Steve Simms's Blog, page 160
January 5, 2022
Mental flossing for happiness
We know that flossing and brushing can help our teeth and gums, but we overlook the fact that cleaning up our thoughts can help our mind. If we don’t learn to filter out negative thoughts, they will continually flow into our brain.
We coast downhill, but it takes a lot of energy to go uphill and enjoy a beautiful view. Happiness requires mental and emotional effort. If your train of thought isn’t bringing you closer to happiness, perhaps it would be a good idea to change trains.
Some of my problems come from mismanaging my mind, so I’m continually trying to manage it better. When I turn over the management of my mind to my feelings and desires, I discover that they aren’t very good managers.
Refuse to believe every thought that you have. Some of them are lies. Investigate a thought before you accept it. Thoughts, feelings, and desires that create inner dysfunction need to be deposed, discarded, and disregarded.
The sight of somebody quietly and stilly observing something beautiful is rare. Openly be amazed by something beautifully today.
If our life becomes dysfunctional, it can be because of our own poor choices. If so, there’s always hope for a course correction.
Tormenting thoughts aren’t imaginary voices. They’re dangerous, internal bullies that we need to resist and subdue.
Mental input impacts mental health. Be careful what you allow to enter and to fill up your mind. Arrogance and rebellion are often an attempt to hide insecurity, anxiety, and fear.
Here’s an obvious observation: People can 1) help themselves, 2) ask for help, or 3) deny their need for help. Two of the three are great options!
[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-29888" />Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com
January 4, 2022
Breaking free from tormenting thoughts
Tormenting thoughts are mental traps that can keep you stuck in negativity if you don’t work to avoid them and clear them out of your mind. Neglecting to control your thoughts, feelings, and desires is like driving without steering (DWS).
If you could see inside people, you’d notice that everyone struggles with negative thoughts and emotions. You’re not alone.
The chemical path isn’t the only way to find relief from inner pain. There are other options that make true inner peace possible.
Cultivating and maintaining positive, hopeful, and healthy thoughts, feelings, and desires is a key to happiness. Fight for delight!
Your brain is organic, IT hardware that you can protect and program. Refuse to download destructive software on your neurons.
Sometimes our mind becomes disordered by our own disorderly choices. Mental choices matter and collaborate to create your current state of mind.
Much emotional pain isn’t caused by a biological disorder, but by how we’re choosing to run our mind. Physical pain warns us when we are misusing our body. Emotional pain warns us when we are misusing our mind.
Freud encouraged people to try to turn “hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” Jesus came “that your joy may be full.” As long as air is circulating in your lungs, there is hope!
How I interpret
What I feel or see
Determines its
Effect on me.
When I blame
I feel anger.
When I reframe
I can tame
My emotions
With peace.
Profanity is unhealthy mental programming
Profanity programs your mind and emotions for angst and anger. Saying it and hearing it stirs up negativity. Avoiding it helps you have peace.
Profanity is a sign of insecurity. Confident people don’t have a need to use forceful, vulgar words. When people try to put profanity into your brain, you have the right to resist it and to avoid them.
[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-29873" />Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.comJanuary 3, 2022
Does church miss the point?
Knowing the heart-felt reality of Jesus is like having an inner fire that you want to continually keep burning inside of you. The reality of the living Jesus can be perceived by the heart but is never fully understood by the mind. If you’ve never been awash in the heart-felt reality of Jesus, you’re missing out on life’s most incredible experience.
Religious head-knowledge analyzes God but living with the heart-felt reality of Jesus keeps people amazed and awed by Him. Christianity without heart-perception of the risen Jesus is shallow and without depth perception. To attend church and neglect to experience the heart-perceived reality of Jesus is to miss the point!
To try to program and control the heart-felt reality of Jesus is to replace it with religious brainwashing. Religious brainwashing often leads to pride, but the heart-perceived reality of Jesus produces humble heart-cleansing.
Churches keep lecturing the very same people, week after week. They attempt to inform people on the mental level, but Jesus wants to transform people’s heart and reform their lifestyle.
