Monday, December 12, 2011

To LOVE is to BE PATIENT!



How many ways have you been turned off, hurt, frustrated, or badly handled by someone that failed to BE PATIENT. Just think about how you felt this week as you ordered some food while sitting in the drive thru and that person rushed you or showed little patience for you as you were trying to order. How did you feel?

Think about when that person behind you blew their horn at you while you were waiting for the traffic light to change. The light had changed for only a few seconds but they were so impatient only thinking of what they wanted you to do and where they wanted to go. How did you feel?

I think my point is clear. It's the same way in relationships when we are dealing with one another. We must practice patient because it doesn't feel good to be rushed or pressured unnecessarily.

I discovered in my own life that I can be Impatient at times when I'm afraid of something, afraid of losing something or missing a opportunity. What's the key word here? FEAR!

As it relates to relationships how did FEAR affect my ability to be patient, As a child in my pre-teens my father walked away from my mother and left her to raise me and my 7 brothers and sisters. My dad walking away when we really needed him affected me greatly. I began to fear being abandoned, unaccepted, or not good enough.After several failed romantic relationships I began to see how that FEAR was causing me to become IMPATIENT and NEEDY. Always finding myself looking and expecting someone to make me feel wanted and accepted.( I know it's unpopular for a man to confess a level of neediness but this is a real problem with many people and it's not just a WOMAN THING it's a Life thing. If you are a man reading this dont be afraid to look at root issues in your life because that will affect your son and daughter and their children. Life must become bigger than our EGO!)


I began to set unrealistic expectations for what I expected from them. I would become impatient and rush into relationships that were bad for me or seriously frustrate the GOOD relationships.

Today in my life I have seriously made examining me a high priority.For years I was unaware of what I know now about me and the issues that affect how I give and show love and How I demonstrate PATIENCE.

1.You see PATIENCE is really about understanding and caring for the needs of others as you take care of yourself

2.IMPATIENCE is really about trying to get your need or desire met without thought or regard for what others need.

3. FEAR is a poison that weakens, breakdowns, and destroys everything it's connected to or directed at. FEAR builds insecurity that stems from some pain,hurtful experience, or traumatic situation in our lives that went unnoticed or unaddressed.


1 John 4:18 MAKES SOMETHING CLEAR ABOUT THE GOD WHO IS LOVE AND THE NATURE OF LOVE
There is no fear where love exists. Rather, perfect love destroys fear, for fear involves punishment, and the person who lives in fear has not been perfected in love.

Let me make something very clear. God through Christ is the perfect love that passage above is talking about. We cannot reach out to people only to give us perfect love or expect them to cast away and disarm all of our fears. God is the only being that posses a perfect Love for all. His perfect Love flows through us when we commit to loving ourselves and others according to the nature of love that reflects him when we demonstrate it in the way it's laid out BELOW in first Corithians Chapter 13

I believe that love is a nature that we commit to beyond how we feel. ICorithians Chapter 13 states:
LOVE IS PATIENT,( This is the first characteristic of love that we must demonstrate.)
love is kind,
love does not envy,
(love does) not boast,
(love is) not proud,
(love is) not disgraceful,
(love does) not desire its own (way),
(love is) not provoked,
(love does) not reckon the wrong,
(love does) not rejoice at unrighteousness but
(love) rejoices with the truth:
(love) bears all things,
(love) believes all things,
(love) hopes all things,
(love) endures all things.


It's through My relationship with God and people that continue to demonstrate LOVE and PATIENCE toward me throughout the years that I have found strength and freedom to live free from the bondage of fear that gained it's power in my life through bad experiences.


YOU SEE IF WE ARE TO TRULY LOVE AND DEOMONSTRATE PATIENCE we must clear the baggage of our past out of the way which will affect our ability to cater and care for others.

I shared An issue in my life that I believe have given you a great basis for which to examine YOUR OWN LIFE. For me it has been fear that hampered my ability to be patient and allow that aspect of LOVE to consistently flow from my life. WHAT IS IT FOR YOU????

IF YOU STRUGGLE WITH BEING PATIENT WITH PEOPLE ESPECIALLY THE PEOPLE YOU CLAIM TO LOVE START EXAMINING YOURSELF! IN MOST CASES THE PROBLEM YOU ARE HAVING IS PROBABLY STARTING WITH YOU.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

What's love got to do with SELF LOVE?



Have you ever wondered why you do the things you do? Why do I feel this way about myself? Why do I need this to feel a certain way or why do I want that? Why do I need to fit in with this crowd? Many of the answers to these types of questions in most cases are connected to experiences or situations we may have been confronted with in the early stages of our lives that we don’t know how to address. The root issues connected to these types of questions affect how we love ourselves and in most cases determine the type of standards we set in our lives. I firmly believe that who we are on a daily basis is a reflection of how we were shaped through our relationships with our parents or guardians at home and how we process through life’s situations and circumstances. Many of the unresolved issues about our self-image that we carry around daily started developing at home.


