What Should I be LifeWalking?

One of the hardest parts of beginning a LifeWalking journey is deciding what your focus should be. For me it is often that I have too many things that I would like to process. I am a work in progress and I know that I always have something that I could be working on. For some of my friends, it is the opposite, they can't think of anything to work on. Very few people initially zero in on exactly what they would like to process during a journey.

The first step for me is always to search out the desires of my heart. I seek out those things that God has laid on my heart recently or long ago that I know I need to process in a deeper way. You will find that LifeWalking is an exceptional way to move forward with those desires.

With LifeWalking, less is more; it is to your advantage to pick two or three desires to LifeWalk in any given journey and save the others for a later time. If you fill your plate with too many things, you will be unable to focus and process those desires that are most important to you with the time and dedication that they deserve. You must prioritize and work on those things that are most important to you now.

I find that it is helpful to process at least one easy desire and one that is more complex and challenging. Easy desires are things that are simply defined and executed. It is easy to start reading for an hour every night before bed. You can measure it and do it. You know when you have succeeded and when you have failed. It might not be easy to convince yourself to do it every night but it doesn't take much processing to figure out how to do it. A more complex desire is something that cannot be defined or measured in simple terms. It can be a vison or passion that you want to pursue or a concept that you want to examine. Complex desires can involve relationships, career moves, spiritual pursuits, and self reflection. These things can take a lot of processing and often take many turns and different forms as you process them through LifeWalking. It is amazing to see what comes out of these desires at the end of the journey, you often find that by processing them with someone else, you have a better grasp of where you needed to go all along and a sense that you never would have gotten there without LifeWalking.

Hopefully this gives you some food for thought. LifeWalking is funny; there are often many directions that you can take. The key is to zero in on the desires that would be best to pursue now not later and those desires that would be processed best with the person that you are partnering with. Know your audience and tailor your goals in that way.

If you are ready to start a journey here are a few simple steps to get you started in selecting your desires:

• Make a list of all the desires that you want to pursue and rank them
• Separate your list into easy and more complex desires
• Ask yourself if there is a particular desire that your current LifeWalking partner has expertise in
• Finalize your list of two to three desire to pursue in a 10 week journey
• START THE JOURNEY!!!

Roadblocks: How to Handle the Inevitable Setbacks

In the course of my life I have attended seminars, sermons, inspirational speeches, read books, and had motivating conversations with friends that have all lead me to undertake some type of positive life change. I have decided to recommit myself to my faith, be a more patient parent, exercise more consistently, or take a more proactive role in my career to name a few. I really want to see these changes take root in my life and I desire to commit myself completely to the change. I get started and for the first day or two, everything is great; my energy is high and I am successful. Then after a couple of days I find the energy beginning to subside but I am still strongly committed to the change. A few more days pass and life inevitably throws me a curve that makes me miss a quiet time or work-out, lose my cool with my kids, or fail to complete my check list for the day but I am undeterred, after all, we all have setbacks and I know I can get right back on the horse tomorrow. After a few more days pass and life keeps throwing those curve balls I find myself missing the mark again and again and my enthusiasm and drive begin to fade. It isn't that I don't still want the change, it's just that change is hard and the status quo is naturally so easy. It is at this point that I usually give up on the big change and allow myself to be satisfied with the small victories that I have achieved.

It is amazing how quickly we will give up the things that we want most in life. There are many good reasons: time, money, energy, etc, but if we continue to allow the excuses to dominate our lives (no matter how valid those excuses might be) we will never be able to achieve the things that we really want in life. The question remains, how can we make this kind of deep meaningful change last when the odds are stacked so high against us? The answer is LifeWalking.
I have found that when I attempt to enact a meaningful change in my life and I process that change with someone who is as committed to helping me achieve that change as I am, the results are phenomenal. LifeWalking allows for accountability, teaching, coaching, and encouragement that can help you to get past the inevitable roadblocks in order to reach the next level and truly grasp the change that you seek.

This is just a brief simple explanation of a very complex topic but I can guarantee you that I have seen it work. This blog wouldn't even be in existence if I hadn't decided to LifeWalk with others who pushed me to keep moving when things were tough, wouldn't allow me to rely on the old (albeit valid) excuses, and were a constant source of strength and encouragement.
If you find yourself fizzling out quickly when it comes to implementing changes in your life I challenge you to find someone to LifeWalk with the next time you are ready to make a big change. In fact, if you really want a challenge, think of some of those past desires to change that didn't quite make it past the roadblocks. I bet that you still have a desire to pursue at least one of them. Find a friend, peer, family member, or colleague who would be willing to support you and help you to process that change now. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Roadblocks are merely challenges, they don't have to signal the end of the road. Believe that real change is always possible.

The Joy of the Lord is my Strength

When you begin to probe your life for areas that need change or improvement, there is one very troubling side effect; it is very easy to get down, depressed, and frustrated with yourself. We are creatures of habit and change is hard. It is hard to realize that we don't have it all figured out. It is discouraging to discover that we have so far to go. It is exhausting to think of the work that lies ahead.

As I have tackled many issues in my life and moved toward a positive life change, I have struggled with these feelings frequently. However, I have discovered that when I allow the joy of the Lord to supersede these feelings and I allow Him to be my strength, it is much easier to get through it. The journey is much easier to tackle with that joy giving me the turbo boost of strength that I need.

