January 21, 2024
Don’t waste your money on therapy….
No matter how good or qualified your therapist — therapy will be of no help:
If you’re seeking help with your intimate relationship but you’re living with your mind made up, bags packed, and a heart full of blame and complaints.
It’s therapy, not arm-wrestling.
If you’re having an extramarital affair and you want to improve your relationship with your spouse so your divorce can be cordial.
It’s therapy, not help with deception and manipulation.
If you’re coming to change or influence a relationship you’re not directly a part of, for instance, you want to fix your son’s marriage or you want you husband to call his mom more often.
It’s therapy, not human chess.
If you’re committed to treating your adult sons and daughters as if they’re children and wonder why they resist visiting or phoning you.
It’s therapy, not guilt-tripping.
If you’re hoping for help to change the political views of people with whom you do not agree.
It’s therapy, not magic.
If you want the lazy to be hardworking, the harsh to be gentle, the stingy to be generous, and the unforgiving to find mercy.
Men and women who discover such radical transformation do so because they grow tired of their selfish, rigid, alienating and arrogant ways, and, in humility, find the courage for change.
It’s not therapy, it’s when desperation meets the Divine.
January 20, 2024
Life As Art
Consider your life a Work of Art.
Take time, lots of it, yes, weeks, perhaps even months, to think deeply about your life and to write about it.
Great art deserves careful consideration and meticulous planning. Such contemplations will not require, in the meantime, you to stop functioning. Humans are vastly capable and can think and plan and ponder their unique works of art while engaged in day-to-day life as it is.
“Am I going where I want to go and doing the things I really want to do with the people who are most important to me?” is the backdrop question.
Articulating goals, even if they are unsure, generic, will bring you an added confidence as you pursue your ArtLife.
Identify which people are really important to you.
Evaluate what activities are really important to you.
Assess your direction.
Some people will tell you that this is a selfish way to live and, sadly, some will indeed plan selfish lives and reap the disappointment such planning will bring.
A life seen as art, planned as art, results in fulfilled, generous and thoughtful people.
Haphazard living, pointless, random existing, dependent on others for a sense of meaning and purpose, is a selfish life if I ever saw one.
January 19, 2024
Greetings from South Africa
Dear Mr. Smith,
Despite the fact that the MERCURY newspaper has shrunk to 8 pages including 1 page dealing with crosswords I have kept up my subscription in order to enjoy your daily inspirational messages.
My wife and myself were especially happy this week to read:
- No Marriage escapes the challenges life brings
- How to have a sacred relationship
They should be compulsory reading at every wedding celebration. I would appreciate you giving me permission to use them at a suitable occasion, quoting you as author.. Many thanks in advance for your co-operation.
Bythe way, my wife grew up in Red Hill (born 1952) and knew your tearoom and the surrounding area well. She was also a bridesmaid at a wedding you conducted at the Parkhill Hall.
Best regards,
Dieter
Ballito KZN
January 12, 2024
Challenges we face daily:
I would suggest that if you are a living breathing person you will be challenged with all of the following at least a few times every 24 hours.
I hope you meet the challenges and come out on top.
In the event you do not come out on top, well, as I tell myself, life has a way of giving people fresh opportunities.
One can always try again tomorrow:
The temptations:
- To compromise your integrity for popularity, profit, or the semblance of peace.
- To spend more money than you can afford on things you do not need.
- To be quiet when it is time to speak and to speak when it is time to be quiet..
- To appear to be listening when someone is talking.
- To ask questions without listening to the answers.
- To eat more than you need and waste food a hungry person would crave to enjoy.
- To speak ill of another and say things about the person you would probably not say were you face-to-face.
- To nurse relationships bruises and wounds and damages you thought you had already forgiven.
- To waste time and opportunity and resources without giving it too much thought.
January 9, 2024
Message to girls
Lies girls are fed and often appear to believe:
- Your body is more important than your brain therefore focus on your body, not your brain. Your body will get you further than your brain. Your body is bait. Use it well for a fine catch (riches, status – things you can’t get alone). Other people are more important than you. You are on Earth to serve, particularly all males.
- Once a husband finds you, your greatest calling is to be a mother. If you have other ambitions you will compromise your mothering. Your only worthwhile ideas pertain to cooking, cleaning, and childcare; leave thinking about sciences, technology, and mathematics to males.
- Once you are in love you will give up yourself for your husband and your children. This is what love is. You are a half. When you meet a man and marry you will become whole. If you suffer in silence and allow others to use you God will reward you.
