I Have Faith, Do You?

by Andrea Goeglein

 
Faith. As I prepared the material for my class, Before Abundance: Developing the Habits of Success, it struck me that everyone has faith in something. The ‘something’ tends to then guide how, and if, they are willing to develop new habits that could enhance their success.

Dr. Success Challenge: Think about what you have faith in, meaning, think of what guides how you believe life works and can be explained. After you have looked at what you believe about how life works, then look at why you believe what you believe.

I have narrowed down (which automatically tells me I am wrong!) the list of possibilities:

1. Faith in Science. If it exists, it can be explained though particular methods of experimentation. The value of developing a new habit must have already been proven for you to attempt implementing them.
2. Faith in Self. If I can think it, I can create it. The value of developing a new habit is inspired by a thought or from hearing how another achieved positive results developing some new habit.
3. Faith in Spirit. You believe developing new habits serves not only your good but potentially serves another and will potentially have a positive impact on others.
4. Faith in Faith. You develop a new habit because you believe in trying whether it can be proven or not. The comment I like most in this arena is: “They call it a mystery for a reason”.

 
I admit to having been all over the board on this for myself. Having been born into a religious family, I was taught to believe in the unseen and things I could not confirm. Yet, being naturally attracted to business, I thought it was normal to believe in the unseen at home and to only believe in what I could see at work. As I matured (remember that is my nice way of saying “having gotten older”), I was getting whiplash between those two worlds more times than I could count. Just to make life fun, it seems that every time I have evidence that supports one stance over another, something occurs that blows a given belief out of the water.

Here are just a few examples of recent articles that came my way which added to the muck:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141106-why-does-anything-exist-at-all

https://www.deepakchopra.com/blog/view/1825/how_to_make_god_love_you

Where I have come out is they following: knowing your own what and why will help flex your thinking when dealing with others’ what’s and why’s, and will help lend support to your decisions such as creating a new habit, positive habit.

My first synchronistic noticing for 2015: I have struggled for many weeks to craft this post. On New Year’s Eve I re-read it and decided to finish it in the morning. The New Year’s morning daily message came from Fr. Richard Rohr was on a similar subject. I will allow Rohr’s closing words to express my thoughts for my work this year:

I hope I can add to the positive momentum of spiritual evolution. Because of my limitations and biases (as a white man, born in Kansas in the 1940s, raised in the Roman Catholic faith, educated in Franciscan seminaries), my approach to union will always be through a particular set of lenses. It cannot not be. My lenses aren’t necessarily better than others, but they are the ones I began with, and thus far they have born much fruit for others. All each of us can do is own and expose our biases, because we all have them. You do too. There is no such thing as a value free, or unbiased position on anything. My prayer, paraphrasing St. Joan of Arc, is: “If I am in your truth, God, keep me there. If I am not, God, put me there.” Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation January 1, 2015 CAC.org

Okay, so I am not a white male Franciscan, but close enough! Thank you for reading and following my blog. Andrea Goeglein

P.S. The photo in the thumbnail of this post was taken my Banzai Ramos, a 747 pilot as he flew over India recently .