What Is Your Truth?

(Excerpt from my upcoming book PUNC Living)

 Something I’ve learned and see playing out time and time again is the adage: What you Believe is Your Truth. When you have that strong conviction that what you are doing is right and you believe it to be the One And Only True Way then nothing on this Earth, possibly even the Universe, will make you accept otherwise if you dig your heels in and refuse any other explanation. Can you relate to that?

When I became a Jehovah’s Witness in 1995 I thought I had found the Truth, and the Witnesses actually refer to their teachings as The Truth. Compared to what I had been taught about Christianity growing up, especially in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the explanations shared with me and discoveries I made for myself, just made so much sense for me that I was convinced it was indeed the Truth.

What I experienced in my childhood and youth convinced me that Christianity was broken. When you get two sides of the same coin, both with the same Belief System but approaching it through a different door, hating each other with such a passion they were prepared to literally tear each other’s throats out, I decided I wanted nothing to do with a God that apparently condoned such hateful violence. When I left to join the Army, it was years before I set foot inside any place of worship, let alone tend a service unless it was compulsory and ordered to do so.

I started looking at other Belief Systems and sadly soon discovered they were no better in many ways. Perhaps not as violent but certainly very controlling and manipulative as well as divisive. Even those who follow a Buddhistic path have at times committed atrocities. I decided to follow a more agnostic path, sceptical of any religion who claimed they were better and everyone else were wrong. I still believed in a Creator, but that was it.

Then I met Jehovah’s Witnesses and decided to explore their views which were attractive to me as they promoted a more unified and peaceful approach, a more accepting and tolerant view of other Belief Systems. I truly believed I had found what I had been searching for.

Once I had accepted that and had become a Pioneer, or fulltime preacher, nothing anyone said from any other Belief System could deter me away. My heels were well and truly dug in. I learned to accept and respect that others would have their own Truths which they would adhere to, and it wasn’t my mission to shove mine down their throats in a Fire and Brimstone manner. No, my work was to help them see an alternative and, in time, to accept that alternative as I had done should they want to.

That changed during my final couple of years as an active Witness because, like I mentioned earlier, when you look for cracks you’ll find them, and I did. I began to dislike the Patriarchal system within the organization, where women have to defer to the men in many ways and which are outdated in modern society.

Their view on homosexuality, which was highlighted by a young man who was Gay being more or less told he had to repress those desires in line with Scripture or face expulsion from the organization. He did what he could and even got married, fathered a child and then left a few years later to follow his heart, regardless of the consequences.

Cracks like that caught my attention and couldn’t, in my mind, be papered over. The final push, if you like, was when it was announced at a Congregation meeting that we shouldn’t be reading any other books other than those published by Jehovah’s Witnesses which, as someone who still read books from various genres, was the final straw for me. Shortly after that I walked away and didn’t go back, and I now look upon my time as a Witness with fondness and also with the knowing that it was a catalyst, and I was meant to go down that route as part of my Spiritual Journey.

When I look back on those fourteen years, I now understand they served their purpose and I had to fully immerse myself in their Teachings and Doctrines, because it has helped create the foundation upon which I now stand. It was the beginning of an Awakening and a Path which led to my current one and I benefitted in many different ways during those years.

For example, my initial Bible Studies and Discussions helped me to quit smoking literally overnight because I wanted to join this new family. My work with Refugees helped me to learn Compassion as well as broaden my knowledge of other Belief Systems and Cultures. I learned that to have a super time at a party didn’t require alcohol, only good music and great people. My Bible Knowledge obviously increased as during that time I studied the Bible chapter by chapter, front to back six or seven times, plus hundreds of other books and thousands of articles.

The point is, when I was that Fulltime Preacher, no amount of persuasion would have shifted my perspective that I had the Truth. I had to do that myself and that’s the same for you if you want to raise your Self-esteem or stop worrying or truly believe in yourself or overcoming Impostor Syndrome. There are no magic pills or wands or hypnotherapy sessions to do it for you, only you and your Decision, your Choice and your Determination to see it through.

Namaste,

J Sadler-Scott

5 Minutes To Change Your Life

 

 

I got this Super Tip from the late Dr Wayne Dyer several years ago and have used it ever since.

If you were to choose a five minute segment out of your day, which would you consider to be the most important and potentially life changing?

Would it be that extra five minutes in the morning when you wake up, when you hit that snooze button, giving you those extra minutes to put yourself in the right mood for the day? That would get your day off to a good start but wouldn’t necessarily change your life.

What about that five minutes before you actually start work, those precious few moments where you have another quick coffee and relax a little, getting yourself into the right Mind-set to start your working day? That would keep you in the right frame of mind to do your job efficiently, well at least until the negativity kicks in – normally by mid-morning at the latest!