This is the place where our heart or mind took its first steps. The heart I’m speaking of isn’t a physical thing. What it symbolizes is a central or vital place in our mind where everything we experience whether it’s good or bad is recorded.

It’s from this very emotional place in our mind that all of the issues of our life flow be it good or bad. Whether we admit it or not we all have emotional needs for security, identity, acceptance, and affirmation.

We develop based on how these four needs are met. Sometimes when we are confronted with confusion or disappointment in these four areas that go unanswered or unresolved it causes chaos in our minds and sometimes our emotions spiral out of control. Instead of clearly assessing the situations that confront us we begin to attack ourselves by developing negative thoughts and attitudes about our life. It’s at this moment that we begin to internalize anger and self-hatred, which causes us to develop a NEGATIVE SELF IMAGE.

Unfortunately, in our culture today image is everything! When we begin to dislike ourselves sometimes we go through life seeking after people, places, or things to identify with what we believe will add value and significance to us. Self-hatred causes us to live in pursuit of new identity, acceptance, security, and affirmation that cause us to live daily without restraints or boundaries. We will have sex, smoke, drink, steal or even kill to fulfill a need for these four things. Self-Love is about understanding who we are, what makes us uniquely different and being comfortable with saying “No.”

Self-love causes us to live our life protected by boundaries and standards that we set for ourselves. It causes us to live driven by a purpose or cause that challenges us to live disciplined and under control. We have to begin to love ourselves enough to know and accept who we are and fully appreciate what makes us uniquely different based on the very special purpose we were individually created for. Self-love is a state of mind that must be maintained and developed in our lives on a daily basis because life will challenge the way we think and feel at times.

Just like self-hatred I believe self-love is developed based on how our emotional needs are met starting in the earliest stages of our life. If you look around in your neighborhoods you may notice that whenever there is a building or house that has been battered and worn down over the years it’s restored or torn down if it’s damaged beyond repair. Much like a damaged building some of us need to be restored in our thinking about ourselves. Regardless of where you are right now in your life your new beginning is only one decision away.

Your new beginning starts with learning to love you. Stop running away from who you really are. Stop running after the crowd! There’s a valuable treasure inside of you called purpose and destiny. It will bring more value and significance to your life than the person, image, place, or thing you may be chasing right now. You are not who they say you are! You are not going to be just like your father. You’re not stupid! You’re not going to be in jail or pregnant before you’re twenty. You’re not a pimp, ho, slut, or bitch. No you are not the ugliest person in the world. Who told you that? You see its statements like these that leave us wounded and bleeding for years emotionally, before we realize how we have been affected. Regardless of where you are you can begin to love yourself today. I am not trying to say that we don’t need to be concerned about the well being of others because we do. We just have to be healthy to help others.


The very nature of love is to guard, and protect. I say that because we guard and protect what we really love. How do I know when I hate myself instead of loving myself? We know we’re living with low self-image when we live our life never exposing our real self because we are afraid that we won’t be accepted by the in crowd. When we keep people in our lives that add no value to us and we know they’re pulling us down but we just can’t cut them off were not loving ourselves.


So Eric how do I begin to love myself?

1.Self-love starts with being willing to let go of some of the hurts and disappointments of our past that cause us to think negatively about ourselves or we must be willing to accept wise counsel to help us process through them.

2. We have to love ourselves enough to say no to people, or things that aren’t good for us and we must love ourselves enough to rebel and revolt against negative thought processes, and attitudes that entice us to live self-destructive lifestyles.

3. We must be willing to reform our circle. Our circle is a support system that’s formed by the most significant and influential people in our lives that we allow to hold us accountable in all areas of our life. We will only be as great as the people we have in our circle. If the people in our circle have no vision for their life we most likely will live without vision or they will tear our hopes and dreams down. Love yourself by building relationships with people that guard you and themselves with restrictions and boundaries in life.

4. Whether you are in a relationship with a significant other or single take time daily or weekly to do things that care for you. Pick one day a week or one week a month to step away for a moment to breath, sleep, pray, write, read,or redeem time for a girls or boys TIME OUT with close friends. Go swimming, travel, do something fun for you. Do something to refresh yourself. Do some self evaluation. Do some self work. Find someone you can talk to about you. Too often through our journey in life we fail to get a tune up and we end up living messy and unproductive lives. Take care of you.


I could keep going but if we start here I really believe we can really get the ball rolling in the right direction. This is a place I'm working on in my own life. I say these things not as a Know it all expert but as a person pressing through a constant process of Change, Growth, and Maturity


Think on these things...........................

