No doubts…just do’s

September 19, 2024

Today’s graphic highlights one of the biggest roadblocks that people encounter in life – our doubts.

Whether you call them doubts or fears, it is our own mind that is creating the roadblocks to our progress or success as a person. You will often hear people say that they didn’t do somethings because they didn’t think that they could do it.

Why do people raise these fears and then let them stop their progress? Perhaps the biggest reason is that realizing our dreams or goals for tomorrow often involves embarking into uncharted waters -going someplace that we’ve never been, trying something new that we’ve never done, or perhaps engaging with someone that we’ve never really met. Just the fact that to get where we think we want to go means trying something new can be frightening for some.

Perhaps a start to finding a way out of this dilemma, is to stop and acknowledge to yourself that you are a little (o0r a lot) afraid of some of the possible outcomes that you envision. Just stopping and  overtly making this an intellectual exercise instead of an emotional one helps. Instead of wasting time playing “whet if” mind games with yourself, maybe focusing upon turning your dreams for tomorrow into plans to accomplish them is a better approach. Just the process of planning is a positive step towards those dreams or goals.

If you busy yourself with planning, you will have no time for the doubts or fears to are holding you back. Once you get a plan started you can jump to the Nike catch phrase “Just do it”. There is no reason to allow the planning process itself to become a roadblock. You don’t need a complete plan to get started.

Ready, Fire, Aim works just as well as Ready, Aim, Fire so long as you make adjustments as you go. Our lives are not like a Russian artillery shell, which once fired will either proceed straight to the target (or maybe fall short). Rather they are like a Ukrainian drone which gets airborne, then looks for the target and homes in until it make a hit.

So, don’t let your doubts hold you back. Get airborne already. Then, make adjustments as needed to hit your target – your dreams or goals.  

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Posted by Norm Werner

Overcome today’s doubts to get to tomorrow…

July 18, 2023

The graphic for today’s post focuses upon doubts that hold us back from realizing our dreams and aspirations for tomorrow. I would add to that graphic the rest of the classic FUD elements (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubts) that are missing.

Fear of the unknown and uncertainty about whether we are even headed in the right direction combine with doubts about our own abilities to do what is needed to realize those dreams often hold us back from even trying. We convince ourselves that it is “better to be safe than sorry.” And then we are sorry that we didn’t even try.

There is a very real chance that the things that you are concerned about or afraid of are real. They are constraints that you are currently under that limit your ability to achieve your goals; however, they are seldom permanent roadblocks. In many cases they just require you to take a detour, like maybe going back to school, in order to obtain some skill or knowledge or certificate/degree that will allow you to advance towards your goals. This is where the attributes of patience and persistence pay off.

It is important during these “detour” times to remind yourself often of the overall goal, when it doesn’t feel like you are making progress towards that goal. It helps if you break down the things that you need to get done before you can resume the pursuit of your goal and reward yourself as you accomplish each step along the way.

Remember that impatience is your key enemy. Anything that is really worth something usually takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. Much of the work may be tedious and repetitive.  Just imagine getting up every morning and doing 2-3 hours of workouts or running, yet that is what Olympic athletes do and they do it for 4 years leading up to their event in the games. That is a real test of patience and persistence.

The doubts that you have today can help you define your plan to achieve your goals for tomorrow by helping you see the things that you need to do in preparation for achieving them. So, don’t let them stop you. Use them to motivate you to create a plan of attack to overcome those roadblocks. Just that act of understanding the issues that you must overcome and planning how you will do it puts you in a whole new frame of mind. You have mentally moved from, “I don’t think I can do this”, to, “Here’s how I’m going to do this.”

I have no doubt that you will achieve your goals for tomorrow.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Keep moving but be at peace…

March 30, 2022

In his post this Monday to his blog, Jack’s Winning Words, Pastor Freed used this quote – “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith.  They keep it awake and moving.”  (Frederick Buechner) Pastor Freed went on to say that even he has doubts from time to time; however, he has found those doubts to be things that actually strengthen his faith.

How can having doubts about your faith make it stronger? I think the answer is that doubts throw you off-center; they trouble your mind and spin you away from the beliefs that your faith is based upon. Doubts are distractions and sometimes major events in one’s life can cause very big doubts and major distraction from our beliefs. This is especially true when we lose a loved one or when a major event causes seemingly catastrophic disruption to our lives. Think of the doubts that people in Ukraine must be gong through right now. Many times those doubts center around the thought “How could God let this happen to me?”

