New 21 Day Goal - No Complaining or Gossiping

Hello World.

My tithing idea came to me yesterday during a meeting at my Church. Me and my wife are attending a class called Fresh Start. It basically introduces you to Christianity and helps you meet other people in the Church. We've been attending this Church off and on for the last couple years and really didn't know anyone - so we decided to take this class to change that.

Anyways - sometime in that class I decided we needed to give more. I have always believed that in order to solve life's most difficult problems - we must help others with their problems.

After that Fresh Start class, we went to the main church gathering. Our Church has 5 Sunday gatherings - so you have plenty of opportunity to go to Church on Sunday.

At the main gathering the pastor that normally leads was on vacation and a youth pastor led the session. Ironically it was all about giving. Specifically it was about giving to the undeserving. The synopsis was God wants you to give and to give to everyone - both those that are deserving and those that are not deserving.

My mind was racing because this was just a continuation of the idea I had already started - we needed to give more to others.

I started thinking about what we could give. I had this really heavy jacket I bought to go to Colorado for Christmas 4 years ago. The jacket was expensive but I would never wear it in San Diego. I figured there was a homeless person in downtown that could use the jacket more. So I put it in my mind to find that homeless person and donate the jacket to them to keep them warm this winter. I haven't done that yet - but it is high on the list of things to do.

So back at home that day I was looking for something to read to help me define my giving goals. I found a book on the shelf titled: The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity" - a simple guide to unlimited abundance.

I skimmed the title pages to see what the book was about and low and behold Chapter 1 was all about tithing. Ironic again.

I read that chapter and figured this was just another coincidence to help me on my new path.

So....back to the title of this post. There are four spiritual laws and the second one covered in the book, after tithing, is goal setting. The idea is once you start giving your 10%, you need to prepare to start receiving. Giving and receiving go hand in hand. Just like yin and yang.

So in order to better receive from God you must set good quality goals. I am working on this part next. I have an idea of some things I would like to set as goals - such as a new town home and being debt free. But an important recommendation in the book is to change the way you think in order to better attract abundance in your life.

Specifically it asks you to do a 21 day quest of No Complaining and No Gossiping. Those two things distract the mind from the state of abundance and attract the wrong things in your life.

So I figure I am going all the way with this Tithing goal and I want to meet God half way. I think this 21 day quest is part of that half way. After all - I don't even know how big my half is yet! My half could be growing bigger and bigger as God sees fit. So for our half of the contribution we will err on the side of caution : -)

So for the next 21 days I will not complain about anything and I will refrain from Gossiping. If I misstep, I will forgive myself of the misstep and start the 21 days over.

I think a good way to go about this is to use affirmations. My mind is conditioned to complaining and gossiping. I can admit that. Some affirmations I like are:

"Have an attitude of gratitude."

" Look for the God opportunity."

Let me explain the second one a little. The God opportunity is simple. Many times in life we see only the negative in a situation. The God opportunity is assuming that God is creating opportunities for you and you simply trust these supposed negative occurrences in your life are those opportunities in disguise. For instance, today my trolley kept stopping on the second to last stop. I realized I might be late for work because of this. Then I stopped and changed my perspective to "perhaps there is a God opportunity here that I will be missing if I don't pay attention".

When you start getting negative because things are not going your way - you miss out on those God opportunities. So I instead started paying attention. I looked at all the people around me, I looked outside the trolley window and all the things occurring.

To be honest, I did not find a God opportunity. But I could think of several that could have happened. I know this is grim, but it helps to illustrate why you should trust the reality of life - even when things seemingly don't go your way - such as being late for work. It could be that an earthquake is about to strike and my floor will suffer casualties and me being late is to ensure I am not on the floor.

Like I said - grim. But it does help you trust God more. I always try to assume that if my plans are off a little bit, that perhaps there is a good reason for it - whether I ever know for sure or not.

That is the positive thinking bug that I want to catch. Perhaps being late due to the trolley created the God opportunity for me - which was to start thinking positive even in inconvenient situations. After all, I am going to need a lot of positive thinking to continue this 10% tithing quest.