The Mind Connection: How the Thoughts You Choose Affect Your Mood, Behavior, and Decisions (8 page)

Are you the kind of person whom others want to be friends with? Looking at it in a more personal way, are you the kind of person you would want to be friends with? If I would not even want to be friends with me, how can I expect anyone else to want to? I want to be the kind of person that people are glad to know and call their acquaintance or friend. I want people to be glad they ran into me at Starbucks and we had a few minutes to chat. When
I am at a gathering of people, I would like to be sought out by others because they like my attitude and being with me adds to their joy.

I am sure you feel the same way, but we must also realize that if we want to have that kind of positive effect on people, we need to be positive people. I don’t think that anyone would say they don’t want people to like them, but they must also realize that nothing good happens accidently. If we want to be well liked, we can choose to be likable. If we want friends, we can choose to be friendly! We have to be kind and do things that make people feel good about themselves when they spend time with us. I once heard that even if people don’t remember what you say to them, they do remember how you made them feel.

My exercise coach and trainer is a very enjoyable, positive, encouraging person, and I always look forward to seeing him. His attitude makes the entire experience of working out pleasant. Even though the exercises themselves are usually difficult, he makes me feel like I am amazingly strong through his positive comments to me. He recently told me that I am functioning at about the age of a fifty-year-old woman although I am seventy. I like him a lot!

On the other hand, I had another trainer a few years ago who wasn’t very positive or encouraging. When he would correct my form, he would do it in a rather negative, condescending way. He actually thought he was helping me, but the truth was that he was discouraging me. I may have needed the advice, but he could have given it to me in a more encouraging way and perhaps in smaller doses. Excessive correction breaks a person’s spirit and makes them weak. He was also very stingy with compliments or praise. Only occasionally did I hear the word “good” come out of his mouth, and even then he didn’t say it with much enthusiasm.
It is not hard to realize why I didn’t enjoy working with him nearly as much as I do my current trainer.

If anyone has a job dealing with the public or they have clients or customers, it is foolish to be negative and expect to do well.

Instead of being focused on me when I am with other people, I need to be focused on them. I have asked God to give me the gift of awareness. I want to train myself to truly be aware of the people around me, their needs, and how I am making them feel. I want to know what they are trying to communicate to me, and that could be different from what they are saying. People who are insecure or in emotional pain are often afraid to reveal their honest needs, so they communicate more vaguely. They hope we will read between the lines, so to speak. They want us to know them and what they need, but they are so fearful of rejection that they will not communicate in a straightforward manner. The only way that we will really “hear” them is if we are listening with our spiritual ears as well as with the ears on our head.

Jesus perceived many things about people that were not obvious to others because He had this gift of awareness. He noticed people that were hurting and He always took time to stop and help them. When we take time to help people, or to genuinely listen to them, it makes them feel valuable.

Jesus noticed a crippled man lying beside a pool of water waiting for a miracle—this man had been there thirty-eight years. Jesus stopped to talk with him and offer help, but I wonder how many others had passed by during those long years, neither noticing the crippled man nor caring to help (see John 5).

Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and
He told a story to help us understand what this means. A man had been beaten and robbed and was left to die on the side of the road. Two religious men saw him but passed by on the other side of the street. Have you ever crossed the street, or avoided an aisle in the store, so you could purposely avoid someone with an unpleasant circumstance simply because you didn’t want to get involved? More than likely, the answer is yes. One man did stop to help and used his time and money to make sure the man was nursed back to health and Jesus said that he was the only one who truly showed love for the man (see Luke 10:27–36).

If you wouldn’t want to be friends with you, then start changing. Give to others what you hope to get. One of the spiritual laws that we are taught in God’s Word is that we reap what we sow (see Galatians 6:7). How exciting is that? If we want to gain something, all we need to do is give it to others and it will eventually come back to us. Look at life like a wheel and realize that what you put on the wheel comes back around to you eventually. When we are born again, Jesus gives us a new beginning. Through a relationship with Him, we can learn how to put things on the wheel of life that we actually want to come back to us.

I am not saying that if I am rude to someone one time that it will come back to me. Thankfully, we can apologize and ask for forgiveness and take things off the wheel, but if I continually mistreat other people, it will come back to me. Dave and I have often teased about the wheel principle. If I am just being playful and throw a wet towel at him, he says, “You just put it on the wheel and you know what that means.” Before the day is out I can expect a wet towel to be thrown at me! I know how the wheel principle works, and I want to keep it in mind when I am dealing with people in relationships. I want to give them what I want given back to me.

I frequently run into people who are lonely, but after being
around them a short period of time I know why. They talk about themselves and their problems incessantly, and their general attitude toward life, work, the government, church, themselves, and other people is all negative and grumpy. They even have a semifrown on their faces and lots of facial and body language that lets the world know they are dissatisfied individuals. I admit that I don’t enjoy being around them, and they don’t have a positive influence on me. I don’t feel better after being with them, but I do feel drained. These types of negative people are also generous with criticism. Dale Carnegie, author of the well-known book
How to Win Friends and Influence People
, said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—and most fools do.”
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If I don’t enjoy being around people who are bitter and critical, why would anyone enjoy being around me if I behave that way? We can learn a lot about how to treat other people by observing how we feel when we are treated badly. I worked at a place for several years where the boss treated most people as inferior to him and insignificant. I knew that God wanted me there during that season of my life, but I honestly didn’t understand why He had me placed where I was being mistreated. Many years later, after being in ministry and having several hundred employees, I realized that I had learned a great lesson during those years. I learned how to treat people if I wanted them to respect and like me. I also learned that if we want to please God, we cannot mistreat His children!

