Hi everyone,
What and exciting start to the New Year!
Firstly, on the 1st January, Mark & I have been married for 30 years, and we are eternally grateful to God for giving us the wisdom to follow a healthy diet, because I know I would not have made it this far with my depression and moods swings. These have been a thing of the past now for over 20 of those years, changing our diet has saved our marriage.
Then besides our website crashing and our emails disappearing for a week or so, our grand daughter Faith started to crawl at five and a half months, keeping us all on our toes running after her. Then our 2nd daughter Marie-Claire married Donald Stewart on 12 January.
We now have 3 grandchildren Stephen aged 5, Dylan will be 2 next month and Faith is just 6 months and Melissa (our eldest daughter) and Jason Klopper are expecting their number 3 and our number 4 grandchild.
Our family is growing in leaps and bounds and it has been wonderful to see how The Natural Way principles have kept them healthy. They too have not had a doctor’s bill due to ill health since the grandchildren were born, so it has been very rewarding.
Interesting info
Taking Control
With everyone making New Year’s resolutions and setting goals I would like to share offer you a different approach.
Mark and I have both found that resolutions often just set us up for failure so we have worked out over the years that we need to take control of the things that we can and let go the things that we cannot.
The things we cannot control (and believe me as “adult children of alcoholic’s” we both have a tendency to be “control freaks” and “workaholic’s”) we take to God in prayer.
These are things like;
The weather
Other people – including our children
Politics
The price of fuel or anything for that matter
Then we get on with the things we can do like;
Follow a healthy diet
Exercise daily
Use our brain more efficiently
Choosing to respond positively when things go bad, trying to see how we can learn from the situation and grow.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
The one freedom we will always have in life, no matter where we are or what we do, is the freedom to choose how we respond to the people around us and to our particular circumstances. Choosing the right response is critical to achieving a sense of emotional balance.
Dr Viktor Frankl, the noted psychiatrist and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, is a shining example of someone who kept his emotions and his humanity intact despite the harshest of circumstances. During the Second World War, Frankl was a long-time prisoner in several concentration camps. Stripped to naked existence – every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, expecting extermination – he somehow managed to find that life was worth preserving. Fuelled by his belief in a larger purpose beyond the fear and indignities of his immediate circumstances, he went on to share his vision of man’s capacity to transcend suffering and to discover a sense of meaning. His book has been a source of inspiration to readers all around the world.
During the height of the Vietnam War, Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking United States military officer in the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prisoner of war camp. Stockdale was tortured over twenty times during an eight-year period of confinement - he had no prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty that he would ever see his family again. Yet he made it his mission to do everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken. When asked by Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) how he dealt with his confinement in this way he answered, ‘I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into a defining event in my life which, in retrospect, I would not trade’.
The late Christopher Reeve’s story is well known. The actor, once famous for his portrayal of ‘Superman’, was paralysed from the neck down after a riding accident. With immense courage and determination he chose not to be defeated by his disability and instead went on to become an inspiration to millions of other people.
Here in South Africa we have our own local hero in Viktor Vermeulen. At the age of nineteen, a highly talented athlete and scholar with an exceptionally bright future as a world-class cricketer, Viktor broke his neck when diving into a swimming pool. Instead of dwelling on what might have been, he went on to establish himself as one of South Africa’s most inspirational and sought-after speakers. I have sat mesmerised through one of Viktor’s talks and seen him touch every single person in a packed auditorium. He had us rolling in the isles with laughter and weeping at his courage. Viktor was truly called to greatness and he made the right choices to get there.
Stories like these have inspired me all my life and in fact they helped Mark and I get through our personal trauma. We realised that there was always someone worse off than we were who had gotten through simply by choosing to have the right emotional response for growth. These men all chose to respond to their own particular circumstances by asking, ‘How can I be a better person because of this?’ and ‘What can I do to help others learn from my experience?’ Each of them, in their own powerful way, turned hardship into inspiration. We hope that in some small measure, we have learned to do the same.
Extracted from Take Control by Mark & Mary-Ann Shearer published by Ibis Books available from CNA, Exclusive books and Adams, Wordsworths, Estoril books, Spar and other good bookshops and health stores or online from sales@mary-anns.co.za or 021 881 3624
Thought for the week
I have been inspired my whole life by reading Psalm 121
I read it when feeling overwhelmed and am instantly at peace as I realize that God is actually the one in control. I just have to trust him
The first two lines always get me
I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth
Amazing the Creator of the Universe is waiting to help us!?!? To help me!
Isn't that awesome?!
