Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

In the Footsteps of the Few

I Was Thinking

To Think Outside the Box

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Pablo Picasso

I think that most of our thinking (despite how much there is to think about) is really pretty standardized and chafingly rote. We think in predetermined patterns and pre-existent templates that require no real thinking. And while there’s a whole lot to think about in this big, wide world of ours…we don’t. Not really. 

Why?

Most of this appears to happen because we think within boxes that we randomly (and sometimes not so randomly) borrow. We think within predetermined boxes because they’re convenient and because they’re standardized.

But what if our thinking were to open up fresh venues?  And what if life could become a journey not lived within suffocating boxes, but rather an adventure crafted of breathless horizons where there are no boxes? What if?

So, let’s consider some boxes that we tend to get stuck in.

First, The Box of Societal Norms

We think within the box of societal norms. We grant these norms legitimacy because most of the people around us adhere to them in one form or another. Because all these people adhere to them, we naturally grant these norms a morality, assuming that others would not dare embrace them if they weren’t sufficiently ethical or moral. To our relief, we quickly discover that if we think within these boxes we are far less likely to be met with rejection, or ridicule, or disdainful judgement, or some other rather distasteful response. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

Second, The Box of the Mundane

We think within the well-worn boxes of the mundane as that path is quite well charted, and therefore void of anything dangerous because other people have figured out where all the dangerous stuff is and either removed it, or they’ve created paths around it. We know that venturing off the path in life is ref with all sorts of calamity that’s just waiting to happen, and so in the box of the mundane there’s nothing to venture off on because there’s one and only one path. It might be mundane, it might go nowhere, but it’s safe (if you happen to define ‘safe’ as refusing to live in order to effectively avoid being hurt). Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

Third, The Box of Our Fears

We think within the box of our fears, as anything on the outside of those walls is filled with horrific danger (often of the most fabricated sort). We’ve probably ventured out there a time or two, and when we did, we got hurt. And so, when we were hurt, we put our pain on emotional steroids which exponentially magnified our fear. We then took that fear and fashioned a monster that doesn’t exist, and we hunkered down in our box horrified by the fiction of it all. And while the space out there is a whole lot bigger than the infinitesimally tiny space in here, at least it’s safe. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

Fourth, The Box of Our Families

We think within the box created by our families as we engaged them growing up. In many unhealthy families, their boxes were shaped by their own demons and assorted hobgoblins that they handed the reins of power over to. Over time, they dutifully passed those onto us. Sometimes these families demand that family members stay within those boxes. Other times, family members may prompt us to move outside of the box because they have come to recognize the life-sucking quality of the box. Yet, while they prompt us to step out, they did not know how to do so themselves. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

Fifth and Finally, The Box of Self-Esteem

We think within the box crafted by our low self-esteems. These are often the smallest of all boxes because we dare not create any room whatsoever for anyone else to come in lest they see how pathetically awful we really are. We know full well that there’s great adventure and untapped possibilities outside of our boxes. We can imagine adventure because we’ve imagined it so many times. But we doubt our ability to function in it, or find a place in it, or seize it in the cultivation of our dreams, or much less survive any adventure of any size. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

I Was Thinking

I was thinking that there are a whole lot of boxes. Lots and lots of them. But I was also thinking that they are just boxes and nothing more. And as a box, it doesn’t hold us.  Rather, we hold it. And when we realize that power and move beyond our boxes, the parameters of our lives will explode exponentially in a manner that we will be free to think about all the many things that this big, wide world of ours has to think about. And so, I think that I really, really want to think outside the boxes.

You will find all of these outlined in my book, “In the Footsteps of the Few – The Power of a Principled Life.” You will find “In the Footsteps of the Few” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

Too often we don't take the time to really ask why we support what we're supporting.  We get swept up in some energizing movement, or we're utterly captivated by some cause.  Something feels inherently good and the premise that drives it appears sound.  We find that an army of people have raced to the forefront of this cause, or it's embraced as long overdue, or it appears right for the times.

