LifeWalkGPS

Gifts-Personalities-Strengths

Lesa Dale

About Lesa Dale

Christmas Blessings

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I spent all day Saturday decorating the church for Christmas. I want to have everything done when our Pastor started his Christmas series. The theme this year is The Cradle, Cross, & Crown.

I tried to incorporate the theme in all the areas, but I also added treasures. I needed a little extra to fill everything out…lol!

Another Christmas tradition here is the annual Christmas Blessing Giveaway over at Woman 2 Woman ministries. I’m proud to be able to participate again this year. This year’s blessing is $400 in Cash to your PayPal account.

The giveaway begins Wednesday, December 9, 2020, and ends at midnight on December 14, 2020

Giveaway rules: No purchase necessary. Must be 18 to enter. Void where prohibited by law.
**Open to US/Canada residents only.** This giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or
associated by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest. By entering this giveaway, you agree
to release Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Woman to Woman Ministries, and all participating bloggers of all liability. Contest ends at 12:01am EST on December 14, 2020.


Winning entry will be verified. Winner is randomly chosen by Rafflecopter and will be emailed.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Participating Bloggers:
Woman to Woman Ministries 
Jenifer Metzger 
Katie Hornor
Homeschooling Dietitian Mom
A Delightful Glow
GROUNDED Ministry
Mama’s Coffee Shop
Changing Focus
Wonder and Grace
Beyond the Stick Figure
Life Walk GPS
A Mama’s Story
Skill Trek: Field Guide for Life
When You Rise Up
iGoBOGO

Discover Your Guiding Points and Make Decisions a Breeze

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Few things are more useful than knowing your values. Knowing your values results in clarity and focus. Your values act as your compass, Guiding Points when defining your priorities. These priorities can determine how to spend your time and energy best. Knowing your values can significantly streamline your life and your efforts. Decisions become easier to make.

Live your values to feel more fulfilled:

First, you must know your values. Have you ever taken the time to determine your values? Now is the time! Make a list of your values. Just write them down. If it means even a little to you, list it.

    • Prioritize your list. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 values or only 10. Put them in order from most important to least.
    • Reexamine your list. Now that you have a prioritized list decide if you’re happy with it. Consider the life you’d like to live. Will your list of values get you there? Reorder your list as appropriate.
    • Sort your list. Once you are happy with your prioritized list, sort the values into several lists of shared ideas.
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Use your values to choose a career or hobby. Suppose your top values were love, contribution, and peace, you probably wouldn’t enjoy a career as an investment banker. Your hobbies likely wouldn’t include trapping animals for fur. But you might want a career with a non-profit organization or as a minister.

    • Does your current career line up with your values? If not, can you change careers? If you can’t change careers at this point in your life, can you do something on the side that will allow you to live your values? Using the previously mentioned values, you could volunteer to work with homeless children on the weekends.
    • It’s just about impossible to be happy and fulfilled if you spend most of your day living a life not aligned with your values.

Create habits in alignment with your values. Suppose one of your highest values is health. It only makes sense to have eating and exercise habits to support that value. It will also be easier to create a habit that promotes a significant value.

    • Examine your list of values and determine if your current habits support those values. What else could you be doing to live your values more consistently?
    • List your habits that are counter to your values, too.

Choose the people in your life. No matter how independent you might be, the people in your life influence your thoughts, decisions, and behavior.

    • Consider how you think and act around each of the people in your life. Consider spending less time with the people who pull you away from your values and more time with the people who push you toward your values.
    • Be strong. Some of your longtime friends might be hurting your ability to be true to yourself.

Make decisions with your values in mind. Knowing and living your values can make your decision-making process much more comfortable. Imagine an opportunity for a big raise, but you’ll spend less time with your family. That would be a hard decision for many people.

    • If you know that your primary value is wealth, the solution is obvious.
    • If you know that your primary value is family, the solution is also apparent.
    • Use your values when making decisions.

Learn and live your values. You’ll be able to make decisions quicker and less painfully. Life has fewer hard choices when you’re familiar with your values, and the best option is obvious. Practice this important concept, and you’ll streamline your life and decision-making process when your Guiding Points are in place.

