by Aren Henry | December, 2019 | Grace, Grit/Grace/Gratitude, Karen Henry
“It is my choice” is ownership. One of the most self-empowering declarations we can make, is the ownership of self. Follow through on those choices are liberating. Empowerment is not something we can be given. Nobody else can give us the choice to do something. The act of saying, “I’m giving you the choice …” translates to someone else thinking it’s theirs to give. It’s not. Choice is power that comes from the core of who we are in relation to all else. We are paralyzed by it, or, we are liberated with it. We can’t avoid the slings and arrows, as Shakespeare said, and yet, we can create a mindset that prepares us for the worst, and the best, of times. Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Free Will I am so entertained by the schools of psychology that debate the nuances of the human condition. Destiny or free will? The chicken or the egg? Positivity or negativity? These are not either/or scenarios. They are on a sliding scale that never fully stops moving throughout the span of a human being’s life. From pre-birth to after death, we are in a dance with universal experiences. We are part of the whole, not outside of it. When we learn through experience, we can choose what’s next. Why then, do we allow anyone ever to tell us what to think, or how to be? Social norms and group think stand as the challenge to...
by Aren Henry | November, 2019 | Grace, Gratitude, Grit, Grit/Grace/Gratitude, Karen Henry
Abundance ‘I have abundance of …’, finish that sentence in your own voice. ‘I am abundant in …’, finish that sentence. Turn it into an action word, and now, a present day, ‘now’ phrase. The self-help industries tell us to envision it, as if we already have what we want. So do some theories in practice in the field of psychology. And in the sports industries. There is an interesting phenomenon happening in the world right now. A pull toward alternative methods of health and healing being reexamined along with the science of what it is to be human. They are more in sync with each other than one would imagine. I know this because I study both. Some of you do too. Openness to new experiences We know that several theories and models in psychology pay attention to how open people are, as a way of seeing the world. We also know that our belief system is a hot topic for today’s times that are constantly in the light. People are noticing every single event that goes on in the world, giving them an overdose of information. Then, they are wondering why they feel so very stressed out and overwhelmed. We are stressed out and overwhelmed because we are taking in too much of everything. We are abundant with information, but not necessarily clarity or education or even common sense. We are flooded with seeing a side of others we never knew was there because we are using our own lens to decide who that person is, based on a small sliver of public information about them. Positive...
