If A Dog Were Your Teacher

If a dog were your teacher
These are some of the lessons you might learn...

When loved ones come home, always run to greet them
Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face
to be pure ecstasy

When it's in your best interest
practice obedience
Let others know when they've invaded your territory
Take naps and stretch before rising
Run romp and play daily

Thrive on attention and let people touch you
Avoid biting, when a simple growl will do
On warm days stop to lie on your back on the grass
On hot days drink lots of water and lay under a shady tree
When you're happy dance around and wag your entire body

No matter how often you're scolded
don't buy into the guilt thing and pout
run right back and make friends

Delight in the simple joy of a long walk
Eat with gusto and enthusiasm
Stop when you have had enough
Be loyal
Never pretend to be something you're not

If what you want lies buried
dig until you find it
When someone is having a bad day
be silent .....
...sit close by.

...and nuzzle them gently.

by Author Unknown

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.  

Proverbs 17:17       

If You Want To Make an Easy Job Seem Hard, Just Keep Putting Off Doing It



When Beth's boss asked her to take on an extra project, Beth saw the opportunity to prove she could handle greater responsibility.  She immediately began to think how she might approach the task and her enthusiasm ran high.  But when the time came to start the project, Beth found herself telling her boss she was too busy to do the job justice.  The project was given to someone else, who earned a promotion for completing it successfully.  Beth didn't receive any new opportunities and eventually took a position with another firm.

What had kept Beth from doing the project?  Simple procrastination.  She put off getting started on the project until she was paralyzed with fear--fear that she might not be able to do the job or that her performance would not meet her boss' expectation.  In the end, Beth didn't move ahead and thus reinforced her fears with a bigger sense of insecurity about her own ability.

If you find yourself procrastinating, ask God to show you how to overcome your fear, then do what He says.  He wants you to succeed and live a fulfilled life, but you must step out in faith for Him to bless you.

How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?

Joshua 18:3

The Seven Powers for Self Control

Lesson 7:  The Power of Intention

Mistakes are opportunities to learn

“A man's errors are his portals of discovery.”

James Joyce

We are now at the final lesson for the Seven Powers for Self Control.  We have learned about the Power of Perception, the Power of Unity, the Power of Attention, the Power of Free Will, the Power of Love, and the Power of Acceptance and now we will focus on the Power of Intention. This power is about looking at mistakes and seeing them as just that…a mistake, a learning opportunity. 

Let’s take a moment and talk about ‘mistakes.’  We all make them.  We all would rather not, but as human beings we will ALL of us make them.  The question becomes, “Why did we make them?”  To really discover the answer to this question, we have to take a look at our motivation or our intent.  If we hurt someone’s feelings, did we intend to hurt their feelings?  If we damaged something, did we intend to damage it?  I’m afraid we all know people who have bad intentions behind their actions.  They really don’t care who they hurt as long as they get what they want.  Then there are the people who deliberately set out to hurt.  Their intention is to hurt someone or a group of someones.  They want to inflict damage.

Thankfully, most of us don’t fit into this category.  When we make a mistake, it is an error.  It was never our intention to hurt or inflict pain of any kind.  It is these experiences that present us with the opportunity to grow and learn.  Think about the mistakes you’ve made in your life.  These were probably experiences that helped to shape who you are today.  You learned lessons from them or you wouldn’t still remember them.  Perhaps the lessons were good ones, maybe they were not so good, maybe even painful.  The point is, there was a lesson you learned from the mistake.

“Mistake is the global term I am using to define conflict situations.  When we make “poor” choices, we create conflicts for ourselves and others…If we are honest with ourselves, we know that in order to act better and change our ways, we must feel good about ourselves.  When we feel poorly, we tend to act poorly,” Becky Bailey tells us in her book Conscious Discipline.   “It is not human nature to feel bad about mistakes and good about accomplishments.  We learn this mind set.”

