Sometimes it’s difficult to receive the love that tells us what we need to hear even when we don’t want to hear it.

I don’t want to have friends that only tell me what I want to hear.  I want to be able to trust the advise of those who I hold in confidence.  When I ask them if an outfit works or if a certain song sounds good in my voice I sure hope they will tell the truth.

Of course we want those who speak truth to us to be respectful in their presentation.  We don’t want them to be insensitive when telling us difficult things.  We hope that they’ll be gentle.  But we still need to know the truth to help us to make the best decision.

God has placed some strong believers in my life who have my back.  I mean by that statement that they have my best interest at heart and they communicate to me the truth that is necessary for me to make good decisions.  I value having a spiritual community that I can share with.

Do you find it difficult to tell others truth?  I hope you are balanced so that you aren’t insensitive to their feelings but you still give them the information that will help them to make the best choices.

I am so grateful for the true love we receive from our Heavenly Father.  God reveals to us who we really are and yet gives us hope because He still loves us and believes in us.  Sometimes it’s painful to pray or read the bible and ask God’s Holy Spirit to show us ourselves and our need for Him.  But we are better off when we do.

So today I pray that God gives you and me the truth we need to have a better life.  And I pray that we will be willing to lovingly share truth with others whose welfare may depend on it.

Sometimes knowing how different your now could have been will inspire the change necessary to make your future all it could be.

What If

My son and I were talking this evening and I asked him this question: “What if we had stayed on the Corrective Diet?  How different would our lives have been?”

The Corrective Diet is a way of eating that emphasizes consuming a plant based whole foods diet.  I lost 32 lbs in one month following this approach.  When you are on the Corrective Diet you eat foods that will create an oxygen rich blood environment and alkalize your body.  When I finished the first month I chose not to continue.  Now some of you may point out that diet’s invariably fail but I mean what if I had continued to practice these principals of eating permanently.  I asked my son to think of the many ways our lives would have been different if I had not stopped.  I would have had more energy.  I wouldn’t have some of the health problems I face today (After being on the Corrective Diet I no longer needed to use blood pressure medicine to keep my pressure in the healthy range).  More energy means I would have been able to spend more time playing with him and his sister.  By taking a look at the potential effects of one choice I can learn to more deeply value the longterm effects of my decisions.

Have you ever taken the time to think about how different your life might be based on a change of one behavior?  Have you really gone done the road with your imagination to consider the implications?  This technique can be really useful in getting you to feel the value of a change or the danger of delaying a change.

What if you stopped waiting for the perfect time to make a change and decided to change now…I mean right now?  What if you not only taking massive action today but also encourage those in your sphere of influence to do the same?  You can change the world one choice at a time.

You’ve Gotten Use To The Usual

When I was in 7th grade my science teacher made us go on a no sugar diet for several days.  After not even a week of not having added sugar our taste buds changed.  What use to be sweet became too sweet.  Imagine how many things that are bad for us we have gotten so use to that we don’t even feel their badness!

As a Christian I realize more than ever before why it’s so important to pray, study the bible, meditate, and share my faith.  All of the above actions allow me to re-tune my spiritual taste buds.  Reading about Jesus and immersing myself in thoughts of Him allows me to see how really negative our world is compared with His character and philosophy of living.

Leave Your Comfort Zone!

Change isn’t comfortable.  If it were everyone would be changing.  We get use to the way things are.  Even though we know things could be better we don’t want to exert the energy to make things different until the pain of staying the same becomes strong enough to our weigh the pain of changing our behavior.

So envisioning the “What If’s” allow us to create greater pain or pleasure as we see the multiple ramifications of our choices.  So….what if you choose to use the power of what if today?