You can be Empowered to Live the Life You Love!

[Audrey Lamb]

You can be empowered to live the life you love!  I have learned the shortest distance between discontent and content is in the power of gratitude.  Gratitude does not change your circumstances.  It changes you… it changes your entire perspective on life and people.  Once your perspective changes, you can operate from a position of strength.

No one likes to suffer, go through hard times, or struggle.  That is very normal…but it is just not life.  I do quite a bit of counseling and the two biggest hurdles people have is 1) accepting the fact  that there is no “magic bullet”

to make it all go away; and 2) understand that a crisis is a pathway; it is an opportunity to “a greater life and a greater you!”

In the midst of it all you CAN experience, levels of joy that stem from knowing it is a temporary situation. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy really does come in the morning.  What ushers in the morning of a new day in your life?  You got it, “a grateful heart”.  Find something, even if it is very small to retrain your mind. Keep holding on to the one small thing that you can be grateful for.  Over a short period of time, gratitude will increase because you have made room for it in your heart and mind.  Before you know it, you will be saying, “I feel my help coming on!”  See, first you think the thought, then the emotion will follow. The right “habit of thought and thinking pattern” has to be established in you first, then the feelings will follow bringing with it new perspectives and strategies to overcome every obstacle.

One of my greatest joys in life is sharing the wisdom I have gained from the poor decisions I have made, wrong turns and wrong relationships.  I show people how to 1) navigate out of destructive, toxic and unfruitful situations; and, where possible, how to avoid them altogether.  You have to recognize the “yellow blinking lights”.  These are signal lights that say, slow down, there is danger ahead.  Get off this road and go in another direction.

I have been exceedingly blessed to see lives transformed by sharing my own experiences in life, relationships and ministry.  I am so grateful to God that the things that should have destroyed, or even killed me, have empowered me.  Now I can, and I do, spend my life helping others to live the life they love.

We will all have challenges but the ability to harness an “attitude of gratitude” will dramatically decrease the power of any circumstance to steal the power God has given you.  You have been wired by God to, first of all, achieve “self-mastery”; secondly, exercise authority and  dominion over your own life; and thirdly, be able to enjoy your life and those in your sphere of influence.

How do I “destroy the little foxes” that come to make me ungrateful? First, I look into my heart and I ask the question,  what am I believing, (do I have faith?).  I take inventory of my mind (what thoughts am I thinking habitually; what false beliefs am I embracing?) and lastly, what is the condition of my relationships  (How am I treating God? How am I treating others? How am I treating myself?).  I should never expect to be grateful if I am critical of myself and others.  Being judgmental and critical steal gratitude away like a thief in night.  Furthermore, being judgmental harbors bitterness and anger.  After that exercise, I begin the process of discarding my negative thoughts and malignant ways.  I replace them with:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8

Today, cultivate a grateful heart and soar to the heights of your personal greatness by being a light to those around you.

Manifold Blessings,

Audrey