Hi All,
I decided to start this topic as an extension of my blog site. I write articles that are inspired by everyday happenings. Please feel free to make comments about the various articles.
,

Reverse Paranoia

I came across the term “Reverse Paranoia” on a blog I follow regularly a couple of days ago and found it very interesting and in line with something I had been considering for the past month. While Paranoia is an abnormal tendency to be suspicious and lack trust in other people, that is the belief that everyone is against you and everything happens as part of a plan to cause harm to you. Reverse Paranoia is the belief that everything that happens is part of a plan for good things to happen to you. Reverse Paranoia is not a mental illness as Paranoia is, it is a conscious state of mind that most successful people have been known to have.

Once something “bad” happens to the average person, he whines about it all day long and say things such as, “I knew this was going to happen, nothing really good ever happens to me.” This person continues with that negative state of mind and continues to dwell on what has gone wrong and what else will probably go wrong. A person with Reverse Paranoia sees everything that has not gone according to plan as part of God’s divine plan to bring ultimate happiness to him. If a paranoid person is delayed on his way to a meeting by a flat tire, he whines and beats himself about it, puts himself in a bad mood and ultimately ruins his day. A person with reverse paranoia faced with the same situation stays calm, fixes the flat tire, drives to the meeting with the same calmness and confidence and puts the experience behind him. If things do not work out, he believes that it was not supposed to work out in the first place. That gives him peace of mind and put him in the best mind frame to go on with the rest of his day.

How many of us have been faced with “bad” situations that turned out better than our previous plan? You forget something at work on your way home and when you go back to get what you forgot you meet someone who gives you a ride home. You miss a flight or a bus and you take the next flight or bus only to find out that the one you would have taken if you had arrived earlier was involved in an accident. You fail an interview and you find a year later that your peers that passed the interview have been downsized by the company. You do not meet the cut-off mark for the University of your choice, you pick another school and sometime later, you find out that the school that you couldn’t go to, has some internal issues and students have been forced to stay at home. Someone breaks an engagement with you and you discover later that the person has alienated all his in-laws or is worse, dead. The list is endless but I am sure that everyone has been faced with a bad situation that ultimately turned out for good.

The outcome of that “bad” situation to a very large extent depends on how you handle it. For a situation where someone forgot something at work and goes back to get it, if she is in a bad mood,  she might be too busy being angry that she might not see the person that is to give her a ride home. Now you see that she has failed to make the best of the situation because of her state of mind.

Choosing to have Reverse Paranoia should be done consciously, saves you a lot of stress and puts you in the best mind frame to make the best of every situation. By believing that everything works together for your good, you keep your mind alert to see opportunities that are hidden in the “bad” situation. It keeps you happy and in a state of mind that attract good things to your life. Reverse Paranoia works hand in hand with the Law of Belief which states that, “Whatever you believe with conviction, becomes your reality” and the Law of Expectation which states that, “Whatever you expect with confidence becomes your own self fulfilling prophecy.”

If you believe that nothing good can happen to you and that things can never run smoothly in your life, your attitude will be so bad that the right people won’t even be able to come into your life, bringing to pass that which you believed in the first place. If you believe the opposite, you will take fewer things to heart and radiate so much positive energy that you end up attracting the right people to your life. You will live a happy and very stress free life. Try it today.

Have a great weekend ahead.

Someone once told me a story that a philosophy professor he met on a flight told him. The professor always went to ease himself everyday after his three-hour philosophy class and each time he did and flushed the toilet, he always saw one little brown spider on the toilet bowl struggling for its life against the swirling water. Every day, he went there and saw the same spider struggling to get out of the toilet bowl. One day, he decided to help the spider, so he took a paper towel and scooped up the spider from the toilet bowl and put it on the floor. The next day, he went to the toilet as usual and found the spider dead on the floor, its eight feet in the air.Out of the kindness of his heart, the professor tried to help the spider thereby imposing his will on the spider and the result of his actions was the direct opposite of what he intended.
I am sure we can all think of situations that would have turned out better if only we had kept our hands to our sides and trusted the situation to God. The truth is that in every situation we find ourselves, God has already mapped out a great plan to get us out of it. The only thing we need to do is to submit to his will and trust him for directions. By running about, looking for ways to influence the outcome of situations without going to God first to ask for directions, we show that we do not trust Him enough to handle the situation and we end up making things worse. It is when we have messed things up by "butting in" that we finally remember God and go crying to Him for help. By then, it would take a longer time to find a remedy to the situation than it would have taken if we had just submitted to His will from the beginning.
The way you render a butterfly useless by using the smallest of pins to try to assist the little butterfly to come out of the pupa stage during the metarmorphosis process so it is when we impose our will on different situations. We mess up that which God has planned for us and end up settling for less than we would have gotten if we had just trusted in Him.
Psalm 125 vs 1: " Those who trust in the Lord are as secure as Mount Zion; They will not be defeated but will endure forever" Do you know what it means to endure forever? That is enough reason for me to keep my meddling fingers out of situations without first consulting God for directions.
This is especially important now that the NYSC passing out date is around the corner. So many people will begin, or have already begun to run helter skelter for people to help them to get employment in different establishments. While it is not wrong to be proactive in things concerning your future, it would do us much more good if we first of all went to God in prayer and asked Him for directions while submitting to His will.

There was once a very wealthy rich farmer who planted crops that yielded him so much money that he fame spread throughout the neighborhood countries. He was also known as being very generous and just in all his dealings. At the end of one planting season, he needed workers to help him harvest his yam farm, so he set out to look for workers. Soon enough, he found some workers and they agreed to work for him for a full day’s pay and went on to work on the farm. 3 hours later, he met another set of workers and also employed them for a full day’s pay. Some hours after that, he met another set of workers and the same thing happened. Two hours to the end of the day, he met some other people sitting around and asked them why they had not been working for the day. They replied, “Because no one hired us”. So he told them to go and join the other workers in his farm. At the end of the day, when his cashier was paying the workers starting with the ones who were employed last, he gave them a full day’s pay. Those who were employed earlier were happy because they figured that they would get more since they had worked for a longer period. They were however dismayed when they received the same amount as everyone. They grumbled among one another. The rich farmer on hearing what they were saying called out to them and asked why they grumbled even after they had previously agreed to be given a full day’s pay. He went on to explain that he had decided to give the workers who had come late a full day’s pay out of the abundance of his heart.

This story was adapted from a story in the bible in Mathew 20 which related the rich man to God.

I was inspired by the story because it showed clearly how God helps us to manifest once we are willing to take a bold step and put in some work. It didn’t matter that the last set of workers had arrived late; they were still given a full day’s pay. It then dawned on me that we humans are the ones putting all the limitations on ourselves by thinking that we have become too old to start something that we should have started earlier in life. Instead of wasting that time in regret, why don’t you just start? The worst that could happen isn’t failure but not trying at all.

The mere fact that you have been given that idea or that you are just about to act on an idea that you have had doesn’t mean that it is too late to succeed. The truth is that it is God who grants us the grace to succeed. As seen in the story from the workers that started work earlier, because someone else started earlier in life doesn’t mean that he will be more successful than you who are just about to start. The key is for you to start and tap into that wisdom which only God gives.

It really doesn’t matter what it is, it could be taking a new course in school, starting a business, changing your career, running a charity, developing a skill, meeting a financial target; whatever it is, don’t be crippled by the thought that it is too late. It is never too late until you are dead. The graveyard is the place filled with the most resources because buried in it are so many unfulfilled dreams and untapped potentials. Do not take your dreams to the grave. It will be such a colossal loss.