00:01
I've always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, The reason for that is, I've always wanted people to give me the benefit of that. But one thing that I've realized and learned as I've gotten older is that there are plenty of snakes in the grass, and you have to be very careful because they will bite.
00:21
Now, some of you may be listening to this and those of you who followed me or thinking Romine, what about the way of the peaceful warrior with a peaceful warrior? Say something like this. The thing is the way of the peaceful warrior or a person. Who is someone of faith?
00:40
Yes, you should trust that. People have good intentions. But at the same time, it does not mean that you should be naive. There are both good people out there and there are bad people. Evil people that are out there. Of course, it is up to God to God who He will and he guides who He wants and leads astray who He wants and that is not for us.
01:03
Of course, we will never know a person's intentions. We can never look into their hearts and truly assess and see what their intending to do. But at the same time, there are plenty of signs that are out there that can let you know that a person does not have a good motive for you.
01:26
There may be constantly pushing beyond boundaries that you've set for that person. They've done something in the past where they have taken your trust or they've harmed you in some way. And yes, everyone does to serve a second chance, but that does not mean that you should just forget about it.
01:47
You should remember, Yes, Everyone deserves a second chance but some people out there are there to just not, do you good to not play a positive role in your life to be a toxic person Now in my own experience? Not too long ago when I was working at one of my firms.
02:09
There was a new partner that came in and everything seemed to be, okay? But It seemed like this partner was starting to build a case against me. And I first I didn't think anything of it because I was like, you know what? It just might not be anything, just gonna let give them the benefit of the doubt and let it be.
02:31
But deep down inside of me, the voice the instinct kept telling me it remains something is not right. Sure. Enough something was not right. This partner was building a case against me to bring in his own associate and be able to have that person have a position, my position.
02:51
And so, I started to listen to that voice inside and smartened up about the firm politics and I realize that there were things that were being done in the background, which were completely false and so I had to get ahead of it. The reason why I bring that one particular example is that these things can happen in any aspect of your life.
03:12
It can happen at work, it can happen within your home. It can happen within any relationships that you have with your friends and you have to learn to protect yourself. God often gives us patterns in our lives and these patterns will happen over and over again. And they happen for a reason.
03:37
Have you learned from the mistakes in your past? Have you learned to be able to recognize the certain patterns to be able to overcome them? Another case in point? Let's say you're a neural relationship with someone and this relationship can be a friendship. It can be, you know, husband and wife.
03:58
They can be any type, but in this particular type of relationship, things start to go sour. Let's say, for example, the person that you are friends with the person that you are and some type of more intimate relationship with, they start to exhibit certain behaviors that you've seen before behaviors.
04:18
For example, that have been toxic in the sense that they have been emotionally, abusive, verbally, abusive They've put you down, they've tried to done things to, or do things to you in, which it's constantly put you in a state of self-doubt misery and you've realized that pattern or you've noticed that because it's happened before.
04:43
And it's interesting because when these things do happen, especially when we have and learned from them, God will put that situation before you again and it can be with that same person or it can be with a completely different person. But whose exhibit at the same behaviors to just see if you are going to learn from your lesson, Are you going to be able to stand up for yourself?
05:08
Are you going to be able to say, you know what, this is. Not the type of relationship. I want to be in. I need to move away from it. I need to let this person go and often it is extremely difficult because in order for us to overcome these obstacles overcome, these snakes and the grass.
05:27
We have to be honest with ourselves and that honesty comes with a cost. It comes with the cost of not being in within that comfort zone that we are often. So used to In this comfort zones. Does not necessarily mean that it's a good comfort zone. It couldn't be a bad, a negative comfort zone, but we're comfortable with it because we know how to move around it.
05:52
We know how to play our roles in it and it's often our egos that tells us Stay within the circle that you're in. It's going to be much more difficult for you to move out of this comfort zone because of the fear of the unknown, The fear that you're not going to be able to find another job.
06:09
The fear that you're not going to be able to find another person, another friendship, another relationship. It's all of these fears that are whisper to us in their whispered by no other than Satan. That's my view of it based upon my faith. Satan will whisper to us in our most darkest moments, and it's often from those dark moments in our lives, where these whispers come in and they create self-doubts within ourselves.
06:39
But when we realize that we need to seek the light, we need to have faith in the truth and the truth, for my own perspective, it's always been God. And my faith and my religion and knowing that he always wants the best for us, but we do have to learn from growing pains.
06:57
We do have to learn to have strength to have faith in Him that when we are taking these actions, when we are moving away outside of our comfort zones. Moving away from these individuals who don't mean the best for us. Moving away from these situations or relationships that have been toxic that even though we are going into a realm of unknown, that we know that he God has the best out there for us.
07:25
We start to realize that there is light at the end of the tunnel but we have to start taking those actions to seek it. Watch out for those snakes in the grass, They do exist. There are people who don't mean you. Well there are people who don't want to see you succeed and whatsoever way that you define success.
07:42
And there are evil people out there. Unfortunately, that's a sad reality. We must pray for them at the end that they find the path that they get guided. But we also must remove them from our lives, or remove the situations from our lives to allow ourselves to grow whether it's spiritually emotionally, physically, whatever the case may be, We have to set boundaries for these situations to be able to protect ourselves, and allow ourselves to grow