We need to look at the opportunity presented to us when we make a mistake. When you make a mistake do you see a moment to be responsible or do you see an opportunity to blame.  It is a choice, you know.  I’ve worked with children (and adults) for a long time.  What’s the first thing that happens when there is a conflict or a mistake?  Immediately, there is finger pointing.  “She made me do it!”  Really?  To every mistake made, there was a decision made.  You chose that course of action.  Sometimes you thought far enough ahead to see the consequences and decided the outcome was acceptable to you.  Sometimes you acted before you thought, requiring you to reflect on your choice and its consequences later.  Either way, you made a decision to act.  Either way there are consequences for that choice.  

If we love and accept ourselves, then we are ready, willing, and able to step up and take responsibility for our actions.  We understand the mistake that was made and we know that we will learn from it.  But more than that, we will love ourselves in spite of our actions.  We understand that our intention was honorable.  That we meant good, it just didn’t  turn out that way.  We accept responsibility and we attempt to make amends.  The lesson gets learned.

“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - and some of them many times over - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”

Alfred Adler

Mr. Adler is correct.  Mistakes are how we learn.  It was always posted in my classroom, “Welearn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.”  This is true, when our intention behind the mistake was good and genuine. 

 

This completes our study of the Seven Powers for Self Control.  It is something we spend our entire lives trying to accomplish.  It is not something that we will do in one day, or one week, or even one year.  It is a process we will spend our lives working to achieve.  Hopefully, when that last day comes, we’ll look back and see that we learned our lessons to the best of our ability. 

The Seven Powers for Self Control

I'd like to take the next several days and look at the Seven Powers for Self Control.  It seems to me that in today's world we have lost our ability to control ourselves; maybe this is why we work so hard to control everything and everyone around us.  Instead of looking outside of ourselves, I would suggest we stop and take a look in the mirror.  It really is not difficult if we think things through a little bit.  These are skills that we all need to work on.  Let's start with:

Lesson 1: The Power of Perception

from FunnyHubhttp://www.funnyhub.com/pictures/pages/mirror-image-perceptions.html

No one can make you mad without your permission

It really is true that no one can make you angry without your permission.  We all like to believe that someone outside of ourselves is responsible for the way we respond in any given situation, but the reality is, it is a choice that we make.  It is so much easier not to take responsibility for our actions, but as we mature we understand that we must be responsible for what we do.  We must set the example for our children so that we model for them the way they should be.

William Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."  It isn't what they said or did that made you mad.  It's what you thought about what they said that made you mad.  Circumstances and others' comments collide with our attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and values.  People don't upset us.  Circumstances can't make us unhappy.  It is our interpretation of those circumstances or the words and actions of others that upset us causing anger, sadness, or self-pity.  A continued focus on anger, sadness, and self-pity evolve into hate, rage, revenge depression, and resentment toward self, other people, life, or God.

Most people don’t understand that emotions can be controlled.  Remember, what we focus on we get more of, so shift your focus.  Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says, “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”  Life has given each of us our own unique vision of the world.  All of the events of our lives have shaped and molded the lenses in which we view everything.  My lens is different than your lens and your lens is different from everyone else’s.  There is no way that we can truly understand what it is to look through another’s lens.  Even if we try, we will never see what they see.

Therefore, the best that we can do is try to understand.  It is important to clarify the intention of the person who has ‘offended’ you.  Communication is a very difficult concept.  Even at best, the words that we use will have many different meanings.  Based on your ‘lens,’ you see and hear words differently than someone else.   Ask the person to re-state what it is they said, or you attempt to re-state what you heard them say.  Then they have the opportunity to say again what they intended.  Sometimes this takes a long time to truly be understood.

It is important to be aware of your own thoughts and feelings.  When you do this, you put yourself in control of your behavior.  When you just react without thinking or acknowledging yourself, you put others in control of you.  We each have around 60,000 thoughts in our heads each day.  Tomorrow will be almost entirely the same 60,000 thoughts we had today.  This ‘loop’ is continually playing in our brains.  It never stops.  Do you know what you’re thinking right now?  I would venture to say that you don’t.  Richard Carlson suggests in his book Easier Than You Think that you watch the screen of your mind like you watch the movie screen.  Just watch your thoughts go by for a short period of time.  Don’t judge what you see, just watch.  You’ll be amazed.  You’ll become aware.

