Conversations With Cinthia

Today Cinthia discusses motivation and inspiration, two concepts that are related but not identical.  She uses a variety of quotes and offers a number of questions to ask ourselves as we examine our own ongoing motivation and inspiration.  The first was the following by Thomas Carlyle: “Let him who would be moved to convince others be first moved to convince himself.”  You cannot motivate others if you are not motivated by your own mission or vision.  Motivation and inspiration are contagious, as are negativity, skepticism, and cynicism. The relationship between motivation and inspiration is somewhat cyclical; Cinthia says, “We motivate to inspire and inspire to motivate.”  Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic, but it culminates in an inner drive to do something and behave in a certain way; it is what moves us from desire to will.  Inspiration makes us want to do something or gives us an idea about what to do.  Both are important, and both can be helped by resources from the outside.  But, as Cinthia emph

For many of us, the harshest litany in our lives is the stream of self-evaluations running through our heads.  This can seem harmless and even necessary to control our behavior; it is easily confused with appropriately holding ourselves accountable.  But the way we deal with ourselves reveals a lot about our views of reality, and it tends to leak out into our relationships with others, though we may not be aware of that.  Today Cinthia looks at two big (and related) reasons we are so hard on ourselves: unforgiveness and perfectionism. Cinthia states that the following is an important rule of life: We accept forgiveness, and we offer forgiveness.  These two actions often seem separate to us, and most of us find one easier than the other.  The two are bound together, however, as Jesus showed in Matthew 6:9-13, often called “The Lord’s Prayer,” and in Matthew 7:12, often called “the Golden Rule.”  (This last has reflections and corollaries that are found in every major religion, indicating that God has written i

Today's broadcast had two parts.  The first was an interview with Kevin Sorbo, a well-known actor who has played many roles, including that of Hercules in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and that of Captain Dylan Hunt in Andromeda.  He is currently promoting a movie that will be coming out in August called Firing Squad, in which Sorbo acts along with James Barrington and Cuba Gooding, Jr.  The movie is based on a true story about three men facing execution in Indonesia and the hope and redemption that broke out in a terrible place.  Sorbo also discussed a book he wrote about his own experiences nearly dying from an aneurism and having four strokes as a result; the book is called True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life and details what it was like to go so quickly from being in Hollywood shape to being unable to get himself out of bed.  Like the movie discussed earlier, the book offers hope and redemption.  The book also describes Sorbo's understanding that Go

I Peter 4:8 tells us, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.”  But what does this mean, and how do we walk it out in a healthy way?  Does it mean dismissing sin, hiding abuse and allowing it to continue, accepting ongoing mistreatment without ever setting a boundary? Covering has several dimensions, and God is our example in all of them.  One aspect of covering is forgiveness, which is always associated with love, and the supreme example of this is Jesus taking our sin on Himself and dying for us.  In this way, God did more than just cover our sin; He completely did away with it.  He destroyed it.  He paid for it and satisfied what had to be done in response to it at a cosmic level.  God’s forgiveness of our sin is never a dismissal of its significance; justice and mercy meet in the cross.  So, when we follow His example by loving one another and forgiving as God, in Christ, forgave us, we do not dismiss the significance of how another has harmed us.  We acknowledge it, a

Is attraction something that just comes and goes, completely beyond our control?  Today Cinthia explores attractiveness as a responsibility we have to others, one that is not primarily about our physical makeup.  While she introduces this topic in terms of spouses who are no longer attracted to their spouses, she explores it further as it applies to our interactions with society in general.  How attractive we are has to do with what it is like for others to be around us.  This is why men often appear more attractive when they exhibit “confidence contained.”  In all of us, qualities like kindness, gentleness, mercy, flexibility, nobleness, health, willingness to work hard, etc., tend to be attractive, while disrespectfulness, immaturity, vulgarity, being unaware of your audience, refusing to cooperate with others, and selfishness in general make us less attractive to others.  We are more attractive when we adjust ourselves somewhat to others by learning to “check the temperature of the room;” for example, we c

