Tag: Greatness

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The Most Important Thing

We began this series the first week of the year, identifying that we’re all overwhelmed, with me indicating that sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t. Over the next several weeks, I unpacked what it is that I believe contributes so dramatically to us being overwhelmed. It all begins with us growing up believing that we have to earn the love of other people (conditional love). The more or better we perform, the more love we perceive we receive. When we don’t perform well or to the satisfaction of others (not necessarily reality, but as perceived by us), we believe we aren’t liked, we aren’t loved. Think about it in your life. 

This conditional love causes us to lack self-love, which creates in us fear, which then prevents us from doing or trying what we’re truly called to, using our God given gifts, and meeting our full potential. Instead pursuing the things that society says will make us happy…prominence, possessions, pleasure, and people, we work tirelessly trying to earn the love of others and fill the God sized hole in the center of our chests. Overwhelmed, we feel like the hamster on the wheel in glass cage. 

Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to discuss the ONLY thing that can allow us to solve for the above. I’m going to detail for you the path that our Lord took me on, one of conversion, healing, and transformation…being the very best I can be, who He called me to be.  

As you’ll learn next week, it all begins with conversion, which is when we understand our identify in Christ, truly internalizing the unconditional love and forgiveness of God our Father.  This step is absolutely critical to your path to peace, joy, and fulfillment. Without it, you’ll never get there. 

Here’s an observation. Unless we know the love of Christ, little else matters. Over the last several years, I’ve come to say, if every Priest, and if we extend to the non-Catholic Christian world…every Pastor and Minister, gave every homily, sermon, and message, every Sunday for the next 5 years on the unconditional love of Christ, it just wouldn’t be enough…because we just don’t get it. 

Moreover, God made us for greatness, as identified in Scripture, i.e., Jeremiah 1:5 and 29:11. The problem…no one talks about it. How about this, which is absolute truth…

God loves you more than you’ll ever know, no matter what you’ve ever done. He made you with very special and unique gifts and talents, putting you on this earth for a specific purpose. God made you for Greatness!!! 

On page 71 of my book, I identify several ways you can help yourself towards conversion. If you don’t have a copy but would like the list, shoot me a note. 

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

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

Remember…God made you for GREATNESS!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

Trapped by Our Wounds

Many of us are overwhelmed by the wounds that we have. Just like tragedy, which we discussed last week, wounds are inevitable. We’re going to have them…all of us. The question or issue is…how do we allow them to impact us? 

Sometimes the things that hurt us are obvious, i.e., tragedies, accidents, painful relationships, or confrontations with other people — these things are all external and it’s easy to recognize them as the source of our hurt. Other wounds are much less obvious. They are often the scars caused by our own emotions sustained over a period of time, i.e., anger, sadness, anxiety, doubt, or fear, perhaps related to the hurts we’ve experienced, perhaps not. Emotional health demands that we become aware of these wounds so we can start the process of healing and moving forward. 

Trapped by Resentment

Resentment toward those who have hurt us can deepen and exacerbate our wounds, with most of us having experienced holding a grudge. Many are trapped and overwhelmed by resentment, it often consuming us. As pointed out last week, there’s a painfully true saying that resenting someone else is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die. In reality, when you harbor resentment, the only person it really hurts is you. Even if the other person knows of it and feels its repercussions, the impact on them pales in comparison to the impact on you. Our resentment can negatively impact not only our view of the situation, but of the world we live in and the people around us.  

For quite a while, I was overwhelmed by my wounds and resentments, almost in disbelief that these seeming “injustices” could have happened to me. My first wife’s long struggle with alcoholism, the failure of our marriage, her death, the loss of my business … I experienced a range of emotions — sadness, despair, doubt, fear — and I remember being angry and bitter almost on a constant basis. It was real. It was penetrating. It hurt, sometimes almost physically. My resentments over these losses consumed me for a while. I felt very isolated, embarrassed to share the details with anyone. It was the most depressing time of my life. 

There is no question that people wrong us, hurt us, sometimes very deeply, whether with malice or not. But when we let this fact get in the way of us living with peace and joy, we only hurt ourselves. 

So how do we get out of habits of resentment and hurt? It is said that the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that there is one. We need to recognize the issues that plague us, many of which are the types of wounds referenced above. Self-discovery is an important step in healing. So is research and study in helping to find solutions. Healing might also require reaching out to someone like a friend or mentor, even a therapist. Our fear in facing our wounds can be massively diminished if we don’t try to go through it all alone. 

Time Heals all Wounds 

There is at least partial truth to the saying that time heals all wounds. It was true for me. As time went on, the pain diminished and healing began to set it. That said, time alone would not have moved me past my many resentments. It was critical that I take ownership of my role in each of the painful circumstances, recognizing that I bore real responsibility for what had happened to me. And that difficult realization took time. My old wounds of low self-esteem and low self-worth, having been unresolved to that point, added to the pain of these new wounds and fostered a lot of resentment. It wasn’t until I started the challenging process of fixing myself that I could humbly acknowledge my role in my circumstances and start to heal. You can do it too!!!

I look forward to continuing to accompany you on this journey. As always, please forward any questions, comments, concerns, or prayer requests to me at [email protected]. 

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

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph

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Weekly Blog

What Do You Fear?

Last week, we talked about how conditional love leads to lack of self-love, which then creates a fear within us. This fear prevents us from trying and doing things, using our God given talents, meeting our full potential.  

I made a decision in college which was driven by my fear. I loved my economics courses and although doing well in them, I was really good at accounting. More confident of getting a job in the latter, I chose to major in accounting. In hindsight…definitely a result of my fear.

Then there was the time when my company was in pursuit of the proverbial homerun. It was obvious that if we were successful, that it would take us to a much better, bigger place, changing my life professionally and financially. This is where these concepts all tie together. Given the conditional love I experienced, resulting in my lack of self-love, I had this fear of not succeeding that had a grip on me. I wanted it so badly. Although you couldn’t tell from the outside, it paralyzed me from within, causing me to make some bad decisions. 

Fear Impedes Our Progress

Fear impedes progress in our lives. Think about it. Because of fear, you don’t do things or do them differently than you otherwise would. Therefore, the results you achieve, both good and bad, are different than if you didn’t have the fear. Without the fear, your lessons learned, your progress would be different, arguably better. 

What Are Our Fears? 

Separate from your phobias, i.e., snakes, spiders, heights, elevators, what are your fears? Depending on the resources you look to, the list of most common fears can vary. When writing my book, Overwhelming Pursuit: Stop Chasing Your Life and Live, the list that rang most true to me included:

  • Ridicule
  • Rejection
  • Conflict or Confrontation
  • Unknown (Uncertainty)
  • Loneliness

Reciting the above when giving talks, I always ask the audience which of the most prevalent fears is not among the list. Someone invariably answers….FAILURE. 

Why are we so fearful of failure? 

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

I have a plaque on my desk that reads, “What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” Think about that for a minute. How would your life be different? I know mine would. How about yours’?

The irony here is that our true friends and those in our family who truly love us will support us no matter what. So will God the Father, who loves us unconditionally, and His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, dare I say our faults and our failings. 

It says 365 times in Scripture some derivative of “be not afraid”. God clearly doesn’t want us to live in fear. Yet most of us live with fears. It used to be true in my life. I thank God for the journey He’s taken me on, which will be shared as we move through this series. 

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