Day 84- How to change your perspective and 'flip the script'
📖Daily Reading
Psalms 16-17
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
Psalm 16:11
You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.
David didn’t deny the challenge and difficulty of his circumstances, he constantly took them to the Lord. Time and time again he ends in a better mood and frame of mind than when he starts. To build upon the concepts of feeling overwhelmed and relying upon God and others and receiving reassurance, he also was able to use this to change his perspective on his challenges. Rather than staying in a place of burden, he was able to release his thinking that it was too hard, and that it was all up to him. In fact he was even at times able to receive gratitude, a new perspective that allowed him to see the joy and pleasure in his situation because the pressure wasn’t all on him.
“You will show me the way of life”. He is telling himself here, hey dude ‘we don’t have to figure this all out, ‘we can trust that we will be shown the way’. Not only that but he allowed himself to receive the gift of joy and pleasure in the whole experience of life, because he knows it is not all up to him. He trusts that will be provided support and guidance. You can too. God will use other people to speak into you and offer help if you will allow yourself to be imperfect enough and ‘weak’ enough to admit that you don’t have it all figured out. I am a recovering perfectionist in addition to people pleaser. I use the word recovering here intentionally. I am still very much a work in progress here and can find myself struggling in perfectionism and not even be aware of it. Can you relate to this?
I am also a rose colored glasses, silver lining kind of person, I can always find the positive - for other people. I can sometimes see a silver lining for myself, but that usually also means that I am also denying the dark cloud in the middle, in modern times this is often referred to as toxic positivity, and it isn’t helpful. So this is not what I am talking about when I refer to flipping the script, and this isn’t what David is role modeling for us in the Psalms. He is vulnerable, emotional, honest, raw, showing his weakness and in that he is able to see through the clouds to the silver lining. He is able to let go of his thoughts that is it all up to him, this allows him to see joy and pleasure in and beyond his circumstances, and also stay strong in his faith and calling even in the face of opposition.
This week I had a personal experience of struggling with overwhelm and perfectionism that was showing up as the dreaded ‘procrastination’. So if you are like me and you don’t feel like you are a perfectionist but you do struggle with procrastination, ‘there’s your sign’⚠️ as Jeff Foxworthy would say. What if you admitted to someone safe and trustworthy what you were struggling with? What if you prayed about it too? Maybe you would receive some encouragement and insight that lead to a new perspective on the situation? God uses other people and their words to help us. You might also be able to receive some joy and pleasure in a situation that previously felt overwhelming. When we keep our overwhelm to ourselves, because we don’t want’ to ‘burden’ others, the overwhelm just grows. Then your mood or behavior as a result may become a real burden to others, but by then you might be too ‘into’ your overwhelm that you can’t see it. Maybe you even add the person who you are trying to protect from being burdened by you to the list of people that are now somehow contributing to your overwhelm? See the avalanche we can cause in our ‘strength’ and stoicism?
Luckily, I have also have a coach that I shared some of my struggles with and also a husband who knows me well enough to not let me stay ‘fine’ when he knows I’m not, and enough self awareness to see that I was circling the drain of self condemnation. I was at the point in my procrastination, perfectionism, being critical with myself and in my denial and toxic positivity that I was on the edge of getting annoyed with my husband and daughter, just by their ‘sin of proximity’ 🤦♀️🙋♀️. Anyone else?
This is how the enemy can creep in and we can’t even see it. The pride of the perfectionist, the lie of self sufficiency and need to be strong and not a burden. We end up creating the very things we are trying to protect ourselves and others from. By the end of my finally letting myself be vulnerable, admit and share my struggles I had freed myself from the shame storm, which allowed a new perspective and attitude to come into my mind about the things I have been procrastinating about AND I even got some beautiful flowers 💐to remind me that I am not alone, I not only have support but I have love and an “I am for you’ person. If I had not done this, the evening might have ended up in an argument or me acting passive aggressively or withdrawn, and trying to find a reason to be annoyed with someone else, just to keep avoiding myself. Can you relate? The truth hurts doesn’t it. I don’t like admitting this to you or to myself, but the truth will set you free. I like being free more than I like being right or being seen a certain way now.
By the way I know not everyone has a person or people like this, and my person, my husband, and I have come to the edge of calling it quits which brought us to the end ourselves and the beginning of a new season of hope and renewed love. I felt very alone at one point, and it has taken me a few years of slowly dipping me toe in the waters of vulnerability and honesty to get to the point that I am now, and I am still feeling like a baby in this area.
So I will reiterate like I have done before to allow yourself to be a beginner and make sure you are vulnerable with safe people. If you don’t have this, ask God, he will show you the way and bring the right people to you. Even more than people, we have a God who is for us and sees our flaws and who loves us anyway and shows us the way of life and grants us the joy of His presence and pleasure of His living with us. So the next time your thoughts try to tell you that you need to do it alone, you need to do it perfectly, be the strong one, not be a burden, vulnerability is weakness to change our perspective and flip the script!
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Do you see the avalanche we can cause in our ‘strength’ and stoicism? What if you admitted to someone safe and trustworthy what you were struggling with? What if you prayed about it too? Maybe you would receive some encouragement and insight that lead to a new perspective on the situation?
📖Tomorrows Reading
Psalm 18
Coaching Opportunity
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