Have you ever needed to break the cycle? Haven’t we been here before? Is that the same house we saw? Yep, we just went in a big circle. Siri is confused, or confusing you. You can relate, right?
I’ve gone in circles as well, once in a canoe. I circled myself and a kayak right into a bush. There are of course, a few times you may want to be going in circles; races, bumper cars, and doing donuts on a jet ski.
We go in circles in life. Maybe it is the weight loss yo-yo game, same fight, different day; all problems, no solution. Conversation that leads to “we are right back where we started.” I often struggle with stories that I make up in my head. They play over and over and over until I’m feeling like a broken record. It’s a vicious cycle.
How do we break these cycles?
A circle, by definition, is a “continuous curved line, which is always the same distance away from a fixed central point”.
To break the circle requires a change in distance or direction. If you’re taking all lefts, try going right or straight. If you’re me in a kayak, get a tow! If you’re struggling with weight, money, or relationships, do something different!
I see cycles break in my students sometimes. They will have a rough morning, go to Specials, and come back a changed kid. The change in direction breaks the cycle of the morning.
When those stories are playing in my head round and round, I have found that if I change what I’m doing, whether it is my physical activity, who I’m talking to, or switch from stories to songs, that breaks the cycle.
Is your life in a vicious cycle? The Journey Training offers participants tools to change their perspective, a safe place to evaluate their life’s direction. Break that cycle by enrolling in the next Threshold class!
If you’re a Journey graduate needing to break the cycle, consider enrolling in Launch and you won’t just break the cycle, you’ll go into orbit!
FREE Mini Journey Training
Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!
Not long ago Holly and I were at a friend’s house enjoying a visit on their back patio. It was a beautiful warm evening, and I looked up and noticed a large and ornate wind chime hanging securely from a branch high above us. I watched the wind chime as it danced around making a beautiful soft song in the breeze. It’s funny how God often uses simple objects in nature to teach me life lessons – it was time for another one of those teachable moments.
As I looked up at that wind chime in the tree I noticed the gentle tension it’s weight was placing on the cable line it was hanging from. All the pieces were aligned and hanging neatly in place, ready for the wind. As long as that wind chime’s cable line is straight and securely anchored to a strong branch of the tree, all of the other separate parts can work together in harmony and make beautiful music when the winds begin to blow. It is the deep strength of the tree and its branch that allows that Wind Chime to operate at its full potential, becoming what it was created to be – an instrument that makes beautiful music in response to the winds of adversity. The chime was correctly aligned vertically to that branch, which made all of the other parts aligned as well. Had that same wind chime not been securely fastened to a strong tree branch, the same winds would have brought it crashing to the ground.
God reminded me in that moment that this is an example of my life. Recently I experienced strong head winds blowing against me in my life through a recent job loss. It forced me to completely reevaluate my priorities and that what I was drawing my security and strength from. Through my relationship with God, the love and support of my family and friends and the training I received from The Journey Training, I am able to see the season from a different perspective. I am resisting playing victim and am using those winds as a valuable tool to build my faith and trust in God – and to deepen my love for Him and for others. It hasn’t been easy, but being anchored into HIS tree and branches has made all the difference as the winds blow!
Think about this – what “branches” are you placing your trust in? What is your anchor to bring security in your life? Is it a career? Money? Health? Possessions? Relationships? These branches give us only false security in life and bring us temporary happiness and fulfillment that is fickle and fleeting. When the winds and storms of life’s stresses come and begin to blow on us from every side, what or Who do we cling to?
Remember this – the wind chime makes beautiful music when the winds are blowing. When it’s completely calm outside the instrument is silent. It was not created for the calm, but for the wind. Likewise, we were created to reflect His glory through the ups and downs on our Journey through life. The bible tells us in James 1 to “count it all joy when you face various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
We all need times of rest and renewal, but remember this – trials and challenges are a part of our journey. God uses these times to carefully shape and strengthen our character and reflect His glory and power back to the world. John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Rather than going through life carefully trying to avoid all hardships, focus on anchoring deep into The True Vine, accepting that we will face adversities. And know that when the winds of life blow hard on you from all directions, your life will make beautiful music to everyone around you and bring glory to Him!
