Your journey to success will take many twists and turns.  There isn’t only one path and you may find yourself thrown onto a path you never expected to be on …. Trust the journey is going to take you to a greater place of accomplishment than you ever imaged.

Live with Zeal!

This is your passion, your fire, your love, devotion, enthusiasm, eagerness, and intensity in your pursuit of your dream.  Some may call it fanaticism and may call you crazy … let them!!!!  You stay focused with your eyes on your prize.

So many people have dreams that never see the light of day … but that isn’t you.  It never will be. You have things you want in life that are so much bigger than yourself or the stuff you can surround yourself with. You choose each and every day to live your life with great enthusiasm, energy and purpose.

You know that you are on this planet to love, to serve and to connect – you are a part of a bigger plan and your role was created for you alone. You live with gusto and face the challenges, roadblocks, and detours  of your life as an adventure.  You allow your experiences to add meaning to your life.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. ~Ephesians 2:10

There are things in this life that we will work for … things we want to accomplish … things we want to do!  My prayer for you on your journey to success is that you always remember that your destination isn’t about the destination itself.  It is the way you are grown, molded and shaped along the journey.  It is about the people’s lives that will change because they know your journey – whether they are a part of it directly or hear about it after the fact.  There is something deep inside you, an emotional experience you will have when you arrive.  Find that and then go walk through walls to get it …. Know that you created it … You will love it … and I can not wait to hear all about it.

What makes you different? unique? special? capable? gifted? talented? It all adds up to one simple truth –

You’ve got this!

You see you were created as YOU specifically.  You have your story.  You were set apart. You have your own wants, needs, likes, dislikes … You are the only you!

You have everything you need to be, do or accomplish anything.  It may be fun to partner with people with different strengths and gifts BUT GOD gave you your dreams and your vision for your future with all the provision you need to birth them, follow them, explore them, expand them, chase them, accommplish them, live them, share them …. your dreams are yours for the making!

Trust God! Love yourself! Live full out! Dream big! Pray bigger! Take action! Work hard! Do you! Be you!

Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Don’t be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. He will see to it that all the work related to the Temple of the Lord is finished correctly. ~1 Chronicles 28:20

There are going to be things you encounter on your success journey that you have absolutely no control over.  Your response and reactions can propel you forward or bring you to a grinding halt!

 YOU are your own x-factor!

Your mindset – your thoughts and beliefs will make or break you.  It doesn’t matter if what happens is really really good or really really bad.  Either direction – when there is a bump in the road, any bit of wonkiness, the wheels fall completely off, or if your DeLorean takes flight and you no longer need roads – it is you that will determine your success in these moments.

I believe that we take 100% ownership of everything in our lives, things can change for the better.  I also believe that we are exactly where we are meant to be.  I had a lot of wrestling to get to this place.  It would be easy to blame my business delays, the necessary shift in our financial goals, and even the changes in our social circles on Thad’s accident and on the other driver.  I didn’t want this change in my life and I thought my life was pretty good.  BUT GOD wanted me to grow … to rely on Him more … to get uncomfortable … because He wants me in a different place!

If I stay externally focused, I can very easily work my way to an analysis paralysis starting with blaming and complaining moving right on through to anger and if left unchecked, their is a rage filled hellion that can make her presence known.  And none of that has anything to do with the TRUTH of who I am!

Things won’t always go your way.  They will quite possibly be some really bad things that happen to you or around you in your life. Train yourself now for how you will respond – Create your x-factor! Know who you are.  Choose today to move your life forward.  Take those thoughts captive – wrestle with them and make them obedient to Christ.  If my life doesn’t look like I want it to – I am the only person that can change it!  God gave me big girl panties for a reason – Action over fear y’all!  Choose you.  Be you.  Do you!

The absolute hardest part of any success journey is the waiting … and there are 2 universal truths with waiting.  Number one – no matter what, there is always waiting! and number two:

It is worth the wait!

Wait for it – You are on a quest to fulfill a God given dream and He wants it more for you than you want it for yourself. Remember – it is God’s mighty power at work within you to accomplish infinitely more than we would ask or imagine.  He know what details need to be in place for it to be the fulfillment of all He wants for you.

You will be grown in the waiting.  We have traits that we need to grow as well as traits that need to be removed … This transformation is the something incredible that happens deep inside as we persevere through the waiting.  We are grown into who we need to become to live abundantly in the fulfillment of our success.

A third universal truth about waiting His timing is always perfect!!!!  We might have everything planned out and we know what we need to do to make it happen so we take off running.  When it doesn’t happen on our timeline – so often we quit or decide that it wasn’t for us in the first place … change your deadline not the goal and keep running!  Winners never quit.  Work for it!  Wait for it!  Bask in the blessing and celebrate when the time is right!

The achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties.  It’s the fancy and formal way to say YOU can do it!

Victory is YOURS!

Sitting here today … right now …. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have everything you need to accomplish!  You don’t need anything else – it really is all you and the magic that is you!  Go for it!

As you work towards your goals and dreams, there will be different times when you have to consider others.  Step into their shoes and see things from their perspective.

Understand someone else’s point of view.  

The more you understand them, their needs and their motivation the more quickly you can help them get their dreams too.

Success very seldom happens in a vacuum and most likely your road to success will require the involvement of other people.  Partnering with people requires that you understand what makes them tick, what they are working towards and how they define success.

To understand others – start with curiosity.  Explore the wonder of who they are and how God wired them.  Each and every person is different and will have different though processes, behaviors and fears.  Be curious about all of their quirkiness.  Their hobbies, their down time, their love language, their wants, their needs, their desires, their goals, their vision for their life and their dreams.  The more you know about them, the more your can support them in their accomplishment and their success.