OK, so how those lovely five minutes when you finally get home from work and you can sit down and unwind with a glass of wine or an ice cold beer? Feels great, doesn’t it? However five minutes is probably all you will get before your phone rings and it’s your boss wanting you back in to sort some issue or other or a client calls to reschedule an important appointment or maybe it’s the babysitter calling to say they can’t come round because the birthday party they thought was next week is actually this week and tonight. And so it goes on.

When you think about it, choosing that important five minute segment can be extremely difficult. You find it hard enough choosing five minutes to get some peace and quiet never mind to decide which is most important.

Yet every single one of us do indeed have a precious five minutes which we use every day. Five minutes which we tend to use incorrectly, in a way which is detrimental to our lives and not at all uplifting. These five minutes are probably the most important in our lives because they set the tone for what comes next.

So when are these life changing five minutes? I’ll give you a clue. Have a look at these scenarios.

Scenario 1

You go to bed at your usual time and you get off to sleep pretty quickly and you sleep for your usual six, eight or however long hours and you wake up – cranky. You just don’t feel right, you feel aggressive, you get out of the wrong side of the bed, as the saying goes, nothing is going right and you end up late for work because you were caught in an unexpected traffic jam and you day goes from bad to worse. All that despite having a good night’s sleep and maybe a happy dream or two.

Scenario 2

You go to bed at your usual time and you get off to sleep pretty quickly and you sleep for your usual six, eight or however long hours and you wake up – feeling great! You jump out of bed ready to meet the day with a spring in your step. You feel happiness well up inside as you sing in the shower. You get to work early because you left home a few minutes earlier and avoided the traffic jams and your boss praises you for your attitude and you get loads done throughout the day.

Two scenarios which start the same but with opposing endings. Why is that? What reason could there be for such a difference in results?

Well let’s wind the clock back those six or eight hours to a point just before you go to sleep. For you see, the most important five minutes of your day are the five minutes before you go to sleep. Why? What’s so important about those few minutes?

What do we normally do before we drift off to sleep? What do we think about just before drifting away into Slumberland? One of two things normally: We either think of what we have to do the next day or we review what we have done today. Am I right?

Now, the thing is, what do we focus on when we’re reviewing the day’s activities or those to come? I’ll guarantee it will be all the negative stuff that’s happened or you think will happen – actually we tend to mix both together into one Neggy Nightcap!

To claim Scenario 2, why not Review the Day and instead of focusing on the He said-She said-and I'm going to do this, that, the other, focus on all the great and wonderful things that happened throughout the day. Don't have any in particular? Then make some up! Just don't focus on the Neggy Crap otherwise it's Scenario 1. Got it? 😉

My 2D Experience

 

I just want to share an experience I had back in the summer of 1991 which was kind of weird. Back then I was a serving soldier with the Corps of Royal Engineers and was based in the German city of Osnabrück, Lower Saxony. I was married with my second wife at the time and our daughter had not long been born. The previous November I had started an Amway Business, as a lot of us did back then, and had spent several months traveling after my day’s work to various parts of North Germany holding all kinds of meetings from home presentations to hotel trainings to product demonstrations and so forth. I was doing OK and loving it.

On this particular day, a Friday, it started as it usually did at five in the morning with my daughter crying out for cuddles or a nappy change or something along those lines and, as I usually got up around then to get ready to go to camp for my day’s soldiering, I usually had the honour and privilege to be the one who got up to take care of my little bundle of joy.

I was on parade for seven o’clock at the camp where I was stationed, then spent my day doing military stuff until four in the afternoon, or 1600 Hours in Military speak. Back home I played with my daughter before having a bite to eat, then donned my dark suit, white shirt and red tie, a look which was believed to indicate and emanate a sense of Trust and left in the evening around six for a two-hour drive to present a Home Meeting for a new Team Member, a fellow soldier who was based near Celle. It was a very successful meeting which ended up taking over four hours such was the interest, and I finally started my homeward drive sometime after midnight. By this time, as you can imagine, I was pretty tired and looking forward to a hopeful Lie-In on the coming morning with it being a Saturday and I wasn’t on ‘Baby Duties’. As an aside, that usually didn’t go to plan, and I wouldn’t get that Lie-In!

It was whilst driving down a long, straight, tree-lined road with my side windows open to keep me awake and listening to a Jim Rohn audio when the strangest thing occurred. All the trees on either side of the road changed from 3D to 2D! They looked just as if someone had cut them out of cardboard, painted them, tacked them to wooden stakes and stuck them in the ground facing towards me like Billboards. I shook my head and blinked my eyes however they kept reverting back to this cardboard cut-out kind of image, even moving in the breeze as I drove past. The whole experience only lasted a few minutes, by which time I had reached a junction, and the rest of my journey was uneventful. It was probably tiredness that caused it, yet it seemed so real. Maybe that’s how early lifeforms saw their surroundings before 3D vision became a thing. Just a thought!

What do you think?

Namaste,

J Sadler-Scott