Your Life

 

Sinking Your Mind

Above everything, guard your thoughts and your heart to keep your life moving in the right direction.

Talking To Yourself

Replace fear and "I can't" with determination and "I will give it my best and try." 

You will be amazed at what you can accomplish!

Just For Today, Focus On The Blessings

Look around, and live a life of gratitude.

No matter how rough times are, there is something to be thankful for each day.

Battle For The Mind

Most of the battles in life are won or lost in our mind. To overcome those battles, we need to learn to control our anxiety, fear, and negative self talk.







Our beliefs affect how we act. We first need to examine what we believe, and make changes where needed. When we change our thinking, changing our behavior will come much easier.

It's The Thought That Counts

"It's the thought that counts..."  

Your thoughts really do count/matter because what you think is usually what you become, what you achieve.  Toxic thoughts often hold us as prisoners and affect our life and our relationships.  You can overcome those thoughts by replacing them with Truth.  Truth that you matter.  Truth that you were created for a purpose, by a God who does not make mistakes.  

Thought Checklist

Do your thoughts need to be trained? We can overcome thoughts that are harmful to us, but just like anything else worth accomplishing, we have to train ourselves to do it.

New Challenge

After a day without the gift challenge, I think I need to focus on something similar.  How about a word a day challenge. Join me?  

I am going to post a word for each day, and similar to the gift challenge, search it out to see what it really means to you, how it can help you, how it can keep you taking steps forward in life.  

Looking forward to hearing from you!

September Challenge, See the Gifts, Day 12

Today's gift challenge should be a little easier.  Just look around and find your 

3 Gifts of Today

Mine are a harvest of tomatoes early this morning, to put in the freezer for soups and sauces this winter;  spending a couple days off with my husband; and beautiful, warm sunshine. I am enjoying every drop of it we can squeeze out before the cold months creep in.  

Sharing the Gifts

Are you sharing the joy dare, the gifts of each day, with your family, your kids, grandkids?  I write them down in a notebook, as writing helps me to see it in front of me and focus on the gifts more. Others I know have their family talk about them at the dinner table each night. They have a gratitude jar on their table, and everyone writes their gifts of the day on a small piece of paper, talks about them, and then puts them in the jar.  Each month brings a new jar of gratitude.  

Talking about, keeping track of the gifts around us, can change our focus and help us to start to see things differently.  It can also help to release fear because fear and thankfulness have a difficult time coexisting.  

Change Your Thinking

Be The Change You Want To See

Great thing to keep in mind as we start a new week. Are your words helpful or hurtful? Do you just complain, or do you seek out a way to help make things better in the environments you are placed in?  

Complaining and finding fault seem to come very easy for most, but if that same time and energy were spent trying to find a solution, or being thankful, our lives and our culture would look much different.  Making a difference starts with one.  

Are you willing to be a part of the remedy today, and make a positive difference in the lives of your family, friends, co-workers, neighborhood, church, nation?  

Good Character or Outstanding Talent?

Who Are You?

If you had to define who you are in 3 words, what would those words be?  Be honest.

What did those words include, your character traits, your perceived worth or identity?  Where do you find your worth, your identity?  Do you find it in your kids, job, spouse, your friends, your things, your weight, your looks? Maybe you find it in where you live, what brand of clothing you are wearing, or what vehicle you drive. 

Do you find that you compare yourself to others?  Do you strive to be perfect?  Do you think you have to keep up with what others perceive as perfection to have a positive identity in yourself?  Are you always striving for more stuff, for a  thinner, younger you?  What is the message about who you are that you send to yourself?  To others?  

Watch this video and see if you can relate to it in any way.  
     

Do you chase the lie of perfection, the lie that you should always be more?  Doubts and lies the world tells us about who we should be and how we should look, make us chase the wrong things and cause us to never be content with who we are.  It's easy to try to find our identity in things, in others, in our social status, but until we can accept ourselves for who we are, until we can put our full identity in being a child of God, we will never be satisfied and will continue to run a race that cannot be won.  We will always want more, want to look different, never be satisfied, but if we plant our identity in being a child of God, we don't have to keep chasing what will never satisfy. When we know we are His child, that is more than enough.  

