Waiting, Gratitude, And Perspective

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, without my blessing blinders on, I would spend more time upset with God about the things I had to wait on rather than grateful for the abundance with which he bought them when they came. Let me tell you about my God. When he makes you wait for something, it's gonna be worth the wait. I am a living witness to this.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Don't bring, don't jump on my work. Don't bring, don't jump a bowl. Don't bring Don't Jump.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

What's

Welcome And Why Count Blessings

SPEAKER_01 0:45

up, everybody? It's your girlish Speaks, and welcome back to another episode of my podcast, I'll Just Let Myself In. It's the podcast, but we don't wait for an imaginary permission slip or a seat at an imaginary table. We let ourselves into our God-given doors. I have been reflecting so much lately. I don't know if it's because the weather has gotten nicer and I've just been outside a little bit more, but I have been very reflective on a topic that I think will encourage so many of you and hopefully help you to reset some parts of yourself if you're feeling a little bit off. I have been thinking very intently and intensely about my blessings. And I want to talk today about us counting our blessings. You know, that's an old school saying, count your blessings, you know. And I think about this so much because we live in a world where it's so easy to compare yourself to other people. It's so easy to focus on what's not going well. Um, it's so easy to just wake up, go online, and be bombarded with so much bad news. And on top of that, we all got real life stuff that's happening to us, right? Like it's not like you don't have your actual life and your actual family and your actual health and all the things that desire to take our joy and our peace. But I have realized that when you really start to focus on and count your blessings, you kind of unlock something new. So today we're gonna be talking about counting our blessings, focusing on our blessings, and I really believe it's going to encourage so many of you.

From Worry To Faith Through Evidence

SPEAKER_01 2:36

For me, you know, this is something that people would probably think comes very naturally to me, but it actually does not. If you have known me in my adult years, probably the last decade or so, you probably think I'm naturally a very faithful person, naturally a very optimistic person, naturally a person that believes that things are gonna work out and go well, and I am that way now. I'm that way because for so long I was not that way. For so long I was a worrier, for so long I was an overthinker. And those things still uh exist in my personality. I'm not completely cured. But when I see them starting to creep back in, which I was, you know, we'll get to that, but that's why I'm focusing on all my blessings these days. Uh, when I see them starting to creep back in, I know that I need to really lock in, think about, meditate on, focus on where my life is excellent, the things in my life that I love, the things in my life that make me very happy. And I have a couple of ways that I do that. Uh, a couple of ways that I recenter myself, a couple of ways that I kind of force myself, disciple myself into faithful thoughts, but not just faithful thoughts, you know, in this like hardcore, I'm just such a great Christian way. Faithful thoughts because I start to look at the evidence. See, our blessings are the evidence. It's the evidence of God's goodness, it's the evidence of uh how he rewards our patience, it's the evidence of how he gives us things that we didn't even know to pray for, didn't even know how to ask for. The blessings in your life are the evidence of who God is and how he has come through for you. And so I really hope that if you are in a season of struggle, or even if you're in a season of abundance, that this episode will encourage you and teach you maybe some ways to really hone in and help your brain to go there first, to go to your blessings before your burdens. I

Spend Energy Where Life Feels Good

SPEAKER_01 4:51

have an intense, intentional, direct, unwavering focus on the things in my life that I love. I think about them, I talk about them. I will be in the middle of something with my friends or in the middle of something with my husband, and I'll be like, this is amazing. I just love y'all. I'm having so much fun. Aren't y'all having so much fun? It helps, it like stops time for me. It's it's an expression of gratitude for what I'm experiencing in the moment. You know, when you do that, it allows you to one, observe and then two, acknowledge the things that actually make you feel blessed. Sometimes we don't realize that we're spending the majority, I'm jumping ahead here of my notes, but sometimes we don't realize that we're spending the majority of our time and sometime money in places and with people who don't feel like a blessing. Yeah. We're spending a lot of time, money, energy, emotion in places that indeed feel like a burden. So you gotta ask yourself, what would happen if I took all that energy that I'm placing in these places and spaces that don't really make me feel blessed, don't really make me see God's hand over my life, don't really make me feel his presence in my life. What if I took all that energy and I put it into the parts of my life that I love? If I put it into the parts of my life that make me feel blessed, if I put it into mentally focusing on my blessings, on the things that are going well, what would happen? Ask yourself, who would I be? Who would I be around if I lived my life that way? These are such important questions because, you know, if you're not careful, you will be living life on the treadmill. And because you're not really moving forward in joy, because you're not moving forward in gratitude, you're just slowly sliding back. Next thing you know, you you on the floor, right? And so it's so important that you take a second and think about your blessings. And more than you, me. It was so important for me in this last quarter, really, to stop and say, okay, what do I love about my life right now? And how can I lean more into that?

