The Dark Room
/THE DARK ROOM
Not too long ago I happened upon a fortune cookie that contained this statement: “Fear is the dark room where negatives are developed”.
Before the vast majority of pictures were taken on phones and stored digitally, we took pictures with a camera and the image was burned onto film. Then the film was taken to a room and placed in a chemical solution to print the images onto paper. This process had to be done in a dark room because the images would be lost if the film were exposed to light.
Let’s think about this in terms of life. Our mind is constantly receiving the input from all the experiences of our lives, and the fact is that we are going to have negative experiences. If we allow these negative experiences into the dark room of fear, then they develop into pictures that we accept into our visual narrative of reality. We allow ourselves to become more and more fearful of all the terrible things that may happen to us.
Let me illustrate this with a practical example. When I was young, I had an intense fear of the dark. It started one night when my mother put me to bed, tucked me in, and turned out the lights. I looked up through the blinds of my window and saw a pair of eyes looking back at me. I was so afraid that I tried to scream but nothing came out. Finally I was able to call for help, but by the time my father ran outside, the man had escaped – all that was left were his footprints in the flowerbed.
For some time after this, I had a fear of the dark, a fear that continued to grow based on other experiences that I allowed to affect me. My mind had taken a picture of the frightening experience and allowed that picture to develop into a debilitating fear that if I went into a dark room, something bad would happen.
Negative experiences will happen. That’s life. We are left with the choice of what to do with them. If we allow our thought process to focus on the negative experiences in our lives, our minds will turn into a dark room where the sketchy thoughts will be developed into full-blown experiences. These experiences will build a fear in us that will cripple us from becoming all that we are created to be. However, if we purposefully focus our thinking on the good, positive, creative, and inspiring experiences of life, our minds become filled with light. And in the light ... the negatives cannot be developed. It’s just not possible.
Author: Skip Ross
Skip Ross was the owner, founder, and director of Circle A Ranch. He and his wife Susan dedicated their lives to making a difference in the development of teens through their ministry and spent the over 40 years giving their summers to the work of Circle A.
Skip authored the books Say Yes to Your Potential and Daily Disciplines, and created the Dynamic Living Seminar and the Thrive Study Series. He traveled the globe teaching the principles of attitude development and leadership to millions of people for over 50 years. He also recorded numerous audio and video teachings that have been distributed around the world with the help of Network 21 and podcasts.
He was a successful business executive, recording artist, and motivational speaker. He was founder and president of the OFIDA Project, on the Board of Directors of the Fred L. Hansen Corp., a Crown IBO with Amway, and a graduate of Westmont College and Fuller Theological Seminary. He worked with many different ministry organizations over the years but has most recently been working with the Equip Organization, founded by John Maxwell, to produce highly effective Christian leaders around the world.
Skip Ross went home to be with Jesus on June 13th, 2021, at the age of 82.
This excerpt is taken from Skip’s book, Daily Disciplines.
