“Faith
is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.”
– Hebrews 11:1
Life begins again and again.
Taking
a leap of Faith
is just
letting your mind
quietly tell your Heart
to say,
“Yes”.
And
when you do,
when all the trials and sorrows
and suffering and pain
have led you
to this moment,
you will discover,
you were looking for
Home,
and you were Home,
and did not
know it.
We all live under the same sky.
There is Glorious Splendor
in our quest,
this hunger for Life
that lives within,
this thirst for Love
that will never end,
as each day by day
Dawns anew,
and Life
begins again and again.
“We all live under the same sky,
but we don’t all have
the same Horizon.”
– Konrad Adenauer
And,
in the Dawn
of our Faith,
we too
are born anew,
and live again.
Let your mind quietly tell your Heart to say, “Yes”.
My Dear Friends,
we are
more than what we seem,
Oh Child of God,
of Unending Grace.
We will never behold
what can never be told,
never held in the mind
of Man,
never found
in Time or Space.
But,
through our Faith
we are born again
by God’s Everlasting
and Loving Grace.
In the Dawn of our Faith.
Like
a candle in the wind,
flickering for the
moment,
the Light
of your Life
can become a reflection
of God’s Love.
Have Faith,
my Friend,
and let the Light
of God’s Love
shine from within.
We don’t all have the same Horizon.
Can knowledge
arise
to reassure someone
that Life is not
a singular, lonely journey,
leading to nowhere,
to nothing
but death?
Life is complicated,
vast and filled with conflicting elements.
No one of us can find
all the answers.
Even endless nights
of worry and toil
will not solve
all of Life’s mysteries.
We may stay up all night
and worry all day,
trying to think through and understand
the complicated events
and circumstances of our lives.
But we will never
fully understand.
“When I applied my mind to know Wisdom,
and to see the business that is done on Earth,
how neither day nor night one’s eyes see sleep;
then I saw all the work of God,
that man cannot find out
the work that is done under the sun.
However much man may toil in seeking,
he will not find it out;
even though a wise man claims to know,
he cannot find it out.”
– Ecclesiastes 8:16-17
These words were penned
by one of the Wisest men
of the ancient World,
a man known for Wisdom
throughout his reign as
the King of Israel.
And yet,
he admitted that mankind
cannot know
all the answers.
Our diligence in thoughtful labor
will not unravel Life’s mysteries:
“However much man may toil in seeking,
he will not find it out.”
We will still be left asking
the Eternal,
“Why?
“For as the Heavens are higher than the Earth,
so are My Ways higher than your ways
and My Thoughts than your thoughts,”
– Isaiah 55:9
Hebrews 11:1 reassures us
that Faith is
“being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see.”
Nothing
is more important than Faith,
our Belief in and Trust
in something without proof.
The Bible
has much to say about Faith
and how important it is.
It is so important
that without Faith,
we have no place with God,
and it is impossible to please Him.
(Hebrews 11:6).
Faith is Belief
in the one, true God,
without actually seeing Him.
“Bad things happen to good people
just about as often as they
happen to bad people.
We have not been given a shield
protecting us from misfortune,
but there is within all of us,
waiting to be discovered,
the strength to deal with adversity,
to overcome it, and learn from it
so we can still find
Love, laughter and joy
despite it.”
– Michael Josephson
“In this time of fear
When prayer so often
Proved in vain,
Hope seemed like the summer birds
Too swiftly flown away.
Yet now I’m standing here,
With Heart so full I can’t explain,
Seeking Faith and speaking words
I never thought I’d say.
There can be miracles
when you Believe.
Though Hope is frail
It’s hard to kill,
Who knows what miracles
You can achieve
When you believe.
Somehow you will.
You will when
you Believe.”
– Stephen Schwartz
By Faith
Abel offered a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord;
by faith Noah prepared the ark in a time when rain was unknown;
by faith Abraham left his home and obeyed God’s command
to go he knew not where, then willingly offered up his only son;
by faith Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt;
by faith Rahab received the spies of Israel and saved her life.
