Remember when you woke up on New Year’s Day and immediately sprang into action on all those realistic goals you set forth the week before? Yeah, neither do I! I recall waking up on New Year’s Day, sipping coffee in my pajamas, scrolling through Netflix, munching on something from Hickory Farms and half-heartedly proclaiming, “I’ll start tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first REAL day of 2019.” I had good intentions, but zero direction on that first day of this fresh new season. Thomas Edison once said, “A vision without execution is hallucination.” I suppose that means I was borderline psychotic for the first several hours of this year, but lucky for me I quickly found my way into remission!
During my first Sunday church service of the year, our beloved Pastor Craig Groeschel reminded us that “our life is the sum total of all the small decisions that we make.” This made me realize that most of us approach our resolutions and personal goals in all the WRONG ways! We’ve been told much of our life to focus on the BIG picture. “Keep your eye on the goal!” “Focus on the prize!” However, with our eyes exclusively on the reward, we overlook the individual steps it takes to get there, and then we wonder why we never made it. In his book “Atomic Habits,” James Clear says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” So in order to simplify our strategies for bringing our personal goals to life, we must first take a look at our systems. Let’s identify what we tend to do wrong when approaching our personal goals, then let’s visualize the improved version of ourselves and choose one small new system for getting there.
MOVE AWAY FROM BIG, BROAD AND BEST
I believe the problem we often make when approaching our goals is that we focus on BIG, BROAD and BEST. For example, “I’m going to rise to the top this year!” Too big – Too broad! Or perhaps we say, “I’m going to get my life together.” Your LIFE entails no less than 100,000 different things, so how and where exactly does one begin? Too broad! You might even say, “I’m ready to be the BEST version of myself!” Unfortunately, BETTER must come before BEST, so if you only focus on the best, you might miss all the small, meaningful victories along the way and then give up prematurely.
Voltaire said, “The best is the enemy of the good.” Smart guy, that Voltaire! If we set our personal goals around big, broad or best, we don’t know where to begin, we miss small (but important) achievements and we give up too soon!
START SMALL, SPECIFIC, AND SATISFYING
So if we aren’t supposed to start BIG, BROAD or BEST – then what are we supposed to do? You guessed it! We should start small, specific and satisfying. The Bible says, in Job Chapter 8, “Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous your future will be”. Small beginnings are the key to realistic outcomes! Specific beginnings are the arrows on the map. If I am going to save more money, I need an exact amount per week (or month) to get started. If I am going to lose weight, I need an exact macro count, calorie count or fitness plan to execute each day. If I am going to pray more often, I need to identify the exact number of minutes I’m striving for. Finally, why must it be satisfying? Because let’s face it, we live in a generation of immediate gratification. If I need information, Google answers the call in less than one second. If I want something but don’t have the cash for it, Capitol One Venture Rewards Card! Amazon delivers things to your doorstep faster than you can press “buy now,” and Uber shows up quicker than I can walk to my driveway and engage the ignition of my own car. We must choose small steps that are satisfying because if we don’t get some type of gratification fairly quickly, we are more likely to give up. If I choose “pray 3 minutes each morning after I wake up” as my faith-seeking goal, then it will only take 3 minutes before I feel the satisfaction of completing that goal (and likely, God will reward me with answers!) Satisfying steps keep us moving!