Today Cinthia continues a conversation she began a few weeks ago with the episode “Why Don’t You Believe Me?”  Trust is impacted by many factors on both sides of a relationship, and it is difficult to sort out when our fears indicate legitimate warning signs about another person and when they signal our own trust issues or immaturity.  (And sometimes both can be involved!) Believing anything is always a risk.  The only thing that is sure is God, and we have a lot of trouble trusting Him.  But some trust is better-placed than other trust.  How do we know whether our disbelief is warranted?  A commitment to reality is important here.  Deciding we can trust someone just because we hope we can gives us little foundation for confidence; trusting based only on our own hope is not a strong plan.  Trust is different than liking someone, and trusting someone does not ensure that they will become what we want them to be.  However, believing someone is always a risk, and waiting for a guarantee of the future will mean w

Today’s title is one that requires some definitions.  First of all, what is an addict?  What is addiction?  Addiction has more than one definition but usually involves becoming physically or psychologically dependent on a substance; it can sometimes apply to compulsive involvement in behavior, such as gambling or sexual compulsions.  Not all habits necessarily qualify as addictions.  At some level, we are all prone to addictions, but some people are much more prone to them than others.  Genetics plays a key role in setting up proclivities to addiction.  Trauma also influences addictions by taking away someone’s ability to regulate his or her internal world.  Anxiety and depressive disorders can create or increase vulnerability to addictions.  Chronic pain and severe injury including head injury, can set up a person for addiction, especially if treatment for these ailments involves narcotics or other controlled substances.  We cannot tell just by looking at a person all the factors that may put that person at

Twilight seems like a wisp of time; it comes and goes and is gone.  It occurs twice a day, bookending the days and nights.  Is this simply an accident of the Earth’s rotation and revolutions around the sun?  Nothing God creates is without meaning and purpose, and twilight, Cinthia explains, is a beautiful gift to us.  Cinthia explored dictionary definitions of twilight as (for example) “the diffused light from the sky during early evening or morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth’s atmosphere.”  Twilight is a time of transition; it gives us time to reflect on the day we have had and to move into night, or to come awake and move into the day.  It is the in-between time when things are ambiguous, obscured, winding up or winding down.  It can be calming, and it can be invigorating.  Imagine life without twilight, life in which darkness fell suddenly as we were driving and dawn broke all at once on our sleeping eyelids.  Twilight gives us the time to adjust, to prepare,

Have you ever told the truth and yet not been believed?  Have you ever struggled to know whether to believe someone else?  Distrust can be painful on both sides, but knowing what to believe can be difficult.  Today Cinthia tackles the dual topic of trusting and being trusted, starting with the statement that everything is a risk.  Trust is necessary for life, and trust is always a risk.  Belief in anything is a risk, but no one can take a step without putting his weight somewhere.  Even our day-to-day tasks require trust in objects, systems, and people.  Relationships require trust, and all of us have had variable experiences trusting others.  That said, some people are better risks than others; some people show us that they are more trustworthy, while others show us that they are not.  Are you a good risk for other people?  What do you show others with your life?  First, make sure that you are a good risk.  Don’t pretend.  If people are trusting you, they are risking on you.  If people are talking to you, th

The past is hard for everyone.  Some long for the past, while others want to erase or avoid it.  Many of us want to erase parts of our pasts while holding onto others.  But the key to dealing with the past is not romanticizing it or avoiding it; it is learning from it.  Cinthia states today that “time is either a guide into your future or a tormentor that can’t be changed.”  Which will you allow your past to be for you? One of the reasons learning from the past can be tricky is that lots of factors impact our memory of it.  Neuroscientists have found that people rarely remember the past with perfect accuracy.  Sometimes family members seem to genuinely “remember” the same events very differently.  How do we know what is fact and what is simply our experience or perception?  One key is to be gentle with your past.  Remember, the goal is not to live in the past or use it to judge ourselves or others.  We do have to resist what we know is untrue.  Rewriting the past is not helpful.  We can face what we know and

Today’s topic is the neuroplasticity of the brain and how we can use it to take charge of our own thought processes.  Cinthia opened today with a quote usually attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”  We see the problems that occur with repeating behaviors that are not working, but what about our thoughts?  Our brains create what are called “neural nets,” or networks of brain cells that learn to fire in succession in response to outside stimuli; these are often compared to superhighways in the brain.  This creates habits of thought that we often do not even notice because we are so used to them.  For example, the phone rings, and you see a particular name on the screen.  What thoughts go through your head automatically?  The stimulus happens, the thoughts begin… and, before you know it, you are traveling down that old familiar superhighway with its familiar assumptions and other habits of thought.  And every time you travel the highwa

