Apparently I began writing this some time ago, saved a draft and then forgot about it. I may revisit this post and complete it at some point, but I’m going to go ahead and post it with the disclaimer that it’s an incomplete rough draft and should be taken as such. There is one addition to the draft at the bottom.
While perusing this article in the May-June 2008 issue of Psychology Today, I flashed back to one of my recent blog posts in which I wrote about some of my past issues with self-confidence. It occurs to me that, perhaps, it would be beneficial for me to look at this from a slightly different perspective.
From the article:
But frustration is one thing; the decision to give up in the face of adversity is quite another. Why do many people simply surrender when faced with big goals and big problems? How did we acquire this tendency to feel hopeless in the face of a career setback or despair over ever recovering from a breakup (and so do nothing to move on from the relationship)?
The fact is that high-stakes situations demand a different calculus than do run-of-the-mill frustrations. When much is at stake—when, for example, we seek access to power, status, and mates—we often frame the problem as a binary choice, because for most of human history, time and options were severely limited in important matters. Do I go all out and fight for the corner office? Do I risk the relationship by declaring my need for commitment? Or do I do nothing at all and passively wait to see what happens?
On important and challenging matters, we hew to a simple heuristic: Fight, or don’t. Either we take on quandaries wholeheartedly or we feel defeated and immobilized. That heuristic also states, “If I choose to fight, I must win.” Helplessness comes from the idea that one must win at all costs, coupled with the fact that there is never a guarantee of a positive outcome.
A person with a must-win outlook creates an untenable demand that is immobilizing. We propel ourselves toward a goal with the all-or-nothing imperative only to feel a pervasive sense of defeat when we realize we’re not getting all that we think we must. This paradox explains why people often stop working toward the things they most desire.
It should be noted that performance anxiety isn’t really characterized by an internal struggle with our opinion of ourselves but rather by an internal struggle with an external idea, that being the approval and acceptance of others. In a nutshell, if we do well we’re loved by those whose approval we seek and, conversely, if we do poorly the opinion of those people changes in kind. I struggled with performance anxiety, but as I consider the quoted paragraphs, I see the same internal argument used in both situations.
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I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I do know who Ted Williams was. Called the most successful batter in MLB history, he is the only player to ever bat over .400 for a season. 4 out of 10 times, he hit the ball. 6 out of 10 times, he didn’t. The best batter ever failed more than he succeeded. I’ll let you work out the implications.
This post was written by Dave Burchett of “Confessions of a Bad Christian” (link goes to this post on his blog) that you’ll find in my blogroll. Dave and I look at Christianity from the same point of view and I hold him as a mentor in my life, though we’ve never met. I hope you enjoy this post and will pay his blog a visit.
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Today you will see why I keep “Confessions of a Bad Christian” as my blog title. Recently the movie Bull Durham was on a cable channel and I watched it again. Hard to believe it has been over 20 years since it was released. In this article I am going to draw some spiritual applications from an R-rated movie. Gasp. In my early church experience real Christians didn’t watch any movie and most assuredly not an R-rated one. The really godly people did not drink or dance. The really, really godly people did not have televisions. They were a laugh a minute. If any of those folks were to read today’s post they would no doubt remove me from their fellowship that I used to call “The First Church Of Misery Loves Company But We Probably Won’t Love You”.
Despite that risk of censure I press on. No baseball movie that I have seen comes closer to capturing the unique culture of baseball like Bull Durham. It has some rough language and sexual content (see previous sentence). So parents and good Christians should proceed with caution. The main characters are a young pitching phenom (Nook LaLoosh) and a nearly washed up but knowledgeable catcher (Crash Davis) that is brought in to mentor the prize prospect. One of my favorite scenes is when Crash teaches the young pitcher how to handle interviews with the press.
Crash Davis: “It’s time to work on your interviews.”
Nuke LaLoosh: “My interviews? What do I gotta do?”
Crash Davis: “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”
Nuke LaLoosh: “Got to play… it’s pretty boring.”
Crash Davis: “Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down.”
I have learned that the journey with Jesus is simply living it one day at a time. Write it down. You can’t live in regret of the past. It is forgiven. You can’t live in fear of the future. It is in God’s Hands. You live in the moment, one day at a time, trusting Him for that day. That’s the point. Play it one day at a time.
My friend John Weber passed away two years ago. He had a saying that I love.
“God didn’t call me to be spectacular. He called me to be faithful.”
Write it down.
Another quote from the movie Bull Durham had spiritual application for me.
“This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”
In many ways Christianity is a very simple faith that we have made incredibly legalistic and difficult. To paraphrase the line above. “You love the Lord your God. You love your neighbor. Sometimes it is easy. sometimes it is hard. Sometimes life rains on you.”
Why do I want to make it so maddeningly complex? Jesus said that two things are the most important.
One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”
Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”
Today I sit here and wonder why I ever tried to make it anything else? The scholar who heard the words of Jesus “got it”.
The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!” (Mark 12, The Message)
I wonder how the body of Christ would look differently if we concentrated on those two simple commands? Would we worry so much about the worship music style and the vestibule carpet color? Why do we get so exorcised about what other Christians are doing and other people are saying? Why do we care so much about being treated fairly and getting what we deserve? If we concentrated on those two commands we would be so much happier and effective for Christ. We would experience and give grace.
