Living on a prayer

I was thinking a while back about how the integration of religious beliefs tend to create a sense of complacency in our population. It sets up an ideal of how one should act and what one should believe in our society in order to be deemed a normal person. An ex of mine used to drone on and on about women’s rights. Now before I go on, let me just say that I am for equal human rights. Not just women, but all people. So needless to say I supported her 100%. She would make statements though about how a man being the financial income earner and supporting the woman was an oppressive role.

The problem here was that I was the only income earner in the relationship and was supporting her financially while she went through college. So while I was busting my ass to make sure she had the small things like a place to live, food and clothing, she was busy looking at me as if though I were a slave owner. I can only imagine though that if these things really mattered to her, the way that she verbally stated that they mattered to her, then she would have situated her life in such a way that she would never have to be financially dependent on another human being. Now that might mean putting in grueling long days because you have to go to school for 8 hours then work for 8 hours, but that is the sacrifice that you must make if that is the life that you really want. If school was just as important as financial independence to her then she should have been willing to work for it.

Of course it is always much easier to complain that to stand up and take action.

This is why Christians pray!

Prayer is a way to take responsibility off of one’s self. Instead of taking the steps to restructure your life and make necessary changes, one can simply say “well, I have been praying about it and I am waiting on god for an answer.”

It is because of all of the restrictions in our society that people have become out of touch with what they are or really want to be. Let’s take for example smoking. Very recently in our society smoking has been deemed to be a very bad thing. I think the research has been conclusive that as far as your health is concerned that this is very true. Each person of course has the right to decide still whether or not they want to put this unhealthy thing in their bodies. It has gotten to the point now, were if you are a smoker people start to look at you as if though you are a really bad person. The result is a large group of people that are “trying to quit.” Many of these people actually have no intention of quitting. They feel the societal pressure, that quitting is the right thing to do. It becomes impossible just to own up to the fact that they enjoy smoking and do not want to quit.

The fact is that from aside from a physiological addiction quitting a habit is as simple as ceasing the behavior. The ability to do this is one of the main things that set us apart from the other creatures that inhabit our planet. Our society and our religions wants to take that responsibility away from us. They want to tell us that we are weak and powerless. This is another system of built in control. They want us to believe that we can’t stop doing what we don’t want to do without their help and their products.

Of course the only way that we can change our behavior is through a simple two step process

#1 You have to really want to change the behavior
#2 You have stop doing the behavior

Does this mean that you won’t have impulses? Of course not but you won’t have the behavior because you won’t take action on it.

I have used this method several times in my own life with great success. I wanted to quit eating high sugar foods. I stopped buying high sugar foods and put myself in a minimal amount of situations where I would be tempted to do so. When I was in a situation like this I would make a conscious effort to not partake. If I did partake it was because I decided that I wanted to, not because I slipped up. Got it? Do you understand what I am getting at?

We are not powerless! We do not have to rely on the government, religion, god, or Jenny Craig to help us with our maladies. All it takes is a little bit of self awareness and a little bit of self control. Most importantly it takes an honest decision from yourself that you would like to be different than you are now.