Satisfaction with Life
Are you satisfied with your life? Do you enjoy what you are doing and those you work with? Does life bring you a sense of fulfillment when you lay your head down at night?
If your past bothers you, understand that we can choose how to let the past impact us. Paul had a lot to regret in his past and he chose to allow it to motivate him to do better. “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on” (Phil. 3:13-14). We cannot control much of what happens to us in life. But we can choose which events will have a major impact on us and which events will have a minor impact on us. You may find it helpful to think about those negative experiences and ask yourself what good can you make of them.
The future – for all of us – is unwritten. It is full of possibilities, opportunities, and views that have not yet been seen. We look at high school graduates and college graduates as being in that position of having the whole world opened to them and there is some truth in that. But we live in a country of “second chances” and we serve a God of “second chances.” You put both of those together and the possibilities are nearly endless.
You may be working on a project that is going to tax your mental or physical abilities. It may be hard, but you can get through it. Just deal with it one aspect at a time. When we learned Romanian, I encouraged Rachel to learn just one vocabulary word at a time. One grammar rule at a time. You learn new peoples’ names, one person at a time.
You can train your mind to view projects as short-lived or long-lasting. You can view experiences as having a short-term impact on you or far-reaching. It all depends on how you view things.
You will locate a viagra tablets uk number of law companies with websites. No one is sure why but buy viagra without consultation nicotine and alcohol are definitely bad boys. If you want to obtain your joyful life back, commander levitra deeprootsmag.org you’ve got to recognize the reality that drugs can greatly help you out. And do not bother to have levitra on line this patented because the patent office will just throw you out.
One approach that might help us deal with dissatisfactions in life is to stop comparing ourselves to other people. One disadvantage of reading “self-help” books is that it can make us feel miserable because we haven’t experienced the same stroke of “good luck.” Maybe we have squandered opportunities to improve ourselves. We compare ourselves with one another automatically.
But these comparisons feed our feelings of inadequacy and discontent. “How does my income compare with my friend’s?” “How does my raise compare with my neighbor’s?” “How does my house compare with my siblings’?” The apostle Paul wrote, “By the grace of God, I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10).
So, we will compare ourselves to others. Paul teaches us to “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Rom. 12:15). That improves our interpersonal relationships and keeps us from feeling bitter toward others’ success. At the same time, we should work at improving ourselves in whatever way we can and have the resources. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23).
When it comes to satisfaction with life, let’s get less of our self-worth from our comparisons with others and more self-worth from living up to our own potential God created in us and how we are fulfilling those expectations.
–Paul Holland
