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Tag Archives: Learning

We Owe It To Ourselves . .

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Character, Choices, Commitment, Courage, Discipline, Exploration, Fullness, Life, Self-Respect, Strength

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explorer, growth, Learning

We owe it to ourselves to understand the way things are, what we believe about the world and our place in it. We do no one, most especially ourselves, any good when we accept the opinions of others on face value or live our lives as echoes of others whom we view favorably or by fandom for their supposed celebrity. This is our life, our journey and our passage through it. If we aren’t going to make choices which reflect what it is that reflects our inner core of values and beliefs, then we aren’t going to have a life which feels comfortable and is meaningful to us. 01 Life Quote

 

Someone dear to me never ceases to amaze me in her insistent and persistent endeavors. She moves through life individually, and purposefully as such, attempting, learning and developing herself. She has a full life of experiences as a result! She might not be the master of any one thing, but she will be able to relish her participation in each and every manner in which she participates. Life is meant to be savored, tasted, tried and experienced. We’re meant to learn, to practice, to endeavor, to attempt, to challenge and to develop skills through all the challenges we master. We might not be proficient enough at some of those things to earn our income or to rely upon them for providing our sole support; but we can qualify ourselves as ably and aptly learned in such matters.

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But for those who don’t love or respect themselves enough to take the time to explore their own hearts and minds; to find preferences, skills, talents, abilities and acceptable beliefs, nothing is learned at all! Without first knowing a thirst from wanting to develop and grow because we believe ourselves worthy such endeavors, we won’t push ourselves beyond the familiar or the simple. And often the simple is to take what others say or do rather than to work on developing those preferences for ourselves.

Moving into the “explorer” mindset is as easy as knowing we’re worth such an effort! That person who is dear to me does what she does because she is feeding her soul. She is learning, developing and growing her mind, her talents, her abilities and her experiences because she is compelled by a desire to be a full, learned individual! Don’t accept what others have done or limit yourself to living vicariously through others. Find a way to challenge anew your heart, mind and your spirit to grow, to learn and to develop something new; and to realize who you are and what makes you tick! Imagine the life you can have when you assert your belief in yourself?! Just igniting that fire within you is to empower yourself to have the fullest, most interesting and experienced life possible.

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LEARNING AS WE GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in God

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Creativity, Forgiveness, God, Learning

LEARNING AS WE GO

I wish I knew then what I know now.  I didn’t, and so, I made mistakes, I lived my life with a flawed sense of reality, sometimes quite selfishly focusing on all the wrong things, the things which don’t really matter when it comes right down to it.  But you know, I suppose that is what separates me from sainthood, I didn’t know, I wasn’t perfect, and all I could do was the best I knew to do when I knew to do it!  Lighten up . . . we are imperfect creatures, designed with flaws, made in flesh with all too human characteristics.  We hurt, we bleed, we covet, we need.  But we can strive to be better each new day, to do better each new year of this life.  I am not where I want to be yet, but I’m headed in the right direction, facing my demons, conquering my enemy fears, and looking for my dreams!
When we make mistakes, do we know that we have two choices?  We can forgive ourselves, as easily as we would probably forgive our friends or family theirs, or we can harbor the harm as though it has ownership on some part of us.  It is often the case that we mold ourselves around our upsets, shape our lives to fit our troubles and create new forms out of the dented clay we have battered in just being humans.  Is that fair?  Does anyone deserve an onus of responsibility which requires perfection?  I have set such lofty standards, that I almost made it impossible at times to exist in this world with my portfolio of follies, those things which I would label the collective mistakes which altered my life significantly.  No, in terms of the world’s turning, they are not earth-shaking, but for my life, perhaps I would have had an entirely different life had I not made these mistakes or lived with these choices.  Can we go back and change the past to ease our burden of guilt?  No  . . . we are left to process, to forgive ourselves our failings and to proceed.  Failing at something doesn’t make us failures as human beings.  It is not the case.  If I cannot come to terms with that significant difference in defining my life, then I cannot move onward to the future with peace of mind.  And I must!  That is what I must do.  I must move forward, so I must forgive myself for being human.  If God can and does forgive me, why can’t I forgive myself?  I must!!

Learn to be all too human, it is what God made you to be.  You are not the exception to the rule, but just another one of us, doing your best each new day!  Let go, trust in God, and try to do better and be better each morning.  But, remember as you live your life, you will make mistakes, you will fail along the journey, you will suffer disappointments and you will let people down.  That doesn’t make you a failure, nor does it destroy your life.  You must forgive yourself, just as you would ask God or others to forgive you, let yourself find a kind and loving heart waiting there within to give nurturing back to yourself!  It’s the requisite condition of our very human design. 

