What Inspires Me Today - The Narrow Road

 Finding The Narrow Road

In my personal "Quiet Times" over the past couple of weeks I've been focusing and thinking about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7. As a 50+ year old adult who has moved away from the evangelical church to focus more on my personal faith walk and less on organized religious exercises, revisiting these passages has been so fascinating. They definitely take on new meaning and reveal a lot of insights I missed in the try to conform and be "Christian" periods of my life.

Verses 13 and 14 of this section deal with Christ's message to the crowds to enter through the narrow gate... that the wide gate is broad, through which many people enter and fall into destruction.

Back in the day I saw that as a crystal clear direction that Christ was the narrow path and "the world" was the wide path. This gave me - and I'd say many members of my various churches - a sense of haughty-ness... we were clearly choosing the more difficult, less travelled, Christ's chosen ones route.

Of course that's how we felt.
A quick glance at how many of these "Christians" see themselves and the rest of the "fallen" world makes it very clear that any approval to feel better-than because of your faith is like candy.

But today... my inspiration when it comes to these verses is quite different and applies so much more personally for me - and I think for anyone regardless of faith structure.

Work on yourself.

It's easy to follow where the masses go... to follow the media... to follow our leaders... to listen to whatever trend is trending and whoever is holding court in the public spheres, or in your own circle. That pathway is wide... and so many times we see the destruction it causes. From the limited effects of personal self esteem and worth issues to the larger issues of Mob Mentality, Dumbing Down, and Fascism/Dictatorship/Etc.

Work on yourself.

The narrow path is the one you tread alone, or perhaps with your closest of friends/loved ones/partners.

The narrow path is work.
The narrow path is about your journey.
The narrow path is about your own self discovery. 
And to stay on the Biblical Theme... the narrow path is about God's walk with you, about you, and for you.

Work on yourself.

The rest of the world will be there and you'll be stronger to face it if you..

Work on yourself.

What Inspires Me Today - Accepting Praise

 Inspiration: Accepting Praise

Last week I began a new management training program at work.

The first session was about giving and receiving feedback... appropriate for all of us as we're going through our annual performance review period. 

In the session we talked about how to give feedback to those on your teams, but then also how to receive feedback.

One of the most important things I learned from therapy (when I was doing it regularly) was the need to receive love and praise... or rather embracing the concept that you are worthy of love and recognition.

In close personal relationships, it's easy to block receiving the love of your spouse, partner, parent, sibling... there are a host of reasons why people struggle with that, but the end result of all of them is that we push away the people we care for the most.  Sometimes it's a strong push, but usually it's a slow and subtle pressure that takes years to build to something we have to deal with. 

But when we allow ourselves to be loved, that love enters, is magnified, and can't help but return back into our world. We are positively changed, and in turn, we positively affect those we love.

The same is true beyond our personal relationships. 

The act of accepting praise and positive recognition from your boss, your colleagues, friends, and greater community is something we downplay, sometimes with a false sense of humility. We right off those who give us praise as either not knowing us well enough, or having ulterior motives, or just being kind.  

Whatever the reason, we are simply finding new ways to prevent ourselves from believing in our own abilities/capabilities/selves. We can't accept praise because we don't believe we deserve it. 

You Do.

Accepting praise and recognition for hard work goes so much farther than ourselves.

When we celebrate our accomplishments and victories, we not only celebrate ourselves, we provide a wealth of feedback to those around us. We light a path forward for others to follow, and when others follow, they experience growth and success in different ways, expanding that path of great work.

What Inspires Me Today - April 28, 2023

Trust in the Unkown

Last night I was giving my Intro1 Improv class their end-of-term evaluations.  I both love and loathe evaluation day. I loathe it because it is so time & energy consuming - and for the teachers, it's not as actively "fun" as a usual class. BUT... I love it because we get to talk about the work, how it impacts us and what it means to us.

In one of the evaluations, we started discussing the idea of being vulnerable.  Now, this is INTRO 1 - improvisers first 8 weeks of improv instruction. This is when the nuts and bolts of Yes Anding, Listening, and breaking through our internal editors.  It's rare that we get too deep into a vulnerability discussion.  However, this discussion got me thinking and inspired me in a new way.

Twenty or so years of improvising and teaching and here we are... yet another Intro 1 class turns on a lightbulb.  That alone is enough for a note of inspiration.

When you're improvising, you have to put a good amount of trust in your scene partner... that they will have your back, they won't deny the reality you've created and they will support you and your decisions on stage.  As we were talking through that it occurred to me that as improvisers we are also putting a tremendous amount of trust in the UNKNOWN.

