, all benefits exist because of God. In other words, all blessings come from God. Since God is the creator and distributor of gifts, they must be credited to Him and used for His purposes. Writer Vaneetha Rendall Risner sums this up beautifully in her description of blessings. She writes, “Scripture shows that a blessing is anything God gives that makes us fully satisfied in him. Anything that draws us closer to Jesus. Anything that helps us relinquish the temporal and hold on more tightly to the eternal.”
Our ultimate goal should be to live eternally in complete happiness in God’s glorious kingdom. The life we have here on earth allows us to work towards that goal. And, God has given us everything we need to accomplish it. He has blessed us with everything we have, including the world itself.
God created a world of extraordinary beauty that we can experience through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Genesis explains that God created everything above, below, and on the earth and blessed his creations. He made men and women. And, He blessed mankind to have agile bodies, sophisticated minds, and eternal souls so we can be productive, be happy, and have eternal life with Him.
Furthermore, God blessed us with unique characteristics and talents, so each of us has a different way of helping and serving others. (Romans 12:6-8) God also blessed us by creating food. And, He made precious metals, including gold. Therefore, God blessed us with material wealth and currency.
How We Get More Blessed
We often question why some people have so many more blessings than others. There are too many variables to answer that. And it is a matter of perception. Some people might seem to be more blessed, but they use and share their gifts more with others.
God does not have a lottery for winning blessings. Neither does he have a scorecard. God blesses everyone. He wants us to acknowledge and appreciate our blessings. But to do this, we must acknowledge and appreciate Him first. The more we acknowledge and honor God, the more grateful we are for the blessings he’s given us. And, the more grateful we are for our gifts, the more He blesses us.
But, it’s our choice. We choose how much we worship God and how grateful we are. This free will gives us individuality. Therefore, God’s blessings align with each person’s uniqueness.
God is Not a Socialist
God knows the value of individuality. He is not a socialist. If He blessed us all the same, we would be alike and have the same. There would be no need to serve one another and no motivation to do good works. Therefore, there would be no need to serve God. That would take away our uniqueness and individual freedom of choice, our need for Jesus Christ, and our ability to enjoy eternal life with our Lord.
Every human being has been blessed with the miracle of life and the benefit of choosing eternal joy or perish. The greatest blessing God gives us is salvation through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior. For people who have the cognitive ability to make decisions, this blessing is a choice. God blesses people who aren’t capable of making decisions with His grace and mercy so that they can remain with Him.
We Choose to be Blessed or Cursed
God has also blessed us with the freedom of choice. We choose to accept or not accept our blessings. In other words, we can be blessed or cursed. To be blessed, we must obey God’s commands. He promises us innumerable blessings when we are obedient. But, when people live by their own rules, they push God away. They are disobedient. They value their desires and the looseness of their sinful nature, which require no obedience. This disobedience results in lawlessness and dissatisfaction. And, these people feel an emptiness. It is a cursed existence.
Follow God’s Commands for Blessings
To be obedient to God, you follow His rules. Review and adhere to the first Ten Commandments. Then, actively practice the two Jesus verified as most important: 1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Why Some People Don’t Recognize Their Blessings
These two commandments allow us to recognize our blessings, use them as God intended, and share them with others. But, sometimes, people struggle with identifying their blessings. Some people view their gifts as common inherent traits and claim, “That’s just the way I am.” Others believe blessings should be big and obvious. Therefore, because they aren’t in the public eye or have a high-powered position, they minimize their talents and gifts as trivial and mundane acts.
Physical Blessings
So, what are some blessings? Like the song goes, “I think about a nursery, and I picture curly heads,” we are blessed to have other people in our lives. Family, friends, neighbors, doctors, dentists, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, first responders, clergymen, cooks, and hundreds of other service providers are there for us each day. How many times have you been grateful that you had someone you could rely on to help you?
We rely on other people because they have the skills to do what we can’t. They are blessed with particular talents. Conversely, as customers, we are blessings to them since we appreciate their talents!
Spiritual Blessings
Besides obvious talents people have, many spiritual blessings are less noticed. The Bible notes these significant gifts and talents. Here is a sample.
Prophecy – This is not fortune-telling. It’s showing possible outcomes by helping others think things through.
Service – Assisting individuals, groups, or society.
Teaching – Not necessarily the vocation of a teacher. But providing others with beneficial information.
Giving – Some people are good at giving money, gifts, awards, material goods, or food instead of physically participating.
Showing mercy – Mercy givers sense and respond to the emotional and spiritual needs of others. They sense people’s suffering respond empathically. They love those who are unlovable.
Praying – Not everyone is good at talking to God, especially for the sake of others. Intercessory prayer is a gift from the Holy Spirit that allows you to prevail in compassionate prayer on someone else’s behalf, motivated by the heart of God.
Healing – Not everyone can be a doctor. And those who are, have special abilities. But, people are often in need of emotional healing. To provide emotional healing, one must empathize and show love to others to the point of healing their emotional wounds.
Wisdom – Those who are blessed with wisdom have greater insight into life. They speak to an individual’s life or a specific situation with great understanding and a righteous perspective to guide others toward a life of holiness and worship.
Intelligence – Some people are just really smart. They can create, discover, and invent things that benefit our lives.
To encourage – No one is immune from feeling discouraged or depressed. And, not everyone is good at lifting people’s spirits, especially during gloomy times. People blessed with the gift of encouragement genuinely elevate people’s moods and optimize people’s attitudes through love and truth.
Leadership – The goal of the gifted leader is to guard and guide those he leads. Good leaders recognize their gift comes from the one true leader, so they submit to God and not their own pride. They do not feel entitled but remain servants to those they lead. Influential leaders remain strong in faith and courage.