So, there you are, spinning further and further away from your faith. How do you reestablish your faith, re-center yourself and regain control? How do you actually make your faith stronger in the face of doubts?  I think Jack answered that question in an earlier post using a quote sent to him by one of his followers –

“Your life becomes a masterpiece when you learn to master peace.”  (Sent by RVB) 

We say “peace be with you” often in church or maybe “be at peace” during a conversation, but how does one master peace? It all gets back to faith. The reason that one has ants in their pants is their inability to control things, to solve the unsolvable problem or face the reality of a temporary failure. We spend sleepless nights agonizing over the “coulda, woulda, shouldas” of life instead of accepting what has happened and moving on.

The quickest way to move on is to acknowledge your faith and accept that you need God’s help. I use the little prayer, “Not my will but thy will be done”, but you can use a prayer as simple as, “Yo God, a little help here.” The point is not to create long, flowery prayers, but to surrender your life to God and let him take control. Giving up the futile fight to control everything puts you back in control of your life by putting you back in control of how you react to the events of life. It puts you at peace.

So, Pastor Freed is right that those doubts actually strengthen one’s faith by forcing us to keep returning to that faith as the best and only answer to life’s challenges. If your life feels like you are standing on an anthill, circle back to your faith and ask God for his help.

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phillipians 4:7)

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Posted by Norm Werner

The search for truth…

May 14, 2015

From the Jack’s Winning Words blog – “Most people really don’t want the truth.  They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.”  (Collective Evolution)  Jack went on to write – Plato (428 BCE), seek-truthfamous philosopher and teacher, was also a funny guy.  He’s the one who said, “I’m trying to think.  Don’t confuse me with the facts.”  He was joking, of course.  In life, we are continually asked to test the sources for our beliefs.  Don’t be afraid to examine the “facts” during your search for truth.    😉  Jack

That saying goes well with another that I also picked off Jack’s blog – “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt.”  (Rene Descartes)

The dictionary defines truth as:

– the quality or state of being true.

“he had to accept the truth of her accusation”

– that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

noun: the truth

“tell me the truth”

-a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

plural noun: truths

“the emergence of scientific truths”

So it looks like the opening statement was the true after all – it’s all about what people want to believe. Some peoplesearching believe that all of what they saw and heard during the moon landing in 1969 is the truth, but others believe that it was all a giant hoax and that the men never left the earth. Both groups embrace their views as “the truth.” It’s interesting, too, that all of the definitions rely on using the word true to define the truth; and some of the definitions for true also point back to beliefs.

In our everyday lives I think most people believe much of what they hear from others and accept it as the truth; however, all of us have probably known people that we just didn’t believe. Maybe they earned that distrust by repeatedly lying about things or maybe they just came across as being a bit shady, so we took everything that they said with a grain of salt. Whichever is the initial case, most people search for the truth. They are not content with just not knowing or not being sure. Maybe they are not searching for the truth so much as for that confirmation of their beliefs that we started with.

doubtBut what of Descartes’ advice? Was he advising that we doubt or beliefs in the search for truth? Yes and no. I think he was saying that one cannot go through life never questioning or doubting things that we might have been told are truths. If truth is based upon belief, then there are many truths in life than cannot be tested or proven; they just must be believed. Certainly religions have always relied on the continued acceptance and belief in things that cannot be proven.

The doubts that have cause schisms within religions seldom had to do with doubts about the basic beliefs, but rather about the dogma imposed over the top of those beliefs by men in power within the church. None of Martin Luther’s 95 theses called the faith that was the basis of the Catholic Church into question; rather he questioned the authority claimed by the Pope and the practices of the church of that day concerning the forgiveness of sins – the selling of indulgences

So the key to Descartes thought is to properly direct that doubt and not to let it degrade into cynicism. Use doubts to doubt your doubtsdiscard old ideas and beliefs that cannot stand inspection and to reinforce those that prove to be true after a closer look. Doubt not your faith, but perhaps those people and institutions that have codified and legislated the practice of that faith into dogma to meet their own needs.

Do you seek the truth in life or just go through life believing everything that you’ve been told is true? How do you act upon your doubts? Do you just let them gnaw away in the back of your mind or do you take some action to prove or disprove those feelings of doubt? Are your religious beliefs based upon a faith strong enough to be classified as a truth in your life? If so, do you share that truth with others through your words and deeds? Do they see that truth in you? If you live your faith then another saying will apply – “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

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Posted by Norm Werner