The power of praying for our kids

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

In the rush of our everyday lives, it’s sometimes hard to set aside focused time to pray for our children, yet what a valuable habit it is to lace into our lives. Each day that we have with our children is another day, another opportunity to prepare the grounds for their future by praying into their lives, by praying for their future spouse, their character, friends and outlooks.
It is said that prayer moves the arm of God. You can pray and speak things into being, pray for protection and direction and purpose.
Sometimes from our perspective as mom looking into an unknown future, we may wonder what effect our prayers really have, wonder what exactly to pray for; but there is no greater proof and inspiration to pray than when we read how powerfully a praying mom shaped a child.

One of my favorite books is ‘How to be a God Chaser and a Kid Chaser’ by Thethus & Tommy Tenney. In it, Tommy says:
“My initial influences also entailed a small woman. Her pursuit began daily before I awoke. If I got up a bit early and ventured into the den or living room, I would see my mom ‘pursuing’ in prayer – Bible open, heart panting, passionately chasing God! Quietly observing that daily discipline affected me. It remodeled the blueprint of my future – and perhaps left a small footprint in the sands of time to mark the passing of a ‘God Chaser’. “

What a powerful and beautiful introduction to a child’s heart, to prayer and chasing God! Wiki says this about Tommy Tenney:

Tommy Tenney (born 1956) is an American preacher, best known for his message of “God Chasing”. In his book The God Chasers (1999), Tenney relates experiences of being “in the presence of God”, including one occasion when a pulpit was purportedly divinely split in two. He teaches that every christian should pursue an intimate relationship with God, and that supernatural occurrences are an ordinary outcome of the pursuit.

He has written over fifty other books and workbooks, including ‘Hadassah: One Night with the King’ with Mark Andrew Olsen, which was made into a film titled “One Night with the King”, in 2006. He is the CEO of the GodChasers.net which holds offices in Pineville (Alexandria) Louisiana. GodChasers.net operates under its parent of HDE.

If you don’t already have an outlined set of prayers and scriptures to pray over your child, Tommy Tenney’s book mentioned above, has a fantastic ‘31-Day Kid Chaser’s Prayer Guide for God Chasers.‘

Another worldchanger whose path in life was affected by the prayers of his mother, is K.P. Yohannan. In his book ‘Revolution in World Missions’ he says:
“Achyamma’s eyes stung with salty tears. But they were not from the cooking fire or the hot spices that wafted up from the pan. She realised time was short. Her six sons were growing beyond her influence. Yet not one showed signs of going into the Gospel ministry. Except for the youngest – little ‘Yohannachan’ as I was known – every one of her children seemed destined for secular work. My brothers seemed content to live and work around our native village of Niranam in Kerala, South India.
“O God,” she prayed in despair, “let just one of my boys preach!” Like Hannah and so many other saintly mothers in the Bible, my mother had dedicated her children to the Lord. That morning, while preparing breakfast, she vowed to fast secretly until God called one of her sons into His service. Every Friday for the next three and a half years, she fasted. Her prayer was always the same. “

KP Yohannan and his wife Gisela decided to give away their own possessions to help spread the good news of Jesus on the Indian subcontinent. They started by helping 2 dozen national workers in the first year. Then in 1979, K.P. and Gisela officially founded Gospel for Asia. After three decades, the organization now serves in 17 nations.Yohannan argues that Western missionaries are ineffective, and that it is more appropriate to provide financial support to missionaries from the relevant country; Gospel for Asia does this
KP Yohannan is the author of eight books published in the US and has authored more than 200 books published in India. His book Revolution In World Missions has over 2 million copies in print.

Let’s not underestimate the power of praying for our children, starting from today! Pray in front of them, pray over them at bedtime, pray for others with them, instill in their hearts a hunger and love for God that will stay with them when they have their children one day,  teach them to have a passion for God. Entire future generations under you can be changed and impacted by your daily prayers for your children in the next twenty years.
I encourage you to begin the habit of praying for your children daily, if you do not already!