Many heroes of Faith
are mentioned in the Bible
“who through Faith
conquered kingdoms,
administered justice,
gained what was promised;
shut the mouths of Lions,
quenched the fury of flames,
escaped the edge of the sword;
had weakness was turned to strength;
became powerful in battle and routed armies”.
Faith is demonstrated by action.
Let YOUR Faith
be YOUR strength.
Goodnight.
Able to “move mountains”.
“Faith”,
Jesus says,
“If it were the size of even
the smallest of the seeds,
the mustard bush,
they would be able to
“move mountains.”
– Matthew 17:20
“Stress, depression, and anxiety
are caused when we are living
to please others.”
– Paulo Coehlo
Freeing Your Truest Self
When You’ve Been Anxious
to Please Everyone Else
I came from a broken and very poor family. My father left the house during my teenage years, and it was just my mother, little brother, and I remaining.
Like most single parents going through the hardships of single handedly caring for two children, my mother was often anxious about my well-being. And she overcompensated for her anxiety by being overbearing.
I unfortunately inherited this anxiety.
For the longest time, it was a daily battle for me.
You know the feeling.
Your muscles tense up, you feel an overwhelming sense of fear, and your heart begins to race.
It’s the uncomfortable worries that surface as you play out worst-case scenarios in your head.
Though we can feel anxiety about debt, work pressures, or any number of challenges, for me, it was mostly triggered by the fear of not being good enough and disappointing other people.
Professor Lacey teaches Latin, Greek & Epic Literature.
My struggle with anxiety was one of the most crippling experiences, and as a result, I never grew.
So, is it really possible to overcome anxiety?
I realized the answer is yes, but first I needed to understand where my anxiety was coming from.
Anxiety is Your Brain Trying to Protect You
There’s a small, almond-sized part of your brain known as the amygdala whose main job is to look out for your survival. For example, if a mountain lion were chasing you, your amygdala would trigger fear so that it would activate your body to run for your life or grab a weapon to fight.
Your amygdala doesn’t only watch out for your physical survival. You feel the same kind of fear when you are nervous about giving a public speech or going on a first date.
When you experience anxiety in these situations, it’s your brain’s way of trying to help you survive emotionally.
Unfortunately, your amygdala is not the greatest at accurately gauging how dangerous a situation might be. It often blows things way out of proportion.
I remember what it felt like when I was a kid and wouldn’t see my mother the whole day because she was always working late. I’d wait for her to talk about something I was excited about only to have her turn the conversation toward things about myself that I should be improving.
Even though this was her way of trying to make sure I survive in the world, because we were barely getting by, the constant requests to do things better made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
It felt like no matter what I did, I could never fully please her. If I accomplished something she requested of me, I’d get a quick “thank you,” then she’d move on to talk about what else I should do.
Philippe Arrighi teaches French and French History and Culture.
I found it most hurtful when she would talk about how great someone else was. She’d update me about some amazing thing that one of her client’s children had accomplished and suggest that I should try to follow in that person’s footsteps.
All that did was make me think that something was wrong with me.
I ended up with low self-esteem, and because I thought I was worthless, nothing was scarier than the thought of making mistakes and failing, because that would confirm that I was not good enough.
This was why I never took too many risks and searched only for options that seemed to have a guarantee for success.
My anxiety made me develop a behavior of perfectionism, and it was ruining my life. The more I let it make my decisions for me, or lack of decisions for that matter, the further I felt from who I wanted to become.
Ironically, becoming a perfectionist was my brain’s solution to helping me feel good enough.
“Perfectionism
is the belief that if we live perfect,
look perfect, and act perfect,
we can minimize or avoid the pain
of blame, judgement, and shame.
It’s a shield.”
– Brené Brown
This toxic behavior put me in an endless cycle of working hard to achieve all sorts of cool things so that one day, I might feel good about myself. In reality, every accomplishment felt anti-climactic. I was always dissatisfied and constantly looking for the next big accomplishment to chase.
