Tag Archives: lessons

Lessons from the XBox

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xboxGuest what! I got an Xbox for Christmas! Well, not really! It’s really for my grandson, who is living with us. But since he’s a kid and should to be supervised while he is playing, I get to play with it also!

Well as I, I mean “we,” were playing the other day I began to realize that there is a lot that can learned about life from playing with the Xbox. The first thing is the fact that if you don’t know how to operate the controllers, the game will be totally frustrating. You have to know when to push the blue “x” button, the green “a” button, rotate the left and right sticks and when to pull the right and left triggers! Whew! It takes a while to get adjusted, especially when the game is moving at such a fast pace! However, your frustration can be minimized if you take the time to find out how to control functions and go through the various tutorials.

That’s the way it is with life! If you don’t know how life works, life can be totally frustrating! You can be overwhelmed by the fast pace of life when you try to learn how it works on the fly! But just like the Xbox games, the frustrations of life can be minimized by taking the time to learn what buttons to push and go through the various tutorials of life. I think the source of many of the problems in our society today can be traced to the fact that most kids are trying to be grown too soon! As a result, they miss out on many of the lessons they should learn during their childhood. Childhood (the tutorial-period) is the time to learn how the various buttons of life work! But if you wait until you are an adult (when the game is already in progress) to learn how to operate the controls, you are setting yourself up for failure and frustration! Now, if you really want to know how life works, I would suggest you take the time to read and study the manual. The manual is the Bible: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. The Bible is the best manual of life because it was authored by the Creator of Life!

Another lesson I learned from playing the Xbox is that if you’re not careful, it will monopolize your time! Before you know it, the day or the night will be gone and you will have accomplished nothing! The lesson of life is this: Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted by the recreations and non-essentials of life that you fail to do and/or don’t have the time for what is really important in life! Focus and spend your time doing the things that are really important, because if you don’t, your energy will be drained and your time will be monopolized by the “Xboxes” of life! Oh well! I would write more, but I have to go now! Time to play my grandson another game of NBA 2K14!

 

Why Does This Keep Happening To Me?

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Some time ago I was watching an episode of a TV show called, “The Outer Limits.” For those of you who may not be familiar with it, the theme and plot was similar to a show that was very popular years ago called, “The Twilight Zone.” Well, this particular episode was about a young man who somehow got caught up in a “time loop!” He went go through the daily routine of going to work, doing all of the other things that people do on a normal day. However, when he woke up the next morning, much to his dismay, he discovered that it really wasn’t a new day, but rather the very same day that he had just went through! It got to the point that he could predict what would happen next because everything turned out the same as they had the previous time he had lived that day!

Well, in some cases, fact is stranger than fiction! Sometimes in life, we go through the same things over and over again, so much to the point that we ask ourselves: “Why does this keep happening to me?” Perhaps you are suffering from a continual string of bad relationships or successive failures. Whatever the case, it seems like it’s a repeating cycle over and over again! You keep getting involved with the same-type situations and with the same-type people! It’s the exact same situation that you were in before, but the names have been changed! It’s really the same (type) lady but she’s just wearing a different dress!

One reason for this is because most of us tend to live our lives in a closed-end loop! We never dare to venture outside of the circle of the familiar. You’d be surprised, but people who constantly find themselves in negative situations and circumstances, for the most part, actually placed themselves in those situations and circumstances by design! You see, subconsciously we will put forth more effort to stay with what is familiar to us, even if the familiar is bad for us!

Yet another reason for the closed-end loop is because many times, we fail to learn the lessons that life is trying to teach us. Unlike some educational institutions, life will not promote us to the next level if the lessons of the present level have not been learned and mastered. So, we keep making the same mistakes because we fail to learn the lesson that is inherent within the mistake! Once we learn the lesson, the mistake has served its purpose and we no longer make that “same” mistake!

So, when will you move to the next level? When will you break out of your closed-in loop? Only when you learn the lesson and understand the reason why this keeps happening to you!