START AND RESTART
Identify a specific area of your life that needs work. If you aren’t sure where to begin, I recommend praying about it and asking God to direct you to the area that needs your attention right now. He says in Psalms 32:8, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.” So ask Him! And listen for answers! Another strategy is consulting what ThriveTime Business Coach, Clay Clark calls the “F6 Goals”: Family, Faith, Fitness, Finances, Friendships and Fun! These are the primary 6 areas of our life that contribute to whole-hearted living. Look over these and decide which area you might want to tackle first. Next, visualize what we EMDR therapists call a “future template.” Get comfortable in a quiet place, close your eyes, and run a movie in your mind of you operating exactly as you would if your chosen focus area was “on point.” For example, if I choose faith as the area I’d like to work on: When I’m running my future template of ‘me living with strong faith,’ I might see myself waking up each morning and reading a few scriptures, spending a few minutes in prayer, attending church on Sunday, and possibly engaging in a small group or Bible study. After I finish my mind-movie, I should then ask myself: “What is one thing that I saw myself doing in that visualization that I am NOT doing now?” Choose one that is small, specific and will be satisfying shortly after you do it, commit to that one thing, and begin doing it every single day. Gretchen Rubin said, “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” So start your small action, and then restart the next day, and restart again the next day. THAT will be a small, specific, satisfying thing that leads you to your big, broad, best-self goal. Before you know it, it will simply be something you DO, and it will be time to identify the next thing to START! You will be proud of each new healthy habit you create, and each will be a building block in the tower of your personal success. Your tenacity and repetition will pay off. If you get bored or discouraged on your small-stepping journey, remember these words from Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap harvest if we do not give up.”
Shawn Maguire has been trained in EMDR, NLP, and CBT (to name a few) and uses these techniques with an emphasis on Christian Counseling.
My shoulders had tension that no amount of yoga or deep breathing would cure, the grip on my steering wheel would undoubtedly break any stress ball, and a puddle was quickly forming beneath my sweating palms. The GPS on my phone repeated, “re-routing” over and over through the speakers of my car.
Yes, I was lost. Hopelessly, lost.
You see, I’d just moved to a big city. It was dark. I was in the middle of traffic on a bridge in an area of the city that did not look safe to stop and ask for directions. The only hope I had for the drive was that I would eventually be able to get off the bridge and park long enough to look at a map—well, cry and then look at a map.
Have you ever been that lost?
If not, I have news for you: without a vision for your kids, you will eventually end up just as lost. On my ridiculous drive, I didn’t have a destination or a vision. I was just aimlessly driving around the city to learn it better. The GPS on my phone had no way of helping me because it didn’t know where I was going. Creating a vision statement for relationships with your kids is as important as identifying a destination for your drive. You can’t expect to get anywhere if you don’t know where you want to go.
So how do you do that exactly?
First, make the vision statement kid-friendly.
When downloading a map app for my phone, I always choose the English version. Why? Because I only speak English. While there’s a chance that I could look at pictures and decipher where to go in an Arabic version of a map, any specific instructions would be entirely lost because I do not speak that language.
Yet, we expect kids to understand our grown-up jargon—and we punish them when they don’t.
When creating a vision statement for your family regarding relationships, it is essential that it uses kid-friendly language. For example, your kid-friendly vision statement might be, “God made humans to treat each other like we would want to be treated.” This statement makes sense and is easy to apply. For younger kids your statement might be, “God made us to be nice.”
A good way to determine whether your vision statement is kid-friendly is whether it can be chanted. Kids love to be silly and chant with their family. You can’t chant, “Relationships are an entity God designed to display His glory to the world.” That statement may be a good place you and your spouse to begin brainstorming, but it can’t be the final version for your kids.
In addition to chanting your kid-friendly vision statement, making a hand motion can be a fun way to help kids really learn the vision you’re casting for your family. If your vision statement is “God made us to be nice,” you could use two cupped hands moving upward for the hand motion.
Having trouble thinking of a statement, chant, or hand motion? No problem, have your kids help you! The more they are involved, the more likely they are to engage.
Second, don’t be afraid to initiate hard conversations.
The birds and the bees is without-a-doubt the conversation I hear parents worry about the most. Afterall, who wants to talk about sex with their child?
Like the dreaded sex talk, most hard conversations with children involve relationships. Whether it is explaining why the family dog can’t come back after that tear-filled vet appointment or why a kid on the playground didn’t invite them to a birthday party, each of these conversations is made difficult by the feelings surrounding relationships. Your child was designed to be in relationship with others and they are going to seek relationship with others, regardless of the instruction they receive from you.
