Be brave and dare to love someone…

November 17, 2022

A couple of quotes in my saved quote file just seemed to fit together this morning –

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” (Anaïs Nin)

“Love comes… when you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.” (Joyce Brothers)

There is little else that expands one’s life as much as sharing love with another person. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to share that love takes the courage to dare that you could be hurt, especially if your love is not returned. Yet, even unrequited love expands your life, since you become more aware of your ability to love someone else.

Loving someone else does not have to be restricted to romantic love. When you form strong bonds with friends it’s often because you have allowed yourself to be vulnerable with them, perhaps sharing secrets or dreams or fears. By opening yourself up and sharing personal things with them your life has expanded to take them into your personal space. Sometimes that may prove to be a mistake, but most times they reciprocate by also sharing parts of their life with you that are their secretes. Think of your BFF’s and the things that you each shared with the other. That took courage.

Being brave enough to keep trying for friendship or love means being able to overcome the disappointments of past attempts that did not work out. In almost all cases it means being able to forgive and move on. I’ve posted here many times about forgiveness – forgiving others who might have hurt you by betraying the thrust that you placed in them; as well as forgiving yourself for misreading the situation and placing trust in someone who was not ready to honor or return that trust.

The bruise that is left by a betrayed trust or an unrequited love can be deep, but it will heal if you let it. Sometimes it is important to forgive yourself first and then move on to forgive the others. That is why Jesus included in the prayer that he taught the disciples in the Lord’s Prayer that they needed to forgive nor only their own transgressions but those who transgressed against them. I chose that version of the wording of the prayer because the word “transgressions” seems to have wider and more inclusive meaning that the word “sins”.

Don’t let your life shrink into loneliness. Put yourself out there and life will become expansive for you. Have the courage to keep being vulnerable, to keep making new friends or searching for love. 

Dare to love and you will find love in return.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Think about it, but then act upon it…

November 14, 2022

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” (Rick Warren) This quote is from pastor and author Rick Warren’s 2002 book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Thinking of yourself or about what something will mean to you is quite natural. How we perceive and react to the world around us is pretty much driven by the thought, “What does this mean for me?” That was certainly not what Rick Warren had in mind and I doubt that Warren had apathy in mind when he penned today’s quote.

Perhaps empathy is a good starting point to what Warren was pointing towards in his remark. However, given the focus on purpose that Warren took in his writings and his ministry, I suspect that there was implied action in Warren’s advice and not just empathy.

Thinking to yourself as you walk by a street beggar, “Oh that poor man. There, but for the grace of God, go I”, is one thing; but, stopping to help or perhaps just giving him/her a little something to help is completely different. Watching the news coverage of a natural disaster somewhere else and feeling bad for the people that you see in the story is most of the time accompanied by feelings of thankfulness that it did not happen where you live. Donating to help those people or donating your time to some relief effort is based upon thinking more of them and less about yourself.

We cannot turn off the natural instinct to think about ourselves and the impact that things might have on us; however, we can make a conscious effort to think more about others and the impact that our actions might have on them. We can turn our thoughts from “How do I get through this” (whatever it is) to thoughts of “How can I help others get through this” and turn those thoughts into actions.

We often see on the news shows stories about people who have been through some personal tragedy, such as the loss of a child to gun violence or drugs, starting a movement to stop or lessen the cause of their loss. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was one such movement. Those are movements and organizations started when someone thought more about others and how they might help others than about themselves.

Maybe the next time that you catch yourself being thankful that something didn’t happen to you, instead of just praying, “Thank you Lord for watching over me and protecting me from that bad thing”, you can go on to ask, “How can I help keep it from happening to someone else or help someone to whom it has already happened?”

Just getting yourself in the frame of mind to think less about yourself and more about others will often lead you to a course of action that will be helpful to others. You will be acting out of humility and acting out humility.

