How to Listen to Your Life

So much about what you do with your money is so much about what you're doing with your time. It's so much about how you're doing with your emotions, and it is also so much about how you're doing in your mind. And it's all usually connected to how you're doing in your relationship with God. Here's why we lose track of our money, we lose track of our time, we lose track of our emotions, we lose track of our mental health, we lose track of our spirituality. It is because we stop paying attention. There is a chapter in my book She's Still There that talks about this concept of paying attention. The reason why there is a planner, a 90-day planner soon to come for 2025, a dated annual planner, is because the majority of the work that you have to do in this world is pay attention. The reason why you're confused about what God is saying or not saying in your life is because You're not paying attention. Sure, you're listening to a lot of podcasts and you may be going to church and you're reading a lot of books, but are you sitting still, like in silence, and actually listening, spending intimate time with God to hear what he's saying? Do you notice? Do you write down? Do you reflect on when there are shifts that happen in your mental state, in your soul, in your emotional state, in your finances, or in your time? And do you say, what is that telling me? Where I'm at right now, my whole life, y'all, is if I got something happening on the inside, if I got something funny happen to my money, if I have something happening in my marriage, with my kids, with my house, the state of my house, I have to ask myself, why is this happening? If it's creating overwhelm, if it's creating discomfort, if it's creating question marks, most of the time, here's what we do though. We keep going. And even when we don't keep going, we rot. You understand what I'm saying? We dry rotting. We in the bed watching Netflix, doing nothing. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I'm saying if it's an unhealthy coping mechanism, it is a bad thing because what you're doing is trading one thing that's creating a problem for another thing that's creating a problem. The only way that you stop having the problem is if you pay attention to why the problem is being sourced in the first place. What are these things telling me about me? So on my birthday weekend, it's going to be emotional. I wish my mother was here. I wish sometimes that, um, certain things would happen that may not happen for me on my behalf. And I've rode that ship a long time ago where what I really want to happen, I will do for myself. So I'm gonna make sure I do something during the year. It may not be on my day, but during the year where I, I'm gonna enjoy myself. I, I enjoy my life, but that does not mean that there are certain times, you know, and for many of us, those times emotionally are celebration, or maybe they are difficult times where we are just emotionally charged about it, or we have thoughts about it, or we have feelings about it, or we look up and the money is spent over it, or we, you know, or we are frustrated about it. Something is going on. There's— our life is talking to us, and the thing is, we don't really listen that well. I am a journaler by heart, by design. I'm a writer, but my life doesn't even allow me to go deep in my journaling practice the way I would really like to. So I bought a 5-year journal. I talked about that a few years ago on a Christmas collection, because it gives you 5 lines to write about what happened today. And then, y'all, there were some days I was missing that. So in the planner, the reason why there are questions in it is because I realized that sometimes we're moving too fast to really think about our life or to ask ourselves the right questions. And so Basically, I put a coach in the form of a journal connected to a planner. And to me, it's a great idea. And for those who have used it, they've said it's made a big difference in paying attention to their lives. And I've had so many people tell me, I know I need to think about my life, but I never quite know how to kind of get there, which is why many of us go to therapists or we go to, we go to counselors or we will have long conversations with friends because we just need somebody to kind of poke and prod to kind of help us get there. Where your treasures are, there your heart will be also. Your money is an indication of what matters to you, what's working and what's not working. Your emotions are an indicator of what's working and what's not working. Your mental health— when you start getting so overwhelmed that you can't finish sentences— I mean, it might be menopause too, it might be stress too, it might be grief too, but Either way, when stuff just doesn't seem like it's locking, you gotta ask yourself, what's going on? When you realize that things are changing, the dynamics are changing between you and a family member, you and your spouse, you and your kids, you gotta be able to ask yourself questions. What changed? When did it change? Can I put my finger on it? What have I done to be restorative, to be loving? What do, where do I need to set a boundary? Like, you gotta pay attention and then explore these things. One of the reasons why our time moves so fast. One of the reasons why the clock won't stop ticking. One of the reasons why it feels like we are always on a conveyor belt for life and day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year blows by is because we don't slow the clock down by answering the questions, by being bored. By sitting with our pen in our hand, waiting for the thoughts to come, by sitting in silence and waiting for God to talk to us. It is a practice, y'all, to sit in silence. It is a practice to write things down. It is a practice to ask yourself, self, how are you doing today? It is a practice for you to think apart from your significant other. How are we doing? And what do I need to do? Because I can only control myself. What do I need to do to shift to the things that I need and also that God wants for me to be experiencing? If you do not ask yourself questions, if you don't check in on yourself, if you don't go in for your yearly exam with your doctor, and if you don't go in on a regular exam of you. Let me tell you what Satan's going to do. He's going to speed things up, even if speeding things up means that he's simply throwing balls of fire your way. Catch that fiery dart, catch that fiery dart, girl. Don't, don't, don't miss