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Knowing Shalom: Restoring Hope
Knowing Shalom: Restoring Hope I learned something about hope today from a coworker. He talked about a behavioral experiment on rats. First, scientists placed rats in a bucket of water to see how long they would swim. Generally, they would swim for about 15 minutes before giving up. Then the scientists added another layer to the experiment. They pulled the rats out of the water after several minutes and dried them off. Then they put the poor rats back in the bucket. This time they could swim for 60 hours. The difference? Hope. The rats could last much longer if they knew that survival and rescue were an option. It is…
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Despair: The Aim of the Abuser
Despair is not often discussed, though it is considered a dangerous psychological condition. Psychology Today describes despair as: … profound and existential hopelessness, helplessness, powerlessness, and pessimism about life and the future. Despair is a deep discouragement and loss of faith about one’s ability to find meaning, fulfillment, and happiness, to create a satisfactory future for oneself. The goal of an abuser is to produce the elements of despair in another person. In speaking with the victims of this abuse and having suffered as one myself, I am always surprised at how difficult it is to admit to the intentionality of emotional abuse. Victims often invent excuses for their…
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How to Find Your Why
All successful salespeople recognize the importance of the why. After all, one must have a powerful why in order to make cold calls that result in rejection far more often than not. I often ask my students why they are in college. And a few have an answer. Most just shrug their shoulders and when pressed, admit that they are there because either they have nothing else to do with their lives or because their parents made them. Sometimes students enroll in college, enter into debt, and then flunk out, simply because their why was weak or worse, nonexistent. Finding the words that explain the meaning for your life can…
Healing Through Art & Words