 

LEARNING AS I GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Knowledge, Learning, Lessons

LEARNING AS I GO…

Life’s a series of lessons, learned as we live, not known beforehand.  They’re sometimes scoldings, sometimes they are trophies, awards, and accolades for “jobs well done”.  Mostly life lessons are an uncertainty, a way to evolve through the knowledge, discipline, experience, and time, which will all help to form the final form which makes up you.  Life is a way to become more than you started out being, and if you’re fortunate, you take your lessons and make the later versions of “you” new and improved! 

Do you ever tire of lessons?  I do.  Plain and simple, I long for the day when I don’t have to learn something which makes me feel a sting of shame, remorse, anguish, or self-abasing pity.  It’s not easy to be learning all the time!  Some days, we just want to be established, based, founded and ready . . . no more lessons, please!  Lessons can teach us, but after enough lessons, don’t we just feel fatigued?  It has happened to me.  I’ve been beaten down and done in by my lessons learned.  I sometimes eagerly crave the day when I don’t have to assume I have failed, faltered, or just missed the boat.  I want to be successful, don’t we all?  So learning lessons can weaken our exterior belief in our own strength.  It takes a special hard shell to know, a lesson learned doesn’t mean we are stupid, failures, or disappointments.  We all make mistakes.  So letting yourself be open to learning lessons, without being judgmental and self-abasing, is key to growth!

Lessons are like time-delayed gifts.  They will always give us a gift, but sometimes it is years after the fact before we can appreciate the lesson fully!  You might have the tendency to carry the guilt or shame like a weight around your neck for a long time before you find the benefit of that lesson!  The important thing to remember is, that no matter how much you need the lesson, there is a positive element to it!  You just need to convince your attitude of that!  It might require an adjustment, afterall, most people can get hooked into the negative way of thinking about lessons, as though evolving is a bad thing.  It isn’t, it just requires your guts and fortitude to make it through the hard times, until the sun shines on your wisdom, and a lesson leaves it mark!  Let yourself be open to learning about life through the lessons presented to you.  They happen for a reason, to make you a better human, by making your attitude more positive in the process!

LEARNING AS I GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Life

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Faith, Learning, Life, Love

LEARNING AS I GO

Life is a process, you can dream about your whole life, plan it out in minute detail even, following your own set course, up until the time that life happens for real.  When life intrudes on how we are living, we must make a detour, we must set our course to new geographical coordinates, and find a new direction suitable for our amended goals.  All of us are learning as we go, we are taking our cues from what happens to us as we proceed, and when we are confronted by things which we must correct in our plan, we have no choice but to redirect, reconfigure and reconnect our internal hard-wiring to be accepting of newness and variation.  Life is a learning process, the minute you stop learning, you are either dead or on your way.  There is no way to limit the inevitability of life challenging us, making us hopefully rise, and not fall to each occasion, demanding from us a certain level of participation.  Life is not a spectator sport! 
Life requires your constant involvement, each day is a rude awakening of the unexpected, combined with the planned, all to make us expectant and surprised, in a fabulous match of emotional internal ping pong.  This is the trick of life, it isn’t ever what you assume it should or would be, it is always a mix of upsets swirling together with the planned.  There is never a time when we aren’t feeling something from a new source, or experiencing a different situation requiring us to look for navigational help.  Even when we share an experience with another human being, the way we deal with it, feel about it, and internalize the situation will always be uniquely our own.  No one else can ever know exactly how it feels to be us. That being said, perhaps we should learn to just go with the flow more often, as life will always take us for a ride, give us a thrill and leave us wondering why things cannot remain constant and steady a while, or just more often! 

How do we learn to let it ride?  Well, the older I get, the more I realize I don’t know about life, and its limitless potential to leave me dazed and confused.  Life is definitely a thrill-ride of surprise, shock, and less often, same-old, same-old.  I admit to being a fan of the routine, the usual, the constant, but the reality of life very rarely permits me to wallow comfortably in that state of being.  Life is rarely that “perpetually” anything, there are usually mishaps, snags, snafus, and dramas often causing unrest all at the same time.  The most important quality to have in life, as my burgeoning wisdom has taught me, is a sense of faith, unwielding and constant.  These most important qualities, hope eternal, faith constant and patience without end must reside perpetually within me.  That’s how you learn to live through life.  Love is a given if you are healthy and in touch with your spirit, but having those other qualities to tether you to the mast, assuring that you are going to find your way through, no matter the storm, is essential to your sense of victory in this life.   Life will shock you, it will lull you in to a sense of false security, thinking there are rhythms of calm and comfort ahead, then “pow”, along comes the first shock!  From that moment on, the only way to respond is to move out of the reaction mode and into the action mode, give up the “victim’s” role and learn to be a conqueror, as you go!