But do I get it? Or do I still get sidetracked by life and pride and worries? It is really very simple. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. Read the Word daily. Love others as you love yourself. That is what Jesus told me to do. Nothing about programs or positions or curriculum or strategies.
Love God. Love others.
Write it down.
Tags: Bull Durham, Confessions of a Bad Christian, Dave Burchett, R rated
I bought a cheap watch from a crazy man
Floating down Canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says now
Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And If I have trouble the warranty said
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
And it rained, It was nothing really new
And it blew, we’ve seen all that before
And it poured, the Earth began to strain
Pontchartrain leaking through the door, tides at war
If a hurricane doesn’t leave you dead
It will make you strong
Don’t try to explain it just nod your head
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
[Guitar Solo]
And it rained, It was nothing really new
And it blew, seen all that before
And it poured, the Earth began to strain
Pontchartrain buried the 9th Ward to the 2nd floor
According to my watch the time is now
Past is dead and gone
Don’t try to shake it just nod your head
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
Don’t try to explain it just bow your head
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
According to my watch the time is now, the past is dead and gone. Jimmy Buffett comes through for sober people. How ironic is that?
Still, this is a great mindset… yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift; that is why it is called the present.
How many times have I gotten hung up on the past or worried about the future, when I should just take a breath and keep on moving? How many times would it have been a great thing for me to look down at a watch that said “NOW”.
I don’t have some profound point to make about this. I’m just writing because the song makes me think. Hopefully, it’ll make you think, too.
Tags: breathe in, breathe out, future, jimmy buffet, move on, past, present
Ok, first allow me to say, I’m back. I thought my domain got renewed, but for one reason or another, it fell through the cracks and I didn’t find out until today. What can I say, it’s been a busy weekend.
Now then, on to the subject of this post.
I’ve long had a penchant for disappearing into fantasy worlds. For a very long time I disappeared into video games for hours on end, but finding myself with less and less interest in playing video games for hours at a time, I did something unthinkable. I started picking up (*GASP*) books. I started reading again with a book I first read 20 years ago called “Red Sky at Morning”. A very good book that I’ll tell you about in more detail sometime.
I just finished another book yesterday. “The Host“, by “Twilight” author Stehpanie Meyer. I’ve not read the Twilight series (though my wife has read all the books twice and my daughter is working on book 4) but I found this book that my wife described as “sorta science fiction but not really” and I thought, why not, I’ll give it a shot. She warned me that it starts off kinda slow and I was off.
The book does, indeed, start slowly. It’s nearly 60 chapters long, and for the first 10 or 15 I didn’t really understand why I kept reading. I didn’t feel any real connection with the characters. I wasn’t really grabbed by the story yet. Still, I kept reading. Saturday and Sunday, I read better than two thirds of the book and just couldn’t put it down.
I’ll spare you the story details, the plot, all that good stuff. You can find that stuff anywhere. What I do want to tell you is why this book was, to me, really great. I cried, several times, as the book wound down to it’s conclusion and today, knowing that there was no more book to read, I was sad. Not sad because I wasn’t going to be able to read anymore of the story, but sad because I felt as if I’d been separated from new friends that I’d shared and experienced a lot with.
You should know that I’m a very visual person and this is something that makes me a slow reader. Books, good or bad, play out as movies captured in my skull. I disappear into the world that’s been created by the author. I become part of the story. If the writer does a good job, I become attached to the people in that world because I’m living in it, with them. Never has this been more true than in “The Host”. I’m sad because I feel a sense of separation; of loss. I miss the characters as if they were real. It is for this reason that I say that this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I laughed with them, cried with them, cried for them, and now miss them terribly. Even worse, there doesn’t seem to be much room for another installment. Nor should there be, if you ask me. The story ends perfectly: enough left hanging to let you fill in more story as you see fit, and final enough that you know it’s the end.
If you’ve not read this book, and you love a good story, I encourage you to check it out. It wasn’t something I expected to like but I found that I loved it and am quite happy I spent the time in this world.
Mrs. Meyer, I look forward to the next one.
I’ve long kicked myself for not accomplishing more with my life. I’ve always felt that I could have done more or been more or experienced more. I’ve come to realize, however, that these feelings stem from my lack of expertise in any one subject. I’m not one that can focus on much for very long. I nearly always grow bored of a particular subject in a relatively short time, no matter how interested I am at the outset. This isn’t always true, but it does have a negative influence on my perception of self.
The thing I don’t seem to take into account is that I have a broad scope of experience in many different areas. A friend of mine once wrote that being a jack of all trades was once a desired job skill while today, well, not so much. For what I spend my days doing, though, it’s not a bad way to go. As I progress in school and toward what I believe to be my call in life, I’m challenged to grow as an individual, but I’m also challenged to grow and learn in a wide range of subjects, which leads me to believe that, perhaps, I’ve been blessed with a personality that is perfectly suited to something I don’t yet fully understand, but it’s much easier for me to take it easy on myself in the process.
That’s not to say that I’ve not made mistakes and that I might not be closer to, if not already reaching, that goal if I’d done things differently, but I can say that I’m one of the only people I know that regularly looks to himself and tries to find something that makes me less than perfect so I can improve personally. I think that’s something to be proud of.