Falling Isn’t the Problem; It’s Not Getting Up

Throughout your life you will fall, falter, or fail. However, having either of these tragic experiences doesn’t designate you as a failure or indicate the end of the world or the end of your life. Falling, faltering, or failing are not the issues. The issues are what you experience on your way down, how you view yourself and your experiences once you are down, as well as your need, your want, and your willingness to rise again.

Life itself can deal you some tough hands, but you must learn how to manage and read the cards that you are dealt, instead of becoming the cards. Disappointment is always waiting to knock on your doors of life or to knock you down throughout your life. However, until you recognize that you do have the power, you do have the authority, and you do have the right to choose how you stand against and combat life’s ills, without constantly falling, faltering, and failing, you will continue to welcome disappointment into your home and into your life, believing that you don’t have a choice in the matter.

Even more difficult than having to deal with life’s falls, falters, and failures, is the fact that you can’t seem to wrap your mind around them, understand them, or make sense of them. In essence, it is hard to deal with something that you don’t understand and something that you can’t control. No matter how many losses you face, no matter how many times you stumble, no matter how many times you fall, no matter how many times you fail, the emotional toll you experience can serve as stumbling blocks against you or stepping-stones for you. Although you probably question the role you might have personally played in causing your falls, your falters, or your failures, the answers rarely seem to come.

I am sure that for many of you it seems as if your life has been plagued with one fall, one falter, and one failure after another.  One thing about these disappointments is that they do not have names on them, and you are not the only one having such experiences. Along with being nameless, the outcomes of disappointments are broad and far reaching. And if you haven’t experienced any disappointments yourself, you must be living in an unrealistic state of mind. I’m sure that you know of friends, colleagues, and family members who seem to have more than their fair share of disappointments. As long as you live, there will be one disappointment or another; you will fall, falter, or fail! However, at some point, you must decide that you will no longer fall the same way as you have in the past, and failing will no longer serve as a hindrance to you recognizing your success. You are going to take the lessons garnered from the tragedies and disappointments you have experienced and use them to develop your personal formula for success. However, you must get up!

Disappointments resulting from falls and failures are very difficult and they are just as disastrous as they seem when you are experiencing them. However, the real issues are, how you perceive your disappointments, how you deal with your disappointments, when you come to recognize the lessons being put forth as a result of your disappointments, and what you do with the lessons learned from your disappointments. Too often, you get so caught up in the disappointments of life that you miss the opportunities for learning the lessons being forth in order for you to engage in the positive transformations that are meant to take place. It is imperative that you recognize the importance of getting up and letting go of your disappointments. And if you can’t pull yourself up, find something or someone that you can hold onto as you embrace the recovery process from your falls, your falters, and your failures. God is always there for you; hold onto him, lift your eyes, and your voice in prayer to him! Get up and speak up with positivity!

To keep falling, to keep faltering, and to keep failing without learning lessons and implementing those lessons into your life are signs of insanity. Until you see, hear, and learn from the lessons related to your falls, falters, and failures, you will continuously walk the paths of insanity, falling head first, with your head in the sand, instead of falling feet first, allowing you to finally look up, get up, and climb up and out of the holes in which you have fallen.

When you decide to get up and not wallow in the devastations associated with your falls, falters, and failures, you will come to recognize that you have a choice as to whether you want to belong to the insanity club or not. You can also decide to wallow in your falls, your falters, and your failures, without getting up, or you can decide to look up and get up! You can decide to look at the glass as being half full, instead of being half empty, being the victor and not the victim, by getting up, brushing yourself off, and starting again, without worrying about how it looked to others, what people might say, or what they think. Your worrying, self-deprecation, being emotionally distraught, bing emotionally dependent, coming unhinged, your ‘woe is me’ attitude, as well as your anger, and hatred will not fix your falls, your falters, or your failures; it’s you getting up with a realistic plan of action that will indicate that for you, defeat and failure are no longer options.      

You must come to recognize that each time you fall, each time you falter, and each time you fail, you are experiencing a season in your life. I am sure that through each season of these disappointments, you question whether some negative behaviors that you have put forth against yourself or against others have contributed to the negative occurrences in your life. You also probably ask yourself, ‘Am I receiving payback or being punished for something I did or didn’t do to or for someone else?’ Guess what? God is not siting in heaven slapping his thigh as he kicks up his heels waiting for something negative to happen to you. He doesn’t have time!

