What’s Up With Self-Help? Part One: Making True Decisions
What comes to your mind when you hear the term “Self-Help”? Perhaps you see an image of a well-dreesed, clean-cut individual who is very enthusiastic about life and has overcome tremendous obstacles… and now this person seems to have everything together. Maybe you can hear the voices of “self-help” language: you have the power within you to create your world! All you need is to harness the power of positive thinking! Speak the right formula of words and you will have all of your dreams for success to come true!
Sometimes I don’t think very positive. Sometimes I don’t say the “right” things. There are times when I’ve felt completely overwhelmed by the facts of life… completely overcome by bad situations and circumstances… overpowered by bad personal habits. What about you? Have you ever felt like no matter what you did, you just couldn’t seem to get everything in your life together?
I try not to spend a lot of time thinking about all of the things I know I need to change about myself. Why? Because it can get pretty depressing. You ever felt this way? Like it’s better not to think about the things that seem to depress you? I’m personally in the process of developing a wholstic plan for keeping myself in shape physically, mentally and spiritually. I’ve been ”developing” this process for quite a few years, but I haven’t had the determination and the discipline to stick to this plan for any consistent length of time beyond a few weeks. So when I tell my wife of six years, “Alright, I’m going to start my plan up again so I can get in better shape and become more efficient in using my potential…” She laughs and says, “Here we go again…” And on some level I feel like, “Ok. Here I go again…”
It’s not that the plan is bad - I just don’t follow what I know I need to do. I don’t work the plan. But isn’t this one of the major distinctions between people who excell in life and people who have made a home in mediocrity? It’s not even about coming up with a GREAT PLAN, as it is about working the little plan that we already know to do. It ’s Jesus who tells us, “If we’re faithful in the small things, God will make us faithful in the big things.” But we often want to jump right into the big things without having first mastered the little things that we have to do on a day to day basis, that we consider to be mostly “drudgery”.
When you hear the term “Self-Help” do you think about drudgery? Do you think, “Here we go again… another attempt to improve myself that won’t work.” Don’t we usually say “this is the way I am” because we’ve been unsuccessful at making positive changes?
But there are people who seem to be entirely successful at taking control of their lives and turning bad situations around into good fortune. So what are they doing that we are not? How are they responding to situations in ways that are different from our thoughts and actions? Or is it mere luck?
Well I don’t believe in luck. I do believe in God and the fact that great potential has been placed within each of us! So where do we go from here? How do we change the negative aspects of our lives? How do we bridge the gap and unlock the creative ability that God has placed inside of our being? Some people say they want to change, but in reality they enjoy being just the way they are. Some people decide to “rely” on God for their transformation and do nothing but sit on the sidelines and watch life pass them by - figuring that ”if God wants something to happen, then it will happen irreguardless of what they do.”
I used to think this way - misinterpreting my lack of action as simply waiting on God and trusting in Him - when the truth was that in many cases I was simply too afraid to try… to do. In other situations I couldn’t muster up the passion to do the job. In certain circumstances I was just plain lazy and undisciplined. However, God is clear that there are specific things He will do to bring about our destiny and there are specific things we are told to do to help bring about our destiny. Think of the math formula of: “If you do this than I will do that.”
God has a definite plan for each of our lives, but we must choose to cooperate with God in that plan. In a very real sense, we are told to engage in “self-help” and “work out our own soul’s salvation.” However, this “self-help” we are told to do is not what is done in popular circles where all the emphasis is placed on the power of humanity to lift ourselves from our own dire realities… to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
I used to think that in order for me to help someone else grow and mature, I had to have my whole life together. I had to look and sound the part and be perfect with all of my problems solved. However, I see the faulty logic of this kind of thinking and being able to think differently relieves me of a lot of internal and external pressure to perform. I am not perfect. I make mistakes. There are things that I fail at and things I need help with because I either don’t know how to use the tools to break free… or I don’t possess the tools to do so. I realize now that success is tied with taking the journey. Many people are too afraid or comfortable in what they know to even step out. But I have decided to take the leap and seek after my true self - the real me that God has created me to be. And with each leg of the journey I discover obstacles that must be overcome and I begin to chip away at the excess which then reveals that I am more than I thought possible.
What about you?
What areas of your life needs changing? Where have you failed time and time again? How have you given up and quite trying? And I ask you as Jesus does, “Do you want to be made whole?”
Is self-help about perfect, flawless perfection? Or is it about something that runs deeper, is more meaningful and longer lasting? Let me know what you think.
Filed under: Risks and Opportunities • Self-Help • Spirituality
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