Herb's blog
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Here you will find a bit of encouragement, a little advice (now and then), maybe some insights into writing, a lot of happy thoughts, and a lot of my love to you who follow me.
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Herb's blog
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Here you will find a bit of encouragement, a little advice (now and then), maybe some insights into writing, a lot of happy thoughts, and a lot of my love to you who follow me.
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2/12/2025 0 Comments choose to be "happy!"The "cherries and pits" theory of happiness In July 1967, I escorted my girlfriend back to her dorm. On the front porch of University Hall, I handed her an envelope and asked her to open it. In it was a greeting card. The cover read, “Life is just a bowl of cherries.” On the inside was written, “Full of pits. "However, below that, I wrote, “Would you grow old with me?” and taped a diamond ring to the inside of the card.
Life is a bowl of cherries with pits. And, I can say truthfully that my life with Beverly has been just that crazy. Pits? Of course, plenty of them. Yet, despite that inauspicious beginning, we’re still married. Allow me to explain why I think our marriage has worked. First, We learned to Enjoy the Cherries of Life. When I turned sixteen, my mother told me to get to know as many girls as possible. “Have a lot of dates with many different girls,” she said. Discover the qualities you like in the girls you meet. “So, I dated more than three dozen girls for the next five years. What did I discover? I quickly realized that many of the girls I dated didn’t accept a second or third invitation to go out. And I also discovered that many of them were looking for someone to marry as soon as possible. Those I quit seeing as soon as I found out. It took me several years to realize that I was looking for someone who was fun to be with. And that person turned out to be Beverly Rodgers of Black Oak, Arkansas. I met her after transferring from McNeese State to Arkansas State, where she was a student. The school was located about four miles outside the small town of Jonesboro, Arkansas. You had to have a car to go anywhere. Neither of us had that privilege. So, we would walk all over campus just to be alone. Every so often, we would walk the quarter-mile to a small eatery called Jack’s Diner across the main highway on the north side of campus. At Jack’s, we would order two small Cokes and one order of onion rings. Then, we would sit together and share our time and abundance of food. Sometimes, she would borrow her best friend’s Volkswagen Beetle so we could go to a movie or a nice restaurant for dinner. I dated her best friend and sorority sister before I dated her. During the next year, I realized how much I enjoyed being with her. I recognized that she was the sweetest cherry in my life. Second, We Recognize the Presence of Pits. We first met when I helped a girl I was dating move into the dorm the day before classes began that fall term. Beverly was one of the girls that lived next door. She and several others came into the room to meet the new guy on campus. Later, we met again when she showed up to be a walk-on in the fall theatrical production, for which I was the lead actor. This girl would tease and flirt with me during the performances, attempting to make me break character in front of the audience. I held my own but never quit trying. Later, I asked her out on a date. I never dated another girl after that first date. We would sit in the lobby of her dorm and play a card game called “spit-n-cuss.” We would laugh and enjoy the game and one another’s company. Then, one evening, she told me how much fun she had spent time with me. Despite not being able to take her places on our dates (a big pit) and dating her best friend before I asked her out (a super big pit), she decided that I was worth having in her life. And we have been loving and laughing our way through cherries and pits for over fifty years. in conclusion So, have I discovered the big prescription for a successful and lengthy marriage? I honestly don’t know. But I can say that if you want to live and have fun with someone for many years, you first must accept that there are a lot of pits in the fruit bowl of life. But instead of focusing on the pits, learn to enjoy the wonder and beauty in the flavor and fruit of the cherries.