Without the heart-perceived presence and power of the living God religion is a placebo. No amount of religious head-knowledge can compare with encountering the heart-felt reality of Jesus. Without the heart-perceived reality of Jesus, the academic approach to religion lacks life-changing power.
Religious head-knowledge is slippery and quickly slides out of the brain. That’s why sermons are seldom remembered. We need more demonstrations and manifestations of the heart-felt reality of Jesus, not more religious head-knowledge.
The pride of religious head-knowledge often keeps us apart from the humble, heart-felt reality of Jesus. When we let religious analysis produce spiritual paralysis, we quench the Holy Spirit.
For religious head-knowledge, read the Bible like a dry textbook. For the heart-felt reality of Jesus, read it like a love letter.
Crusty, frozen snowWon't blowIn a gentle wind.Crusty, frozen ChristiansWon't flowWith God's Spirit.Religiously programmed minds,That know when to stand,And when to sit,And when to sing,Make a church Run smoothly,But often neglect to experienceThe heart-felt reality of Jesus!Church shouldHelp us partakeAnd radiateThe heart-felt reality of Jesus,Not indoctrinate.
To recite a creed,
Without a need
For the heart-felt reality of Jesus,
Is empty words.
January 2, 2022
We have the ability to embrace accountability
Capability
Without accountability
Turns into inability.
The more society teaches people they aren’t accountable for their thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors, the more chaos ensues. People who want to be accountable to nobody are a danger to everybody.
People who think they’re a failure are often just really good at dodging accountability. We can deny and mask inner pain, or we can accept the challenge to discover and change how we’re enabling it by our thoughts and actions.
Self-love without self-accountability and self-discipline is a stormy romance! You begin to heal and recover when you begin to hold yourself accountable. If you’re not responsible for your choices, you’re just a helpless victim. To find hope and to heal, assume responsibility.
Don’t just be accountable at the end of the day. The first thing in the morning be accountable for making your day beautiful. Every day I hold myself accountable to expose my mind to a continual barrage of hope.
It’s very difficult to improve if you rarely admit that you’re wrong. Your life is a blog post for people to read, a podcast for them to listen to. What wrong message are you sending?
Accountability can be annoying, but if you’ll stay with it, your pain will slowly morph into peace. You can’t improve yourself if you don’t think that you’re ever wrong.
To build a positive life, don’t fight other people. Battle the negativity and dysfunction that’s operating within you. If you’re indifferent to your thoughts and accept them without discernment, they’ll entangle you in mental bondage.
If we refuse to admit where we’re off track, we’ll stay that way. For true freedom, we need to push past our pain, step beyond the shame, and humbly admit our bondage. Unless we confess, we’ll continually regress. If we won’t continually correct our thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions, they’ll mislead us over and over again.
Without friends, my conscience, the Bible, and God’s Spirit to hold me accountable, I’d be way off track. Unaccountability isn’t freedom; it’s chaos.
Avoid accomplices who’ll attempt to help you do wrong. Acquire allies who’ll assist you to do right. As people we have a need, not just to be held in someone’s arms, but to be held accountable for our thoughts, desires, and actions.
Painful consequences are trying to hold you accountable to improve your thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions. When we try to reject all accountability, we experience chaos in life, but our pride tries to hide and deny our mess. We are the only one responsible and accountable for our choices.
Blaming isn’t very effective because we too often blame other people instead of our own choices and behaviors. The truth is often unrecognized because we don’t want to recognize it. Admit what you’ve done wrong and do your best to make it right. You are accountable for the thoughts, feelings, desires, and behaviors that you allow to take over your life.
As humans we’re constantly being judged by life. When we do unwise things, we experience negative consequences.
Greatness isn’t pride. It’s honesty, integrity, compassion, kindness, and self-control. A great nation holds itself accountable, not only for its present, but also for its past.
I’m holding up a mirror to help you. If you write it off as judg ing, it won’t be helpful.
Good advice
Can help you
Help yourself
But first you must
Take your heart
Off the ice.
Christians admire Jeremiah & Martin Luther for declaring that the people of God were off track but reject such messages today.
January 1, 2022
Warmheartedness refuses to hyphenate life
Make it your aim to be warmhearted and amiable. That will make life more fun and give you better interactions with people. Embracing warmheartedness is life-changing!