Speaking different languages – According to Scripture, “different” languages meant speaking in tongues. However, today we have many other languages that didn’t exist in Biblical times. Still, we must talk so people can understand what we are saying. But, not everyone can learn or speak multiple languages. Therefore, being able to speak different languages, including sign language, is a blessing.
Interpreting different languages – To effectively communicate and help one another, we must understand each other. Whether it is a national language, sign language, colloquialisms, or reading people’s expressions and body language, some people are better at interpreting what people are saying than others.
Counting your blessings makes you meditate on all the good in your life and adds to your happiness. However, if you’re in a mood that makes addition difficult, or you just stink at math, you can just recount (describe) your blessings. Use the list as a guide if necessary.
You Decide if You Want to be Happy by Counting Your Blessings
It’s easy to fall into the pit of curses. Therefore, if you feel like you have more curses than blessings, you must first be truthful. Ask yourself if you genuinely want to be better and be happier. Then, you must decide if you’re willing to do what is necessary to achieve happiness. You must be willing to believe God’s promises, study His word, and be obedient to Him.
God Promised to Turn Curses into Blessings
Know that God promised to turn curses into blessings. But only if you revere and obey Him. Do this by asking Him into your heart, following his rules, and knowing His word. An easy way to start is by following the two commands Jesus gave us – love God, each other, and yourself.
If you still have trouble recognizing your blessings, pay attention to other people. Acknowledge, accept, and appreciate their abilities and talents. As soon as you do that, you’ll realize you’re blessed!
“To be happy, you must value happiness” sounds like one of those Proverbs that we agree with but don’t apply. In truth, we should pay more attention to these words of wisdom and live accordingly. We would be happier. Find out why and how valuing happiness will make you a happier person.
What Do You Value?
What do you value? Recently, I asked about forty people, both professionally and personally, that same question. Every person had to stop and think about it. Some people seemed embarrassed to answer. A few got slightly indignant, and some struggled to find an answer. How did you respond?
Like most people, you probably have a shortlist of people and things. Common answers include family, friends, job, home, and health. Even though all of us want to be happy, no one in my survey answered, “Happiness.” Only two people answered, “God,” which is the only way to complete happiness.
Why People Struggle Saying What They Value
I wondered why people had such a difficult time answering a question that has no wrong answer. So, I studied it. People struggle with acknowledging what they value because they’ve lost sight of it. The things you value most are your priorities in life. Your priorities are the things and people you focus on the most. Therefore, what and whom you focus on the most is what you truly value. You might claim to value one thing, but your focus may be on something totally different. For example, say you claim to value your children, but you focus on getting them involved in all kinds of sports. You buy the best equipment for them. Then, constantly tell them how to play better. What is your real focus? In truth, you’ve lost sight of what you claim is most important to you.
Here are four reasons people lose sight of what they value. See if you can relate to any.
Get distracted
Are too busy
Temptation
Never had much value to begin with
Distracted Because of Competition and Criticism
By nature, we are competitive, greedy, jealous, impatient, and self-centered. Therefore, it’s easy to become distracted by what other people have. Comparing yourself to other people creates competitions that you’ll want to win. So, instead of focusing on how blessed you are with what and who you have, you’ll focus on wanting more or being better than your competition.
One way to make yourself better than others is by criticizing them. Conversely, our need for acceptance makes us averse to being criticized. This double standard distracts us from what we truly value.
If you were criticized and judged by your parents or others instead of valued, you’d be the one to create a high opinion of yourself. This overestimation of oneself is known as pride. The worst sin of all, pride, causes us to judge and criticize others as a means to prevent the pain of rejection. Therefore, pride causes you to value yourself by focusing on other people’s flaws.
Distraction Because of Pain
Besides the pain of criticism, other emotional and physical pain can distract you. We are wired to avoid pain. However, pain is inevitable. Therefore, when we have any pain, we tend to focus on getting relief. In addition, pharmaceutical companies, hospital councils for accreditation, and the medical community have prioritized pain relief. Likewise, too many parents try to prevent their children from experiencing the pain of disappointment. Therefore, they are less inclined to tell their children, “No.” This kind of pain has become intolerant and taboo.
Certainly, there some conditions require pain relief. But, we must be careful that we don’t cancel out our ability to tolerate pain. If you lose the ability to handle physical or emotional pain, you’ll lose faith. And, fear will prevail. You, the people, and the things you value will suffer because you’ll be too focused on being “afraid of…” rather than having faith in Jesus Christ. Remember, the what and whom you focus on the most determines your behavior.
Busyness
Competition, averting criticism and avoiding pain keep us busy. Maybe that’s part of the reason people are so busy these days. Most conversations I have with people include the phrase, “so busy.” With so many people being so busy all the time, our Gross National Product should be record-breaking. And, “Now Hiring” signs should be a rare sight. Neither is true. Productivity is not equivalent to busyness. Much of today’s busyness is fruitless. And now, people can make more money by not working!
When I ask people exactly what they are so busy doing, they usually respond, “Oh, you know….” Honestly, I don’t. And, it’s apparent they aren’t impressed with their accomplishments since they can’t recall any. Unimpressively busy people don’t focus on anything productive. Therefore, they rely on other people to give them something to value. Such reliance creates temptation for both parties.
Temptation
Temptation is Satan’s way of getting you to sin – transgress God’s law. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Today, you don’t have to get out of bed to be tempted. And, instead of being led into temptation, you carry it around with you.
Cell phones are a significant source of temptation. It’s easy to peek at your screen to see who’s texting, trending, or posting when you know you should be working, studying, or listening. Therefore, you focus on doing what you feel like doing instead of doing what is right.