Having addressed female audiences in the USA, Southern Africa, and in three Asian countries, I perceive these covert and overt messages to girls remain consistent. Perhaps saddest is that when girls find faith, they often expect God to be the ultimate male, issuing similar messages, demands, and expectations.
January 8, 2024
Joy and its causes
Causes of joy…..
1. Generosity – giving more than you can afford.
2. Faith – in God and in the humanity of others.
3. Forgiveness – absolute, and especially when undeserved.
4. Transparency – living without deceit or hidden agenda.
5. Openness – willingness to try new things and new adventures.
6. Awareness – of the impact left on others and on the environment.
7. Kindness – treating others in a manner that fosters their highest good.
8. Assertiveness – finding your way without impeding the growth of others.
9. Usefulness – finding a meaningful place in a community.
10. Love – deciding to love without expecting recognition or reward.
January 3, 2024
Listen up
To listen is to love.
Listening, no matter how skilled you are, cannot be faked.
You may be a skilled multitasker but even you can’t listen and, at the same time, do other things.
Even if you’re one of those people who can “spin a lot of plates at one time” or whatever the metaphor is, even you can’t do other things and listen and really hear the person talking to you.
Listening takes more than both ears. It takes both ears, both eyes, a closed mouth, and your whole focused body.
Even thinking about or wanting to check your phone, let alone the shifty reptile-like quick glances you give it and think no one notices, upsets your capacity to hear and it disturbs the speaker’s ease in talking to you.
Another thing that really upsets listening is your own unresolved stuff with other people, living or dead. As soon as any person “goes deep,” the millisecond he or she approaches anything close to something unresolved in your life, even if it’s from years ago, it’ll set you off inside, close your ears, or start you talking.
That’s how we ward off stuff, manage triggers, fight to keep things buried.
To listen is to love.
It’s often the only thing someone may want from you.
January 1, 2024
Dig deeper
“The doldrum days” (the wait for the New Year) are over. The pace of life will resume. Many new year pledges will be forgotten. I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to dig a little deeper:
Dig deeper when it comes to caring for your health. Determine to do what you know will prolong your life. Look around you. It is obvious when people live against their own longevity, day by day, meal by meal, nap by nap. Everything in my day-to-day experience improves when I dedicate time to exercise and eating well.
DIg deeper into your loving and caring and creative side. In other words, all of your relationships. The adult in you has long recognized our human desire for powerful human connection. Reach out to the important people in your life. Minimize potential for regret.
Dig a little deeper into your relationship with money. You are either in charge of your money or it is in charge of you. Credit card debt, excessive gambling, binge spending, have ruined many lives and marriages. Repeatedly spending beyond our means is a sure-fire formula for ruin.
Eating, relating with others, earning and spending, are all deeply spiritual exercises. They reflect the conditions of our souls, our inner-beings. This is exactly the reason upsets in any of these areas of our lives can be fuel for distress.
———-
This graphic illustrates the reach of this column…..
December 31, 2023
What do you mean “happy” new year?
The Mercury and to all who may read this….
Of course I want you to have a “happy” new year. What exactly do I mean?
• May you find authentic inclusion with a group of caring friends.
• May you enjoy significant connection and derive mutual satisfaction with members of your immediate and extended family and family of choice.
• May you have meaningful work, work that respectfully uses your talents, strengths and imagination.
• May your capacity for humor enrich those whom you love and bring joy.
• May you discover new and wonderful things about yourself and others despite your years of experience.
• May regret over past failures provide you with healthy awareness rather than weigh you down.
• May you be part of the solution and not part of the problem in matters large and small.
• May you become more skillful in defining your boundaries and therefore more able to love your friends, family, colleagues, strangers and foes.
• May you resist urges, subtle or gross — all of which may be socially acceptable — to exploit others to accomplish your personal or professional goals.
• May you do no harm and may no harm be done to you.
• May we be agents of peace.
—————
The Mercury is one of South Africa’s longest running weekday morning newspapers. It is published in KZN, a province of South Africa.
I have enjoyed the privilege of writing daily for this newspaper since March 21, 2001. This affords me the unusual joy of occasionally being able to surprise friends. Pictured below is a couple whom I married in Prague (earlier this year). A few days before the wedding I discovered they were going South Africa for their honeymoon. Here they are reading a welcome column in The Mercury while in Umhlanga.
