Focus

We are inspired, changed, shifted when we watch our Olympic athletes with courage and commitment go after what their preparation has led them to – this moment for the medal. Intellectually we know that if they win today, they already won 1,460 PRIVATE days leading up to this one.

Why is it that we recognize our attraction to their stories of hardship, maturity, overcoming? Why is it that we’re drawn to how they cheer and encourage each other on? How is it that we respect the difficulty of the skill that they have mastered? But take it to our private world and we don’t feel like doing our next best choice – challenge–whether that is a workout to accomplish a level of fitness, or grabbing that “A” in your college course, overcoming an attitude or a task at work, healing from an addiction, earning the use of your first pink Cadillac, or just getting out of your comfort zone in any area of life – you get the drift! Inside each of us is a built in knowing that our opportunity to live this life and to be our best has a timeframe and a clock. The greatest depression and anxiety in life is to know that we are in someway under performing to our ability or calling.

Regret is the result of fear and procrastination over time. When celebration and victory is an option, why settle? Seize the value of today, and give your next hour of life the best, prioritized, most disciplined version of yourself to accomplishing your next victory! When we think about serving the world, our playing small or invisible serves no one.

I can only wonder how many people these athletes have inspired by the way they have shared themselves, their work, their skill, and their success with us from the Olympic stage? Before you cop out and say “yeah but my life will never be lived out on the Olympic stage”, you’re already operating under an excuse that keeps you from being your best! Your best will serve others and it will make a difference!

What is your best today? ‪#‎designYOURlife‬‪#‎BeyondDreamBig‬ ‪#‎myMKlife‬ ‪#‎usa‬ ‪#‎thePRIVATEmoment‬

FREEDOM is in doing the right thing. Freedom is in choosing discipline. The results I want in my life come from discipline and making ‘best’ over good (and certainly over bad) choices every single time. Momentary pleasure and ‘cheating’ only cheats me, and the pleasure QUICKLY turns into longer pain and guilt. The cycle is over, and by the GRACE of God I choose freedom each and every time.

Whether it is a food, the investment of an hour, substance, gossip, financial, work task, physical exercise or different– FREEDOM is in doing the right thing. In CHRIST, we are equipped to know right over wrong, best over good. Col 3:17

So keepin it real – what lesson have you recently gotten? And how many setbacks did it take you before you got it? Or perhaps more real – what lesson have you repeatedly had to wrestle with and failed? And are you ready to get the lesson? You will know by how you treat your every day. Today for example – you either lived in a way that reflects you got the lesson, or you didn’t. But there’s always tonight and tomorrow! Things can change in an instant! Almost every success story includes “… and then I decided…”.

1. What is the lesson that I am in the process of learning?
2. What is the pain, the failure, disappointment, the emotion, the outcome that the process of this lesson continues to give me in a way that I don’t like it?

3. What do I really want right now? Define the way you would like someone you respect to describe you. Define an outcome that would make you feel successful, with integrity, accomplished, growing in character and wisdom.

4. What habit or habits need to go and what habit or have it do you want to develop?

5. What is the one thing that if you would just do it would be the best starting point and make all the difference right now?

6. How would you be accountable?

7. When you don’t feel like it, when the emotion and inspiration you have right now to make this change fades (and IT WILL), what will be your game plan to press through anyway?

Take the time to answer and process. Connect with a friend, mentor, or coach who loves you and is willing to walk alongside your increase, your growth, your success!

Life is about growing. We are all working on something. Then have it, some task, some skill, some self-control or self-discipline, communication, a schedule, learning, saving, the list is long. You are not alone!

#DREAMBIG #epicfamily61 #mymklife #designyourlife

There’s no denying or debating this truth. Life can and will come at you in many directions – and the blend of joy, sorrow, mundane, encouragement, criticism, exhilaration, boring, required, expected, pleasure, discipline, connection, loneliness, celebration, loss, happiness, sadness, confidence, lost confidence – I could go on and on. As human beings we get the privilege of experiencing emotions, having relationships, getting to work and learn and grow and increase and change! It’s important to learn how to talk to yourself so that you know who you are, where you stand, and whose got your back! Countless Scriptures confirm that God will direct our pads as we seek him. Our willingness to obey that direction is a factor that will determine our outcome. Beyond that, there are friends that “stick closer than a brother.” Usually, that’s your shortlist, but your good friends will tell you the truth even if it’s not what you want to hear.

What words are you telling yourself today?

Who’s wisdom will you accept and consider today?

What are you pretending not to know or trying to ignore?

What are the possibilities if you take action on what you know to do and what those around you with wisdom concur?

How long will you delay?

Delayed obedience is disobedience, and it’s just so much more simple to do the hard thing, to realign your thoughts, and to move forward in progress! Progress not perfection. One day at a time! One choice at a time! One thought at a time – captured, reconfigured, and acted on.

#designyourlife #mymklife #epicfamily61 (at Bowling Green, Kentucky)