But in all of that, do we ask the larger questions?  Do we ask if there is some underlying issue that's bigger than the cause that prompted it?  Is there more here than just the excitement of the moment or the rallying cry of the population?  Do we proceed with a wisdom that will solve the larger issues, or will we just perpetuate all of those by running amuck in lesser things?  Change is needed.  But if it is not thoughtful change, nothing will change.

Am I Passionate for the Right Things?

“In full uniform, the color guard marched by as part of the parade.  And as they did, he forced his horribly slumped and deeply aged body out of his worn wheelchair and stood to ram-rod attention.  He held a salute until the guard had passed, and then he feebly collapsed back into his wheelchair.  As I stared in ever-warming admiration, emblazoned across his hat I saw the words “WWII Veteran.”  And while I deeply admire his stirring passion for our country, I stood there wishing that my passion for the cause of Christ might someday be strong enough to lift me out of the many wheelchairs within which I sit.”

Am I passionate for the right things?  Not just passionate.  But passionate in the right way.  Sure, there’s a lot of voices out there.  There’s a lot of causes out there.  There’s a lot of yelling, and screaming, and arguing, and hostile behaviors, and noisy propaganda, and a bunch of edgy people on more than one rant advocating for these causes.  On top of that, the causes themselves shift depending upon the temperature of the culture, or the agenda of the people pulling long strings behind closed doors.  There are causes that represent the demands of a handful of people who find the foundations of their cause so ill-defined or fragile that constructive dialogue is replaced with destructive actions.  Greed is rampant.  Power-mongering runs wild.  Principles have been discarded because they impede the progressive thinking that end up resulting in regressive outcomes.  And in this mess and in the midst of all of this noise, am I passionate for the right things?

Consider this.  There are some things that are timeless.  There are some things that are woven into this existence that you can’t remove.  There are principles and ethics that are foundational.  You can try and remove them, but there’s a huge cost to that.  Civilizations throughout history have messed with them, or attempted to adjust them to suit a particular cause, or worked to rid their culture of them altogether.  And the outcomes are never good.  History will tell us that rather plainly, if we’re willing to be honest about history. 

And so, I want to be passionate about something that’s timeless, because I want it to live on beyond my life.  Something that this culture can reliably build on both today and tomorrow and for every tomorrow after that.  Something that’s certain to sustain my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids.  And nothing that we can create on our own will do that.  What we create is too weak, and too fragile, and too shallow, and too lackluster to do that.  That kind of stuff is only something that God can create. 

And so, it’s this God and what He created and principles that He built it all around, it’s that stuff that I choose to be passionate about.  Not man-made stuff because that doesn’t last.  Rather, it’s God-created stuff.  It’s the principles that shaped this existence at its core that I will surrender my passions to and be passionate about.  Because if I’m not passionate about that stuff, passion won’t matter because very shortly nothing will.

  Defined By Our Appearance

“If the mirror doesn’t give me much back, it’s because it’s not designed to reflect the things within me that make the reflection truly magnificent.”

The world has set an airbrushed standard of what we’re supposed to look like. This photoshopped menagerie of idealized versions of a perfected humanity demands something of us that none of us can achieve. Even those whose images are altered to this definition of perfection are themselves nothing of the sort.

The culture defines beauty but it cannot demonstrate what they define as beauty unless they fabricate it. Physical perfection is the illusion that eludes anyone who claims it or pursues it. It’s the design of people who themselves cannot achieve the design that they both create and propagate. This perfection is declared as some pinnacle whose pursuit is the holy grail of our existence. It is decreed as the key that opens doors that will never open for the less desirable. It will elicit favors that the more homely among us can never elicit. In essence, it’s value is non-negotiable.