In closing, here’s a prayer by Stormie O’Martian, on Developing a Hunger for the Things of God:

Lord, I pray that You will help (name of child) to be reliable, dependable, responsible, compassionate, sensitive, loving and giving to others. Deliver her/him from any pride, laziness, slothfulness, selfishness, or lust of the flesh. I pray that she/he will have a teachable and submissive spirit, yet be able to stand strong in her/his convictions. I pray that she/he will always desire to belong to a christian church that is alive to the truth of Your Word and the power of the Holy Spirit-led worship and prayer. Write Your law in her/his mind and on her/his heart so that she/he always walks with a confident assurance of the righteousness of Your commands. As shehe learns to pray, teach her/him to listen for Your voice. May there always be a Holy Spirit fire in her/his heart and an unwavering desire for the things of God.

Overcoming Frustration with your Circumstances

Do you find yourself frustrated with your current circumstances?
Wish things could drastically change or just improve even a bit?

Whether you’re a fulltime parent battling to balance parenting, your marriage and work pressures, or a fulltime parent battling to find balance in raising your children and finding some personal time, know that you aren’t alone. You can however, do something to change things. As the wise old adage goes

‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’

3 STEPS TO IMPROVING YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES

1. Take time out and evaluate things objectively
Sometimes being in the situation, in the heat of it all, can cloud your judgement and view on things. Take a half day off on a Saturday, sit at Seattle with a latte’, or [insert favorite relaxing activity here], and evaluate what you are frustrated about, what you’d like to see changed, and make sure you have a goal or end point. I personally pray for guidance when I do this. Maybe you’re a fulltime career person battling to spend enough time with the kids, or find you aren’t fulfilled in your chosen career. Perhaps you aren’t spending enough time with your spouse, or you’re battling to meet deadlines at work because you stay up too late with your family and are exhausted every morning at work. Maybe you’re frustrated or bored being a fulltime parent, and want to find a way to make some money. Whatever your problem, and no matter how impossible it may seem to solve, know that there is always a solution 🙂

2. Get some help!
A lot of the time, our problems can be solved slightly, if not fully, but just saying ‘I need help.’ I personally battle to do this, but am learning to. As a fulltime mom, for instance, I found trying to juggle kids, dinner, bathtimes, bedtimes, dishes, laundry and cooking all too much. By four PM I was exhausted, and then had to think about starting our evening routine of cooking, bathtime, dinnertime and bedtime stories. I had been sick for three weeks and was just burntout and not getting better! So I wrote up a ‘household contributions chart’ and put in everyone’s name at least once a week, in a task next to mine. So every evening while I am bathing the kids, someone else is preparing dinner, or doing a load of laundry. What I need to add to the list in order to solve the overall ‘burntout mom’ problem is most probably some time off on weekends, and an earlier bedtime, but the start has been made, and the busy busy role of being fulltime mom has been eased that much by just yelling HEEELP 🙂 Who can help you in your situation?

3. Work at the solution until the problem has been solved entirely.

It would be a waste of everyone’s effort to help me, if I didn’t make sure I solved my circumstance problem (burntout fulltime mom) entirely – if I didnt make sure I got that extra sleep, or took time off on Saturdays to do a hobby, or worked harder at my commitment to having a devotion time in the mornings (my grounding and sanity preserver). Likewise, be sure to make a complete list of ways in which your problem can be solved to the extent you’d like it to be. Ask your spouse for support in letting you work that hour later each evening until your deadline is finished, with the promise of a weekend away once you’re done. Get a babysitter in and do date nights once a week if your marriage is needing some TLC. Set some mommy/daddy-child dates for each child for the upcoming month if you are battling to spend enough time with your kids each week.

I encourage you to be proactive this week in solving your frustrations, be they big or small!

Good luck! x

The beauty & importance of devotion times!

So I’ll start off with a question for you.. 🙂 What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows?

Nothing brings to light the importance to me of devotion/quiet times, than a few chaotic mornings where I don’t have any. I have a few laaate nights, and can’t get out of bed the next morning, or my phone dies in the night and my alarm doesn’t go off, or I turn my alarm off under my pillow without remembering I’d even done that, when I roll out of bed at some late hour. Whatever the excuse.. That sinking feeling settles in really fast as I juggle making oats, getting hungry kids out of jarmies and seeing my hubby off. The day’s hit with a rush and I have no peace. I don’t have a grip on the day, and man do I feel it.