Stop Comparing With Blessing Blinders

SPEAKER_01 7:23

There are two ways that I focus on my blessings, right? And and these are things that just help me. I'm gonna give you both of them and then we're gonna get into them one by one. The first one is I stop the comparison game. I just stop it. And we're gonna talk about how I do that. And the second one is that I let my blessings motivate me to behave, okay? So I stopped the comparison game and I let my blessings motivate me to behave. I stopped the comparison game when I realized that in every area of my life and in every season of my life, there was something or someone who was looking at what I had and wishing they had it while I was looking at someone else and what they had and wishing I had that. And this will never stop, y'all. It will never you, the thing about it is you really think once I get this thing, I'll feel like I'm good. And then you get that thing, and then you still want something else. And it's not even like these are not noble things, some of the things that we want, some of the things we're going after. But the truth of the matter is as long as you continue to compare yourself to people, as long as you continue to spend more time focused on other people's blessings. And I don't even like the whole idea of like what looks like people's blessings, because you don't know what people had to go through to get that. And what people, yes, that's true. But some people are genuinely blessed in an area that you are struggling in at the moment. That's just a fact. Some people are genuinely thriving in an area that you can't seem to get no fruit in at the moment. That's a real thing. But guess what? If you don't focus on it, it can't mess you up. And I realize, especially in the area of education, in the area of career, in the area of family, at this age, in our big 30s, it is really easy to start looking around and wondering, oh man, did I waste time? Should I have made this decision earlier? What am I doing? You could be extreme. I know people who are extremely successful, and they wake up and they're like, I don't want any of this. I'm completely unhappy. And I feel like I've wasted the last 10 or 15 years of my life. While other people are like, I would do anything to be in that person's position, have their salary, live in their home, drive their car. Like, it is so unhealthy to compare ourselves, and it stops us from focusing on the blessings that we do have. I do something in my brain called putting on my blessing blinders. This this is just this is just something that I do. Y'all may think it's corny, but it really works for me. You know, when you see a horse in a race, they have blinders on. And one of the reasons that horses have on blinders is because one, they have a 340-degree, I believe, range of motion in their eyesight. And so it is very easy for them to get distracted, but not because something's wrong with them or because they're lazy or because they are not effective, because that's how their eyes were made, and they're very sensitive to motion and sound. And so when they're in a race specifically, they wear blinders so that they can stay focused on where they are going. If they were to not wear blinders, some reports say that they would get wobbly, some of them might fall, and they would definitely veer into one another off course and not go as fast. And listen, I cannot relate to the horse more on this one. Because when I don't have my blessing blinders on, and I am easily distracted by noise. And listen, the thing about it is the funny thing about it with the horses, right? To me, they sound just like us because we're so easily distracted by motion and sound. What is social media? Motion and sound. And we've gotten to the place now where we scrolling. You can sit on your phone and just scroll and scroll. It's endless. We have an endless feed. You there's no way to get to the end of your feed. There's always something different or new you can watch. And when you get bored with Instagram, you head on over to threads. When you get bored with threads, you head on over to TikTok. And if you're on Facebook, you head on over to Facebook. And if you get tired of that, you head on over to Substack. And when you get done with that, you hit the streaming app on your phone. It is non-stop. And if we're not careful, all the images we see, all the sounds we hear, they can start to make us feel like everybody around us is just a little more blessed than we are. Yeah, they're just they're just a little more blessed, they're doing better financially, they go on better vacations, they have a better house, they have a better relationship, whatever your thing is, right? You you can start to really feel that. But guess what? Somebody's looking at you and feeling the same exact thing. They're looking at what you post, they're looking at where you go, they're looking at what you wear, they're looking at what you do for a living, and they're going, man, if I can only have that. Someone posted something uh the other day and they were talking about salaries for business owners and you know what you pay yourself. And they were basically saying, making 10K a month is good, but when you hit the 30K a month, you know, range, that's when you can really start pretty much having your way and living, you know, the way you want to live. And uh I'm into that kind of content and all those things as an entrepreneur, as the wife of a corporate guy. I'm into all these different types of discourses online. And I'm looking at the comments, and the comments went everywhere from 30K is nothing. I would kill myself if I only made 30K a month. My Amex bill is 30K a month, that's nothing for me. To if I was making 10,000 a month, that would change my life. How y'all saying 10,000 a month ain't enough? To 10,000 US dollars, that would go so far where I am, people in other countries. It the whole gambit. And it just made me think of this topic. You gotta focus on your own life and your own blessings because somebody would love to be where you are while you wanna be somewhere else. And guess what? Neither of you are wrong. Neither of you are wrong. What's wrong is when we don't put our blessing blinders on and we don't focus on what we have. I love running my own race, but I would be lying if I said to you that there weren't times where I look to the left or the right and I start seeing with someone else who is in the same race as me, a similar race as me, and that's a whole nother sermon within itself because nobody's in the same race as you, right? Nobody's in your lane. But we feel like, oh man, this person does the same thing I do, or this person knows the same people I know, but they seem to be getting ahead. And I have really had to disciple myself about this. I've really had to get very hard on myself about keeping my blessing blinders on. I had to get really hard on myself because I know that there are things that I deserved that I didn't get, but I know there are things that I didn't deserve that I did get. I know there