The second problem is that the more often we conclude that we are worthless the more likely we are to live as if this is the case. Why try when nothing we endeavor to accomplish works anyway? This notion can be debilitating and can keep us from making progress toward our goals. Hope is one of our primary motivators. With the loss of hope goes the confidence that with time and effort our situation can improve.

The biggest problem with determining our own value by how much we have accomplished is that it leaves us inherently unstable. When we feel good about what we have done we have value. When we seem to fail or when we are no longer able to do what once made us feel accomplished, we are devalued. This ebb and flow can pick us up and beat us back down throughout our lives unless we learn to see our value somewhere higher.

This is especially important to understand during a time when so many are without work and spend many months looking for jobs. Research has shown that a prolonged job search without being hired can have a more devastating long-term effect on the human psyche than almost anything else that we can experience.

For others the challenge is struggling to move up in life while looking around and seeing others within their own age group who are well-established in their careers. This comparison can lead one to the devastating conclusion they they just don’t have what it takes to succeed.

So what is it that defines our worth? While struggling through this issue in my personal life I recently remembered a sermon by Henri Nouwen called “Being the Beloved” that I heard a few years ago. While watching it on YouTube I found strength in the reminder that who we are and what defines is that we are beloved sons and daughters of God.

All our lives we look for our identity, defining ourselves by what we have, what we do, and what people say about us. Each of these things leave us unstable and empty. What truly defines our worth and gives sustained hope is that we are God’s beloved children. This is our identity and our task is to claim it and to live under the influence of this reality.

Only when we understand that our worth is not wrapped up in what we have done but rather in a love that we have freely received, will we be able to break the grip of the idea that we are what we do. Believing that we are more than what we have done will then empower us to live out the value that we have received rather than fighting to prove our worth.

The best time to enjoy your own city is when you are hosting visitors. The desire to show someone around and to help them enjoy their visit is a wonderful stimulus to explore what your surroundings have to offer. We typically take our own areas for granted while longing for what everywhere else has to offer. The grass seems greener on the other side of the fence until someone comes over to our side and wants to take a look around.

My brother is visiting me for two weeks here in San Diego and we are having a blast. It has been fun for me to slow down and enjoy some time with John in the beautiful place where I live. We have thrown the frisbee at Ocean Beach, overlooked the city from the lighthouse at Cabrillo National Monument, walked the boardwalk from Mission to Pacific Beach, visited the local Drive In theater, played games at Dave & Busters, watched a Padres game, spent a night in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter overlooking downtown and enjoyed coffee at some of San Diego’s finest coffee shops. It has been a joy to host my brother and I’m so glad we’ve made the time for this visit.

One of the best things about living in San Diego is that it is a place where people love to visit. I’ve seen and hosted more visitors here than I likely will anywhere else. Welcoming visitors lends a unique perspective to how I look at my city. It causes me to look for and notice the places that would be good to take people to enjoy. I am a travel guide of sorts and this helps to keep me alert.

While longing for a vacation is it possible that we are overlooking some of the beauty and intrigue that is all around us? Use your next opportunity to host visitors as a chance to explore your own area with renewed interest. Buy a travel guide and look up new places as if you were a visitor. I hope this helps you to enjoy your own city.

The door to the ironically named New College, one of Oxford's oldest colleges founded in 1379.

Oxford, England is one of my favorite towns in the world. There are many reasons for this but one of them is because it inspires me to dream big. I love history and the first time I set foot in Oxford I was enamored with its intriguing past. Studying at a college that patterned its educational methods after the Oxbridge model only added to the intrigue. As I walked the historic streets I found myself musing about how much I would love to study at Oxford University someday.

A few years later I went back to explore the possibility further. I’ll never forget standing outside of Queen’s College hesitant to ask for academic information. While I waited the words to a song reminded me that this was my time and to live every moment leaving nothing to chance. I faced my fears and spent a beautiful day wandering around Oxford, gathering information, meeting faculty from the University, and learning as much about the town’s history as I could discover.

I ultimately decided that it would be best to pursue a Master’s Degree at a seminary in the US first. Whether or not I ever complete a degree program at Oxford I still hope for a chance to study in some form as part of my education. Meanwhile, it continues to inspire me as a place that reminds me not to give up on my dreams and settle.

Since the prospect of studying for a Ph.D. is looming in front of me, I have started editing pictures and posting them to my daily photo blog at JustAndyPhoto.com for inspiration. Click here to see more.

What places inspire you?

Many forms of writing, academic in particular, can be quite laborious. Writing from the heart is like sharing a conversation with a close friend over coffee. I try to write like a journalist capturing life as it happens. This kind of writing needs to be both personal and universal. It is personal because it flows from real life experiences but it is universal because it is meant to apply to all rather than making them feel like they are reading a personal diary. Why a blog, you ask? The JustAndyBlog exists to share life’s experiences, lessons, inspiration and beauty.

