There was a time in my life where my prayer was "Oh God if you could just give me a blueprint to follow in living successfully this life you have given me, then I would feel so much less stressed!" I wanted God to tell me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it because, truthfully, I was totally afraid I would mess everything up, again.
You see, my past includes a long season of massive chaos. So long in fact that my whole life began to fall apart. My health was greatly affected, my marriage crumbled, my parenting was characterized by anger and resentment, my home-keeping was overwhelmingly run with a type-a, control-freak mentality, and that same mentality ruined the joy I used to have in my work.
I was a complete and total wreck when God reached down and asked me to take the hand of His Son, Jesus. The choice to accept His hand and allow Him to restore me has changed the trajectory of my life forever.
It was then I realized that it was my choice to live life on my own terms that had created the chaos I was living with. Instead of continuing with a blueprint of my own making, I chose to invite God in to show me His way instead. The difference has been...dramatic. I am no longer characterized by anger, stress, fear, anxiety, or controlling behavior. Instead, because of God, I am redeemed and now characterized, humbly (for I am prone to wander back into my old ways) by His love in all I set out to do each day.
Maybe you are in that place today where you have realized how messed up you have made things, but you're not sure how to make it any better. Are you wondering how to live a successful life? One in which you feel accomplished, energized, excited about and even peaceful in?
Three Steps to Creating Your Blueprint for Success
1. Recognize: The first step to establishing a new blueprint is to recognize why you need a different one in the first place. Why isn't your life what you want it to be? What choices have you made in how you run your life (or allow others to impact it) that are contributing to your lack of success? Start by focusing on your weekly schedule. For a minimum of one week, track everything you do everyday. At the end of each week, take some time to reflect on what exactly happened and why. Here's a FREE DOWNLOAD for the tool I use to do this.
2. Reorganize: The next step is to reorganize how you fill up your days. What choices do you make that impact your stress level? Do you make time for God in every day? Do you make time for yourself? Do you make time to invest in your marriage? Do you make time for your kids? What is the biggest source stress in your life? What can you do about it? These are key questions, and ones to process over several weeks through prayer and reflection, asking God to show you how to reorganize your time. For detailed, specific help from the perspective of a woman who has "been there," may I humbly offer my book Cultivating Peace: Receiving God's Peace within Your Chaos?
3. Release: This final step is the most crucial. Once we recognize that it is our choice to live our lives on our own terms that caused the chaos we are living with, and have sought God's perspective on how to reorganize how we use our time, then comes our opportunity to release control to God for how to live this new life He has provided. This is where we release the idea of a mapped out, step-by-step blue print and instead embrace the idea that God can be trusted to guide us when we choose to focus on Him instead of our own ideas. This is a radical idea, I know, but when we plan to let go of being in control in favor of releasing that control to God, we can be assured that He will lead us better than we could ever lead ourselves.
You CAN Calm the Chaos!
If you would like to learn more about how to recognize, reorganize and release in order to allow God to create a personal blueprint for success, please check out the one-on-one, online, and group classes I am offering this fall.
What I have learned by choosing to trust God's ways to live this big life He has given me have, oddly enough, become the very blueprint I cried out to God for:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart (recognize); do not depend on your own understanding (reorganize). Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take (release).
(Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT, parenthetical statements are mine)
Join the Conversation: What area, Recognize, Reorganize, or Release, do you think will have the most impact on creating your personal blueprint for success?
Leave your comment below!