Gratitude – The Blazing Center

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I couldn’t help myself. When I saw this post yesterday I just knew it would be my final curation post of the week. Gratitude is one of those things that all people understand. I have had a gratitude journal for years. I was first given the assignment by my instructor when going through the training to become a Christian life coach. I wrote an article about the assignment: Gratitude Journal. Of course, the date is wrong, because I made some huge changes to my site last year and only repurposed the articles that fit my new direction.

I like this article by Mark Altrogge because he keeps it real. And 7 Wonderful Benefits of Gratitude has some excellent points.

  • Thankfulness helps us remember God’s blessing in the past.
  • Thankfulness helps us appreciate God’s blessing in the present.
  • Thankfulness cultivates faith for the future.
  • Thankfulness helps us experience God’s peace.
  • Thankfulness helps us to avoid complaining and shine as lights in the world.
  • Thankfulness stimulates us to be generous, to want to bless others.
  • Thankfulness brings contentment and joy into our lives.

Enjoy reading the full article.

Trusting God for Good Gifts – The Blazing Center

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I thought this one was very appropriate for this time of year. Not being a pessimist myself, I don’t think I’ve ever looked at God’s Gifts quite this way. But in the end, it’s all about the cross and God’s Love! I hope you enjoy this, at least to me, a new viewpoint from David Appelt – Learning to Trust God for Good Gifts.

Sometimes, a good gift is discipline, but sometimes it is a true blessing that we enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). A good gift can be a job that we love, a healthy family, financial blessing, joy in fellowship in our Church, and more. God is always refining us, and that is a blessing. At the same time, God is also in the business of blessing us with good gifts.

No, I’m not talking about the prosperity gospel

The truth is, even as I write this, part of me feels a huge need to continually couch against the prosperity gospel (a la Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, or Steven Furtick). That’s a trap that many have fallen prey to—thinking that God only is good if he makes us healthy and wealthy.

On the other hand, there is the trap I fall into—knowing God loves me but partially living like he doesn’t really enjoy blessing me. Somehow I only really expect Him to bring refining struggle into my life instead of gracious blessing.

Read the full article.

Getting to Know Yourself – Prolific Living

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You may have noticed that all the curated post have a little bit of a theme. They are all about getting ready for new beginnings, new year. Spending some time to figure out where you’re going and what you are doing.

Today is no different, I don’t think you can do any of this if you don’t know yourself. I found this really great article from 2016 at Prolific Living about getting to know yourself. It’s 29 Questions to Discover the Real You.

At the core of our desires is living a life of purpose and meaning.

At the core of a life of purpose and meaning is being of service to others.

At the core of being of service to others is finding peace and happiness.

At the core of finding peace and happiness, we discover who we are.

And to do that, we must get over a little irony, that most of us hardly know – much less, know well – the single person we have spent every second of our existence with, our own selves.

I have a new program in the works: Discovering God’s Unique Design in You. Look for further announcements coming soon.

Life Plan – Michael Hyatt

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I read Michael Hyatt’s book Living Forward when it first came out in 2016. I took a lot of time and built my first life plan that year. I’m sharing this post of his from 2011 because I really like the metaphor of the GPS.  But in this post, he mentions a free ebook Creating Your Personal Life Plan the book is no longer available and I wanted to make sure you were aware of that from the beginning.

7 Ways a Life Plan Is Like a GPS System

He wrote this article in response to several of his followers not agreeing with the new cover for that ebook.

No metaphor is perfect, of course. They all break down at some point. But, I actually think a GPS system works pretty well. Here are seven ways it corresponds to a life plan.

One Word 365

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The month of December is the “Word of the Year” month according to Christine Kane. And I love Christine Kane! But the movement came before. All the way back to 1999!

Christine has a Discover Your Word Tool that you can get for free here: Your Word of the Year

Last year was my first experience with “Word of the Year.” It was the first time I had discovered my word. I spent a lot of time in prayer and meditated to find my word for 2018. You can read about it in New Year 2018.

But if you are looking for some direction on how to find your word, I like this article by Rey Lopez on the One Word 365 blog. Here is a small excerpt from the article.

