The Lord always
gives me what I need
He has a plan
beyond my desires
and understanding
may I trust
in His ways
in His time
and His love
for He has never failed
faltered or forsaken me
not even once
may I be faithful
to His faithfulness
forever
FAITHFUL TO FAITHFULNESS
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
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Once a person is committed to a certain belief, it can be difficult to change their mind.
This is true even if their belief is illogical.
Beliefs are more often tied to emotions than logic, after all.
The stronger a person feels about what they believe, the less logic, or even truth, matter.
Once their identity is tied to a certain belief, debating or arguing with them is not going to get you very far.
In fact, the harder you try to push them to change their mind, the harder they will resist.
It takes a lot of humility for a person to admit that their beliefs are based on flawed or incomplete information.
Pride and vanity are powerful and obstructive forces, and humility is often hard to come by.
One thing is for certain, however, if you attempt to combat pride and vanity with more pride and vanity, you will likely only make things worse.
Your only hope for helping others to see things from your perspective is to first see things from their perspective.
This means that you have to start from a place of humility, even if they do not.
Time and energy spent trying to change other people’s beliefs is often time and energy wasted.
Beliefs are very personal.
They run deep within our identities.
They inform who we are and how we see and interact with the world.
They are not easily changed.
This is especially true when our beliefs are met head on with resistance.
Resistance tends to make us double-down on our beliefs, to hold them tighter, and to defend them more fervently.
Our beliefs are what we use to protect ourselves against challenges and threats.
Challenges and threats to our beliefs in an attempt to get us to change them, therefore, almost always have the opposite effect.
They makes us cling to our beliefs more tightly.
Our beliefs only change when we are willing for them to do so.
This willingness is not usually brought about by debate, argument, or condemnation.
Willingness, the kind that is deep enough and real enough to make us change what we believe, often only comes about by way of great pain or great love.
We should keep this in mind when we find ourselves tempted to try to change another person’s beliefs.
Perhaps if we spent more time and energy showing the person or persons we wish to change more love, compassion, and understanding, they may come to see for themselves that there is a better way to live and a better way to believe.
Maybe they will come around on their own.
At least we can be certain that our time and energy will not be wasted.
Time and energy spent on love, compassion, and understanding is never wasted.
People may not take our ideas seriously until they see them materialize.
If we have unpopular ideas, that is to say, if we have ideas that are not popular because they are too new, too different, or too disruptive to have caught on yet, we cannot expect people to believe that we are serious unless we show them proof.
The best evidence that we are serious about something, especially something extraordinary, innovative, or outlandish, is to do it.
No one owes us belief. No one owes us trust. No one owes us respect. All of these must be earned through effort, through action, and through results.
Over time, if our ideas prove out, if they do what they say they would and if we do what we say we would with them, we may gain a reputation for having good ideas that are worth pursuing, worth believing in, and worth investing time and resources in.
There is no guarantee of this, however. In the world of unpopular ideas, there is a fine line between perceived genius and perceived madness, and that line is drawn with results.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
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Our feelings are ours alone and it is up to us to change the narrative.
Unless someone causes us some kind of direct physical harm, most likely the way that we feel about the actions of others toward us, good or bad, is more a matter of the story we tell ourselves about who we are to them and them to us, than something real.*
That is to say, quite often, our psychological-emotional anguish over the words, attitudes, and behaviors of others is more the result of our perception, our imagination, and our experiential filters than it is the result of something tangible or even intentional.
This does not mean that our pain, insecurity, or internal turmoil are not real. They are very real to us and have very real physical, psychological, and emotional consequences. Even if it is only imagined, our hurt hurts us.
In spite of our feelings and the stories in our minds that feed into them, if we are able to step back and look at our lives and our relationships objectively for a moment, we may be able to see that, except in some rare and extreme circumstances, very few people have done or are doing anything actually harmful to us. Most of our psychological-emotional distress and discomfort is a self-made narrative we use to justify our inability to face and overcome our own insecurities.
No one is going to change our story for us. We must rewrite it on our own. This may be a long, difficult process and we may need help along the way, but, if we have the ability to recognize the difference between the story and the story teller, there is hope that we can transform from victim to hero.
*PLEASE NOTE: This is not intended to diminish or downplay the experiences of anyone who has survived or is currently living with physical and/or emotional abuse. Physical and emotional abuse are very real and very serious. They can and do have longterm, even deadly consequences, and anyone who has or is currently experiencing abuse of any kind should seek professional and/or legal help immediately.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Meditations on God 