Eric T. Little
aka "Twin"

Sunday, December 4, 2011

What's love got to do with it? part2

What's love got to do with it? part2
Previously I touch on the two elements that effect our emotions and ultimately define how we engage each other. Those two powerful forces are lust and love. We must be careful to understand them both and how they effect the climate and condition of our relationships. We must view love and lust as two different people with different personalities and characteristics. Their motives are different. Love desires to give and lust desires to take. Love thinks of you and your greater well being. Lust thinks only of itself and it's own desires with no regard for what you may need or want. As you can see we can really clear the confusion around lust and love when closely examine who they are and how they operate.

The character and nature of love and lust will never change. I 'm centering my discussions around the character and nature of love based on IICorithians Chapter 13.
I believe in many cases we have misunderstood and demonstrated a nature in relationships that hasn't reflected love that was healthy and balanced due to great levels of selfishness. Selfishness isn't a characteristic of love. It reflects the nature of lust that only seeks to take and not give. It seeks to expose and not protect. it's this misconception that I seek to challenge.

Most people attribute love to a feeling. In fact we do feel love but it's not a feeling. I believe love is a "NATURE" that we decide to commit to in our mind and soul before it becomes enamored in emotions.

Nature
1: The essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized; "it is the nature of fire to burn"; "the true nature of jealousy"

2: The emotional and intellectual attributes that determine a person's characteristic, actions and reactions; "it is his nature to help others"


Lust and love have two different natures. We either commit to the nature of love or commit to the nature of lust in our relationships. Love and lust contradicts each other by the nature in which they act and respond. There motives are different. They are what they are. In your relationships stop looking for what not there imagining that it's there. Judge what nature is consistently presenting itself to you and call it what it is. We must stop calling lust love.

Finally we must examine ourselves and determine whether we are truly demonstrating the nature of love or demonstrating the nature of lust. Before we tell some one we love them we must know and understand the nature we are committing ourselves to demonstrating. Love is not about just describing how we feel it's about deciding how we are committed to care, act and respond consistently toward a person place or thing.


I don't know what it takes for each individual to make that decision but it's from that decision that love establishes it's place in our heart. When we classify love as a feeling it gives off the impression that love is subject to change and that's not true in my opinion. I believe that love is a nature that we commit to beyond how we feel. IICorithians Chapter 13 states:
Love is patient,
love is kind,
love does not envy,
(love does) not boast,
(love is) not proud,
(love is) not disgraceful,
(love does) not desire its own (way),
(love is) not provoked,
(love does) not reckon the wrong,
(love does) not rejoice at unrighteousness but
(love) rejoices with the truth:
(love) bears all things,
(love) believes all things,
(love) hopes all things,
(love) endures all things.

The only thing that's subject to change based on it's nature is lust. we cant mix the nature of love with the nature of lust. It's from this place that I desire to see change.

It seems that millions of people are desperate for information as it relates to male female relationships.

One thing that really gets on my nerves is this. Many of us want new and better results in our relationships without putting the time and effort into becoming knowledgeable about the root issues of the problems we deal with in relationships. too many of us want a cosmetic makeover in our relationships. I say that because we shun or reject uncensored truth, and the real work it will require for lasting change. We want everything fast and easy. We must stop stop evading self evaluation because many times that's where change and growth starts in our relationships.

Recently someone asked me why my blogs on relationships are so long and I became a little irritated. I was irritated by the thought that some people could miss valuable information that could really help them and their relationships as it relates to love because they are too lazy to read.

In this life what you need will not always be handed to you. There are some things you must seek out for yourself. Ultimately, as it relates to love and relationships, I write this blog understanding that we will only change things in our lives and relationships when we get tired of banging our heads against the wall of disappointment and Ignorance. We must change the things we can no longer afford to tolerate. we have been talking about Love but we must first commit to loving ourselves. Love not only looks out for the well being and interest of the other person but it also cares for the giver as well. Love is not about ignoring you and your needs totally. Love is not blind and it's not stupid.

Self love would not tell you to ignore abuse and neglect. You can love a person as they are going through different struggle in your relationship but you must know when their struggle and issues are too damaging to your life to carry any longer. You can still love a person even if your relationship has to change. You may be dating someone and you are realizing that the relationship is verbally abusive and very negative. You may still love that person but you don't have to stay in the dating relationship with that person because that type of relationship is hurting you. This is why a relationship with God and wise counsel is so important as we seek to enter romantic relationships.

Sometimes we try to date people we were only supposed to be friends with or we date people that we have nothing in common with and there is no common purpose connecting us to that person other than they are "Fine" or "Sexy." If sex get involve at some point when we are casually dating an individual it causes great confusion because we tend to call what we feel from the experiences love when in most instances it is not truly love at all. Start loving yourself by thinking before you act and understand that wisdom for better choices come from accountability and good information. Seek them both if you truly desire to love and be loved correctly.

Think on these things...........................

Eric T. Little
aka "Twin"