Author Archives: Yvonne Ator

Faith (Part 2) – Mental Diet,Taking Risks & Defying the Odds to Live Your Ideals

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“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

What do you believe?

Have you ever wondered how you came to believe what you do? Have you always believed the same things or have you evolved?

“Faith is defined as confidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, view, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion, as well as confidence based on some degree of warrant. It can also be belief that is not based on proof.” – Wiki

We view the world through the lens of our beliefs. Our beliefs determine where we place our trust or confidence. So the importance of knowing why and how we believe what we do can not be understated.

Do you believe based on something you read? Or heard? Something you were taught?

How do you believe what you believe?

I love the quote by Henry Ford – “Whether  you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you are right.”

Faith comes by hearing… What are you allowing into your mind?

Sometimes the mind feels like a war zone. Your dreams and aspirations are held hostage by fear, doubt, negativity… We serve as enemy combatants when we self-sabotage…

I doubt myself. Daily.

How in the world did I get here? This was never part of my plan. But I took a step of faith.

I have always been a voracious reader. But I  never even imagined myself as a writer. In fact, during my teens,  I had a teacher who would often scrawl “Too brief!” across my work. It was the first time anyone had ever expressed interest in what I had to say.  I never planned any of this. But a few years ago, I began to have an inkling… Having a scientific background, I delayed acting on this until I could no longer deny the urge to write. I have never studied writing.

But here I am. Writing for you. Sharing my heart with you, wherever you are,  whomever you are and hoping that you will find comfort, belonging and validation in my words.

Here’s the cool thing… the inklings, the gut instincts are not isolated… no, there isn’t concrete evidence, but there are signs of confirmation along the way… When I started getting the urge to write a few years ago, random people unsolicited began encouraging me to write, or start a blog… In an even more interesting twist, a pastor at a church I was visiting prophesied I would write! I didn’t believe at the time but I did feel very encouraged by it.

You are not alone… If you believe in God, you know that God is on your side. Your life has purpose and you can have faith in God’s plans for your life. You can choose to fight for your mind rather than allow the enemy of complacency and mediocrity to numb you from your passions and ideals… You can walk into the arena, knowing that you are not alone.

Take your values with you, remember you have support, you have love and empathy cheering for you in the stadium seats…

And those critics, internal and external, are just critics. If there are constructive lessons, learn them. But be discerning. Make sure you tune out the destructive critics, those who do not have your best interests at heart and seek to keep you from sharing your work…

I am becoming more aware of the things I say to myself. The words I allow into my brain. Do they energize me or drain me? Do they increase or decrease my faith?  Am I constantly complaining or demeaning myself? Or others?

Remember that exercise in psychology class (long time ago!) on the impact of thoughts on muscular strength. A volunteer is asked to stretch arms straight out to the side and resist external pressure to lower them. In the first attempt, the person is asked to think negative, self-defeating thoughts and scenarios such as failure or rejection.  When  someone applies pressure to lower the arms. The arms lower very easily. But during the second attempt, when the volunteer is asked to think or imagine positive thoughts such as “I am strong” and external pressure is applied to their arms, the person is able to withstand the pressure.

What enables some to succeed while others fail, regardless of socioeconomic status and background? What keeps some patients alive and others not?  Studies have shown that patients who feel loved or know that they are being prayed for have better health outcomes.

With today’s steady mental diet of cynical commentary, verbal and physical violence in reality shows, we know that we are slowly depriving ourselves of the mental nutrition we deserve, and in turn, robbing ourselves of the faith and fortitude we need to take the risks required for our dreams.

What are you reading? Tabloids? Trivia?

When it is time to take risks, your mind will either take them from a place of abundance (“I am enough”, “I am good enough”, “there is enough for everyone”, “I have options”) or from a place of scarcity (“there isn’t enough”,” no one likes me”, “no one will give me the opportunity I want”, “I am the wrong race”, “there will be nothing for me if she succeeds”). All of these are based on what you allow into your mind.

“Guard your heart.” I used to dislike this verse because I thought it meant that I was supposed to be closed off… Not at all… It means that your heart is your life’s wellspring… Everything in your life, flows from your heart.

It makes sense to keep your heart pure… uncontaminated by the poisons of  resentment, cynicism and corruption… As a Daring Way Facilitator, I think a lot about wholeheartedness. You can’t be wholehearted while filled with suspicion and resentment and a scarcity mentality. These can also be very contagious states of mind. So, with whom are you spending time?

Your company, your mental state and  your environment will determine your faith and eventually your fate.

Faith means  I am trusting that even though I can not see evidence of success, I venture out anyway… following the inkling, the instinct, that gut feeling. Yes, I will be wise and do the research, read the map, check the weather… But, I will step out when I feel that gut instinct to move.

Faith means stepping out, knowing that I could fall but also knowing that a bridge could appear… Either way, I am trusting, putting my confidence in that which I can neither see nor explain…

The men who landed on the moon, had never seen a man on the moon before… but they had to trust that it was possible. They did all the grueling work of preparing for space. But they still had to take a leap of faith.

You feel that indescribable urge to write a book… you’ve never written before… Write a page. See what happens.