All my life people have assumed that my real name is Andrew. So when they ask, “Your full name is Andrew, right?”, I answer, “No, its just Andy.” Then almost without fail, they cannot take my word for it, so they have to ask, “But on your birth certificate it is Andrew, right?” I truly am “just” Andy along with my grandfather and father, making me Andy Johnson III. Somehow when I started this blog the domain names that I needed were still available. This is how the “JustAndy” experiment began.

Causes :: These articles are about people who are changing the world by living for a cause. I write about causes not only to share the amazing stories about the people whose life-saving work I have encountered, but also to get the word out about what they are doing. I want people to read these articles and to be inspired to make a difference either by joining hands with the cause or by doing something else for which they are inspired to take action.

Coffee :: I love coffee so occasionally I write about the best coffee houses and drinks that I encounter. I accomplish most of my writing in coffee houses at this stage in my life so coffee seems integrally tied to my interest in writing.

Culture :: I discovered a love for culture through travel. Breaking out of my own cultural shell to see the world opened my eyes to the cultural beauty outside of my own experience. Music, art and creativity are so inspiring that sometimes you have to stop and write about them to fully share your appreciation of these experiences.

Life :: Writing about life is a way of remembering and sharing significant experiences. This is a miscellaneous subject that does not fall neatly into one of the other categories.

Spirituality :: Writing about spirituality is a way of processing how life’s insights and experiences are shaping my spiritual journey. I am a follower of Jesus Christ and write from this perspective but I hope to engage thinking and seeking readers of all persuasions.

Travel :: Nothing inspires me to write more than travel. Something about living outside the range of normal day-to-day experiences inspires one to capture what is happening with a greater clarity than what is possible at home. I write about trips, people, places, and experiences I encounter through my various travels in my home country, the US, and abroad.

If you have checked my blog recently you have probably noticed that I have not posted anything new for awhile and that the look and feel of the site has changed a number of times. Back in February I moved my web hosting over to Host Gator and the WordPress theme that I was using at the time refused to display properly. I had planned to redesign the blog anyway so I used this as my stimulus to get moving on the project.

My primary goal for the blog was to make it more writing-oriented. It needed to look good with graphics but also to use a format friendly to text-only posts. I also wanted to make it easy to contribute to from a mobile device so that I could update it on the go. Since the blog is integrative and discusses a variety of topics I wanted it to be as customizable as possible so that I could incorporate my own design and content ideas.

The first theme that I chose, after the much deliberation common to WordPress users, used beautiful typography and a format friendly to all screen sizes. I loved the theme but could not make it do what I wanted it to do. After weeks of looking for hacks and workarounds I realized that this was not a sustainable plan for developing a blog so I moved on. My second theme incorporated a retro-newspaper-like look that I really liked. When I started using the theme, however, there were many things that did not work correctly and the customization options were quite limited.

By this time I had dozens of bookmarks and screenshots of various WordPress themes and several months into the process still did not have a design with which to work. Then Woothemes released an update of its flagship theme “Canvas” and promoted the broad range of customization options that it offered. Taking a closer look I realized that Canvas offered everything that I had been looking for across the WordPress universe. When I started to work with Canvas it just worked the way it was supposed to and I became hooked.

Some of the features of my updated blog include:

• A custom header and background design.
• A slider on the home page that displays featured content.
• A second slider-enabled page on which to feature my travel writing.
• Multiple sidebars so that I can feature content in travels posts that is different than what one sees when reading other blog posts.
• A photos page that shows a thumbnail of every photo used in my posts and links each one to the blog post in which it is embedded.
• A customized menu that leads visitors to the right content.
• A sidebar widget for my Instagram photos
• Support for the WordPress post-type feature that enables Tumblr-like “tumblog” posts and can be updated from the Express App on the iPhone. This will be incorporated into a later update of the blog.

I hope that you enjoy the blog. If you are in the process of setting up a blog and have any questions or comments about blogging platforms, themes and options I would love to interact with you through the comments below!

On July 1st I released a new “photo-of-the-day” blog on which I will be posting one picture per day for the upcoming year. Each month will have a different theme. The month of

When I received the news that Jet Blue would not be offering their All You Can Jet Pass this year, I decided to dedicate the month of July to my one month of Jet-Setting around the United States and the Caribbean with this pass. This trip in September-October of 2010 included stops in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Portland, Tampa, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Costa Rica.

JustAndyPhoto.com is a Tumblr blog but you can follow it whether or not you use this blogging platform. If you are on Tumblr let’s be friends!

