What to do

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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Adult NIV Bibles come in green forest or blue wheat. The Children’s Bible is more appropriate for children who can read.

1. Choose the Bible you want.
2. Fill out the form.  You may include a message for the recipient.
3. Click “Submit.”
4. Sender will be notified via email when Bible has shipped.

There is no cost or shipping fee.  Limit one Bible per customer.  Supplies are limited.

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.

1. No understanding:  If you got contradictory information or didn’t learn what forgiveness really means, you won’t know how to forgive.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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!

Forgiveness 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Some people believe they must consciously remember bad things so they won’t make the same mistakes.
4. 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.
5. 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!

Count Your Blessings and Add Up Your Happiness

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:

1.    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.
2.    It’s easy because we are born with negative emotions.
   • We develop survival instincts before intellect, which makes them more powerful, influential, and natural.
3.    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.
4.    Genetics.
   • Anxious parents pass anxiety onto their offspring.
5.    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.

Overcome negativity of others

When my husband and I got serious about our relationship, he admitted he was first drawn to me because of my smile. David (my husband) is like most people. We are drawn to people who smile because smiling faces communicate happiness, warmth, acceptance, and love. What are masks really preventing?

Our Faces Communicate Who We Are

Our face is our primary source of communication. While we scan people’s bodies and appearances to form our opinions, we cannot know the person without hearing his/her words and reading the person’s facial expressions.

Masks Prevent Us From Revealing Our True Selves

Our faces communicate who we are. That’s why bank robbers, thieves, and members of certain organizations cover their faces. They can’t be identified for who they are, but are identified by what they do. (Side note: Any member of a group that requires masks becomes anonymous and has given up his/her independence.) From this, we can assert that masks prevent us from revealing our true selves.

Covid19 Government Imposed Mandates

Most of us are mandated to wear masks these days and maintain (the oxymoron) social distancing to prevent the spread of an unfamiliar virus named Covid19. I certainly respect the health and well-being of others and myself. However, I struggle with being forced to do something that goes against my human need to read people’s faces and my natural inclination for social interaction. Especially, when said mandates are based on ambiguous and inconsistent information.

Albeit, I comply with these government directives, but confess that it is very uncomfortable. I can no longer read people’s faces. I have a difficult time understanding muffled voices. And, I am constantly trying to get comfortable wearing a paper product that is supposed to prevent the spread of a virus that came from the same country where the mask was made.

In addition, breathing my own recycled air that fogs up my eyeglasses while trying to overcome the sense of suffocation is unnerving. I am preoccupied with my discomfort. But then I look around at the other people donning their face coverings. I wonder if they share my anguish or are they contentedly smiling? Since I can’t tell what they are communicating, I do what comes natural and shy away from them.

Masks Prevent Friendly Interactions

It is apparent to me that masks are preventing us from having friendly interactions.

Friendly interactions include smiling. Despite my mask mayhem, I’ve tried masked smiling at people. But, I can’t tell if they are smiling back or if they even noticed my smile. Smiling has become challenging and limited.

Health Benefits of Smiling

Smiling promotes friendliness and communicates love and acceptance. It also has physical, emotional, and relational health benefits. Smiling eases us into laughter which increases our level of endorphins. These chemical hormones activate our bodies’ opiate receptors which reduce physical and emotional pain. Smiling and laughter also boost our immune systems and lower blood pressure. Simply put, smiling and laughter make us healthier.

Social Benefits of Smiling

When you smile, it makes you appear more approachable. It draws people to you rather than pushes them away. Since we are a social species, smiling is a natural way of connecting with others and building social bonds, which make us safer and more secure.

Smiling Imposes God’s Mandates

Genuine smiles communicate confidence and imply the presence of Honesty, Empathy, Accountability, Respect, and Trust = HEART which equals love. These are God’s mandates that bring about happiness.

Masks Prevent Us From Being Happy

Wearing masks may prevent us from spreading disease, but it can also cause dis-ease. We must be careful. Wearing masks can keep us from smiling and prevents us from seeing the smiles of other people. Therefore, it prevents us from experiencing the values we must have to be happy. But, we can overcome that.

