Choose Your Friends Wisely: Wrong Associations Interrupt Your Life & Destiny

There’s an old adage which says, “Show me the company you keep and I will show you the direction of your life.”  Yesterday while listening as a client proudly cited her laundry list of reasons why she is stuck and can’t move forward, I cued in on one of the top quoted sources of a non-productive life.  I know you’ve heard of time-management, right?  Well, I’m here to tell you there’s more to it than just managing your time. It’s more important that you keep others from interrupting your life. More like people-management. This is the issue that unfortunately has my client mired.

The right friends are essential to our spiritual, physical, emotional and financial well-being. I’ve learned the people we associate with not only affect our attitude, but our views and beliefs too.  On the surface they may not appear to be a “thorn” in the side, however, if you intentionally pay close attention to their personality traits, you may discover their toxic behaviors.  For several years I thought my relationship with someone I’ll call “Narcissistic Nellie” was comparable with my life goals and dreams.  She is a good person. However, later on I recognized the one-sided conversations, the extreme sense of self-importance and belief that the world revolved around her.  She was overt about getting her needs met on many occasions even with my skills and on my time.  Oh how I often wanted to tell her, “It isn’t about you.” And that’s putting it gently.

When you genuinely love people and want to help them, you may not realize the types of personalities that the enemy sends to interrupt your life, zap your energy leaving nothing left for yourself.

Read More...

You Can Trade Your Frustrations; Reflections on Lessons from a Squirrel

From my deck I enjoy watching the squirrels joyfully at play in the back yard.  I think they are so cute. Taking a break while watching them helps me unwind. There are many fun observations one can make about squirrels. Gracefully scampering and leaping from branch to branch, they make me think of the grace and poise of the ballerina. Obviously from an innate understanding, and without any cues, squirrels just have an accurate estimation of measuring distance and awareness of perception.  And they know how, when and where to hide from predators.  God created them that way.

What more are we to him? Squirrels cannot praise him. Squirrels cannot worship him. Yet, God designed them to survive. He provides for them day by day. He put joy and play inside of them. What more has he placed inside of us, the ones who are made in the image of him?

I believe we sometimes short-change ourselves. We go through life’s perplexities with the mindset that we are carrying this big brown bag of burdens on our backs.  I’ve never seen a squirrel sitting under a tree sulking about not finding an acorn. Nor have I’ve ever observed one sinking in despair.  No, they make the decision to hunt for their provision and protection.

Read More...

Remember Who & Whose You Are: How to Keep Things in Perspective

I was sitting here thinking that God has a sense of humor.

There’s no other explanation I could come up with for what was going through my mind. A couple of years ago he spoke to me to elevate, educate and motivate his people.  Initially I had no idea what he meant or how to do that. Later it occurred to me that I had been sort of doing this all along, in my small way. I knew that it was important to me to let people know there’s always a way out of situations and circumstances.  I truly believe that. Therefore, I began sharing my heart about this subject matter during my 360 Mountain Moving Motivation calls.

And then the enemy strikes back.

Within the last couple of weeks, my husband and I have been under so much pressure.  We were threatened with a civil suit and to add insult to injury, I later received an unpleasant report from my doctor. How does God expect me to elevate, educate and motivate others when I need someone to encourage me?

Read More...