Check out JustAndyPhoto.com here

As we become “responsible adults” and become more and more busy with our work, we often misplace every other ambition in our lives. Someone asks what we have been up to and we respond “oh, just working I guess.” Yet Gallup’s research shows that only 20% of people can answer a strong yes to the question, “Do you like what you do every day?” What this means is that in general we do not like our jobs and yet we hope to live satisfying lives with our schedules and goals revolving solely around what we do to make a living.

Perhaps part of the reason why do not like what we do for work is that we have not taken the time to plan or prepare for something that we would love to do. We can spend most of our lives making excuses for why we did not end up doing what had once set out to do. We like to say things like “well, we have to be realistic” to make ourselves feel better. This leads to the second observation that our career wellbeing is far more important to our lives than we realize. We cannot afford to keep putting off the kind of effort that it will take to lead us toward engaging our time with that which matters to us.

Wellbeing puts it this way, “But Career Wellbeing is arguable the most esential of the five elements. If you don’t have the opportunity to regularly do something you enjoy – even if it’s more of a passion or interest than something you get paid to do – the odds of your having high wellbeing in other areas diminish rapidly. People with high Career Wellbeing are more than twice as likely to be thriving in their lives overall.”

My third observation is that our goal should be increasing engagement with the things that matter to us rather than retirement. Life is not primarily about how much money we make or how much we are able to own as a result. Real life is about how we engage with that which is most important to us and the rich experiences that result from this engagement.

Gallup’s research shows that people who are engaged with their work have extremely different experiences with it than those who are not. Their stress is lower, their happiness and interest are higher, and they do not have to live for the weekends because they remain engaged both at work and away from it. People who are engaged with their careers are healthier. One study identified that of those who live to age 95 the average retirement age is 80. This is up from the nationwide average of 65 and shows that longevity is linked to engagement.

We are told that a successful life is blazing through our careers, making as much money as possible so that we can retire and finally engage with the things we love as soon as possible. Engagement is what keeps us healthy and interested throughout our lives. We should take small “retirements” along the way to recharge and keep our interest strong so that we can continue to pursue with increasing vigor that which matters to us.

What do we mean by “that which matters?” That’s for each one of us to decide personally. It is shaped by many influences such as our spiritual lives, family situation, and a variety of other interests and concerns. Reading this made me think about my grandmother. She is no longer working for a living but she has not ceased to engage that which matters to her. Grandma Nafziger travels around visiting and caring for her family. If you strike up a conversation with her at any time she will be able to share the latest concerns, developments and celebrations of every member of her family. She is truly engaged with that which matters to her most and I think that this is part of what keeps her so healthy and mentally sharp. I want to live my life well and hope that as I grow older I am marked by an ever increasing engagement with that which is most important in my life.

When we don’t feel well connected to community we begin to beat ourselves up and to think that there must be something wrong with us or we would have more friends. The vicious cycle begins when we so dislike ourselves that we think others don’t care for us either. The more we retreat into isolation the more our insecurities are affirmed until we have walled ourselves into self-made prison cells of isolation.

I think that part of the reason why we struggle to make changes even when we know that we need to is that we allow ourselves to be tied down by the way things have always been. I could connect more at my job or at my church but I have been at both of them for several years without doing so. How am I supposed to all of the sudden engage now? I think this is part of why travel is appealing. There is no history to hold me down. What’s to lose? Engage every person you meet, enjoy every meal and take a picture of every place. What do you have to lose?

Somehow we need to remind ourselves that it is not impossible to create new routines. We have to believe that if life is worth living the way we live it is worth changing. I think that at the heart of believing life can change for the better is the underlying faith that we are beloved children of God and that he wants us to live our lives to the fullest. We may not always know what this means or how this can be true in light of our current realities, yet if we truly believe that God loves us as much as he says does, it will change our outlook.

Henri Nouwen once said that we all hope for a good life and define what this means in various ways. We sometimes base the value of our lives on what people think of us. At times we build our confidence on what we have accomplished. Other times we define ourselves according to how much we possess. Throughout our lives each of these will go up and down. Sometimes we will feel loved and other times criticized or disconnected. At times we will have a lot and sometimes we may lose it all. There are times where we feel like we can accomplish whatever we want and others where we feel hopeless to do almost anything. If we are counting on any of these for stability our lives will always fluctuate above and below the line of wellbeing.

The one thing that holds true through all of these is that we are God’s beloved children. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jeremiah 31:3) This is just as true when we feel worthless and that our lives are over as it is when we feel accomplished and like things are going quite well. If we can begin to believe how much God loves us, we will see our lives and the people in them through new eyes. This will raise our perceived limits on how much others can love us and how good life can be. This is the place to start in the journey back to wellbeing.