are opportunities that I didn't deserve that I was not ready for, that God said, Oh yes, you are, and got me ready and sent me and allowed me to kill it. And I know there's other opportunities that I was completely ready for, and I would have been the perfect person and I would have done it so well and it didn't happen. And so I have to really put my blessing blinders on because if I'm not careful, I will start to focus more on the opportunities that I didn't get and feel away about that rather than the opportunities that I did get. You know, without my blessing blinders on, I would spend more time upset with God about the things I had to wait on rather than grateful for the abundance with which he bought them when they came. Let me tell you about my God. When he makes you wait for something, it's gonna be worth the wait. I am a living witness to this. You gotta put your blessing blinders on. I don't care if that means you gotta sit down and write out all the ways you are blessed right now. Let me tell you something. You could be going through the hardest thing in your life, and I've been through some hard things. Even in those hard things, I found blessings. Even in those difficult things, I could look at something or a bunch of something in my life that were going well. And what the devil wants us to do is look at the one, two, maybe three or four things in our life that are not where we want them to be and allow that to trump all the things that are great. If you knew how quickly things could change in your life, you would not waste time being worried and you wouldn't waste time being ungrateful. You just wouldn't. You'd put those blessing blinders on and you would focus because let me tell you something. You can go from a season of lack to abundance like that. And the other way is true too. You can go from a season of abundance to a season of lack very quickly. And that does not always mean financial. It could be in your health, it could be in relationships, it can be in the life you planned for yourself and God can switch something up. So, so be in the present. See, the the blessing blinders for me, they allow me to stay present in what's actually happening. It also stops all that imposter syndrome, it helps with self-sabotage. I'm telling you, the blessing blinders, them girls, I wish I could sell it. I wish I could figure out the blessing blinders are a real thing. They help you to lock into what's actually happening for you in this moment. And when I take them off, when I try to run my race without them, oh, I stumble. Yeah, I be knocking into people, falling over, emotional, can't get it together, jealous, envious. Let's wake it up. Yeah. I know y'all think, oh, less, you're confident. No, no, no, no, no. I be struggling. I get jealous. I get in my feelings about things. And then it reminds me, oh, you took you took them blinders off. You took them blinders off. And you ain't gonna win the race like that. See, that's the thing. That's the thing that really convicts me. I realized that I was losing my race, a race that God marked out for me only, because my blessing blinders were off. And all I could see, I went through a season where all I could see was other people's blessings. I couldn't even really see my own. You know, I knew they were there, but I I treated them like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that, but that it's not that big of a deal. Oh, yeah, I did that, but I haven't done it in a while. Yeah, I need to, I need to be seen working. I need to, and I really had to check myself. Holy Spirit checked me. But I really had to check myself and say, girl, there are opportunities that you got that you have no business having had. You have a long resume in a couple different careers, in a couple of different places. You could go, you have decided to be an entrepreneur, you have decided to start a media business, but you could go get a job right now that would pay you very well if you wanted to. There are some people who don't have that opportunity, who don't have those connections, who don't have those credentials, who don't have that opportunity. Put them blessing blinders on. You know, there are some people who cannot take the opportunities that I have taken to be an entrepreneur because they need health insurance. My husband is one of them. He can't just quit his job and say, well, I'm a I'm I'm a I'ma be an entrepreneur. Um, we need some health insurance in this marriage. You know what I mean? I'm very grateful. I'm grateful that he doesn't want to quit his job, but I'm very grateful that I'm in this position. But when my blessing blinders are off, oh, I get real weird. See, we get when we're not grateful and when we're not focused, not even, I don't even want to say when we're not grateful because I don't think it's, I don't think it comes from a bad heart of ingratitude. When we're not focused on our blessings, it's just when we are not focused on our personal blessings and the ways that God has shown up for us, we get weird. We get in a place where it is difficult for us to see how good we really have it. And we know that this is true because when something really, when something actually bad happens, you think about, man, how good I used to have it. You know, there's a saying, everyone has so many problems. And so they have a health challenge and then they only have one problem. You know, these are the things that happen. You think you're doing bad, then you lose that job, and then you're like, man, I should have been saving more money. I could have been saying, I could have been doing so much better financially, then I was, I could have been stewarding that money so much better. You know, you have a health scale, you have a health issue, and you're like, man, I should have been eating better, I should have been working out, I knew better. You know, you're in a place right now, if you have the opportunity to grow, to change, to fix something. That is a beautiful thing. I saw a post the other day that said, if you have the opportunity to change when conviction is your only consequence, change. Some of the things we go through and we feel and we have some sort of like, man, I really need to work on that. Man, I really should change that. And then when the conviction is the consequence, change then. Because there could be some real consequences. Some of us are in a season of blessings, some of us are in a season of real good things that God is allowing, doing, things that God is removing. But we can't see it as a blessing because we're so focused on what we wanted or what someone else has. Don't even compare yourself to yourself. Don't even compare yourself to your old self. Man, I just wanna get back to who I used to be, who I you're not who you used to be. You'll never be that person again. You've had experiences, you've had situations, you've had opportunities, you had ups and downs, and they have changed you. Lean into who you are right now. Stop the comparison game, and you'll be able to lean into your blessings. The

