Day 4: 31 Days to Reset Your Life

I posted my Day 1 and then I kept 2 and 3 a little more private. I am back again to post Day 4. I found this exercise interesting, and I honestly don't believe that my list is complete. I think that it's just as complete as it's gonna get for tonight/this morning. So here goes.

Part 1: Make a list of the things that you value:

Love, serving, mentoring, teaching, giving, caring for others, encouraging, Jesus, adventure, faith, learning, friendship, family, being carefree, truth, integrity, genuineness, having my own family, missions, community, children, fulfillment, purpose, wealth, health, creativity, laughter, fun, freedom, travel

Part 2: Create a Reset 10 of your Top 10 values from the previous list. (I listed mine in no particular order outside of Jesus truly being first.)

Jesus

Teaching

Genuineness

Purpose

Faith

Love

Serving

Learning

Community

Friendship

This was definitely an interesting assignment and it really got me thinking. I think I'm going to end up adding more to the list as the week goes on. I guess, we'll see what happens.

If you're interested in learning more about this assignment and the actual #31daystoreset program that it's a part of, go here: http://happyblackwoman.com/identify-your-values/#comment-66261

Happy Resetting Folks!

Love,

K. Denise

New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions

Soooooooooo, this is that time of year when people start thinking of all of the stuff that didn’t go right last year and that they want to change for the year to come. They reflect on all of the major situations and they talk about how they want to grow or where they want to go and they make a short or long list depending on the person of how they’re going to get there. I am switching things up this year. I am going to focus on one thing and let it be the driving force behind all of my decisions to the events in my life for the year to come. My resolution is to make each minute better than the last one that I had.

For me it’s just that simple. When you really think about it all you have is the minute that you’re in. The next one may never come. People die in an instant and all of the plans that they had for the year to come will mean nothing. The moment after death is irrelevant. The moment right before though, that is a moment that you can do something with. You can share a little more love, laugh if you feel like, smile for no reason, or cry if you want to. You can pray, praise, or perfect! You can encourage, inspire, and enable. You can do so much with the moment that’s present. Unfortunately, so many people forsake the moment that they’re in for a moment that may never come. They lose all of the possibility of the now, hoping in a future that may be expiring sooner than they think. I don’t want to be that person. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a planner by nature. I will always have some sort of multi-step process in play to get things done. There’s always a method for getting from the point that I’m at the next one on the list. I just don’t want to get so caught up in the plans that the current moment is never lived. That would be a total waste of all of the moments that I am given if I spend all of the current in anticipation of the next. I want to live now, love now, laugh now, enjoy now, work now, grow now, be fully me at my best right now. And if I get another moment, cool. There’s an opportunity to be better.

So that’s the theme for 2011. Make each moment better than the last. I don’t know how many I’ve got. I can’t count the number that I’ve wasted. I vow to make each one count. This is my resolution from here on out!

Self Sabotage

Have you ever gotten to a point in life when you were on the edge of something great...maybe even life changing? You know, it's that moment when you knew that sooner rather than later your star was going to sky rocket into the stratosphere and the things that you'd been working on were going to be on the front page instead of floating around in the background. If you've been there, what did you do? If you haven't been there already, what do you think would happen when you were on the verge of greatness?

Well, I've been there. I'm actually there right now, and my first instinct isn't to celebrate, get excited, or even prepare for what's coming. My first instinct is to mess it all up before it can ever happen! I know, I know...you're probably saying, "What in the world is this chick thinking?" Believe you me, I have asked myself the very same question. But this is a familiar pattern for me. When I get close to crossing the line from obscurity into well known I do my best to mess it up or get off track. Something about the spotlight freaks me out in a major way. I love the things that I do, and I don't really want other people to know about them. I don't do those things to get noticed, I do them simply because I love them and I believe in them. I don't volunteer with the homeless so people can say, "Oh look at what she's doing." I volunteer with the homeless because I genuinely love them and honestly believe that is what God wants me to do. I don't work with kids and develop programming so people can see it, I do it because those kids mean the world to me and God has placed a burden on my heart to educate the next generation. I have a wonderful life where I daily get to work on things that mean so much to me. God has blessed me so much because he has allowed me to focus on things that I already genuinely adore doing.

You see, the spotlight scares me. I don't crave it or want any parts of it. I've seen really great people get really messed up in their thought process because they started to get a little attention for what they were doing. Folks who were totally focused on God, became totally focused on self. Those that were all about their mission and project began to compromise the very thing that got them noticed in the first place for a little more time in the limelight. Then for others the thing that they loved the most became their biggest burden and eventually the thing that they absolutely hated doing. I don't want to be any one of those people.

I don't want the joy taken out of serving my homeless friends, or the laughter removed from my after school program. I don't want to be consumed with making more money or having more things. I don't want to live a life where I suddenly forget how blessed I am and from whom the blessings come. I don't want to become the center of my life because I already know that I am not big enough to fill that position.

So to avoid all of the things that I don't want, I try to stop myself from ever making it out of obscurity by doing just enough foolishness to stop God's blessings in my life. This is funny because most of things that many would assume that I would do aren't even an option for me. I truly have been changed and I just can't going back to being "that" girl anymore. I instead do what I consider "simple things." Little stuff like taking my time in following a direction that God has given me, attempting to hold on to a grudge a few days longer that I know that I'm supposed to. Not writing or speaking when it's clear that he has given me something to say. Involving myself in a relationship that I know is going nowhere and doing nothing other than taking my time and attention away from what I know that I should be focused on.

This is how I try to stop God's plan for my life. This is the art of self sabotage for me. What's funny is that now even a lot of these plans aren't working. God is creating such a disgust for these "simple sins" that it is making it nearly impossible for me to carry any of my self sabotage plans out. I'll be honest and let you know that this is really scaring me. You see this means that the things that God has for me to do are really important. So important that he won't even let me stop myself. I just wished that he would sometimes play by my rules. I wish that he would understand that it's not that I don't want to do everything that he's called me to do, but I'm scared of the type of person that I may become as a result.

I guess there are some things that God wants me to understand too. Things like, I will probably be okay and He knows what I can handle. Just maybe, He knows that I am not at risk of turning into any of those people that I mentioned earlier because of what he's built into my life. He knows what he can trust me with. He knows where I'll end up, and He's clearly proven to me time and time again that he won't let me get too far off the narrow road that he created just for me.

I need to make a decision today. A decision to either stop fighting God or blindly go wherever it is that he's leading me, or a decision to stop playing games and just walk away. I guess when I look at it like that there is no real decision to make. Here I am Lord, send me.