Think about it, and then act upon it…

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Posted by Norm Werner

That’s life…

November 11, 2022

This quote was at the top of an email that I got this morning which was probably advertising something. I like it because it takes an active view of making life better, rather than a passive view.

One could spend (waste) a lot of time in the passive mode of hoping and dreaming about how life could be, but those who actually achieve those dreams are the ones that take action to make their dream happen. It is through the doing that we turn “I wish I was” into “I am.”

So instead of spending more time this morning hoping and wishing for a better life, maybe take a few moments to ask for God’s help doing the things that you need to do to become that better person. A simple prayer like, “God help me make better decisions today and help me become a better person” can set the stage for the successes that you desire.  

At the end of the day, if you can look back and feel good about the decisions that you made and the way that you comported yourself you will feel a sense of accomplishment that surpasses the achievement of greater wealth or power. You may also notice that the things that make you feel the best about yourself were things that you did to make someone else’s life better – a kind gesture or effort to help someone else, to complement them, or otherwise engage them.

Life is not lived in the vacuum of self, which is the lonely realm of hoping and dreaming; life is lived within the context of society in which “we” is more important than “me”. We are told in the Bible –

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”  (Philippians 2:3-4)

It is not enough to wish that the other person has a better day or to hope that someone would open that door for them; it is up to you to do thigs to make the day better for them and in so doing to have a better day and become a better person yourself.

That’s life.

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Posted by Norm Werner

What will you change today?

November 8, 2022

I recently collected a number of quotes on change and think that a few go well together for today’s post. Change is happening all the time and all around us. Just think of the changes that today will bring in our political environment. We spend much of our time reacting to change, but today’s quotes focus on being pro-active about change.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama

“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Roy T. Bennett

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow

“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” — Georg C. Lichtenberg

We must start as President Obama states by deciding that we are not going to sit around and wait for change to come to us. We are the change agent. Change starts with us.

Next, we must acknowledge that we may be resisting change because we are unwilling to leave our comfort zone, to take the chances that change involves as Bennett advised. We become to comfortable with the safety of staying put and do not even try to move forward.  We let our safe routine become our prisons, trapping us as if we were a mime in his imaginary glass box. Yet if we do not advance and grow, as Maslow puts it, life will leave us behind.

Finally, we need to understand that change is not always going to result in things being better, just different and if we make enough things different, we will eventually get to the better place that we desire.

So, the question becomes, “What will you change today?” What things can we change in our day-to-day life that will challenge our comfort zone and allow us to grow?

Maybe we can decide to greet strangers differently; not trying to remain safe by avoiding interacting with them, but, rather, greeting them with a warm “Hello, how are you?” and a smile. How did that make you feel? How did that change you?

Perhaps you can try a new place to have lunch, perhaps someplace with an ethnic food menu. You will experience new tastes and see new people that you don’t normally meet. Was that an interesting experience? Did you like the new flavors that you experienced? Did you meet some new people? How did that change you?

The point is to acknowledge and become more aware that what you think of as your daily routine is, by definition, your comfort zone. Staying in that comfort zone means staying as you are and not growing as a person, not being all that you could be.

You may be thinking, “I’m happy where I am, why should I disturb things by making changes?”  Maybe two more quotes from my collection will help answer that question.

 “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” — Harold Wilson

Quite simply we cannot stop change from occurring, nor should we try. Instead, resolve to the agent of change in your life rather than being a by-stander and always reacting to the changes that are inevitable.

But what should you change?

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” — Maya Angelou

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” — Wayne W. Dyer

Maybe what you need to change today is your attitude.

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Posted by Norm Werner

What will move you to take that chance?

November 2, 2022

As happens many times, a post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog this morning provides the inspiration for this post –

You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change.”  (Zig Ziglar)

Pastor Freed often uses quotes from Ziglar in his blog. This quote seemed to go nicely together with the headline from an article that I saved –

Which is Stronger – Outside Pressure to Change? Or your Internal Drive to Transform? (Headline on an article I saw recently)

Outside pressure to make changes in our lives is a very strong motivator, whether that change is something like how we act, some bad habit that we have, or maybe even how we look. Most people have a desire (some might even say a “need”) to be accepted by their peers. If we become conscious of disapproval from those around us, we are forced to at least look at what it is that they don’t like about what they see.