this, okay? Reach up high, go down low, catch all these things. Job, what would happen if I attacked your servant Job? Yes, he hit Job where it hurt. He took his wife, he took his kids, he took his wealth, he took all these things. But more than that, I think, or at least comparable, is the fact that there were all these things for Job to catch at the same time. I want to call you to attention today. I want to call you to attention, Inner Circle, as we work through this financial challenge. And I want to call you to attention as you work through your emotional challenges and as you work through your relationship challenges, as you work through your internal battles, those challenges that you fight that no one knows. I want to challenge you to slow down, to listen. My mother's life verse was John 15:5. I'm the vine, you are the branches. If anyone abides in me and my word in him, he will bear much fruit. Abiding takes effort. You have to sit with God. You have to sit with his love letter to you, his word. You have to sit in prayer, but then you have to ask, because some of us sit, but we're so disconnected in how we apply our spiritual revelation to our emotional pain or our mental pain or our marital pain or our pain with other relationships. And because we're not asking ourselves those questions, we are super churchy. And we're super bitter. Like, we're super spiritual, but we're super angry. We're super knowledgeable, but we're super emotionally unbalanced, and we won't go see a counselor, and we won't go— we won't talk to our friends and tell them what's really going on, and we won't even take the time to admit it. Those are their battles that we all have within us, but those battles don't have to stop me from having a good day. They can if I let them. They don't have to. I saw this, uh, Instagram video yesterday where this girl with no hand was braiding and adding hair into another girl's head. No hand. So she used the one hand to hold the hair while she parted. She just used it as this extra appendage, but without any of the dexterity of fingers attached. And what is my excuse? My son was born from a birth injury, traumatic birth injury. And there's one thing that the doctors can do to kind of straighten out his arm a little bit and give him a little greater range of motion. It would require him being in a cast for 6 months. And I said, I really think you should do it. He'll do it if I push him to, but he said, Mom, I'm fine. He does not bring That girl did not bring their infirmity, what we used to call handicaps, their physical challenge. They don't bring that mindset with them. The problem is, y'all, we bring the mindsets with us. The new frontier. This is my new year, right? Turning 52, which is crazy. The reality is We all have challenges of some kind. The question is, do the challenges have us? You can allow the goodness of life to happen and hold onto that at the same time you hold on, or at least put in your hand so you can look at it, what's quite not right. You can bring your challenge to the party. Is what I'm trying to say. If you struggle with depression, bring it to the party. Acknowledge it. Even let the people who love you know it. Sometimes y'all, if you, if I go out and y'all see me struggling, just know I'm doing the best I can to be there. And just, and have that friend that you'll say, if you see me getting quiet, if you could just sit with me, tell them what you need, let them help you. Bring your challenge to the party. If you have been struggling for all of your life to get your finances straight and you can never seem to do it, instead of taking another class and trying to learn another trick or pretending like you don't struggle, bring it to the party. I don't know why I can't get my finances together, but I'm going to show up and, and I'm going to bring that. I'm not going to ignore that, but we're going, we're going to keep working through it. Bring my challenges to the party. The worst thing you can ever do is not bring your challenge to the party. Let me tell you why. It doesn't have to have a front seat. It doesn't have to be the star of the show. But if you don't bring it with you, you're not bringing you. So even though I wanted to redo that TikTok dance that we did on Instagram, because I didn't know they were going to circle around and spot me, that was their fun thing. And at that point I learned to dance. I didn't have nothing else. I wasn't ready with nothing else. So I'm looking all Oompa Loompa-y and all shaky buddy and all of this, you know, squatting down and doing, sticking my tongue out and all this craziness. And I wanted to redo it, but you know what I brought to the party? My oofy goofy self. I brought her and I let her shine. She deserves to shine too. She does. If you've tried it over and over again and you failed, bring that failure to the party. If you have gotten the next job and after 6 months you realize it's the wrong job again, okay, when you get your new job, bring the failures and the lessons learned to the party. The reason why so many people cannot live as fully themselves is because they're hiding their handicap. They're hiding their challenge. They're hiding their struggle. You don't get to Be fully you. And I don't mean everybody has to know your business. I'm saying you have to know where your challenge lies and bring it with you. It's when you stuff her— she's still there— in the closet and hide her, that's when you will always struggle with authenticity, transparency, and fullness of life and joy, because you will not have fullness if you hide your challenge. In the closet. So the question I want to ask you this morning is, what is your challenge? What is your concern that you try to keep tucked away, but you know that if you hide it, don't deal with it— let me give you some practical examples. Your marriage is struggling. You don't like who you're married to. Y'all are roommates passing like ships in the night. Bring it to the party so that when you go to the party, the literal party, and see your friend with her boyfriend and this friend with her husband and this friend with, you know, her fiancé and that friend with the husband, then they just seem to be all in love. When you bring that person to the party, you fully, you can look at them and enjoy the party and hold that part of it in your hand. 