We just saw Nacho Libre
But I laughed out loud. And then, I picked up Todd & Karen’s dog tonight, to dog sit for a few days. This is the note I found with her food:
“Hi guys,
Can you lock the door on your way out and shut off the kitchen and outdoor lights?
Thanks,
XxooxXXOOo
Ps. If anything come up, we’ll be at the Holiday Inn in DL. But you know, whatever.
I just heard something amazing. It’s amazing. It applies to every part of our lives, every job, every marriage, every ministry. Listen to this.
We all go through phases; they’re naturally occurring, we can’t stop them, we can’t avoid them, they happen and they happen to all of us in every area of our lives. Here they are:
1- Enthusiastic – the “go for it” stage. It’s called the honeymoon, literal or figurative. Everyone is happy and excited and you can’t stop talking about whatever you’re excited about.
2-Doldrums. This happens typically 6-8 weeks after you’ve started whatever it is you’re excited about. A new baby is exciting but after 8 weeks of no sleep you hit the doldrums. A wedding is exciting but then after the honeymoon you go back to normal life. Etc. We sometimes get pessimistic, frustrated, fearful. Sometimes we want to quit, sometimes we do quit.
3- Introspection – a time for pulling in. We ask ourselves – “is this what I want? can I do this?” It’s a time of re-purposing, re-attaching, renewing our commitment and passion to/for something. Like the Bob Dylan song -”returning to the same place and seeing it for the first time.”
4-New energy and commitment. Back to enthusiasm, happy, go-for-it stage.
This is huge for me. Because it’s a cycle of experience, it’s not about ME, there’s nothing wrong with ME. Because I know this, I can strategize and plan for the doldrum times. If I think there’s something wrong with me and I don’t understand why I feel the way I do, I become a victim because I give up my own power to control the interpretation of how I’m feeling. Make sense? I am in control of how I feel. I can choose to say, on a yuck day, “this is ok, I’m in a doldrum phase, it will pass. I’ll do something fun today to help get out of it” or whatever. It’s not about the EVENT, but the INTERPRETATION. Amazing! I wish I had known this years ago!
and the beauty is, if we know this about ourselves, we can help others through it when we see them in the throes of confusion. What a blessing.
I’m reading “To Own a Dragon” by Donald Miller. He’s talking about the game of chess. Here’s what he says:
So that’s where patience comes in. I was tempted to react by killing any of my opponent’s pieces I could, but those are never good moves. As far as I can tell, the trick is to stick with your strategy, no matter what your emotions are telling you to do. I mean, if a person can do that, they are going to do very well in life, no matter what setbacks they encounter.
I realized I spent much of my time reacting. If somebody offended me, I was quick to react rather than consider what reacting was going to cost me, and whether the price was too much to pay to get revenge. I’ve found if a guy can control his emotions, he is going to go a great deal further in life. Sometimes that means walking away. And so even in casual conversation with friends, I started being more calculative about what I said and did, being careful not to offend, and if offended, working to bring peace into the situation. The trick is to stick with the plan. If the plan is to finish school and become a doctor, or work hard and move up the company ladder, then throwing somebody through a window would be a departure from the plan.
I used to know a guy named Ben who was alway being chosen to lead everything. To be honest, the guy bothered me for the longest time. We’d have coffee and I would ask him a question, kind of enter into debate about some stupid issue, and he would sit there thinking about it then come back with a safe answer, very objective. Like I said, it was annoying. But pretty soon I started noticing most of the guys in our circle respected Ben, really wanted his opinion about things, and the girls all wanted to date him. I realized also, that what bugged me about him not entering into debate was that I wanted him to stoop to my level, I wanted him to be a reactor. The more patient and calculated Ben was, the more he was asked to lead, and the more respect he got from everybody around him.
And so I started noticing the guys who weren’t respected much in life – that is, they weren’t close to a group of guys, and girls generally felt uncomfortable around them. They were guys who reacted. They were too loud. They didn’t control their body movements. They didn’t sound wise when they talked. They would say whatever came into their minds before processing their remarks, filtering them, really thinking about where their comments were going.
I had to swallow my pride on this one. I had to act more like Ben. It took a lot of practice, to tell you the truth. I had this annoying character flaw that I always want to be right. Somebody would say something that I disagreed with, and I would open my big mouth and try to correct them, or just make myself sound smart. But people who react never sound smart. It’s the people who don’t talk who sound smart, the people who don’t use a lot of words.
I think there are a couple languages being used when two people are having a conversation. The first is whatever words are being spoken, and they say whatever they say. But the other is this hidden language, the emotions that go pumping through a person, trying to get him to do and say things that are going to make him look like an idiot. I might say with my mouth something really wise and practical. But if I were just reacting, that other language would say I wasn’t in control, I was weak, insecure. And that’s the thing with Ben: he never looked that way. He always came off as thoughtful and reflective and in command of his thoughts and actions. It’s no wonder he was always asked to lead.
I’m not saying we should all become politicians. That would be an aggravating universe, to say the least. But I know life got a bit better when I stopped reacting all the time. Because of this, I don’t have a bunch of people mad at me.
I heard somebdoy say that a good idea was to count to five before responding to a threatening situation. At first, I thought this might get confusing, as though we might be tempted to answer every question by whispering the number “six,” but what this person was really doing was teaching people not to react. For me, five was a pretty low number. If we were just talking about baseball or something, that was fine, but if emotions got heated, I would have to count to a million. I would have to politely leave- tell my body to smile and say thanks or whatever, keep on counting, then go home and feel a lot of anger or bitterness or jealousy. But it got easier. After awhile, you realize that by walking away, by not getting angry, you are winning, moving ahead, and you get addicted to it. You get used to acting wisely and you like it. You realize this is a better system because it offers you something. It offers you life.
