Tag: Goals

5 Things to Add to Your Morning Routine

Netflix & What Would’ve Been

Has this ever happened to you?If you’re like me, you have a “free day” marked on your calendar and you expect  to do whatever you need or want. However, the great plans that you had disappeared when you sit down to catch up on your Netflix queue. Before you know it, you’ve watched an entire season of Luke Cage, it’s 6 o’clock and you still haven’t showered!

Time w/ God

I like to get the most out of my day. I feel like it is a good day when at night I can look back and feel like I accomplished something. It’s a good feeling to have days where you feel productive. Productivity has a way of making you feel better in every area of your life.

Start the Right Way

One of the most important things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is how important your morning routine is to the start of a great day. You can pretty much Google“How to have a great morning,” and get plenty of advice on how to get the most out of your day. What I see from these tips and morning routines are the biblical principles that God has laid out for us. So what does God say about how we are to start our day.

  1. Plan the night before

The start to a great day actually begins the night before. Proverbs 21:5 Says that “the plans of the diligent leads to abundance”. A successful day actually begins the day before. Too many times we just let the day happen to us. We need to plan how we want our days to look in advance.

  1. Devotional

Having a good devotional is a  benefit. Most devotionals give a daily scripture, some reflection and a prayer at the end. I really like devotionals because they offer a focus for the day. It provides context and gives me a reference for what I can refer to throughout the day. Joshua 1:8 says it best. We are to “meditate on God’s word day and night.” Devotionals are great for this.

  1. Pray

By this point in the morning routine, there you should flow from one thing to the next. It can be easy to flow from the devotional time to a time of personal prayer. For me, I like to begin my personal time with expressing to God how thankful I am. Our prayer time should focus on God rather than ourselves. While there are times we do need to express issues of our lives to God, there should also be times where we are praying for our families, friends and communities.

  1. Journal

I am a big fan of writing in a journal. For me, it’s a great way to reflect on the previous day, and a way to transfer the thoughts in my head out on paper. Sitting down to journal after a time of prayer is a great way of getting in the habit of writing the things down that God tells us. Using a journal as part of your morning routine helps to value God’s voice and His word.

  1. Confessions/Affirmations

Ending the morning routine with confessions or affirmations is an awesome way to build up our confidence and self-esteem before  we step into the world. God’s word is most powerful when we speak it out of our mouths. We don’t just become the things we see and hear, we become what we say. Confessing God’s word over lives builds us up for so many things that we attack during the day.

Have you developed a morning routine? If not, what is holding you back? Let’s start today with getting the most out of our days.

 

New Year & New You

It’s a New Year

Welcome to 2018!! Happy New Year!!!

Have you thought about how this year will be different from last year? Will it be different from any other year that you’ve gone through? At the end of each year you start to see people selling all types of “Life Changing” products that are geared towards helping create a new you in the New Year. Can all of these products really work? Are we stuck in the hamster wheel of having the same life year after year?

[ctt template=”8″ link=”S006_” via=”no” ]New Year means it’s time for new habits[/ctt]

The answer is a resounding, “NO!” We don’t have to do the same thing year in and year out, especially if it’s not leading us to the place we want to be. Our lives can be what we make them out to be. I’m a firm believer in that if you think it, it will come to pass.

The Right Tool for The New Year

With so many different tools out there that promise to take us from where we are, to the promised land. How do we know what do use?

I’m going to tell you the truth. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT TOOL YOU USE. The only thing that matters is that you build consistency.

I heard Dave Ramsey say in referring to the debt snowball that, “you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.”

The idea is that you’re not going to go from having a mountain of debt to being debt free overnight. You do it one day at a time, paying off one debt at a time. The important thing is to build the habits that allow you to have consistency everyday.

The same is true in every area of our lives. If we want to have successful marriages and be better parents, then it starts one day at a time. Knowing where we fall short and were we can improve is the first step.

It’s time for a Vision

This year, let’s not set goals. If you’re honest with yourself, most of us have let our goals go by mid-January. What we want to do is develop the habits that will take us from where we are to where we want to go.