The recognition of that disapproval from those around us can provoke our “fight or flight” reaction mechanism – sometimes both at the same time. I suspect that the whole Goth movement in youth is both a rebellion against main-stream peer pressure to conform to peer group standards for body image and appearance style and a flight into the acceptance of an alternative lifestyle group.

What Ziglar was pointing out is that we all must make choices about things in our lives that represent inflection points – points at which change will redirect the course of our lives. Most of these decision points have both external and internal forces at play. If there is no external reason to change, no peer pressure or societal law or standard to consider, it is totally up to our internal desire for change. Career changes come immediately to mind, although some “careers” such as being a drug dealer have strong societal disapproval as external factors.

One’s internal drive to transform is usually strongly influenced by what we call our “good conscious”, our ability to distinguish between right and wrong and our desire to be on the “right side”. Most of those decisions aren’t given a lot of thought because we just “know” what the right thing to do is and do it automatically.

Some things, like quitting smoking, have both components in the decision process. Society took a dim view of smoking some time back and there was certainly enough proof of it bad effects on us to give pause to any smoker for self-reflection and the need for change. We continue to see external factors at work today in on-gong ads that now are also influencing decision on things like Vaping and alcohol and drug use.

A good time for self-reflection and to consider taking the chance to change is every morning while you are getting ready for the day ahead. If you start your day with morning prayers, maybe add this to those prayers. Take a moment to consider that you have yet to commit (or submit) to your normal routine today, which may contain some bad habits or pre-dispositions that you’d really like to change. Resolve to change something about yourself today that will make you a better person. Ask God for His help if you are praying (I usually just ask God to help me make petter decisions during the day). Then set out to make a conscious effort to effect those changes.

You may not (in most cases will not) be completely successful in changing your life in one day, but you can be successful in nudging it off the path that you were on and heading it in a slightly different direction – celebrate even that slight change and increase your resolve (your internal drive) for tomorrow.

Take the chance to change today. You are on the way to a new you. You will find more acceptance in society, and you will feel better about yourself. It’s a win-win.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Let your light shine in the darkness…

November 1, 2022

A couple of quotes in my collection just seemed to fit together this morning –

“Fear has a very concrete power of keeping us from doing and saying the things that are our purpose.” (Luvvie Ajayi)

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”  (Brené Brown)

Darkness and fear go hand in hand. We fear what we cannot see in the darkness – maybe an upcoming event or a place that we’ve neve been before. We let our imaginations replace the unknown with all sorts of improbable but none the less seemingly possible negative outcomes. We talk (think) ourselves out of even trying. Only through overcoming those fears and exploring the things that we kept ourselves from doing can we really discover our own power and purpose (our real destiny).

In Sunday School you might have learned a little song titled “This little light of mine”. That is a perfect song for children but as we grow up we accept things less and less and need to understand things more and more. Perhaps this Scottish hymn is more appropriate for adults.

Fear and self-doubt are both darkness’s that can creep over us and prevent us from doing and saying the things that we want to say and should say. They hold us back from our purposes in life. At the end of every dark tunnel of fear that we allow ourselves to enter is the same ultimate fear – the fear of death. It is only when we can conquer that fear that we can let our light shine. The only path to conquering that fear is the one that Jesus provided for us on the cross – through belief in Him, through faith. Bob Dylan said it in the lyrics for the song  Precious Angel: “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.”

So, fear not, believe in Christ and be brave, and let the light of your faith shine in whatever darkness you face. The light of your faith will show you the way out of the darkness and it may help illuminate the path for others facing the same darkness. Let your light shine in the darkness.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Another year…another Halloween

October 31, 2022

For whatever reason that I cannot fathom, each year Halloween seems to be the day that serves to mark the passing of another year for me. It has been a very cold night for the past few years, although not so much tonight, if the weather holds to the forecast.