In the natural (our nature), we prioritize our instincts and feelings. Therefore, we do what we feel like to get what we want instead of doing what is right and just. Temptation comes out of our nature only to keep us stuck there. How many times have you done something you felt like doing but knew wasn’t right and felt guilty about it afterward? Then, you were tempted to do something else that wasn’t right to ease your guilt. It’s easy to get caught in this cycle that makes you constantly focus on misery and relief.
Who are the Tempters?
Marketing strategists know how easy it is to tap into our nature. They tempt you into buying things you don’t need and can’t afford. Moreover, they condition you into believing it’s so essential that you should have it right now. Therefore, you focus on instant gratification.
Advertisers aren’t the only ones promoting temptation. Parents foster temptation by giving their children credit cards. Since credit cards are abstract currency, children can easily imagine the credit card will cover the purchase of whatever they want. It becomes easy for them to focus on getting what they feel like they naturally deserve.
Parents also cave to temptation when they give their young children cell phones based on the assumption, “In case something happens.” This message provides children with a sense of impending doom. So, the phone becomes necessary for survival. Children learn to value safety and security by focusing on the need for technology.
Society’s Reformed Temptation
Temptation is not restricted to acquisition. It’s a rampant deception that society constantly ameliorates into acceptable behaviors. Society’s proliferation of uninhibited sex and vulgar language has reformed degenerate actions into normal social behaviors. Moreover, the mainstream media has abolished temptation by making individuals’ amoral behaviors nothing less than ordinary conduct. This revised form of temptation gives value to wickedness and allows people to focus on fulfilling their desires and urges.
Lack of Esteem
Self-centered people focus on themselves because no one else did. The last reason people lose sight of what they value is that they never had it in the first place. Abused and neglected children grow to see themselves as worthless, damaged goods or commodities used for other people’s pleasure. In addition, children raised by parents who compromised moral and ethical values or had weak core values continue to be influenced by the laws of nature instead of God’s laws. As a result, they value life by focusing on survival.
When you focus on surviving, you live in survival mode – your natural and primal way of existence. It’s how we are born. Scripture refers to this level of existence as living in the flesh or sinful nature. To live in survival mode means you are always on the lookout for danger and strive to dominate. Therefore, you tend to expect the worst and try to control others. Your primary emotions are fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. These negative emotions cause anxiety and depression, which cause you to focus more on yourself.
Nature is in Opposition to Happiness
Nature is central to why people lose sight of what they value. Don’t underestimate the power of your nature and natural emotions. The Apostle Paul is explicit about what happens when we prioritize and focus on our nature. He reminds us how our nature contradicts the Spirit of God. Since complete happiness comes from the Spirit of God, we can conclude that our nature is in opposition to happiness. Therefore, if you value happiness, you cannot focus on your nature.
Don’t let competition, pain and fear, busyness, temptations, and low self-esteem make you transgress from what really matters. When you value something, you prioritize and pay attention to what he, she, or it needs to function well. You nurture, support, and protect what you value because you want it to last. In fact, we often want to pass the things we value on to other people.
To Value is to be Disciplined, Committed, and Willing
A lot of time and effort is required to nurture and preserve what you value. Therefore, it’s not always easy. It’s challenging when you’re hurt or tired. So, to value someone or something, you must be disciplined, committed, and willing to submit and serve – abilities we have, but choose if and when we want to engage them.
Core Values
The willingness to submit and serve others comes from another type of value. These are core values – the beliefs we have about what is right and wrong and most important in life. Our core values control our behaviors.
God created people and rules for the people to follow so we could live in His love and be happy. A summary of His laws includes Honesty, Empathy, Accountability, Respect, and Trust (HEART). These rules are systemic core values that must be obeyed so everyone can experience peace, joy, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment.
To Value Happiness You Must Be God-Centered
Therefore, to be happy, you must value happiness by focusing on the core values that God gave us. You must be God-centered, meaning you must love God first. When you put God first, everyone and everything you value will be blessed and a blessing.
Our Two Minds Must Work Together to Value God
To value God, you must feel His presence, and you must know Him. Therefore, God created us to have two minds. We are born into the world with instincts and emotions that allow us to exist and have deep intuitions. But, they do not create happiness.
They are a function of our first mind that develops, our subconscious mind. Our second mind, the conscious, comes alive after we are born. It is located above our subconscious mind and makes us knowingly aware of the world. Our conscious mind gives us a higher level of understanding that inspires happiness.
The Earthly Subconscious Mind and Spiritual Conscious Mind
We can describe our conscious and subconscious minds the same way Jesus explained himself to those who didn’t believe Him. “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23) Therefore, we can connect our subconscious mind to earthly (natural) ways and our conscious mind to the Spirit of God.
While our subconscious mind protects our existence, our conscious mind discerns right, wrong, good, and bad. It’s where we think through situations and assess outcomes. The conscious mind allows us to know God through His Word and the teachings of Jesus Christ. But, both minds are necessary to have a complete relationship with God.
Jesus taught his followers the truth that often conflicted with their beliefs. However, because he valued them, He persisted with love and patience. You must do the same for yourself. Your subconscious mind may be filled with false beliefs that other people or you created. But, your conscious mind knows the truth, and through love and persistence, it must teach that truth to your subconscious mind. You do this through conscious awareness and repetition of good thoughts and the use of good words. Then, your subconscious mind will create good habits that will protect and promote who and what you value.
How Your Habits Affect the Value of Your Happiness
Assess your habits. How do they affect who and what you value? Do they bring you closer to God or push you from God? Do they line up with the core values? If they lead you to a conscious awareness of joy, peace, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment, you value happiness. On the other hand, if you are left feeling sad, angry, and resentful, stuck, dissatisfied, or guilty, your values are not God-centered.
