Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
Life can sometimes feel out of control. Unanswered prayers fill us with doubt. But are you even in the right place or state of mind to have your prayers answered in the first place!?
Blessings are sometimes confusing. We can pray and focus all of our energy towards getting out of a certain situation or for a specific thing to happen. Sometimes it does. Other times, nothing seems to happen at all. We can’t expect every blessing to come like that. There are times in our lives where we are supposed to go through hard times and we are supposed to be uncomfortable. Fear of change is the best way to limit our growth as individuals. Being receptive to these ideas means we are willing to put in the work to receive what ever comes next in our life. In one of my previous blog posts I suggest that elevation requires separation. This separation sometimes includes separating from old blessings to receive the new.
No matter where you are in life, you cannot win consistently unless you are in a position to win. –Bill Russell
I reread this quote by the great Bill Russell recently and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It is not enough to pray a lot and wait for your blessing to fall right into your lap. We can only receive it if we are in a place where we can recognize the blessing for what it is. The response to your prayer may be to meet someone, or to give you more free time to do something. It may be the opportunity to help someone else. If we are not in a position to ‘win’ (receive our blessing) as Mr. Russell says, then these opportunities will come and go without us even realizing. I’m not saying that prayer does not get people out of situations. I am proof that it does. What I am saying is that our blessings evolve as we do. If we are not constantly seeking what else is out there then we won’t be able to string together the blessing that are waiting for us. You will find yourself praying the same prayers and wondering why your circumstances have not changed. We must constantly grow in ourselves so that we are in the best place in our life to receive our next blessing. If we remain stagnate, it may seem as if our prayers are not being answered.
To make sure we are constantly pushing forward it is important to understand the power of decision-making. I would urge anyone reading this to purchase a copy of The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. This book profoundly changed my view on the choices I make on any given day. It’s not about a secret recipe for how to be successful. It is a fundamental shift in how to think about our daily decisions. Success is really about the small choices that seem insignificant.
Whether you believe it or not, every decision you make is either bringing you one step forward or one step back. The Slight Edge is about realizing this and taking the proper steps to ensure all of our decisions are in the best interest of our dreams. It may not seem obvious at first, but if you seriously reflect back on every decisions you made recently you will notice patterns emerge.
We have to pay the price of our goals and dreams.
That means some relationships may have to end, some bad habits may need correcting. It will be uncomfortable to make some of these decisions. However, the price for not achieving our dreams is far greater. People think greatness is some esoteric concept that only celebrities have or only the well off can achieve. I beg you to reconsider. It is in the small details. Small details over time can produce huge rewards. Think about The First Transcontinental Railroad. It started with one small spike driven into the ground. Each stake was pounded into the ground with effort, and after years of pounding the same spikes into the ground the West was finally connected to the rest of the United States. Talk about an enormous ‘blessing.’ I have come to understand that my blessings are rewards for my diligence.
We can pray and ask for something every single day but if our actions aren’t consistent with what we are trying to attract then we will walk away from the moments we asked for with out even realizing it. To fully receive the potential every day holds, our thoughts and actions must be aligned. Double mindedness, or being focused on too many things at once, stagnates our energy. Think of a tug of war; both sides pulling to get the middle on their side of the line. We are the flag in the middle; each team pulling is one of our goals, hope, dreams, aspirations, prayers, whatever name you want to give them. At the core of each of these is essentially an idea. When we are focused on too many of these ideas we expend a lot of energy and the flag in the middle, ourselves, just feels jerked back and forth. It hasn’t really gone anywhere. We tend to get frustrated if we spend a lot of our time and energy doing something but see no results. If we can find away to focus and just let one or a few of the teams pull us in one direction then we will see the same amount of energy is used up but the flag has definitely moved in the direction it was pulled. It takes courage to let go of some of the things that are pulling us and let all of our thoughts match all of our actions. You’ll find that it is easier to recognize each of our blessings if we can give more focus to fewer things. It is easy to be caught up in all of the distractions our modern world provides. I think it is important for us to slow down from time to time and live in the moment. In this moment, we don’t focus on the past or future, just the now. If we can learn to recognize these moments, in “the now,” we can make better decisions that take the lessons of the past and build the future, one decision at a time.
I challenge you to take some time and think about some of the decisions you’ve made recently. Not the big important decisions, but the small ones that you’ve made when no one is around. It’s okay if not all of them were pushing you forward. Life is a process of learning. Learn to see the importance of every decision you make.