The best way to help your children have a godly vision for relationships is to initiate the conversation first, before the kids on the playground or the Internet taints their view of relationships.
Kids on the playground might say, “my older brother told me sex is for grown-ups and is a lot of fun.” While both of those statements are true, you might prefer your children know about sex from God’s perspective before knowing that sex is fun. Let’s explore how having a vision statement for relationships can make equipping your kids with that information easier.
I’ve seen some families come up with a specific vision statement for sex. For example, “God made sex for grown-ups in marriage.” For younger kids, this can be helpful because it helps answer those questions like, “Where do babies come from?” Instead of responding with a deer-in-the-headlights look, a parent could respond by explaining that God designed babies to come from two married people having sex. For older kids, parents can use this statement to talk about how sex is purposeful but it is also pleasurable. Initiating the conversation about sex being pleasurable can help preteens and teenagers feel safer to talk to their parents about sex rather than trying to find out the pleasures of sex on their own.
Other families might be inclined to incorporate the sex vision statement into their original vision statement for relationships. For example, “God made humans to treat each other like we would want to be treated” can be a good basis for sex also. This vision statement helps begin conversations about respecting our bodies and other people’s bodies. Regarding sex, this could include, “God designed sex for marriage. With sex, we treat each other like we would want to be treated by not having sex with someone until marriage.” This can also be a good opportunity to have conversations to prevent childhood sexual abuse and talk about respecting each other’s bodies.
Finally, live out relationships the way you want your kids to relate to others.
Has your child ever said or done something completely inappropriate that you know they learned from you? You are not alone. Anyone with kids has experienced the gut-wrenching moment of their child imitating language or behavior not intended to pass on.
As you chant your vision statement, make sure that you do what the chant says. The vision statement, “God made us to be nice” means that your kids need to see you being nice to people. This statement should challenge you as much as it challenges your kids. Whether it is in heavy traffic, a long line at the grocery store, or to your spouse after a long day, let your children see what you want them to learn.
New Vision Counseling offers a unique Christian approach with proven therapy techniques. Call (405) 921-7776 today.
3 Ways to Be Present: Tis the Season to be Present, Part 2
By Ben Thompson
“Be still, and know that I am God…”
Psalm 46:10a
In the first part of this blog we discussed being present in all the chaos of life. If we wait until everything is calm and peaceful before we can become present, we will either wait a longtime (maybe forever) or rarely be present in our lives.
Most importantly, when we are present, we are able to experience the presence of God in powerful ways. We slow down enough to realize God is with us and wants us to look to him.
Imagine having God right by your side to guide you through life, but never taking the time to listen to him or ask him for anything. Crazy, right? But we are all guilty of this because instead of being consumed by God in the present, we are consumed with everything else.
How do we practice being present so we can experience a closer connection with God?
Here are three simple things you can start doing today:
- Breathe! Breathing is the quickest and easiest way to reorient our bodies and minds to the present moment. I recommend taking slightly deeper breaths than normal and simply focus on the in and out of your breath. As you are more connected to your breathing and to the moment, you can then feel the presence of God more fully.
- Be quiet and listen. This is especially important in times you are having a heated conversation with someone or find yourself mentally obsessing over something. Simply tell yourself to slow down and pay attention to what is going on around you and inside you. Your body, for example, may be trying to tell you, “Hey there, I’m getting pretty hot and frustrated here. I need a break!” Then, you can take the little break that your heart, body, and probably everyone around you knows you need to take. As you quiet down, this will allow you to listen better to God in whatever ways he is speaking to you.
- Surrender. Don’t confuse this with giving up or giving in to your feelings. Surrender means accepting that your thoughts and feelings are currently too hard to let go of and you must give them over to God before they take you over (see Psalm 55:22). The next time you find yourself frustrated and getting angry tell yourself, “Surrender to this. You are upset and feeling out of control. God I am giving you control,” and allow yourself to experience God taking care of you and your emotions.