'Cause here's what'll happen. If you don't bring her to the party, if you don't bring her out, she will fight for attention. And sometimes in her fight with you, she will convince you to not live. And that's what happens when people start pulling back because they don't want to, they don't want to, they're fighting that battle internally and not acknowledging it is what it is. I brought all of my Oompa Loompa to the party yesterday. Okay, I told you already, I'm like, why is everything up here hanging way down here? It was the dress, y'all. Partly the dress. It just, it was just accentuating everything that was on top. But it doesn't matter. I was looking and thinking, girl, why you moving like you 52? What do I have to bring to the party? I have to bring to the party. And I, and someone said it in my social media, she said, I am just so glad that as you are, you had a good time. And I don't know what she meant by that, but I know how I took it. Yes. Cause I decided a couple of years ago, it, what am I doing? What am I doing? Not bringing her to the party. What am I doing? Not taking the picture or not buying clothes to dress her. What am I doing? This is who she is right now. And whatever the physical challenge may be, this is who I have to bring with me to the party. You've been fighting with your hair for decades. Now it's thinning. You try to figure out what to do. Your old style won't work. Maybe it's time for you to bring what you have to the party. Maybe you trim it or cut it or go natural or put the perm back on or whatever you have to do to just say, this is what makes me feel like I am fully here right now. The gift for me going to Hawaii now for 3 times in the last 4 years, I believe, was that I bring my whole self. There's no judgment there. People that I know or don't know, the weather is perfect. I'm not fighting hot or cold. I just wear what makes me comfortable because I'm there by myself. And when I do meet up with other people, these aren't people that I really know well, it's for work. And so I bring my full self to the party. And once I experienced what that felt like to sit in the sun with this dress, one of my favorites, Target, Universal Thread, thank you very much. Then why am I not wearing this dress at home? Out. If she makes me feel the way I feel when I'm in the place where I bring my whole self and have nothing to hide, why am I not wearing this dress here? And I'm not saying that everything you wear on vacation, you gotta wear in your hometown. My point is it made me realize that I made a decision to bring the whole girl with me out of town near the Pacific, in the middle of Pacific Ocean, but I was leaving the challenged parts of her behind, which means I'm not doing anybody any favors. In fact, I'm doing myself a disservice. What is your challenge? And whether it's your birthday or your anniversary, or whether it's the summer, whether it is, um, you know, the holidays, or whether it is the new job or the old job or the new school or the new kid or the new marriage or the old marriage or the new church, the old church, the new education that you stopped and then you restarted, whatever it is, you gotta face that challenge and bring it with you. You may be like my son and say, I don't even want to change it, Mom. So if you haven't seen Inside Out 1 or 2, you should see 1, then 2. If you've seen 1, please go see 2. You need all the therapy for free, or at least for the price of a movie ticket that you can get. But the point is all the emotions matter. And the more we do to try to piece ourselves together, control the outcome with the parts we like, hiding the parts we don't, the less of a full throttle experience you have as a person. You have the opportunity as you get older to not fake the funk and not pretend to be someone you're not. But so many people still do. You don't have to wait until you're 52 or 32 or 72 to figure it out. You can decide wherever you are right now, right now. And what's the litmus test for what you can do to know if you are walking fully as yourself and bringing your challenges with you? Fruit. Peace. Joy. Patience. You show up as someone who is satisfied, even if there's still need for growth. You show up for someone who is complete, even though there are cracks and crevices that may need mending. It looks like you showing up and enjoying your life. Robin Williams is a comedian that most of us are familiar with who took his life, sadly. And everybody said he brought so much joy to everyone else. And he did. And I can't speak for him. I don't know what he was bringing to the table or not. I just know he struggled with depression and that ultimately is what influenced his decision to take his own life. There are some things that will only get healed, y'all, when you bring them to the table. When in safe places and spaces, you divulge What's really going on with me? Where am I really struggling? What, what is really happening? Where you go to the therapist or you go to the pastor or you have an honest conversation with a friend. I really want to bring my whole self to the table and I'm really nervous about this, but I want to just let you know where I really am. It's a risk. I know. But what other alternative is there? Living like a shell, living half-staff, living not finished? I think not. So I want you to bring all of her with you. The reason why there's a planner, but the reason why there's a Circle Up Guide, which has questions in there too, it's free with your membership. If you're a Community Connection or Coffee member, ask yourself questions. The reason why I end every podcast usually with a question. There are free questions on my website for every single podcast episode. There are questions. Listen and then think. Because if you don't look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself some questions and you just drag along whatever part of you makes it today, you aren't living. And I want you to live. And life is joy and life is hard and life is peace and life is conflict. Life is loud and life is quiet. Life is full. Sometimes life is empty. Life is God and life sometimes is God, where are you? But if you're willing to live at both ends of the spectrum, both joy and pain, peace and a little chaos sometimes when you're working some things out, Honesty and Thanksgiving. If you're willing to bring both things, all things with you, that is where the road to full living is. So here's to living full throttle. Here's to living with full joy. Here's to living with a smile on your face and your challenges in tow. Here's to choosing gratitude, but answering questions honestly. Here's to starting over and starting again. Here's to you. Doing you as fully you and always you.