“Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” In this saying it is urged that all who seek heaven on earth or in the hereafter should become like little children. In seeking things of the spirit and in our faith, we should try to become
childlike. Even as we grow older, the years of seeking can give us the attitude of the trusting child. Not only for its simple trust should we have the childlike spirit, but also for its joy in life, its ready laughter, its lack of criticism, and its desire to share.
Word for today
Verbose: Wordy, having too many words, long-winded, full of verbiage.
Prayer of the day
I pray that I may be calm in the midst of storms. I pray that I may pass on this calmness to others who lonely and full of fear.
FLOW
68th The Flow
Overload or overwhelm, this is the 9th one on this emotion chart. Grief, depression, and helplessness are merely expressions of feeling overloaded or overwhelmed. Grief happens when you feel like there is no empowering meaning for something that has
happened, or that your life is being negatively impacted by people, events, or forces that are outside your control. People in this state become overwhelmed and often begin to feel that nothing can change the situation, that the problem is too big it’s permanent, personal. People
go into these emotional states whenever they perceive their world in a way that makes them feel like there’s more going on than they can possibly deal with, the pace, amount, or intensity of sensations seems overwhelming.
The message of being overwhelmed is that you need to reevaluate what’s most important to you in this situation. The reason you’re overloaded is that you’re trying to deal with too many things at once, you’re trying to change everything overnight, and the
feeling of being overloaded or overwhelmed disrupts and destroys more people’s lives than just about any other emotion.
The solution: you must immediately develop a sense of control over life. Decide, out of all the things you’re dealing with in your life, what the absolute, most important things is for you to focus on. Now write down all the things that are most important for
you to accomplish and put them in an order of priority. Just putting them down on paper will allow you to begin to feel a sense of control over what’s going on.
Each emotion we see if not work with it becomes worse and worse. So let look at the good side of these emotions. Today we talk about inadequacy. This feeling of unworthiness occurs anytime we feel we can’t do something we should be able to do. The challenge, of
course, is that often we have a completely unfair rule for determining whether we’re inadequate or not. First, understand the message inadequacy is giving you.
The message is that you don’t presently have a level of skill necessary for the task at hands. It’s telling you that you need more information, understanding, strategies, tools or confidence. Simply ask yourself, “is this really an appropriate emotion for me to
feel in this situation? Am I really inadequate, or do I have to change the way I’m perceiving things? Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that in order to feel adequate, you have to go out on the basketball court and outdo Mr. James. This is probably an inappropriate perception.
Whenever you feel inadequate, appreciate the encouragement to improve. Remind yourself that you’re not “perfect,” and that you don’t need to be. With this realization, you can begin to feel adequate the moment you decide to commit yourself to CAN! Constant and
never-ending improvement in this area.
This emotion is critical, because when someone feels inadequate, they tend to fall into trap of learned helplessness, and they begin to see the problem as being a permanent one with themselves. There’s no greater lie you could tell yourself. You’re not
inadequate. You may be untrained or unskilled in particular area, but you’re not inadequate. The capability for greatness in anything is within you even now.
66th The Flow
The emotion that is a waste to the human spirit is guilt. The emotions of guilt, regret and remorse are among the emotions human being do most to avoid in life, and this is valuable. They are painful emotions for us to experience, but they, too, serve a
valuable function, one which becomes apparent once we hear the message.
Guilt tells you that you have violated one of your own highest standards, and that you must do something immediately to ensure that you’re not going to violate that standard again in future. Guilt is the ultimate leverage is the pain we can give ourselves.
Guilt is the ultimate leverage for many people in changing a behavior. However, some people try to deal with their guilt by denying and suppressing it. Unfortunately, this rarely works guilt does not go away, it only comes back stronger.
The other extreme is to surrender to and wallow in guilt, where we begin to just accept the pain and experience learned helplessness. This is not the purpose of guilt. It’s designed, again, to drive us to action to create a change. People fail to understand
this and often feel so remorseful about something they once did that they allow themselves to feel inferior for the rest of their lives! That is not the message of guilt. It’s there to make sure you either avoid behaviors out of yours certainty that they’ll lead to guilt, or if
you’ve already violated your standard, it’s there to induce enough pain within you to get yourself to recommit to a higher standard once again.