by Joey | Apr 24, 2018 | Devotional Series
For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.
Jerimiah 29:11
Months ago, I was in a scary dark place. Life has a way of just kind of throwing everything imaginable at you until you’re face down in a pillow wishing you could just disappear. I’ve been in that place a few times in my life, which is why I’m really glad I journal. When the darkness starts to creep in, I’m able to go back and remind myself I’ve been through tough stuff before and survived.
Though I am not a new believer, it is a relatively new habit for me to rely on faith when things get tough. I’ve done it before, totally inexplicably because faith was definitely not front and center in my life at the time. And in those experiences, I learned that whether I’m stressing and worrying or not, things find a way of working out.
Life got tough at the end of last year. I’ve made no secrets about that. And while I’ve always been a relatively optimistic person (it’s just my disposition), I experienced an odd sense of peace despite all the turmoil.
I always know God is at work when things get tough. In the moments of our deepest despair, I truly believe God is using us, changing us, moving us. We’re creatures of comfort and habit. We will almost always seek the path of least resistance. And unless something swoops in and forces us along, we’ll never move. We’ll never progress. We’ll never get from where we are to where we’re meant to be.
I relied hard on the above scripture in the final months of 2017. I couldn’t understand why things were going the way they were, but I did have an abundant faith that there was a greater good at play. Now, months later, I can look back and see the things from which God was protecting me.
Change is often painful and uncomfortable. We don’t usually seek it out. As humans, we like stability and predictability. But in order for you to live your best life, God is going to introduce painful things that force you to move along.
I will say this. There has never been a period of darkness in my life that didn’t make a whole lot of sense in the end. I’ve always found myself thanking God for the darkness once the light floods back in.
Celebrate the darkness friends, no matter how painful and uncomfortable it may be. It’s in those moments that God is paying you the most attention. He loves you abundantly, and when you can’t find the courage or strength to move, he will do it for you.
by Joey | Apr 18, 2018 | Joyful by Design
I went back to yoga last week for the first time in about a month. I’d been avoiding it. Ever since I took an extended break last fall, I lost my groove. And finding the energy and courage to accept the fact that I practically had to start over again was a little harder than I anticipated. It’s never easy to put yourself in a situation that you know is 1) going to be hard and 2) going to make you uncomfortable.
But ultimately, I missed yoga enough to make the decision to go. I mean, the fact that the gym is going to yank that money out of my account every month whether I show up or not helped nudge that decision along, too. Accountability.
And while I suffered through my first class back in a while, I had some pretty powerful thoughts that I realized could pretty much be applied to anything: chasing a dream, starting a new project, a fitness journey, starting a business, you name it.
Stay focused
I was shocked as I not-so-gracefully transitioned from one pose to the next that whoa, I can still do this. In the few classes I’d attended sporadically the last several months, I found balancing extremely difficult. And because of that, I’d make silly, sarcastic comments throughout the class to put myself and those suffering alongside me at ease. You know, subscribing to that whole if I call myself out on my shortcomings, it’s relatable— if someone else calls me out, it’s an insult school of thought. But I’d had a tough week last week, so I wasn’t up for much chatter throughout the class. Instead, I stayed laser-focused on the task at hand.
As a firm believer in the power of our words, I’m embarrassed to admit how shocked I was to discover how much better I did when I kept to myself and focused on just trying.
Go at your own pace
I attend a flow class. And the way that typically works is the instructor walks us through a sequence of poses and then encourages us to repeat that sequence at the pace of our breath. Now, I am usually surrounded by people who have been doing yoga for years. I only started last summer, and like I said, I took an extended break last fall. It’d be really easy for me to take one glance around the room, decide I’m a failure, and walk out.
But the truth is, where they are has nothing to do with me. If you keep going at your own pace, eventually you’ll end up where you need to go. If you give up because someone else is already doing it faster, better, or more gracefully, you’ll never progress.
Rest when you need to
You’re useless if you keep trying to push when your energy levels are depleted. Stop. Take a break. Rest. Then get up and try again.
Push through the discomfort
I wish I kept count of the number of times the instructor has told us to do something and my immediate thought was ha, yeah right, not possible. I think this might be my favorite part of yoga. Something new and different gets introduced, a pose you would never think you’re capable of, and on the other side of discomfort is success.
