The lyrics to the song “Don’t you worry bout a thing” by Stevie Wonder gives as the reason not to worry is that he would be standing on the side when you check it out!
It’s a very comforting, feel-good song that he wrote in the 70s, but the message is still good, and it influences the question of this blog. Do you know your support network? Are you aware of the people who are for you?
The New Year is here, and no one needs to take on the challenge of a new year without a support network. Football great, Tom Brady, in a recent interview, said that his success on every level was all about the people who came into his life at the right time. He said that he was able to take full advantage of his opportunities because of the support of others who wanted to see him succeed.
We live in a dog eat dog environment. There are many folks who would claim to support you only later to prove they were not. People are jealous, envious, full of hate, and vindictive. Many folks are hurt, and as a cost of that hurt, they hurt others. Support is the difference in behavior.
This year, give those watching something to see. Go hard at whatever task you want to accomplish and draw strength from your team who is on the sidelines routing for you. The new year represents more.
More in 2024! More muscle, more hustle, more appreciation, more love, more success, and more celebration. You are in control of your own destiny, and as you succeed, don’t forget to look over at the sidelines and acknowledge your support!
Determination is the firmness of purpose. Resoluteness. Whenever we see success, determination showed up first. To live life knowing where you’re supposed to go is a beautiful thing. It allows you to step with assurity and act expeditiously.
Obviously, this state is not so easily attained. Many get paralyzed in their desires and crumble at the stress. When there is no “handout” in sight, can you get the job done alone? Ignorance, prejudice, stupidity, pressure, and focus are always against us. It’s a battle whether you have succeeded or failed we all will have these struggles.
Then, our upbringing at times is a hindrance to our future because either someone loved us too much or not enough. Perverted things happened that affected our lives forever or we had a loved one missing which left an empty space in our hearts. We were bullied, discouraged, cheated, lied to, and hurt.
Finally, we lacked the proper examples, we never saw someone else do what we desired to do and we lost our sense of well-being. It was as if there was a conspiracy set against us. But deep down in our souls is a glimmer of hope.
Now hope is commonly used to mean a wish: its strength is the strength of the person’s desire. This would be fine if there had been no challenges or disappointments in your life. But in the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. This means that you have a blessed assurance of trusting in God to bless your efforts according to his will.
Watch how this works: This would mean that you would never trust a man, you would never even blame a man for his folly. Everything that would happen to you would be viewed as part of a grand scheme by God that ends in your benefit. Completely trusting God and living a life to please him is the greatest thing for a man. The Bible teaches us to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. It then promises that everything else we need would be given to us.
When you read about God’s people in scripture try counting all the rich people. Adam was rich — he was the only man on earth. Noah would have experienced this as well being the head of his household. Abraham and Isaac were rich. We literally saw Jacob obtain his wealth. Job and countless others lived extremely well and I believe they were blessed in this way because God saw their heart and knew that wealth would not ruin them.
The point here is that determination begats success but believing in God begats determination. We come into this world being memorized by what we see. I want you to ignore what you see and live life knowing.
Most people, in reading the headline of this blog post would say that God made marriage sacred. Much of what we know about marriage is really heresy and misinterpreted biblical text. Much of our marriage information was learned from movies and TV shows and so it’s really difficult to separate fact from fiction.
The other problem we face in our understanding is which viewpoint we choose to believe. You see, it’s not enough to just do a Google search or go ask your local pastor. We must consider too whether the information is coming from a conservative, moderate or liberal point-of-view as the three do not agree.
So how can you tell which one is right? Is it even possible to have an absolute truth to the marriage question? Most of our beliefs will be shaped around the generation we are from. That doesn’t make the stance right or wrong, just familiar. So is your familiarity more correct than mine?
From my generation, marriage is honorable among all and it is between a male and female just as it is written in the bible. My generation was not accepting of same-sex marriage and really felt “funny” about interracial marriage. We believed that multiple marriages at the same time has it’s highlights, but would be a bad thing overall. And my generation frowned upon divorce but it was growing in popularity.