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2/12/2025 0 Comments Build a positive attitude:A Few Secrets to Help Live Your LIfe More Fully My dad died at a time in my life right after I had begun to build a family. So, at 33, I buried one of the most influential people in my life. That was probably the most traumatic event that I had ever experienced. I also included the year I spent in combat in Vietnam. I never realized that thinking negative thoughts often lead to a person being thought of as depressed. I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out why I was having problems with being so negative. I asked myself these questions: “Why am I having these struggles?” “Why do I seem to be negative all the time?” Finally, my wife insisted that I talk to my doctor about it. That conversation resulted in a prescription, but the negative thinking continued. That's when I decided to get some help from a counselor. What I learned during the following year helped me turn my life around. The counselor guided me through the negative thoughts into a positive outlook. Now that I'm turning seventy, I have started a new career. I want to share some of the insights I gained with you. If you incorporate these two simple suggestions, you may not solve your negative thinking, but you'll positively influence yourself and the people around you. First, don't hold your problems inside.Perhaps a story will help illustrate what I mean by that statement. When trash compactors were first developed, the instructions said that you had to follow the directions carefully. The compactors must be emptied at least once a week because if you let them sit for several weeks, even a month, the trash keeps getting pushed down to the bottom. Eventually, that garbage turns into gaseous materials that could explode under pressure. I think this illustrates what happens to us emotionally. Have you ever said something to somebody that you knew well and got so angry at you that they started blurting negative things? And you think, "Whoa, wait a minute. What did I say?" It probably wasn't anything that you said. It seems that you just lit a small match to something already festering inside the other person. The outburst resulted from years of holding in much negativity that eventually had to come out. You happened to be the poor sap standing by when it happened. To avoid this, take time to talk to a friend, a mental health professional, or a counselor. As I mentioned earlier, I spent about a year with a counselor. He helped me to realize that I was spending too much time trying to deal with the pain that I felt from losing my dad. Understand that this was my problem, and I needed to get over it and move on. He helped me to recognize that I was spending the last ten years of my life trying to please my father, who was already dead. You can talk to a friend, of course. But I would suggest that you spend time with people you trust. You know they won't go blabbing it out to everybody around. Just talk it out. Don't hold things in. Let it go before it festers. Second, take time to express gratitude to other people.What do I mean by this? Just thank people. Tell people how much you appreciate them. Several years ago, Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, did a major study on the architecture of emotions. In this multi-year study, he discovered that “… our brains have a built-in negative bias." In other words, the brain constantly seeks for negative things to defend ourselves. It's constantly looking for the bad things we must notice and deal with. The problem, he noticed, was that too many people end up focusing more on the negative than the positive. In the study report, he said, "We need to work a little extra hard to overcome this problem because most people have a negative tendency in their thinking." So I say, start by showing gratitude to other people. Express your appreciation. Look for the good in people around you. As you continue telling other people how nice, kind, or polite they are …, perhaps your brain will start applying those same thoughts to yourself. You might start seeing the good things in yourself and believing you’re not as bad as you thought. Speaking gratitude, speaking good, speaking positive—eventually, your brain will catch up with those words and start thinking, "Wait a minute, maybe I'm pretty good myself." These are two small suggestions. I'm not here to offer you a big, broad understanding but to share two little things that you can do. So, I challenge you to commit today to being just a little more positive in everything you do and say. Listen to how you’re talking to other people and, of course, how you're talking to yourself. Remember, your thoughts control your emotions, your emotions do not control your thoughts.
Change your thoughts, and you'll change the way you feel. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” You could say that in life we are motivated by two basic forces – love and fear. Love opens us to the passion and excitement that love has to offer, while fear causes us to withdraw from life and hide away, terrified of hurt and pain. John Lennon said something along these lines and noted that without the ability to love ourselves, we can't truly love others.
