God Speaks Daily

“If you choose not to decide, you have still made a choice.”

A corollary is:

“I spent years avoiding decisions because I was afraid to make the wrong choices. I never realized I’d made an even worse decision.”

When I began to accomplish things, right or wrong, making the choices and taking action based on those choices, with the knowledge that I would be accountable and responsible for the results of my actions I gained a huge sense of empowerment. Taking action stopped my analysis paralysis. It stopped the need to gather information as an escape from responsibility.

This saying opened up my life to productivity. It opened me up to getting more things done and more learning experiences.

Over the years, I’ve made enormous mistakes. I have had some wonderful failures. I say wonderful because every time I went out and failed, I learned something. Every time I went out and failed, I got closer to being able to go out and succeed.

This reminds me to take action. This reminds me to come out of my mind, to stop the mental dialogue, and take physical action.

First quote is from the band Rush’s song Freewill on the Permanent Waves album.

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less things bother you.”

This is about outside issues I can’t control. As I looked at these outside issues, I realized that in most cases they’re not my concern.

When I look at the average political debate, there’s nothing going on that has an effect on my life. It has really nothing to do with me, because I know who I am. I’m not involved with it.

It’s just a distraction. And as I’ve found more and more of these things that were just distractions, things that I was allowing myself to become involved with or incensed with, and started saying, “No, this is a distraction, this doesn’t really mean anything to me, it’s just outside of me, it doesn’t affect me,” my life got simpler.

My life got simpler, I got more things done because I wasn’t thinking about what some guy who thought he knew how to run my life and was willing to make my choices for me thought about, but rather just living my life and making my own choices.

“The most important thing you can do for someone is to notice him. The second most important thing is to listen to him.”

At the time I first heard this message from god, I had spent years running around, trying to attract people into my life by talking. I heard this saying and I started, rather than talking, I started listening and noticing people, and going out and noticing people and then listening to them talk.

Brian Tracy calls this spotlighting, which means that you sit with someone and you keep the spotlight or focus on him.

When I started doing noticing and listening to people two things happened. Firstly, I started attracting needy people into my life, which weren’t the people I wanted. These attention-starved individuals flocked to me because I was giving them attention.

And secondly, I started attracting interesting people into my life, the people that I want in my life.

As I got more practice noticing and listening to others, I learned to screen out the needy people, but allow the interesting people into my life.

In the years since I first heard this saying, simply noticing and listening to people has brought many wonderful people into my life.

The corollary to this – and this is what defines a needy person from an interesting person – is the needy person always has to get the attention. They always have to be the one talking. They always have to have the spotlight on them.

An interesting person is comfortable getting attention and is giving attention.

When I get interesting people into my life, I keep them.

“Many people never listen. Instead, they just wait for their turn to speak.”

This is something that has always amazed me when I’m out interacting with people. For a period in my life, I used to get very upset with people who interrupted me. After a while, I realized that these people weren’t having conversations with me, rather they were seeing me as an audience.

As I was starting to realize this, I was working for an individual and I would go to his house and work for 4 or 5 hours a few times a week. When I was ready to leave, he would sit down and start talking.

I would sit and fidget, wanting and waiting to leave. Despite my fidgeting, he would talk. The more I would fidget, the more he would talk.

After a bit of this, he would get frustrated, I would get frustrated, and then I would leave.

When I first heard this saying, I got to thinking about it, and wondered, “What would happen if I just sat down and listened? Maybe that’s what he wants. He doesn’t want a conversation, he wants an audience.”

The first time I did this, it was amazing. Where in the past, I would spend a half-hour or so fidgeting and trying to get away from him in a polite manner, when I sat down and looked right into his eyes and listened to what he said, he ran out within two or three minutes. He had said everything that he needed to say. He got exactly what he needed.

“Before you can walk a mile in another man’s shoes, you must first take your shoes off.”

This statement reminds me that I need to step outside of myself to understand people. It also reminds me, when I’m talking to people, that everything they say is going to be based on the way they see the world.

Many times, people’s opinions are not valid. They see things through their perspective and taint them with their own biases.

Said simply. . .

“We only see the world through our own eyes.”

I really like this saying because it reminds me to see each person as an individual.

This also means I should ignore some advice given by others, because they’re not qualified to comment on certain areas of my life.