a real post - Thought Police by Amy Maclin

Marisa needs this: Thought Police. Here are a few common cognitive distortions.

Emotional Reasoning: Conclusion based on nothing but strong feelings. ("I feel guilty - I must have done something wrong.")

Overgenarlizing: Seeing a negative event as part of an endless pattern of defeat. ("I didn't get the job. I'm such a loser. I'll never get another job again.")
...
Disqualifying the positive: Discoutning anything good as a fluke. ("That interview ent well, but soon they'll figure out I'm a fraud.")

All or nothing thinking: Looking at an issue in black-and-white terms. ("My boss didn't like an example in my report - I blew the whole thing!")

Step back and ask - what's the real world evidence that contradicts my negativism? (not your imaginative evidence!)

buying christmas gifts

I seriously am writing this blog only to get the last title to move down the page because I don't like it. It's weird. I can't tell you about buying Christmas gifts becuase then somebody would read it and know what their gifts are.

Do what you really want, follow your heart, live your dream

What should I do? You ask. And the answer is, "What you really want, what your dream is. Do what you really want to do." This question assumes a lot.

What I really want to do?

Why is it so easy to assume that I know what I really want to do?

And this message is easily mixed with contrary messages. Major in something practical in college, and follow your dream later or on the side. Then later it's -  you spent all this time and effort in this major, now you want to go do something else and throw it all away? Why, yes I sort of thought I was supposed to. I guess I misunderstood.

Do what your heart really wants. Or if you're a evangelical Christian, do what God has really called you to do.

Finding that out is half the battle. When somebody tells me that, or even worse, asks me that question, I think, Will somebody help me please?

John Acuff has a few candles of hope held out, in the form of some oddly surprising advice, considering that the book they come from is called "Quitter".

"Don't quit your day job."

Use it as a platform to launch into what you really want. What your dream is.

There it is again. Do what you really want.

Oh and by the way, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So don't waste your time on something that's not working.

Don't give up on your dream. The only one who fails is the one who gives up, or something like that.

There is one difference my life now and my life a year and a half ago. I'm not any closer to my dream, or even knowing what it is. But I have a job. And according to John Acuff, my job could be a launching pad or drawing board for my dream.

And to some of you, this sounds like a bunch of sentimental hogwash. I shouldn't have a dream or care about what it is - and if I don't know what it is why am I so worried about losing it? Maybe I should reword things for those special readers out there - I'm worried about missing what God really made me to do. He formed everyone with gifts and ways to channel his love and creativity and message to the world, and that's what I don't want to miss.

Perhaps John Acuff has it right when he says finding that is not a matter of discovery (oh the options!), but recovery (when did I know I was doing something I was supposed to? What are the hinge moments? When are the moments from my past I was doing something that stirred my deep gladness?). I threw in the word deep gladness because A. I can't remember what phrase John Acuff used and B. I pulled it from another great quote about mission, vocation and finding dreams.

"The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." That was Frederick Beuchner. One of my heroes.

Why am I so unlike my heroes?

don't have much to blog about

Of course I could tell you that I went and scheduled a training over our department's luncheon. So I missed most of the only festive non-work part of my job. What a bummer.