Authors: Joyce Meyer
Tags: #Religion / Christian Life / Personal Growth, #Religion / Christian Life / Inspirational, #RELIGION / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth
Because I have a lot of experience with self-pity, it is one of the attitudes I definitely avoid, and I encourage others to do the same thing. Self-pity is truly pitiful; it is actually idolatry, because we are turning inward and idolizing ourselves. We think incessantly about ourselves and all the ways in which
we are mistreated or disadvantaged. If we truly look at what others have, there are plenty who probably have much less than we do. When we allow our mind to rotate round and round on all the things we don’t like about our lives, we have no peace of mind.
Self-pity is truly pitiful.
I read about a study Duke University did on the subject of peace of mind. There were several factors listed that contributed to mental and emotional stability, but two things really caught my attention: choosing not to waste energy fighting against things you cannot change and refusing to live in self-pity. Both of these decisions helped foster peace of mind and contributed to a happier life.
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Your life may not be perfect, and perhaps you’re not as appreciated as you should be, but feeling sorry for yourself will never change it. Use your energy for something useful instead of useless. Self-pity is a trap. It is like being in a prison in solitary confinement. All that is in our thinking is how bad off we are. We live in the darkness of selfishness and fail to see how truly blessed we are in many ways.
An impatient attitude is another bad attitude to avoid. It brings a lot of stress into our lives, because the simple truth is that we all have to wait on things we want and desire, so we might as well learn to wait patiently. Here is a short story that gives us a hint about how to do it.
A man observed a woman in the grocery store with a three-year-old girl in her basket.
As they passed the cookie section, the little girl asked for cookies and her mother told her no. The little girl immediately began to whine and fuss. The mother said quietly, “Now, Monica, we just have half of the aisles left to go through; don’t be upset. It won’t be long.”
Soon they came to the candy aisle, and the little girl began to shout for candy. And when told she couldn’t have any, she began to cry. The mother said, “There, there, Monica, only two more aisles to go, and then we’ll be checking out.”
When they got to the checkout stand, the little girl immediately began to clamor for gum and burst into a terrible tantrum upon discovering there would be no gum purchased. The mother patiently said, “Monica, we’ll be through this checkout stand in five minutes and then you can go home and have a nice nap.”
The man followed them out to the parking lot and stopped the woman to compliment her. “I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Monica,” he said. Whereupon the mother said,
“I’m Monica… my little girl’s name is Tammy.” (author unknown)
Sometimes we have to talk to ourselves during difficulty in order to keep convincing ourselves that we can be patient and make it through the difficulty. The fruit of patience is in us as children of God, but we do have to use self-control in order for it to manifest. If we say the first thing that comes to our mind (never a good idea), it’s likely we won’t be glad to wait. The flesh is just impatient, but thankfully it can be controlled and even retrained.
Some people think one step ahead of where they actually are, which can cause frustration. One of the best ways to be patient is to keep your mind focused on what you are currently doing. Don’t be so focused on the destination that you fail to enjoy the journey. We live in a fast-paced society where everything moves quickly, and it is easy to get caught up in the cycle of “hurry.”
However, it is not good for us, and it usually ends up causing us to have a short fuse when things don’t go our way. It doesn’t take much imposition or inconvenience to make us blow up!
They say that practice makes perfect, so let’s practice having a patient attitude with situations, people, and ourselves. Most of all, let’s be patient with God when we are waiting on Him to do something we have asked Him to do. God has a perfect timing for all things, and He will not be rushed, so settle down and enjoy the wait.
God has a perfect timing for all things, and He will not be rushed, so settle down and enjoy the wait.
Don’t slip into a “This is too hard—I can’t do it” attitude. Only a very weak person decides something is too hard before they have even tried to do it. Or perhaps they do try a couple of times and then they give up. Even that is less than God’s best because His Word tells us not to get weary in doing what is right, because in due time we will reap if we don’t faint and give up (see Galatians 6:9). The fainting actually takes place in our minds, and then our will to succeed goes right down the drain.
No one can succeed if they don’t think they can. Maintaining an “I can” attitude is the forerunner to the completion of any project. It would be amazing if we could count up all the missed opportunities some people have in a lifetime simply because they think the work or sacrifice involved in doing a thing would be “too hard.”
The list of attitudes we should avoid could go on and on. Others we might consider are a complaining attitude, a selfish attitude, a jealous attitude, a stubborn attitude, or a lazy attitude. In short, we should work with God toward keeping a godly and positive attitude at all times. Positive things add to our lives, and negative ones subtract, so let’s be wise enough to make the better choice. Choose your attitude wisely, because, as it has been said, it does determine
your altitude. Nobody with a bad attitude is going to go very far in life, nor will they be happy.
I heard a story about a ninety-two-year-old woman who was being moved to a nursing home after her husband of seventy years passed away. She waited many hours in the lobby as the facility staff made all the arrangements and prepared her room.
Because this elderly woman was legally blind, a kind staff member described the room in great detail as final preparations were being made. “I love it already!” the new patient exclaimed.
“How can you love it? You haven’t even been in the room yet,” the staff member said.
And that’s when this woman said something truly extraordinary: “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.”
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I love that attitude, don’t you? It didn’t matter how the furniture was arranged or where the room was located; she had already made a choice—the same choice you and I can make today. Let’s choose to be happy!
