Renewal

Bruce Barton

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things... I am tempted to think... there are no little things.

Ezra Taft Benson

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, & then they take themselves out of the slums. The would would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

George Bernard Shaw

This is true joy in life, that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of feverish, selfish little clod of ailments & grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold for the moment & I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generation.

Breaking Down the Walls

We gradually evolved two unspoken ground rules. The first was "no probing". As soon as we unfolded the inner layers of vulnerability, we were not to question each other, only to empathize. Probing was simply too invasive. It was also too controlling & too logical. We were covering new, difficult terrain that was scary & uncertain, & it stirred up fears & doubts. We wanted to cover more & more of it, but we grew to respect the need to let each other open up in our own time.

Spread Positivity

What if you were a positive scripter, an affirmer, of other people. When they're being directed by the social mirror to take the lower path, you inspire them toward a higher path because you believe in them. You listen to them & empathize with them. You don't absolve them of responsibility; you encourage them to be proactive.

Becoming a Transition Person

✅"I believe that giving "wings" to our children & to other means empowering them with the freedom to rise above negative scripting that had been passed down to us". ✅Instead of transferring those scripts to the next generation, we can change them & do it in a way that will build relationships in the process. ✅If your parents abused you as a child, that does not mean that you have to abuse your own children. If you are proactive, you will rewrite the script & break generational curses.

The Physical Dimension

✅A good exercise program is one that you can do in your own home & one that will build your body in three areas: endurance, flexibility, & strength. ✅When you exercise your patience beyond your past limits, the emotional fiber is broken, nature overcompensates, & next time the fiber is stronger. ✅No pain, no gain. ✅Exercise in the morning so you will have more afternoon energy & fatigue you felt that made you "too tired" to exercise in the past will be replaced by an energy that will invigorate everything you do. ✅When exercising, your paradigm of yourself, your self-esteem, your self-confidence, & your integrity will profoundly be affected.

Effective Routine

✅As you plan, you force your mind to recognize high leverage Quadrant II activities, priority goals, & activities to maximize the use of your time & energy. ✅Organize & execute your activities around your priorities. ✅Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce, to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independence. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth. It's intrinsic.

Synergy in Renewal

✅Balanced renewal is optimally synergetic. The things you do to sharpen the saw in any one dimension have positive impact in other dimensions because they are so highly interrelated. ✅Your physical health affects your mental health. Your spiritual strength affects your social/emotional strength. ✅As you improve in one dimension, you increase your ability in other dimensions as well. ✅The more proactive you are, the more effectively you can exercise personal leadership & management in your life & the more Quadrant II renewing activities you can do. ✅The more you seek first to understand, the more effectively you can go for synergetic Win/Win solutions. ✅The more you improve in any of the habits that lead to independence, the more effective you will be in interdependent situations.

Intergenerational Living

✅Don't have band-aid & aspirin love, have real deep love that heals naturally. ✅Have a deep understanding of each other, & a marvelous synergy that grew out of roots we nurtured as we examined our programs, re-scripted ourselves, & managed our lives so that we could create time for the important Quadrant II activity of communicating deeply with each other. ✅The lives of our children were being influenced & shaped by us often in ways we didn't even begin to realize. ✅Real self-awareness helps us to appreciate those scripts & to appreciate those who have gone before us & nurtured us in principle-based living, mirroring back to us not only what we are, but what we can become. ✅A strong intergenerational family is potentially one of the most fruitful, rewarding, & satisfying interdependent relationships.

Sharpen the Saw

✅Exercise all 4 Dimensions of our nature, regularly, & consistently in wise & balanced ways. ✅Personal PC must be pressed upon until it becomes second nature, until it becomes a kind of healthy addiction.

The Social/Emotional Dimension

✅Habits 1-3: Center on principles of vision, leadership, & management. ✅4-6: Center principles of interpersonal leadership, empathic communication, & creative cooperation. ✅The social & emotional dimensions of our lives are tied together because our emotional life is primarily, but not exclusively developed out of & manifested in our relationships with others. ✅Success in Habits 4-6 are no primarily a matter of intellect, it's primarily a matter of emotion. It's highly related to our sense of personal security. ✅Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles & values & in no other way. ✅Focus on the meaning and purpose of your life, something to transcend your life & tap the best energy within.

A Personal Note

✅I believe that as human beings, we cannot perfect ourselves. To the degree to which we align ourselves with correct principles, divine endowments will be released within our nature in enabling us to fulfill the measure of our creation. ✅We our spiritual beings having a spiritual experience.

Changes

✅It comes from striking at a root; the fabric of our thought, the fundamental, essential paradigms, which give definition to our character & create the lens through which we see the world. ✅Deeper even than consciousness there is our being itself, our very substance, our nature. ✅Building a character of total integrity & living the life of love & service that creates such unity isn't easy. It isn't a quick fix.