The more this happens, the more I really value that time. I love the days/weeks in a row where I do get up, where the alarm goes off and I don’t care that it’s 4:50am, I’m  hungry for that peace, for that grip on the day, for those prayers over my situations and family, for that time with God listening and pouring out my heart, the time of reading and learning and growing. Because once the kids wake up, the day goes on in the usual homeschooling, housecleaning noisy rush and I don’t have the time or the quiet to hear His still small voice. But the stillness and the peace of that devotion carries throughout the day. I know God has my day, my family, and others that I pray for, in His hands. I feel secure and confident and in control of the day as opposed to a that feeling of being a step behind the kids and the day, trying to play catch up.

A few things I find handy for making sure my quiet times happen are below:

KEEPING QUIET TIMES SMOOTH:

1. Set two alarms
The first is awful, the second gets you up if you put it in a place far from the bedside 🙂

2. Make sure your books, music, bible, etc. are all together in your ‘spot’
Nothing worse than groggily looking for a pen twenty minutes into your quiet time! Cue muttering.

3. Keep a variety of things to read/study
This helps me keep interested and excited; nothing gets ‘dry’

4. Know and get rid of distractions for good
Turn off wireless if you know FB is a weakness first thing in the morning, or move to a room where the kids and dogs won’t hear you and wake up the neighbourhood 🙂

I would love to hear what your variety of things to read/study/pray about is. Here are some of mine:
THE INTRIGUING DEVOTION  VARIETY :

1. PRAYER MAP:  Open Doors is awesome – I have a prayer map (link to it here) of the 10/40 window from Open Doors magazine (read more about them here, which lists the persecuted countries in the world. I pray for one a day, sometimes I pick one for a while.

2. DAILY DEVOTION BOOK: the authors vary, but I love the fresh topic and scriptures each day.

3.  KIDS PRAYER CALENDAR: I made up my own from the scriptures/ideas in the back of the book How to be a God Chaser & A Kid Chaser – by Tenney & Tenney. What a stunning idea, each day has a scripture focus, a prayer declaration & something to claim over your little ones. Love it!

4.  POWER OF A PRAYING PARENT: by Stormie Omartian. A short prayer a day, praying the scriptures over our children. Got to love this book too!

5.  THE BIBLE: I pick up where I left off the previous day, and just read a few chapters at a time. The Word transforms us from the inside out.

6. BOOK OF INTEREST: I plough through a book every 1-2 weeks, it is surprising how fast you can read, when you have that quiet uninterrupted time.

7.  PRAYER LIST: Unsaved family/friends, personal stuff you are praying about on a daily basis, and so on. Someone once said that prayer moves God’s hand, and I absolutely believe that.

8.  DIARY: Not to forget the diary where everything I learn, or want to remember, goes.

What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows? 🙂 I’d love to hear!

In closing, I read an interesting article recently about how putting ten thousand hours into something makes you an expert in that field. Well, the same thing applies to quiet times. Think over forty or fifty years of daily devotions with God, and reading and learning and studying, and what that accumulates to. Powerful stuff!
In my busy days, where I am rushing and busy and distracted, I remind myself that sometimes, God speaks to us in a ‘still small voice’ (1 Kings 19:12). He may speak in other ways too, but sometimes what I really need is some alone time with him where I keep my mouth closed and just listen 🙂 Life is too loud. Make time!

I encourage you to zealously pursue having your quiet times, and protecting that time, even when you really battle to wake up, or tend to procrastinate. It is hard to wake up super early, but know that that time is a great headstart to your day on many levels! Be strong!

TV viewing – how much & what?

A friend of mine recently spoke to her kindgarten class of four year olds about dinnertime and eating at the table. After a few blank looks and protesting, she discovered that the majority of them had no idea what she was talking about, as they ate with their parent(s) in front of the telly.
I was initially shocked, but thinking more about it, I realise how easy one can fall into doing that. You’re both tired, both get home after office hours, and all you want to do is relax and eat and not have to think or talk about anything much. Dinner + Telly, there you go.

