An Island of Peace in a Troubled World[/caption]Often without realizing it, we frequently react to the personality of someone we meet or even someone we see.
A brief definition would be that personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
I like the last phrase about personality being fairly consistent throughout life. I like it because it implies that our personality is inherently part of us from our birth. That tells me that we are made to enjoy life. I just can’t see someone “made in the image of God” being made with a bent toward evil or even unhappiness.
In the last posting, we talked about individuality. Picture an M&M made up of a hard candy shell and a soft chocolate center. It’s not too far-fetched to think of the shell as our individuality; as what makes us stand out in the world or as the defense we create against melting in someone’s hand. And we can think of our personality as the soft chocolate center with the characteristics that are inherent within us; joy, peace, satisfaction, etc.
Richard Carlson talks at length about an inherent capacity for happiness. Maybe it’s our personality he’s talking about. – that built-in part.
So What Happens
But let’s get real here. We all know people who have the personality of barbed wire. I have a theory about how personality gets from “M&M-Center” to “barbed-wire.”
Simply put, life happens. Some of us are always able to handle disappointments with a smile. Nothing ever gets us down.
Others store up disappointments like a bank account. We keep an internal scoreboard where we tally all the hurts, offenses, criticisms, put-downs, failures. And being good stewards, we routinely take our scoreboards out and review them; we think about the offenses; we relive the hurts; we suffer the failures all over again.
Before long, this scoreboard becomes a jumbotron that everybody sees. The negativity completely clouds or hides our personality.
Sounds Grim
It does sound grim, but it doesn't have to be. Like a frost-covered window, we can clear a little space by taking command of just one of our negative thoughts. We talk about how to do this in Finding Personal Peace.We can see through the window a little bit. If we keep dealing with negative thinking (the jumbotron of hurts) before long, we can see a beautiful scene which is what we’re truly like without the negativity.
Picture a tiny tropical island. It’s beautiful with the waves crashing ashore.
Now picture the island surrounded by murky water; water made muddy by negative thinking roiling around within us.
When we control the negative thinking, the water becomes sparkling clear and we begin to see the beauty that exists below. The tiny island is but the tip of a great mountain with colorful fish, bright coral reefs, and all sorts of amazing creatures.
Our Personality
Our personality can be like a jewel if we let it shine. We can let it shine by dealing with all the negativity we have accumulated.
Go for it!
www.findingpersonalpeace.com
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