Daily Reading - October 28th, and 29th - Calendar Books by Allen James - "The Journey: A Calendar Book"

Calendar Books by Allen James' reading for October 28th (yesterday) was, "Keep a warm heart", and today's, October 29th is a quote by Anna Pavlova, a well known Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries;

"To follow without halt one aim, that is the secret of success".

First if I may address yesterday's thought for a brief moment. As most men would admit, possessing and maintaining the respect and high esteem of their mother is one, if not THE greatest task in life, literally. Our mothers' opinions of our lives and of how we live our lives, to many mothers, is a direct reflection on how they reared us as children.

I am one of those men. As the youngest of 7 children, I shared a special bond with my mother. I would say most of my decisions in life prior to her death, and some following her death, were considered heavily as to what my mother would think or if she would approve.

I was considered a young man with a "warm heart", meaning I was thoughtful, considerate of others, and caring. However; when I turned 30 my life was shattered by loss; a few years earlier the only grandparent I ever knew died, only days before my 30th birthday my sister died a tragic demise, and only days after, I returned home to an empty house; my wife had followed through with moving out. Much to experience at one time. To be stressed out would be putting it lightly.

About a year later I was sitting and talking with me mother about one thing or another; the topic is not relevant. What is relevant is following my discussion my mother responded with, "You've become hard-hearted". BAMMMM.... Talk about being side swiped. To hear the one individual whose opinions meant so much to me be so honest with me about how she now saw me, woke me up.

Hard-hearted was NOT a description I would have thought would apply to me, nor did I want it to be. Hard-hearted is evidenced in our lives through the following:

You don’t really celebrate and you don’t really cry.
Well, you might on the outside, but in reality
you don’t feel it.

You stop genuinely caring. Enough said.

So much of what’s supposed to be meaningful
feels mechanical. From your personal friendships to
your family to work, the feeling’s gone.

Passion is hard to come by. For anything.

You no longer believe the best about people. Even
when you meet someone, you’re thinking about what’s
going to go wrong, not what’s going to go right.

Recall my reading explaining my mantra, "Expectation equals disappointment"? We become hard-hearted when we over-protect a broken heart. People promise and don’t deliver. Our hopes were bigger than what happened. We trusted someone and our trust was misplaced. Really, just life. It happens to everyone. But how we respond is so critical. It’s easy to shield ourselves from people. It’s easy to stop trusting, stop loving, stop believing. But this would be a mistake. It kills our heart.

We stop looking for what’s good in people and situations. Because life has its disappointments, and people are still people, it’s easy to focus on personal and organization shortcomings. If we keep this up, it can be all we focus on. Keep looking for flickers of light.

Many people accept a harder heart as a new normal. A hardened heart isn’t inevitable, but it does take intentional effort to guard against one. If you feel your heart becoming hard, you need to take action and fight against it.

(By the way....mine is back to normal...just a little enlarged on the left side : )

Keep looking up. AJ