What Will Be Your Story?

Tomorrow starts a new 365 day book for your life story. What will your story be? Will you live a joy-filled, worthwhile life, filled with love for those around you, no matter what may be going on in our country, our world, and life in general? We choose the legacy we leave behind each day, choose wisely and be the change you want to see in the world. One person can make a difference.  Will you offer hope, love, joy?  Will you care about those around you and not just focus on self, and the problems that face us each day?  Hope and love can change us.  Choosing joy, deep down inside us joy, can get us through difficult times.  What will you choose for 2013?  What legacy will you leave, not just in 2013, but daily?  Each day matters, each moment matters.  Will you choose to be defeated, or will you set goals and work to achieve them?  Will you offer hope to a hurting world?  Need some help with figuring out how to do this?  Contact me for a complimentary session, and let's get started in making 2013 life story worth sharing! 

Christmas Week

One week until Christmas.  What is your focus right now?  Is it on all the things that have to be done yet?  Are you stressed out, grouchy, overwhelmed?  Do you feel like crying, instead of being filled with joy?  If so, your focus needs to shift.  Christmas is simply about love and hope.  We are the ones who have made it about overdoing on gifts, decorating, overspending, running ourselves ragged until we are ready to explode from stress.  

Have you taken time to stop, enjoy, and breathe?  Have you enjoyed the season by walking in the snow, laughing with children, looking at Christmas lights, listening to uplifting Christmas music, watching your favorite Christmas movie, or reading Luke 2 in the Bible?  It can be difficult to focus on the real reason for this Season...Christ's birth, followed by family, and sharing love with others.  I challenge you in the next week to take time to breathe, to laugh, to stop and be still.  Take time to focus on love with those around you.  Time with loved ones is precious, don't miss the opportunity to make memories together.  

When you think back over Christmas memories, what stands out to you?  Is it the gifts you received or the way you felt because someone took time to love, to give, to invest in you? My best memories are on simple things like decorating the tree as a family while listening to Christmas music, baking cookies and making candy with my mom, sister, and my Gram when she would visit during the holidays.  Also, driving around and looking at Christmas lights on homes, and attending Christmas eve services together as a family and focusing on the real reason for Christmas, Jesus, are times that are precious to me and forever in my memory.  

Where is your focus?  Take some time to be quiet, and enjoy the peace that this season represents.  Make memories with loved ones.  Find your hope in Jesus.  

Merry Christmas!

Gratitude

It's Thanksgiving weekend.  Many people forget to take time to stop and be thankful.  No matter what, there is something to be grateful for in your life.  I challenge you to take time to look around and write down the blessings in your life.  A daily gratitude journal filled with words, pictures, drawings, and objects helps to bring the focus on the things you are grateful for in your day. Gratitude journals are also great to look back on and spark memories of what you were grateful for, especially when it may be a tough day or week, and you need to be reminded.  Look at the small things, as well as the large things that surround you.  There are many wonderful things to find to be thankful for in the ordinary things of life, take the time to see them.  

“Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.”  ~Jorhn Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box 

Perseverance

Perseverance is to persist in anything you undertake; maintain a purpose despite difficulties, troubles, obstacles, or feeling discouraged.

Is perseverance something that is easy for you during difficult times and disappointments, or is it something you struggle to overcome, wanting to give up?  Do you get weighed down by fears?  What holds you back from pressing on to pursue your purpose in life?  

When you do push through difficulties or obstacles, what helps you to move on, and persevere? 

We live in a society that wants everything instantly, so persevering to achieve goals, move to the next level, or overcome setbacks or problems is something many give up on because they want immediate results.  Anything worth achieving, pursuing, and improving takes time and persistence.  It takes the will and the drive to not give up.  

We all will face setbacks, troubles, and difficulties.   The way we handle those things is the difference between success and failure, whether in a career, personal life, marriage, relationships, schooling.  The choice is yours on how you react, and what you do, or don't do, to make life better.  

Persevering is not easy.  It takes determination to continue on to achieve goals and dreams in life.  It takes the will to get back up and dust yourself off if you get knocked down, to keep taking steps forward, even if those steps are difficult ones.  Many times, you will feel like quitting or giving up right before a breakthrough.  Don't quit.  Don't give up.  Keep pursuing your goals, keep working to overcome your obstacles.  It will be worth the effort.