Category: Things that make you go hmmm

The labels we wear

labels Labels.  We all wear them.  The things people have spoken about us or to us have stuck to us and changed the way we live.  For some it is trying to outlive the labels, and others try to live up to them.  Everyone of us has experienced the labels our world puts on people.

As humans we love to categorize people, and have them fit neatly into a slot that makes sense in our minds.  The standard we use for people is usually ourselves.  When people behave the way we want they are great people, and when they don’t we usually get upset.  If people behave differently enough from us we categorize them as different and set them aside.   We have labels for just about everyone we meet, and we relate to people based on the labels they have.

Growing up there were jocks and geeks, preps and Goths, punks, metal heads and grunge.  But there are more than the social labels we wear.  There are a lot of things spoken to us over the years that have labeled us as well.  Useless, bum, jerk, loser, worthless, good for nothing, dumbass, and many others.  The struggle to be yourself is especially hard for young people still discovering who they really are as they grow into adulthood.  And the labels can be extremely hard to live with as evidenced by our teen suicide rates.more than a label

We are more than a label.  And we don’t have to be the labels that others have placed on us.  Even our parents placed labels on us as we grew up and were told to be something.  Part of the journey of self discovery is learning to discern yourself from the labels.  Under all the labels our world has placed on us is the real you and I.  An extremely valuable person to find.  One that Jesus thought was worth leaving heaven and dying for.

All of those labels have created ways of relating and interacting with our world, and many of them are learned behaviors and are not the real us.  The journey is to help us decide which ones are not us and which ones are.  As we discover ourselves under the labels we can then begin to express ourselves for who we really are.  It isn’t going to be an easy path to take because some of the labels we wear have a depth of pain attached to them that will take some working through.  But the rewards for doing so are incredible.  Don’t let the worry of what you may discover keep you from searching.  There is a great wealth inside each one of us if we are willing to look for and discover who we really are.

Share the journey

shapeimage_2The journey to become who we were created to be is a powerful and life changing one.  It is unfortunately one that many people miss out on taking.  They become whoever their world, situation or friendships demand, and miss completely out on the adventure they were created for.  Once you start the journey, your life begins to shift, and things that you thought were once important often begin to fade away because your filters for life have changed.

As you journey you get to see yourself and others differently, and you become more accepting of others because you are becoming more secure in who you are so when others are different they no longer cause you to be uncomfortable or threatened.  It truly is an amazing journey that all of us should be on.  The world would be a much different place to live if we did.  As we journey we write about who we are becoming and the changes we are making because we understand ourselves better when we write about it.  Our journals begin to record the milestones along the way and we understand ourselves and our environment better.

Just as important as journaling is for us to understand ourselves, is sharing your journey with someone else.  Finding someone you can be honest with, and who can be honest with you is invaluable to discovering yourself.  We can come to some understanding by writing, but it pales in comparison to the depth of understanding we gain by sharing our journey.  Finding someone you can trust openly and begin to share your struggles, insights and victories helps you to process deeply who you are and their questions and insights as you share help you discover what changes you could be making.

Someone once said You don’t truly understand something until you try to teach it to someone else. The process of sharing anything that you think you understand deepens you level of understanding because you have to take that mess of information, sort it out, repackage it and organize it in a way that someone else can understand.   By having to help someone else understand your journey you open the door to you understanding you.

When we are trying to explain something to someone else, we are forced to ask ourselves the most important question in leaning… in gaining true understanding… “why.” When we have to answer the question “why,” superficial understanding won’t do. We have to know something deeply in order to not just say how, but why.  Why we are is just as important as who we are and who we are becoming.  Only by sharing the journey with someone else can we truly and deeply understand ourselves.

Mapping the journey

journalingJournaling is something that I used to hate doing.  It was always something that others mentioned that would help me in my life and encouraged me to do.  But every time I tried I struggled to make it worth while.  It always seemed like a diary to me and I had absolutely no use for a log of my daily events.

Recently I came to understand journaling in a whole new light.  It was never supposed to be a diary.  There was no need at all the log events that happened in my life at all.  Unless that is something that you want to do.  Journaling was meant to be a way to sort out your thoughts and feelings.  Sometimes this is linked to an event, but doesn’t need to be.  If we want to truly know ourselves then this is something that is necessary to the process.

Dawson Trotman said “Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through the lips and fingertips.”  As we put our thoughts down on paper, or computer screen, we can process what is happening in us.  Without doing this we will miss out completely on knowing who we are, and who we are becoming.  Life simply passes and we struggle to get by.  Journaling allows us to place markers along the journey.  Things we have learned about ourselves and the way we see the world.  Discoveries we have made about life, and the struggles it brings.  As we process what is happening to us and within us, we grow.

You wouldmemory map never plan a trip without deciding first where you wanted to go.  A destination is very important in every journey.  But just as important is knowing where you are now.  You can plan a trip from London to Sydney, and have everything lined up for the journey and it will do you absolutely no good when you are currently in Toronto.  Journaling is a way for us to see first where we are at personally.

It allows us to look within and see things about ourselves we would have never noticed otherwise.  It allows us to be honest with ourselves because there is no one to impress.  It is simply us looking in a mirror and writing what we see.  Just as important is the writing where we want to go.  Without a destination to work towards the place we are in now can be painful and not have any purpose or hope.  A destination makes the start worth while.

When we journal we simply are mapping our journey of self-discovery and becoming.  As we journey we mark memorable and life altering moments and discoveries, and allow ourselves to process what is we are discovering and clearly understand who we are becoming.  This allows us to not simply exist, but to really live life and achieve our potential.