Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Category: Spirit (Page 32 of 49)

5 Ideas for Navigating Troubled Times

March 21, 2020 / / 0 Comments

It was a heartbreaking conversation. A few days ago, my wife and I helped our son and his fiancé make the gut wrenching decision to postpone their long-planned wedding. Their immanent April celebration is now a distant October event.

It’s a challenging time. The reach of COVID-19 is affecting us all, but not in the same ways. Some of us have been devastated by the disease through personal illness, the loss of a loved one, or financial instability caused by industry shutdowns. For others, the impact to this point has been relatively mild, like adapting to the new realities of social distancing and sheltering in place at home.

Rather than write a “one size fits all” post, I decided to share a variety of suggestions to hopefully help you navigate this season regardless of where you’re at on the impact spectrum. You may be drawn to some suggestions while others might feel completely irrelevant to you. In the future, the appeal of these ideas may completely reverse as your situation changes. Here’s a list of thoughts and resources for you to browse as you choose:

1. FIND YOUR BALANCE

It’s okay to be scared right now. That’s normal and natural given the breadth and impact of this global pandemic. That said, huddling in the fetal position unable to function or stuffing an entire closet full of toilet paper is an unhelpful overreaction. Conversely, laughing this situation off as an overhyped hoax and not taking proper precautions for the good of yourself and others is also a dangerous extreme. Somewhere in the middle is a healthy place to land.

2. FIND YOUR PEACE

I use several apps to help me with this. The Calm app provides guided and unguided meditation experiences of varying lengths with soothing music, imagery, and nature sounds. For those with a spiritual bent, there’s the Pause app produced by author John Eldredge based of his book Get Your Life Back. It leads you through one, three, five, or ten minute reflections to quiet your anxious mind and realign your perspective. A friend also recommended Rob Bell’s latest podcast where he and his wife Kristen share tools they use to navigate these troubled times. Choosing your focus also really helps (you can read my post on that here).

3. FIND YOUR MOTIVATION

While not the right time for everyone, this may be an opportunity for you to get to some long-delayed or newly discovered home projects. Scanning old photos, decluttering (see my post on that here), deep cleaning, whatever. I plan on hanging picture shelves.

4. FIND YOUR FUN

In addition to binging that show you’ve been meaning to watch, break out the board games or coloring books. Curl up with a steaming mug and a novel. Check out Google Earth or the Google Arts & Culture web site and take a virtual stroll through the world’s greatest museums, cities, and sites of interest. My wife and I have a puzzle sitting out to noodle with during breaks in our writing sessions. For 94 different ideas, check out this great list of in-home activities from Apartment Therapy.

5. FIND YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

With many of us stuck at home, this is a great time to connect with friends and family on FaceTime or a good old fashioned phone call. I recently chatted with my parents then spent an hour and a half on speaker phone with my sister over lunch. Physical isolation doesn’t have to mean relational isolation.

So which of these ideas connect with you right now? Pick one and try it today. Keep the others in your back pocket as it looks like this “new normal” is going to be around for awhile. Find your BALANCE. Find your PEACE. Find your MOTIVATION. Find your FUN. Find your RELATIONSHIPS. If you do, you’ll make it through these challenging times, and you’ll take another step toward BecomingYourself.

The Beautiful or the Ugly? Choose Your Focus for a Happier Life

March 14, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Take a look at this picture:

That’s the view from just outside the door of our apartment in Sacramento, CA. Not so great. 

Now look at this picture:

Much better right? Wouldn’t it be great if that was our view? Guess what? It is. I took both of those photos from the same spot. I didn’t even move my feet. I just changed what I chose to focus on.

What’s my point? In life, there’s beauty and ugliness all around us. In our physical surroundings, in other people, in our circumstances, in ourselves. Whether we choose to focus on the beautiful or the ugly will have a huge impact on our mood, our attitude, and our outlook on life.

We’ve all known people who choose to see the ugliness, the downside, the negative in everything. Their glass is always half empty. They’re like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, minus being cute and cuddly. They are not fun people to be around.

On the flip side, we’ve all known people who are contagiously positive, upbeat, and filled with wonder at the world around them. Think Will Ferrell’s character Buddy in the Christmas movie Elf. Their glass is always half full. We’ve been envious of them. What’s their secret? They choose to see the beauty in every situation.

I’m not saying this is easy. I’m not saying “just put on a happy face.” Sometimes life is really hard, and some of us go through pain that most people can’t even imagine. And sometimes we should look at the ugly parts of life in order to heal ourselves or to bring help and hope to others in need.

What I am saying is that we have a choice to make. In every situation, every day. We don’t get to choose many of the things that happen to us in life, but we do get to choose how we will respond to them. How we will view our circumstances. What aspects of life we will focus on.