Being present takes practice. At New Vision we are here to help you become more present in your life and more connected to God. If we can help in any way, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We have great therapists who want you to experience a more present and connected life with God, yourself, and others.
By Ben Thompson
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
Matthew 1:23
“Be present”is something we’re hearing more and more these days, which is great advice, but who has the time? Sure, I’ll be present when the kids are quiet, it’s peaceful,and the last present is bought. If you are like me, that leaves little time to be present unless you are willing to get up at 2:30 in the morning.
Fortunately, God did not wait for everything to be calm before he sent his son, Jesus, to be present with us on earth. God did not wait for conditions to be perfect. As you read in the Bible, Jesus presence on earth started in the midst of scandal,serious danger, Roman rule, and potential death from King Herod that we read about in Matthew 2.
God showed us that peace was not a prerequisite to being present.
How peaceful and present are you feeling this holiday season? We find ourselves worried about getting the right presents, frustrated with our overspending, and getting angry with our loved ones. We are more concerned with buying presents than we are about being present. Ironically, we are in a season of year focused on the presence of God on earth, and it is one of the hardest times to be present.
Being present means being in this moment, peaceful or not.
It means taking a breath right now and calming down. It means stopping in the middle of a fight with your spouse or your kids, taking a breath, and asking yourself, “What’s most important to me right now?” When you slow down and pay attention to your body, mind, and soul, you are present.Then, you can make better decisions for yourself and those around you.
There is no better time than to be present than right now. Jesus presence on earth brought peace to a chaotic world. Likewise, our presence can bring peace on earth,peace to our families, and peace to ourselves in spite of all that is going on around us.
In the next part of this blog series, I’ll teach you more ways you can become present in your everyday life.
Blessed to Be a Blessing
The Fear of Setting Boundaries
The Three Zones of Fear
Christian Counseling Edmond OK
Family Christian Counseling OKC
Your Failures Don’t Disqualify You from God’s Best
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone was unabashedly destroying you with their words. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar “You stupid idiot, why did you do that?” Or how about “Can’t you do anything right?” Or how about “You are not as pretty as, smart as, fast as, rich as, loved as…the list seems to never end.” If you have ever been talked to like this you know how awful it feels. How we can feel paralyzed and hopeless when someone who is close to us criticizes us like this. How can we value ourselves if someone who is supposed to be for us betrays us like this? Many of us have had a parent talk to us like this. Others, like me, have suffered feeling not good enough by the absence of a parent. But right now I am not talking about any of them. I am talking about you. What if this is the way your internal critic talks to you. Ouch!
The great news is today is your day to take back control. God did not wire us to tolerate critical and abusive words. He wired us to live and give love and that is where we are headed today. You have already done Step one and that’s identify the critical voices that are not serving you well.
Step two is to identify who they sound like from your present or past. If you are not sure then ask if it sounds like a male you know or a female you know. Sometimes you may need to pray and listen to identify the origins. When you get the answer write it down.
Step three is to look up in your Bible (or just ask Alexa) who God says you are. Ask how much He loves you and how He sees you. Does he think you are worthy of love, intelligent, good enough, and worth fighting for? If you are still not sure then Jesus dying to take your place is a good start.
Step Four is where the rubber meets the road and you activate God’s truth in your life. Select the top 5 scriptures and phrases you have found and immerse yourself in them. Do this a minimum of three focused times per day. This could look like morning, noon and night. In addition to reading and memorizing what is true, where a rubber band or set alerts on your phone to remind you to look at them throughout the day. And every time the negative voices begin spewing their venom choose to replace them with God’s truth. And watch your belief system slowly but surely begin to shift.
Shawn Maguire is a Licensed Professional Therapist who has served marriages, families and individuals for almost 25 years. He is the owner of New Vision Counseling, a place where therapists integrate. their faith with cutting edge counseling techniques to offer hope and healing in any circumstance of life. You can find out more about Shawn and his team at NewVisionCounseling.org or follow him on facebook and Instagram at NewVisionCounseling.