On the other hand, your falls, falters, and failures aren’t necessarily payback, but they are grand lessons for you and others. As a result, one of the lessons you’ll learn is that you can’t treat people the way you don’t want to be treated and expect to prosper.  Treat people right and you don’t have to worry about the falls, falters, and failures in your life. As a matter of fact, disappointments will occur anyhow; they might be compounded when you tend to forget how you got to where you are and when you step on the heads and backs of people and forget the bridges that brought you across in order to get to where you want to be. Karma really is a bitch!!!

But the greatest question always seems to be, ‘Why me?’ And why not you; aren’t you human? In all actuality, when losses occur, it’s time for you to gather the lessons being put forth by the losses in order for you to experience the next fall, falter, or failure in a different manner. Losses are opportunities for transformation in and around your life! In order for you to transform from being down, lying down, or feeling down, you must gather the strength to get up, determined to stand up and move up and onward!

You must believe that you can stand once again, recognizing that you will fall again, falter again, and fail again, but they won’t occur as they have in the past. You are now stronger, wiser, and more determined to not be defeated. As a matter of fact, you will no longer cry and wallow in your falls, your falters, and your failures, you will examine how they occurred, gain an understanding of the circumstances in which they occurred, clean up the mess (es) that contributed to your falls, your falters, and your failures, deciding that you will walk differently, stand differently, speak differently, feel differently, believe differently, and fall differently…yes you can!  

When you recognize that “Falling Isn’t the Problem; It’s Not Getting Up,” you will come to recognize that you can triumph over life’s disappointments. You can also confront the emotional fallout that occurs when you fall, falter, or fail, and you can forgive yourself and stop blaming others. You are an overcomer who will not stand down, lie down, or stay down! Once you recognize and learn from the lessons that appear from your falls, your falters, and your failures, you will come to see them as set asides instead of setbacks. You will give God all the glory not only for the lessons learned, but for your falls, your falters, and your failures; without them, there would be no lessons and you wouldn't have another chance at living your life in abundance, with purpose, direction, and love!   

©2017; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

What You Allow Others to Contribute to Your Relationships Will Determine What You Receive from Your Relationships

I am sure that at one time or another, you have had a relationship (or two) to fail. On many fronts, you have been perplexed as to how and why your relationship failed in the first place. The question you must ask yourself and at some point answer for yourself is, “How did I get to the point of being involved in a failed relationship?” Once you realize that for too long, the problem has been that you have allowed others to choose you to be a part of their relationships, rather than you having a say and control over who engages in your relationships with you. You have rarely made the choice to be in relationships with others, allowing them to choose you to be in their relationships.

When others choose you to be in their relationships without you being a part of the choosing process, you allow them to contribute what they want to contribute to the relationship, as well as how they want to contribute, and when they want to contribute. After all, the relationship does belong to them; they chose you! What you allow them to contribute just might not be healthy for you or the relationship, resulting in hell on earth and eventual failure.

Once you have asked and answered the preceding question, hopefully, you will come to realize that what you allow others to bring into and contribute to your relationships will be based on their terms, rendering you helpless in making contributions to your own relationships, based on your terms. You will come to recognize the failures of your relationships, instead of the healthiness and longevity of your relationships, all because they are truly NOT YOUR relationships.

Just as you work hard in deciding the kind of work you do on your job, ensuring that your boss and your coworkers approve of you, providing you with an excellent and favorable evaluation, and an eventual nice raise and bonus, you must work even harder in ensuring that there is harmony, happiness, honor, and approval in your relationships, by managing what and whom you allow to contribute to your relationships. If you continue to allow individuals who are observable wrecks, “slackers,” and “lackers,” including those who lack boundaries, are unstable, and are directionless, to contribute to your relationships, the outcome of your relationships will be based on the contributors and the contributions that they make. Whatever you allow to cross the threshold of your life will infiltrate the very fiber of your relationships, whether good or bad, negative or positive.

If you allow others to contribute nothing to your relationships, you will receive absolutely nothing as a result! If you expect nothing from those you allow into your life and into your relationships, you will still receive absolutely nothing! On the other hand, if the contributions of others are based on the horn of plenty, the results will be plenteous. Your relationships will be filled with all that is great and good. You must remember that people can only contribute to your relationships what you expect them to contribute and what you allow them to contribute. But you can only control the contributions if you choose the relationships in which you engage, as well as the people with whom you choose to engage. Your relationship choices should never be based on a game of chance or checkers, but a game of choice and chess. It’s all about the strategy!