This anonymous quote was found scrawled on a cellar wall in Germany during the Holocaust:

“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I cannot feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent.”

Beauty and hope can be found in the most desperate of situations if we choose to look for it.

So how about you? What do you choose to see? Where do you fix your eyes? What do you notice? Where do you focus your attention? Give yourself, and those around you, an amazing gift. Choose today to see the beauty in everything and everyone. Train your eyes to see the good. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

Spiritual Sidebar: 

For those of you with a spiritual bent, this idea of choosing where to focus your gaze is something that’s written about a lot in the Bible. Here are some examples:

“Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.” Psalm 105:4 (New International Version)

“Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.” Psalm 39:6-7 (New International Version)

“And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.” Hebrews 12:1b-2a (New Living Translation)

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1-2 (New International Version)

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (New Living Translation)

“Meanwhile, the disciples were in trouble far away from land, for a strong wind had risen, and they were fighting heavy waves. About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. In their fear, they cried out, “It’s a ghost!”

But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage. I am here!”

Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.”

“Yes, come,” Jesus said.

So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted.

Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. “You have so little faith,” Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?”

Matthew 14:24-31 (New Living Version)

This post was originally published August 4, 2018.

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 3): Yourself

February 22, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Let’s start with an exercise – open your phone camera and flip the image so you can see yourself. Got it? Now ask yourself these questions: How is my relationship with the person I’m looking at? How well do I get along with myself? How do I feel about me?

Dating friends recently asked me about the keys to a healthy, long-term relationship. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in twenty-seven years of marriage to my wife Lisa. Beyond that, what have I learned in forty-nine years of deep connections with family and friends? To help clarify my thinking, I’ve been doing a series of blog posts here at Becoming Yourself. The first key I talked about was intentionality (read that post here), and the second was about expectations (read that post here).

The phone exercise was an introduction to this week’s key:

To have healthy relationships with OTHERS, you need a healthy relationship with YOURSELF

We know this intuitively, right? Most of us have been in or observed enough relationships to know that without positive self-worth and a clear sense of identity from both people, relationships tend to go badly. Without these anchors, an unhealthy codependancy and “clingyness” sets in. When we aren’t comfortable in our own skin, we always want a friend or our partner around because we don’t like being alone or we expect a relationship to solve our problems. While someone else can help you, bring out the best in you, and make life more fulfilling, they can’t fix you. Only you, and I would add God, can do that.

Some of this is personality driven. I’m an introvert, and I love to be alone with my own thoughts. Extroverts naturally enjoy being around other people much of the time. But regardless of your personality type, I think there’s a core issue of relationship to self that we all need to face. If we’re not okay with the person in the mirror, we’re going to have a really hard time being in healthy, long-term relationships. Why? Because the best thing you can bring to a relationship is a healthy you.

So how do you have a healthy relationship with yourself? I could recommend positive self-talk, concentrating on what you’re good at and the nice things people say about you, helping others and doing good in the world, etc.. Those are all wonderful things that will help you feel better about yourself, but I don’t think they address the core issue. When it comes to a positive relationship with yourself, I believe the most important thing is this:

IDENTITY

Who do you really think you are? If in your heart you believe you’re bad, spoiled, broken, a mistake, unworthy, stupid, or unlovable, then no amount of pep talking in the mirror is going to change that. But if deep down, you believe you’re wonderful, worthwhile, beautiful, wanted, cherished, prized, and loved, that’s going to radically impact your sense of self.

So how do you have the later view instead of the former? My best advice is to anchor your identity in something bigger than yourself that won’t move or shift or fail. For me, that’s God. I believe I was created to be in relationship with Her/Him (God is beyond gender binaries). That God desires to know me. That I’m more than a cosmic accident of time + matter + energy + chance. I build my sense of identity on a foundation that says no matter what I do or what happens in this life, I’m God’s child and always will be. That makes me feel really good about who I am, which enables me to give myself fully to others.

I know that for some of you, the God thing is a non-starter. I get it. We’ve all had different experiences and have different views on God and spirituality. That said, I think we all have the same core questions and issues to face, and one of the biggest is “Who am I?” You don’t have to base your identity on God, but you do have to base it on something. Make sure whatever you choose is big enough, strong enough, and unshakable enough to survive the storms of life. Careers, money, abilities, goals, activities, and other people are all great, but they’re also impermanent. Who will you be when they’re gone? How you choose to answer the question of identity will have a major impact on your relationship with yourself and in turn, your ability to have healthy, long-term relationships with others (for more on finding your identity, see my post here).

So how are you getting along with that person in the mirror? What do you ultimately believe about yourself? What will you choose as the foundation of your identity? Answer those questions well, and you’ll hold another key to deep, lasting relationships. And you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 23, 2019.

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