Looking up the statistics on TV viewing, you realise just how many murders, violence and the likes you view over a year, or two or ten. It is shocking. Not only do you view a lot more than you realise, but you don’t really realise how desensitised you get to violence, violent crime news, etc.
A recent article I read online (found here) revealed a few of the following interesting, sad facts:

– The number of murders seen by a child by the time they finish elementary school: 8 000
– 54% of4 – 6 year olds who, when asked to choose between TV and spending time with dad, preferred TV
– 66% of Americans watch TV while eating dinner
– 200 000 acts of violence seen by age 18 on TV, including 40 000 murders

According to The Barna Group‘s research (George Barna wrote one of my favorite eye-opening books on children, called Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions, a must read!):

– a person’s lifelong behaviors and views are generally developed when they are young – particularly before they reach the teenage years
– a person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age nine
– “In essence,” the researcher noted, “what you believe by the time you are 13 is what you will die believing.

Delving a bit deeper into this topic, I found it interesting that a friend of mine’s three year old began being suddenly defiant after watching a few episodes of a children’s TV program about rebellious sheep who defied their owner. It is amazing that a  child who can hardly speak fluent sentences yet can learn powerful habits and attitudes from cartoons.

So, where do you draw the line? Are you not supposed to just get home and relax a bit in front of the telly after a long hard day? Are you supposed to pick your viewing down to what cartoons you let your child watch? That’s for you to work out and weigh up. In our house we stick to two or three educational cartoons & a few christian programs, and the rest of the stuff out there’s unknown to us 🙂

Here are a few things to consider doing, to manouvre your family in a viewing -healthy direction:

1. TOSS THE TELLY!
Personally, I know all too well how hard it is to be adamant you won’t let your baby watch TV.. until he is two and his sister came along, and then I was ever so grateful for the telly to distract him so I could just have a moment to myself. The moments turned into an hour a day, and my obliging TV-glued toddler never protested once. I understand it’s appeal. What we did when we got married (and man am I grateful for it) is we chose to not have a TV in the house. This year we’ll have been married for ten years, and still.. we do not own a TV. Not to say we don’t hire DVD’s ocassionally, but the beauty of it is we try and get into the habit of eating dinner as a family. At a table. We try to get into the habit of reading in the evenings as opposed to watching DVD’s (a hard habit to shake sometimes, but we try), of getting into hobbies, or socialising with friends. Some days I long to sit in front of the telly and just veg, but I project and think of how I would like my kids to grow up after following our example and habits, what I’d like them to value and love doing, and then we go for a walk at the dam and feed the ducks instead, or swim, even though it initially takes a lot of energy, which we don’t always feel we have.
We have friends who have a large family, and next to their television they have a few scriptures on a page, one of them being from Psalm 101:3 –
I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.” I think of this often. Love it, they challenge and remind me to keep my heart and mind pure and to protect and guard my heart. Wise words!

2. FIND A REPLACEMENT ACTIVITY
So you feel the pain of that dead time where you’re tired and just want to be entertained. Well, there are stunning alternatives to the telly out there. Considering how powerful the first ten to thirteen years are of a child’s life, it is important that we do the most we can in those years. I have discovered Discipleland. They are on our list of stuff to buy this year. They offer awesome books on the stories of the Old and New Testaments, as well as great teaching resources with leading questions that make you and your children think! Basically you get (well, for my two children’s age range) 8 Old Testament quarters and 8 New Testament quarters, each quarter has thirteen lessons, each comes with a book for teacher (mom), an activity book for the kids with stickers, etc. and a teaching poster. If we view each moment as irreplacable, as an opportunity to actively teach our kids something, this is a big thumbs up in my home. It isn’t too pricey either, and is a stunning way to teach your child the bible and the character of God. Imagine replacing mindless TV cartoons with 45minutes of this? Nice! There are many other ways to spend your time, if you are looking at replacing TV time. Dig deep and think about it, it is a valuable thing to choose to do!