Sometimes things feel unnatural, but if you trust the leader, you can assume it’s possible so it’s worth trying. I’ve surprised myself on more than one occasion just by pushing through the initial discomfort. Keep going.
I think we all get way too focused on everyone else’s end result to allow ourselves to happily accept the messy middle. It’s in the midst of doing difficult things that we learn the most about ourselves. It’s where we find confidence and self-worth. If you live your whole life inside the bubble that feels safe, are you really living? Don’t just go through the motions every day. Make the decision to go after the things that you want–you have to begin somewhere. And so did everyone else.
by Joey | Apr 16, 2018 | Advice
Spring has finally sprung here in Charlotte which means lots of pollen, sunshine, and an overwhelming sense of awakening. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they spend the first few weeks of spring shedding layers both literally and figuratively? Spring tends to shine a new light on things that looked much different in the darkness of winter. Those cluttered closets suddenly feel suffocating. Your pale legs could blind a small child. And your emotional baggage feels heavier now that you’re dragging it into the daylight instead of cozying up with it on the couch in the midst of yet another Netflix binge.
I find it’s no coincidence that spring is a season of rebirth. Flowers bloom, caterpillars morph into butterflies, and you emerge from the fog that’s been sitting on your soul. Speaking of butterflies, did you know that caterpillars are born with all of the parts necessary to become a butterfly later in life? Those parts just lay dormant until it’s time for the caterpillar to use them. I find that really comforting. I believe God does the same thing with each of us. We are all equipped with everything we need at any stage in our lives; some things just lay dormant until it’s time for us to use them.
I feel like this spring I’m reaching for internal tools I never knew I had or would need to use. It’s a complicated business, decluttering your emotional life. It’s as if we spend all this time collecting people, beliefs, and feelings. But we rarely take the time to sift through everything and decide “yup, okay, you stay, You? Toss.” It’s like that iconic scene from the S&TC movie when Carrie famously tries on all the outfits from her life and her friends sit on her bed voting Keep, Toss, or Storage.
Our physical surroundings get a clear out every so often. If you’re anything like me, every few months you grow restless and you march through your house ruthless with a black trash bag. But when was the last time you did the same with the emotional baggage you carry around?
It’s heavy. But letting things in our physical world go is much easier than mentally sending up the balloon of thoughts. Physical things take up space, they nag us and remind us they no longer serve a purpose in our lives. But without our attention, our emotional load (man, I hate that word) just continues to pile up until it’s all too much.
I’d like to encourage you to give yourself some time to sift through things internally and decide what stays and what goes. Give yourself permission to let go of the things that are weighing you down. Free up your mental space to allow for new and exciting things to come into your life.
The universe abhors a vacuum. But in order for fresh, new opportunities, people, experiences, you name it, to come waltzing into your life, first you have to make space.
What’s something you’ve been carrying around that you’re prepared to let go?
by Joey | Apr 6, 2018 | Advice
It’s Friday. I woke up mentally and emotionally spent. It took everything in my power to respect the alarm clock this morning, and even once out of bed, it was a concentrated effort to open up my laptop. Dread.
In the past, I would have dismissed that feeling, chalking it up to a normal part of the everyday grind. But that’s not how I’m choosing to live my life anymore. So when that feeling crops up, I take it as a clue. Dread is an indicator that something needs my attention. I either need to reevaluate, adjust, or change something completely.
We’re often far too busy to do any kind of internal reflection–and then we wonder why we’re face down in a pillow sobbing so hard we can’t breathe. Listen to me when I say this; it’s really easy to fall into to a life you don’t want. And busy-ness is a major contributing factor to this epidemic.
Breakdowns don’t just happen. Burnout doesn’t come on like the flu. There are warning signs left and right. Symptoms. But we’re too busy to pay them any attention. We keep telling ourselves we’ll get to it later–but by the time it demands our attention, it’s so big that it paralyzes us all together. Cycle repeat.
If we pay these little nagging feelings the attention they deserve when they crop up, it’s ten times easier to identify the culprit and rectify the situation with small adjustments. Or, if you want to be like me circa 2017, you can let them all build up and then just set your whole life on fire. Seems like a no-brainer, huh? Right, that’s what I thought.
