Do you have the discipline to forgive, and have faith? Have you forgiven yourself and others? Do you have faith thing will work out? What are you disciplined in?
Some Back Story
We are going back in time to reveal some of my past. Going back a very long time ago to when I was a small child. I had faith. Yes, faith, and I had discipline as I grew older; however I didn't have much forgiveness for myself or others.
The faith I had was in a variety of things from when I was young to now. Some of the faith was misplaced, and some of it was a negative bias. It was something that just seemed to happen as I went through life. People's idea in faith changes as they move through life or at least mine did, and does.
The discipline I had wasn't that long ago actually. I was getting up at 5am everyday and going for morning walks with my dog, journaling, and reading every morning. Then I am not too sure what happened and I fell out of this routine, and haven't been able to get it back. There are some things I am good with and others I am not so much.
The forgiveness... well that one was lacking, and has lacked at times. I am, or at least I would like think that I am better about it now. I wasn't very forgiving of others, and if I was it wasn't quick, and sure as hell wasn't very forgiving of myself.
Developing the Arts of Forgiveness, Discipline, and Faith.
So how does one develop these three things? How do you develop forgiveness, discipline, and faith? Well first we should probably examine what each of these means to you before we can develop them. I know each of these three things are going to have different meanings to each person so I will let you know what I perceive they are and hopefully that'll help you figure them out for yourself as well!
Let's start with DISCIPLINE as this one element could be the first piece to the other two. Without discipline you can't forge a better life. I know I have, and still do lack a lot of discipline, as a matter of fact writing this blog each week takes a whole heckuva lot of discipline; because well Netflix, kids, video games, and general life stuff.
Discipline Equals Freedom
- Jocko Willink
As I said with my back story I had some good disciplined habits of waking up at 5am each day to get my day started, and as much as I have wanted to do that again I haven't. I am earlier than a lot of people but not enough for me. I have things to do and get done for me and my family, and for you as well. During this period I was walking a lot, journaling, and reading more. Now without this discipline I find it very difficult to get some exercise in, read, or even journal at all.
So what can you do to gain some discipline? There are a few ideas that always seem to float around, and one is accountability. This one is a good one, and the idea is to find some one to be accountable with to gain the discipline to build the habit. What is interesting about accountability though is it requires a level of discipline as well; however you can have it if the other party is prepared to hold you to task.
The second way is to schedule it in to your calendar if it's scheduled or booked your time it must get done. Why else go through all that effort to schedule it and set reminders to not do it in the end anyway. Even if you take baby steps progress is progress so long as you are moving forward.
The second part we are going to tackle now is FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness is a difficult one to handle especially if you have been wronged in the most egregious manor.
There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.
- John Connolly
Some say to forgive is to love ones self and others unconditionally, but what is that? How do you forgive? Forgiveness to me is freedom, once you found the will to forgive some one or even yourself you can move forward. Forgiveness is truly a part of loving yourself, and others.
To be able to forgive you have to search deep down inside yourself and find the courage to let go of the wrongs of the past so you can see a brighter future. This isn't always going to be easy and will require quiet reflection, and self awareness of your feelings. This isn't quite a quick fix for most, and may even be a revelation at some point to them.
As a quick story to give some idea it took me a few years to come to terms with my anger within. Others used to tell me I was angry person to which I would get angry and say no I am not in a mean angry voice of course. It wasn't until I was listening to a podcast one night that was talking taking control and owning your emotions that I finally admitted I was angry, and that moment I felt the anger rush out of my body, and my soul, and mind lift.
So if you have been struggling to get through something and deal with your emotions don't worry it will come. I recommend getting a journal, and writing things down into it to help you reflect and find what is bothering you, and work through it. If it is something someone has done find the courage to forgive them, and let them know, respectively, it had hurt you as they may not have known. Being able to forgive will truly help you better yourself.
The one person I some times struggle to forgive is myself. Not because I have wronged or done terrible things to myself, but because I don't do things I say to myself that I am going to do and then when I should do them I am really tough on myself. I am even tougher on myself when I fail at something I have sunk energy, time, and emotion into just to come up short again, and again. It is something I am still working on everyday. You just have to have faith in the process.
And this brings us to the final piece FAITH. This is a difficult one because faith means lots to different people in many different ways. Faith in ones self, faith in a spiritual guidance, religious faith, and blind faith.
Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation
- D. Elton Trueblood
To have faith, any kind of faith is to have trust. Trust is born out of acceptance, and guidance. You can't have trust if you don't accept that things can and will work out; just not how quickly you intended them to. The universe has it's plan for you and it will come to fruition. Now I am not talking about blind faith here just is just silly.
What I am talking about is learning, understanding, and planning. You don't need proof of something for it to be true you just have to have enough understanding, and learned enough to work your plan. If you can learn from others, and understand what needs to be done you can create a wondrous plan for your life that you can have total faith in.
I think a really great example is religion. A lot of people have faith in one religion or another, and it isn't so much the religion as the figures within them such Jesus, Moses, Allah, and the others. We can't see these figures; however people believe they are there guiding them through the teachings of others, and the people who are being taught have an understanding of what is being asked of them to do. They see the plan, or the forming of a plan of action and they work the plan knowing it will work out.
Sometimes these plans take us a path we didn't see for ourselves, and we end up at our destination it's only a little different than we first imagined. Working the plan and having faith in it being fulfilled we should enjoy the journey as that is where all the real gems lay.
To tie these three ideas together of DISCIPLINE, FORGIVENESS, and FAITH you can't can't have one without the other. To be able to forgive you have to be disciplined with your thoughts and emotions which helps you create faith. You can't have discipline without faith as you need that to know everything is going to work out, which lends to forgiving when things don't go quite as planned.
This is all I have for you this week. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. If you did enjoy this please leave a comment below and share with your friends and enemies.
Ride Hard, and Live Long
It's been my pleasure to write this for you.
Sincerely,
Rob
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