Misappropriated Investments

Therefore, we rigorously invest in a host of surgeries, a variety of cutting-edge procedures, and an assorted collection of creams and lotions. We sweat through an endless variety of trendy workouts that claim to put us one step closer to this pinnacle of our humanity. We dive into whatever diet that happens to have the blessing of some trending celebrity or health guru. We spend hours preening in front of the mirror. We take thousands of selfies in order to capture just the right angle that accentuates everything that we want to accentuate, and that hides everything that we don’t.

Our interactions with the world around us becomes dictated by a shrewd and entirely exhausting game of flaunting that which we believe to be beautiful and disguising that which we don’t. We are driven to present a pristine self that is pressed, clean, orderly, well-groomed, tight in the right places, and loose in the places that enhance our appearance.

The Priority of Our Appearance

Imagine, if you will, the amount of energy that we invest in our appearance. Imagine the amount of time, money, and personal resources that we squander on what we look like. And with such a grossly disproportionate investment in the external, the internal goes wanting. The essential essence of who we are is left languishing as the red-haired step-child to the physical part of ourselves that can never and will never define the whole of ourselves. We are ambushed by the power of the airbrush  

The Vulnerability of the Veneer

Your humanity is too vast to be held hostage to the veneer of your appearance. The essence that you bring to your world is housed in the powerhouse of your humanity, not the smoothness of your complexion. Your abilities will always outclass your body type. Flexing a muscle changes nothing. Flexing your mind can change everything.

The veneers are a pathetic representation of what we think will garner the affection and attention of a world from which we seek acceptance at the sacrifice of self. Veneers are a mortifying trade-off where our desperate need for acceptance drives us to betray ourselves in a deathly exchange of identity for acceptance.

Defining Ourselves By Our Appearance

Despite its destructive nature, this photoshopped menagerie of idealized versions of a perfected humanity reigns over a deluded culture. It is the template by which all other templates are judged, modified or mortified. It is the reflection demanded of every mirror.

Acquiescing to this weak standard, we begin to judge ourselves in relation to that standard. We lay out some sort of culturally-biased continuum in our heads and then we gauge our value based on where we place ourselves on that continuum. We live a life where the entirety of our resources are spent fighting our way up that continuum. The understanding of who we are and any value that we possess becomes based on where we’ve landed on that continuum and how aggressively we’re working our way up it (or have fallen down it).

In the book, “The Self that I Long to Believe In,” I wrote the following:

“Our existence alone is the greatest statement of our worth and the clearest evidence as to our value. What we do with that existence is up to us. But the sheer reality of that existence evidences value. The fact I am writing this and you are reading this attests to the fact that we both have immense value because we both exist to do both of those things.”

That thought is build upon by a later quote in the book which reads:

“Each of us needs to embrace the fact that our value is in who we are. And we need to widen that thought by understanding that this value that we carry within us exceeds our greatest estimation of it. It will readily eclipse anything that we do.”

None of this has anything to do with our appearance. The essence of your greatness is not based on what you look like in any mirror. It’s based on what you want to do with the person that’s in the mirror. It’s ferreting out the rich storehouse of gifts, talents, and abilities that reside within the heart. These will handily eclipse any reflection.

I would go so far as to say that cultivating who you are will lend such a power and vibrancy to your presentation that your physical appearance will be swallowed up in release of who you are. People won’t seek you out because of how you look. They will seek out because you radiate something that swallows up the superficiality of what they’ve spent their lives pursuing.

The Reflection of Your Soul, Not Your Face

“Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” outlines thirty-one “I am” statements that God has made regarding who you are. These are the reflections that have value. These are the reflections that grant our lives the power and sense of satisfaction that no other reflection will be able to deliver. Indeed, they are what’s truly beautiful. They are elegant. Their beauty deepens with age and their power multiplies with time. Your appearance is enhanced to the point that no mirror can contain it or reflect it. That is what the following “I am” statements will deliver into your life, today and every day.

You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.

The Self That I Long to Believe In

Bigger on the Inside Than the Outside

Attempting to Define Success to Define Ourselves

“It would make sense that our worth should be, and in reality is based on something that cannot be proven for any other reason than its value lies forever beyond the most magnificent achievements that would serve to even remotely evidence it.”

