Thursday, March 29, 2012
SPOKEN HEART STORY
Most of your adult life you are sure, very sure about one or two things. Things like i can never fit in a bikini, i can never wear a hawk on my head; i can never drink cheap alcohol Omera. Just like i have started to be sure i can’t write now in the middle of my intro, at some point in my life i was sure i am not really a poetry guy. Just like sitting with a guitar on the pavement or wearing a sleeveless shirt thanks to a number of weeks at the gym, I thought poets were sissies, – and I quote – ‘poetry, guitars and biceps are desperate attempts to get noticed’. Continued………….
Thursday, March 15, 2012
THE CONTRACT
I sat through a three hours class of psychology of communication this week. The topic was self concept. I don’t want to turn this into a review of that class but am going to tell you this; those quotes we write in facebook, hear from our preachers, told by our teachers about self esteem, happiness and personal behavior and their relationship have a strong psychological background.
The basic idea is that everyone has a painting – or several paintings depending on your creativity, sanity and emotional state - in their head of their own physical, behavioral and psychological attributes. The issue is not the number; the issue is the polarity of these paintings. Some people actually have a painting of themselves that they are proud of – they are very positive towards themselves. Most people have mixed feelings when it comes to looking at the picture of them. The rest hate that picture, they think it’s not good enough, they should have been taller, browner, sharper in class, their hips should have been fuller, their parents should have been a little richer, they should have had better social skills, their breath should have smelled a little better.
The relationship between these paintings and happiness, success and our behavior is very simple. By creating this picture, we are not only painting how our life is at the moment but most important we are casting an image of how we want our lives to be in future. Positivity draws positivity, negativity draws more of it.
The moment you view yourself as the best, as the brightest, the moment you tell yourself that ‘maybe am not doing good now but I know and I have always known that I have the potential, the connection, the will and the power to be the best and eventually I will’ you have painted a picture of success for yourself
A negative painting is a killer and a positive one is more of enduring happiness. One week ago I was looking for a movie to watch among the several in the computer. I’ve watched all of them so I settle for this documentary titled the secret.
The documentary simplifies the reasons for success and failure into one very subtle secret: we draw these things towards us by our thoughts. We succeed because we think of success, we are happy because our thoughts appreciate the reasons for us to be happy. We fail because we keep thinking of the failure, we keep thinking of those obstacles of reasons why we could not succeed.
To make this clear, think of it this way. Your brain is your life magnet, successes and failures are tiny iron pieces hanging in the atmosphere, and your thoughts are the power that draws particular pieces to your life. The more you think of failure, the more pieces of failure you attract and in the end you are one big magnet covered in failure. The opposite applies to success. The stronger and more frequent your thoughts are, the more your chances of achieving either. To some the power that rearranges everything in this world to fit into your thought is the universe. To me, it’s God
Two weeks ago I was travelling back to Maseno after attending a funeral of a very close cousin of mine, he died very young and in that bus from Magadi to Nairobi I was feeling like shit. I was counting the things I’ve done wrong, the mistakes I haven’t apologized for, the people I haven’t told I loved, the wrongs I’ve never made an effort to make right and wondering if my cousin had his wrongs, his mistakes, negligence instances, things he wished he could say but never got the chance to. My question to myself was, will I have a chance to? What really would have changed my mood that day was the opposite of my line of thoughts, the positive things I’ve done, what I have been able to accomplish, and the far I’ve gone. Even with those few mistakes in your life, the things you have done right are way much more. The problem with us is we overlook a dozen good things about ourselves and obsess over that one thing we think is wrong.
In Nairobi I spent the night with another cousin of mine. In the morning before I leave I pick one DVD with messages from Joel Osteen. I’ve always admired the way he speaks but mostly for the humor and the stories, not really listening to the message. So I watch one sermon and I wake up to take a shower. I leave with that DVD in the Drive. I only notice that I have it when I get to Maseno and I get it out of the drive and put it on shelve. Am back to watching movies.
The same thing that happened one week ago happened last night only this time round I find that Joel Osteen DVD and I continue watching from where I had stopped. The next message in that DVD is called ‘not being critical about yourself’.
What I got from that message is that even though we have a painting of ourselves and we believe that we know ourselves the most, God has a painting of us too. He is the master painter, He painted the universe, all those natural landscapes and features you see at and say wow, He painted them. And then He painted you. What our paintings say is that God made all these paintings we admire so perfectly and then when he got to us, somehow, He made mistakes. That is not even remotely true. You are as good as those things that make you wow in fact even better because God actually took His time, got His hands dirty to make you in His image and breathed His life into you.
You did not get the wrong hips, a smaller mind, the wrong nose, the wrong eye color, the wrong parents, or the wrong neighborhood. What you got is the perfect of all those for you. Joel Osteen said that we are living in defeat because we don’t recognize the value of what we are. You are a masterpiece painting and all that is in your life plays into making you that. Get up in the morning; look in the mirror and say, ‘Good morning you wonderful being’
We are Masterpieces of God. We don’t get our worth from what people think about us. We get it from who the painter is. An original Picaso, no matter how bad it might look would sell for millions of dollars. What would the worth of God’s work be?
Everyday you have to pray that, that painting in your head about yourself draws closer to what God made you and the only way we achieve that is to think positive, to praise ourselves for the good things in our lives, to appreciate our achievements. Too often we tend to obsess over how far we need to go that we forget to look back and say ‘This far am doing very good’. God did it, why not you? Every time he created something, the bible says, and God saw that it was good.