You will never know if you don’t try.

You have to become aware of your thoughts.

And your thoughts can be the difference between life and death! See you next time!

Cultivating Faith:

What about you? What do you believe? What steps do you need to take to

1. What do you believe? About yourself? About your life?

2. What are you allowing into your mind?

3.  What risks do you need to take?

4. What are the odds of your success based on your mental diet?

5. In what or whom do you trust? Who is on your team?

6. In what ways can you improve your odds?

7. What step can you take right now to improve your mental diet? Let us know in the comments below!

You are what you eat, mentally… Feed that brain of yours with the nutrition it deserves. Then you will have the faith needed to take risks and defy the odds to live your calling! See you next time!

Yvonne Whitelaw writes for Yvonnewhitelaw.com where she blogs about her quest to grow into her ideals in her “Live Your Ideals Project”. By sharing her lessons along the way (every Monday and Thursday), she hopes to serve and inspire a tribe of wholehearted warriors like you, to “live your ideals, live your calling and change the world.”

Faith: Uncertainty, Darkness and responding to Life’s Ambiguities.

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“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” ― Gilda Radner

Been experiencing a lot of uncertainty lately.

The past few months have been really trying. I find myself vacillating between two options over and over again. Unable to decide.  Ever the pattern recognizer (I majored in math in college!), I couldn’t figure out why this kept happening.

This happened with trivial or important decisions. Each time, I would find myself stuck, unable to see an obvious choice.  I have always been an deeply intuitive decision maker, so the ambivalence was really difficult to deal with.  Not having my usual sense of clarity was throwing me off. I began to struggle – what Jonathan Fields calls “the thrash”…

And then I realized that this was just a season.

Darkness is inevitable. In life, the dark comes as often as the light… Like the calendar, sometimes the darkness lasts longer depending on the seasons… Think about the equinox… Think about those regions that have daylight only,  others have darkness only…  Some days of the year have longer periods of light than others and so on.

Life is the same way.

The thing is Uncertainty can be tricky because  we want to control everything. We want to know everything. Google has spoiled us with instant information and we expect to know everything about our lives.  We want to say with certainty where we are going to be in 5 years, 10 years, etc.

But the unexpected comes…  cancer…  divorce… an accident…

And even the good things – pregnancy, a marriage proposal, winning the lottery…
How do we respond to the unplanned… the uncertain… the unexpected? How do you respond when things get really foggy or dark?

I don’t have all the answers… I can’t tell you why that bad thing happened to you.. I don’t know… But I know that you are loved. I know that your life has purpose. I know that the sun will come up tomorrow… I know that you can get clear about your ideals and live them. But I can’t predict the outcomes… I can tell you what I expect but I don’t know if it will happen.

And that is ok.

We have to make peace with uncertainty.

I don’t have all the answers. I never will.

So after my most recent experience with uncertainty, I decided to sit with it. Sit with the uncertainty. “Embrace the thrash.”  I decided to trust, breathe into it and do what I can. Listen for the lessons. Look for the gifts. Remind myself  of  my core ideals and make sure I am aligned with them.

There is always something I can do. Instead of flailing and beating myself up, complaining and blaming as I grope in the dark, I can choose differently. I can be proactive, positively intentional and come from a place of worthiness, even in the uncertainty.

Oprah (I am her biggest fan!) writes a monthly column in O magazine  “What I know for sure”. So, A la Oprah, I know for sure that the dust settles eventually… the fog clears… in medicine they say “Bleeding stops, eventually”

In other words, change happens.

So that season of thrash, uncertainty, darkness will pass.

My job is to stay present, have faith that my life has purpose, let my ideals  guide me and keep moving.

I am learning that when the student is ready, the Teacher will appear.

My job is to get ready. Clear my desk. Sharpen my pencil. Get my paper. Get rid of the distraction. Get quiet and  Listen.

This is how I navigated through this intense period of uncertainty. I had exercised faith even though I could not see. I couldn’t see where I was going, I couldn’t figure out how to move forward, so I focused on the things I could do.

You could sit down and wait for the smoke to clear… that’s also fine…

Either way, have faith… especially when you can’t see!

 

Cultivating Faith during Uncertainty:

1. What do you believe?

2. In what ways can you prepare during an uncertain season?

3. What mistakes have you made during uncertainty? What lessons or gifts await you in this season of uncertainty?

4. Do you have a mindfulness practice currently? In what ways can you cultivate stillness?

5. Whom can you reach out to for support?

6. In what ways can you “Embrace the Thrash” as recommended by Jonathan Fields?

7. What are your core ideals? Have you listed them? Are you living them?

 

The Bible says that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”. Keep your eyes on the prize, even when things get dark and uncertain. The sun will come out. But there are gifts in the dark too.  Keep moving and never, ever give up! See you next time!

Yvonne Whitelaw writes for Yvonnewhitelaw.com where she blogs about her quest to grow into her ideals in her “Live Your Ideals Project”. By sharing her lessons along the way (every Monday and Thursday), she hopes to serve and inspire a tribe of wholehearted warriors like you, to “live your ideals, live your calling and change the world.”