It’s easy to have a great attitude when life is great. What about when everything is going wrong? How do you keep a great attitude then?
On this week’s episode of The Whole House Podcast, Diane Tarantini and I share some of our Job syndrome stories as well as what God taught us through them.
- Whether it is physical, financial or emotional circumstances, we can learn to ask God to change us in the midst of the crisis.
- Often, just doing the next thing in the midst of the circumstances teaches steadfastness.
- When physical sickness or an injury limits what we can do physically, we have to watch our emotional response.
- When our negative emotions are in overdrive, we can quickly form toxic responses.
- It takes 21 days for certain protein changes to happen in the brain, – for the new memory to become self sustaining and for the old memory to be broken down.
It takes three cycles of 21 (63) days to completely form a new thought pattern.
- By day 7, the protein connection holding the memory in place is a bump shape, day 14, a lollipop, by 21 it is a mushroom. YOU must repeat the 21 day cycle three times for a thought to become automated.
Awareness is the process of bringing thoughts into captivity.
Our signals come from two sources:
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External- 5 senses.
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Non conscious- metacognitive (your memories).
You have to develop disciplined thought lives, and part of that is increasing awareness of what you are allowing in your mind. Be aware of the signals coming in and understanding the internal environment of your mind.
When you think, you also feel. When you think a thought, you also bring up an attached emotion. Emotions and feelings are different.
Attitude is a state of mind – a thought plus its attached emotion. Attitudes influence what you say and do.
If the attitude activated is negative, then the emotional response will be a negative or stressful feeling.
If the attitude is positive, the feeling will be positive. Your attitude will be revealed no matter how much you try to hide it. So, you say, “I’m in a bad mood.”
Research has shown that mental practice -imagination, visualization, deep thought and reflection produces the same physical changes in the brain as would physically carrying out the same imagined process.
Brain scans show that the parts of the brain activated by action are the same parts activated by simply thinking about an action. This shed new depths and understanding for the scripture – Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”- Hebrews 11:1
As young women, we often live our lives as if our energy is finite. We live as if we have unlimited energy and we hit our thirties, forties and fifties and realize we begin to have major health issues. If you are young, you can learn the lesson now-
You can’t do everything, but you can do one or two things well.
It’s best to practice making choices now before stress and physical symptoms crop up. If you choose to do what is essential now, your body will thank you later. So will your family. If what is essential to you is God, husband and children, then the things outside of this scope are not essential. If you have the mindset that you can do it all, you will eventually face the consequences. If you use the measuring stick of what is truly essential for you today, the consequences will be positive tomorrow.
As a young stay-at-home Mom, I used to volunteer for things thinking – this will only take an hour. In truth, with the driving, planning, preparing and getting out the door, the hour turned into four or five. When I returned home, I was tired and cranky. I had used all my reserves for someone else. What was essential? What was my priority? My family. My little children who had no idea why I was not happy or why church stuff made me unhappy.
It was a disservice to God, first of all for me to say yes when my insides were saying no (quietly) and I reasoned it away. It was, and still can be a disservice to my family because my witness to them became – God, church, and all of that just makes people cranky. My attitude was not one of gratitude.
My kiddos are grown now. This doesn’t mean I suddenly have unlimited energy and time. I still must choose what is essential. I also have the added limitation of several immune system disorders. With that in mind, I must choose ONLY what is essential for me, not what others say is essential. I have tried that route. It only ends up affecting my body and no one else’s.
Once my energy envelope is empty, my mind, mood and attitude suffer and I have no one to blame except myself.
The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes the obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. — Greg Mckeown
Many of the aspects of our mood and attitude we have control over. We can say “no” when we mean it. We can strip our calendars of things that we know are not our “best yes”.
We don’t have to do everything. We should never take on responsibility in order not to hurt someone’s feelings. They can take care of their own feelings. If whatever it is isn’t your primary responsibility is, let it go.
Here are some of the resources mentioned on the show:
You can listen to the podcast here:
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