Halloween is the night when kids dress up and pretend that they are their favorite adult heroes (real or imagined) and when adults can dress up and pretend that they are children again. It has become the second biggest retail event of the year after Christmas, with candy, costumes and home decorations raking in millions of dollars.

And, while we still have all of the scary skeletons, ghosts and ghouls decorating our homes, Halloween has shifted from a scary night into a fun night for most. Casper the Friendly Ghost and Scooby Do grace as many lawns as Frankenstein these days. That’s a good thing. We certainly have enough scary stuff going on in the world with hunger, homelessness, pandemics and wars going on. We need a little comic relief and a good laugh.

I’ve even noticed over the last few Halloweens that the traditional greeting from kids of “Trick or Treat” is usually followed by “Happy Halloween.” That’s a good thing, too.

So, tonight I’ll mark another year handing out candy and saying Happy Halloween to our little visitors. None of us will be afraid tonight. What’s really frightening is what’s coming next week on November 8th. One has only to watch the constant negative TV ads to become very scared. It would seem from the ads that no matter which candidate we vote far we will be electing lying, cheating and dishonest scumbags who will lead us into oblivion. Now that’s scary. Maybe we should write in Scooby Do for some of those political positions.

Have a Happy Halloween!

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Posted by Norm Werner

Stop and listen first…

October 25, 2022

A couple of quotes that I’ve saved seem to go together to make a good point about listening.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”  (Stephen Covey)

“The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” (Keanu Reeves)

Today’s politicians in both major parties seem to have gone beyond Covey’s observation. They not only are not listening to each other’s point of view or concerns but are also not waiting to reply. They are just trying to shout each other down.

The seemingly lost art of compromise requires that both sides listen and try to understand the differences that exist and then try to find a way to satisfy at least some of the concerns of the other side. One must first listen and then try to understand before replying or working towards a compromise.

Covey’s point in particular points out the issue that ego brings into the picture. It starts with the thought “I am right, and I need for you to see and admit that”. That is the impetus behind the intent to reply. If we start instead from the position “I hadn’t considered that point of view before, let me think about that”, it might allow us to have a civil discourse that could lead to compromise.

If your immediate reaction is “Why should I consider the other persons point of view? It is obviously wrong”; then stop and realize that you are a part of the problem and not the solution. Take Reeves advice and pay attention, not to reply but in order to understand.

Some points of view that you may encounter are so alien to your own way of thinking that it is easy to dismiss them as crackpot or too extreme. The task then is not so much to understand the point of view (that may be impossible) but, rather, to understand what is motivating or driving that point of view.

If you pay attention, you may find that fear is the key driver in many, if not all, very extreme points of view. Fear of loss of power, money or control. Fear of the unknown or misunderstood. Fear drives bigotry. Fear drives homophobia. Fear drives misogyny. Fear drives misinformation and conspiracy theories. The anger that you may encounter is just a reaction to those fears.

Trying to understand what the person with whom you are talking is afraid of changes the dynamics of the conversation and allows a path to compromise by allaying those fears. If one starts from the position of “what would it take to lessen your fears and make you more comfortable with this situation or person?”, you are at least on the path towards compromise. You can find that path if you pay attention and listen to understand rather than to reply.

Some of the best listeners that I’ve encountered also make the best conversationists. Conversations with them are satisfying and rewarding because they listen and explore your comments with questions or remarks that bring out more from you. They seem to be more interested in what you will say next than in what they will say next. Somehow that makes what they will say next all the more interesting.

So, take the advice of our quotes today and pay attention. Listen not to reply but to understand. Reply with a question, not a retort. Consider that there may be alternatives to your current point of view.  Understand the underlying fears that may be motivating the other person. Look for the path to a possible compromise.