To discover these things about others grow your skills of asking deep probing questions with no preconceived notions.  So often we assume and fill in the blanks in areas that we don’t really know.  Tear down the walls that are built on your assumptions that may be completely off or feel very close to the truth.  And because we are all so different, we are often wrong and our past and our thoughts are influencing our perception of what is real.  Allow conversation to take place in judgment free zones!  When we are curious, we ask different questions because we really want to know about them. If you want blanks filled in – ask the questions.

Asking questions also provides an opportunity for growth, insight and change.  Questions can be used to gather data, gain clarity, make statements, communicate passion, seek feedback or create an opportunity for soul searching.  Be willing to sit in the silence and let them find their truth.

And finally listen to learn instead of listening to respond. Your ability to ask questions and listen gets better and more natural the more you are invested in the other person than you are in the outcome. Understanding is all about loving others and seeking genuine relationships with them.  Your will not be besties with everyone you are on the journey with, but I promise you – your ability to love all of them no matter what will directly impact your success.

To move forward, we have to have the mental and moral strength to resist opposition and keep gong when it gets hard.  This is tenacity.

The determination to get where you want to go!

Ponder your resolve to complete what you set out to do in the face of extreme difficulty.  Some might say it is the baby born from the love between passion and perseverance and is closely linked with grit. Grit is a trait that gives us the guts to overcome obstacles or challenges that we encounter on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in realizing our dreams …. Grit is what keeps us going no matter what and our tenacity is where we get our how!

Tenacity has a built in flexibility and adaptability that combines things like perseverance, resilience, longing, grace, self control with a desire to accomplish. The flexibility and adaptability is our willingness to change when new information is received.  Its not head down and keep moving as your force your way to your goal; it is the willingness to get back up, dust ourselves off, consider what happened, then tweak your approach as you start again.  Tenacity requires a willingness to grow and personally develop.

Perseverance is the continuous “moving towards” something in spite of every obstacle, discouragement, disappointment or distraction. It is an internal strength to keep focused on where we are going regardless of what things look like right now!

Resilience is the strength we develop, born in adversity.  It is a muscle that is grown when we overcome major trauma or significant changes in life.  In a simple form, it is our ability to bounce back and eventually recover quicker.

Longing is the desire and determination to achieve whatever goals we have before us … It is yearning for something God has stirred in your heart.  What dreams and desires does He have you working on?

Grace is the ability to work towards that God given desire knowing that we will stumble, falter and fail.  It is acting on our faith, over fear, trusting that God will be with us and will help us back up.  Grace is accepting the forgiveness God offers and having a clear understanding of our own limitations as we grow, learn and become who He calls us to be.  Grace is the power He gives us to live in the Spirit.

Self-control is a fruit of the spirit that gives us the ability to be more than who we are!  It is self control that lets us do what is right instead of what we want in the moment.  It is how we pause and temper impulsive behavior.  It is our ability to cherish and move forward when facing delayed vs instant gratification.

All of these elements determine our success … at some level we all have a need to achieve, to accomplish, and leave our mark on this world.  With tenacity, anything is possible!

Sacrifice. To get to the finish line, some things may need to be sacrificed along the way. They may be temporary or permanent, but it is up to you to decide what is best for you short and long term!  

Sacrifice means giving up something you want now to have what you want later!

This can look very different for different journeys during different seasons in your life. Some different things that I sacrificed along the way:

In this season of striving towards health, I sacrificed sugar, soda and processed foods.

In the season of starting our business, we sacrificed live TV and limited “screen time”.

In a season of growing closer to God, I sacrificed sleep for adding in daily quiet time first thing in the morning.

Your sacrifice will be yours regardless of what someone else does and you can not compare nor judge your choices versus someone elses.  You may get ideas from others, though you need to determine what is required of you.  You KNOW what you want to accomplish and you KNOW what it will take for you to get it.

I remember asking God, “How do I know?”  It is the quiet voice inside that we rebel against … and it can often be something we have a death grip on.  When God gives us a goal, dream or vision that seems to overtake our  every thought, we begin the mental game of “How do I make this happen?”  This ever present thought has happened a few times in my life – completing a triathlon, starting our business, and relying on God after Thad’s accident.

Three completely different unrelated items all took the same transformation journey:

1. I became aware of the idea acknowledging it was something I had to do
2. I expanded the vision to understand where I was going and why
3. I made uncomfortable changes and stepped into the unknown in FAITH
4. I shared my journey with others for accountability
5. I did the necessary work

Steps 4 and 5 have both happened though, in my experience, their order isn’t important.  There are times when doing the work came before sharing and others where I couldn’t seem to start the work without sharing.  You will know what happens for you.

There will be obstacles; there will be moments of wanting to give up; there will be resistance by you and others; there will most likely be pain involved and yet you will not be able to let it go.  Remember to take consistent deliberate steps towards your calling … keep your steps sustainable … This is your commitment for this season and you will KNOW when it is time to re-evaluate and adjust.  Trust yourself, sacrifice, and go for it!

God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. Just think of the enormous amount of free time God has! He is never in a hurry. Yet we are always in such a frantic hurry. While still in the light of the glory of the vision, we go right out to do things, but the vision is not yet real in us. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.

The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. Allow the Potter to put you on His wheel and whirl you around as He desires. Then as surely as God is God, and you are you, you will turn out as an exact likeness of the vision. But don’t lose heart in the process. If you have ever had a vision from God, you may try as you will to be satisfied on a lower level, but God will never allow it. ~ Oswald Chambers