“Letting go” seems to be a topic that we frequently hear but rarely grasp. At least that was the case for me, until I had no other options than to completely surrender my life. I was always the kid that had big dreams, big plans and big ideas. I refused to let anyone or anything stand in the way of them. I held on so tightly to the life that I “thought” I wanted, that I was unable to allow what God wanted to flow freely into my existence. In a very short period of a year and a half, every possible thing that I could imagine, went wrong. In that period of time I had 8 close friends pass away, I went through the worst break up of my life, I suffered from severe panic attacks, I had $2,800.00 dollars stolen from me, I had my family completely fall apart, I was abandoned and betrayed by the people closest to me, and I had extreme health complications where I genuinely did not know that I was going to survive. This all came to a head while I was working a six month contract at Disney World… the happiest place on earth right? HA!
For the first time in my life I was completely speechless and alone… or so I thought. There was a day in time while in Orlando when I was driving down the highway and I had a complete mental and emotional breakdown. As this was happening, on the regular, secular radio, a song began to play, entitled “It Is Well” by Bethel Music. I had never heard this song before in my life. In this moment in time, it was as if the hand of God reached down into my car and spoke this song to my soul. This moment and this song, forever changed my life. The bridge of the song says “Let go my soul and trust in him, the waves and wind still know his name.” That phrase “Let go my soul” stuck with me, and began to be a theme of my life. When I would get depressed or lonely, instead of sitting in my self-pity, I would journal, read books and pray for the first time in my life. I embraced the act of surrender. Sometimes your house has to fall apart in order for you to rebuild it with a better foundation. I came to the place in my life where I had no choice other than to let go.
Learning to let go and trust that even the waves and wind in your life know the name of God is a powerful, freeing experience. We so often get locked on what our expectations or plans are. In doing so, we are unable to allow a better, more beautiful life to flow freely to us. This theme has not only continued in my life but opened up opportunities and dreams that I never imagined. Learning to surrender has become a part of my purpose. Letting go and finding your purpose through surrender has become something that I am so passionate about that I even wrote an entire book on the same subject, with the same title as the Spoken Word below. For a young man who dealt with severe control issues, codependency, addiction and self-destructive tendencies, it is ironic and sentimental to see how quickly your life can take a new better direction, when you let go of your expectations of self and others and place your trust simply in the creator of the universe.
I wrote this spoken word originally in my personal journal. During that time I never expected to share it with anyone. Often times God’s “plans” are a little different than ours, right? My book “Let Go My Soul” should be released sometime in 2017. That is a completely unexpected dream that fell into my life, which never would have happened if not for the blessing of my trials.
I went through The Journey Training before that season of my life even took place. Although I still had a lot of growing to do between me and God; the growth, acceptance and awareness that I gained at The Journey Training pointed me in the right direction to handle this season of life and to learn what “taking care of myself first” actually looked like.
I hope you all gain something from knowing a little bit about my story. I pray that through this Spoken Word you are inspired, refreshed and find some freedom through the act of letting go. A great way to begin fighting for your freedom is through The Journey Training. In that training, lives are changed, connections are made, awareness is activated and purpose is redeemed, all through a simple choice to play hard and trust the process.
God bless and go be a light to the world!
I am a courageous and inspirational leader, and man after God’s own heart. My purpose is to inspire the hopeless to find purpose in their struggles, through my story.
In my Simply Lose It Society Coaching Group’s last phone call, we explored some important things. We envisioned what our perfect year would look like next year. When we read our paragraphs to each other on the call, I noticed a huge theme. We all wanted more stability in our lives.
For one is was stability in emotions, for another it was stability in family relationships. There were finances, food, and weight. After sharing, I prompted us all to share what our biggest struggle at the current time is. Sometimes, overcoming our greatest struggle of the moment can start an avalanche that gets us moving to that vision – that perfect year.
Stabilizing the situations
I looked up the definition of “Stabilize” and this is what it said: to make or become unlikely to give way or overturn; make or become unlikely to change, fail or decline
We all wanted to be more “steady” and not so quick to go off the rails! I’ve experienced this in my diet, finances, anger, and many things, as I am sure you have, too. Well, one member said their biggest struggle was uncontrollable eating.
Well, being me, I looked up the definition of control and this is what it said: the power to influence or direct behavior or the course of events; to command.
WOW! Who, in their diet, wouldn’t love to be able to direct their behaviors? How about finances, relationships, or responses to events in our lives? I told her, “What I hear you saying is the pendulum swings way to fast.” This led to my next Google.
How do you slow down your pendulum?
I went right to cuckoo clock repair. What do they do if the clock runs too fast, and the cuckoo show up too much? In my life, my cuckoo shows up way too much, and way to quickly! Well, it said that the longer the pendulum, the slower is swings.
So we just need longer pendulums, or more patience. How can we create a longer pendulum in our lives? I began thinking of how I’d done this before, and this is what I came up with.