How to be God-Centered
Figure out what prevents you from being God-centered. Do this by paying attention to how you value the important things in your life.
Do you practice the core values within the confines of love with people? If not, what prevents you from doing that?
What obstacles do you need to remove?
What do you need to eliminate?
Who do you need to remove from your life?
What do you need to replace what you removed or eliminated?
To become more God-centered, read and study the Bible for wisdom. Pray for God’s help and find good role models. Seek therapy or counseling for guidance if necessary.
Being Happy Here is a Primer for Eternal Happiness
God created us to be happy in this world as a primer for eternal happiness in His kingdom. To be happy, you must value happiness. To value happiness, you must value God. When you value God, you’ll focus on how to have eternal happiness. Jesus tells us, “Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart [your wishes, your desires; that on which your life centers] will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-22 AMP)
You can still be happy when life isn’t fair. Happy people know this. They don’t always like the fact that life isn’t fair, but they understand and accept it. Happy people uphold their values, practice forgiveness, and rely on their faith to overcome unfairness. However, people who can’t handle the reality that life isn’t fair are dissatisfied and malcontent. They are unhappy. This post explains how you can still be happy when life isn’t fair.
Correcting Unfairness Doesn’t Create Happiness
Unhappy people reject the fact that life isn’t fair and have difficulty tolerating the discomfort that comes with unfairness. Instead of accepting this reality, they brood over past and current hurt, pain, and suffering. Therefore, they continually seek justice to correct inequity rather than seek wisdom to prevail over it.
In their pursuit of rightness, unhappy people, whether individuals or groups, manipulate or abandon the core values (God’s laws). Moreover, they blame and punish others and use their own beliefs to determine reparations. They want the impossible – to conquer unfairness. This ideal puts them in a superior position, which itself is unfair! Maybe these people think conquering the impossible will make them happy. Whatever their reasons, their attempts to make life fair creates more unfairness because of the choices they make in those attempts.
The desire to correct inequity is not new. To have this desire, people had to recognize the existence of injustice. This recognition came when people realized they had a choice. And, the first people to realize this were Eve and Adam.
Freedom of Choice
God is love. He is not a dictator. He created us to have free will so we can choose to love and obey Him, not be slaves to Him. In that obedience and love, we live fuller and happier lives. And that is God’s desire for us. But, for us to utilize free will, we must have something to obey. Therefore, we must have rules. Then, we can choose to follow or not follow them.
Rules Give Us Choices
For fairness to exist, we must have rules, and we must obey them. Genesis shows this through the story of Adam and Eve. God gave Adam and Eve everything to make their lives happy. They were free of inequity. There was nothing to make them feel fear, anger, shame, or guilt. They were free to walk anywhere in the garden and eat as much as they pleased.
Adam and Eve seemed to have the kind of choices we typically have on vacation – where, when, and what to eat. But, like any good parent, God had house rules. One basic instruction was, “Do Not Touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” It would have been an easy rule to obey if God had tucked the tree in the corner of the garden. But, He placed it smack in the middle. So no matter what direction Adam and Eve went, they passed the tree. God’s rule gave Adam and Eve the choice to obey God.
Intrusive Thoughts Cause Bad Choices
Adam and Eve could choose what God desired or what they desired. Eventually, their desires won out. Eve yielded to the serpent, an intruder that intensified temptation and planted doubt in her mind. The attraction was a better-tasting, better-looking fruit that would improve their existence. And, it was doubtful that God would have them die after all the work he went through to create them. These intrusive thoughts justified their disobedience.
Adam and Eve challenged God by putting their desires and interests ahead of His. Is there any competition more unfair than that between parent and child?
Many times people, especially children, think unfairness is punishment. It occurs as a result of someone’s will. Therefore, unfairness, itself is not a punishment.
Negative Emotions Make Us Recognize Unfairness
After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they felt ashamed and afraid – two emotions that allow us to recognize the existence of unfairness. When God called them out, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. This sequence of events shows us that inequity started with Satan (temptation and doubt) and persisted by a lack of obedience to God. In other words, unfairness occurs due to irreverence and bad choices.
Forgiveness Nullifies Injustice
Happy people revere God’s word and rely on it to help them overcome the challenges of temptation and doubt. They adhere to God’s rules through conscious thought, awareness, and faith to maintain their obedience and fairness. If they falter, they know repentance yields God’s mercy, which reconciles them and sets them free. Therefore, they know that forgiveness does not correct unfairness but nullifies it.
To forgive is not as easy for us as it is for God. Our negative bias (our natural inclination for survival) makes it difficult to let go of bad things that happened. Therefore, to forgive, we must be closer to God. We must get out of our natural state and into a spiritual level by being consciously aware of human frailties.
Yesterday’s Choice May Be Today’s Injustice
Reality is everyone makes mistakes and bad choices. No one can alter this truth. Accepting it sets you up to know unfairness happens for reasons that extend beyond the information you have. For example, an ancestor’s lack of obedience and bad choices done years ago might be a reason for a family’s dysfunction today.
While the actual cause for inequity might not be known, remembering that human beings are not perfect and offering forgiveness allows you to manage your current situation without seeking justice or demanding compensation. It sets you free and prevents you from making more bad choices that would cause additional unfairness to others, including your descendants.
Jesus’s Greatest Lesson
Forgiveness and tolerance of people’s fallibility require obedience to Jesus’s teaching. Two of his most excellent teachings are Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. When you practice these two commandments, you focus less on the unfairness of life and more on how to love others.
