I think a lot about what is really important because time is of the utmost. There are only so many hours in the day. There are only so many days to the week, weeks in a year, and years in a life. So, well, let’s skip to the chase and go to right to the end.
I mean, when trying to consider what is important, let’s look at something fun. Death. Dying. The inevitable. We are all going to bite the dust…buy the farm…kick the bucket. In fact, if you are over 50, you might say you’ve got one foot in the grave.
Isn’t this great? Without the recognition that we are running out of time, we might not seriously consider what is important in life.
In fact, anticipating that final day might be a great way to identify what is important. One way to do this is ask yourself this question. How do you want to be remembered? What do you want to people to say at your funeral other than “Gee, he looks better than he has in years?” That girl could cook! She was so kind. He was so generous. She had a zest for life. He was such a hard worker. Or if you are a product of the genteel south, you might hear something like “Bless his heart…” and you know a cleverly disguised insult is about to be catapulted. Bless his heart, he just wasn’t right. Bless her heart, she just….”
There is a new book out of the five most common regrets when people die. I googled it and found this. Bonnie Ware Here’s what they are.
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
How does it happen that people have those regrets? I’m here to tell you in two words. Stinking thinking. Oh sure, some people with better vocabularies would call it a faulty paradigm but bottom line, but it’s a lot more fun to say stinking thinking. They didn’t get a good paradigm in time.
We all have a paradigm, many in fact. A paradigm is a belief system. It allows us to have expectations about what the world will give us. If I do this, then this will happen. I want a bumper sticker for my car that says “How’s my driving paradigm?” I prefer to slow down when I see a yellow light unless it is too late. Some people prefer to speed up. I think a red light means stop. Some say slow down and then roll through it.
We have cute little idioms to remind us of our paradigms. Finish this for me.
· What goes up, must ___________
· You reap what you _________________
· If at first you don’t succeed, __________________
· Give a man a fish and you feed him ___________
· Teach a man to fish and _____________________
· Fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice then _________
Every organization has a paradigm, the government, the corporations, Occupy Wall Street. Martin Luther King and Mohandas Ghandi had revolutionary paradigms. Let’s save those for another day but it might be something you want to give a presentation on.
As children, we grow up with a paradigm about ourselves and a paradigm about religion. With a little luck, you’ve examined both. Those paradigms if never questioned often lead us to do things that seem illogical to others. I think that paradigm is what leads us and others to act in both effective or very destructive and painful ways.
Some peoples behavior and paradigms keep us wondering. John Edwards? Bernie Madoff? Enron? Hitler? and then others inspire us. Thoreau, Aristotle, Ghandi? Jesus. What paradigm did you grow up with? Before you could really think about it, your parents were helping you form a paradigm about you. That you were precious, loved, special, competent, capable, a good learned. Maybe you developed a belief about yourself that you were just an extra mouth to feed. More trouble than you are worth. Difficult. Whiny. Smart. Stupid. Pretty or handsome. Or Ugly.
Those beliefs about ourselves become so deep that they become us. Not even conscious unless intentionally looked at. I had the good fortune to bump into the right people and circumstances that helped me to look at my core paradigm about myself.
Being the baby of seven kids, back in the 50’s, with a father that tried to squelch his own feelings with alcohol, and a mother that did what she could to protect us, I started off with a paradigm like this. I’m not smart, not important, not very athletic, NOT clever or even much fun. Six older siblings all struggling to survive their own emotional confusion helped me reach the conclusion that life sucked, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. In high school, being shy, withdrawn, unassertive, quiet, not very likable or attractive, and scared of challenges was just who I was and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about. Later I learned I assumed the predictable role, or the paradigm of the lost child as a result of growing up in a dysfunctional family.
My religious paradigm was Catholic and all of its wacky doodle ideas.
Let’s look at our religious training. Most of us were probably brought up to believe in a superior being. He was like a father to us, always watching us, and capable of bestowing rewards upon us. Like Santa Claus.
Most religions don’t want you to explore different ideas about the world, or other religions. One of the coolest things about UU religious education is the encouragement to explore other religions, to question and explore ideas. When I was in high school, I started to explore the how and why of Catholic beliefs. It didn’t take long for Brother Isaac to default to an answered shared by so many other preachers and ministers.
So Brother Isaac, how does this Virgin Mary thing work? His response? "FAITH"
Okay, and how about that little white wafer becoming the body and blood of Christ? "FAITH"And how about that mortal and venial sin thing, that sends light duty sinners to purgatory, and unbaptized babies to a place called Limbo? "FAITH"
I think I became a Unitarian that day when I started my own search for truth.
How many of you have examined the faith you grew up with and finally came up something you are comfortable with. I’d be willing to bet that you read a lot, talked to lots of people, listened to others, maybe even watched movies, listened to CDs and thought deeply. Changing my inner core beliefs about myself required the same skills.It became apparent to me that my childhood core beliefs were not working for me too. Over the years, I’ve found a number of alternative paradigms that now seem to fit me.
As a young adult, I accepted the basic principles best summed up by Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. This to me is a no brainer when you consider the alternative to each. But some people still do.
· Diligence · Honest · Integrity · Fairness · Generosity · Kindness · Thrift · Friendship · Hard work | · Carelessness · Dishonesty · Deceitfulness · Favoritism · Greed · Mean spirited · Wastefulness · Meanness · Laziness |
That’s pretty general but I needed something a little more specific, almost like a formula, or a how to list.
I borrowed that formula from people like Brian Tracy and Steven Covey. Does anyone in here want to be a peak performing person? I have a list of Brian Tracy’s “Beliefs of Peak Performing Men and Women” posted in my classroom and talk with students about these ideas as part of the Career Exploration class.
