Faith is the antithesis of knowing. When you have faith, you don’t know. You are aware of not knowing and perhaps most importantly, you are okay with not knowing. Faith is moving forward towards a path you believe in, but aren’t actually sure of
Stories of miracles are awe inspiring. But what about when miracles don’t happen? Does that mean that faith was lacking? That those who hoped for miracles didn’t do all they could?
Major life stressors, such as the pandemic can reek habit on your mental health and cause anxiety to skyrocket. That doesn’t mean you need to be a victim of circumstances or a puppet on the stage of life. Humans have an amazing and essential capacity to adapt and grow through difficult circumstances.
We have lost the capacity for patience. We have lost the need to analyze information because someone in front of our screen will do it for us. Our internal processing atrophies when we deny its use. Sometime it has never been learned. Due to the constant influx of information, we often revert to external sources in which we are told everything we should think, see and believe. If we are not careful we essentially become a robot, fed what the external world tells us and then acting accordingly.
How long, I wonder, how much time in this life, have I forfeited? Just a few minutes here and there, but has it been hours? Days? Even years now, that I gave to nothingness?
Feeling no pain sounds like it would be amazing. Pain, however, is a communicator and when we find every means possible to avoid feeling that pain, we are figuratively gouging our eyes out. When we ignore, mask or hide pain we are choosing to ignore what our body and mind is attempting to communicate with us. By avoiding addressing pain, we cannot identify and fix the root cause of the pain.
Emotions are powerful. While they sometimes seem beyond our control, as we begin to gain a greater awareness of our emotions, the events that lead to them, the thought process that is involved with them and the way they are elicited, we can begin to make changes to our environment and the way we think which will help us alter the automatic response that is associated with our emotional experience. While many emotional responses are a learned response from past experiences, we can change our learned response to be more inline with what we would like our emotions to be.
Some people believe that prayer is something God requires, or that we do it for Him or to honor Him. When the consequences of prayer are analyzed, it is clear that prayer is about the individual who is praying. Through prayer our life can be both enriched and clarified and as a result, greater mental health and spiritual benefit is experienced.
Your diagnosis is not a prison sentence. It does not mean that you have to suffer for the rest of your life. The greatest gift of a diagnosis is in giving you information and allowing you to learn about yourself, what skills you need to develop and some personal struggles you will need to overcome. Take advantage of this gift and work, because it will be hard work, to overcome the struggles a diagnosis helps you to identify.
Your life is beautiful and unique. It will never look like the lives of those around you. There will always be elements of your life that stand out and for which you stand apart from others. Stop comparing, but rather choose to celebrate these differences.
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