Striving to fit in?

Childhood is the true phase of your life where you learn to be original, with no sense of inhibition, shame or fear. You learn to articulate things as you see without fabricating it or coloring it to make it look good. But slowly it is the adults who taught you to limit your powers, shackle your genius and betray the truths of your heart. Very soon you find yourself boxed in and designed to operate at a very superficial level.

The lamp of your creativity, your positivity and your intimacy with your greatness grew dim as you began to worry about fitting in, having more than others and being popular. Well, here’s what I say: participate not in the world of numbed-out grownups, with its scarcity, apathy and limitation. Your surroundings really do shape your perceptions, your inspirations and your implementations. The right values and ethics that you hold on to, will give you the freedom to choose things that are worth and edifying.

The Bible exhorts us by these words, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable -if there are any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy-dwell on these things". This is not a religious emphasis, but a divine way to healthy living which has a capacity to impact our personal life as well as the society we live in.

Why do people continuously strive to fit in to find their significance? God has blessed each one of us with unique gifts and potential to be a better human and live a life that can bring happiness and peace to oneself and to others. Let us help our children and the people in our influence to unleash the goodness and make them realize that they are worth living to impact the community and nation.

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Dealing with negative Habits!

Life is filled with choices and it depends on us as to what we want to choose and why we choose it. What we are today is the result of choices we made at some point of time in our life. Many are hooked into habits that are detrimental to an extent, which has destroyed their career, health and families.

When one habit gets ingrained, especially the negative ones, a person finds impossible to shun the habit when he/she actually wants to come out. The general misconception that people have is that they are in perfect control and can operate the habits in their terms, which is not actually true.

'If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential (persist long enough for a breakthrough). Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit.'. Atomic Habits

Think with me on this, what if each one thinks it is my life and my choice? It will be disastrous. Our personal habits and behavior have ripple effects on others too. This is exactly how the rapists, child traffickers and fascist think and contribute to the depravity of the society and our country.

In addition to this, another area to consider and be conscious of is the moral framework. Sadly, the moral framework now, to a larger extent has been made relative and makes people forget that it has an effect on others whether it is good or bad habits. The Bible states that out of the man’s heart comes evil thoughts that leads to evil work that has a serious implication on the society. You cannot solve from within. You need a Savior from outside who has a capacity to look into your heart and deliver you and me from areas and habits that captivates us for bad.

James Clear in his book "Atomic Habits" points out how these stages work to form good or bad habits. Avoiding the cues at the source will do much good, failing which we will end up hooked into all sort of negative habits that will have a serious impact.

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Popular ideology- If you are not with me you are against me!

One of the biggest challenges we all have to encounter and sometimes struggle with is having difficulty to say ‘No’ to friends, team members, people with whom we encounter on a daily basis because the proposal or what they are claiming to be are not convincing enough and probably not even right. If we recollect, this starts at a much younger age from our school days when our peers assume we are against them because we are not seen always with them.

The smarter and the stronger one’s are those who persuade the weaker ones to be with them in order to fulfill their selfish motives and agendas. We forget that we have the right not to agree to everything especially when it is wrong. Let’s remind ourselves this - we can disagree but still hold hands. People have got this wrong completely but it is worth teaching our children and reminding each other that one has the right to disagree on any grounds, it can be from a logical, emotional or spiritual standpoint.

If this is not sensitized, our loved ones and especially our children who are most vulnerable will find themselves accompanying their friends in doing wrong and may get involved in all sort of craziness. King Solomon the wisest king in his proverbs (found in the Bible) warns us this way, ‘My child if sinners entice you, turn your back on them, they may say “come and join us”. Let’s hide and kill someone! Just for fun, lets ambush the innocent!’ He advises to stay far away from their paths.

Do not get yourselves entangled with the whims and fancies of people just because you don’t want them to think you are against them. Let us learn to do good and encourage others to do good and spread the positive values in order to promote harmony. I constantly want to emphasize the God factor in my article basically because there are no self-established boundaries that can do good to our souls. We need God’s help, a God, who spoke on the issues of the heart, good living and gave a glimpse of eternity.

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The truth outlives a lie!

Talking about lying, do you know how early it starts? It starts really, really early. How early? Well babies will fake a cry, wait to see who's coming and then go right back to crying.

*One-year-old’s learn concealment.

*Two-year-old’s bluff.

*Five-year-old’s lie outright. They manipulate via flattery.

*Nine-year-old’s, masters of the cover-up.

*By the time you enter college, you're going to lie to your mom in one out of every five interactions.

  *By the time we enter this work world and we are breadwinners, we enter a world that is just cluttered with spam, fake digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, a deception epidemic -- in short, what one author calls a post-truth society. 

I would want to bring the facts and research done by Pamea Meyer who is an American author, certified fraud examiner, and entrepreneur. Described by Readers Digest as “the nation’s best-known expert on lying”. You may watch her ted talk on lie spotting in the link given below. 

In her research she brings out these facts. It says on a given day; studies show that you may be lied to anywhere from 10 to 200 times. Now granted, many of those are white lies. But in another study, it showed that strangers lied three times within the first 10 minutes of meeting each other. 

*We lie more to strangers than we lie to coworkers.

*Extroverts lie more than introverts.

*Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do with other people.

*Women lie more to protect other people.

*If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spouse in one out of every 10 interactions.

*Now, you may think that's bad. If you're unmarried, that number drops to three.

*It is said more than three-quarters of lies go undetected

If you seriously think about it, we will notice that we are against lying, but we are covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctioned for centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture, it's part of our history, and all the time part of our carnality.

Pamea Myer states that most often we are willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, to maintain friendship and for various other reasons known to us alone. For sure, you cannot survive by telling lies, it will put you in a spot someday.  The Bible says “the truth shall make you free.”. Yes, it does. It may look strange but when we speak the truth God definitely will help us. It also says, ‘if God sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Recommended link: https://youtu.be/P_6vDLq64gE

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