Have God in Your Heart and You’ll Have the Values for Happiness

Even though mask wearing prevents us from experiencing the values that lead us to happiness, as long as we keep God in our hearts, we have those values in us. We can experience those values with ourselves, with people closely associated with us, and with God. The Apostle Paul found contentment even while he was in prison by giving thanks and glory to God and serving others through his writings. (Philippians4:6-13) He knew how to be happy during dire times. We can do the same thing.

Be grateful for what you have, give glory to God, and serve others during this time. You will find joy, peace, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment. Even when you wear a mask, you will be happy!

What are masks really preventing?  

Everyone wants to be happy or happier, but living in the natural is easier. Part 1 of How to Live Longer in Happiness explains our nature and what it’s like to live in the natural.  Part 2 describes the elements of happiness and what it is like to live in happiness.  How to Live Longer in Happiness Part 3: Getting There explains how to go from living in the natural where you just survive to living life to the full where you live in happiness.

We Must Be Taught How to be Happy

Many people spent more time being raised in the natural so end up staying there or keep going back to it despite their glimpses of happiness. We all know happiness exists and everyone wants to be happy, but it’s easy to stay in the natural. Many people don’t know how to go from surviving in the natural to living in happiness. The key is to know how to live in happiness. Therefore, we must use our thinking brain and be taught how to be happy.

God Wants Us to Live Happy

Remember my story in Part 1 – God created us to subjugate the earth (the natural) and rule over the animals, meaning we have a thinking brain so we can problem solve, make decisions, and follow rules. When God created us, He was joyful and satisfied. He is so happy with us as His creation, like any parent, He wants us to have His same joy and satisfaction. He wants us to be happy.

God also gave us instincts to survive and spiritual instincts to deepen our relationship with Him. We must be careful that we don’t allow our survival instincts to overpower our spiritual instincts. Our spiritual instincts develop our conscience which dwells in our thinking brain and promotes love. Our survival instincts develop our alert system which dwells in our subconscious mind and perpetuates fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt.

Existence Depends on Emotions and Memory

Fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt preserve our existence. They prevent us from doing things that will get us in trouble or dead and give us the ability to overpower others. We feel afraid when we are threatened and we feel guilty when we’ve caused someone pain. We can also overpower others by making them feel afraid.

Fear is the strongest survival emotion since it is the one that deals directly with life and death. Therefore, fear is the major manipulator since it manipulates behaviors so we can exist.

Our existence also depends on memory. Our brains are so sophisticated that we have the ability to store memories. We remember good and bad things. These memories are crucial for us to continue our existence. Good memories motivate us to repeat proactive behaviors and bad memories protect us from repeating harmful experiences.

Memory Storage

Our memories are stored in both the thinking (conscious) and emotional (subconscious) parts of the brain. Since our alert system is in our subconscious mind, this is where our bad memories are stored. They are tied to our survival emotions with the strongest survival emotion being fear since fear is the emotion that deals directly with life and death.

We’re Naturally Inclined to be Negative

Bad memories include the bad feelings associated with the situation we remember. These subconscious memories alert us to danger and prevent us from repeating behaviors that caused us pain and threatened our existence. Through fear, they remind us what not to do. For example, “Don’t touch the fire” (for fear of getting burned), “Can’t play in the yard” (for fear of getting kidnapped), “Don’t run with scissors” (for fear of getting stabbed), “Don’t get close to anyone, so don’t get married” (for fear of getting a broken heart).

To be safer and ensure existence, we focus on what “not” to do, so our subconscious mind is filled with “nots.” This makes us naturally inclined to feel, talk, and be more negative. Think about it – how much easier is it to say what you don’t want than what you do want?

Rules Tell Us What We Can and Cannot Do to Keep Us Safe

Parents set rules to delineate what their children can and cannot do, and tell their children, “Don’t” so the children will remember how to be safe and secure.

God set rules for us. He gave us the Ten Commandments so people could live better, live safer, and get closer with Him. I believe He wrote eight of the Ten Commandments in the negative, i.e. “Don’t have any God other than me,” “Don’t kill,” “Don’t commit adultery,” Don’t steal,” etc. in order to connect directly to our “not” filled subconscious mind (where our soul is) and so we would remember them better.

