Managing The Inner You and The Community Around You

By Dr. Linda Murray

Some people are under the belief that once a life plan or change is executed, the difficult part of the work is over. That belief is so far from the truth. Truth be told, the work has just begun. If fact, to maintain the plan or change, it needs to be managed. Most life changes need aftercare and management, to avoid self- destruction and returning to the things you left or something worse.

Dr. Murray used her autobiography as a metaphor to show the reader how to be the change that the family needed; by exceeding the family tree and ending generational patterns that paralyzed generations, leaving behind a tree of doubt, guilt, shame, and disparity.  

Dr. Murray challenged the readers to evaluate, plan, and execute, in the first book. She encourages the reader never to blame the tree, but rather help, leave, and in some cases, return to help the tree or create healthier trees (The Community). Good mentors and leaders not only empower but lead others through the change.

The purpose of this book is to expose characteristics, challenges, and benefits of managing the inner you, with the intent of effectively managing the people around you. This will be accomplished by sharing uncompromising truths, techniques, and thought-provoking concepts to help the reader manage the inner self and the community around them. 

The concepts shared in this book are designed to promote and stimulate internal and external conversations, acknowledgments, and truths as well as awareness, education, knowledge, and self-empowerment with the intent of managing every perspective of your life and the people around you (The Community).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Murray
• Release date: Oct 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781698391779

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Managing the Inner You

ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY: In order to see your plan through, your mental as well as physical being must be healthy.

Your mind controls what happens to you and what you feel. You can convince yourself that you are sick. You can keep yourself from anything if you limit yourself. On the other hand, you can achieve almost anything if you focus on achieving it. Be realistic about what happens and what would happen. From my experience, break ups, changes, and shifts in relationships, both personal and professional, can make you physically sick if you do not learn how to channel the emotions and examine the benefits of the change. Your situations, responses, and reactions control your thinking and emotions. Your emotions impact your physical health and decision making.

If you are unable to change your perspective (thinking), this can limit your ability to function properly. Seeing your situation from a different perspective makes all the difference. Your outcomes depend on what you feed your mind.

I have experienced situations where I have not been motivated to get out of bed. I stressed the night before. I feared all the things that could possibly happen, overreacted, and wore out my body and mind. The next morning, I was exhausted and unable to perform. I’d wasted a night by struggling with the fear of the unknown.

I was on a job once. I am the kind of person who attempts to do everything prior to deadlines or right the first time, so that no one has to call on me for anything because the requested task is complete. One day, a manager left a note on my monitor that read, Stop by my office. I need to see you. This manager was known for firing people at will. I avoider her the whole day with dread. I ran into her at the end of the day in the breakroom; I normally eat after the lunch rush. Let me cut across the field, as one of my old friends used to say. My manager had wanted to offer me a promotion! When you allow fear to control or stop you from taking the next steps, you will lose out on opportunities.

I have since learned how to meditate, quiet my mind, and re-direct my focus onto the positive possibilities. You must rely on the reality that you are living; therefore, good and bad events will happen. Learning to manage the inner you will prevent unnecessary anxiety. Freaking out is not the answer in any situation. Your mind can hinder you or propel you to move forward. If you listen to a lot of negative people, your mind spirals into that negativity. You can address that by monitoring your mind and pre-empting negative emotions and perspectives by engaging in motivations and positivity when negativity comes to mind. You are in a position of always challenging the mind so that you can place yourself into the reality that you want to see. You must manage the ups and downs of your life, your emotions, and your experiences in order to have a successful life away from the tree (situation) you came from.

You Must Put in the Work

You must determine your direction and your frequency on your own, as you have moved away from the tree you were born into if it is not beneficial. You must produce consistent results. You will experience outcomes that are not simple to explain through logic. However, I also know that the outcomes are not magical. Success and progress are not a matter of wishing prayers and strong desire. Faith without works is powerless. Power without practice will not bear fruit.

What I don’t believe in is power that can be replicated to produce outcomes. I struggle with tools and people that don’t produce consistent results. I know that the tool is just an image or a belief that motivates you to do the work. I believe in miracles, but I also know that I must put in my contribution of work. I refuse to give in to the popular notion of fairy tales and prosperity propagandizing.