Success has been accorded an endless array of definitions.  Some of them are crafted to make failure seem more like success so that we can limp through life and fail without remorse or guilt.  Other definitions are quite lofty, written to give us opportunity achieve in a manner that has little to do with the achievement and everything to do with restoring blunted self-esteems.  At times success is defined by whatever will accord us the accolades of others or advance us socially or professionally.  At yet other times, the definition of success is more about giving ourselves a sorely needed boost when our spirits have been lagging.

Lost in the Array of Definitions

Whatever and wherever their source, a dizzying array of definitions abound.  Many seem to be a target created after the trigger was pulled, making every decision a bulls-eye even if the aim was horrid.  Some are thrown out because they’re easy, or we’re not certain what success is so we just come up with something that might pass for success if people don’t pay too much attention.  And in the squalor of definitions gone awry and rogue, we seem to have lost a genuine definition of success.

Why Success?

It's interesting that success, in whatever manner it is defined, has come to define our worth and value.  That’s why a lack of perceived success will tank our self-esteem quicker than just about anything else.  Success appears to have become the litmus test as to the credibility of our existence and the unforgiving gauge of our worth.  Success has evolved into the exclusive commodity by which we ascribe value to ourselves and others.

Fear of Questioning the Definition

Success becomes so acutely defined and so irrevocably defining that we seldom entertain any other possible definition.  We find ourselves entangled in the culturally mandated definition of success, or the definitions imposed by our families or friends or occupation.  We become so absorbed in the sorting out and the achieving of those definitions that the endeavor to achieve them becomes inordinately consuming. But what does this mean in terms of how we’ve come to identify who we are and in that, how we’ve attempted to determine the value of who we are?

The Flaw of Success

Yet, the nature of such a mentality of success demands that we constantly achieve.  It is an effort of insanely perpetual works that requires that we continually prove our worth as the previous success eventually fades sufficiently to demand a new one.  Sure, we can define it.  But success as used to determine our worth and value is always temporal.  It’s always moving.  Therefore, we become enslaved to successes that demand nothing more than other successes.

We Are Too Big to Be Defined By Any Success

Our value is not based on ‘what we do.’  Rather, it is based on ‘who we are.’  If we remain stuck with the feeling that our worth is based on ‘what we do,’ the definition of success is what lends credence to those efforts.

Success is irrelevant in respect to our self-esteem as any definition of success regardless of how lofty does not possess the power to sustain our sense of worth or feed our sense of value.  When it comes to our sense of worth and value, success is the thing that’s not the thing.  It’s been marketed as the snake oil for our self-esteem by the carpetbaggers of our culture, but it’s snake oil only.

Success cannot do what it promises to do. With such an apparently irreconcilable flaw in its makeup, it would be worthwhile to postulate that our worth must be based on something significantly more consistent and profoundly more fundamental than success.

Value Based on Who We Are

Maybe we should dare to consider that our worth does not need to be established either by effort or definition.  Maybe we should consider the possibility that it has never ‘not’ been established.  That success was achieved by the fact that God decided to designed us and then deliver us into a far larger design to make an impact in and upon that design.  We’re here, and that itself is a success. 

Everything that we do from here forward is not about success, for success has already been achieved by the fact of our existence.  It’s about calling.  It’s about fulfillment of the purpose that we’ve been given the privilege to fulfill.  It’s about honing in on our purpose and purposefully carrying it out.  It’s about obedience to the call, not the adherence to some definition that measures our obedience to the call.  It’s doing all of that knowing that our worth and value exists by virtue of the fact that we exist.  From there on out, it’s about the doing and not about the proving.  

