Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Tag: John Eldredge (Page 1 of 3)

The Personal Growth Exercise You’ll LOVE Doing: Fill Your Life With Beauty

January 23, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I was crying over the TV show Britain’s Got Talent. For those who know me that will come as no great surprise. I’m a sentimental sap. But from a pure talent perspective, the performance that turned on the water works was pretty poor. So why was I crying? Why was the audience going wild? Why did one of the normally stoic British judges break down and weep? Take a look for yourself…

Did that strike you the way it has so many others? I think the secret of this performance’s impact lies in this quote:

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

SImone Weil

We human beings are emotional creatures. We’re made to feel deeply. But the pressure and drudgery of daily living often flattens our “emotional experience” curves into a relatively narrow range. Bright colors fade to neutrals. Uncontrollable laughter becomes a bemused smile. Deep heartache becomes an ongoing sense of mild disappointment.

As Simone Weil observed, two things that can wrench the emotional limiters from our hearts are beauty and affliction. Affliction tends to come along with enough regularity on its own and, while it does tap into our deeper emotions, not many of us would choose to seek it out. So that leaves us with beauty.

Simply put, we need it. A lot of it. To experience the fullness of life that I believe we are meant for, we need heaps of beauty to compensate for the affliction that life brings our way. It needs to be planned for, worked at, chased after. The enjoyment of beauty must be prioritized, budgeted, and indulged in.

Author John Eldredge notes the uniqueness of beauty:

We need not fear indulging here. The experience of beauty is unique to all the other pleasures in this: there is no possessive quality to it. Just because you love the landscape doesn’t mean you have to acquire the real estate. Simply to behold the flower is enough; there is nothing in me that wants to consume it. Beauty is the closest thing we have to fullness without possessing on this side of eternity. It heralds the Great Restoration. Perhaps that is why it is so healing—beauty is pure gift. It helps us in our letting go.

John eldredge, “The journey of desire: searching for the life you’ve always dreamed of”

I think that’s why I was crying over a mediocre performance by a group of elementary children. Their sense of abandonment was inspiring. Their unbridled joy was contagious. Their teacher’s pride in and commitment to his students was moving. It all touched something deep inside of me that whispered, “This is how life is meant to be.” And in that, it was beautiful.

So how will you experience beauty today? Wander a park, stroll an art gallery, savor a gourmet meal, see a play, listen to music you love, read a great book, watch an artfully made film, have a deep conversation with a friend. Embrace beauty. Drink it in. Open your eyes, mind, and heart to beauty in her many forms. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published in May of 2019.

How’s Your Hope? 2 Keys to Leveraging Hope for a Better Life

September 12, 2020 / / 2 Comments

I originally published this post in August of 2019, but given everything that 2020 has thrown at us so far, I found it coming back to my mind. My deep wish is that it helps you find hope in these troubled times.

One of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. I love the last scene where Morgan Freeman’s character Red, newly released from decades in prison, is on a bus to where Tim Robbin’s character Andy is restoring a boat on a beach in Mexico. In his buttery voice, Morgan reflects on hope:

“I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

What is it about hope that has such a profound impact on us? There are a lot of emotional experiences we desire like love, joy, and peace. What makes hope so important?

Hope is a big topic so I’ll only attempt to describe one aspect of it. This post was inspired by author John Eldredge in one of his recent “Wild at Heart” daily emails. You can read that post here.

What I found intriguing was Eldredge’s idea that we all have three kinds of hopes:

1. CASUAL HOPES – these are our day to day, common hopes. I hope my favorite team makes the playoffs. I hope this restaurant has cheesecake. I hope I can see my friends Friday night. These hopes we readily acknowledge to ourselves and others.

2. PRECIOUS HOPES – these are more serious. The fulfillment, or lack of fulfillment, of these hopes have a dramatic impact on our lives and the lives of people we love. I hope I survive the layoffs at work. I hope my child starts making better choices. I hope it’s not cancer. These kinds of hopes we usually acknowledge to ourselves and the people close to us.

3. ULTIMATE HOPES – these hopes go to the deepest level of our thoughts about life and ourselves. I hope I really matter. I hope my life has lasting meaning. I hope there’s something good waiting for me when I die. These kinds of hopes most of us rarely acknowledge even to ourselves let alone share with other people. 

Here’s why understanding these three types of hope is important to our personal growth:

“When our hopes are in their proper places, attached to the right things, not only do we flourish better as human beings, but we are rescued from a thousand heartbreaks.” John Eldredge

What’s he saying here? Two critical things:

1. We need to keep our hopes in their PROPER PLACE – all of those hopes listed above are normal and healthy. But if we allow a casual hope, like our favorite team making the playoffs, to become a precious hope, we’re headed for trouble. If your team being edged out of the post-season puts you in a deep depression, that’s a clear sign that you’ve allowed a casual hope to slip out of its proper place. The same is true with a precious hope becoming an ultimate one. I have a precious hope that my adult children will continue to make good choices. That said, whether they do or don’t will not determine my self-worth or my sense of my life having meaning.

2. We need to anchor our ultimate hopes in SOMETHING WORTHY – we choose where we place our hopes. For our casual hopes, choosing which restaurant to go to is not a big deal. For our precious hopes, choosing which doctor to trust with analyzing our biopsy results is more significant. We want to have confidence in the worthiness our choice. Then there are ultimate hopes. I believe that where we choose to anchor our ultimate hopes is one of the most important decisions we will ever make. Choosing a worthy place to rest them is critical to becoming our True Selves, avoiding unnecessary pain, and enjoying the fullest experience of life.

