Blog Archives
Suffering: it’s normal
Suffering is part of life and common to all of us, do not fool yourself or let others trick you into believing otherwise.
What you do with suffering and your attitude to it will determine your success in life.
In all things hold on to hope, never let go. You can get through!
If you are not coping then get help, professional help if need be, get help to overcome. You do not need to go through it alone and there any many organisations/mental health providers worldwide to help you overcome and get through so check your local directory or contact your doctor or even your local citizens advice bureau.
Like this:
Hope, Attitude and Reality: Finding Strength in Difficult Circumstances
Positive thinking or a positive attitude may not bring about a cure, recovery or solution, but neither will negative thinking or a negative attitude. It will however improve your current state of being.
Three thoughts
1: Always hope, never lose hope, while there is breath in you there is hope.
2: Choose your own attitude.
“The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Viktor E. Frankl
3: Accept the reality of your situation, act appropriately and always hold on to faith, even in difficult circumstances. Remember the Stockdale Paradox
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale
Positive thinking based in reality is positive action.
Please also read “Which is best? Positive Thinking or Positive Action?” by Claire Boyles on her site Life Matters
Autumn Leaves by Paul S Allen
In Support of Hidden Illness
My latest song dedicated to all those with chronic illnesses like ME/CFS and mental illnesses, depression and anxiety.
Song: “Sweet Lullabies” by Paul S Allen (©Paul S Allen 2010)
Written for my wife who has Myalgic Encephalopathy/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)
Images and Video: ©Paul S Allen 2010
Photos of flowers from around Dunedin New Zealand
Dangerous Leaders
To hold leaders and leadership in too high regard will lead to disappointment.
What happens when egocentric leaders meet needy people? Potentially a train wreck of use and abuse on all levels. When a self serving person is in a leadership position they are in a dangerous place and the emotional, spiritual and physical well-being of the followers are at risk. The leader will do all within them to protect their position because their ego and self-esteem have been tied together with the position.
The danger that is faced is not just for the follower, the leader is building a folly for themselves that will (not could) fall down at any stage.
The follower with low self-esteem or is wanting constant approval will be encouraged by the egocentric leader to do more, give more, give up more, not for the purpose of the organisation but because it gives a sense of having people serve them, it is all about power and control. Then needy follower will feel that they are being “useful” or “important” without being encourage to improve their own lives or situations.
This is all done in very subtle ways where even the leader may not be aware of what is going on.
So what can be done to protect the follower and inform the leader that they need help too?
- Remember that the cause, purpose or vision is bigger than you (well at least it should be).
- It is not about power and glory: You are in the position because there is a need in the community that requires attention or fixing.
- Get help, to change an egocentric lifestyle or leadership style will require the assistance of others, may be even professional help.
- Swallow your pride
- If you need to resign, or step down while you get it sorted, do it
- Become accountable to someone outside of your organisation
- You need assistance too, again this may need to be professional assistance
- Talk to friends and family not attached to the organisation, ask for their honest opinions and LISTEN to them
- Take a big step and say “no”.
- Learn where your boundaries are and where they should be
- Take time out for yourself, and don’t feel guilty about it
- Know this: YOU are important, YOU matter, and YOUR opinions count
Getting your priorities in order is individual and although people may suggest what they should be, only the individual should organise their own.
Good leadership will always respect the individual, embrace the different opinions of others, it will respect boundaries while challenging the status quo.
The Chrysalis: The Dark Night of The Soul
The “dark night of the soul” is a right of passage.
Struggle and suffering is part of life and it is a deception to think that it is unnecessary and avoidable.
No caterpillar can fulfill its purpose of being without passing through the chrysalis stage to become a butterfly.
To become what you are destined to be you must go through the dark night of the soul. You must break away from the popular and be prepared for deep personal change. Yes it will be painful at times, you will lose friends along the way, you will go into and through strange and lonely places, but unless you do you will stagnate in your personal, spiritual and emotional growth.
Let us think, just for a moment, about the life cycle of a butterfly.
1 The egg
The egg stage provides a place where ideas can be mulled over and considered and no amount of forcing can (or should) be used to assist the hatching process. It will hatch at the right time and forcing it will kill it.
The strength of the egg is seclusion.
2 The caterpillar
To often people stay at this stage of growth, this is where on mass an army goes forth and devours all the food it can see. There is comfort in this feeding machine stage and there are friends around. Uniformity is celebrated and those who are different are discarded.
The strength of the caterpillar is numbers.
3 The chrysalis
The caterpillar finds another secluded place to secure a strong foundation for a tenuous thread, and then builds a hard shell around itself. This excludes all external contact. Within this quiet and private stage the caterpillar changes. It will have its whole physical being broken, the skin ripped open new limbs growing. How painful would that be? At this stage no amount of assistance will help it. But it must go through it.
Never be afraid of solitude and silence, deep personal change happens there.
The strength of the chrysalis is solitude.
4 The butterfly,
Once the butterfly has emerged, again a process that no assistance can be given without damaging it, it needs to regain its strength and unfold its wings. It can then leave the familiarity of its known world and move on to the new lands beyond. The purpose of the butterfly is to breed, to bring the next generation into the world.
The strength of the butterfly is partnership.
Points to remember
- Things happen when the time is right
- Pressure to grow or change can cause damage or worse
- Staying at the same stage too long will destroy you
- The true purpose of the caterpillar is not to just eat but rather to become a butterfly
- Sometimes the life will be painful
- Suffering is part of life and struggles are needed to help develop the full potential of what you were made to be.
Seek to be the butterfly.