No matter how much I succeeded, it was never enough for me, just like I never felt like I was enough for other people.
It wasn’t until I met someone who could see the real me that I finally figured out how to overcome my anxiety.
The Power of a Safe Space
When I was a teenager, a man named Anthony saved my life. If it weren’t for him, I would’ve gone down a much more self-destructive path.
He never questioned the mistakes I’d made unless I wanted to talk about them. And when I didn’t want to talk about them, he’d openly share his own horrible mistakes.
I never once felt judged by him, nor did I feel like he had a set of expectations for me.
Anthony helped me feel safe.
People touched by
you will not be
ordinary anymore.
I realized for the first time that for most of my life, I didn’t feel safe to be who I was.
I was almost always in survival mode, shielding myself emotionally. All my behavior was in reaction to the anxiety of not feeling good enough for other people.
Being in a safe space finally helped me put my guard down and look at myself objectively. It was in these moments that I became deeply aware that being a perfectionist wasn’t the answer to my anxiety, and that I was heading down a path toward depression.
I didn’t come to this realization sooner because the pre-frontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain, is turned off when the brain’s in survival mode. This pre-frontal cortex is what’s capable of rational behavior, critical thinking, and emotional regulation.
The only way to calm down the survival mode of your brain is to place yourself in environments where you feel safe.
The thinking part of your brain will help you understand where your anxiety comes from and figure out an effective way to handle it.
It was in this safe space that I finally realized that I had the power and responsibility to stay true to myself.
How I Overcame My Anxiety
Deep down, I hated myself for constantly giving in to other people’s expectations of me and for letting their standards determine my self-worth.
But the reality is that I let this happen.
And here’s the even harsher truth.
I let it happen because it’s much easier to live a life that someone else wants you to live.
The scariest part is that once you take ownership of the one life you have, you have no one to blame if things go wrong. At least following someone else’s path gave me the right to blame him or her.
My brain would rather me let others’ standards dictate my life and sacrifice my mental health than do anything that might make me experience the emotional pain of looking like a failure and falling short of someone’s standards.
Now that I knew all my anxiety was coming from my brain being in survival mode, I needed to figure out a way to regularly calm it down.
A beautiful sunset at the Anderson School.
This was when I discovered meditation.
I learned that brain scans in studies have revealed that meditation calms the amygdala and activates the thinking part of your brain.
I started using the free version of an app called Head space, and I learned how effective it can be to simply be present and enter a state of awareness.
For most of my life, I’d been tossed left and right by my circumstances and was a slave to my emotional reactions. Meditation helped me become more aware of why I was behaving the way I did, especially in these reactive moments.
I finally saw that almost all my anxiety led to irrational thoughts and behaviors.
For example, I remember when I decided to start my business, it was hard to build my audience. Nobody was reading any of my articles, and I wasn’t getting any traffic on my website.
I’ve given up on other ventures plenty of times before, and I was ready to give up on this one too. I took it personally and started telling myself the familiar narrative that I didn’t have what it takes. I just wasn’t good enough. Then I recognized that I was reacting to my anxiety as I’d always done, and I could choose a different way.
I was able to be aware and think to myself, “I’m feeling anxious right now because this moment feels similar to a couple of painful experiences I had in the past.”
The moment I became aware of this I gave myself the power to make a choice rather than to habitually react.
So I told myself, “The old you would put yourself down and give up, but the new you can try to assess the situation objectively and see what is really setting you back.”
After doing this, I was finally able to grasp that I didn’t have business challenges because of my character, but most likely because of the strategies and tactics I was using to market myself. Once I used different strategies, I got different results.
Your Best Life Starting Now
In order to live our best life, we have to calm our anxiety about disappointing other people and not being good enough, and find the courage to be true to ourselves.
It is one of the hardest decisions you will ever make, but it will also be one of the best.
The first step to changing my life for the better was having awareness. The next key step was focus.