3. WRITE UP A LONG TERM LIFESTYLE LIST
My husband’s big on this one, and I respect him so much for initiating this. He gets us (well, him and I at the moment until the kids are older) to write (down to weekly activities) what things we’d both like to be able to do and be, study, learn. We start off thinking of no limitations, no excuses, nothing, just imagining that the world’s our oyster 🙂 Then we write a long list of things we love doing, things we’d like to learn to do, things we’d like to study, etc. Then we write next to each if we’d like to do that activity daily, weekly or monthly, and then put it into a calendar. You’ll be surprised to find that you can fit a heck of a lot into your week, and can start even now to slowly learn/study/begin those things you feel are impossible or too expensive. Surfing in Thailand may not be an easy thing to learn to do considering I live in a landlocked city on the other side of the world, but learning Spanish is totally doable. Two hours a week is not impossible if I just learn to stop doing things that waste my time (goodbye NCIS and hello productivity!!) They say that 10 000 hours in a field makes you an expert. Those hours add up over the years pretty quickly! Don’t let life pass you by. Picture yourself in ten or twenty years, what you’d like to do and who you’d like to be, and work at it, in a planned way. Remember  that bad habits also add up – although I am mildly proud in a geeky way to have watched all TEN Seasons of Stargate SG1 while pregnant with my first child, man, what a waste of time! I could be nearly fluent in Spanish by now, know what I’m saying? If I had kept on going with cheesy sci-fi where would that get me in ten or twenty years time? Most probably ten kilo’s heavier and into a SG1 fan conference. Oooh.

I hope I’ve helped you relook the value of your time, as well as the power we as parents have being examples to our children in how we choose to spend our time. I pray God would help you and I to be wise in moulding ourselves after Him, as well as our children.

Moulding worshippers out of our children

Are we being examples to our children on how to praise/worship?

I’m not into forcing my kids to raise their hands, or do anything they don’t fully understand at home or church. But I do pray often that they would learn by my example and choose for themselves what they will do. So I have started being an in-public worshipper, as opposed to just quiet devotion times worshipper. An uninhibited God- lover and praiser in my lounge, every morning, while they play. From Planetshakers to Psalty, I sing it, I dance, shout, cry and they dance with me, draw on things they shouldn’t, or climb onto the table and tear up printer paper. Whatever. I pray they will absorb my habits, my passion for God and choose to follow when they are ready and old enough to understand.

God, make worshippers out of my children, let them learn from my example,  raise them up to be passionate for you, break their hearts for what breaks yours.

Grace, my 22 month old, gets into bed most evenings and puts her hands up and sings Psalty’s  ‘I love you.’ THE cutest thing to listen to. Ethan, my 3 year old, went to bed feeling sick the other day, and came out ten minutes later and announced,”I’m better, Jesus loves me. Jesus made me better’ He strung that logic together all by himself and MAN was I proud, and totally humbled at how powerful an example we really are. How he got to that sentence I do not know, whether it was from singing Jesus loves me a thousand times at bedtime for 2 years, or following how we prayed for dad’s beesting to be healed, Im not sure, but I do know that they learn and copy, and it excites and inspires me to be a better mother.

When arguing with your spouse drives you crazy!

Today, I had an argument with my husband on his way out of the door to work. Which is the worst kind of argument, for me because I can’t follow him around finishing the argument off, and for him, because I reckon women can handle a myriad of emotions in a single blink, whereas men can’t. It’s not a put-down, I think it’s just fact. My hubby may well agree.

So, we argued, he left, I mulled over it, he mulled over it, and a perfectly productive day was wasted. Later in the afternoon we finally got to chat to each other on skype, just touching base, and continued to argue. Which led me to this post.

Here are some handy tips to make arguing not so ugly..

1. Stick to Skype arguments
We often argue on Skype, and I realised perhaps others out there don’t know the beauty of arguing on skype! Really, it is beautiful. I can rant and pull my hair out, sigh and roll my eyes, smirk and be sarcastic even, if it gets that ugly, and all he sees is my text. Beautiful! Being a woman who can process a thousand emotions and trains of thought per minute, I can type thirty lines of opinion and emotion in a flash, and he can reply without being interrupted. That should sell arguing on skype to all men, instantly. NO INTERRUPTION, that is unheard of in arguing, right? Skype truly is a marriage saver for us sometimes.

2. Argue in public
It is really awkward and socially inappropriate to rip each other’s heads off in Seattle. So we don’t. We are forced to speak under our breaths, usually (I can grin at how funny this is on hindsight) our ‘conflict management sessions’ peak in intensity, where we whisper really emotionally, and then both stop and breathe. We do this on repeat until we a) fix the problem and kiss and make up, or b) run out of coffee money. At least you get to go home with closure and happiness 🙂

3. Argue in the garden, not in bed
Worst case, the neighbours get a low down on your current argument about the budget or how mad hubby gets about the maid, or how totally illogically I argue. Nontheless, we argue, get it over with, and go to bed happy. Nothing worse than arguing in bed and sulking to sleep, which isn’t really recommended anyhow – Ephesians 4.26 reckons “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” which is something my husband’s grandparents told him once, and is totally true. Which leads me to another point..