If I think I am hungry, I usually head straight for a snack or meal. But sometimes if I get distracted, I forget that I’m hungry. Well, I don’t forget that I’m hungry. I actually realized that I really wasn’t hungry, but I mistook an emotion for being hungry. So this is what I’m going to do: when I feel hungry, I’m going to set a 10-minute timer. In that 10 minutes, I’m going to get busy doing something. When it goes off, if I truly am hungry, I’ll still be hungry. I just created some patience, or a longer pendulum, in my life.
Try it before you buy it
You can do this in many areas of your life! How many impulse shoppers do we have reading this? Well, set that timer for when you want to buy something. You might just figure out you can actually live without it, or you really didn’t want it anyway.
Or how about with your anger? In The Journey Training, we teach that many times we are “making up a story” causing us to get mad. In other words, we connect the dots and come to our own conclusions about someone’s actions. Usually, their intention wasn’t what we first thought it to be. We teach trainees to process their emotions before jumping off the cliff. Many times, we can come to the conclusion that we made up a story, and are able to forgive and move on. That is the equivalent of creating a longer pendulum in your feelings before reacting.
What else can you create a longer pendulum for? Where else in our lives would creating opportunities to be patient would help us?
Most people plan more for their yearly vacation than they do their lives. Why not pause, take a weekend off and create a longer pendulum in your own life, too. One way you could do this is to enroll in the very next Threshold class. You never know what you’ve been missing until you stop to smell the roses. I challenge you to find some areas in your life and create a longer pendulum today!
In my career in Land Surveying, which spans 37 years, I’ve learned a lot about the profession. To say I’ve reached the destination of knowing enough would be a stretch for sure, but to say I’ve learned a lot would be the truth.
In our lives, we learn a lot from our experience. I teach an experiential self-development program in Tulsa called The Journey Training which I helped create with some other incredible people. It helps people find out what they don’t know about their actions, lives and beliefs. To explain how it works, as a child you were probably told at one time or another, “Don’t touch that stovetop, it’s hot!” And many of you reading this “tested” that theory you were told to find out it was true, and never touched the hot stovetop again.
When you have an experience like that, the information moves from knowledge in our head to belief in our heart (or wisdom), and you never have to think much on the subject again – you just know the truth! In the training, we “remove the blinders” people have been wearing in their own lives that has been keeping them from what they really want. These unknown truths are the false beliefs we keep defending, but are often what holds us back from knowing the real truth, and in turn getting the outcome we truly want.
And then there were my car-wrecks. It took a rather large insurance bill to wake me up to the truth that a 17-year old boy with two wrecks on his record would cost me. I had to figure it out the hard way when it became rather hard and costly to keep driving because of that insurance bill. I have a 17-year old son today, and quite frankly, I give him as much information as I can – and I hope he has ears to hear!
Know it All
Unfortunately, you were burned if you touched the stove to test the theory (like I did) and it hurt. In our profession, experience is the best teacher. But to save on the cost of learning this way, learning from the experience of others can be a far cheaper, more valuable lesson to us!
I’ve heard many people say with dread, “The conference is coming up. Oh I do NOT want to sit through another one of those.” I remember my first Oklahoma Society of Land Surveyors Conference (OSLS). They were showcasing the latest pen plotters that were available. I remember watching it draw the plat and wondering the logic of why it drew the way that it did. It would begin drawing a word, then the arm would swing away just before finishing the word to draw some lines in the far corner of the plat. Then it would swing back to finish the letters of the word, swing away again, and then come back to dot the i.
Then my dad took me into the conference room and I sat through a 3-hour session about “River Surveys.” It was like a sermon in church to a 12-year-old (I was 12 years old) and I couldn’t keep focused on the speaker. But then a hand flew up in the front and the Surveyor asked a question while the other surveyors wriggled around in their chairs. I think the question was more of a trap for the speaker than inquisitive, and the speaker quickly corrected the Surveyor and perhaps embarrassed him. It seemed the Surveyor asking the question had been doing these surveys wrong his entire life and never realized it. The embarrassment he felt was probably a God-send to the other surveyors in the room who had been making the same mistakes, or had never done a River Survey. His experience, although quite embarrassing, was very valuable to the entire room.
Over the years, I’ve heard many questions in the OSLS Conference classes, and I’ve learned from every one. I’ve learned what I’ve been doing right, and on occasion, what I may have been doing wrong. Both were valuable to me as affirmation or correction, and sometimes just opening my eyes to what I don’t know. Like I say in The Journey Training, “You DON’T KNOW what you DON’T KNOW.” Sometimes it takes experience to find out what that is, but the more we develop ourselves by learning from the experience of others, the more we will create value in our lives without it costing us dearly. And to this day, I’m still learning how smart my dad was. As a man told me on a plane once when he heard I had a young son, “The older he gets, the smarter you’ll be.”