Choose to Believe the Best
Happy people understand love and know it involves choice. 1 Corinthians 13 gives a thorough definition of love, and part of the description tells us that love believes the best. Since our negative bias pulls us in the opposite direction, we must choose what we want to think. For example, say I invite my friend for lunch, and she doesn’t show up. If I go with my nature, I’ll think of all kinds of negative reasons she didn’t meet me. Maybe she’s mad at me, she got into an accident, or she didn’t remember. None of these makes me feel good, and I won’t feel good about my friend either. That’s not fair to her or me. Therefore, if I choose to believe the best and think she must have a good reason not to come to lunch, I remind myself that she is a worthy person and I feel good. No matter her explanation, I’ve loved both myself and her. I’ve been obedient and fair.
It isn’t always easy to love someone, especially if the person or persons have treated you unfairly. Therefore, the choice to love and believe the best requires obedience through discipline or self-control. As long as you can think, you can exercise discipline. But again, it’s your choice.
Faith and Unfairness
People who think life should be fair may acknowledge God, but they are more obedient to themselves and their beliefs of what is right than to God and His righteousness. Therefore, they put their faith in information rather than God. They “follow the science” instead of following Jesus and question God instead of questioning science.
Science is the systematic study of structure and behavior through observation and experiment. To use this approach for assessing and overcoming unfairness means quantifying the inequities in life.
Retribution or Reconciliation
People who follow this train of thought would assert there should be quantifiable compensation for those who’ve experienced unfairness. You can only do this if you can put a particular value amount on someone or something. We see this in civil justice to settle problems caused by unfair practices. This kind of settlement is retribution, not reconciliation.
Unhappy people who meditate on past human errors seek this kind of compensation for historical injustices. Sometimes adult children carry grudges against their parents. It can also happen in certain groups. In truth, how can you measure the right amount of compensation for something that happened years before and under different conditions? How satisfied would you be if you received payment for an injustice that occurred seventy years ago by someone you don’t even know?
Compensation for a historical injustice is difficult to settle. This kind of debt is challenging since the debtor is unknown or no longer here. Therefore, someone who currently exists must pay. That would be like you paying for a car your great uncle purchased one hundred years ago. How fair is that?
Extinguishing Unfairness Means Denying Truth and Reality
People who believe there should be no unfairness try to extinguish it. They do this by omitting historical information for education, tearing down historical statues and portraits, and changing schools’ names. Deleting or rewriting history does not erase it, nor does it eliminate unfairness. If you burned all the pictures of your grandmother because she left your cousin a larger inheritance than you, that doesn’t erase her existence. After all, if she didn’t exist, neither would you. This type of thinking denies the truth and reality, which isn’t fair.
People who continue to feel bad because of things that happened to them when they were younger try to prevent injustices for their children. I hear this a lot when clients tell me they learned what not to do from their parents. Other examples where adults try to ensure fairness for children include:
Lowering test scores for school admissions.
Eliminating team tryouts.
Giving everyone on the team a trophy.
These efforts to correct unfairness deny children truth and reality and set them up for future disappointment. When people try to spare children the frustration of inequity, they prevent children from being strong and courageous in overcoming adversity. They don’t allow children to be encouraged to be the best they can be. It’s unfair.
Negative Bias Perpetuates Negative View
People who get stuck about life being unfair view life from their negative bias. Therefore, they focus on what they don’t have compared to what others do have. People who accept life isn’t fair look in both directions. They can see how much better things might be, but they also realize how much worse things could be for them. These people maintain an accurate and fair perspective of reality that allows them to be more grateful for what they have. Their gratitude reminds them of all the good they have that enables them to give to others.
Accepting Life Isn’t Fair Makes You More Generous
People who accept that life is unfair are more generous. They don’t give out of guilt or fear but out of compassion and love. Generous people plan what they give. They support, encourage, uphold, and uplift others because they want to build up, not compensate or punish.
Unhappy people spend too much time in their nature, which makes them more competitive than generous. Dominance and greed overtake humility and generosity, so they determine who should have what. They base their determinations on their thoughts and feelings. So, they may see someone who is momentarily vulnerable as a chronic victim (poor soul) and incapable of taking care of his/her problems. Thus, they must rescue these poor unfortunate souls. Rescuers determine what victims need. Therefore, they don’t honor vulnerable people. How fair is that?
Unfair Doesn’t Mean Unable
Happy people know that unfair doesn’t mean unable. Moreover, they are forward thinkers, so they look towards the future with hope and optimism. They don’t see unfairness as the extinction of equality but as existential diversity that allows them to strive for self-improvement and encourage others to do the same.
Unhappy people view unfairness as a malformation of existence, a grave injustice for those who are or have been on the underside of prosperity. Deuteronomy tells us there will always be poor people, whether they are deficient in material goods, money, health, or spirit. We are to honor them through generous support, encouragement, and love. Retaliating to correct the unfairness doesn’t promote better conditions. It takes you away from those in need and leaves them feeling abandoned.
If Life Were Fair We Wouldn’t Fair Well
If life were fair, everyone would have the same skills, talents, intellect, illnesses, amount of money, and good looks. There would be no competition and no specialties – nothing to compete for and nothing to make you unique. If life were fair and we all had the same, people would become complacent and live their lives following the orders of those who dictate equality.
Life isn’t fair – thank goodness! Because of that, we can have healthy competition, serve others, experience mercy and grace, be grateful, commit to our values, be obedient, and have an intimate relationship with God. It allows us to love more.
Life isn’t fair is not a concept. It is a fact of life. However, many people are more distressed by it than accepting. Read this short poem for insight into why unfairness is beneficial to all of us.