Fear is holding you back from tackling life and living it to the full. It can stop you in your tracks and keep you from chasing your dreams, and often, we don't even realize what fears are haunting us. We are terrified of failing, of losing love, of being lonely, of having to change, and of the unknown, too. We are veritable cowardly lions. While there is a time and place for fear, which often protects us from truly dangerous experiences, they can also be destructive. With these six steps, you can put fear to one side and start living your life to the fullest. 1. Be Clear in Your Goals Before you can make the most of your life, you need to know what you want to get out of it. What goals are you looking to achieve? This will help clarify and allow you to shift your focus to your priorities. Just knowing isn't enough, though. You need to recognize potential and understand how to leverage it to move you closer to those goals. 2. Mentally Prepare Yes, plenty of amazing opportunities are out there just waiting for you to grab them. Not everyone can leverage all of them, but the biggest reason you can't is a failure to prepare. You should be prepared mentally for any eventuality and have the knowledge and skills necessary to make the most of any opportunity that comes your way. 3. Network If you don't have the skills or knowledge, you should know someone who does. That's why a strong social and professional network is imperative to unlocking everything life has to offer. Not to mention that many of those opportunities could come through your network – and without a network, where would you be? People are the key to grabbing life. 4. Ask Questions Opportunities don't come out of nowhere, a lot of the time it will be a subtle opportunity. That's why it's vital that you ask questions of everything and force yourself to think creatively and look at life from every angle. Your curiosity could be the key to unlocking opportunity. 5. Recognize Opportunities It's not going to land on your lap gift-wrapped, the greatest opportunities in life are often disguised as something else entirely. Which is why asking questions is important, but it's equally as important that you are able to recognize the opportunities that do crop up. The reason we fail to recognize them is that we expect them to be obvious and that just isn't how life rolls. 6. Take Risks Not just any risk, though, calculated risks. When you recognize an opportunity and understand how to take advantage of it then you need to take risks. Before you do so, review the pros and cons and seize the day or move on to the next opportunity. There are no guarantees in life; it is what you make it. You can use these six steps in business and in your personal life, the truth is that they're more alike than we care to admit. The key to unlocking your happiness and seizing everything life has to offer is fully within your power. You just have to grab everything that comes your way and learn to practice gratitude for everything you achieve. "Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.” - GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Change has a very negative connotation for most people. On a deep emotional level, we are creatures of comfort, and we automatically seek out what feels good in the moment. We long for comfort, usually from what we know is familiar. Once we can comfortably deal with and "know" all the "unknowns," we can "relax." Because your nervous system and mind are designed to find and attach meaning(s) to everything, something new is always a confrontation between what is and will be in your mind.
The unknown is always something that your mind and nervous system must "unravel" afresh, and this process feels uncomfortable on many levels. When something becomes comfortable, you get used to it as you remove all the "unknowns," and your automatic behavior can take over again. Our nervous system works primarily by conditioning, and we notice and assume consistent patterns by repetition. This system is there to serve us, helping us be more efficient and able to do more. Your mind is designed to always look for the best way. We learn certain orders and sequences in which things happen and recognize and respond according to these sequences through repetition. Every emotion you experience, for instance, is nothing but the result of a sequence of events and reactions triggered by your unconscious awareness that generates and creates the actual feeling, which is nothing but a sensation in your nervous system. To change anything, you must first be aware of these patterns. It would be best to become aware of what goes on under your conscious awareness. This is not difficult, and everybody can do it. You need not understand everything about the human nervous system to use it. Be aware of the fact that there is a part of you that responds and acts "automatically" based on your past experiences and associations. The challenge is to go from one pattern that does not serve you to one that does. You would have to change your mind in that you have to change how you perceive yourself and your life. Doing things differently will make you feel uncomfortable at first. Still, you can rest assured that the "uncomfortable" will become "comfortable" as you start forming new associations and patterns of association. Making the "uncomfortable" comfortable or making the "unknown" known is how we grow as human beings. What you are comfortable with represents your comfort zone, including all the experiences you can comfortably deal with. If you don't expand this "zone, " you won't expand yourself. The need to grow and become more like a person is a deep emotional need all humans have. Without growth, you won't be happy. Although it feels uncomfortable at the moment, all growth always feels immensely fulfilling in the long term, and it is this feeling that we all crave, the feeling that we call "good." You can do something that feels comfortable and "good" at the moment by staying with what you know, but true fulfillment comes from pushing beyond your comfort zone and creating a sense of pride in yourself. Growth means change, which involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. The truth is that all of life is constantly in a process of change. Nothing ever stays the same. It is the nature of all of life, including you. Even if you do nothing, life will still change. To progress, you have to decide to initiate and create the change consciously. It would be best to consciously put yourself in the uncomfortable place where you can grow, and as you do this, you progress. Progress is by choice, while change is automatic. To be in control of your life, you have to consciously choose to change and keep changing yourself to become the person you want to be. All change starts with a change of mind. You have to start by changing your thoughts about what you want to change. In changing the way you think about something you immediately change your perception and, consequently, how you feel about it. When you change how you feel, you change your behavior, which is how you progress. Constantly trying to change behavior will rarely create long-term and lasting change. Change your mind, and the rest will follow! If you don't change, you won't grow; if you don't, you are not living. 9/28/2024 0 Comments Kindling a Light in the Darkness“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung
This powerful quote by Carl Jung touches on one of the most fundamental questions of human life: Why are we here? It suggests that life is not just about survival or navigating day-to-day experiences but about something deeper—bringing light to darkness, finding meaning in a seemingly chaotic world, and striving toward personal growth and enlightenment. Let's explore what it means to "kindle a light in the darkness" and how this idea can inspire us to live more fulfilling lives. Life in the Darkness of Being The term "darkness of mere being" points to a fundamental truth of the human condition—life has an inherent mystery and uncertainty. This darkness might represent the unknown, our struggles, the existing existential challenges, or simply the mundane nature of existence. Sometimes, life can feel like we're drifting without a clear purpose, navigating through the darkness of routine and uncertainty. But this darkness is not necessarily negative. Instead, Jung sees it as the backdrop against which we can shine our light. Just as stars are most brilliant in the blackness of night, our inner light becomes meaningful and transformative against the challenges and mysteries of our existence. The darkness is not to be shunned or feared but acknowledged as the canvas upon which we paint our purpose. Kindling the Light Within What does it mean to kindle a light? To Jung, it’s about awakening a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives and, more importantly, contributing to something greater than ourselves. This could manifest in many ways: spreading kindness, creating art, teaching, caring for others, seeking personal growth, or striving to improve the world. Everyone's light is unique—what we each have to offer is a product of our experiences, gifts, and perspectives. Kindling this light is an active, conscious effort. Just as a fire requires fuel and tending, we must nurture our sense of purpose and allow it to shine. This can be done through introspection, self-awareness, and actions aligned with our deepest values. For some, this may involve exploring spiritual practices, pursuing passions, or developing skills that bring joy and fulfillment. It requires us to be both aware of the darkness and determined to illuminate it with our presence. Purpose Beyond Ourselves The idea of “kindling a light” suggests that our purpose is personal and communal. Our light does not exist in isolation; it is meant to contribute to the world around us to dispel the darkness that others face. Every action of love, compassion, understanding, and creativity has the potential to illuminate the lives of others. In essence, our light ripples outward, impacting our existence and the lives of those we encounter. Acts of kindness, sharing knowledge, and simply offering a listening ear are all ways we kindle light in others’ darkness. And in doing so, we build a web of interconnected brightness that elevates the human experience for all. Finding Your Light You may ask, “How do I find my light?” This is an individual journey, but it often starts with self-reflection. Ask yourself what brings you joy, sparks curiosity, and inspires a sense of purpose within you. Reflect on moments when you felt most alive or at peace—these are clues pointing toward your light. Your light might be expressed through creativity, connection, service, or learning. It may change over time, evolving as you grow and experience life. It's also important to be gentle with yourself during this process. Darkness and uncertainty are part of the journey. There will be times when your light feels dim or hard to find. But remember, even a small flicker can change the atmosphere. Take small steps to fuel your light daily, whether through self-care, pursuing a passion, helping others, or finding quiet moments to reconnect with what matters. Embracing the Darkness and the Light The interplay between darkness and light is a natural part of life. Jung’s quote reminds us that our purpose is not to eradicate the darkness but to coexist with it, to bring light where we can. In doing so, we cultivate resilience, courage, and a sense of meaning that can withstand life's inevitable challenges. By kindling a light in the darkness of being, we elevate our lives and inspire others to do the same. We become beacons of hope, curiosity, and compassion, making our journey meaningful and enriching for us and those around us. And ultimately, isn’t that the greatest purpose we can pursue? So today, take a moment to reflect on the light you carry within and how you might let it shine a little brighter in the world. Remember, your light can transform darkness—not by banishing it but by illuminating it with love, wisdom, and purpose. Inspiration from Carl Jung Jung’s words invite us to see our lives as meaningful contributions to the vast tapestry of existence. They encourage us to seek purpose in our struggles and shine amidst uncertainty. In this light, every act of love, understanding, and creativity is a step toward kindling a flame that lights up the darkness—not only for ourselves but for humanity as a whole. |
AuthorHerb Sennett is one of the happiest people you will ever meet. His mother guided him in the skill of positive thinking and helped him to believe in himself and to love learning and teaching. He spent 30 years as a communication arts professor and has earned a Doctor of Philosophy and a Doctor of Ministry degrees. He is an ordained minister and an accomplished filmmaker and stage director. He knows how live life more abundantly and how enjoy each day fully. Archives
February 2025
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