Thinking a Bit More Deeply

It would therefore be wise to consider the possibility that our worth is based on something so profound and unerringly rich that its worth singularly speaks for itself.  Something that does not need to be proven simply because it is established in a manner that the need of proof is the weakness of our vision and not the fact of reality.  It would make sense that our worth should be, and in reality is based on something that cannot be proven for any other reason than its value lies forever beyond the most magnificent achievements that would serve to even remotely evidence it.

Achieving for Sheer Pleasure, Not Proof of Value

We would be wise to embrace the liberating reality that we can achieve in life for the sheer pleasure of achievement, rather than as a despairing effort to establish our worth.  We can walk through life with vigor and tenacity out of a sense of worth, not out of some desperate effort to prove our worth.  We change things and we change the course of things because we have been privileged to possess both the ability and the permission to do so.  Life is engaged, energized and inspired by our worth, rather than depleted in the pursuit of it.  Our days are lived embracing the reality that our value is based on who we are, and to embrace that liberating reality is to embrace a life liberated.

The Viciousness of Low Self-Esteem Explained

If we cannot embrace this indispensable reality, we will be irreversibly stunted by the limitations of the achievements we pursue.  We will chain our potential to the baseness of achievements.  When we do, the infinite worth that defines us will be forever overshadowed by the shallowness of achievements, for the greatest achievements will never come close to reflecting our true value.  Your value is based on who you are, despite what you do.  And that is a critical but glorious shift that we each must make.

Finding Ourselves Somewhere Else

In the Footsteps of the Few

Not Where We Were

It seems that we have some vague and rather ethereal sense of where we’re going in this thing called life.  For the more contemplative soul, that sense might be quite refined.  For the casual traveler, it might be a bit more nebulous and scattered.  For many, where they’re going is defined by the tasks of the day, rather than enlarged by a vision for tomorrow.

In many cases where we’re going is far more rigorously defined by all the places where we don’t want to go, rather than the places where we do want to go.  At other times its definition is shaped by the opinions of others, or it’s carved directly from the bedrock of the value systems that have been built into our lives throughout the whole of our lives. In whatever way we do it, we all have some sense of where we’re going. And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else. 

The Detours We Create

Yet, life is not so predictable as to always wind its way to the places that we presumed it to be going.  There are those times when where we were going was mistaken as some sort of final destination when in reality it was only a step to a final destination. At other times the place where we’re going is really a destination that we had fabricated because the place to which life had originally called us appeared too big, or too far, or too steep, or simply impossible in whatever way our limited vision happened to interpret it. Sometimes our destination is to set a course away from our destination so that we can dispense with whatever responsibility or obligation our original destination might have demanded of us. But then there are those other times when life takes a sharp turn that seems little of our actions, nothing of our destination, but everything of circumstances designed to kill our journey and crush our destination long before we get within arm’s length of it.

And then in the magic of life, there are those times where we have actually pursued some authentic destination with such rigor that the trajectory has catapulted us past our destination to places that are everything of our fondest imagination. However, it might play out, we’re all headed somewhere.

The Explanation of Detours Missed

How It Happens

Yet, more often than not it’s the not the obvious shifts in our journey that are the core problem. Sure, life shows up and we get shoved down. There’s no question that the natural ebb and flow of life, whether it be titanic or miniscule, will happen to us.  Despite our frequently ego-centric inclinations to the contrary, we are not so shrewd or ingenious as to be able to traverse life in a manner that deftly side-steps everything that comes at us.  We don’t dance as well as we think we do.

Casual and Careless

Yet, more often than not, the explanation doesn’t rest in life having shown up. The much more poignant issue is that too often we are passive, flabby and lax in rigorously living out our lives. We’re far too casual and careless. Somehow, somewhere the sanctity of life and the privilege of living it out was supplanted with some sense that it’s too much work or that it’s not going to work, so why try?

Preoccupied with Pabulum

Too often we’re too preoccupied with pabulum. We’re tediously engaged with tiny things and we’re caught in the tedium of minutia because we can gather these things around us and control them when the bigger things are out of our control. Too frequently we’re goaded by the fear of big dreams and massive possibilities, so we dumb down our lives to anesthetize those fears. 