The Bible says that without a vision the people perish.

Just think about how much time we’ve wasted because we weren’t sure what to do next or where we really wanted to go in life. A wasted year is a year that has perished.

So this is where we start. We need to get a picture of what we want this year to look like. How would our marriages look? What type of dates do we go on? Where do we take our vacations? How are we spending our quality time together?

Here are three ways that we can get the most out of this year.

  1. Look to change your habits, don’t set goals

Most people fail at achieving their goals because the goals seem detached from their current lifestyle. Let’s look to change our habits,which are the key to life. If we change our habits, we can change our relationships, marriages, and lives for the better.

  1. Have a vision

Take some time and think, allow yourself to dream of what you want your marriage to look like this upcoming year.

  1. Write it down

After writing it down, put it in a place where it will be seen  everyday. The bathroom mirror, the refrigerator or closet where you get dressed in the morning. I’ve even heard of people putting their dreams on a sticky note in their car. Whatever works, just put it in a place where you will see it everyday.

Habakkuk 2:2(ERV)

The Lord answered me, “Write down what I show you. Write it clearly on a sign so that the message will be easy to read.”

 

I truly believe that this year will be a great year for you and your marriage. Leave a comment below on what habits you want to develop.

3 Ways Not to Drift in Your Marriage

New Year = New You = New Marriage

This New Year means a chance to start some new habits. The beginning of each year marks a time where we can start fresh. It’s the perfect time to ignite a flame that may have died down in your marriage. It’s the best time to get your mind wrapped around having the best marriage possible.

One of the biggest attacks to our marriages isn’t an outside person or something like that. We could protect our marriages better if we didn’t get lazy in them.

Threats To Marriage

[ctt template=”8″ link=”Xgmxo” via=”no” ]Complacency and laziness are the biggest threats to marriages.[/ctt]

Complacency and laziness are the biggest threats to marriages.

Part of the definition of complacency is to be content. Our lives, children, work and marriages should have points of accomplishment and pride. However there is a difference between taking pride in your accomplishments and not striving for anything else.

Complacency to the point that we no longer strive for self improvement is unsatisfactory. We can only contribute to our marriages with what we have on the inside of us. If we are no longer depositing into ourselves then at some point, our well will run dry of what we can put into the relationship.

Marriage requires work. Work on yourself first. For me it all starts with my relationship with God. As my relationship with Him grows and I learn more about Him, I find myself wanting to grow in other areas of my life. It is the desire for God first, hat  creates a desire which spills into other areas and pushes me to pursue my dreams and goals.

It’s time to Plan Ahead. I wrote an article to help you Plan Ahead.

Combat Laziness

I’m a firm believer in dreaming big and setting big goals. I always want something out in front of me that I am pursuing. It’s the pursuit that doesn’t allow me to settle for complacency. While our lives may be good according to some, we aren’t looking around us but looking forward to what’s ahead.

Laziness works very much the same way. Laziness is like the brother of complacency. It is the next rung on the ladder to nowhere. Once we reach complacency and we entertain it, the next step down the rabbit hole is laziness.

Laziness can take over a marriage and ultimately destroy it. When we are unwilling to work or put forth the energy into our marriages laziness will take over.

We have to actively fight laziness. Make sure to take the  steps to combat laziness and build strong healthy marriages.

Here are three ways to fight complacency and laziness:

  1. Self improvement: personal development is the key to making deposits into yourself. We should be well-rounded people. We have to have more to contribute to the marriage than our paychecks. Our lives have to be more than what we happened at work today.

 

  1. Have A Goal: There is a difference between goals and habits. The idea that I want to get across is that we need something to strive for. Set a goal or a habit that you want to accomplish.

 

  1. Pursue Your Spouse: I’m a big proponent of the idea of dating your spouse. For many couples the dating process was where we tried to impress the other person. We look for ways to get to know them better, or ways to get close to them. There’s no reason that this shouldn’t carry on when we get married. It may require more working around schedules, but it can be done.

 

Let’s fight complacency and laziness 2018.