Trust

Memory Will Protect Your Heart

 

Sad Black Woman

(Photo Credit: Ex-Superwoman)

Psychology teaches us to judge people by their previous actions. While one should forgive people, and forgive them immediately, don’t forget their track record. Even when you’ve just met a person, evaluate his or her words and assess his or her fidelity to those words. Unless you have some type of mental condition adversely affecting your memory, it offers great power to protect you from heartbreak. Listen carefully to what people say and closely observe whether they deliver on what they communicate.

One of the central reasons why an individual must engage in close analysis of what others communicate and their corresponding actions is selfishness often enters the equation. People’s selfishness can have devastating effects. Although you cannot guard yourself against all acts of others’ selfishness, valuing the power of memory permits you to diminish opportunities for falling prey to such selfishness.

It’s okay to trust people—just exercise good judgment. As much as possible, make sure the people you trust have a track record that merits trust. Words alone are meaningless. What real evidence is available to help you determine whether to trust someone? If you ask that question each time you make a decision, you will greatly ameliorate your outcomes.

Memory, an invisible best friend often neglected, is waiting to collaborate with you to defeat those who would attempt to do you harm. Let memory guide your thoughts, your actions, your values, your principles.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Don’t Invite Disloyalty to Your Doorstep
Disloyalty

(Photo Credit: Bole Gain India)

The waning embracement of loyalty is becoming ever so lucid throughout America.  When you fail to be loyal to your family and friends, you invite disloyalty to your doorstep.  The costs of being loyal are significantly less than the repercussions of being disloyal.  Often those who are disloyal to their family and friends are governed by a spirit of selfishness.  This spirit of selfishness frequently defines those who are disloyal.  Most folks willing to be disloyal will try to make everything about them.  If you, therefore, have friends and family members who attempt to make everything about themselves, then they have great potential to be disloyal to you.

Although it can be quite emotionally painful to have someone you trust be disloyal to you, it can be empowering: You have a chance to learn his or her real name: Enemy.  Once you discover his or her true name, treat the person accordingly.  The discovery of disloyalty will remove the blinders from your eyes about the person.  This will enable you to invest your time in people who genuinely love and support you. Even when people painstakingly endeavor to conceal their disloyalty, disloyalty has a way of being revealed to you.  Disloyal people tend to have disloyal friends, family members, and associates, and those individuals often—without the least thought and regret—communicate the disloyalty to the victims.

While it can seem easy to respond to this piece by saying, “Don’t trust everyone,” some of the victimizers can be people you’ve never had any reason to suspect of being disloyal.  You should not immediately blame the victim.  It’s not healthy to go around distrusting everyone but it’s wise to keep your eyes and ears open.

Should a family member or friend be forgiven for being disloyal?

Forgive everyone for everything.  The disloyal will inevitably receive justice.  You will recover from the pain disloyal people have inflict on you—just don’t let that pain stifle your progress.  Find the strength to overcome this pain or it will accomplish just what your enemies hoped it would: destruction.

After reading this piece, let your loyal family members and friends know how much you really appreciate, love and support them.  Being a victim of disloyalty offers you powerful insights about why your loyal family members and friends are so valuable.

As a quick reminder to disloyal people, your actions can cause those same evil seeds you planted in one place to sprout at your doorsteps.  You do reap what you sow.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Beware of the Snakes in the Grass

Beware of Snakes

Always be on the lookout for your enemies being close to you. Now, I am not saying that all of your friends, associates, and close friends are your enemies, but I am recommending that you be watchful of the people who you allow to enter into your circle of friends and associates. Although you may be the type of person who is so trusting of people, you have to keep a certain level of resistance to telling people everything. Of course, in a perfect world, you would like to think that you can tell people secrets and confidential things and not have those things told to others. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. In this less than perfect world, we have to be smart enough to know that everyone we talk to is not our friends, and everyone who we call a “friend” is not our real friends. Your “friends” can be some of the most jealous, envious, and uncaring people you will encounter in this human experience.

You have to be careful about how the people around you will use you for what they can get from you and then stab you in the back just as soon as they get a chance. In fact, people can be stabbing you in the back while you are helping them. It is so despicable that you can be making such a strong effort to really help people, but those same people can be working against you, talking about you behind your back, defaming your character, passing along private information you have provided them, and taking out of context some of the things you have told them. When people have placed great trust in you, you should at least have the decency to have some level of care for them that you would not attempt to do anything that would cause them harm or potentially cause them harm.

When you go and confront these close enemies, the first thing that they will do is deny anything that they have done. No matter how good you try to be to some people, some of them will still do things to try to hurt you. When you maintain a snake as a friend, you better expect that snake to raise its head and bite the dickens out of you. Ultimately, you have to rid yourself of snakes in the grass or else they will kill you. You don’t have to be uneasy around your friends and associates—just be smart about what you say to them and what you do around them. You should never tell anyone everything in the first place. What those snakes in the grass have to understand is you know significant information about them that you can also use to harm them too. When you use this information, don’t feel horrible about it—this is simply counterpunching! Never attack but don’t hesitate to counterpunch!

Even when you separate yourself from these snakes in the grass, you still have to watch out for the things that they may try to do to you. You have to be ready with a counter to what they may do and say. Snakes in the grass emerge from Satan’s influence. When you are dealing with snakes in the grass, please know that you are going to have to combat them more than just physically—you’re going to have to fight them spiritually too.

I would encourage people to not allow themselves to become snakes in the grass. You will find that you will be generating a self-inflicted wound that you will never be able to mend. Keep that in mind snakes in the grass and future snakes in the grass.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison