Today I restarted my morning routine, which consisted of reading "Trusting God Day by Day: a 365 Daily Devotional", reading "The Confident Woman 365 Devotional" and listening to a speech from an app called Peptalk Motivation. All of what I listened to this morning was about me taking more control of my thoughts. The first devotional I read stressed the importance of not over-thinking. The second devotional stressed the importance of having a clear conscience and the Peptalk speech stressed the importance of retraining my mind.
After reading the first devotional, I had been stressing myself out for about a month now because I have a tendency to feel as though I need to always know the answers. Whenever I don't understand why something bad is happening or why something is happening in general, I question God. One of the things the author Joyce Meyer mentioned that stuck with me was, "We don't want surprises; we want to be in control because we are afraid things won't turn out the way we want." This past month I have tried to put my faith in God, but not being 100% in control of certain things has caused me to become stressed. However, when reflecting on that daily devotional, I realized that I need to stop worrying so much and trust that God has a great plan and everything is going to work out fine.
In the second daily devotional, Meyer stated, "Confidence is faith in God and a belief that because He is helping you, you can succeed in whatever you need to do. However, if we feel guilty, we will shrink back from God rather than boldly expecting Him to assist us." When reflecting on that devotional, I thought about what I do whenever I'm upset. In those moments, I know praying is the best way to deal with the situation. However, I typically don't pray in those moments because I feel guilty that I usually only pray after something bad has happened. But the point that Meyer makes in the second devotional is that I need to stop worrying if I am offending God because He will always be there for me no matter what.
The Peptalk speech consisted of several speakers, so I'm unable to identify who exactly said what. There were a lot of gems dropped throughout this speech about retraining your mind and taking ownership of your actions and thoughts. One of the things mentioned was, "It's not the smarter people who achieve success. It's the people who procrastinate less, make fewer excuses as they take actions every day towards the goals they want to achieve." That stuck with me because whenever I'm comfortable, I become complacent and therefore don't achieve the goals I wish to achieve.
One lady who spoke during the Peptalk speech talked about how every human being has a five-second window, Within that five seconds, we have the ability to move from an idea to an action before our brain kicks into full gear and sabotages any change in behavior. For example, when I'm comfortable in bed and feeling sleepy and deciding whether I want to actually go to class, I have five seconds to decide whether I'm actually going to go before my brain makes the decision to stay in bed for me. So basically if you want to see a postive change in your life, you have to take control of your thoughts and not allow your thoughts to control you.