Ask yourself the questions
Let me finish with a story of a woman and her daughter. As the woman was cooking the ham, she took a cleaver and chopped off the bone of the ham before putting in her rather large pot. Her daughter asked, “Mom, why do you chop the bone off the ham before cooking it?”
She answered, “I don’t know, my mother always did, so I do it too.”
Her curiosity got the best of her, so she called her mother and asked, “Mom, why did you always chop the bone off the ham before cooking it?”
Her mother answered, “Because I didn’t have a pot big enough to put the whole ham in.”
Sometimes the question we need to ask ourselves is why we are doing what we do. Sometimes, learning why we do what we do can cause us to change, and in turn do things better. The ignorance of just following suit without knowing the reasons can be more damaging than not knowing how to do something in the first place. At least then we seek to learn how to do it right. Now, that kind of experience is something that can benefit us all!
If you want to find out why you do what you do, please join us for the next Journey Training. I hope to see you soon!
People all over the country debate politics, religion, and morality. My friends? We debate over the location of a bathroom.
Four years ago, two friends and I were at the Rose and Crown Tavern when one asked the other where the bathroom was. The other friend said, “It’s in the back corner.” The one came back from the bathroom and insisted that the bathroom was NOT in the corner. This was debated for the rest of the meal.
Four years to the day later (thanks to Facebook’s on this day feature), the three of us returned to the Rose and Crown, or as we know it, the place where the bathroom is or is not in the corner. We were seated at a table with a straight view to the bathroom. Perfect!
Despite the noise of a tavern, on a Thursday night with Karaoke, the debate produced a healthy discourse. One of my friends said something that I thought was “being right is your perspective.” What she actually said was, “reality is your perspective.” Either way, WOW! Now the bathroom issue is getting somewhere.
Much of our reality, how we experience the world, is viewed only from our own personal perspective. One person may go to a corner bathroom. Another person may go to that same bathroom, but see the hallway that’s 6 feet from the corner as a part of the bathroom, and therefore, it’s not in the corner.
I’m going to go THERE and bring up politics – a very relevant experience of perspective.
You and I could watch the same channel playing the same speech, but our convictions, views, and experiences lead us to very different perspectives. Our reality of that speech can be very different.
“Being right is about your perspective.” Part of what made the bathroom debate last 4 years is the need to be right. Sometimes, we feel like we just have to be right about something and we just can’t allow ourselves to believe that what the other person is saying can possibly be right. We turn simple discussions into competitions where there has to be a winner. That means someone also has to be a loser. Is that really what we want?
In The Journey Training, participants learn to change their “I’m right!” perspective to “I acknowledge your position. This is my position…” This language and perspective change fosters healthy communication with active listening.
What was my position on the bathroom issue you ask? I see BOTH perspectives. The restroom hallway is not in the corner, but the door to the ladies room is in the corner! Just call me Switzerland!
Have you heard something like, “It’s better to give someone a hand up than a handout”? Well, contrary to societal opinion, it’s not a mean or cruel statement. It’s wisdom, because it strikes at the heart of human nature. Sure, there are times to give freely to people in need because we’ve been so blessed. I believe we’re called do so and I bet you do just that. But, when I put my hand out—feeling entitled, deserving, and play the victim—there are clear consequences:
I become lazy
I get angry
I fail to contribute
I don’t serve
I stop learning
Let’s look at these briefly.
I become lazy. If I am handed stuff, why sweat, labor, and toil? Even though we were created to create and designed to work, any person given all he or she needs will find the path of doing nothing an easy one to tread. I simply become lazy.
I get angry. When I believe I’m entitled and then don’t get “what I deserve,” my thoughts are, Hey, not fair! and Why would they do this to me!? And because thoughts drive feelings, the output can only be one thing: Now I’m mad! Anger is generally an unhealthy place to be, serving none of us well.
I fail to contribute. There’s not a “motivational speaker” who hasn’t said, “What goes around comes around!” and “To get you must first give!” Well, no matter your view of these sweaty people on the platform, they’re right. It’s just the way the world works. It’s forever true: we reap what we sow. Truly, when my hand is out, I’m not using it, nor my feet, energy, or talent to add value to anyone else’s life. Fail!
I don’t serve. This sounds like contribution, but it comes before. Contribution is the result; service is the act. The act of serving feeds our soul, ignites our spirit, and creates joy–in us. When engaged in victim thinking, there’s about zero chance I’ll be serving and thus contributing to anyone–not even myself.
I stop learning. If I am lost in the forest, have never been a Boy Scout and want to survive, I would have to learn and learn fast! There would be no time for the traps victim thinking leads to: complaining, blaming, and procrastinating. I would work–intensely—to find food, water, and shelter. I may lack the skills, but the desire to learn would envelope me. If you hand me all that I need to make it, I would learn nothing.
So honest question: Have you ever found yourself in any of these places?
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