the lesson

I heard a good sermon about a month ago. The priest talked about self talk and what we think about ourselves and what we can accomplish. 

In one Native American tribe, there was a belief that there was an animal, a bear inside all of us. As an Elder said to someone young, "The bear can go either way. The bear can give you confidence, make you happy, inspires you to be kind to others and inspires you to do amazing things!

Or the bear can fill you full of doubt, It can make you hate yourself, make you depressed, be mean to others, and there's very little you can accomplish!"

The Youth asked, "What makes the bear be either a positive or negative force?"

Elder replied, "It depends on what you feed the bear. Will you feed him confidence or fear?"

When I say confidence, I mean REALISTIC confidence.  Building up your hopes only to see them dashed is a sure route to depressiopn.
But, it's easy for me to get down on myself.  It's easy for me to be full of fear and downright PETRIFIED of the future!!

The older I get, the more I realize how disciplined our mind must be in order to fight all the large, disturbing challenges each and everyone of us face. 

& self discipline isn't easy when it comes to getting our mind to think one way when it really wants to think another way (usually negative).  Unless things are going well, we all face a lot of inner turmoil, and we will face it in the future.  We have to keep fighting and somehow find a way toward being more successful.  That's hard to do.