Stop and listen first.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Can’t stop it…gotta love it…

October 24, 2022

I received this graphic today in a daily feed that I get for my real estate business. I have to admit that the word “love” is not the first thing that comes to mind for me when confronted with change. Fear, maybe. Anxiety, certainly. Excitement, maybe. But love – not really.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever see change as beautiful; however, I am trying to deal with the inevitability of change is a better way than fear or anxiety. Perhaps the excitement factor of change is the aspect that would allow us to love it. Heading into unknown waters with a sense of wonder and excitement allows us to put aside our fears and refocus on making the real-time decisions needed in the moment. The old saw – Live in the Moment- is essentially living through the changes, big and small, that are constantly occurring in our lives.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that life without changes can get boring pretty fast. We need changes to keep us challenged and motivated. We also need it to keep learning. Life is not a boring straight line. It is full of twists and turns, of things unexpected and things not turning out as planned. Many of those things can be humorous (witness the success of the America’s Funniest Home Videos TV show) and all of them provide learning opportunities.

walking man

Changes may take old friends out of our lives, but they also bring new friends into it. Changes may redirect our careers, sometimes ending one only to provide the start to another. We may see changes as good or bad but in reality, they are just things that are different. We can’t stop changes, so we might as well get used to them and get on with our new lives. We might not love change but we can’t stop living due to change. Maybe we should start each day with the thought, “Well this is different. What good can I do with this?” Seeing change as an exciting challenge each day may help you get over your fears or anxiety and help you focus on meeting those challenges and you’ve got to love that.

Change. Can’t stop it…gotta love it!

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Posted by Norm Werner

What about the thorns?

October 20, 2022

I saw this quote, some time ago in the Jack’s Winning Words blog – “Anyone can love a rose, but it takes a lot to love a leaf.  It’s ordinary to love the beautiful, but it’s beautiful to love the ordinary.”  (Unknown)

It is true that it is easier to love the rose than it is to think enough about the leaf to love it, too. Life has many more leaves than roses, but we tend to just look past them and focus upon the roses – the beautiful things and people that we encounter in our lives or that we strive to achieve.

But what about the things that are not only not beautiful, but perhaps even painful in life – the thorns that we encounter. If there is beauty in loving the ordinary in life, maybe there is even more beauty in leaning to love the thorns.

Both the leaves and the thorns are an integral part of the rose bush that produces the roses, just as the ordinary, day-to-day things that we experience and even the painful or hurtful things that we endure are a part of life. We must learn to love them, too.

Most of the “thorns” that we experience in life are not necessarily harmful or painful; they are just things that didn’t turn out the way we had hoped or envisioned that they would. They may be failures or disappointments or even rejections.

Just like the experience of grabbing a rose stem the wrong way teaches us about thorns and causes us to use a different approach the next time, we also learn from the life thorns that we encounter. “How we handle what’s ahead of us will be determined by what we learned from everything that’s behind us.”  (Craig Lounsbrough)

I’m not sure that we can ever learn to love the thorns that we encounter in life; however, we can decide to learn from them to make the road ahead a little less bumpy and dangerous – a little more beautiful. We can accept them and learn from them.

I find it sadly interesting that it seems to be easier to focus upon and love the ordinary and even the thorns in life once one gets older. When we are young, we are so focused and consumed with the pursuit of “getting ahead” in life (the roses that we are reaching for) that we don’t take the time to appreciate the ordinary (the leaves), much less to love the thorns.

I’m not sure that love is the right way to describe the ability to accept and learn from life’s thorns. Perhaps “appreciate” is a better description of the change that occurs as we get older or maybe just “accept” works best. One stops taking life for granted and becomes thankful for each day – for the ordinary and even for the thorns that come along with the day.

So, go ahead and stop and smell the roses, but also pause to appreciate the leaves and even to accept the thorns.  They are all part of this wonderful journey called life. What will you learn from today?

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Posted by Norm Werner

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