What Do You Think?

What occupies your mind?  What has taken up residence in your thoughts?  Is it helpful or hurtful?  Worries, negative thoughts, regrets, and anxieties can infest our minds like a parasite, going through each part of our thoughts making us sick, depressed, and  only seeing the bad in life.  What goes on in our minds can be an invisible invasion to others, but eventually, those diseased and harmful thoughts do spill out of us, in our words, our actions, our lack of caring about life.  

Guarding and protecting our thoughts is very important.  Recognizing when our worries have  parasitically invaded our minds and exterminating those thoughts and worries from our lives is essential to good health, a good attitude, and true joy.  

Everyday take time to examine your thoughts, and gather up those that are wandering away in a harmful direction.  Instead of complaining about something, find something to be grateful for and focus on the positive, not the negative.  If the news is overwhelming your mind, which it can easily do, turn it off, don't read about it, take a media fast for as long as it takes to calm your anxious thoughts.  If you are judging someone, find something good about them and focus on the good, not the bad.  We all make mistakes, we are all human, we all struggle.  Live in the present, not the future or the past, and be present in the day you are given.  Worries about what could happen, or what has happened, easily infest our thoughts and steal the joy of living today.  Today is a gift, don't waste that gift on 'what if's' and 'I should have's.'  

Life happens.  It's our choice how we react.  When we refuse to let worries infest our brain and stop them before they start, we can enjoy life much more, see the beauty around us, be grateful for what we have, and be a blessing to those in our lives.  

Stressed Out Life

Stress affects many people, for many different reasons. 

Too much stress can make you sick.  Have you been there?  I have. We will all face stress, we have to learn how to deal with that stress to keep our bodies healthy, our emotions and choices healthy, our brains healthy, and our spiritual selves healthy.  This diagram is from Men's Health on a few affects of stress on our mind, body, emotions, and behaviors:

There are many ways to manage stress.  One, is separating true reality from fears we blow up in our minds.  Sometimes fears take over and make a false reality in our brains, making things seem much worse than they actually are.  It is essential to get a grasp on what is truth and what is exaggerated fears in our minds. 

One great place to start in managing stress is by eating well. Eat nutritious, balanced foods, and don't skip meals.  Veggies, low sugar to no sugar, and a lot of water helps our bodies to be nutritiously sound.  Regular exercise is also important to help get rid of the stress in life.  

Getting enough sleep is another key. The right amount varies with the individual, but most adults need eight hours for proper restoration of our body and mind.  

Something very important, that many forget about when stressed, is to take time for yourself.  Creative outlets are important, such as reading, drawing, photography, music, artwork or building something, whatever it is that gets your creative mind moving. God gave all of us creative gifts.  I know when I am out with my camera in nature, my stress levels immediately go down.   Also, take time to get a massage, soak in the tub, go for a walk, get away by yourself for a little bit and quiet your mind of your to do list during this time for yourself.

It's important to remember that it is ok to say NO, as you are only one person, who cannot, and should not try, to do everything. It is important to know your limits and stick to them.  

Daily prayer has been shown to reduce stress.  In the book The Faith Factor by Dale Matthews, he says that people who read the Bible and pray every day are 40% less likely to suffer from hypertension than others.  

Learn to laugh. Research shows laughter brings down, and helps controls stress hormones.  "Laughter is the best medicine" is very true when it comes to reducing stress.  

Enjoy your life and let the stress go.  Laugh a lot, love those around you, live every moment of life.  For every moment wasted on worry and stress, we lose that moments potential to have joy and love fill our lives.  It is truly a choice, I know as I have suffered with a lot of stress in the past.  I have learned to take steps to overcome it, and capture and enjoy life.  If you would like to learn how to take steps to a healthier, less stress-filled life, please contact me.  Life keeps going.  Are you truly living it, or is stress and worry robbing you of the gift of each day?  It's your choice, what choice are you making?