Life Is Like A Classroom

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Life

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Knowledge, Learning, Life, Testing

Life Is Like A Classroom

Life is like a classroom, our daily tests – those things which happen to us by choice & by randomness. Each day we wake begins the day of testing, much like in school, we just have a much bigger & more expansive classroom & arena for learning. Some things on our tests we’re prepared for, we know what to do. Other things are just “out of the blue” & leave us guessing for ways to respond so that we can do our best to make it through the test. We don’t like to view life like a vast classroom, somehow we assume the end of school days means the end of this whole process of our learning & then having to prove we know what we’ve learned, but it is surely our task to pick up where we leave off as adolescents & continue the process right up until the day we pass.

It never stops, so we cannot stop either . . we must continue to learn, to grow, to seek knowledge, to make better choices, to avail ourselves of all the benefits of life lessons so that we make for ourselves a better life. When viewed thusly, we realize our goal is to pass each lesson, to learn & to grow. When we look to the lessons as necessary teachers enabling us to learn sufficiently to advance us to some higher level of wisdom, knowledge & understanding, then they become positive parts of our daily experiences, we advance with each one learned instead of remaining where we are!

The Trouble With Me

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Emotions, Failure, Learning, Maturity, Spirit

The Trouble With Me 

The trouble with me is that I can intend to not let my emotions get the best of me, but just when I am resolved to be determined to not let that happen, that is when they get to me the most!  Our mountains, those challenges which we face, are there to strengthen us, but in that process, they can take us down.  We might be stronger ultimately, but in the process of building our strength, of learning our lessons, in shaping our beings internally, we might just fall, flounder, and err.  We might just decide to fail our tests, not purposefully wanting to fail, but just through fatigue, anguish, weakness of our spirit, or whatever may be the case, we might not pass our tests initially.  Sometimes our challenges are hurdles which trip us up numerous times before we finally learn how to pass over them, get by them, or knock them down!  Usually it’s because we have too much invested emotionally in our situations, and those emotional swings are like extreme amusement-park rollercoasters, which we ride as unwilling participants in some daunting life adventure!  

Emotions are the great wasteland of our lives, if only we could learn to let them not wear us, to not impact us so completely!  Learning to live without reacting to your every and constant emotion is the lesson of a mature spirit.  I’m on my way, but the journey to emotional and spiritual maturity is a long, hard-fought trip through explosions of anger, hurt, futility, pain, pride, and all that makes you feel vulnerable! I aspire to such maturity one day!    In the meantime, I will probably continue to express the same responses to the same emotions to the same situations.  I don’t like repeating my lessons, it makes me feel incompetent, stupid, and truly immature, but it won’t happen until the day I learn to give my emotions absolutely no control over my life.  I must learn to feel what I feel in a moment, but then to let it go instead of letting it ruin my day, letting it take my happiness, nor allowing it to fester unresolved inside my spirit. Emotions aren’t even always truthful!  They can be manipulating, destructive and false!

Why then do we give them such power over our daily happiness?  Learning to be mature spiritually means not living by our emotions, but rather by what we know to be true and real in every single moment. We don’t have to always give our feelings such merit and such high regard!  Learn to not be ruled by your own emotions, live in the moments of reality, not your own emotionally-altered versions of reality!  Spiritual maturity means learning to be content and at peace with your life no matter the situation, the condition, nor the emotional response evoked. It takes practice to be in such a state of being.  I will keep on practicing . . for as long as it takes!  I aspire to such maturity one day!

So Many Choices

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Choices

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Choices, Faith, Freedom, Learning

So Many Choices

The best part of life is having choices whereby we can make the most of our dreams.    The worst part of life is having so many choices whereby we can become lost in all the confusing options we encounter   trying to make our dreams come to fruition!  I don’t know how we get into stages of life with virtually no sense   direction, but we do sometimes.  We can honestly be so overwhelmed with our own freedom, so frightened by the sense of absolute emptiness   in our life, that the very knowledge of rebuilding from the ground up is just too much to take!  I’m at that place . . I’ve been in situations which have now come to a closing point, and at this moment, I would seem to have the entire world as my oyster!  That would be an idyllic state for most people, but it can be completely disturbing too. I’m in over my head, I haven’t direction at all times, and I seek maps and landmarks to help me make my way! It’s not always easy to see the directional indicators of life, those that seem to lead us, to guide us, to point us through the times of uncertainty.  Where are the signs?  What should I look for?  Where do I turn?  Well, in my overwhelmed state, the only place, yet the best one,  I know to turn is God.