The generation before me believe marriage was between a man and a woman and divorce was flat out wrong. They believed there were men’s roles and women’s role and as long as each person “stayed in their lane” the marriage would be considered successful.
The generation after me believes that marriage is none of your business and whatever a person decides to do and who they decide to do it with is their business. If two men want to be married then that is their business. If you are in love with a sheep and want that animal to be your wife, help yourself but above all, they believe, people should mind their business.
As for the biblical interpretation, you would think that because the Bible describes marriage as a covenant that it should be sacred. However, covenants are broken all the time (Israel was enslaved due to their covenant breaking with God) and marriage didn’t become sacred until the Catholic church deemed it that in the 12th century.
Furthermore, the vows that you said at your marriage and definitely the ones in the movies and on TV are not biblical. The whole love, honor and obey line was written by a Baptist pastor. Divorce was allowed when the covenant was violated — meaning you broke your promise so the contract is dissolved. Divorce is a sin but not an unforgivable one. The sin of divorce is managed the same way lying, murder, covetousness and stealing are managed: You repent.
The key to understanding and having a successful marriage is about choice. You make a choice to stay with someone and work things out. And it is your choice! It’s your life and you decide your barriers and boundaries and be at peace. If you are with someone who is please to dwell with you then cherish them. The God that loves you would not want you in a toxic situation waiting on him to intervene. He never said he would. He already gave you choice!
One of the most fulfilling things in life is to know your place. To know where you fit in life and actually be doing something that builds your self worth is something everyone would want but few actually achieve.
Opportunity has been covered in red tape and there are so many hoops to jump through that many people give up on chasing their dreams. It is as if our government wanted to keep people from achievement. It seems as if the rich have a hold on making the real money and instead of skill and ingenuity creating opportunities, who you know makes all the difference.
The decision needs to first be made as to the thing that matters most: To seek fame or fortune; to have influence and power; or to make life easier or better for others. Other decisions like whether or not to go to college, start in the military or learn a trade are key. A person can succeed doing either of the three.
Then understanding what moves you and what makes you feel alive. I’ve always asked myself the question is it a job that I would do for free. Then finally you have to make it work. And on the way to completing this task you learn many things about who you are and what you are made of. You learn your passions and your fears. You learn how you respond in problem solving and the things that frustrated you the most.
Above all else you have to master the learning curve to secure your space under the sun. There really is enough world for all of us. You just have to carve out your own slice! Happy cutting!
Living in Western civilization means to live with anxiety and to have something to constantly worry about. It seems that most of what we worry about has to do with things we cannot control. That tends to drive us crazy. We lose time, sleep, energy and creative time worrying.
With such busy schedules I discovered this life hack that tends to work well for me. It seems so simple but for me it was really effective. I scheduled my time to worry. I mean I literally had it on my calendar. Once it’s scheduled I direct my brain to stop worrying until that time. When you focus on this you actually stop worrying. What this allows you to do is focus on solutions and be productive in other areas that you do control.
Pretty neat, huh? Then you literally get a natural high from all the things you accomplished when you focus. And here is the best part — when your scheduled time to worry comes up, you will be hard pressed to find something to worry about. Most of the time the problem takes care of itself. If not, all you have to do is reschedule your worry time.
Now with every accomplishment you have to give yourself credit for it. Celebrate a successful day in some creative way. There is nothing wrong with slowing your pace to congratulate yourself. You mind will conform to this if you focus. This idea works because all we are really trying to do is be productive. We want to be able to do meaningful things that allow us to grow and develop a sense of pride in our living. Successful people have learned how to manage their anxiety and you can to.
Make sure you focus on what matters most and then you make sure you are physically able to hand your load and then give yourself a fighting chance. Get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, enjoy daily exercise and drink plenty of water. You will feel that stress melt away. Trust.
There is something to be said for being together. Our closeness or unity or connection to another person or group of folks quenches the thirsty we have for belonging. As humans we need to be a part of something — good or bad we need to belong. We yearn for inclusion and to be entangled with other people.
