Tag: Challenges

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Weekly Blog

Why You Beat Yourself Up

Last week, we talked about conditional love. My lived experience is that it creates in us a lack of self-love. In believing that we only receive love if we perform well and to the satisfaction of others, we don’t love or believe in ourselves when we don’t perform well. Not loving self then creates fear (next week’s subject), which prevents us from trying and doing things, using our God given talents, meeting our full potential.  

We believe that we have to perform well to be loved. Stated another way, we fear that if we don’t perform well, we won’t be loved. And at a fundamental level, we all want to be loved; we all want to be accepted. 

Related to lack of self-love, consider this – you do really well at something, then hearing ten compliments and one criticism. What is it you remember and concentrate on long after the occurrence? If you’re like most, it’s the criticism. You see flaws in yourself that you don’t see in others. We judge ourselves much more harshly than others. All of this is a result of lack of self-love, born of conditional love. 

Same Was True for Me

My lack of self-love resulted in me beating myself up on a regular basis. From the outside, I was this confident guy, who had it all together…nice family, good business, nice things, but I was crumbling inside. It was real….I had no peace or joy in my life. I was on that hamster wheel, exhausted, deflated, and frustrated. I was overwhelmed. 

We can beat ourselves up over past sins and past decisions, big or small. Both have been an issue for me. Taking the latter as an example, I remember making a business decision with significant financial impact. It turned out to be the wrong decision, with a dramatic negative result. I carried that burden with me for an incredibly long time, beating the “crap” out of myself regularly, i.e., daily, hourly. I couldn’t let it go. According to my therapist, referenced again below, it was stealing the energy from me to live a happy and fulfilled life. 

It Happens to All of Us

When writing my book, I wanted to vet the concepts. As such, I reached out to the Christian therapist who helped me so much on my journey….more on that later in this blog series. I said to her something like, “70-75% of people suffer from lack of self-love…right?” She scoffed at me, laughing. I’ll never forget it. I said, “what do you mean?” She then said, “try 95%+”. She then explained that based on her experience and research, that lack of self-love easily afflicts more than 95% of us”. Wow!!!

Here’s the Truth of the Situation 

Those closest to you, who truly love you, family and friends, could care less how you perform. They’re going to love you anyhow. And God loves you more than you’ll ever know, no matter what you’ve ever done. He sent His only begotten Son to die on the Cross for your sins, dare I say your faults and failings. 

Life is messy, as we’ve discussed in this series so far. The mess is going to continue as we further unpack things over the next several weeks…before we get to the good stuff…the path to peace, joy, and fulfillment. Stay tuned. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

We’re All Overwhelmed

Can you identify with the hamster on the wheel in the glass cage, watching the world go by around you? Take me for example…for the longest time, I was trying to make that wheel go faster and faster. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t find a way to jump off the wheel. Didn’t know if anyone saw me on the wheel. If anyone else was on the wheel with me. If anyone would catch me if I fell off the wheel. I couldn’t keep up; I was massively stressed, exhausted, frustrated, and deflated. I was overwhelmed. 

We’re all overwhelmed. Here’s what I also figured out…I was just as overwhelmed when things seemed to be going well as when things turned bad.

An example of the good times – for over 10 years, I worked every Sunday, 7AM-Noon, meeting my family for 12:30 Mass, believing I wasn’t missing any family time. I was crazy. I used to travel 2-3 days per week. When in town, I’d work from 6-8AM at my desk at the house, then taking the kids to school. I would race to the office for a frenetic pace of meetings and phone calls, working through lunch, going home late afternoon/early evening. 

I would eat dinner on the run, running the kids to their practices and events. I coached many of their sports, so I’d often be on the field with them. I’ve always been an exercise enthusiast, so I always got in my exercise, typically late at night (lots of sleep deprivation). I had business meetings some nights, other meetings other nights; we had a social life. There was always too much to do and not enough time to do it. I was overwhelmed, but because I thought I was in control I didn’t notice. In fact, I was energized by it…I was important because I was busy (so I thought). 

Then there are the bad times, where we have relationship issues, challenges (i.e., COVID), and experience the busyness of everyday life. We’re stressed, frustrated, deflated, exhausted, and very aware that we’re overwhelmed. 

We have the Internet, wifi, social media, smart devices – not only do things move much faster, but there is no way to disconnect; we have no downtime. In the background we’re concerned about our careers, our compensation, needs of our families, college, retirement, paying for houses, cars, vacations, etc., whatever allows us to keep up or get ahead. 

I’d suggest that it afflicts everyone…whether you’re in high school or college, newly graduated, just starting out, advanced in your career or retired; single, married, empty nester or house full of kids, young, old, wildly successful or not. And most believe that once they reach that pinnacle of success, what society says will make them happy, that everything will be good. Believe it or not, just the opposite is true; it often intensifies. 