Expand the Mind

✅It's exercising the visualizing, imaging power of your mind, to see the end from the beginning and to see the entire journey, at least in principles if not steps. ✅Spend one hour a day doing your mindfulness ritual for the rest of your life to stay cool & collected. ✅This will affect every decision & every relationship. ✅This will improve the quality, the effectiveness, of every other hour of the day, including the depth & restfulness of your sleep. ✅This will build long-term physical, spiritual, & mental strength to enable you to handle difficult life challenges. ✅Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling great temptation or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here.. now. Now it is being decided whether in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

Four Dimensions of Renewal

✅Perspective: Spiritual ✅Autonomy: Mental ✅Connectedness: Social ✅Tone: Physical

Play Four Roles

✅Physical: Be a good animal. ✅Mental: Be a good craftsman. ✅Social: Be a good friend. ✅Spiritual: Be a saint.

Education

✅Proactive people can figure out many different ways to educate themselves. ✅It is valuable to read broadly because it exposes yourself to great minds. ✅There's no better way to inform & expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature. ✅Inform & expand your mind on a regular basis to get into the habit of reading good literature (Harvard Classics Autobiographies, National Geographic, & other publications to expand cultural awareness, expand paradigms, & sharpen your mental saw. ✅Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keep a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, & learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, & context. ✅Writing good letters, communicating on the deeper level of thoughts, feelings, & ideas rather than on the shallow, superficial level of events affects your ability to think clearly, to reason accurately, and to be understood effectively.

The Upward Spiral

✅Renewal is the principle & the process. ✅Empower yourself to move on an upward spiral of growth & change of continuous improvement. ✅Education of the conscience is vital to the truly proactive, highly effective person. ✅Training & educating the conscience requires great concentration, more balanced discipline. ✅Just as junk food & lack of exercise can ruin an athletes' condition, those things are obscene, crude, or pornographic can breed an inner darkness that numbs our higher sensibilities & substitutes the social conscience. ✅We will always reap what we sow. ✅As you move upward on the spiral, you must show diligence in the process of renewal by educating & obeying our conscience. ✅An increasingly educated conscience will propel us along the path of personal freedom, security, wisdom, & power.

REAP & SOW

✅Sometimes we make mistakes, we feel awkward. But if we start with the Daily Private Victory & work from the inside out, the results will surely come. ✅As we plant the seed & patiently weed & nourish it, we begin to feel the excitement of real growth & eventually taste the incomparably delicious fruits of a congruent & effective life. ✅By centering our lives on correct principles & creating a balanced focus between doing & increasing our ability to do, we become empowered in the task of creating effective, useful, & peaceful lives... for ourselves & for our posterity.

The Daily Private Victory

✅Spend a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of physical, spiritual, & mental dimensions. ✅These factors are within your Circle of Influence. ✅Focus time necessary to integrate these habits into your life & become principle centered.

The Spiritual Dimension

✅The spiritual dimension is your core, your center, your commitment to your value system. ✅As you read & meditate, you feel renewed, strengthened, centered, & recommitted to serve ✅The sea had taught him as a child: patience, respect, an awareness of interdependence of things. Listen to the sounds & silence to feel a growing peace. ✅Reach back to your childhood when the days were simple. Perhaps to childhood, perhaps to memories of happy times. Think about the past and many little moments of joy. Try to remember these moments with exactness. In remembering, you'll find a growing warmth inside. ✅Examine your motives. ✅Everyone wants success, recognition, & security but don't let too much craving & desire bring you suffering when you don't get what you want. ✅Prayer is not a mechanical duty but a source to power in releasing & multiplying multiple energies. ✅Carry your peaceful moments in your mind & heart. ✅Feel a sense of peace, a sense of knowing what you're about.

Inside-Out Again

✅There is a gap or a space between stimulus & response, & that the key to both our growth & happiness is how we use that space. ✅It doesn't take too much imagination to envision the level of understanding & trust we were able to reach by spending at least two hours a day, every day, for a full year in deep communication. ✅It wasn't all "sweetness & light". We occasionally hit some raw nerves & had some painful experiences- experiences that made us extremely vulnerable to each other. And yet we found we had been wanting to go into those things for years. When we did go into the deeper, more tender issues & then came out of them, we felt in some way healed.

The Mental Dimension

✅With TV these days, we don't do anymore serious reading, we don't explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we don't think analytically, we don't write. ✅Test your ability to express yourself in distilled, clear, & concise language rather than binging Tik Tok which stupefies you. ✅Select the information, inspiring, & entertaining programs which best serve & express your purpose & values. ✅Realize the dependent sickness of becoming addicted to soap operas or to a steady diet of a particular program. ✅Embrace high quality educational & entertainment programs because they enrich your lives and contribute meaningfully to your purposes & goals. ✅Be careful for the programs that waste your time & mind and influence on negative ways if you let them. ✅Manage yourself effectively to maximize & use of resource in accomplishing your mission.