So where will you choose to place your ultimate hopes for meaning, identity, self-worth, and a future? Obviously, you wouldn’t want to anchor these kinds of hopes to the volatility of the stock market or an ultimately unfulfilling bank account. Or even to your career which can change or end. What about in another person? What about in yourself? Where do you believe your strongest anchor lies? What is the bedrock that you can count on no matter what comes? That’s a question everyone needs to answer for themselves.

For me, the most worthy anchor for my ultimate hopes is my relationship with God. God fulfills my hopes for lasting meaning, for being deeply valued for who I am, and for a positive future beyond this life.

So when it comes to your hopes, keep them in their proper place. Don’t let a causal hope become a precious one, or a precious hope become ultimate. And make sure you anchor your ultimate hopes in something truly worthy of your trust. If you do, you’ll take another giant step toward Becoming Yourself. 

Drowning in the Sea of Bad News? Here’s a Lifeline

July 4, 2020 / / 2 Comments

A global pandemic. Financial insecurity. Social isolation. A tattered economy. Racial injustice. Broken social systems. Loved ones suffering. And it’s only July. We still have six more months before 2020 releases us from its tumultuous grip, and – spoiler alert – 2021 is making no promises. It’s no wonder so many of us feel pummeled by the onslaught of stress and bad news, overwhelmed to the point of drowning.

I want to offer you a lifeline. A practice I discovered about a year ago has been an incredible gift, helping me to survive, and even thrive, in these trying times. It’s called benevolent detachment. This is about letting go. It involves caring and engaging with the suffering of the world to a certain point, then releasing that burden.

Benevolent detachment is NOT:

1. Ignoring other people’s pain

2. Closing yourself off emotionally

3. Being selfish or narcissistic 

Benevolent detachment IS:

1. Recognizing that you have mental and emotional limits 

2. Doing your part to alleviate suffering within those limits

3. Letting go of your worry about people and situations, trusting others and a higher power to do what you cannot

This practice allows me to care about and help others in a manageable, sustainable way. It helps me sleep at night. It helps me get other things done. It helps me still feel joy, even in difficult seasons.

I learned about benevolent detachment from author John Eldredge. He writes this:

Mature adults have learned how to create healthy distance between themselves and the thing they have become entangled with. Thus the word ‘detachment.’ It means getting untangled, stepping out of the quagmire; it means peeling apart the Velcro by which this person, relationship, crisis, or global issue has attached itself to you. Or you to it. Detachment means getting some healthy distance. Social media overloads our empathy. So I use the word ‘benevolent’ in referring to this necessary kind of detachment because we’re not talking about cynicism or resignation. Benevolent means kindness. It means something done in love. Jesus invites us into a way of living where we are genuinely comfortable turning things over to him.

John eldredge, Get Your Life Back – Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad

You may be suspect of this approach, feeling it’s an abdication of our responsibility to help others. I assure you it is not. Each of us should do our part to alleviate pain in this world. But bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2 in the Bible) does not mean being buried by them. Being demoralized is not a virtue. Neither is being traumatized, so affected by the world’s suffering that it hinders us from really living. From fulfilling our other responsibilities. From experiencing joy. Even Jesus did not heal everyone and often turned away from the needy, clamoring crowds to rest (Mark 1:29-39 in the Bible).

So how do you practice benevolent detachment? To avoid the danger of using this tool to ignore our shared responsibility to help others, first find and commit to doing your part to ease suffering. I wrote about how to do that here and here. Once that’s in place, here are a few simple steps to benevolent detachment:

  1. Close your eyes and take several deep breaths
  2. Ask yourself what specific person or situation is causing your worry or stress. Is it a sick friend? Your finances? Racial injustice? Your child? Contracting coronavirus? Your job?
  3. Visualize yourself holding the object of your anxiety in your hands, feel the weight of it
  4. Gently, lovingly, open your hands and let it go. Try picturing yourself setting it down, or dropping it, or placing it in the lap of your higher power.

Benevolent detachment is really simple in concept, but it’s a skill to be learned through repetition. The stress of the world latches on to us like Velcro and doesn’t release easily. If you’re intrigued by the possibilities, if you see in this a glimmer of hope for long-sought relief, I highly encourage you to check out some of these resources from John Eldredge. He approaches this practice from a Christian perspective, but people from all faiths or no faith can benefit from applying it in their own context:

FREE PHONE APP:  One Minute Pause (Ransomed Heart) – Accompanied by calming music and beautiful images, John guides you through benevolent detachment, allowing you to choose 1, 3, 5, or 10 minute exercises. There’s also an excerpt on benevolent detachment from his book Get Your Life Back. I’ve found this app very helpful when I’m struggling to apply this practice (available in the wherever you get apps).

PODCAST:  Benevolent Detachment (John Eldredge and Wild at Heart) – John and his wife Stasi discuss this practice in detail with practical examples of how to apply it to your life (available wherever you listen to podcasts).

BOOK:  Get Your Life Back – John lays out a number of clear, manageable spiritual practices to deal with the stress of life, including benevolent detachment (available wherever you buy books).

So how about you? Could you use some relief? Are you struggling beneath emotional weight you were never meant to carry? Would you like some help setting that boulder down? Then explore benevolent detachment. It will help you care for yourself as you care for the world. And you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

WATCH ME INTERVIEW MY AUTHOR WIFE BELOW! TO BROWSE MY OTHER YOUTUBE VIDEOS, CLICK HERE.

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