{"id":20445,"date":"2025-01-28T22:15:19","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T22:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/?p=20445"},"modified":"2025-08-21T17:59:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T17:59:16","slug":"introspective-reflections-of-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/2025\/01\/28\/introspective-reflections-of-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Introspective reflections of mine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n

\u201cI like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Mahatma Gandhi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

Noise between my own ears<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary\u2014my dyslexic brain seems to live in all these layers of impact simultaneously. Navigating them can feel like a whirlwind: spicy, chaotic, and full of missteps. One of the toughest parts of practicing honest self-reflection is facing the feedback my actions provoke. It\u2019s not always easy, but it\u2019s always revealing.

Firstly\u2014I\u2019m acutely aware of my mistakes. I\u2019m my own toughest critic, and I often struggle to extend myself the same grace I\u2019d offer others. Being my biggest fan doesn\u2019t come easily. When I stay in my head and avoid action, I miss out on the kind of feedback that could guide or encourage me forward. Without that external input\u2014often critical, but necessary\u2014I lose the chance to recalibrate and retool.

I actively choose a path driven by kindness and few absolutes. This allows me to freely encounter many worldviews – selecting the best from all sources engendering enrichment and enlightenment. I am intimately aware of who I am, who I am no longer , and I am persistently seeking who I may become! While I do believe in a deity that may prefer a path different than my choosing, I also believe that a human\u2019s understanding of that path is fueled merely by faith and perception and often little by fact or truth.

I will say this.\u00a0 I want to believe there is deity and perhaps more than One!\u00a0 *gasp*\u00a0 I even believe that there may be a form of preference from deity(s) – or maybe it should be framed as a preferred pathway back – universal law and wisdom demonstrates this example similar to us as parents providing models to our kiddos but – this drive or preference – is selfishly driven from their experiential wisdom and lessons learned.\u00a0 I can choose to be informed from their experience or by my own hard knocks against the pathway to experiential wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a pattern we offer to my kiddos, and I get glimpses of chagrin when I see them going though what I perceive as backwards!  It is my observation, that we are individually and collectively faced with too much intellectualism and analysis paralysis – you know the indecisive squirrels.   The trouble is though – my Modus Operandi<\/strong><\/em> is taking action – feedback then comes as encouragement, or perhaps a need to recalibrate, and\/or a need to refine or even sometimes critical correction.  The pervasive positivity only model with no attention to negativity has slowly disrupted accountability of any actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is my hope that we can individually and collectively lean into kindness and validation first, letting and allowing for cruelty to be delivered thru natural and not human driven consequence or preference (aka ego)!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Friedrich Nietzsche<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenseits von Gut und B\u00f6se<\/em> (1886) ch. 4, no. 146<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstly – I\u2019m aware of my mistakes! \u00a0I am my biggest critic, and I definitely struggle to allow myself enough grace to also be my biggest fan! Without action and remaining solely intellectually driven I don\u2019t receive feedback that can encourage or persuade me on. I can\u2019t receive often critical feedback reminding me that recalibration and retooling is required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[674],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2025-check-ins"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}