Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing p. 2 of 2

One of the most difficult things in your life first is to identify what is the main thing? What is important? What is significant? What is your priority? How do you define yourself? Who ARE you? What ARE you about?

Most people can't tell you who they are, because they tell you what they did or what they do. I sell insurance. I work for a car dealership. I'm a mother of five. Those are all the things you do. Who are you? Really, think about this WHO ARE YOU? There is a difference between what you do and who you are! To the other extreme, they identify themselves by their sexual orientation, social and group affiliations or they identify themselves by the mistakes they made... I'm a drug dealer or I'm an alcoholic etc. NO those are all the things you did. I want to draw a distinction between actions, behavior and personhood! You could have done something that you are not! People will meet you at one phase in your life and define you by the stage you were in when they met you, NOT recognizing that that was JUST a stage that you were going through!

A snapshot of your life. I like to refer to this as a clip of a movie. I like to see myself as the Producer of my life movie and God as the Director of my life movie. I/we all have a viewing audience, some people will appreciate the movie by watching it in its entirety and others will decide after watching a clip that they're not interested. That's fine with me, it's MY movie! There will always be critics.

People will often define you by your mistakes rather than your identity! It then becomes YOUR responsibilty to define yourself and to be able to determine what is the main thing?!? The priority. The center. The full stratum of all that I hope to do. What is your core? Your anchor? Once you figure this out for yourself, you can confidently say ~This IS who I AM! I may have issues. A polarity of issues. Extremity of issues. Issues that are extremely to the right and to the wrong. But you will never be able to keep the main thing by focusing on the peripheral issues.

The way you keep the main thing is to find the center! If your going to balance. Your going to balance yourself by finding your center, NOT the extremes. Everybody has extremes. People who are extremely nice, and extremely kind, and extremely personal CAN also be extremely volatile, extremely angry, flip out, eyes rolling around in their head. Everybody has polarities... polar opposites. What is the Center? Finding the Center releases the potential to balance our life. Anybody who is out of balance, is out of balance NOT because they're a good or bad person but because they have not been able to keep the main thing the main thing and find the Center of their lives.

You can't put out every fire, you can't straighten out everybody's issue, you can't make everybody love you, you can't prove who you are to everybody! You have to think (decide) this IS who I AM! I AM who God say's I am. I can do what God says I can do. I can have what God says I can have. If you don't like me, see ya. This IS who I AM! I'm right here.

You can't spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are a good person to people who refuse to be convinced! Who incidentally are not neccesarily good people themselves. When you do that, you give the power to somebody else, to define YOU. When you give the power to define you away to somebody else... THEY WILL make you whatever they need you to be! Which leads to abuse, abnormal use, ALL un-wanted drama. YOU must define who you are in order to avoid others or circumstances constantly controlling you and dominating your emotions. FREE yourself from this negative cycle!

People who have lost themselves, have lost their center, can't find themselves and they're drowning all the while smiling and saying everything is okay. Because they think that the image is more important than the reality. But what good is it to project well-being, if you don't possess well-being?!?! Seriously, think about this for a moment.

It IS the foundation that we build on. You need to have a solid foundation that is deep, strong and stable inside of YOU, so that when all the peripheral things hit you, YOU won't break or fall apart! Like a mighty oak tree that has roots deep within the ground! YOU too will stand strong. NO matter, who, what, where, when and why!