Doubt and Faith with Shaun Tomson

In today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Christopher Robbins, co-founder of Familius publishing, husband, father of nine, author, fisherman, backpacker, and aspirational musician based in the Central Valley of California, talks to Shaun Tomson.

 

Episode Highlights

• 01:49: Shaun talks about his book and the 18 chapter that it contains. They are based on the duality of what he experiences in life and how to move from the negative to the positive.
• 03:18: There is a synthesis between religion and kind of a secular perspective in terms of it's a foundation on which we build our lives and foundation on which we build our world.
• 04:51: As per Shaun it is faith that keeps us in the direction of where we want to go. 
• 06:09: Life that bends inside us, gives us hope, meaning, reason and optimism.
• 08:55: Shaun shares the heartbreaking story of losing his son and how he coped with the grief.
• 10:40: Look for help from friends, rekindle those relationships, look from help for professional people and religious people and look for science and helping nature just work in nature.
• 11:32: Christopher had many conversations with psychologist authors and it's a common denominator that they say that those people with whom they are counseling and working with those who can accept the reality of where they are right now are able to move forward and those who cannot accept it, they continue to stay in place.
• 13:05: You put more pressure on yourself and eventually you get caught in this despair and anxiety and you just stop spinning downwards and it's not dissimilar when you can't accept reality and you get caught in this cycle of conjecture, you get open cycle.
• 16:16: Help others find the beauty in the world, find the signs that God exists and loves, and then things will continue.

3 Key Points

1. Shaun explains how we come from different religions, but underneath we are the same in terms of how we relate to that one God or to that energy that we believe controls the world and is responsible for the world staying on its exes.
2. There is a very powerful and inspirational story in the book about how Shaun lost and then regained his faith.
3. Shaun explains how forgiveness is essential to cope with one's grief.

Tweetable Quotes

• "It's a book of perspective, not prescription." - Shaun 
• "I can think about faith from a religious point of view, also can think of it from a secular point of view." – Christopher
• "I think back to my athletic days as a competitor, and it's not really aligned with grief. It is aligned with what can happen when you are an athlete." – Christopher
• "Whatever your sport may be, do that and then help others, whatever that might be mentoring, teaching and doing with our projects, getting involved with the NGO that might do something, and do you create inspirational project that is in memory of the of the person you lost." - Shaun

Resources Mentioned

• Helping Families be Happy Podcast Apple
• Podcast Editing