Human beings are locked in time while we live on the earth, and we used to know it.  The sun went down, and people could no longer see to continue working, which meant they had to end the day’s work and rest.  Time used to pace us, just as our bodies used to do.  Now, however, we seem to be in a game against time.  Our technology allows us to multitask at unprecedented levels.  We move faster and are not even aware of the moments in which we exist.  We regret the past, reliving what we cannot change, and we rush ahead into the future, planning and conquering moments that have not yet arrived -- and, when they do arrive, we are already in the next set of moments.  Our minds can go places that our bodies cannot go, and our bodies are exhausted by struggling and being left behind.  We watch each other dissociate, splitting ourselves and failing to be present where we are; this is hard on our psyches. Time is a set condition, albeit one we fail to honor in the modern era.  Time is on its own journey and has its o

When we do not take responsibility for being the best versions of ourselves, we often move toward pleasure to mitigate the pain.  Now, pleasure is not bad -- it’s great, actually.  But pleasure always has a price.  Sometimes the price is worth paying, but, when we are using pleasure to mitigate pain, we often pay more than we acknowledge ourselves to be losing for our pleasure.  Not only that, but we inflict a cost on others, sometimes without even being aware we are doing it. A primary concept in today’s broadcast is that good character understands and respects the price of pleasure.  Furthermore, good character qualities actually produce emotional, intellectual, spiritual, relational, and physical benefits.  Consider the price of an addiction to yourself and to others versus the cost and eventual benefits of sobriety.  Becoming a sober-minded person also has a cost, but, in the long-run, the gain is larger and the cost (for you and for others) less than that of continuing to be dominated by addiction as a w

Do you reject compliments, explaining why you don’t really deserve them?  Do you get nervous when someone does something nice for you, turn down offers of help even when you could really use them, or hate the feeling you get when someone forgives you or extends grace and kindness your way?  Today’s show is on letting other people love you. It can be scary and humbling to let someone love you and give you grace.  The enemy (i.e., Satan) will try to exploit this by encouraging you to think that you are in a one-down position.  Sometimes it is easier to accept good things from a stranger because we do not worry there will be an ongoing obligation in the relationship.  But grace, kindness, forgiveness, and help are meant to be gifts of honor.  Do not insult the person trying to honor you by rejecting that honor.  So how do we honor the gifts of love others give us?  Well, if we are gifted forgiveness, grace, and covering, change is the best response.  Grace helps us have energy to get up again and do it right, to

Today's topic is devotion, devotions, and the interaction between the two.  Devotion has to do with love, loyalty, enthusiasm for someone or something, faithfulness, fidelity, and even strong emotional attachment.  It can also have to do with religious worship or observance.  A devotion can be a quiet time spent praying, reading the Bible, reflecting, singing, journaling, or making time for something or someone to which or to whom you are devoted. Devotion is not always intentional.  We may find ourselves devoted to a variety of things, some of them dangerous, foolish, or simply not worthy of the level of devotion we give them.  Cinthia reflected that, in the 1980's, she was devoted to Diet Pepsi and smoking; this was evidenced by the time, energy, resources, and obsession she put toward these things.  She would not have called this "devotion" at the time, but that is what it was.  Intentional devotion times can help us intentionally grow our devotion to the things to which we want to devote ourselves.  Inves

Like it or not, humans need to attach to other humans.  We may not want to need that; we may associate it with pain and fear, or may simply not have developed the skills to attach well.  We may actually push away the very thing we need.  But it doesn’t stop us from needing to be loved, seen, understood by someone.  Today Cinthia challenged us to let “them” (i.e., other human beings who are willing to extend grace and give kindness) love us – to accept compliments with a smile and a “thank you,” to receive gifts offered, to allow those who love us to support us as we change. God is with us while we are in the process of change.  We may want to run from ourselves and our sins, but He is willing to be with us and help us while we change, even while we are fighting Him.  He extends grace and mercy without limit during our lives, but we may find that others have limits and will only keep trying for so long if we continue to push them away from us.  Allow those who love you to support you as you change. Sometimes i