Confused.me

This is one of those posts that may well be confusing because I am trying to process so many thoughts.

Well I just finished watching the video above. And man, I was blown away by the interviewee. Not so much by what she said, as much of that was similar to what I have been saying.  But rather by her demeanour, her kindness, her grace.  I was reading the comments, and many people said the same thing, that there is a softness and a femininity about the way she communicates. And you know what, I’m now kicking myself because I have been meaning to write a post about a renewed commitment on my part to kindness, grace and gentleness.  But these traits as she expressed them represent who I want to be.
And she is clearly a woman of faith – not just in name only!  And beautiful, and physically attractive.  And despite being clearly successful in her own career, also blessed with a wonderful marriage to someone who sounds like a fantastic man. Man, I was so impressed.

You know what?  I have embraced candour over the last few years, and I think that there was a place for that. I have frankly expressed anger, even blazing rage on this blog and my other one. But that is not who I want to be any more. Now instead of candour I want to embrace radical humility.  This following is a slightly “off the cuff” or spontaneous idea, and I have not really made a commitment to it in my heart. However, I’m thinking that it would be good to explore my own journey of character growth over the coming months and years, not just incidentally, but rather working on a deliberate path of growth and cataloguing my journey (and frankly, that is such an obvious idea on such a blog as this!) I’ve always acted as if I am (of course!) outstanding, and my character is fully developed and excellent for marriage and if my frequent problems were always or often caused by other people’s character failings. And to just dip into candour just once more, I do make a big effort. Really.  All the same, I really want to grow as well, I want to always be growing, and not just so I can brag about how amazing my character is! And for that, for that constant growth, for me, humility is the most important ingredient. You know what, I think that life is going to constantly be throwing big, difficult lessons at us, whether we like it or not, but growth is a choice. And you know what, while I may have gotten many things right, this is something that I have not gotten right, that is, sitting here and venting incessantly.

Off the top of my head, the areas I really want to focus on in my own growth journey and in writing about that growth are: humility, as I’ve said, kindness, patience, and there was a fourth one, possibly a fifth. Grace should also be there, also forgiveness – ah that was it – communication.  Yeah, I write these long posts, but please believe me, I am not good at communication at all. I’m quite non-confrontational so often, instead of saying what I should say, I simply run away. All of these things represent my areas of weakness, as demonstrated to me in the course of writing this blog!  Actually by kindness I mean grace. Something the lady said in the video which really struck home was that you really see who someone is when you have fallen out with them. And of course that struck home because of all the times I have hurled vitriol at people from this blog. I am the kind of person who can be really kind to people before the fall-out, but afterwards…And that is something I really want and need to work on.

Furthermore, I think that God has finally brought me to the place where I can try to be gracious towards Evangelical Christians, and other people who frankly I strongly dislike (lots of frankness in this post, especially as I’m not allowed to use the word “candid” any more!)  I believe that God is teaching me emotional maturity, which I’ve always known to be lacking in my life, and this is a big expression of that, learning to see these people as still being worthy of kindness and grace even though I never want to go near their churches ever again.  Did I tell you about the time that…?!!!  You know what, I’d like to assure you that the time for those rants is over, finally.  Unfortunately ranting has become such a habit that – it’s going to require lots of effort to not just reach for this blog to throw out another spontaneous rant…

Finally, a word about the host, Lewis Howes.  I’ve only just heard about the lady interviewed, Faith Jenkins, through watching this video.  However, I first heard of the host, Lewis Howes, possibly a decade ago (possibly even longer – perhaps as far back as when he was about 23?  Or was that how old he was when he got off his sister’s couch, and I heard about him a few years later? I forget) – through LinkedIn. Now I cannot remember how exactly I came across him, it may have been via an ad on LinkedIn. However, I remember the story that he was into professional sports, but then he had an injury which made him stop playing. And he sat on his sister’s couch for a few months, but then he decided that he was going to stop moping, and try to reach for success. And I can’t remember exactly what it was that he had started – perhaps a networking thing – but he had achieved success quite quickly. Which was impressive in itself, of course. But what really struck me, even all those years ago, was that he seemed to be so down-to-earth, and genuinely humble.  He came across as being non-braggy at all. So I kinda intermittently caught a few things that he was doing, and each time, his humility just seemed to radiate off the screen. Well I’ve been so on-again, off-again with LinkedIn, sometimes not going there for months, or years, and LinkedIn itself has changed a lot over the years. So I completely lost sight of Mr Howes for years until a few days ago when browsing YouTube.  (I think his name also casually surfaced in another context a few years ago which I have currently forgotten.) And I thought from seeing the name – is that that guy from LinkedIn?! And yeah, it’s the same guy! And what really impresses me about him in this video is that he seems to have maintained the same great character. He talks about humility, he also talks about being “in integrity” a few times in the video. Another thing is that he seems so sincere. And then at one point, he actually spoke about building a strong foundation for your relationship.  And I thought: “Has this man been reading my blog?!”

So altogether it was great to watch this video, and learn from these two people who both seem to be truly working so hard on themselves. I am so deeply impressed by the pair of them and I wish them both every success in their various endeavours 🙂

Ah also – this is what I mean by being confused – I forgot to add that over the years I have asked myself whether my own problems have largely been caused by my own failings, in particular my itchy ego!  The answer to that question seems like an obvious yes – right?!  So then, the next question is “how much/to what extent?!”

 

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