I betcha won’t ever look at a wind chime the same way again…
FREE Mini Journey Training
Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!
At the beginning of the year, someone asked me a question – a question that seemed unnatural to me. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?”
I was thrown off guard because I naturally think in terms of how I can make someone else’s life better, easier, or less worrisome. When the question was aimed at me, I didn’t know what to say. After much consideration I finally declared what I wanted, “No pain!” That seemed like an easy answer because I was in my fifth month dealing with shoulder pain. Major pain! I was four weeks out from a surgery that was more involved than first thought and the surgery came after an intense four months of physical therapy.
My answer was meant to appease the person asking it because it was obvious that I was in a lot of physical pain. Yet my answer avoided the real source of my pain – emotional pain. A betrayal that had caused me so much pain that I chose to go numb rather than to feel it. If I felt it I’d have to deal with it, and I didn’t want to deal with it because it was going to take work – a lot of work.
Finding your way requires direction
Life is a journey, and the first step in a journey is to know your destination. My destination was “No Pain,” which may be unrealistic for many reasons I won’t go into here. So I changed it to a journey of healing, with the final destination of health.
Once you know your destination you can begin on the path to it. When there is pain blocking your path, you tend not to head that way. This was the difficulty in my case. Pain was blocking my path, preventing me from arriving at my destination. But in order for me to be free from the pain, I needed to face the pain and deal with it.
Flats require attention
Facing and dealing with the pain in my journey was going to be like driving a hundred miles, getting a flat tire along the way, and continuing to drive on the flat trying to get there. It only causes more damage and could make the car inoperable.
If I pull over but don’t change the flat, I’ll remain stuck and never reach my destination. If I pull out all of the tools needed to change the flat, but if I don’t use the tools, I sit still on the side of the road, watching everyone else getting closer to their destinations.
Fix-a-flat and get moving!
Sometimes fixing a situation in your life requires an extra hand – someone to come alongside you who has the tools and ability to help you. That is what The Journey Training did for me. It connected me with people who have the tools I need, so as I am on my way, I can fix the “flats” along the way. It is an empowering, freeing and self-strengthening opportunity that I recommend for anyone to attend. If you’re too afraid to begin, or you’ve begun and have a flat, reach out the The Journey Training and get the tools you need to help you along your way today! Your destination awaits!
FREE Mini Journey Training
Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!
You may have seen a report recently about two climbers, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson, who became the first to successfully free climb the “Dawn Wall” route of Yosemite’s El Capitan face. January 14, 2015 marked the end of a 19 day trek up the sheer rock face that placed them in the record books.
Seven years of planning and a lifetime of practice in completing other complex free climbs prepared this duo for achieving what many, including themselves, considered an impossible feat.
The climb took them up a path that traveled back and forth and even downward at times as they headed toward the summit. In preparation, they spent countless hours rappelling down the face of the rock to map even the smallest cracks or ledges that they could utilize to make their way to the summit. Each successful foothold or handhold represented movement toward their ultimate goal.
Aided only by safety ropes should they slip and fall, which they did multiple times (Jorgeson fell 11 times on just one section of the climb), they successfully completed each of the 32 sections or pitches before moving to the next.
At the end of each days climbing, they rested on a “portaledge,” a temporary horizontal surface with a rainfly, and suspended themselves from the face of the wall in order to get some much needed rest from the physical demands of free climbing. Every few days, supplies were delivered to the climbers by their friends on the ground who were acting as their support team.
How can you apply their achievement to your life? Are you wanting to reach a goal, quit a bad habit, or overcome an addiction?
Look at the lessons below and apply them to your situation:
Size up your challenge and plan appropriately. Lack of planning in a free climb may spell death. Fortunately, lack of planning to reach your goal or make a life change is rarely life threatening, however it can certainly result in setbacks in your attempt at change. Minimize your potential for setbacks with planning that is appropriate in complexity to the challenge at hand.
Imagine your own rock wall you need to traverse. The bottom represents where you are today, the summit – where you want to be, and the wall between the bottom and the summit are the challenges, behaviors, temptations, and old habits you’ll have to overcome to reach your goal.
• Between you and success are potential opportunities to fail or succeed.
You’ve studied your behavior patterns and have identified the potential areas that you might sabotage yourself or just make a mistake and experience temporary failure.