An interesting side effect of allowing the joy of the Lord to be your strength, suddenly I find that I deal much less with fear. If the Lord is for me, who can be against me? If my trust is in the Lord, whom shall I fear?

I know that this post is full of many of the cliches that you and I have heard all of our lives and you might be tempted to scoff at them (I would be) but I have found that there is powerful truth in each one of these statements. They come from God and therefore they are true.

Try opening yourself up to joy for a change. When you are struggling, let joy in. When you are doubting or self-critical, let joy in. The power of joy to change your life is astounding. It doesn't matter what you are facing, what challenges you are going through, joy can be the balm to heal those wounds so give it a try. What do you have to lose?

Honesty

It is interesting to me that there often seems to be a pretty big disconnect between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us. We often believe that we look, act, or behave differently that actually comes across to others. For instance, I can have a picture in my mind about the way I looked at a particular event but when I see the pictures, it comes across very different. In the past I believed that I was a pretty upbeat positive person until my husband shared with me that he just couldn't take my negativity each day when he got home from work. Finally, I had a friend share with me that her interpretation of events that occurred between us were very different that my own.

For many different reasons, our perceptions of ourselves don't quite match up with reality. Sometimes it is good to have a different perception in order to protect ourselves; in all honesty, if we constantly focused on the truth of our imperfections and shortcomings we would be continually depressed and unable to function in our daily lives, however, if we want to see real growth and change occur in our lives, we must begin to be honest with ourselves, others, and God about the areas that need change.

It isn't easy to separate the fact from fiction; we have all been living the fiction for so long. First you have to get honest with yourself. The first step to seeing real change in your life is admitting that you have a problem. I have been attending church essentially since birth and as such I have a reputation both privately and publicly. When I recognized that I wanted to grow in my walk with the Lord, the first step was admitting that while I knew a lot about God, I didn't really know God. I had never really had the deep relationship that I craved. While I had always loved God and believed the Bible and allowed biblical teaching to direct my life, I had never really pursued the deep relationship that I so craved.

The next step you can take is to enlist a good friend to help you discern the truth. It is important to let that person know that in this area, you value honesty above all. Share with this person the change that you would like to see (weight loss, better relationships, quality quiet time with God, etc.). Then tell her that for this season, in this area you need her to be completely open and honest with you about what she sees. I had to admit to a good friend that while I presented myself as a strong Christian (which in many ways I was) I had never allowed myself to truly immerse myself in the word and in prayer in a way that would bring me into a deeper relationship with God in which I could truly know him in a much deeper way (it was really scary).

Finally, get honest with God. God is big enough to handle all of your failings and he already knows what they are so go to him in prayer and ask for his strength and guidance. It was life changing to approach God on my knees and admit to him and myself that while I had always tried to be a good Christian, I know that I hadn't always tried to have a deep relationship with him. Wow, that prayer opened up a whole to depth to my relationship with him and allowed me to finally move forward in my Christian walk.

In the end I realized that the thing that held me back more than anything was my inability to be honest with God, myself, and others. When we are fighting to maintain the lie that we have built about our lives, we have no energy left to fight to make it true. Once we admit our weakness and allow others to come in and help us to grow, we can finally move forward.

What lies have you been telling God, yourself, and others? I challenge you to pick just one area, get honest with yourself, ask God and others for help and put in the work that it takes to change that one area of your life. It is amazing the freedom that comes from being honest and the power that it gives you to finally move forward.

Finding Purpose

I was recently speaking with a friend about our struggle to find purpose in our daily lives. I am a stay-at-home mom and I often feel that my life doesn't have a real purpose because I don't have a career; she is a single career woman and she doesn't feel like she has a purpose because she isn't married and doesn't have children. I was waiting for that career believing that once I had it, I would finally be fulfilling my purpose; she was waiting for that husband and those children believing that once she had them she would find her purpose. Funny, we both had what the other wanted but both of us struggled to feel as though our lives were achieving the purpose that God had for us.

I began to process that idea and came to the conclusion that we are often very confused as to what God's purpose for our lives truly is. It is much easier to say that I will be able to operate in my purpose once I have achieved some far off goal rather than to admit that the real problem is that we are not living God's purpose for our lives now and in order to begin living out God's purpose now, we will have to do some work and make some changes.

The first change that needs to be made is a change in our thought process. Instead of asking God to fulfill that far off goal (career, marriage, children) we need to begin asking God what His purpose for our lives is now. I have begun to come to God by saying, "With all things being as they are, no major changes, what do you want me to do with my life now?" I made a paradigm shift from finding purpose in a future goal to fully living my life now in order to fulfill God's purpose. I can't tell you how much of my life I have wasted waiting for the next big thing and then regretting what I didn't do before I had it. I wanted to get married so instead of enjoying single life, I waited and prayed for marriage and missed out on many of the things that God may have had for me in my single life. Now I don't want to miss out on the amazing things that God had for me in this season of life by being too focused on the next one.

God has a purpose for each and every one of our days. There is no day too small or insignificant. It is up to us to use the time that we have purposefully and intentionally and not to waste it on the things that could be.

I encourage you to start asking God what is your purpose now. Don't ask God to change your circumstances, ask him to change your outlook. You will be amazed at the freedom that you can find by starting to live your purpose today rather than waiting for that magical far off moment when it will be achieved. In truth, there will always be another milestone to wait for so you will never arrive at your purpose until you start to live it in the here and now.