4. Don’t argue while angry
Probably the most important of all points. If  you learn to wait it out a bit until you have your emotions under control, chances are you’ll be able to argue it out civilly, without feeling your blood pressure’s about to explode.

5. Keep it decent
Name calling, even swearing if it gets to that, may seem easier when arguing and feeling attacked, but those words last long after the argument’s over. Keep that in mind, and literally make a set line together that you both will not cross, no matter how bad the argument gets. This helps a lot, trust me! And remember, the ‘D’ word should be a no-go zone, divorce is never, ever an option, or spoken of in our household. 😉

6. Timing is everything
Pick your timing. I know arguments usually feel URGENT, but if I’m about to go to the dentist and am nipping straws, I don’t want to argue about why I said that rude comment the other day, and hubby doesn’t want to argue just before he leaves for work, or just before we are about to sleep. Refer back to point 1 about arguing on Skype.. sometime in the day is probably best 🙂

7. Bear in mind the treasure your marriage is, ultimately
We all say things we regret in arguments. Try, in the heat of the moment, to either walk away and revisit later, or to just zip it, swallow your emotions and pride, and for the sake of your marriage, just make peace NOW. Sometimes it’s hard to just give up all the little points you feel you HAVE to make heard, and just say, “honey, this is silly, and not worth our energy, I’m sorry I ..XYZ.. , I love you, please can we let it go?” but it is well worth learning how to do. Your marriage is a long term awesome precious thing, and working on keeping it scar free is really great to learn and practice.

So the next time you feel mad as hell, and open your mouth to retaliate or argue with your spouse, ask yourself if it’s worth it, if it’s put off-able til later, if it can be done over skype, or if it can be avoided altogether.
Speaking of all this, it’s time for me to go and find my hubby and apologize for a crazy day, and then kiss and make up. 😀

Happy marriage building! x

No, you can’t have THAT now.. the art of delayed gratification!

What is it about waiting, that we just don’t like?
In a world where everything is instant and easy, how hard do we find it to just..wait. We get impatient in traffic, give the waiter a hard time if our order is slightly late & heaven forbid if the train is a minute off schedule.

At the end of last year, hubby (who works for himself mostly) and I sat down to chat about our list of debt to pay, medical appointments to make, etc. All feels great when you have a list, and know where you’re going..
This year, business has it that for  the first time in our blissful married lives, we are getting a set salary, not the ‘make as and when we need’ which we (meaning I!!) have become so comfortably accustomed to. My ideal list has since gone from exciting to gobsmackingly horrid – I will have to wait painfully as we tick off only one item per month, as opposed to most  urgent few first. Oh the horror.
This, after a good subconscious scrutiny, has been the reason for my red flag mood this week. Which has led me to mull over that thing that is so foreign to so many of us.. delayed gratification!

Do you recall the Deferred Gratification Test that was done in the ’70’s?
If you weren’t around then, like me, and have no idea what that was about, no worries, here’s the short of it:

In 1972, an experiment was conducted by a psychologist – Walter Mischel –  on a group of four year olds. Each child was offered a marshmallow. They were then given the option of having it now, or waiting a few minutes, and having two. Some children grabbed the marshmallow right away, while others were able to hold off and wait. Interestingly,  Mischel followed up on the children as adults and discovered that those who displayed deferred gratification and didn’t eat their marshmallows that day, were considered emotionally intelligent, were  generally more self-motivated and successful in school. On the other hand, those who simply couldn’t wait generally had low self-esteem and had suffered in school, labelled by both their teachers and parents as being easily frustrated, stubborn and envious.
This got me smiling, and thinking about my grumpiness over not getting what I want..now.

4 Tips to Feeling Great about Delayed Gratification

1. Have a long term goal
Having a set, written goal as well as specific smaller goals inbetween, helps you stick to the plan and not be swayed by emotional moments and temptation. Reward yourself for sticking to each small goal. We all like rewards, even if given to ourselves, by ourselves 🙂

2. Prioritise!
Think about what your priorities are, and then write them down if need be. In a moment of weakness, recall that food on the table is  more important than your shoe cupboard, or that nonurgent camping gadget, say, and walk away!