• Every forward step matters, even if it is a small one.
Just like the climbers, a minute ledge or foothold may be all you need to keep moving toward your goal. You may feel like some of the steps you take don’t matter, but you’d be wrong. Every step in the right direction takes you toward your new goals, so celebrate each and every one of them!
What is one small step you can take toward overcoming your old ways?
• The path usually isn’t straight and it’s not going to be easy.
Remember the saying, “the shortest path between two point is a straight line?” That may be mathematically accurate, but it is rarely the case when making life changes or achieving a goal. Just like Jorgeson and Caldwell, the path for your success will undoubtedly take you sideways and possibly backwards at times. Mapping your path ahead of time helps you keep your focus and not lose heart when you don’t “feel” like you are making progress or it appears to others that you are losing ground.
Keep in mind, even when Jorgeson or Caldwell fell, they didn’t fall all the way back to the starting point. Slipping when you reach for a crack to hold onto or when you place your foot on a small ledge doesn’t mean you’ve failed with a capital “F”, it merely means you’ve experienced a momentary setback and have an opportunity to learn how to better identify your next small step and try again for success. Successful people know that they learn as much or more from their “failures” as they do from their successes. As Arthur Greeno, a Journey Training facilitator states, “Failure is always an option. But so is Success.”
What “failures” have you experienced in the past? Did you learn from them or treat them with a capital “F” and give up? What lessons can you learn from your past setbacks that can empower and energize you toward future successes?
• Have an accountability partner and support team.
Any task that we can reach by ourselves probably isn’t stretching us much and causes us to live in comfortable mediocrity. Reach for a larger goal or develop better lifestyle choices that require you to enlist the help of others. The help may come in the form of a mentor, coach, or accountability partner. The key to remember here is that you can’t achieve great things in life alone. Everyone needs support in some form or fashion.
Even Jorgeson and Caldwell had each other and a National Geographic Camera crew for accountability and encouragement. Add to that, their family and friends were there to provide assistance and supplies when needed.
Who are your accountability partners to help keep you keep on track? Who do you have around you to provide encouragement? Who do you have to help sustain you during long treks in your journey?
It is worth it.
So why endure all of the planning, frustration, setbacks, vulnerability, and reliance on others? Because it’s worth it! You are worth it! It’s worth all of this for you to become a better you and to help you in your pursuit in overcoming “impossible” obstacles. When you become a better you, then you can help others better themselves.
For more information on Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell’s climb of the “Dawn Wall” of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan rock, see the links below.
On the journey of life, resistance to change can exposes itself in many ways, ranging from foot-dragging, to sabotage, to even outright rebellion. Studying universal sources of resistance gives us the ability to see when we may be resistant to change ourselves. Here are several warning signs to watch out for:
• Excessive Uncertainty.
To some, change can feel like walking off a cliff blindfolded. This anxiety can cause us to push back from anything we view as “change.” We all naturally seek self preservation and safety, so it is common for people to choose to remain in misery to avoid the uncertainty of change. As the saying goes, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
• Everything seems different.
Change naturally brings new things into our lives. But we are creatures of habit. Since we are often lulled into daily routines, change often jolts us into consciousness, often in uncomfortable ways. We can resist change if it shines a spotlight on things we’d rather have stay the same.
• Loss of face.
Change is a departure from the past. We can perceive change as admitting that we have done something wrong that requires a change. If we buy into that thought process, we often resist change to save our ego and perceived reputation.
• Concerns about competence.
If changes mean that our current skills become obsolete, we often resist change so that we don’t have to learn new skill sets. If things would only stay the same, we would not have to feel like we are not up to the new task.
• More work.
Change is indeed more work. Those closest to change are often overloaded and resist it in an effort to reduce the load.
• Past resentment.
The ghosts of the past are always lying in wait to haunt us. Old wounds can be reopened in times of change.
• Ripple effects.
Change can create ripples and affect others around you. These ripples can lead to disruptions in routines, workflow, and even in the way we think.
* Have you found yourself resisting change lately? If so, do you see things like these cropping up within you? How have you dealt with them?
FREE Mini Journey Training
Discover How To Find More Passion and Purpose In Your Life!
