Flipping The Switch
We decide to change our own minds.
So much of personal discovery and change has nothing to do with others, whether they are influential writers, speakers, teachers, coaches, gurus, best friends, Hollywood idols, or even our spouse.
Rather, it seems to have more to do with an on/off switch in our brains we decide to flip on or off.
Because the switch is ours to flip, we are responsible for the life we choose to live, even if we don’t want to admit this or don’t think it’s fair.
Periodically, for some reason and at times hard to understand, we decide to flip that switch and reconsider ideas earlier dismissed.
Perhaps it is because we have come to realize our lives have become unmanageable; our thoughts and ideas, once ardently believed, are no longer making too much sense.
Before the flip, we might have been afraid to risk changing our minds.
So much of what we thought and did were being propped up by our stated opinions.
Perhaps too many important relationships were tied to our beliefs that to change our minds risked their demise.
But what if our fear to disappoint is holding us back from deploying our gifts and talents - those known to us and hidden to others?
And what if we have to move ahead for God to guide our steps?
Sitting on past achievements is the opposite to a good plan.
I guess that’s why the only way to find out anything for ourselves is to be willing to lose our lives for something of higher value — to decide to go ahead and flip the switch.
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, [Jesus] said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
For what can a man give in return for his soul?
For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”