THE WORST HELL

No this is not going to be a theological treatise on hell. Dante in The Divine Comedy describes multiple levels of hell. I am not going to be talking about that either. This is taken from something that one of my clients shared with me and I found truth in it so with permission I am sharing this with you.

For many of us there are times when our life seems like hell on earth. Others turn on us and we find ourselves alone at the very time when we need others the most. Our bodies fail us and it seems like we spend every waking minute undergoing treatments. We lose jobs and we may be on the verge of losing our homes and everything else of value. I am not making light of any of those situations. Just the opposite. But as horrible as those are, they are not the worst hell.

According to my client, The Worst Hell is the hell that we bring upon ourselves through our own actions. We personally mess up so badly that everything collapses around us. We can’t blame the boss, spouse, economy or politicians. There is no one or nothing that we can blame but ourselves. That’s the worst because we then live with the “should haves” or “shouldn’t haves.”

These are times when the course of our future is in our hands. There are things that we can do. Admitting what we have done, facing our failing, and doing our best to minimize the harm to others are all important. Those who have been hurt need to have a chance to heal.

Then stand up. We are all human, and we will all fail. Run as fast as you can from anyone who claims they never have.

Find others who will stand there with you in your pain. There are people who will come alongside you in spite of what you have done.

Learn from those who have dug themselves out of their own self-created hells.

You need to learn to accept forgiveness. It’s surprising how often others will offer it and you owe it to them, and to yourself, to receive it.

Go forward with life. It’s a precious gift not to be wasted.

My car has reactive, “intelligent” cruise control, the purpose of which is to keep me from rear-ending slower cars should if I fail to pay attention. It senses other cars, and automatically slows my speed to match theirs. Pretty cool, huh? But, the other day I was cruising along, listening to music and not paying attention to my speed because I had the cruise control on. There were a row of cars ahead in my lane, and my cruise control properly matched their speed. However I suddenly realized that, I was now doing 63 in a 70 MPH zone because that was the speed of the other cars. When I became aware of my inordinately slow pace, I of course changed lanes and sped up to my desired speed. (Only 70 of course. Right?)

It made me wonder how often I have done that in my life. You know, gone along with the crowd matching their lives instead of consciously determining what I wanted to accomplish. Their course may be great for them but not necessarily the way I wanted to live.

This got me thinking, do others find themselves in a similar situations? Setting their work, relationships, and life goals on cruise control. Going along with the crowd, instead of intentionally deciding what was right and best for themselves.

Making the decision to change lanes isn’t easy or comfortable (after all, a little extra petal to the metal requires more gasoline), but if you decide your destination is more important, it’s worth the effort.

Happy New Year to you all, and to your loved ones. I hope that the upcoming year is filled with Peace, Joy, Purpose and Fulfillment.

Many of you may be staring 2016 like every other year: making a New Year’s Resolution.

New Year’s Resolutions don’t work for me. In the past they were about all the normal things, workout more, lose weight and things like that. The only one that I have ever kept was the resolution not to make any more resolutions. If making resolutions works better for you than it has for me than by all means, more power to you.

For me, they were too small and too focused. I saw on the news recently that often times resolutions work against you and people end up not just not keeping them but actually doing worse at what they had hoped to accomplish.

New Year Challenge

I am challenging you to go deeper this New Year. Make it a year of discovery of who you are and more importantly who you want to be. That may include physical goals but I hope that with them are goals that impact your emotions and your purpose. We are more than just physical. The reflection we face in the mirror each day should say more to us than confirm whether we are having a bad hair day. We see ourselves worrying about our relationships, finances, families and jobs. We see looking back at us a person with flaws, personal failings and unresolved dreams. We all too often turn from that vision hoping maybe we can face ourselves tomorrow and discover a different person.

Each passing year slaps us in the face with the fact that our lives are passing. Wouldn’t it be great if a year from now you look in that mirror and smile at the whole person who is smiling back at you.

Be resolved to make this coming year one that you look back on with a sense of marvel at the transformation that has taken place in your life.

(More to come on how to accomplish this in future blogs)