For more a more detailed look at why life isn’t fair, read Post #29. You will learn what causes unfairness and how happy people and unhappy people perceive and manage unfairness.
Life isn’t fair is nothing new. It started with Adam and Eve. Right after they decided to disobey God and eat the fruit, unfairness was born. Our ability to make choices leads us to unfairness. While freewill was given to us out of God’s love for us, that same freewill gives us the opportunity to choose right or wrong, good or bad. Even if we make a choice based on what we think is right, it might not be right for someone else.
The key to fairness is obedience to God. However, most of us struggle with that. Obedience goes against our nature. Therfore, to be truly obedient, we must value God. We must be disciplined and more committed to Him than ourselves.
We perpetuate our unfairness. Many people create more unfairness by trying to correct existing unfairness. Accept that life isn’t fair and learn how to manage it through God’s word and love.
We all get negative from time to time because we lose, make costly choices, or have things taken from us. But, faith, hope, and love help us replace those absences. When faith, hope, and love are absent, we are left with nothing. That nothingness becomes negativity, which is an expression of pessimism or criticism and an attitude of not being hopeful. Negativity is systemic. It spreads quickly and is a challenge to overcome, especially the negativity in others. Overcome Negativity Part 3 explains how to overcome negativity of others so you can maintain your happiness no matter where you are and who you’re with.
Overcome Negativity Part 3 is divided into three sections:
Section one gives an overview of people who live in negativity.
Two explains what you need to overcome the negativity of others.
Three provides example scenarios that show you how to talk and behave to overcome negativity in others.
Objective
Before we begin, know the objective. To overcome means to succeed in dealing with something. It doesn’t mean to overtake or change. Therefore, to overcome other people’s negativity is to succeed in making situations with negative people the best possible situations for you and them with the hope they will want to change.
Section 1: Overview
People Who Live in Negativity
People who live in negativity live in a vacuum. Therefore, they take more than they give. As harsh as it sounds, they are thieves, murders, and misers since they steal your peace, kill your joy, and squirrel away their love. However, they aren’t satisfied with their plunder, so they blow it off.
These people try to fill their emptiness with nothing good. Therefore, they are occupied with deficits. They focus on the not’s in life – what they do not want, do not have, cannot do, and how others should not be. They make choices, behave, vote for, relate to, and treat others based on what they don’t like, don’t want, can’t tolerate, and believe isn’t right. I call them “Notters.”
Nothing good comes from choices and behaviors that are based on negativity.
Negative people are at different skill levels. Constant practice makes them masters. They can reach levels where dislike turns into hatred, what they don’t want escalates to violence, and what they can’t tolerate results in personal harm.
Negative Dispositions
Notters fool you into believing they are saviors because their primary focus is themselves and not our real Savior, Jesus Christ. Therefore, they must save themselves. Their “save yourself” attitude keeps them in survival mode, where negative emotions pervade their bodies, minds, and souls. Their negative ways become habits, which become their beliefs and dispositions.
People with negative dispositions have low self-worth. To elevate themselves, they seek people they view as more deficient. If they can’t find any “poor unfortunate souls,” they’ll create them by devaluing people. They’ll take people’s joy, peace, love, freedom, and satisfaction. Therefore, they are more discouraging than encouraging.
Poor unfortunate souls give negative people someone to play with. Depending on what the Notters are in the mood for, they can save, punish, or control their unsuspecting buddies.
Play it Safe
Negative people play it safe. They don’t maintain goodness. So they don’t stand firm in righteousness. They go along with the group that benefits them most or dominate with a force that no one will challenge.
These doom-and-gloomers also play it safe by predicting the worst. They expect the worst, plan for the worst and tell you the worst. Focusing on the worst sets them up to be victims or heroes and allows them always to be right.
Goodness is Fantasy
Goodness is more fantasy than reality for negative people because they base their reality on absences. They see more bad than good and more wrong than right. Life is more difficult for negative people.
Additional traits of negative people
Negative people are also worriers, skeptics, secretive, easily offended, controlling, and drama lovers.
Reasons People are Negative
There is no way to predict how negative someone will be because there are too many variables. Genetics, environment, personality, birth order, mental health, and emotional sensitivity determine a person’s level of negativity and ability to live above their nature.
Reasons people are negative:
A Godless life.
You don’t have to be an atheist to have a Godless life. Replacing god with personal desires or pushing God out makes God absent. An absence of God is an absence of truth and love.
It’s easy because we are born with negative emotions.
We develop survival instincts before intellect, which makes them more powerful, influential, and natural.
Unresolved traumatic experiences keep people in survival mode.
When people have experiences that threaten their existence, they are naturally frightened. If they’re never confident that they’re safe and secure, their alert system never shuts off.
Genetics.
Anxious parents pass anxiety onto their offspring.
Over or under indulged children develop a negative reality.
These children don’t get what they need. Overindulged children get too much of what they want and not what they need, so they value things more than people. Children who didn’t get what they needed or wanted due to abuse or neglect rely on what they already have – their survival instincts, which become a priority for them.
Sin Nature
Negative people live in their nature. The apostle Paul calls it “sin nature” because we are quite sinful when we live here. When we are in our nature, our emotions rule. We are greedy, covetous, competitive, impatient, contemptible, immoral, and selfish. To live outside of our nature, we must be more conscious and conscientious.
Section 2: What You Need to Overcome the Negativity of Others
Everyone shares the same kind of nature. Therefore, to overcome negativity in others, you must be aware of your nature and raise your consciousness to a supernatural mindset. You must lift your spirit and lower yourself and your defenses the way Christ humbled himself. Therefore, do not compete with, counter, condemn, or coddle negative people, but demonstrate faith, model hope, and offer love. Have humility and be mindful. You need compassion, strength, courage, commitment, and discipline.
