"THINK BEFORE YOU DO..."

Ever notice that everywhere you go…there you are …  that you can do the same thing over and over and it doesn’t change, unless you do something different. My Dad would always say to me….”think before you do” he always challenged me with that, and I always ignored his great advice, because I did not want to change how I did things.  I did not want to think about how I was thinking, and I did not want to see how my actions effected others.  I did not want to see that my thinking was the reason I kept falling into the same hole.   I did not want to see that my thoughts, attitudes and emotions were the things that kept me locked up, and created a rift in relationships.

 How about you?  Do you like to be challenged?   What does it mean to be challenged?  A challenge is an opportunity to grow.  It is an opportunity to reach beyond your current state and ability into a new arena of growth.  A challenge requires something from you. The challenge most often is something that you cannot see.  It is something that you do not possess, or haven’t attained to.  To take on a challenge, you have to be willing to expose where you stand currently.  It exposes your weakness, and it exposes your strengths. 

Exposure of strengths and weaknesses is not a bad thing.  It is good. It allows others to support you and come alongside your weak areas, encouraging and strengthening you, and allows you to utilize your strong areas to support them.  When we are challenged, we have the opportunity to grow.  The opportunity to avoid the challenge is there, but chances are the challenge will present itself in another way over time.  Growth requires a challenge, and definitely challenges your way of thinking, feeling and deciding.

Where are you at today when it comes to challenges?  What areas of your life are you unwilling to take a look at how you think, feel and decide? Are you happy to take a passive role in the way your life pans out? Are you okay with areas of dysfunction in your life, and how that effects others? Or are you ready to see some changes made? You cannot give what you do not have, but yet how great it is to give!  Every day at every turn we are presented with challenges, with opportunities to receive and exchange what we have for what we don’t have.  Are you up for the challenge?