July 2024

Worried & Stressed?

Growing in Faith / By

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

You probably read the title and thought YES give me something I can use. Then you read the Bible verse and you were like REALLY…..

Going through the hard is well, hard. It’s so “easy” to keep trying it your way to get out it. It’s handing over that reign of control over to God that is probably about the same hard as what you are going through. Especially if you are type A personality like me.

Don’t underestimate the power of prayer. When you choose to give it ALL (and I mean all) to God you do get this sort of peace in your heart. It’s taking the burden of all you are going through and asking for help. God works in all kinds of ways. Help may come from a friend calling or texting, a random act of kindness, softened heart with the one you are praying for. The list goes on. His works are mysterious and wonderful.

With that mysterious and wonderful comes timing. We want it to be over NOW. Lord, get me out of this situation so life can be good again. Here’s the thing….He works in HIS timing and not OUR timing.

It sucks…it’s okay…you can think that too. But you can also think of how he is trying to use you in His big plan. He uses our struggles to further His kingdom.

What story can you tell from your situation that will help someone else? What have you learned about yourself and others?

Move from Overwhelmed to Confident

Changing Your Life / By

Most of us have a thousand things running through our head of things we need to do and places we need to go. You may feel like you are living in chaos with no light at the end. You don’t feel confident you have it together, you feel like you are taking it hour by hour or even minute by minute. You feel stressed out. You have big goals you want to achieve, but the thought of it just makes you want to crawl back into bed.

Does this sound like you?

This is where a Sunday planning technique comes in. It sets you up for success and makes you feel less overwhelmed. It takes 30-60 minutes of your day that you won’t believe how much better you feel.

Here’s what you do:

  • Review your calendar of what meetings, appointments, events that are going on this week. Do you need to prep for meetings and who’s taking the kids/when?
  • Meal plan – based on what’s going on each night & even the weather. If it’s nice, you might want to grill out. If it’s going to be rainy, maybe plan a casserole. If you have a busy night maybe plan a crockpot meal that you can start before work or make it a leftover night. Maybe you plan a night of getting take out. This planning helps so when you get home, it’s not another decision of what are we having for dinner or do we have the ingredients. Bonus to plan/meal prep your breakfast & lunches.
  • Write down all the things that you want to accomplish this week. You can make 2 lists – 1 for work and 1 for home. Think about how much time each item will take. Breakdown the tasks to 1 hour or less increments. I call this my brain dump. Notice I said “want” and not “must” so don’t get overwhelmed. The whole point is to just get it out of your head.
  • Prioritize the list you just wrote. Either do a A, B, C or even you can number them. It’s however your mind works bests to prioritize. Not everything can be an A or B. If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.
  • Review each day to determine how many hours are “open” to get the stuff done off the list. Again, you can separate work and home.
  • Then it’s just a plug and chug. Start with your highest priority items and plug them into your calendar starting with Monday. Make sure to give yourself some time for flexibility as life will happen so don’t plan every minute of everyday. Don’t forget to put some “me time” in there to enjoy life. Note: you will more than likely not fit everything on your list in the calendar. THAT IS THE POINT! You want to work on the most important things first. Stop working on those low priority items..they can wait.

At the end of the week, you will feel accomplished and be amazed at how much you got done. Each day you will have the plan so you aren’t scrambling each day to figure it out.

Taking that 60 minutes each Sunday will make the difference between living a life of chaos/overwhelmed to confident and relaxed.

But I still have a long way to go…..

Weekly Challenge / By

If you are a goal getter, you probably have some lofty goals that take time to achieve. The problem that we sometimes run into is that we start out full steam ahead, but over time our motivation starts to dwindle a little bit. That’s where this week’s challenge comes in!

The challenge is to reflect upon the progress you have made so far and acknowledge what you have done so far each week. Yes…you read that right. EACH WEEK!! If a goal is important to you, you should be making it a priority in your life. That’s where setting too many goals becomes an issue. You lose focus and get overwhelmed. Narrowing your focus keeps you moving forward and making progress.

At the beginning of the week, plan out what you are going to do this week to progress your goal. What will you do? What day / time will you do it? The more specific in your planning the better. Make it like an appointment you have to keep. Yes, life will get in the way some weeks so adjust and still do it. At the end of the week, celebrate your success that you did what you said you would do.

Good intentions are just that….intentions. You must act on those intentions to move that goal forward.

Now to be a little vulnerable here…. At the beginning of the year I set some pretty lofty work goals and personal goals. The problem is that I focused mostly on my work goals and let my personal goals become “good intentions.” Yes I made small progress with them, but not enough to be on track.

Now I could have just reduce down the goal or even quit, but that’s not me. What I did was reflect on why? What do I need to do to meet the goal now within the next 6 months? If you know me, I am a tracking fiend! Reflecting back, I didn’t have a tracker or really a written down plan. That’s where I failed. What do you do when you fail… YOU FAIL FORWARD!! I spent the time to make trackers to make sure I stayed on track. I committed to expedited timeline to still meet my goals and what is needed to do that.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

What do you want to achieve by the end of the year?

Why does it need to be by the end of the year?

What do you need to commit to doing to make it happen? Weekly / Monthly

Now make your specific plan for this week and this month.

YOU GOT THIS GOAL GETTER!!!