· Winners are not born. They are made. · The dominant force in your existence is the way you think. · You can create your own reality. · There is some benefit to be had from every adversity · Each one of your beliefs is a choice. · You are never defeated until you accept defeat as a reality and stop trying. · The only real limitations on what you can accomplish are those that you impose on yourself. · You already possess the ability to excel in at least one key area of your life. · There can be no great success without great commitment. · You need the support and cooperation of other people to achieve any worthwhile goal. |
Almost every one of these includes the assumption the basic concept of personal responsibility. In almost any circumstance I can refer to one of these to encourage myself to carry on.
I think the three most important ones are
· The dominant force in your existence is the way you think.· You can create your own reality
· Each one of your beliefs is a choice.
Too many people want to complain about things around them that is causing the hardships in their lives. I teach middle school. I hear it every day. Kids complain almost as much as the teachers do. And don’t even get me started on the parents.
I try not to complain too much. In fact, if you hear me complaining, slap me. Remind me of reality. Cognitive Reality therapy, and many other ways of thinking say "Everything is exactly as it should be."
Everything that happens, everything that is said, or everything that is done. Is exactly as it should be for us to learn. I’ll add to that, everything happens for a reason. Simply from the law of physics, everything happens as a result of some event. All the results that are going on in my life are happening for a reason. One can get spiritual about this, and consider Karma, and reincarnation. I do.
This takes me back to the personal responsibility part of it all. If I don’t like the results I’m getting, it’s my job to change the inputs. If I don’t like my reality, it is up to me to change it. If I don’t like the interactions I have with people, it’s up to me to change it. If I don’t like the way I look, I can lose weight, and get a haircut. If I don’t like my job, I can get some new training, and start looking for a new one. And if I can’t change my circumstances, I can change my attitude. If I want change, then it is up to me.
If we are the results of our thinking and our beliefs, then how do we change our Beliefs? If you suffer from stinking thinking, you can change it. How do you change your beliefs about yourself?
To borrow a phrase from the computer software engineers, Garbage in, garbage out. What we watch, what we listen to, what we read, goes in. Our thoughts are products of the input. Our beliefs are a product of inputs with a little thought process thrown in. Our decisions create our actions are all connected. It all stems from the inputs.
If you want better actions, make better decisions. If you want better decisions, have better thoughts and ideas. If you want better thoughts and ideas, change the input.
There is no shortage of positive inputs out there for us these days. Books are free from the library. Anyone with a computer and internet access can access the greatest thinking, ideas, videos and music ever available from one source.
What are you reading these days? What movies do you watch? What music do you listen to? While we are on the topic of inputs, what do you eat? What input do you get from your associations and friends? Given time and awareness, we could ask ourselves does this input make me a better person or not. Does it build me up or drag me down? Being a Unitarian fellowship, I’m not going to tell you what inputs you need. That is up to you. After all, that is the UU way.
How do we deal with others who have paradigms so destructive? Many are still stuck in the same rigid stinking thinking they were raised with, or some other form of stinking thinking that they acquired along the way, and for better or worse, we have to deal with them. We have politicians that seem to favor the rich and neglect the poor. We have some (but not all) corporations that rape, rob and pillage a culture in an environment and its people in the name of profit.
They all operate based on their paradigm. As with ourselves, the only way to change one of those is with different input, different information that contradicts stinking thinking. James Wolfensohn But when someone is on a winning horse, and everything looks wonderful, it's very hard as an outsider to persuade them something is wrong. “
Of course, better ideas can and do take hold eventually.
I have no good solutions but to refer back to the concept of personal responsibility. Steven Covey says that one must first seek out our own private victory, which will help us achieve any public victories.
Of course, better ideas can and do take hold eventually.
I have no good solutions but to refer back to the concept of personal responsibility. Steven Covey says that one must first seek out our own private victory, which will help us achieve any public victories.
And a little reminder from another group that emphasizes personal responsibility, Ala-non. Now, I don’t consider myself a traditional Christian. But I sure thank god for the Serenity Prayer by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The prayer has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs.
The best-known form is:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
First thing you need is serenity also known as Peace of mind, which according to Brian Tracy is the first thing you need to be happy.
I’d like to summarize this little chat we’ve had.
It’s simple. You might wish that I started and ended with this.
Brian Tracy summarizes all we need to be happiness.
1. Peace of Mind
1. Health and Energy
2. Loving Relationships
3. Financial Freedom
4. Worthy Goals and Ideals
5. Personal Fulfillment
Just how do I do that?
Steven Covey helps with tools that can help acquire those things starting with taking the bull by the horns and accepting responsibility for the inputs. Involve yourself, align yourself, and immerse yourself in truthful personally edifying activities and inspiring quotations.
Seven Habits of Highly Successful People
1. (Be responsible for yourself)
2. (Know what you want and set goals)
3. . (Prioritize your actions)
4. (Cooperate with one another)
5. . (Communicate effectively)
6. (Seek Interdependence)
7. (Learn to chill)
And when the going gets tough, refer to the beliefs of peak performing men and women.
1. Winners are not born. They are made.
2. The dominant force in your existence is the way you think.
3. You can create your own reality.
4. There is some benefit to be had from every adversity
5. Each one of your beliefs is a choice.
6. You are never defeated until you accept defeat as a reality and stop trying.
7. The only real limitations on what you can accomplish are those that you impose on yourself.
8. You already possess the ability to excel in at least one key area of your life.
9. There can be no great success without great commitment.
10. You need the support and cooperation of other people to achieve any worthwhile goal.
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