Last night I prayed. It started ‘God, I know its been long…..’. In the end I have decided to make this contract with God and myself. For every negative thought that I can consciously pick, I am going to make an effort to counter it with five positive ones. I am dedicated to painting a picture of my success and that I will start now. You can also do the same. Don’t you dare let yourself go through life with that negative painting in your mind
The basic idea is that everyone has a painting – or several paintings depending on your creativity, sanity and emotional state - in their head of their own physical, behavioral and psychological attributes. The issue is not the number; the issue is the polarity of these paintings. Some people actually have a painting of themselves that they are proud of – they are very positive towards themselves. Most people have mixed feelings when it comes to looking at the picture of them. The rest hate that picture, they think it’s not good enough, they should have been taller, browner, sharper in class, their hips should have been fuller, their parents should have been a little richer, they should have had better social skills, their breath should have smelled a little better.
The relationship between these paintings and happiness, success and our behavior is very simple. By creating this picture, we are not only painting how our life is at the moment but most important we are casting an image of how we want our lives to be in future. Positivity draws positivity, negativity draws more of it.
The moment you view yourself as the best, as the brightest, the moment you tell yourself that ‘maybe am not doing good now but I know and I have always known that I have the potential, the connection, the will and the power to be the best and eventually I will’ you have painted a picture of success for yourself
A negative painting is a killer and a positive one is more of enduring happiness. One week ago I was looking for a movie to watch among the several in the computer. I’ve watched all of them so I settle for this documentary titled the secret.
The documentary simplifies the reasons for success and failure into one very subtle secret: we draw these things towards us by our thoughts. We succeed because we think of success, we are happy because our thoughts appreciate the reasons for us to be happy. We fail because we keep thinking of the failure, we keep thinking of those obstacles of reasons why we could not succeed.
To make this clear, think of it this way. Your brain is your life magnet, successes and failures are tiny iron pieces hanging in the atmosphere, and your thoughts are the power that draws particular pieces to your life. The more you think of failure, the more pieces of failure you attract and in the end you are one big magnet covered in failure. The opposite applies to success. The stronger and more frequent your thoughts are, the more your chances of achieving either. To some the power that rearranges everything in this world to fit into your thought is the universe. To me, it’s God
Two weeks ago I was travelling back to Maseno after attending a funeral of a very close cousin of mine, he died very young and in that bus from Magadi to Nairobi I was feeling like shit. I was counting the things I’ve done wrong, the mistakes I haven’t apologized for, the people I haven’t told I loved, the wrongs I’ve never made an effort to make right and wondering if my cousin had his wrongs, his mistakes, negligence instances, things he wished he could say but never got the chance to. My question to myself was, will I have a chance to? What really would have changed my mood that day was the opposite of my line of thoughts, the positive things I’ve done, what I have been able to accomplish, and the far I’ve gone. Even with those few mistakes in your life, the things you have done right are way much more. The problem with us is we overlook a dozen good things about ourselves and obsess over that one thing we think is wrong.
In Nairobi I spent the night with another cousin of mine. In the morning before I leave I pick one DVD with messages from Joel Osteen. I’ve always admired the way he speaks but mostly for the humor and the stories, not really listening to the message. So I watch one sermon and I wake up to take a shower. I leave with that DVD in the Drive. I only notice that I have it when I get to Maseno and I get it out of the drive and put it on shelve. Am back to watching movies.
The same thing that happened one week ago happened last night only this time round I find that Joel Osteen DVD and I continue watching from where I had stopped. The next message in that DVD is called ‘not being critical about yourself’.
What I got from that message is that even though we have a painting of ourselves and we believe that we know ourselves the most, God has a painting of us too. He is the master painter, He painted the universe, all those natural landscapes and features you see at and say wow, He painted them. And then He painted you. What our paintings say is that God made all these paintings we admire so perfectly and then when he got to us, somehow, He made mistakes. That is not even remotely true. You are as good as those things that make you wow in fact even better because God actually took His time, got His hands dirty to make you in His image and breathed His life into you.
You did not get the wrong hips, a smaller mind, the wrong nose, the wrong eye color, the wrong parents, or the wrong neighborhood. What you got is the perfect of all those for you. Joel Osteen said that we are living in defeat because we don’t recognize the value of what we are. You are a masterpiece painting and all that is in your life plays into making you that. Get up in the morning; look in the mirror and say, ‘Good morning you wonderful being’
We are Masterpieces of God. We don’t get our worth from what people think about us. We get it from who the painter is. An original Picaso, no matter how bad it might look would sell for millions of dollars. What would the worth of God’s work be?
Everyday you have to pray that, that painting in your head about yourself draws closer to what God made you and the only way we achieve that is to think positive, to praise ourselves for the good things in our lives, to appreciate our achievements. Too often we tend to obsess over how far we need to go that we forget to look back and say ‘This far am doing very good’. God did it, why not you? Every time he created something, the bible says, and God saw that it was good.
Last night I prayed. It started ‘God, I know its been long…..’. In the end I have decided to make this contract with God and myself. For every negative thought that I can consciously pick, I am going to make an effort to counter it with five positive ones. I am dedicated to painting a picture of my success and that I will start now. You can also do the same. Don’t you dare let yourself go through life with that negative painting in your mind
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