With close to 200,000 words in the English language, trying to find that singularly perfect combination of letters to transform who you are throughout the year can be a bit overwhelming.

Does the focus need to be on my work or my home life?

Am I more concerned with my close relationships or my place in society?

Should my word be all-encompassing or dialed into just one aspect of who I am?

How is one word going to sum up my hopes for 2019?

I get it.

Choosing your word for the year is a challenge. But it could be as simple as knowing where to start, and there are a few things everyone can do to zero in on their perfect word.

You can also look around and find “discover your tribe,” or others that share your inspirational word. I checked I’m in a tribe by myself so far. But I’m not quite ready to reveal my word or verse for the year just yet. Wait until next week, I’m still trying to figure out just what it means.

Accepting God’s Love & Christmas Blessing Giveaway!

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For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself. – Galatians 5:14 NIV

That’s a powerful verse, and it’s found a few more times throughout the Bible too. And I’m betting you have no problem loving others. Sure, sometimes family can be a pain or our kids can make us crazy but when it comes down to it, we still love them. It’s ‘easy’ to love others.

But how well do you do when it comes to loving yourself?  

“That was a dumb thing to say.”
“How could I have been so stupid to do that?”
“I’m so fat.”
“My nose is too big.”
“I’m so ugly.”
“I’m so stupid.”
“I’m not smart enough.”

Those words, or similar ones, are often spoken over and over inside our heads. They aren’t words we would ever think of saying to those around us – friends or family – but we can speak them to ourselves without hesitation. Why is that?

Sadly, society has trained us to fall into the trap of believing we aren’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, etc. It’s taught us that if we aren’t a certain height, weight, and skin color (to name a few) that there’s something wrong with is.

Or what about when we keep reliving past mistakes over and over in our heads? Better yet, what about when we’re with friends or family, and we can’t stop bringing up the hurtful things we did to them years ago? Often, they have forgiven and moved on and don’t enjoy talking about the past hurts but we can’t stop doing it because we haven’t forgiven ourselves yet. And, finally – what about when we feel there’s no way God can love us when we don’t love ourselves and think our past sins are unforgivable?

Why do we fall prey to those things and think those things about ourselves? Especially as Christians. God doesn’t want us believing those lies! Just look at Psalm 139: 13-15:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. -Psalm 139: 13-15 NIV

Did you catch that? Fearfully and wonderfully made!

But let’s face it, we’re human, and it’s not always easy to fight the self-sabotage and negative self-talk which makes it challenging to show ourselves self-love and grace which is right where the devil wants us – ‘hating’ ourselves.

What Is “Self-Love”?

First, let’s get clear on how we’re defining self-love. If you look it up in the dictionary, it has a negative connotation:

The instinct to direct one’s actions to the promotion of one’s welfare or well-being, especially excessive regard for one’s advantage. Dictionary.com

That’s not what we’re talking about here. In this case, we’re using the word self-love in a way that means not beating yourself up for past actions, or for looking in the mirror and loving what you see regardless of skin color, size, or number on the scale. We’re talking about self-love, to accept ourselves…faults and all, just like He does.

So, how do you accept that God loves you even when you don’t love yourself? It’s not always easy, believe me, I know the struggle. But, it gets “easier” as time goes on if you’re willing to put forth the effort to work on it.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Rules:

Giveaway Rules: No purchase necessary. Must be 18 to enter. Void where prohibited by law. **Open to US/Canada residents only.** This giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or associated with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest. By entering this giveaway, you agree to release Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Woman to Woman Ministries, and all participating bloggers of all liability. Contest ends at 12:01 am EST on December 11, 2018. Winning entry will be verified. A winner is randomly chosen by Rafflecopter and will be emailed.

 

Participating bloggers:
Woman to Woman Ministries
Jenifer Metzger
A Delightful Glow
Coupons and Freebies Mom
Newly Us
As For Me and My Homestead
Breakthrough Homeschooling
Rachael Gilbert
Skill Trek
Lesa Dale
Bible Journaling Ministries
Days & Thoughts
A Heart for Your Home
Shari A. Miller, Living to Leave a Legacy

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