Along for the Ride

Frequently we presume that we’re some docile passenger along for a ride that’s going wherever it’s going, so we just let it go to wherever that place is. We freely surrender to passivity which is an invitation to meaninglessness. And meaninglessness is the death of the soul itself. Life is a river, we say. And the best course of action is to navigate it because entertaining the far-fetched notion of swimming against it is utterly preposterous.  

The Walls of Denial

At other times, we live in the constructed confines erected from the raw material of denial, causing us to live out a life that is in denial of life itself. We become squatters living in a squatter’s camp constructed by the flimsy materials of justification, rationalization, blame-placing and projecting. We pull in the walls due to the reality that materials of this sort are always pulling inward because they will die if we dare to press them outward.  Hemmed in by walls of this sort, the world around us is shut out and moves on without our awareness of it. 

Ending Up Where We Wish to Be

We will end up somewhere. The fact that we have a destination is irrefutable as life is a journey that presents us with no option other than the journey. We may decide that the nature and course of the journey is irrelevant, and we may take a backseat to passivity.  If we do, we have no right to complain when we end up in some place other than what we may have thought or preferred.

Yet, we can recognize that we are not automatons subject to the flux of the world within which we have found ourselves. It would seem advisable to recognize that we have an obligation to the course that our life is taking, and that along with that obligation we have been granted a profound degree of power to bring to the course. If we succumb to carelessness, or become engrossed by pabulum, or if we just let the ride go wherever circumstances take it, or if we pull close the walls of denial this thing that we call life will wind itself to wherever it’s going with no one at the helm.  And that kind of destination cannot be good.

We would be wise to inventory our lives and determine if we are in some way large or small participating in any of these behaviors.  If so, we need to root them out and expunge them from our lives.  Reclaiming a sense of vision, and then seizing our lives with discipline and intentionality will set us on a path that will land us in places that we’ve dreamt to land.  If we don’t, the place we land may not be on any land that we even remotely recognize.

Our freedoms are not a "right."  They are, in fact, a "privilege."  They are not ours to abuse.   Rather, they are ours to cherish.  But as we abuse these rights by demanding our right to them or exercising them in ways that will destroy these very freedoms, we forget that they are fragile.  Very fragile.  They are not permanent.  They are not guaranteed.  They will not stand under the weight of our misuse of them.  And if handled inappropriately or abused in one of the many ways that we abuse them, we may someday find ourselves without them.

We are a nation that is losing it's mooring.  We are blatantly rewriting our history and thoughtlessly discarding truth in some mad dash of ultimate destruction.  We are using our freedoms to destroy ourselves.  And I would think that that is the saddest use of these cherished and long-held freedoms that I can think of. 

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We need to stop.  We need to put down our calendars, set our phones aside, strip ourselves of the voices incessantly clamoring for our attention and listen.  Just listen.  For life is not what we’re chasing.  It’s what we’re leaving behind in the chasing.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Rich is the person who stops long enough to listen to a bird sing in the celebration of spring, peer into the deep blue of a drowsy summer sky, draw in the pungent aroma of fall’s leaves, and watch the listless kiss of a winter’s snow.  For in doing these you have witnessed that which money cannot purchase and man cannot create.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We spend our lives acquiring what we think we need to fight the battles that we think we’re fighting.  In a world fraught with fear and uncertainty, we assimilate whatever grants us this sense of invincibility and power for whatever battle we think we’re fighting.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“I do not weaponize my life for God by rigorously acquiring an expansive arsenal of sophisticated munitions.  Rather, I empty out the arsenal of everything but God, for at that point the arsenal is filled to capacity.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We build bridges or barriers.  If you think about it, everything that we do builds one or the other.  And the function of a bridge is quite different than the function of a barrier.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Every decision will build a bridge or a barrier.  Therefore, what stands in front of you at this moment illustrates the decisions that you made on your way to this moment.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.