Who do you know that makes you feel great when you’re with them? Now ask yourself why, and start following their example. I have not always been the best listener in the world. I am great at talking, but not so much at listening. One of the pastors I enjoy being with the most is a great listener. When I talk to him, he acts like every word I say is worth hearing. He never makes me
feel rushed or as if he can’t wait to get away from me. He rarely interrupts me, because he is more focused on what I am saying than what he wants to say. The lesson is simple: If I want to make others feel the way he makes me feel, then I need to do what he does!

I know a few other people who always make me feel amazing because they encourage and compliment me at least a few times each time I see them. I can follow their example, and I am learning to do so. Choose friends you want to be like, and not people you don’t want to be like.

While visiting a prison and spending time with various inmates, a friend shared that most of the inmates connected the beginnings of their lives of crime to being influenced by the wrong group of people. They were not refusing to take responsibility for their crimes, but shared that their troubles started when they joined a gang, or got involved with the wrong man or the wrong woman.

When I was between the ages of eight and twelve, I lived in a neighborhood where most of the children were older than me, and I found that hanging around them led to me doing things I should not have been doing. They influenced me to start smoking cigarettes when I was nine and to frequently lie to my parents about things we were doing. They even convinced me to steal money from my parents and give it to them. It is amazing what we will do to be accepted and feel that we belong. As human beings created for connectedness, we are in danger of making seriously bad decisions in order to avoid being lonely, but then we end up alone anyway, dealing with the problems we created from the bad choices we made.

Just think of the woman who desperately wants to get married and is fearful that her age is getting to be a hindrance. She meets a man who is interested in her, but he is not a Christian like she is, and he has no interest in becoming one. He also has several habits that concern her, like drinking too much and gambling, and he has a quick temper. But in her desperation, she convinces herself that God wants to use her to change him, and in a few months they are married. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that she made a serious mistake, but now she is faced with a lifetime of misery and she is still lonely!

Think of the young girl in college who wants to be accepted into a certain sorority and she compromises her moral standards to be accepted by the group. She is excited to be in the group; after all, it is the most prestigious one on campus. But how will she feel when she is expelled from school for underage drinking and drug addiction, neither of which were problems she was even tempted with prior to meeting her “new friends.”

Learn to let God be involved in choosing your friends, and you will have ones who make you a better person.

You may not be a negative or a rude person, but if you are around others who are like this for a lengthy period of time, you will start to pick up bad habits. It is like being around people who smoke cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. You may not smoke yourself, but if you’re around the smoke, you will end up smelling like smoke anyway.

My daughter-in-law said one time that she knows when my son has stopped by my house with the kids, because they come home smelling like my perfume. This makes me wonder: Do we come home at night smelling like Jesus? Are we positive people with a sweet-smelling fragrance? Second Corinthians 2:14–15 says it this way:

On several occasions in my close to forty years in ministry, I have had to deal with troublemakers. You may ask, “Joyce, were they Christians?” The answer is yes, but they were Christians who lived more by what they thought and felt instead of by what God’s Word teaches. People who are unwise let what they think flow right out of their mouths. For example, when they don’t agree with a decision that has been made at work, the first thing they do is make trouble by sowing seeds of strife and gossip. They may cause other people to have a bad opinion regarding something that they should not have gotten involved in to begin with.

It amazes me that when we don’t agree with a decision that has been made, we always feel that we are right in our opinions and that those who made the decision are wrong. I often tell people that they don’t need to have an opinion in an area where they have no responsibility, and I also still need to remind myself of the same thing at times. Sometimes a restaurant I eat at frequently will take something off the menu that “I” really like, and it irritates me! I have
asked why and been told that it was an item that was rarely sold and they were losing money on it. That, of course, had not occurred to me. After all, if “I” like it, surely everyone else does too, so why in the world would they take it off the menu?

Since I am not responsible for the profit of the restaurant, I can have all the opinions I want to about their menu choices, but my opinions are ill informed. It doesn’t cost us anything to have an opinion, but if every business followed all of our advice they might go bankrupt. A lot more humility and a lot less pride would do all of us good and would cut down on strife in the world.

Over the years, I have learned how truly dangerous strife is, and I personally avoid the troublemakers who cause it. It is like a poisonous root that spreads quickly and bears bad fruit everywhere it goes. I also aggressively resist letting strife or a root of bitterness get into my own life. I have opportunities to be offended just like anyone else does, but I have learned that I don’t have to “take” offense. I can give it right back to Satan, who is the instigator of it.

Recently we dealt with a person who had upset several people at our ministry offices. He had an offense in his heart that had been festering a long time, and although he would have normally been a fairly positive, happy individual, he became negative and was causing strife and division. Thankfully, when confronted, he immediately realized he had let his attitude become poisoned with wrong thinking. He was very repentant and quickly apologized to all the people he had influenced. I would love to be able to say that is what always happens; however, people who allow a root of bitterness to get into their soul are not always that easily persuaded to take responsibility for their bad attitude and make restitution. Sadly, they frequently go from bad to worse until they lose their friends and their jobs.