It is important for you to identify and develop the ingredients, as well as the overall recipe for what and whom you want in your life and in your relationships. Although God is the author and the finisher of your life, you are the author and the finisher of how your relationships will start, continue, and end. You have the power and the authority to mandate and dictate what it will take for the people you invite into your life to earn and maintain the love, respect, commitment, positive communication, trust, and other favorable attributes necessary for them to engage in a healthy relationship with you. In essence, you will determine what you will allow into your relationships, what you receive from your relationships, and begin to dictate the outcome of your relationships.

How do you allow someone to tell you that God told him/her that you are meant for him/her, when supposedly you know the same God and He did not tell you that that person was meant for you? And God will not tell you to allow a fool to direct your life! How do you allow someone to fill your life with bags containing rocks of anger, confusion, animosity, hatred, and abuse, when you know that eventually you will sink?  What you allow into your life, based on the contributions of others will determine what you receive…exactly what was contributed.

You must decide to work hard at investing the time necessary for you to ensure that the measure of the people you invite into your relationships actually fit your needs and that they accentuate and enhance your life and your life directions. It is important to recognize that oil and water don’t mix. Toxicity is never an option and will never result in positive and healthy relationships. If you are not willing to drink from bottles with cross bones and skulls on them (poison), why are you allowing others into your life who are offering these bottles of poison to you? If you allow the poisons of negativity, jealousy, infidelity, control, and other infiltrators to dictate and orchestrate your relationships, your relationships will surely fail.

In order to ensure that your chosen relationships are healthy, positive, and long lasting, it’s imperative that you work hard on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to establish your relationship expectations and for you to become aware of and wise enough to recognize the “relationship slackers,” prior to allowing them into your life and most certainly prior to them contributing to your relationships. The same fervor you display on your paid job must be displayed on a daily basis in the work needed for the success, health, and wealth of your relationships.

Although it is imperative that you work at your relationships, work on your relationships, and work in your relationships, you cannot downplay the reality that you must also have people who are contributing to your relationships positively. Along with many of the aforementioned attributes that you must allow others to contribute favorably to your relationships, financial resources are also important.

Why are you allowing your mate, your friend, or your family members to live in your home without healthy and positive contributions to the relationship? What you allow them to contribute to the relationship will determine what you get out of the relationship. And if they are “relationship slackers,” refusing to work or refusing to financially contribute to the household and to the relationship itself, you are receiving the short end of the stick. It is time for you to require those around you to work and contribute financially to your home and your relationships, just as you contribute to them.

It is also time for you to require your grown ‘children’ to get off their butts, engage their feet, their minds, and their abilities to not only find a job, but to also maintain a job and contribute to the household expenses. Stop allowing your chronically unemployed mate and/or chronically unemployed adult children to contribute absolutely nothing to their relationships with you. Stop allowing them to take up space in your home and in your head, while paying no rent, while eating your food, and while usurping your time, your energy, and your emotions, as they display daily levels of disrespect and bad attitudes.

In other words, it’s time for you to stop putting up with the “relationship slackers” in your life!  Stop enabling your lazy mate and your lazy adult children in their refusal to take responsibility for the role they play in their relationship with you. If you have to work inside and outside of your home and work in your relationships, everyone in your household should also do the same! What you allow others to contribute to your relationships will determine what you receive from your relationships!

You now have the awareness, insight, and understanding as to why it is important for you to choose the people in your life and to choose what you allow them to contribute to your relationships. It is now up to you to muster the confidence, the strength, and the tenacity for you to decide when enough is enough, as well as when to draw the line regarding whom you allow to contribute to your relationships, as well as what you allow them to contribute.

Take back your control, take back your household, take back your zest for life, and take back your healthy and positive relationships! And if you can’t do it alone, seek professional help from a licensed relationship/mental health professional. You deserve the best! However, you have to request the best, expect the best, and only allow the best to enter into and permeate throughout your life.  When you decide whom you will allow to enter into your life and into your relationships, as well as what and how much you will allow them to contribute to your relationships, you have made the decision that you will only settle for what’s right, what’s healthy, and what’s best for YOU! The ball is in your court; now make your goals!

©2017; J. Morley Productions, Inc; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30012; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

Recognizing the Deceiver To Avoid Being Deceived

It is often known by most people that we are rarely hurt, disappointed, or deceived by strangers. The truth is, you are not as trusting of someone you do not know or of someone with whom you do not have some level of familiarity. Because you are fearful of what can and will be done to you, by someone you do not know, you will have your antennas up and cover yourself with your protective shield. In all actuality, it is rarely the stranger you fear who will break your heart, break into your home, break your confidence, break your rhythm, or break the essence of who you are. And you probably ask, why is this so?