Boundary Check-in:
First, you need to give yourself permission to be 100% in control of your life. It’s important to recognize that your actions and decisions can and often will affect others. But ultimately, you need to embrace the freedom that you’re allowed to make adjustments as necessary.
- Take some time to sit with your thoughts. I like to journal things out, but if you’re not a pen and paper kind of person, you can opt for a nice walk or even just to sit outdoors for a few minutes, distraction-free.
- Run an internal thought check. I tend to think about my week, giving each thing my focused attention in order to determine how it makes me feel. If it’s something that doesn’t stir up any major emotions, I move on to the next. If it’s something that causes an anxious reaction, I jot it down.
- Once I’ve completed my internal thought check, I evaluate my list. Sometimes there’s nothing on it (yay!) but sometimes there are quite a few things that need my attention. For each item, I try my best to diagnose why it’s causing me anxiety and then I brainstorm a few solutions that could help eliminate the panic. System repeat.
It may come as a surprise to you to find out how big of a difference these little check-ins can make. A lot of times, anxiety can make something feel much bigger than it actually is. And when we stuff it down instead of paying it attention, it can rob us of our emotional energy. Many times, these little nagging anxieties can be easily resolved with a quick minor adjustment. But when we ignore them completely, things tend to spiral out of control and you’re left with a much bigger problem.
If you’re feeling all kinds of out of control today, take a few minutes to run a boundary check. Determine exactly what it is that’s making you feel panicky (spoiler alert: it’s probably just one specific thing that’s poisoning your entire day/week/month/outlook). And brainstorm a few actionable steps that you can actually take to solve the issue. I promise you’ll start to feel a lot better!
To help you out, I created an exercise to help you thought download! Get yours below!
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by Joey | Apr 4, 2018 | Real Life, Writing
Have you ever felt stuck? You wake up every single day and nothing is different than the day before? You keep promising yourself change, but nothing changes. That was me. Ideas swirled in abundance and the desire burned, but still, I was plagued with inertia. I want ______ and I want ______ I kept telling myself over and over. And while dreaming and identifying your desires are important, they’re simply pieces of a much bigger puzzle.
You can’t live in a state of inaction and expect to live the life you dream of. It’s simply impossible. In order to do the thing you have to do the thing.There were two words placed on my heart at the beginning of this year. DO was one of them. CREATE was the other. So one morning I woke up and said screw it, I’m doing it. I’m just going to create and keep on creating.
I have a somewhat unfortunate but also really exciting secret to share with you. In order to change your life, you have to change your life. I was in a state of waiting. I have no idea what exactly it was I was waiting for, but there I sat, primed and ready. Maybe I was waiting for the right time, a clue from the universe or a publisher to come knocking at my door and beg me to write my next book. Or maybe it was all of the above. The truth is, you’re never going to have what you want unless you take the steps necessary to have what you want.
The sad truth of it all is that change takes work. Change takes change. It’s uncomfortable and scary and chock-full of unknown variables. But if you’re in it for the process instead of the final product or destination, it becomes way less scary.
I like to write. Simple as that. I never feel more like myself than when I’m tapping away at a keyboard. No, I don’t always know what’s going to come in the end. Hell, I wrote Yeah, maybe in 2009/2010 and I’m just now releasing it in paperback. So clearly it wasn’t about the final product in the end. The point was to just do it.
We put way too much pressure on ourselves. We fool ourselves into thinking that everything we do has to be for a greater purpose. What if you just do it because you enjoy it and see what comes of it?
So in an attempt to introduce a much-needed change into my life, I decided to challenge myself into making writing a daily habit again. 1500 words a day for 30 days = a book.
People have been asking for a second book. I’ve been wanting to write a second book. So, writing the book seemed like the most logical next step. This draft doesn’t have to be anything amazing, I just have to do it. Once it’s all down on paper, it’s much easier to develop it into something people might actually want to read. But if kept sitting idle in my state of waiting, nothing was ever going to happen.
So maybe you’re waiting for permission. Maybe you’re waiting for a sign. Maybe you’re waiting for someone to tell you to just do the damn thing. Consider this all of those things.
Just do the thing, friend.
My deadline is May 6th. If you care to join me in your own 30-day project, comment down below. I’d be happy to act as an accountability partner for anyone willing to take the steps necessary to change their lives.
You can do it, I believe in you.