3. Projection
Envision how great  you will feel the moment you reach your goal. The pain of saying no to fifty cheeseburgers will be sweet when you set foot on the beach with your toddlers for the first time. Hold out!

4. Remember the marshmallow test
If some four year olds out there can say NO!, heck, so can you! Seriously though, it is something that you can learn over time. It can help you overcome irritating habits, like overeating and overspending and help with getting out of debt.

Go for it, sit down and write. Regardless of your bad habits, where would you like to be in a year, or five. What would you like to have, or do or be? Make some financial goals, or study goals, whatever it is you need to, set some smaller goals to help you stay on track, and go for it!

How to kick some New Year Resolution butt!

What is it about human nature and new year’s resolutions? They seem incompatible from the start.

We make a nice list of things we’ll begin, let’s say, getting up early every morning to do bicycle crunches. January first, you begin. Easy does it, but a start is a start, feeling good.  By day three, you’re feeling the effects of that extra hour less sleep, and you’re snoring on your back mid-crunch. Evening of day three you’re googling other ways of getting great abs that doesn’t require as much .. change in routine. By February it’s all crashed & burned and forgotten as a ludicrous idea anyway, and you’re back where you left off last year, still working off those christmas mince pies. Why do so many new  year’s resolutions end up that way?
I think it has to do with Wiki’s quote of  Isaac Newton’s 1st law in ‘ Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ‘

“The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.”

In normal English, that means an object, (that would be you), will continue moving at its current velocity (zero, and no, walking around the office does not count as exercise) until some force (reason or motivation) causes its speed or direction to change.

So, how do you kick some new year’s resolution butt?

Planning, people. We all know deep down how really difficult it is to change, to keep the ‘oomph’, to keep the habit alive. Here are some tips to getting things going, and keeping them going..hopefully permanently:

1. You need a solid reason WHY
Why do you want to get a six pack? ‘Because it looks hot’ isn’t solid enough. ‘Because it would make me feel stronger, better about myself, and happier in my marriage because I know my wife loves it when my body’s looking it’s best’ Now we’re getting warmer.. analyse your deep seated reasons, write them down, stick them somewhere where you can see them every day. On the fridge, in the car, on the bathroom mirror. Your WHY.

2. Have a specific goal in mind
Cycling like a speed demon for months on end because you enjoy it may work for some, but you’ll likely land up back on the couch if you don’t have a goal in mind. Do you have a set number of pounds or kilo’s you want to lose? Put a number to it (be realistic too). Do you have a race in mind that you’d like to train for? Print out a training schedule and grab a friend or join a club. Set a goal, and then plan your baby steps inbetween today and your goal. We did this one year, just 5 months prior to a half marathon, and felt like absolute champions when we got over the finish line. We’d never run before, let alone finished a race in another city, but planning prevailed. Set a goal, plan a path to it, go for it.

3. Accountability is a winner
If your goal isn’t something you can do with someone, like training for the yoyo championships or for long jumping, say, then write up your goal and your WHY and stick them somewhere where others can see them. This gets you out there, lets the world know of your intentions and goals, and keeps you from slipping into December’s-old-self. People are watching, and expecting great stuff from you, come on!

4. Believe in yourself, self talk!

Get out of your old bad self talk habits that may try and creep in and sabotage everything at 5am in mid winter when you’re battling to crawl out of bed. I find a handful of small cards with affirmations work wonders. They don’t have to be lengthy or lame, just find a few lines that really motivate you deep down, that talk to you and inspire you, and carry them in your wallet, or stick them on your fridge (or inside of your cupboard if you prefer them to be private). ‘I value myself deeply and love eating healthy food’ etc.
You know what I mean.. what works for you?

5. Pray

Personally, I believe wrapping it all up in prayer does wonders. Asking for help to keep disciplined, to grow in character & faithfulness, from God who sees everything and every heart, is the best accountability of all. When I’m trying to get up at 5 for a workout, or to write, even if noone else on the planet is aware of my trying to open an eye, I know He knows. He knows my WHY’s and my dreams and frustrations, and that I’ve asked for His help is.. reassuring and powerful in a way.