Humility and Fruits of the Spirit
Humility does not mean to concede or lie down and take it. When you have humility, you’re aware of your bad qualities and know that you are not more valuable than any person. You are a willing servant to God and others. Christ-like humility requires enormous strength, courage, and commitment. It’s not for the faint of heart but is for those who have God filled hearts.
When you ask God into your heart, He gives you what you need to overcome negativity. He gives you the Fruits of the Spirit, which include love [unselfish concern for others], joy, [inner] peace, patience [not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (discipline). (Galatians 5:22-23)
To use the Fruits of the Spirit successfully, you must be mindful.
Three Steps to Mindfulness
Don’t be fooled by the sweetness associated with the Fruits of the Spirit. They require power and might to practice. You must defy nature’s gravity and forces to utilize them by being actively aware of your body, thoughts, emotions, and gut feelings – you must be mindful.
When you are mindful, you bring your conscious and subconscious minds together to work in harmony. You must be aware of your body and emotions, but keep them secondary to your thoughts as you consider your gut feelings.
Step One: Physical Awareness
The first part of mindfulness is physical awareness. Pay attention to your body – your breathing, heart rate, and muscle tension.
Negativity affects our bodies. To overcome the negativity of others, you must maintain a physical countenance. Pay attention to your facial expressions, body posture, and breathing when a negative person confronts you. It’s easy to be negative, but positive people are at ease. They are peaceful.
When soldiers are at ease, they are less stiff and ridged. Their bodies are more relaxed and at peace. We are at ease when we are free. Command yourself to stand at ease when you’re with a negative person. Be flexible and peaceful.
Step Two: Thoughtfulness
The second part of mindfulness is the awareness of your thoughts. When a Notter confronts you, think purposefully. Negative people are emotionally charged. They react, which makes you react. Think of responding instead of reacting. Imagine if first responders were first reactors. They would be so emotionally overwhelmed they wouldn’t be able to help anyone.
First responders train to respond and you must also prepare to respond. You already have self-control, aka discipline. You prove it every time you obey a rule. Even if you don’t feel like following the law, you do. What makes you obedient? Thought and reason. Your conscience tells you it is the right thing to do. And your thinking mind reasons out the possible outcomes if you do or don’t obey. Use your discipline to determine how you will respond to negatively reactive people.
Put Yourself in Charge
When you are with a negative person, use discipline to stop and think. Ask yourself, “What do I need to make this the best possible situation?” When you do this, it takes power from the negative person and puts you in charge.
You’ll probably discover you need compassion, patience, love, kindness, and gentleness. God has already given you these, so just exercise them.
Compassion is an awareness of someone’s pain and suffering. Patience means you are calm while you wait. Love and kindness allow you to serve as Christ does. Gentleness does not mean coddling or submitting. It means showing care and respect for others in the way that you act and speak. Keep your tone of voice neutral.
Reflective Listening
One way to exercise these spiritual gifts is to use reflective listening. When you reflect the person’s emotions back to him/her, it gets the person to think, which diffuses his/her negative emotions. Let’s say someone spoke harshly to you because he was frustrated. You might say something like, “Oh, it sounds like you’re frustrated right now.” Note: Negative people tend to anticipate a gloomy future based on the negatives of the past. Saying “right now” keeps them in the present and reality.
Third Step: Emotional and Instinctual Awareness
The final aspect of mindfulness is to be aware of your emotions and gut instincts. These come from the subconscious mind. We can only access them when we’re calm enough to listen.
The deep emotions and inner voice we hear when we are at peace are wisdom and truth. They lead you to do what is right even though the situation may be wrong for you.
A wrong situation for you might be the right situation for a negative person. Negative people overuse negative words and emotions, so they build up an immunity to the adverse effects. Consequently, they don’t realize how negative they are. Negativity becomes their reality and their reality isn’t truth.
God = Truth
If negative people have a negative reality, it means truth is absent. When there is no truth, there is no God. God’s word is absolute truth. Whether you’re a believer or not, the Bible is the best book on the market. It teaches you how to live well. Read God’s word to keep yourself positive and adherent to the truth.
Truth is goodness. It builds trust and intimacy, promotes healing, binds relationships, and conquers fear. Truth leads to joy, peace, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment – happiness.
Pessimists vs. Realists
Negative people limit themselves from experiencing happiness, so they feel bad. Their bad feelings make them more inclined to complain, be cynical, downplay the good things that happen, and predict a gloomy future. Positive people call these folks pessimists, but negative people call themselves realists, which makes sense because their reality is the absence of truth. And, to them, truth is relative, not absolute.
God and truth are absent in people’s lives because of ignorance, insufficient knowledge, laziness, theft, no support, and choice. For many adults, it’s their choice that He is absent.
The Gift of Freewill
Everyone has God’s gift of Freewill. When we live with the Holy Spirit of God, we recognize the unlimited choices we have. We choose how to act, what to believe, what is best, how to think, and how to feel. Negative people are not free. They are confined to nature’s laws, where there are only two choices – eat or be eaten.
Section 2: How to Overcome the Negativity of Others
Vaccinate Yourself
Compassion and empathy prevent us from catching the bad emotions of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. They allow us to sympathize and relate to people’s pain and suffering so we don’t feel like we have to fix the person’s problem. When someone complains, you can show compassion and empathy by saying something like, “I’m sorry to hear that happened to you.” DO NOT say, “I’m sorry,” because it makes you sound guilty. It provokes an adverse reaction because you must be forgiven or punished. Adding “hear” alerts the person’s subconscious mind to the attention you’re giving him. Therefore, you give the person something before he can take anything away from you.
