The highest and most noble part of you knows it.
When somebody mentions it, you FEEL it—the gnawing, the conviction, the aspiration, the belief that you can change it.
But then, the survival part of you brain says, “You’ve always been this way, you’ll never change, you can’t do it.“
And then you give up before you ever start. Or maybe it’s just me.
WHY are our brains SO resistant to change?!?! UGH!
But I know change is possible. I’ve done it in many areas of my life. And so have you!!!
Here’s why I think it’s worth it to keep asking more of ourselves.
It’s not so we can finally weigh 140 pounds or make 100K or write that book–it’s not the destination…
Because THERE is never better than here if we don’t continue to change and grow and challenge ourselves.
The point is the person we become along the way.
The person who’s had enough challenge and adversity to be strong and humble. The person who has put herself out there enough to work through her people pleasing and fear of rejection. The person who has denied her flesh enough to know how strong appetites can be. The person who faces her resentments and finally trains her heart to forgive.
Diamonds are made under pressure.
We live in a world where we its easy to skirt around most of that pressure, staying stagnant or apathetic or hidden. But at what cost to ourselves and to the people who need us?
I LOVE October and fall and the 4th quarter of the year. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I REALLY LOVE using this time of year as a way to jump start a new year.
So if you had to pick one thing that you could change about yourself, about your life–what would it be and why?
The why is just as important as the what so don’t forget that part when you are trying to pick the one thing you want to change! I took an inventory of my life and while in so many ways its incredible and amazing, it is also HARD.
As many of you know, we have been in an intense stress cycle since January–Tom Tom’s mom passed away and he came to live with us full-time and on and on. In fact, it has felt like one thing right after the other.
And, when I get stressed I feel it in my health! So I know that for me, I am in a season where that is exactly what I need to work on.
That means paying attention to my nutrition. It means recommitting myself to what I want MOST versus what I want NOW. I’m sure most of you know exactly what I mean! What I want NOW are some Krispy Kreme donuts. But, what I want MOST is to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.
Did you catch that?
I want to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.
There it is…my why.
Your One Thing may be different. It might be finances or marriage or your parenting or something job/vocation-related.
Remember how I said your why is just as important as your what? It is because all roads lead right back to that WHY. It helps us to train ourselves into the habit of choosing what we want most in our lives instead of choosing what we want now.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard me talk about the fact that when you make a change in one area of your life, it often causes a domino effect and you continue to want to change and grow. You just see areas where you know that you’re not living to your highest self, you know that you’re choosing what you want now rather than what you want most.
But let me say it again.
It’s not about your destination or goal.
We think, oh, if I just lost a hundred pounds, if I just got down to 140, if I just built my business to $100K, if I just got to this rank.
If I just.
We have this idea that if we achieve our goal that, “Everything’s going to be amazing and it’s going to be unicorns and butterflies.”
But let me tell ya, it’s not any better there than here unless you do the hard work–the mind work–changing your thoughts and following through in order to be the person you are called to be. If you don’t, you’re just going to be the same person there.
Becoming the person that you were meant to be is almost always through hardship, sacrifice, suffering–just being willing to expose yourself to ALL THE HARD THINGS so that you can learn more about yourself. Diving deeper.
We really have no idea how strong the appetites of our flesh are until we try, say, not to eat sugar for a month. Then we are saying, “Oh my gosh, that has such a hold on me. Food has such a hold on me. Drink has such a hold on me. Approval of other people has such a hold on me.” It”s only when we try to make a change that we realize,“Oh my word, that is a hard thing for me.”
This is why I love challenging myself and trying new things. This is why I love fasting, intermittent fasting, or cutting out sugar. This is why I love challenging myself about getting my work done in a certain period of time.
It brings up all of my drama.
It brings up all of my issues. It brings up all of my appetites. It brings up all of the areas of my life that really need work and change. And, if we don’t challenge ourselves, then we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know how strong our appetites are because we’ve never challenged ourselves to change them. We don’t know how negative our mindset is because we’ve never made ourselves aware enough to go, “Oh my gosh, I’m just doing that to myself.”
That pesky brain, tho…
The other thing that happens is the battle between the higher part of our brain that sets goals, that knows something needs to change, that makes us feel so inspired and the lower part of our brain that just likes to keep us safe. He says, “You’re never going to do that. You know you’ve always struggled with your weight. You know, you just are the way you are. You’re just negative, gossipy, and that’s not going to change. You just don’t like exercise.” Well that is exactly the point! Let all of that bizness come to the surface because that will teach you who you are.
Why is this such a big deal? We don’t realize how we have made basically everything into an idol. We’ve made wealth into an idol, we’ve made frugality into an idol, we’ve made the way people look at us into an idol, we’ve made our children into an idol, we’ve made our marriage into an idol. It is this kind of journey that will make these things apparent. The only way that I know how addicted I am to sugar is to not eat sugar. And let me tell you, as soon as I tell myself I’m going to go a month without sugar, do you know all the drama that comes up? A lot of drama. It’s so worth it. It’s so worth it for the journey.
Let’s Get To Work!
Remember, once you pick your One Thing, you’re going to be super motivated about it initially. “I’m going to work on my marriage. I’m going to work on my finances. I’m going to work on my weight. I’m going to work on whatever.” Then, all the negativity is going to rush in about why you can’t do that and why it’s so hard and why don’t you just go watch Netflix and eat donuts.
Remember that this is the point. Let it all come up and over the next few months we’re going to work on how to manage that, how to be willing to walk into hardship and sacrifice. We are going to learn how to train ourselves so that the pain becomes more than tolerable–so much so that you almost like it. It’s kind of like how I felt when I had been in CrossFit for a while. It’s really hard and you’re sore, but you get to the point where you crave that because you know what that means, it means I’m getting stronger.
The hard part where champions are made. Now, when I get to the hard part, I think to myself, “This is the hard part. Good.” We are retraining our minds that the hard part is not even the hard part. The hard part is the good part.
The hard part is where the magic happens.
The hard part is the part where everything finally changes and you’ve learned to embrace it.
I want you to go into the next several months with the eye of the tiger! I have the eye of the tiger in a lot of different areas of my life because–domino effect! But I am committed to really zeroing in on my health in the coming months. Continuing intermittent fasting, continuing to challenge myself to figure my hormones out, to learn how to listen to my body, to prioritize rest. Part of that has been focusing on working three days a week instead of five. Constraining my focus and challenging myself in an area I know I need to work on and being willing to endure the misery that comes with that for a while. Knowing that six months from now or three months from now, that misery is not even going to feel like misery! It’s just going to feel like, this is the part that I’ve been waiting for. This is the part where champions are made. Get the eye of the tiger. Y’all.
What can I do NOW or change NOW that will set me up for the best 2020 ever?
None of the habits I want to train into myself are glamorous or easy or even praise worth in and of themselves.
But the accumulations of good disciplines makes for a life that has depth and meaning and purpose.
We are inclined to what is easy and what is normal, but what if the BEST God has for us isn’t easy or normal?
What if it’s counter cultural and hard and totally worth it?
What ONE thing needs to change for you?
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