I learned this lesson at an early age. My mother famously sat the siblings down and explained where Christmas presents came from. She said, Santa Claus is not getting the credit for my hard work. In my own experience, I recognize the gems of wisdom. There was no magic that got me to the end of my doctoral degree or any other milestone. There was no pill or sprinkling that got my dissertation written. There are people who recognize the work and the commitment that make the outcomes happen. There are people who achieve lasting and continued results. I have also seen those who wait for a promise without action. Many of them are still waiting.

Therefore, what you are managing is the decision. First, calm down and decide. Make the decision based on the information available to you, your willingness to hard work, and the context you can influence or access. You now manage that decision. Your process from the moment of decision forward is a journey of endurance, with several crucial tasks. During the journey, you must face many realities. Every person, experience, and need will be different. Let’s explore a few areas that should be managed right out of the gate.

Deny Fear. Once you decide, then fear, family, and ambivalence will attempt to provide you with reasons and information that change your decision or at least tell you to reconsider. Take ownership. It is your decision. Live through the experience. Even losses are lessons.

Be Honest. You can lie to everyone except God and yourself. Be honest that you can either face the challenge or that you are inadequate. Maybe you don’t have the means or the resources. Often, we take on things that we cannot manage. We make purchases that we cannot afford.

Seek Knowledge. Taking a leap involves educating yourself to understand what you are getting into. Map out a plan that integrates the additional knowledge you gain during implementation. Rather than thinking that you know it all, approach each step as an additional opportunity to learn.

Reach Out for Help. Find experts and lean on them. Start hanging with the right groups. Awareness, knowledge, and resources help you manage the inner you. You have decided to be different. Get practice living in that space.

Learn How to Execute. Often, we fight with ourselves. You must risk. You must accept some failure. If you have not failed, you are not trying. Decide upon the limits you will accept. Keep in mind that the greater the rewards, the riskier the choices seem. This may not be completely true. When we have not achieved a certain level, we may perceive the newness as fear or additional risk. Rely on your help and support from friends who have been there to orient you.

Remove People Who Interfere. Decide that it is something you want to do. Eliminate people who are stressful and don’t bring value to you. Sometimes, I feel out of sorts or drained. I must quickly realize when I am pouring out to people and depleting myself. Make sure you are not giving out more than you are getting. Connect with the source so that you can be filled.

Celebrate. You must celebrate. Even small steps forward are wins. Early on, wins may not be as large as they are later in the process. Losing less money than last quarter on your way to profitability is an acceptable outcome. It seems counterintuitive, but it offers questions about process, effort, and balance that you can answer.

Consistency. This is a daily challenge. It is a lifestyle change. It is a complete balance of all these things. It is something that you execute daily. You do not just wake up and do this once. It is a practice. That is what creates the lifestyle.

If there was a pill, I would want it. I have tried. I have researched and explored whether there are consistent results. Network marketing is one example. I need to see the checks you get consistently. Because you cannot show me them, I cannot believe in it. While you are working to prove the validity of the pill, I am working to create my own pill. I must get up every morning and get to my lab. It will maintain my integrity, my self-respect, and my ethics. Many are faking and walking through it, faking that they have it. I will believe it if you show me. Just show me.

Mature Faith. There should be examples in your repertoire that you were able to do it before me. You must put yourself in the place where faith can operate. People feel that something is going to pick you up from nowhere and save you. If you are still in the same old house, you are not in the space to make things happen. People don’t realize that there is a struggle. If we don’t move through and look for other options, you can’t change anything. You require a trust in yourself to do what you can, because this is what activates faith.

Mature Patience. Be patient with yourself and your decisions. Be willing to work through the process. Endure what it takes. When I was in my doctoral program, the time estimate was 5 years. It didn’t work out that way for me. I had to decide whether I wanted the degree enough to endure to the end. You must be willing to explore the options and balance the body, mind, and spirit to go through with your decision.

Empowerment and Encouragement

It would be great if you could reach out to others. That possibility may exist, but if it doesn’t, you must learn to empower yourself. That may sound rough, but if you don’t like being with yourself, why would others want to be with you? If you learn to be alone, you will learn techniques of self-empowerment. We always look to others to provide satisfaction or security. We don’t know what really satisfies us if we don’t find out these switches or triggers while we are alone. Remove the noise.

Males and females move from role to role without taking time to discover themselves. We must take time to eliminate the noise and complexity to find who we are. While leaving others to complement what we are as individuals—what