A SHORT GUIDE TO LIVING

POSITIVELY
By Ryan Riebe

YOU NEED TO FIND

WHAT HINDERS YOU
TO MOVE FORWARD
To live a more fulfill live, you
first of all must find the
habits that hinder you.
Finding these habits are
tough, and require you to be
vulnerable. Being vulnerable
means to recognize your
shame and fear.

BEING VULNERABLE

To recognize your shame and fear, ask yourself the

question Im not ______ enough.

ex. Im not good enough, Im not attractive

enoughetc.

What did you answer? Are they personal?

Being vulnerable is tough, and recognizing what

you lack at is something that requires great
courage. Courage is telling of the story of who
you are wholeheartedly. Believe it or not, your
vulnerabilities and special skills make you
worthy in your own unique way. Worthiness is
the belief that you are worthy of love and
belonging. After recognizing your vulnerabilities,
you have to do something with them.

If you do not transform your pain, you will transmit

it.
Richard Rohr

BEING WHOLE HEARTED

Connecting with others about your vulnerabilities is the best way

to deal with with them. Coming out with them, and recognizing
them with others will allow you to better connect with God,
allowing you to see the imperfections in yourself and others.

Connecting with others will help achieve two major functions

of a healthy soul: the energy to continue moving forward, and
a oneness or identity with others that makes you become
one.

WHAT WE DO
WITH
VULNERABILITY
Our shame and pain that we
deal with is usually hidden.
We do numerous things with
it to try and avoid it, but it
actually drives us to do
certain things.

We try to avoid our shame by minimizing it in

our own special ways. Minimizing the pain is a
bad idea, however, as An example of this is
dehumanizing others, as we feel inferior to
them or a large majority of others.
Dehumanizing them makes you feel better
about yourself, but it can lead to very serious
and bad consequences for yourself and others.

DEHUMANIZATION

Dehumanizing can happen in numerous different

ways

The most major dehumanization that occurs daily is probably through

gender relations. Males are generally depicted as having to be big and
strong, showing few emotions. Women are generally seen as weaker,
emotional, and treated as less of a person as a man. Making jokes
about women or honoring hardcore men make this depiction
worse, and push the separation of genders further.

TOUGH-GUISE 2

Tough-Guise 2 went into bad habits

that we as a society have on genders.
Some of the main ideas are:

Ads make stereotypes on

women, giving the idea that they
should be thin. Males should be
tough and mean, with few
emotions. An example of an ad
like that is located to the right.
Males being violent and women
being weak are not learned
behaviors, but are actively taught
in our society that continues to
be pushed forward.

OTHER BAD HABITS

There are numerous other habits that affect society.

Racism, mean jokes, not recognizing the poor are
just a few that plague our society. Even spending
too much time on social media is a major issue that
affects people from truly becoming who they want
to be. What habits hinder you from getting what
you want? Are there any habits that plague society
that you struggle with?

HOW DO YOU COMBAT

THESE BAD HABITS?

Combating these bad habits needs to start with Empathy

for others. Empathy is described as loving one another for
who they are, and feeling their emotional pain even if you
have not had to experience it directly. Feeling empathy
can happen for everyone, including the poor. Actually
knowing the poor and deciding to live and be with them
will lead to change, and not making fun of and pushing the
common stereotypes shows empathy for others, and the
smallest things to matter.

A PERSONAL STORY OF
EMPATHY

After I experienced a full week of working with

and for the poor in Guatemala, our group had a
prayer session at the end. We were able to put
away all bad globalizations, and understand better
how the poor down there lived. I felt a lot of
empathy for them, and saw an image of Jesus in
the church like the one pictured to the left. It was
a perfect representation of Jesus, and showed how
much empathy he had for us, and what we should
have on others and the pain we all endure. Having
empathy, and following Jesus and St Ignatius good
spirit will allow one to overcome habits for
themselves, pushing for a world change to have
better habits to push the world further.