You and I both know that we rarely, if at all, will allow a stranger to get too close to us. You and I are not willing to invest in strangers or trust them with our hearts, our minds, our body, or our souls…it just seems too risky, too dangerous, and the fear of the unknown outcome is too great. Now for some of you, you might not have this fear or carry these sentiments. Whatever the case, any time you allow others into your life while investing your heart, your mind, our time, your soul, and the essence of who you are, you put yourself in a position to be deceived and betrayed.

Although the stranger you meet is someone to be suspicious of, concerned about, and fearful of, you will probably not allow him/her to get close enough to you to hurt you, betray you, and deceive you. But, when you think about it, the person you fell in love with, the person you allowed in your head, allowed in your bed, slept with, ate with, and shared your secrets with, was a stranger at some point.

It is often a fact that prior to your intimacy with this person you allowed to cross the line into your self-life and secret life was a stranger. As you begin to ponder, think about, and assess the realities as to how you all moved from stranger-ship to friendship and then to an intimate relationship, you will come to recognize how blessed you are and how blessed you have been to have come as far as you have, while being unscathed. This person could have taken you out of your mind, out of your misery, and out of the very essence of who you are! You really did not and probably still do not know him/her.

If you are familiar with someone and have spent a fair amount of time with him/her, you are more likely to trust them and allow them to cross the great divide between stranger-ship, friendship, and then an eventual relationship. However, many of you believe that because you knew someone while growing up, because you all lived in the same block, played in the same neighborhood, you all attended the same school, and you enjoyed some of the same activities, nothing negative can or will happen to you. But, you are so mistaken! You haven't seen Joe or Emily in years. You can only identify with their past, but not their present, and you most certainly cannot identify with their future. You really don’t know them!

Because you believe you ‘know” someone, you will more than likely place your faith and your hope in them, believing they have your back. However, they will probably let you down at some point. As a result, you will lose confidence in them. Not only will it be difficult for you to trust them, it will be extremely difficult for you to trust yourself and others, especially when you feel betrayed and deceived.

If you were to rewind the movie reel of your relationships with these people, you would come to recognize that you saw the red flags quite some time before you allowed them into your life, investing in them with your confidence, your trust, and your beliefs. You believed and hoped that they would change. To change means to become different. The reality is people aren’t prone to become different. Your continuous investment in people who are continuously doing the same things they did yesterday, with additional excuses, and apologizes that mean absolutely nothing, is not so much an indictment of them as it is one of you. As a matter of fact, this is INSANE! The unfaithful will only stop being unfaithful to you when you stop accepting the behavior and enabling them to mistreat you and cheat on you as you have allowed month after month and year after year. The only thing they change is the nature of their game! It is time for you to ‘Recognize the Deceiver to Avoid Being Deceived!”

And you say your best friend, your children, your mate, your parents, your boss and others have disappointed you? They have constantly betrayed and deceived you? How were they able to violate your trust, unless you ignored your own truths and the truths these people have shown to you? Did you have unrealistic expectations of these people? Yes, it is true that when you have lemons, you can make lemonade, but the lemon will still be a lemon!

Whether your relationship with someone is platonic or intimate, the reality is, PEOPLE DON’T CHANGE…THEY GROW! The greatest growth occurs when people mature and GROW UP! If they were deceptive when you met them, they will probably be deceptive when you leave them or they leave you. The only thing that changes is the depth of their deception; they step up their deception game, but they remain the same!

You must learn to see the deceiver you allowed into your life or the one who gained entry into your life through your blindness or state of desperation in his/her true light…as a deceiver. And with a deceiver comes deception. A leopard never changes its spots and a zebra never changes its stripes. You knew he/she was married when you became involved with him/her and now you are feeling betrayed because there is still a spouse in the picture! Why? You made wedding plans, but he/she never committed to you. However, you are blaming your mate and feeling betrayed. Why? You put your own ‘business’ in the street, letting everyone know your secrets. Now you are upset and feeling betrayed because your ‘best’ friend and your family are talking about your ‘business.’ Why? He/she was a habitual cheater while the two of you were dating, but you married him/her anyhow, believing he/she would change. Why? The truth is, you deceived and betrayed yourself. Therefore, you must come to recognize yourself as a deceiver when you aren’t willing to see the truth, stand for the truth, and speak the truth, just so that you can live a lie of pleasure for a short time.

At some point, you must come to realize that many times you set yourself up for the deceptions and the betrayals that you encounter in your life. You believe in the wrong people, the wrong situations and the wrong circumstances; investing in the wrong people, the wrong situations or the wrong circumstances; trusting in the wrong people, the wrong situations, and the wrong circumstances, without believing in, investing in, and trusting in a higher power, along with believing in, investing in, and trusting in yourself. Remember, deception and betrayal have a lot to do with the choices you make; choices such as whom you choose to allow into your life, whom you choose to keep in your life even if you did not invite them into your life, whom you trust, with whom you place your faith, your heart, your belief, and your expectations.

It is time for you to stop investing your energy in people and relationships that don’t yield the returns you expect; that’s if you are looking for or expecting returns. You will most certainly get what you expect, and if you expect nothing, you will receive absolutely NOTHING! Some of you were so bent on returning the White House to a fully ‘white’ house, in order to get President Obama out of the White House and out of the his-story books, that you were willing to do almost anything. You placed your trust, your hope, your beliefs and your expectations in a deceiver who had shown you who and what he stood for. You believed that you would receive something different during the 2016 presidential election by voting for the person currently serving as the president of this great nation; or you chose not to vote at all. Either way, you invested in the choice you made, you had high hopes, and you had high expectations. However, over the past seven months, you have felt let down, betrayed, and deceived. It seems as if the green grass you sought has become artificial turf. At this point, you are feeling very disappointed. The question is, who betrayed whom? You set yourself up to receive the outcome that has taken place, and there is no one to take responsibility for the outcome but you, especially when you saw the reality of what you would be getting from the onset. You recognized the deceiver, but you did not avoid being deceived!

Take some time to sit back and take stock of your life through reflective engagement. This time is not intended as a time to kick yourself in the ass because of your past mistakes. It is a time for you to take a look at those mistakes and assess the role you played in them occurring. Some crucial mistakes are the ones you made by letting old flames and old relationships to reenter and rekindle in your life without having full knowledge of their past or their present, and without a connection to and with your future. It is also looking at the new relationships you formulate, quickly crossing the lines from stranger-ship to friendship, and then relationship, without in depth knowledge of their past, their present, or their dreams for their future. These are the people you allowed into your life without instituting clear and consistent boundaries, ensuring balance in your life. These are the people who brought you packages not wrapped in your favorite color, but packages wrapped in your least favorite color. These are packages sometimes wrapped in your favorite color, but they do not have your name on them. These are packages of deception and betrayal. These are packages where you must “Recognize the Deceiver to Avoid Being Deceived!”

You must also come to recognize that when you don’t have clear boundaries and allow imbalance to take hold of your life, you are setting yourself up for deceit and betrayal. In other words, you are setting up for the ‘okie doke.’ People cannot deceive you or betray you unless you trust them and allow them to take up space in your head, your heart, and your soul. When you allow people to park in your private parking space of life, you render yourself helpless and vulnerable to deception and betrayal.  Why are you picking up a snake and putting it in your bosom or pocket? And when it bites you, you feel deceived and betrayed. The snake didn’t deceive you or betray you…you knew it was a snake when you picked it up, and you know what snakes do!   

Even though years have weathered who and what you thought you knew, as well as what you currently believe you know about people in your life, you must be careful about letting your guard down and invoking your honor of trust, confidence, faith, respect, and love in people who are not in the same book, the same chapter, or the same page as you. You must also not be so desperate to be with somebody, that you wind up with anybody, who turns out to be nobody. You cannot be deceived if you keep your mind, your eyes, your spirit, your truth, and your mouth open. Everyone who comes your way is not necessarily going your way!

 You must recognize and prepare yourself for the setup of deceit and betrayal. You must also recognize the role you play in the deceit and betrayal process. Deceit is a deadly force that is not easy to defeat. Although it is very difficult for you to experience deceit and betrayal, you can recover from them. You have to take them for what they are and stand up to them when they appear by calling them exactly what they are. It is time for you to stop trying to battle with deceit and betrayal and learn to run from them and leave them behind! Deal with the emotional let down associated with these two demons and recognize the lessons learned from your experiences associated with having courted them for a time. Learn to forgive yourself and forgive the deceiver and the betrayer; they are not worth carrying in your heart; your heart is not big enough to share space with mess. This is also not the time to be vindictive or to get back at anyone; they are not worth it! However, it is the time for you to develop a plan of action for you to move forward in life, without deception and betrayal.

Thank God that you are still here to tell your story and you have decided to no longer allow deceit and betrayal to take up space in your home, your mind, your heart, or your spirit! They should not take up space for which they are not paying rent!

©2017; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745, Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com