This puts new improvisers, and I'd say seasoned ones too, in a place of vulnerability. We don't know what is going to happen next. But here we are, together in this place, supporting each other and taking a step into that unknown to see what will happen.  

This might be an underlying reason so many people have a tremendous fear of improvising.  We don't really know what's going to happen. You have to trust in the unknown and find out.

This idea plays out in our lives, our relationships, and our work as well.

We have projects, and opportunities, and work that may or may not have a clear outcome... or we know what we want the outcome to be, but the path isn't so clear.  We have to trust in the unknown all the time. 

In improv, we have our scene partners to help us find the way together.

In our work, we have our colleagues, in relationships our friends and spouses, and of course we have ourselves.  And while it feels trite... to survive the unknown, we have to put a lot of trust in ourselves as well.

First Things: The magic of people

Last night I attended a memorial gathering for an old friend of mine from my early days in Detroit.

There are people you meet who, for good reasons, linger with you for the rest of your life. There is a magic about them that resonates with the universe and adjusts our molecules and energies in just the right way to change us for the better, if even we only spend a very short time with them. Chase Chapman was one of those people. My friend Andy Swan was another. Both of them were bright stars, snuffed out too soon.

We laugh, we smile, we talk for a while and then we're off to our own worlds. Before we know it the manufactured stuff of living overtakes us and that bill that you can't pay pushes away a caring word, the overdue report squashes a friendly hello, and the actions of an evil world pauses a confident gait.

We are more than those things. People like Chase and Andy, and countless others buoy us to be better... to not let those manufactured things pull us away from the magic of people, of living, of each other.

First Things: 2018

Around the start of a new year I always try to take a few moments and journal my thoughts from the previous year and those for the next. On New Year's Eve I jotted down my thoughts about the end of 2017. Today I finally got around to looking forward and in the process was reminded of something I tell myself a lot.

Feeling defeated is easy

Feeling empowered is a choice

It is easy to feel like the world is against you. To look at the chips and see how they did not fall like you wanted. It is easy to see external things as the cause of our problems, issues, defeats, difficulties, etc.. It is true - they DO affect us. We are battered by the world. Life is a hurricane.

But we have a choice to make - do we allow all of that to let us feel defeated - or do we make a choice to take power over one thing? It's easy to rest - but to get up, we have to make a choice to stand. We can choose to have power over one thing and move forward to the next, and the next, and the next.

Trying to stay positive when it's difficult: Car stuff

It's no secret - car stuff always gets me down. 

 

When I was in a pinch three years ago and had to get a car asap, I stepped out in faith that I'd be able to afford the lease on a new Fiat, wasn't sure about it, but moved ahead and got the car. There are many other circulstances that lead to that decision. I chose the positive path instead of being worried about money or what I was going to do at the end of the lease. A change for me because I am inherent worrier.

 

A few months later my mom started her final battle with cancer. The reliability and great gas mileage of my new car was an incredible blessing. Judith the Fiat and I made many trips to be with my mom and family through her final months with us. Since then, with only minor things (tires mostly), I've loved my little car. It fits me and my personality. 

 

Now all of those miles have caught up with the lease and in the spirit of thankfulness, I'm now stuck in a rather unforgiving spot owing literally thousands of dollars in mileage. There is little understanding or grace from the dealership - an agreement is an agreement, I get that. But it goes against everything anyone I know who has had a lease told me. Everyone said "they'll work with you, don't worry," or "I was way over and they got me into a new lease for less than I was paying before." So I won't lie that I'm pretty bummed right now. I had to borrow money to pay the mileage overage, or put a downpayment on buying the car to keep my payments affordable - but then I will have this car for five more years without a warranty. One of the nice things has been not having to worry about repairs - I've lived through many of those... in fact I'm STILL paying off debt from several blown gaskets, transmission repairs, brake jobs, and even a full engine rebuild I had to have done to an 81 mustang. 

 

So I'm pretty much back to where I was 3 years ago. 

 

Making the positive choice was good back then. I believe that God rewards when we trust him. I just have to figure out what that path is now, and hope for a little understanding and grace from a dealer or two. OH... and a little wisdom because all of this stuff is really confusing. In the end I really am grateful to be in this position, to be fortunate to have been able to drive a car I really WANTED - and to be able to face my worst case scenario and borrow the money to end the lease in March and walk away without a car for a minute... But I'm pretty sure it won't come down to that.

First Things: Your path

Driving into the office today there was a segment on our local NPR station talking about people moving from other states (particularly the South) to Detroit - and what things they brought with them as heritage from their old lives.

It made me consider what my life would have been like had my parents gone through with a move they talked about when we were young.

Dad had lost his job at Pullman Standard (the rail car giant), and mom wasn't working. Our home was in danger of Sherrif's auction and times were very hard. They had discussed at length moving to Arkansas to a job a friend of my father said he could get him. We almost moved, but something kept them in PA.

My thoughts on how moving would have affected me, moved to much more how I think moving would have affected my parents (or maybe not) - and how that change would have affected me.

As we went through the loss of my mom, her cancer and her treatment, we learned a lot about our family. I didn't want to lose my mom without talking with her about her life - with dad, with her parents, her grandparents.

Mom always had a kind of negative fatalist mentality or outlook on life. I remember her saying many times as a kid... "Two Steps forward just to take three steps back." And "No matter what we do we can never get ahead."

As we talked with Dad through everything, we asked about moving, about why they didn't do things they always talked about and Dad constantly pulls the conversation back to being forced to do things by others... family members taking things from him, people threatening to not take care of our grandma... and people telling him that he'd never make it.  And when we listen to dad talk today about his life, and about things happening today... this mentality paints an overall coating to how he sees the world. No matter what he does, someone is there to take his chances away, someone is there to flounder his plans / his success... even before it can start.

I think that had they taken the chance to move out of state, they would have had an opportunity to break that mindset, to see that not everything ends a step behind where you started and that you can allow others to stop you or you can make your own solid choices to push forward.

I think that would have had the biggest influence on me had we moved.

It's easy for me to default to a point of view that expects "the other shoe to drop" at any moment.
With every project, with every element of my life I always anticipate the upcoming event that will knock me off of my path.

Things are going well... something's going to come along to fuck it up.

This is my default.

But it gives control of my life to that event (if even the event never happens). It surrenders the idea that I am successful - it puts me in a place of defeat from the first step I take. I'm sure that I'm not alone.

We have to conquer that mentality.
Yes, issues come up, things happen, difficulties will block our way.
But they do not have to knock us off of our path.

We can achieve much more if  we see these moments as opportunities to STRENGTHEN our path rather than knock us off of it. What path in life is straight? The variances in our path can defeat us or strengthen us. It's our choice on how we view them and what we do with them.

First Things: Holding On

This morning as I walked to my car I noticed that the thistle in our front yard had burst out with about eight blooms.

Days earlier I found myself wondering how I was going to take it down, its tall spike-filled stalk turning a mustard brown with the fading of summer. The remnants of its last bloom had been wisked away by the wind leaving only the white broken end of an empty stalk.

But today, after a weekend's worth of rain and wind the persistent plant had pushed out several purple tufted bulbs with two bumble bees clinging to its nectar.

Today I celebrate that little burst of life, the reminder that it will hold on through the winter to be reborn in the Spring. From the weakened stalk a beautiful punch of bright color broke through.

Even when you feel like you're not at your best, like you're failing at life, beauty and growth is still possible. You're not dead until you're dead... and even then, as with the thistle, the seeds of what you've created will spread and grow again.

First Things: Betterment or Detriment

Last night, as Ian and I were driving home from visiting a friend downriver, we were talking about the HBO Documentary Tickle.  If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it. It's seriously messed up and completely fascinating.

Without spoiling too much of the movie, it ends up centering around someone who has a tremendous amount of wealth and time and uses that very poorly.

And it struck me, almost to the point of tears, that to do such a thing with the valuable resources and time you are given seems to be to be more "sinful" than the poor person who turns to drugs or crime.

I'm sure that in some ways the socio-psychological conditions by which both the wealthy person and the poor person choose to waste their resources are similar... but for the person who has much to offer the world - to squander that wealth is far more reprehensible that the person without.

It sits with me then, that we have an obligation to be wise with what we have been given. To use the little or vast resources that we have at our disposal for betterment and not detriment. Do we use our words to build up or to tear down? Do we use our time to improve or to complain? Do we spend our energy celebrating another person or belittling them?

When I look at the legacies those who have gone before us left, the legacies of those who used their time, money, and efforts to tear down are rarely celebrated - perhaps in circles for a season, but then they are gone, tucked away as a part of history we learn to not repeat. But those who enrich the world, who stand as a force for positive change, their legacies last both in physical memorials of statues, statutes, laws and books - but in the hearts of lives changed for good.

We have a choice every day as to how we will spend our valuable resources.
For betterment or for detriment.