Start today. It’s only the 9th Jan! Never too late to begin 🙂
Sit down somewhere quiet where you can think, dig deep and plan to make resolutions that excite and inspire you, and then plan to succeed.

You can do it!

How does she do that.. & I’d give my left thumb for those shoes..

Don’t you sometimes find yourself dissatisfied with some area of your life?
I definitely do!

The lead couple kissing in the driveway before leaving for work, in the movie you watched last night plays clearly in your memory while you’re carrying out the garbage in your PJ’s, seething over an argument you’ve just had with your spouse about dog food. SERIOUSLY?! Get a room, you mutter.
I’m a lousy wife, says the voice in my mind. Sigh.

The picture perfect family on that billboard over the highway smile down at you from a sunlit beach, while you drive home in traffic with two hungry, irritable children and no glimpse of a holiday in the foreseeable future. Your heart takes a dip – every good family goes on holiday. My kids are being deprived, I’m a bad mommy. Sigh.

From then on, for a week, every advert showing holidays has you gritting your teeth in frustration and misery. The joyful attitude of the last two years’ mutual decision to save instead of going away seems like some distant craziness. I.WANT.A.HOLIDAY!  (and I feel darn lousy for not being able to be that perfect family) is what’s really chewing at me.
Intro snappy wife and mum.

What is it that makes us get into thinking like that? What is it that makes us feel utterly miserable and dissatisfied about certain parts of our lives or ourselves? Where do we get our picture of what it means to be a beautiful woman, have an awesome marriage, and a beautiful home?
Have you ever stopped to dig deep and ask yourself?

I have to laugh at myself as this is an example of my train of thought sometimes:

I’ll wake up in the morning on a, say, Tuesday, subconsciously mulling over that fashion mag I read yesterday in the dentist waiting room, and open my shoe cupboard. (well, more like..my shoe microcollection of 5 pairs). Slops, slops, boots, brown heels, black heels. I’m a 30 year old attractive wife, no slops for me anymore. I can look as great as that model.. Heels it is! I whip out the sexiest pair, dust them off, and put them on, feeling instantly sexier for having them on. A flash of fashion mag model streaks through my head. Hot shoes..check. Great wife… double check.. and off I head to a normal morning of two toddlers, housework and general chaos. Sitting on the loo five hours later, I look down at my aching feet and wonder who the heck I’m kidding. Heels and my stay at home mom lifestyle don’t seem to gel as easily as expected.
Back they go in the shoe cupboard, and are replaced by the old trusty slops. Joy . They may not be hot, but they are comfy, I tell myself, feeling unsexy again. Some days I just want to feel more exciting and more important than just a ‘comfy’ wife. I want my norm to be that hot magazine model. I mean, isn’t that the norm? Can I not just step out of bed and into hotness? Every magazine I seem to read lately says so in picture form, or so I believe.

My realisation is that if we’re yoyoing with our emotions and pictures of ourselves, we are getting our skewed pictures from media, a lousy liar of a place.

4 Ways to Get Over that media Malarkey

1. Scrutinize what you see and watch

When Jennifer Aniston wakes up in that movie with perfect bed hair, and that stab of ”oh my word, she is beautiful and I wish I woke up like that, I must be wierd’ runs through your mind subconsciously, STOP right there, look at her and go ‘Really? Do people REALLY wake up like that? Nope, they take half and hour to GET like that. I’m normal, she’s misrepresenting, darn woman!.. move on.’

2. Dip into the Scriptures and take a look at what it says about YOU.

The looking glass for our ‘perfect wife, mom, family and home’ should really be the Bible, not media and everything it portrays. Learn what it says about who you are, who you are meant to be and what your levels are. And then LOVE THE HECK OUT OF YOURSELF while striving for your best.

3. Write/Consciously work out your pattern for your life

Immerse yourself in God’s Word, find what it says about you, your family,  your role as wife and mother, and then set in your heart ‘This will be my ideal, my standard;  this is what I, by God’s grace, will allow to be the pattern for my life and family.” Settle it in your heart & find your peace.

4. From today, be aware of your internal dialogue & master it

Be aware of what dips your mood, your esteem or your outlook on certain things, and nip them in the bud. Become a more self analysing person, questioning what you believe and why. Dig deep and change!