Hope for the Best, but Expect Nothing
You can never predict how someone will react or reply. Some people don’t even respond well to compliments. Therefore, don’t set yourself up for disappointment by expecting negative people to give you a positive reply. This way, you’re not thrown off balance. You can hope for the best but expect nothing in return. If you get a negative response, rise above it with kindness and honesty. For example, if you give a gift to someone and the person responds, “You shouldn’t have done that,” you can respond with something like, “Hmm. Are you saying I am wrong for doing something good for you?”
Choose to Believe the Best
1 Corinthians explains love. One characteristic of love is to choose to believe the best in others. This one concept will keep you happy no matter who’s with you. It initiates the Fruits of the Spirit.
When you’re with someone who hurts your feelings, you can overcome that negativity by choosing to believe the best. Just thinking something like, “Joe must have had a good reason for saying that” prevents you from getting angry.
When you overcome people’s negativity, you give them more than they have and maybe even deserve. You can’t make them accept what you give them. Regardless, you are doing what is right and just in God’s eyes. You are a good servant to others and faithful to God.
Example 1: Managing Discouraging People
I decided to have a couple dental implants after discussing it with my dentist. I was very excited to share my good news with my friend. After I told her, she replied, “Oh. I know someone who had that done, and he said he’d never do it again. It was one of the most painful experiences he ever had.”
I love my friend but didn’t like what she said. So, I chose to believe the best and thought, “She must have a good reason to tell me that.”
This one thought prevented me from feeling discouraged and disappointed. Then I asked, “How do you think this information helps me?” She chuckled and said, “I’m just saying. It’s painful.” I responded, “Wow! It’s nice to know you care about me enough to warn me of the pain.”
I wish my friend would have shared my enthusiasm. But, I overcame the negativity and maintained my joy and peace.
Example 2: The “But-ters”
When you encounter someone who has nothing positive to say, chances are they’re in a deep deficit. Some people complain but don’t want things to be better. I call them the “But-ters.” These are the complainers who come across as wanting your input and counter every positive suggestion you make with, “but…” They create circular conversations.
Stop the cycle by saying something like, “It sounds like you are miserable, but don’t want to be better because you keep telling me why it won’t get better.”
Example 3: Critics and Judges
It’s difficult to trust people who criticize and judge others. When you hear criticism, don’t be afraid to confront it. Again, using reflective listening, you could say, “Hmm. It sounds like you dislike the way that lady wears her hair.” You can also ask, “Do you assess me that way when you’re with other people?”
Example 4: Relentless Negative Opinions
Some people are relentless in making damaging statements. They discount your opinions, have no regard for your feelings, and no respect for your beliefs. One way to stop it is to remind them that you care about them and see they are fervent in their opinions, but you still don’t agree with them. Let’s say someone continues to deride the political candidate he knows you like. You could respond, “You know I love you, and you know I like Candidate X. If the shoe were on the other foot, know that I would show you love, honor, and respect to not deride the person I know you favor. So, I will no longer continue this conversation.”
If you’ve given your best effort without any relief, you might just have to detach from negative people. As Jesus told his disciples in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
Be a Light
You can’t get light from the darkness. Therefore, you can’t make negative people positive. But you can show them the benefits of being positive. You can be a light in their darkness that shows them the way.
Okay, it’s established that 2020 was a challenging year. But, was it really ALL bad? People died, people were born, people got sick, and people got well, people got divorced, and people got married. Some people lost jobs; some people gained employment. I think the most challenging part of 2020 was the media – both social and news. Truthfully, how good were they?
While we use the term media to refer to the dissemination of information, media is also “a nutrient system for the artificial cultivation of cells or organisms and especially bacteria.” You choose which definition fits with today’s information environment.
The Antidote for Dis-ease
The media almost forces us to believe the worst about everything. It’s easy to get infected with its artificial cultivation of germs and become dis-eased. But, you can promote better health and be more at ease. One of the antidotes to this dis-ease and its adverse effects is gratitude.
Benefits of Gratitude
Gratitude has excellent benefits. Research shows that being thankful improves physical and mental health and relationships. It increases financial opportunities, reduces anxiety and depression, and helps you sleep better. But this is not new. Look at the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers. They asked for healing and Jesus honored their request. But, only one of the ten came back to thank him.
One in Ten Ratio for Appreciation
Jesus teaches us the importance of gratitude, as he mentioned the other nine. Perhaps this indicates the ratio of people who show appreciation to be 1:10. Imagine if we changed that ratio to 10:10.
Don’t you feel better when someone thanks you for something kind you did for them? Make this a feel better year. Show your gratitude to God and others even when you don’t feel like it. Find something to be grateful for. There’s always something or someone worthy of appreciation. (Your ancestors, perhaps.)
Be Actively Thankful
Impress your gratitude to others. Acknowledge other people’s kindness with a hand-written thank you note or telephone call. Emails and text messages are NOT impressive. If someone made an effort to serve you in kindness, at least you can make an effort to be thankful for it. Be actively grateful – the Samaritan Jesus healed didn’t just shout back, “Thanks, Buddy!” He ran back to Jesus, lay down, and thanked Him.
Be Grateful, Be Happier
Start your day with gratitude. Remember, each morning you wake up, your subconscious mind (the mind responsible for feelings of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt) has been awake all night. Therefore, you wake to negative emotions. Overcome those negative emotions by waking up your conscious mind to pleasant thoughts using gratitude. Thank God for a new day and new opportunities. You’ll set yourself up for a happier day! Do this every day and you’ll set yourself up for a happier year!
Commit to being thankful, take the Gratitude Pledge!