Life is imperfect. As hard as we work to make things perfect, they never will be. Why? Earth is not a perfect place. As Christians, awaiting for Christ’s return, we must adjust our mindset and how we view life. Life is imperfect. We are imperfect. We must learn to find contentment in imperfections. If we don’t, we will never be happy. Lately, the Lord has been highlighting my controlling, demanding, anxious ways. These ways are after perfection. We control, demand, and are anxious, because we’re desiring perfection- or what we picture as perfection. Without even realizing it, we don’t see that our ways are causing us stress. The issue is…
-
-
Effective Conflict Resolution: 5 Tips
Conflict is a part of life. Though many people run from it, there’s no way to avoid it. Instead of dreading it and avoiding it, we must learn healthy ways to deal with it. Effective conflict resolution is key. How do you typically respond to conflict? Consider these 5 tips. 1. Take a moment. One behavior that contributes to the strife is immediate reaction. When in conflict, it is sometimes best to take a moment. Take a moment to gather yourself, calm down, and process the entire situation- not just your perspective. The common suggestion, count to ten, can be vey helpful. It allows you the time to get yourself…
-
Focus on Purpose
As you go about your day-to-day activities, what are you focused on? Do you live from an overwhelmed, make-it-by attitude; or do you live fulfilled, productive, and purpose driven? Though we all have routine obligations and responsibilities, I encourage you to focus on purpose. What do I mean by focus on purpose? Focus on your purpose for doing your particular things. This requires a mental shift from the what to the why. Ask yourself: “Why am I doing this?” This will enable you to function from a place of purpose, not a place of stress. This can be helpful when applied at home with family, or even at work on…
-
Confession is Key
You know something that can really get me down? Falling short. There is a desire for perfection within me. I can see this from a fleshly side: pride, self-esteem, etc. I can also see this from a spiritual side, stemming from the desire to be like Christ. From a spiritual perspective, we may get down when we know we haven’t done right in God’s eyes. It can also hurt when we know we have hurt others. How do we move forward from these moments? Confession is key. Though we all have a level of pride in wanting to do right, we must remember that only One is perfect. Jesus Christ.…
-
Guard Your Mind: 3 Tips
We live in a noisy, distracting world. If you are going to be all and do all that God has created you to do, you must learn how to guard your mind. As long as we are living, we must know that attacks are inevitable. Enemies, distractions, negativity will all be present. We won’t be able to completely cut out all distractions, but we must learn how to guard our mind, while living in the midst of distractions. Guard Your Mind: 3 Tips 1. Honesty In order to guard your mind, you must be honest. You must be honest about how you feel, why you feel that way, and what…
-
Pace Yourself
The world we live in often pushes us around. Most people feel stressed, over worked, under rested, and pushed around. We accept this way of life as though it’s the only way. There is, however, a better way. I encourage you to pace yourself and not push yourself. Pacing yourself provides many benefits. It allows you to be present, mindful, and engaged. Think of how often we may be somewhere, but we’re really not ‘there.’ Instead, we’re thinking of what else needs to be done, what others are doing, or what we’re doing next. That’s no way to live. Living this way prevents us from living anchored, fulfilled lives of…
-
Seek Balance
Coming off the Thanksgiving holiday, I can truly say that I was blessed with balance. The normal pace of life tends to be rushed. I constantly feel like I’m on the clock, working to stay on top of things. This break allowed me to not be so tied to the clock, providing me the space to do what mattered to me. We tend to burn out and push ourselves to exhaustion, which is not healthy. I encourage you to begin to seek balance in your day-to-day life. Though our days seem to be maxed out, there are countless ways to change it up. For me, I’m becoming very aware that…
-
Take Action Now
One of the biggest reasons we aren’t progressing in life is because we’re not taking action. We read, we consume, and even plan to do things; yet we never do them. We scroll, save, pin, and even commit; yet we don’t implement. If we are going to see our lives truly change, we must start taking action. Even more specific, we must start living with a take action now mindset. This attitude will change our days, our decisions, our lives. It will help you to use your time more wisely and it will keep you moving forward. So often what gets us is a lack of action. We lose our…
-
Control Your Emotions
How well do you control your emotions? This is an area that the Lord is actively growing me in. Not just controlling them, but growing in understanding them in myself as well as in others. If we are going to follow Christ and be all that He has created us to be, we must grow in being able to control our emotions. What disturbs your peace? Steals your joy? Throws you off? These are the things that we must begin paying attention to. We must pay closely to the emotion that is aroused within us, as well as the ‘why‘ that triggered the emotion. The worse thing we can do…
-
Growth Is Not Pretty
We have the wrong idea about change. We look at our lives and think that something is wrong with us. We look at the lives and others and again, think something is wrong with us. Many of the circumstances in our lives are there to help us grow. Once we accept that, a growth mindset, some call it; we must then realize that growth is not pretty. Growth is a messy process. It’s messy because it reveals the worse in us. Challenges pull out what’s deep within and even then growth isn’t automatic. This is why people can experience the same tough situations, yet be affected very differently. Growth requires…