Togetherness is defined as a state or feeling of closeness and happiness among people who are together as friends, family members, etc. Some have several groups they associate with. In these groups you should find all you need to balance your life such as encouragement, support, wisdom, intimacy, family, networking and entertainment.
Togetherness is so important that we should have a societal rule that everyone must be a part of a crew. You choose your own crew but your Togetherness will also be charged for trouble you get in. That alone would make us choose our friends more closely and truly be our brothers keeper!
Togetherness greatly helps with mental health issues and it single handedly lowers suicide rates. In fact, overall crime goes down in areas where people cluster together in unity. Many foreigners to this country take their togetherness to a foreign land and excel! They live in close quarters together for a time to save money and get ahead. So two families may move together and live together here. All able-bodied individuals work and the money made is shared with the cluster. Each family helps the other get ahead and they slowly bring in more families as others advance.
This just proves that we are better together. We were created to be a part of a pair that would have the ability to increase it’s nunber and the. They would all work together and look out for each other. We also call this a family!
I remember the crew I had in junior high, high school and college. Then I had a different group of professionals when I entered the workforce. As far back as I can recall, I have never existed without a crew. And all of my groups were successful. How about you my friends? Do you have a crew? Do you support your crew? Is your group successful? Can you rely on them? These are very important questions if you plan to get by with a little help from your friends!
Rochester, New York carries the distinction of consistently having the most rainy days in America. At 167 days on average, the good folks who live there have to keep an umbrella handy. And if we can us rain as a metaphor for trouble then to live a life with almost half of the days of the year being full of trouble wouldn’t make for a good life.
With that much trouble you can’t help but blame yourself for your troubles. There are people sitting in prison right now angry over decisions that went wrong. Some trouble is expected in life but not that much. On the contrary, what would it take to have a life almost void of trouble? The sun shines in Arizona 85 percent of the time. You would think it would be called the sunshine state. So the sun and the rain symbolize the good and the bad and my point here is to analyze what separates the two.
We know that decisions play a huge role but I believe the one holding your umbrella shares in the copability. I guess because of the way I feel about connectiveness and relationships it seems that if I’m holding your umbrella that I’m going to make sure you don’t get wet. Now every one doesn’t have the ability or desire to take responsibility for another person’s actions. I just believe that if we are truly partners then whatever is in me to do for you, I will do it. This is actually a biblical principle as the bible says that God shall supply all our needs according to his riches in glory (Phil. 4:19). Said another way it means that God will be using all of his resources to ensure we thrive. Is it possible to be that friendly with someone?
The point is this: Our arsenal of friends should include soldiers who are dedicated to your success and well being. Likewise, you should be the flipside of that for your team. Make sure the folks in your circle really belong.
So you had an expectation of something — that’s how it starts. Then you feel that you deserve that expectations fulfillment. Excitement follows. Expectation grows and an adrenaline rush ensues.
Then suddenly something unexpected, uncontrollable or undeserving happens and all you were left with is disappointment.
Disappointment is hard to swallow. It doesn’t go down easy. It causes heartaches.
Chasing disappointment is anger. Anger allows the feeling of disappointment to linger. The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment. You can experience periods of sadness, depression and resentment.
It’s as if disappointment laughs at you. It calls out to you saying, “who told you to have expectations?” Disappointment burns.
To protect ourselves we need to stop having expectations for anyone but ourselves. The likelihood of you letting down yourself should be less.
Do yourself a favor and don’t desire something to a level that leads to greater expectation and possible disappointment. Your emotional orientation takes a hard hit everytime you do.
This is the time for reflection and change in our lives and hopefully life’s lessons have taught us well enough that we are heeding the call and understanding what we must do to be better. By heeding the call I mean you are actually listening to your inner reflections on your past and adjusting accordingly.
It seems that for some of us our inner voice is “spot on” with reality and helps us out greatly in our decision making. Then there are others who’s inner voice is wounded and we need a little help to make sure what is said is correct and not detrimental to us.