Does at least some of the above apply to you? You aren’t alone. Join me next week, when we begin to unpack why we’re overwhelmed. Be assured…there’s an answer to this dilemma, how we live lives of peace, joy, and fulfillment. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

Starting Anew

All of us want to live good lives. We want to experience success (which means different things to different people), be happy, and feel loved. Often missing the mark, year-end is a great time to refocus. Advent is a time of preparing, when God becomes man in the form of the vulnerable little baby Jesus. A period of hope, of celebration, Christmas leads to the New Year, a time to plan anew, learning from the past, but leaving it for a better, brighter future. 

Three lessons central to my lived experience:

  • In understanding the unconditional love of Jesus, the unimaginable is achievable
  • There’s a path to peace, joy, and fulfillment 
  • God made us for Greatness

Although all are integral to our faith, we never hear anything about them, including in Church. I’d suggest that if more people knew the truth of the above, Masses would be standing room only. Parishes would once again be the center of family life, like they were years ago. 

So leaving this year and going into next, I’m going to share how we achieve the above three things. I’m going to do so predominantly with “story”, from my life and others. Stories resonate with people. We learn from our own individual stories. And the stories of others…that’s my prayer with this series. 

The Problem

Let’s frame the problem…most of us don’t know how to achieve the three points above. We pursue prominence, possessions, pleasure, and fulfillment in our personal relationships, thinking these things will satisfy us. Probably not unlike you, I fully bought into these false answers for years, working very hard to succeed. Then tragedy struck, and I lost my family as I knew it, as well as the business I had spent so many years building. 

In hindsight, I was overwhelmed when things seemed to be going well, as I was when things got really bad. It just felt different. During the good times, it was all about the pace: running, running, running. There was always too much to do and never enough hours in the day. It was overwhelming, but because I felt like I was in control, it didn’t seem like it. In fact, I was energized by it. In the bad times, I was exhausted, deflated, frustrated, and very aware of just how overwhelmed I truly was. 

When my life reached the point of crisis, I began to learn the lessons that have benefited me beyond belief. As I have learned how to remove the shackles that the world puts on us, I have been blessed with profound peace, joy, and fulfillment. 

Before we can address any issue, we first need to understand it, so the first 5-6 blogs will look at why we are the way we are and how we got here. The second 5-6 will lay out the path the Lord took me on, to resolve our issues, positioning us to live lives of peace, joy, and fulfillment. 

It is my hope that this blog series will serve as a resource to you, that it will help you find relief from whatever life circumstances are overwhelming you. I pray that it will allow you to see yourself as you are: a person worthy of love precisely because you exist, and not for what you achieve. I hope that the principles I lay out will do for you what they did for me, setting you on the path to finding your life’s purpose. Because whether you’re aware of it or not, you were made for greatness. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

Categories
Weekly Blog

What Would You Attempt if You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

My research indicates that one of the biggest fears people have is the fear of failure. What is it about failure that most concerns us? Is it…

  • Being rejected
  • Not being loved
  • Not being good enough
  • Failure itself – what it says about us

 

Why this Fear

So, why this fear? My experience is that we grow up believing that we have to earn the love of others and do so by trying to excel at what we do. Over time, we get trapped into believing that our “who” is our “do”, that our role is our identity. In other words, we believe our worth is in our performance, prominence, possessions, and personal relationships. Most people believe they have to “do” to be loved. 

I’m convinced that believing that we have to earn love creates in us a lack of self-love. We fear that if we don’t perform well, we won’t be loved. And at a very fundamental level, we all want to be loved; we all want to be accepted.

What Would You Attempt if You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

I have a plaque on my desk that reads, “What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Think about that question. Pause and ponder it in your mind, “What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”

  • How would your life be different? (I know mine would be) 
  • What would you try?
  • What would you be?
  • How would the world be different if everyone lived this way?

If your biggest fear is failure (like most), it only makes sense that you would try more things and do them differently if “you knew you couldn’t fail”. You would exhibit more courage. You may possibly think differently about what direction you would go in. You wouldn’t be so tense or nervous when trying a new endeavor. 

 

What Would You Attempt if You Knew Nobody Would Feel any 

Differently about You if You Failed?

So, what would your outlook be on trying new things if you knew that nobody cared whether you succeeded or failed; that it would make no difference as to how they thought about you? 

Again, those who truly love you will never leave you. They’ll always love you for your “who”, not your “do”. And God our Father never sees you as a failure, nor does His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins, dare I say our faults and our failings. 

 

You Can Do Something About It

TRY, RISK, DARE, and DO all that you feel called to. Who cares what happens…those who love you don’t. God loves you regardless. And nobody else matters. 

As always, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with questions, comments, concerns, challenges, or prayer requests.  

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

God made you for GREATNESS!!!

 

Mark Joseph