You cannot teach children the power of self-control if you haven’t mastered it yourself and self-control begins with your perceptions.  You would not purposely hand control over to your children, but when you allow them to control what you do or don’t do, that is exactly what you are doing.  When you say, “You make me so mad,” or “Don’t make me…” you are putting that other person in control of you.  You’re saying that for this moment in time, I’ll let you be in charge of me and my actions. 

Stop what you’re thinking right now and change it.  Don’t give anyone permission to upset you.  Take back control of your life.  Self-control is an act of love and a moment-by-moment choice.  Seize the moment, now.

“I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.”

Mark Twain

What Are You Waiting For?



 

It is a beautiful morning here in Nebraska!  There is not a cloud in the sky, the birds are singing their various melodies outside my window, and there is a gentle breeze blowing the limbs of the trees.  In my mind's eye, this is what heaven must look like, only even better.  It makes me think about a friend of mine who is ill and unable to get outside as much as she would like.  She has cancer and will, in all likelihood, die from it.

You know, I am amazed at her outlook on life.  She is finding only the good things to focus her attentions on.  Even as her hair begins to fall out, she is excited at the prospect of being able to try new wigs and hats.  She's always wanted to try different hair colors; now she's going to do that.  She says she'll have a different color every day.  I marvel at her ability to find the good in everything she sees right now.  Her sense of humor is just amazing; she finds joy and laughter everywhere.  And I thank God for all the lessons she is placing before me.

Lesson #1.  What are you waiting for? 
This is the only life on this earth that we are going to have.  What is it that you need to do to make your life better?  Is there someone you need to make amends with?  Is there something new you'd like to try?  Have you always thought that 'someday' you'd do things differently?  Whatever it is, TODAY is the day!  There is no reason to put off any longer the things that you need to do to make your life your own.  It is a choice that you make every day, either you will or you won't.  You don't need to think about it any longer.  You don't need any more information.  Just go do it!  The difference between people who are living their dreams and those who aren't, is that the ones who are living them have chosen to take action on what they know is right for them. 

It is scary to step out of the unknown and do the things that you'd like to do or that you know you should do.  We feel safe and comfortable in what we are stuck in, even if it's not what we want.  It may even be bad for us, but it's comfortable, it's safe because it's the known.  The unknown frightens us. 

My partners and I have been talking about that very thing this week.  There are so many things to learn when you're starting a new business.  We are all (bite-your-tongue) middle-aged and so are not as "up" on things as we would be if we were younger, technology kinds of things.  Talk about stepping out in faith!  I am humbled every day by the lessons placed before me and just how much I do not know.  There are many, many times that I would happily fold it all up and put it back on the shelf to remain there until 'someday' when I'm more prepared for all of this.  But then the question becomes, just when will that be?  How will I know that I'm ready?  How will it be different from now?

You see, my friend didn't have any choice in this matter.  Her life was changed in the blink of an eye.  She didn't have the opportunity to sit back and contemplate all the angles and probabilities.  Her choices were made for her and she is doing her best to find the good in everything placed before her.  Her choices are limited, but she is making the best of each that she has.  She could sit at home and feel sorry for herself and her family.  She could choose to dwell on the limited time she has and make herself and everyone around her crazy in the process, but she is choosing to embrace her life, just as it is.

Most of us are fortunate; we have the ability to make our own choices.  We may not find them easy, but they are our choices to make.  Be grateful that you have them.  Seize the day and just make a decision.  Do whatever it is you need to do TODAY to live the life you know in your heart you are here to live.  Take that step of faith. 

My friends at Simple Truths have a wonderful video that I would encourage you to watch.  It tells the story of exactly this kind of faith and trust.  It's a short film.  Please take the time. Let me be your mother eagle.

 Even Eagles Need a Push by David McNally and Mac Anderson.  http://www.eaglesneedapush.com/