Intelligence without warmheartedness produces cold, hard facts that are often used as weapons. We need to learn to balance intelligence, with warmheartedness, so that we don’t use what we know in selfish and self-justifying ways. Education without warmheartedness tends to be very cold.
Honest, kind, and amiable conversation is a warmheartedness building tool. The world needs more people who will demonstrate and promote warmheartedness. Be one!
If you want someone to consider your opinion, be amiable when you express it. Warmheartedness tears down walls and enables people to experience deep, inner connection. It perceives purpose and meaning in every encounter with people.
Being sincerely amiable and warmhearted doesn’t mean that we agree with people. It just means that we care about them. Kindness warms the heart of both the one who gives it and the one who receives it.
Fear drives away warmheartedness. It replaces it with a defensive and hostile attitude.
Warmheartedness is contagious if we don’t cover it with a mask. The hostile climate in our culture cries out for warmheartedness.
It’s better to be amiable than bitter–better to forgive than to give out spite. An amiable attitude attracts kindness; an angry one generates animosity. Amiable encounters with people are inspiring. Go be amiable and warmhearted. Then you’ll be a blessing to yourself and to the people you meet.
Affable-tize your life. Be kind and friendly to everyone. Without warmheartedness, true happiness seems like an illusion.
Warmheartedness is too important to be hyphenated! We need to pull it together and let our heart overflow with kindness and compassion. It’s never too late to get started being warmhearted.
“I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.” – Dalai Lama
[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-29821" />Photo by Budgeron Bach on Pexels.comWhat’s up with New Year’s Day?
New Year’s Day
Marks the place
In space
Where we say
A new orbit of the Sun
Has begun.
December 31, 2021
Labeling & medicating tormenting thoughts isn’t as effective as overcoming them
If you want inner peace, you must pursue it internally, not externally. Our society has become good at labeling and medicating tormenting thoughts and emotions, but not so good at overcoming them. Unhealthy thoughts frequently cause healthy brains to dysfunction.
For more happiness try less analysis and more wonder-filled pondering. People frequently install antivirus aps to protect their devices, but seldom install anti-negativity and anti-dishonesty aps to protect their mind. If we’d stop the lies that we tell self and others, we’d soon discover the truth that sets us free.
A healthy brain, continually filled with unhealthy thinking, won’t function well because of the faulty programming. Often our problem isn’t that our brain needs fixing, but that we need the wisdom and humility to redirect our thinking. The more we accept dysfunctional thoughts and feelings, the more they will hold us captive.
Our perceptions produce our feelings, and our perceptions are often wrong. When lying emotions aren’t resisted and rejected, they can quickly make us think and act irrationally. We can begin to admit, expose, and unravel, whatever we’re thinking and doing that’s causing dysfunction in our life.
All humans are broken. We all need help, even when we’re too proud to admit it. Joy seems elite (instead of normal) when we neglect to delete negative thoughts.
Trying to put together a product that requires assembly, without following directions, often leads to a mess. That’s a life lesson.
Want to feel better? Daily feed your mind on uplifting books and give it a work-out by therapeutic writing (journaling or essaying).
An orchard won’t grow good fruit unless it’s actively and continually cared for, cultivated, and pruned. The same with your mind and heart.
To try to avoid the pain of guilt many people use denial, but it’s much more effective to ask for and receive forgiveness. A thousand pictures (or academic lectures) can’t equal the healing power of a few sincere, compassionate, heart-connecting words.
Much pain
Comes from
Misusing our brain,
But we can train
To think better thoughts.
Without gratitude
It’s easy to have
A bad attitude.
When people have
Hate in their eyes
They’ve been listening
To accusing lies.
Bonus thought: Self-defense, without compassion, can quickly turn lethal.
[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." data-large-file="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." src="https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.co..." alt="" class="wp-image-29805" />Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-5938291.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-3738213.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-3760790.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-10031282.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-416322.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-9589491.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-6532986.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/pexels-photo-3401897.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]Pexels.com](https://stevesimms.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/pexels-photo-6707465.jpeg){kind=link}