Let Blessings Motivate Better Behavior

SPEAKER_01 22:18

second way that I really do lean into my blessings is that I let them motivate me to behave. You know, I'm one of those people that I realize I need I need motivation that's not just emotional. I am one of those people that needs to be motivated by what I can see, right? Um, I am really growing in my ability to save money and to work on my finances. I'm really growing in my ability to, you know, stay consistent with my wellness and all those things. And something that someone said to me that really unlocked something for me, they said, you need to use your vanity. You need to use your materialism. Use the things you love. You you like sneakers and clothes and bags and shopping, use that. Use that as a reason to save money, use that as a reason to be better with money, to not spend it on all this little frivolous stuff so that you can actually get some of the things, not all the things, that you really want. You know, you love fashion and all of this stuff. Take care of your body so that you feel good when you go out, so that you feel good when you're in front of people. Now, these are not the only reasons. I have much deeper spiritual reasons for the things that I am doing because out of obedience to Christ, right? Areas of my character that I want to change. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't say those things were helpful. And looking at the things that I currently have, right? Whether they be material things, relationships, love, these things help me to behave because one, I'm grateful for the blessing. I don't want to lose the blessing, and I want more of the blessing. Yeah. Uh-huh. I want more. I want God to know, oh, yeah, I could trust her with this. I could give her a little bit more. Let me sprinkle a little bit more of that love in her life. Yeah. Let me sprinkle a little bit more of that money. Let me sprinkle a little bit more opportunities. Let me sprinkle a little bit more of those great, amazing friendships. You know, these are things that I want God to know He could trust me with. And so I let the blessings motivate me to behave. People say what you focus on is what grows. And I really believe it, but I believe that more than your focus alone making it grow. I think what you focus on shapes how you show up. And how you show up gives your environment no other choice but to go where you're going. It makes the blessings overflow because you are behaving as a blessed person. You are speaking as a blessed person. And we know how that goes. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And as a man thinketh, so he shall be. You know, the Bible talks about life and death being in the tongue. How we show up, how we speak, what we believe about ourselves has so much to do with how we live. It is difficult to be acting up, ungrateful, depressed, upset when you are intensely focused on your blessings. When you got them blessing blinders on, it's hard to have a bad attitude. It's hard. It's hard to come out of agreement with what God is showing you works. You will get that complaining in order very quick when you start focusing on your blessings. Yep. You'll be like, I, I, I, and then you'll literally, I have literally stopped myself mid-sentence when I'm about to complain about something in my life. Because I'm like, look around. Look around. You have love, you have your health. I have amazing friends who show up for me, who love me, who don't play about me, who are honest with me, who help me spiritually. I am not lonely in this life. You know, I have my way in a lot of areas. And so when I get ready to complain, I have to, I have to, I have to really think to myself, are you being grateful? And when you allow your blessings to help you behave, you actually become addicted to the feeling. You become addicted to gratitude. You really do become addicted, so much so that you will have a physical reaction when people are ungrateful around you. You will have a physical reaction, people complain around you. You will have a physical reaction when people automatically go to the worst-case scenario around you. It will rep, you will feel repulsed by it because you've practiced so much living in what is going well.

