Settle Down
📖Daily Reading
Joshua 11-14
🎥 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
Joshua 11: 23
So Joshua took control of the entire land, just as the Lord had instructed Moses. He gave it to the people of Israel as their special possession, dividing the land among the tribes. So the land finally had rest from war.
Conceptually if we are ‘the land’ and the battles and wars are with our fives senses and our ‘higher’ selves and ‘lower’ selves. This passage here reminds of the importance of rest. God finds many ways to remind us constantly of this truth throughout the Bible. We can’t keep up the pace of battles at all times. We also need to give our bodies and brains an opportunity for the changes we have made to settle into our bodies and this can only happen when we take time to rest.
Here in America in particular this goes against our ‘go hard or go home’, ‘hustle’, ‘I’ll sleep when I and dead’, ‘suck it up buttercup’…. culture. We are an ambitious and impatient group and we don’t respect the importance of rest. Rest is where change happens. We know this from the process of becoming fit. Muscles don’t ‘grow’ while we are doing the hard work - they ‘grow’ during the rest period. Science is also learning more and more about sleep everyday too and the importance of sleep and sleep cycles. This is when our brain sorts things out and categorizes and files and refreshes all of what happens during our conscious waking hours. Our brain doesn't just shut down, it goes to work for us! It is essential!
Conceptually I am going to drill down further into us being the land - not just our bodies but our nervous systems. Our nervous systems also need time to process and settle down. One of the harmful side effects of our ‘hustle’ and ‘get it done’ society is that many of our nervous systems stay fired up- the sympathetic nervous system. You have probably heard of the fight, fight, freeze or fawn response that we have to stress. Many of us stay in a constant state of one or all of these which is exhausting and depleting. Just like Joshua recognized how hard war is on the land and that it needed time to settle down and also the people needed a break and time to settle down. In the settling down process and rest periods is where our nervous system can switch back from sympathetic to para sympathetic which allows us to calm down, and get a ‘lay of the new land’. To make new important connections and exchange of information of the old way and new way can be solidified and made permanent with in us at a fundamental identity level.
If we don’t allow this full process to take place and respect this need for rest and settling down, we can find ourselves in a harmful cycle of wearing our selves out conquering life and reacting to demands and desires, crashing and burning and then getting back up to fight again. A cycle of short term ‘successes’ but then we find ourselves back flighting the same battle. We are missing the ‘settling down’ part of the process where we allow the new to settle into our new identity to take up permanent residence and letting our para sympathetic nervous system to take over the new information and calm down and literally breathe in the new and exhale the old.
The definitions of settle are: ‘begin to feel comfortable or established in a new situation’, ‘turn one’s attention to; apply oneself to’, ‘become or make calmer or quieter’. Are you allowing the changes (battles) you are working so hard on time to settle down into you? Pay attention to your nervous system and allow time and space between changes or battles.
We often want to quit or change all of the things all at once - lose 20 lbs, get muscles, meditate daily, eat ‘healthy’ all in 30 days and then we exhaust ourselves and then we feel guilty (because we set the bar too high and tackled too much at once), then for many of this might lead to feeling shame then we give up and say ‘what the heck’ and then go right back to our old ways. Then we get tired of ourselves again and think we are failing then we look for the next challenge or ‘quick fix’ then we tackle too much again and then before you know it you have been trying to lose the same 20 lbs, keep a budget, quit or moderate drinking, etc, etc.. for five or 10 years or longer.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
What might happen if you allowed yourself maybe 5 or 10 years to tackle all of the things and you worked on one thing at a time and you took the time with each thing (maybe a year or two) to really change at a fundamental identity level and you also gave yourself and your nervous system time to settle down in between each change? Here is a paradoxical truth to ‘noodle on’: When you take more time have more time!
📖Tomorrows Reading
Joshua 15-17
Coaching Opportunity
Let's make 2023 the year of YOU by laying a solid foundational mind set! The world needs what only you have to offer! Give yourself the best gift ever, the best version of you is ready to rise & shine!
Book your free📞Wake Up Call today to learn if this is what you have been waiting for!
If you have stuck with me this far, then you are not reading this by accident, I believe God has a plan for you and is calling you forward!😉🤩
CONNECT WITH ME
Subscribe to Rise & Shine✨Together Daily Encouragement
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/felecia.b.holmes (personal)
Rise & Shine Together Private Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1093183278239989
You Tube: Rise & Shine Playlist
|