What you focus on is usually what you will gravitate toward.
The key to living your best life is not to run away from who you were, but to run toward who you want to become.
As I meditated, my anxiety calmed down and I started to have such a clear idea of the person I wanted to be.
I no longer wanted to be the anxious person who thought he was worthless. I wanted to become a great husband, father, and leader. Rather than worrying about not being able to meet these expectations, I started to engage the thinking part of my brain to figure out what needed to be done.
I didn’t have all the answers, but I knew I could only make this life I wanted a reality if I started making changes and learned as I went.
I wanted to learn what it took to become a better husband, so I started going to marriage counseling.
I wanted to become a better parent, so I researched how children are wired and how to best communicate with them.
I wanted to be a better leader, so I invested in credible leadership and coaching courses.
And I did these things not because I wanted to prove something to myself, but more because it mattered to me deeply and I knew it was a part of who I truly was.
I’ve spent too much time running away from opportunities for growth because I was afraid I might not be good enough. The problem, though, was that I was running away without knowing where I wanted to go. I ended up in destinations where I felt more lost than ever, and my anxiety kept catching up to me in the end.
Now, whenever I experience anxiety, I tell myself, “This is anxiety.” I thank my brain for looking out for me and then I ask myself, “What do I need to focus on in this moment, and how can I get it?”
Then, surprisingly, the anxiety calms down and the thinking part of my brain activates to try and figure out the best way to go about things.
This is what changed everything for me.
And I know it can for you too.
While people might have expectations for you, the world desperately needs the power that comes from you living your most authentic life.
If you are battling anxiety about not being good enough or pleasing other people, take a moment to slow down and acknowledge what you are experiencing. Then, identify what you need to feel safe so you can turn on the thinking part of your brain and start uncovering the answers you most need. That might mean meditating, talking to a close friend, or even just getting out in nature for a walk.
It’s time to take a deep breath, be compassionate with yourself, and decide who it is you want to be.
Stay aware and focused and you’ll be there sooner than you think.
About Eugene Choi
Eugene works with professionals who are frustrated because they’ve made it as far as they can go and start to feel stuck. His unique method of coaching helps them figure out what their next steps can be whether it’s a way to grow within their company or even switch careers.
2018-19 Anderson School Calendar
First Semester
September 4 – December 21 2018
Sept. 4 (Tuesday) First Day of First Semester
Oct 8 (Monday) Columbus Day Holiday
Nov. 19 – 23 Thanksgiving / Fall Break
T. B. A. Texas A.G.T. Conference (no school)
Dec. 21 (Friday) Last Day of Fall Semester
Dec. 24 – Jan. 7 Winter Break Holidays
Second Semester
January 8 – May 24 2019
Jan. 8 (Tuesday) Second Semester begins
Jan. 21 (Monday) Rev. Dr. Martin L. King Holiday
Feb. 18 (Monday) President’s Day Holiday
Mar. 11 -15 Spring Break Holidays
April 19 & 22 (Fri. & Mon.) Good Friday & Easter Holidays
May 20 Prep. Day for Adventure Trip (no school)
May 21 – 24 Adventure Trip
May 24 Last Day of Semester
Dr. & Mrs. Anderson may schedule 2-5 additional days
(to be announced later) for In-service Training.
Visit our website at http://www.andersonschool.net
for updated information.
The School Calendar is subject to change.
There are no make-up days
if school is closed due to
inclement weather.
Inclement Weather Policy:
the school will close if Fort Worth I. S. D. is closed.
(Calendar 2018-2019 / approved 7-29-18)
“SPENDING TIME WITH CHILDREN
IS MORE IMPORTANT
THAN SPENDING MONEY ON CHILDREN.”
– Anthony D. Williams, from: Inside the Divine Pattern
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Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker is licensed as both a psychologist and marriage and family counselor. She specializes in couples and family therapy and parent education. She writes regularly for Psych Central as well as Psych Central’s 
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