• The attitude you choose goes a long way in determining the life you are going to live.
• It’s actually harder to have a bad attitude than a good one.
• Don’t be so focused on the destination that you fail to enjoy the journey.
• You can practice having a patient attitude and thinking God-honoring thoughts.
• An “I can” attitude is key to the successful completion of a project.
Do not abandon yourself to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Pope John Paul II
There is a great deal of sadness in the world that could be avoided if people would learn to think the way God instructs us to think. We can actually make ourselves happy if we know how to do it and are willing. Most of us have thought ourselves out of happiness countless times, so why not start thinking ourselves into it? Henri Nouwen said, “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
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If we choose to worry and imagine the worst of what could happen, then we lose the opportunity for happiness. I’ve heard it said that children are happy because they don’t have a file in their minds called “All the things that could go wrong.”
I am sure you have heard the statement “Perception is everything,” and it really is true to a large degree. How we see things affects our moods and determines whether we will be sad or joyful. If someone doesn’t like me, but I believe they do, then I am affected by what I believe, not by their opinion of me.
I am not suggesting that we never face reality. Facts are facts, but the truth, which God reveals to us through studying His
Word, can change facts. We can choose to follow God’s advice and believe the best about our current reality, and by doing so we will remain happy while God is working all things out for our good (see Romans 8:28). Dale Carnegie said, “It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
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Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
Abraham Lincoln
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It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
L. M. Montgomery,
Anne of Green Gables
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We can see from these quotes and others like them that people throughout history have discovered the impact thoughts have on happiness.
Joy is extremely valuable. The Bible states that the joy of the Lord is our strength (see Nehemiah 8:10)! Don’t give yours away too easily.
At what price are you willing to sell your joy? In his book
I Once Was Blind But Now I Squint
, Kent Crockett tells the story of his wife accidentally pulling up to the full-service pump rather than the self-service pump at a gas station. She didn’t realize that she was now paying an extra fifty cents per gallon for the increased service.
When she got home and told her husband she had paid seven dollars more than she wanted to, he was upset at the increased
cost. He did the math in his head and deduced they could have taken their car 128 more miles had they only paid for self-service. He was angry that the gas station had charged so much more for full service.
But then a realization hit him. He said that God showed him that he had sold his joy for seven dollars! Surely his joy was more valuable than that.
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This is a very impactful story that leaves me wondering how often I have sold my joy for even less. Jesus said that He left us His joy.
And now I am coming to You; I say these things while I am still in the world, so that My joy may be made full and complete and perfect in them [that they may experience My delight fulfilled in them, that My enjoyment may be perfected in their own souls, that they may have My gladness within them, filling their hearts].
John 17:13
We have joy in us as a gift from Jesus, but we don’t always appropriate and use all that we have. Can joy be blocked and hindered by life’s difficulties? The answer is yes it can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It all depends on what we choose to focus on.
I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]
John 16:33
Difficulty is never enjoyable, but right thinking in the midst of it will cheer us up. Even though we have trials, we can face them with courage, being confident of God’s love and His promise to help us. It seems to me that joy and happiness (which is a part of joy) comes more from what we believe than from what is happening to us.
Would you be willing to make some changes in your approach to life and even develop some new habits if it would enable you to have more joy and enjoyment?
Perhaps if we studied the habits and attitudes of happy people we could see some of the things we might need to change if we truly want to be happy. If we value joy, then we cannot just passively sit and wish to be happy; we can aggressively pursue it and be willing to make adjustments where they are needed.
One of the things I learned during my pursuit to be happy was that I could not give someone else the responsibility for my joy. First, it is not fair to them and, second, they have no capability to do so all the time. God wants us, first and foremost, to find our joy in Him, and He won’t allow us to constantly get it from any other source. If we were able to do that, we would depend on those people in a way that only belongs to God. Certainly, people can do things that make us happy, but our experience proves that they also disappoint us. The next time you find that you are angry with someone because they didn’t make you happy, you might want to adjust your attitude and take responsibility for your own joy.
Another thing I learned was that complication and stress were devastating to my joy, and the only way to lessen them was to work at simplifying my life. You may think this is impossible for you to do, but it really isn’t. If we do the things God has truly
assigned us to do, He always gives us the grace to do them peacefully and joyfully. However, if we complicate life by adding all the things that people expect us to do, the story changes. Our approach to life is very important. Try the simple approach!
1. If someone hurts your feelings or disappoints you, choose to forgive them instead of getting angry.
2. If things don’t work out your way, trust that God is in control and that what He does will be better than what you had planned.
3. When a problem arises, believe the best instead of the worst.
4. Don’t waste your energy worrying because it doesn’t do any good.
5. Don’t buy more than you can comfortably pay for.
6. Be your unique self and never compare yourself with anyone else.
7. When you sin against God, repent, receive your forgiveness, and don’t waste time feeling guilty.
8. When someone doesn’t like you, pray for them. The real problem may be that they don’t like themselves.
9. If your schedule is overcrowded, then change it!
10. If you’re tired all the time, then get more rest.
The simple approach to pressing problems leaves room for joy in the midst of them, and they get solved much quicker.
Take some time to pray and ask God to begin showing you things you could change that would increase your joy. It has been said that only a fool expects to keep doing the same thing over and over and get a different result.