The Letter of the Law

Remember that our subconscious mind is not logical. Its maturity is like us at age three so it interprets information very literally. Since the people still lived primarily in the natural when the Ten Commandments were written, they had more active subconscious minds. Therefore, they interpreted laws literally. They believed in the letter of the law. In addition to the Commandments, they created more laws to help them have a healthier existence and ensure they were doing what was right for God so He would continue to bless them. Soon, they became too focused on the laws and enforcing them.

When we follow the letter of the law, we live in the context of right and wrong. Therefore, when we break the law we are condemned. Condemnation results in feelings of fear, anger, contempt, shame, and guilt. It takes us back to our nature. This wasn’t God’s intent. God wants us to live in the spirit – in Him.

The Spirit of the Law

Since God is spirit, His laws are not legalistic. They are spiritual. God wants us to follow the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law. This concept requires conscious thought and conscious awareness. It is one we must be taught, so we need a teacher. Alas, God sent His son. Jesus is our teacher and our savior.

In Nature We Focus on What Not To Do; In Happiness, What To Do

Unlike living in the natural where our existence is based on what “not” to do, living in happiness is all about what to do. To live in happiness, the first “to do” is to be a student of Jesus and follow him. In other words, be a disciple (a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosopher.)

Going From Surviving in Nature to Living in Happiness

The following illustration shows what we experience in the natural and in happiness.  The gap in between is what we’ll focus on for living longer in happiness.

To go from surviving in nature to living in happiness…

you must follow the spirit of the law.

What the Spirit of the Law Looks Like

The spirit of the law is what to do instead of what to not do. Therefore, if I summarize the Ten Commandments and put them in a spiritual to-do list, it would look like this. We must practice:

These translate into things like honor, compassion, responsibility, consideration, truth, and faith. They are not emotions, but values that we all know are right and just; the codes and attitudes that come from our conscious mind and conscience – from our spirit. These are the values God gave us because He values us. They are the spirit of the law. When we practice these values, we enhance our relationships, bring about a healthier environment, and create a healthier society. They promote joy, peace, love, freedom, satisfaction, and contentment.

Jesus’s Greatest Commandment

You can see these values spell “HEART.” Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments into one great commandment, to love one another as He has loved us. So, we are to follow the spirit of the law with love.

Discipline

Jesus sacrificed Himself for us to save us from condemnation. This took courage and discipline. God gave all of us the gift of discipline. However, discipline opposes our nature. By nature, we are greedy, covetous, and gluttonous, and it’s easy to be dishonest, irresponsible, and disrespectful when we feel like we deserve to have something, want something we really can’t afford, or when someone hurts our feelings.

To get to happiness, we must follow the spirit of the law with discipline. We tend to cringe at the word discipline. It takes us out of the natural since it equates to self-control and that means we can’t have what we want when we want it. However, discipline renders obedience and obedience keeps us in right standing with whoever is in charge. In this case, it is God. Using discipline to achieve spiritual happiness can be challenging, but the reward is far greater than the challenge.

Die in the Natural, Be a Disciple, Live in Happiness

Finally, Jesus rose from the dead. He showed us that when we die in the natural, we will live spiritually in eternal happiness. But, we must accept Him into our mind, heart, and soul and follow Him.

Getting There

When I put it all together, the way to go from living in nature to living in happiness looks like this:

What to do to Live Longer in Happiness

In summary, to live longer in happiness you must:

• Recognize what it’s like for you to live in the natural
• Assess the outcomes of living in the natural
• Choose where you want to live – If it’s happiness, continue
• Stop being afraid
• Become familiar with the elements of happiness and how they feel by identifying them
• Acknowledge the elements of happiness when you experience them (For example, when you enjoy something talk about how joyful it was or acknowledge how satisfying something was for you.)
• Be willing to do this for yourself so you can be better for others
• Be more consciously aware
• Practice honesty, empathy, accountability, respect, and trust constantly no matter how you feel
• Make an effort to talk in the affirmative – For example instead of saying “I don’t…” say, “I do…” or “I can…”
• Be a disciple
• Honor God by using your gifts and especially your gift of discipline

If you choose to live in happiness, you will never regret your decision. This is not to say that you won’t have any challenges and bad times. But, when you choose to live in happiness, you choose to be closer to God, and the challenges you face will result in even more joy, peace, love, freedom, and satisfaction.

How to Live Longer in Happiness Part 3: Getting There: