A self pit full of despair.
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Thoughts
There once was a boy who was a man who stood next to a man who was a boy.
The boy ask the man who he was.
The man began to talk about himself
until the boy interrupted and asked again
who he was. The man became irritated
and continued talking about himself.
The boy again asked who he was.
The man walked away angry that the boy
seemed to ignore everything he said.
Then, standing alone, the boy heard
a gentle voice inside of him saying
"Son, you are mine and thanks for asking".
I describe excellence as “skilled and filled” as in Exodus 31:1-5. In other words, living up to our potential. The pursuit of excellence includes learning to enjoy the process, which inevitably leads to the surprise outcomes along the way that perfectionism never allows to be enjoyed.
Perfectionism can be skilled but not always filled, something to beware of as describe in Deuteronomy 8. Skilled but not filled is self-reliance, or trusting oneself.
The goal of excellence allows us the freedom from judging each step. That's why James 1:5 implies we aren't expected to have perfect knowledge. We are given an open "Book" test without the reproach of being graded or judged.
Perfectionism does not lead to higher performance and greater happiness though it can bring some forms of success. Often perfectionism parades as excellence but it differs greatly by making everyone miserable in the process because the essential element of trust is missing. The perfectionist trusts no one but himself, criticizes everyone else, and is rarely trustworthy if things don't go his way.
Basically, the perfectionist is the control freak who is afraid to fail because he finds his value in his achievement only.
Even panic attacks are the result of perfectionist tendencies. The perfectionist always focuses on the flaws and mistakes, leaving them with more fatigue and less to show for it.
I've rarely met anyone that successfully pursues excellence by criticism. Whether from our own mind or from another's tongue, we usually give undue credit to the criticism we hear.
A challenge to excellence through encouragement, not criticism, is inspiring because it includes a living example by another that has the courage to encourage us. Criticism does the double harm of tearing someone down and leaving them without help to heal.
Seeking love out of wisdom rather than seeking wisdom out of love.
Under the shadow of His wings rather than in the shifting shadows. Darkness has become my friend if unwilling to be befriended in the darkness by Grace. Beauty in the darkness is not that darkness is beauty, but that there is no absence of light. It just takes a blackness to the darkness so that I no longer try to see with my own eyes.
I then can see by the kaleidoscopic eye of faith that enlightens my heart's eye to see the Hope riding Black Beauty who has come to rescue me.
Many differences resulting in conflict are the result of misunderstandings rather than actual wrongs. It is critical to be aware of the approach and that it be done with sensitivity and sincerity. In the approach the other should be given the benefit of the doubt while you may be doubted as to your own motives as well as met with reproach through accusations whether false, true, or partially true. Initial approaches are often riddled with inconsistent words or meanings so the first meeting or conversation may appear unsuccessful. The willingness to go back repeatedly brings a clarity often missed or wrongly heard even though a seed is almost always planted if done in a calm confidence.
The are so many variations of responses initially that often reflect a shutting down effect in either party that the resulting reactions are based more on history rather that what is happening in real time.
Continue to cultivate whatever common ground can be found so some point of stability can be reached to refer back to later. This is often discovered as soon as I give up my egotistical tendency to have to win at all costs or at least to make a point on the scoreboard.
To approach with power is to move into a place close enough where a heartbeat can be heard or a glimpse into another's soul can be seen or felt.
Where there is life found, there is life's way.
Running for cover with a lover.
Words are powerful. Communicators know this. Negotiators know this. Deep down, you know this. Words have blessed you and words have devastated you. The healing that comes from a kind and tender word is precious. The destruction of a cruel taunt or a well-told deception is crushing. To have such power is amazing or razing. Which do you choose?
Enlightened is when the mind itself is strengthened to see through its stored information so that it can hear without asking and believe without reasoning when our questions and arguments get in the way. There is a lot of stress from an educated guess that complicates the profound of uncharted ground.
In any particular conversation that begins or ends up in an argument, there exists a place underneath where reason is often able to undermine the incorrect assumptions, confront the legalism, and bring to light the underlying issues. The real issues are often unrecognized and more emotional than rational. Learn to listen for them. Step one is be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Psalm 103:8
I hear many people who are described as unemotional that accuse those around them as too emotional. I find that the unemotional are the most expressive of emotions through their too sweeping statements, too harshly conveyed, and too suspicious of those they accuse. I call this emotional, but detached in disorder. Oh how deep their pain must be that inflicts so much pain on others.
The heart of the matter becomes redemptive when the heart is in the matter. We all are so full of experiences that make us feel a certain way.
Yet without the heart seeing and gathering the wisdom from the way we feel, our feelings often can determine a false sense of reality of what only seems to be true.
Let the emotions instead become hearing aids into the intimacy with the Almighty and his son or daughter whichever that you may be as he mends the broken heart drowning under the bridge over troubled waters.
Sing with the Matter Horn and bad news will not be feared but seen through.
We so often get bogged down in our disappointments and the powerful effects on us from these that we begin to seek some form of relief with a vengeance. What we do from that point is just shift our disappointment to a new object whether it be a person or project and the feeling from that is that of power, yet there is no real power. This is simply what I call fear as power in reverse.
The feeling is similar to backing up in your car at high speed. You may have the feeling of getting somewhere but it feels more like a growing crisis with an accident waiting to happen. It worsens in the fact that after I make my decision to shift my disappointment to something or someone else, the decision itself takes on strength or confidence making it hard to reverse when wrong.
The real shift that should take place is a shift in the actual power itself that empowers me. We all have experienced this in times where we were moved in such a way that a deep feeling of passion came over us in such a natural way that no intellectual tendency to argue or prevent it could stop us.
There is a freedom in this experience that transcends disappointment into a previously hidden joy with strength that clears the fog off the mirror of our self image and begins the healing that reshapes our view of ourself and others.
Suffering from disappointment then becomes a privilege of sharing, enlightenment, and connection that kicks the ass of what divides our hearts and lives so we can float like a bumble bee and sting like a butterfly.
As Friedrich von Schiller wrote "Disappointment is to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air".
Somewhere between an isolated monk on too high a hill and a monkey in a business suit insolated in too high a suite.