 I heard it said that in anxious moments though, we can lose our ability to hear His voice of leadership.  I pray that this is not the case, as there is so much pressing upon my soul and spirit right now, I wish I could hear Him guiding me in everything!    My heart longs to know what lies ahead. I’m surely feeling adrift. My faith is the only thing I have in these moments right now . . faith don’t fail me now!  As I ponder what lies ahead, I consider for the first time in a long time, what is it that will make me happy?  I haven’t thought as much about my own happiness in a long time.  I’ve been putting others first and that is not advisable, as we lose our own focus and direction when we give ourselves last billing in our lives!  Make yourself important enough to be the absolute center of your life … others who want to be there will either agree or move on, but you have to remain true to yourself nonetheless!    Without knowing what you want, doing those things which bring your soul joy and soothe your spirit, you will live a lesser life. That would be a shame, and you would sadden God to do something so selfless. It’s in your own ability to find what makes your spirit soar that you allow His will to be done in your life! He has given you gifts in line with your spirit’s desires, if you do what you passionately are implored to do, you will find your heart’s contentment!

 I’m there right now . . I’m in the place of learning what will make my heart joyous!    When I discover that, I will surely let you all know.  Possibly you will have already seen it or noticed me doing something which brings me great joy, thus you can be assured I am onto something!    I’m just making my way through all the choice open to me, exploring my options and deciding what it will be that will bring me joy in this life!    Seek yours and you will never leave with regrets on the last day, wondering why you didn’t do what you were meant to do!

Getting Close

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in God

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God, Grace, Learning

Getting Close

When I lost my dad, it was the worst thing yet to happen in my life. I went through months of grieving, anger being the strongest emotional reaction to the feeling of loss I had. I spent many hours dealing with healing, and in that time, I had to learn again why I believed what I believed, as for a while, I couldn’t believe in anything!    The hardest period of my life was living without believing, feeling so much pain and anger with God for taking my dad away, that I had trouble releasing that anger just to allow myself time to move through the stages of grief. I was changed in that time, into someone who doubted things, but through that doubt, I learned the most important thing I have ever learned, that I do believe in God, I know Christ died for my forgiveness, giving me eternal life, and that my dad’s death wasn’t a punishment He gave to me for something I had done in my life.   

Losing my dad actually gave me the ideal reason to re-examine my faith at the very core . . I had to, it was completely shaken to my core! I had nothing to do but to test my beliefs, asking many questions, learning how to heal, growing closer to God and becoming a greater believer in the process! The worst thing that has ever happened to me, also helped to make me a much stronger person, forcing me to learn to adapt, giving me reason to explore and examine my faith, and allowing me to find God again, in a relationship which has grown more intimate each and every day!    Through loss and the ensuing grief, I turned heartache into the most rewarding way to develop my faith to a whole new level! I learned through it what spiritual maturity is, why it mattered and how to rely on God for everything each day! I took anger at God and turned it to constant love, even realizing that sometimes God’s actions are not comfortable, do not make me happy, and can even hurt! Sometimes, I have to accept what God does, even though it is painful, for it is a part of life and a part of our process of living a faith-based life! I matured into the person who accepts God’s will in my life, knowing that bad things will happen, but He will always see me through those times!   

I can honestly say that it was in the ultimate   trial that I learned how to let my spirit soar! Without the breaking, without all my anger at Him, I wouldn’t know how deeply I love God, how much I need Him and how much love can live on even after someone leaves. I am so much stronger, better and more mature spiritually because I went through something which could have broken me for good! Instead, I let Him lead me through all my pain, heal my heart and help me see that it does pass, and soon, we are able to stand up to even more challenges in our lives as a result! God helps us through the bad times, knowing that we become better people just by going through them! He gives us His grace and strength sufficient for each day, knowing that with faith, we will come to rely on His new daily dose of grace again tomorrow!    I’m not happy to have lost my dad so early in life, nor anyone I love, but I can say that I have   learned how to take something which was devastating and make it into something with a positive impact upon my spirit, after some time, by asking for God’s abundant grace and love! Through Him all things are possible!

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Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

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