This is all important because we live among thieves. Thieves are all over the place and we all have a little thievery in us. We all don’t loot or rob people at gunpoint, but what I mean is we steal another persons time, energy and space. We rob people of their joy and happiness and we steal ideas and concepts, friends and lovers and items of clothing like there is no tomorrow. It’s hard to be angry with someone when at some level you are doing the same thing. However, as we mature our thievery should subside. We should not be as taxing on our friends and families and we should be more giving with our own resources.
So when you evaluate the people in your life, this tends to be a common denominator when deciding who should stay and who should go. As we get older it becomes more difficult to deal with theft. So we excomunicate them from our lives.
To help you with this task of elimination, I submit four categories of thieves. The first is called commensalism and these are the thieves that are like suckerfish who ride along with the shark to grab his leftovers. These fish do not bother the Shark, but they exist and thrive because of the shark. These would be your family, particularly your kids (17 and under) and older parents. There is such an obligation to help this bunch that this really becomes a labor of love. In addtion, you may have brothers or sisters in Christ who you have helped them get out of foolishness in the past and since they continue to get better, you continue to help them progress in anyway you can. This group will burn a lot of your energy but the results are priceless.
The next group is parasitism and these are the folks are flat out selfish. Family is not excluded from this category. These folks do almost everything at your expense. It is their consistent selfish behavior that makes them so toxic that you have to decide how much more you can take. With this group, over 90 percent is them taking from you. It is even possible for you to be in denial of this and allow them to continue.
The next group I refer to as spitefulism. I may have invented this word but the meaning is real. This is when two people are together and their brain’s pleasure center allows them to be so taxing on eachother that both are suffering from the interaction. I have seen these couples in counseling. They have come to me and neither party wants to give up anything. This proves that some people should have never hooked up. How do you stay in a relationship where both people are miserable and neither wants to get help. This behavior leds to eventual self-distruction.
The final group is mutualism and this is exactly what it sounds like: Both parties benefit from eachother. In this relation you don’t mind giving so that there is no thievery. This can be with a spouse, sibling or friend.
So now you have been blessed to see another year. The longer we live, the better life should get. If life is not getting better, this is the first indicator that something is wrong. Choose this day who will be in your life. Part of our free will is having the choice to chose our circles. Choose wisely my friend. Because although there is not a precise measure of your stress to life ratio, what is certain is that stress is killing you. Not only is stress killing you, but there are already people plotting for your stuff.
Today I turn 49 years old. It is hard to believe that when I was 16 years old I did not think I would make it to age 30. It was because there were gangs in Detroit and Black males between the ages of 18 and 34 were killing each other or going to jail.
So, I made it…and some. I have learned so much between the ages of 16 and 32 and now 32 to 49 I believe that I have arrived in a few areas and I would like to share.
First, I am thoroughly convinced that I am overall a good person and I love me unconditionally. I make mistakes, I am flawed, I still carry a level of inmaturity and I’m OK with all of that. I love being me and I would not trade that for the world.
Second, I do not have or own anything that I am not willing to part with. Understand what I am saying, all material things serve as my enjoyment, but I can give them up in a heartbeat. Furthermore, my “status” in life does not define me. I am a pastor, author, business owner, psychotherapist and family man and if it all ended today it would be well with my soul. The reason is because I understand that all of these things came with an expiration date. If my bible study is correct, my real treasure is in heaven.
The last thing I will share is that I am most proud of this truth: I am my own man. I am free to do as I please and I chose to serve Jesus the Christ. I understand that whatever I set my mind to do, I can do it. I am not loyal to any earthly group and my belief and ideas are not shared or pressured with a common interest. I am a driver. I make things happen and I fix things. I have many items available to help in my tool belt and I am an agent of change. I am a healer.
So as I celebrate the day of my birth, I thank all who thought to give me a shout or post something on social media. I am praying for continued growth, health and strength but most importantly that I can always live with the person I see in the mirror. Thank you God that I am not a sellout and I understand that I have been purchased already and my soul is not for sale. More on this in 364 days!
ClydeStyle 