Doubt sets in quickly. After a long run of success, a single setback causes me to doubt if I will ever feel the way I did again. That doubtfulness always leads to feelings of anxiety. It’s crazy how easy it is to deceive myself. These moments remind me of Jeremiah 17.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Jeremiah 17:9-10
I must remind myself that I do not answer to my heart, as it is not rational but reactionary. My mind controls my heart. If I allow my heart to backflow into my mind and take control, I will lose control. When I can step out of the situation and look at myself from the outside, I can also see that I lack thankfulness.
Whether or not you believe what the Bible says, the phrase “the heart wants what the heart wants” is universal. But, unfortunately, those unable to keep their heart in check find themselves down some dark and troublesome roads.
The statement, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds,” to me means that I need to ensure I am leading myself correctly. If the fruit of my deeds is out of alignment, so is my heart, and the results are problematic. But, on the other hand, if the fruit of my deeds aligns with what I desire for my life, my heart and mind must also be in alignment. How could they not be?
Thankfulness is a great way to keep everything aligned. You can’t be thankful and anxious at the same time.
6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
My prayer is to never lack thankfulness. Even in dark moments, there is something to be thankful for.
Hi Jerad;
I like this, but was a little shocked by the bible’s interpretation of feelings as being “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick”. I completely disagree.
Don’t be too quick to ignore the messages coming from your heart. Your feelings speak your truth in a way that your brain may not yet understand or even agree with. It pays to listen and give value to those feelings. If the feelings are sick, it is likely because you are sick. Feelings are golden and worth ruminating on. Above all things, feelings speak your truth, unfiltered by your brain. Over the long haul, feelings may be the only thing you can really count on to assess if your life is on track or not. Your brain is a slippery character that can rationalize any action or outcome even if it requires you to keep doing things that hurt your heart or that you know are not good for your well being. Most people know this to be true, but don’t know how to break free from harmful self-talk and self-doubt.
You start this blog post by saying “After a long run of success, a single setback causes me to doubt if I will ever feel the way I did again.”
Doubt does not come from your heart. It comes from your brain. Gratitude can indeed unburden a doubtful mind. Anxiety, fear that is not fully defined, vanishes when gratitude is front and centre in your mind and heart. The doubtful mind sees a single failure and stupidly imagines nothing but more of the same, disregarding all of the successes which came before and all the failures which led you to them. Our brain is conditioned to avoid pain and to forget the uncomfortableness of failure. The thankful mind however embraces both failure and success with compassionate understanding. Failure is required to succeed. There is no success without it. Gratitude, which is a form of love, will make room for this process and embrace failure as part of your journey. Be grateful for your mistakes.
Prayer to never lack thankfulness seems an odd concept to me. Thankfulness is a choice. It requires no effort nor money to bring thankfulness into your life. It is not something to be wished for but something to simply embrace and to practice. With such great and immediate rewards, thankfulness is relatively easy to turn into habit.
warm regards
John
Hi John, thank you for the comment and for sharing your heart with me.
Our differences of opinion likely come from what we have chosen to align ourselves with. However, I do agree with you in some ways as well.
I don’t mean to say that the heart should be completely avoided. The heart is very much a part of what influences us. When we reference truths that we deeply believe, we associate those with residing in or coming from our heart. The heart can be influenced by the mind. However, the mind can be influenced by the heart as well and in proper alignment, the result should bear fruit. That fruit can look different depending on where your values lie. If in your heart you design money and power, that will influence your mind and you will do what you need to do to try and obtain money and power. A weak mind may go about that incorrectly and become corrupt early on, during, or as a result of the process. The heart is the root, the mind being too weak to keep it in check.
Feelings are a result of what the heart wants and how the mind interprets that need. So yes, sometimes feelings are all you can count on, but feelings are not created in a vacuum, they are influenced by the heart and mind. The mind creates feelings, feelings do not create the mind. Thoughts that are not held captive are what send us down irrational paths which can lead to a hurt heart, which is simply a symbolic way of saying we have hurt feelings.
You are right in saying that doubt doesn’t come from the heart because it’s a feeling or reaction from the mind. I return to the heart and mind having to be in alignment in order to feel contentment. One has to control the other, they can’t equally control each other, and the mind is the only part of us that can manifest things into existence. I think we can both agree that “the heart” is simply a metaphor for desires that go deeper than conscious thought and perhaps even make up the majority of our ego. The heart is subconscious thought and our subconscious is made up of everything we have experienced up until the exact moment. Because it is mostly autonomous, it must be kept in check somehow, and that has to be with our conscious mind.
Thankfulness is a choice. It is something I don’t want to lack because in every situation there is something to be thankful for. I am not wishing for thankfulness, I am desiring it to be a part of who I am and how I experience everything. I pray for it because my natural inclination is to look for fault or to assume I lack something in a situation. That becomes my focus instead of recognizing what is happening, taking it for what it is, not ignoring anything, but making sure to include thankfulness so I can maintain alignment.
We’re both not wrong, we are both simply aligning ourselves and how we view the world differently, which is ok. I truly appreciate you taking the time you did to write. It made me think deeper, and for that, I am thankful!