It was a quote I first came across in 2009 and it has had a profound impact on my life ever since:
“Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
Written after his own personal burnout, Martin Lloyd-Jones is saying something that is certainly worth pondering over. Take yesterday for example – did you spend most of the day speaking truth to yourself or was most of the time spent listening to yourself – your worries, petty grievances, fears and anxieties? For me, as a disciple of Christ, by ‘truth’ I mean the Bible scripture in all its richness and fulness.
Most of us I think spend more time listening to lies than we do speaking truth to ourselves.
Waking up in the early hours of the morning, I find it is so easy for my mind to quickly rush to things I am worried about or I feel I need to do. It’s a very unhelpful time to think about those things, because invariably at that early hour I can do nothing about the things that are on my mind. There is something about that time in the middle of the night when we are still tired and our blood sugar level is low that makes listening to the worries of our heart all too easy.
And if we are not careful, that listening process can carry on from the moment we eventually get up. So often as we struggle through our morning routine, we’re not directing the thoughts in our mind – we’re simply at their mercy. We find ourselves complaining about what happened yesterday and then worrying about what is going to happen today or tomorrow. We go in the bathroom, look in the mirror and assess the damage that then leads us to brood over how we feel. The reality is we are not in charge of our thinking – we’re just there.
That is why speaking truth to your heart is so important. For me the routine that I have found so beneficial is increasing intimacy with God by getting to know Him better through internalising Biblical Scripture. The best time to start is as soon as possible after I wake up before all the challenges and issues of the day come charging at me.
In the post entitled ‘How to avoid God, ‘ I mentioned a quote by C.S. Lewis that vividly expresses that:
The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job of each morning consists of shoving them all back: in listening to that other voice, taking the other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.
How about you?
How do you quiet the anxieties and worries of your heart and speak truth into your life?
Dear Dr Raheja
I have been reading your posts for the past few months and finding them very helpful.
Thank you also for the suggestion that instead of listening to our selves, we should talk to our selves by meditating the scripture.
I also enjoyed “Hope in Darkness”
Thanks for the encouragement Shyam. Do feel free to share more of your thoughts and pass on to others who would also find helpful.
Hi Sunil, I used to give all my anxieties and fears to God, but I’ve realised that I need to deal with them myself. I also often wake up at 0200 in the morning a reply past bad experiences and worry about future possibilities, but this has become such a normal thing now that when it starts happening, I just simply say to myself “ok, here we go again” and I imagine that it’s just like watching a cinema screen that I can’t stop, I just have to watch it until the end then get out (I eventually fall back to sleep). I think this goes back to our cave-man times, we are constantly scanning the environment for threats, but the threats are obviously different now. Although I don’t believe in god anymore, I have noticed that things to sometimes fall into place all by themselves, whether we worry about them or not. We have to remember that we are 99.999999% empty space, and everything around us is also empty space.
Thank you for sharing how you handle anxiety, Karl.
It does raise a question in my mind – if we are 99.9999999% empty space as you say, then does that not mean all of our existence is meaningless? Without an infinite reference point (God) does that not make our lives empty and without purpose? We are then just tiny specks of dust in a dark, hostile and vast universe that is going nowhere. Intellectually we might be able to handle that, but emotionally and existentially that is very bleak.
Why does existence have to have meaning? Can’t we just exist? The purpose of my life, biologically speaking, was to create more humans, I’ve created one, so my purpose now is to try to gently mould her into an ethical, moral and productive human being who will contribute in some way to society in a positive way, then she will hopefully repeat the process. The avoidance of pain and search for happiness are our main goals, but dealing with pain in a constructive way can be done with or without god, as can the pursuit of happiness. By going to church, reading the bible and praying, god will not bestow more grace upon you, in fact he may dispense more on me and less on you (I’m talking as if he exists), so it is in fact pointless to worship some entity which may or may not like you depending on whether or not you do or do not worship ‘it’.
Interesting comments Karl.
The main response I have is that without an infinite reference point in God and what He has revealed through Scripture how can you decide the validity of your assumptions? So how do you know the purpose of your life is to create more human beings? How can you be sure that the avoidance of pain and the search for pleasure are our main goals? Yes that is what we often do, but why should that be our purpose?
And why should we believe that God is somehow indebted to me because I go to church and worship Him?
I do appreciate your willingness to explore these ideas.
Should we then completely not listen to our heart or ignore the fact when we are? I think I can recognise when I am listening to my heart and I should start moving towards talking more and listening less.
Many thanks for your question Sunil Kumar.
I think usually when we listen to our hearts it is negative and very critical. Often those thoughts are not based in reality or are unrealistic.
However, the more the peace of God controls our hearts then the more our hearts will not condemn us.
(For more on this see 1 John 3)