Share Gratitude And Build Testimony

SPEAKER_01 26:41

I want to challenge you, if you've made it this far, throw in the chat something that you're grateful for, something that is going well in your life. Throw something in the comments to let me know what areas in your life you feel so blessed. I want to hear it. I want the other people who read the comments to see it. Because the truth of the matter is we need to talk more about the things that God is doing in our lives. There is no shortage online of people talking about what is not going well, people complaining about the state of the world. And listen, I get it. It's a lot to talk about. It's a lot to talk about. But as believers, we should have some good testimony, something to share, something that God is doing in our lives. And even if you don't share it with anyone, if you meditate on it and you live in a place of blessing, it will show up in the way that you behave. There's no way that it won't. People around you will feel the goodness of God on your life. One of my favorite encouragements and compliments when people come into my home is they say, it feels so much love in here. I love your home. It just feels like so much light. It feels like so much peace. I love that because I've worked hard to live a life that reflects these things. But people can feel it when it's not that way. And trust me, I had many years of people walking to my house and they would not say that. Okay? So I'm speaking from a place of real gratitude to God for the changes that He's placed in my life because I really do understand that when you lean into how blessed you are, blessings continue to flow. I know there's someone watching this podcast that can't relate to feeling like their life is so abundant right now. Their life is so blessed right now. But if you could find one thing to focus on, and I'm talking about real intense focus. Meaning every time something tries to make you doubt that, then you go back, nope. But there's just been one good friend, and you say, no one likes me and people aren't loyal to me. But you know what? That Emily, she's a real one. Think about Emily. Think about Emily. You know, I don't like this job at all, but I'm so grateful to have a paycheck and so grateful that I'm no longer in this situation or having to live with this person or having to do this. I can take care of myself. Focus on that. Focus on the parts of your life that are working for you. And I promise more of them will continue to come in. It may take some time, it may not happen overnight, but if you count your blessings, God will give you more to count. I am a witness to this. I spent many years lonely, many years wondering if I would ever have the lifestyle that I have right now. I spent many years trying to figure out who am I in this world? What do I actually want to do? And so being in a space where God has answered those questions for me, I know that it is completely silly of me to think that the questions I have right now, because I have questions right now about the future me, would go unanswered by that same gracious, loving, caring, and all-knowing God.

It Is God’s Pleasure To Bless

SPEAKER_01 30:19

One of the things that I can be quoted saying often to people who know me in real life is that it is God's pleasure to bless you. I think if we could get this, things would be very different for us. It is God's pleasure to bless you. It's not a burden to him, it's not hard for him. He desires to bless you. And maybe you didn't grow up with parents like that. Maybe you grew up with parents who, if you asked them for anything, it was like, oh my gosh, this kid always wants something. Maybe you grew up with friends who didn't show up for you. Maybe you grew up with people who made you feel like your needs were a burden. Made you feel like the things you wanted were stupid, made you feel annoying for having desires. But let me tell you, God is very different. It is his pleasure to bless you. Ask him for what you need while being very focused, intentional, and grateful for the ways that he has already shown up for you. I pray that this encourages somebody that you decide this week that you're gonna count your blessings, lean into your blessings.

Daily Gratitude That Changes Your Brain

SPEAKER_01 31:24

That could look like writing out a gratitude journal. That could look like literally listing things each day. What blessing did I get today? There's not a day that you wake up breathing and go to bed breathing that some form of blessing didn't happen, even if it's just those two things. Practice daily what is one blessing from today and see how your life starts to bloom for you. You will start seeing blessings in every little thing. And once you see them, you can't unsee them. This

Closing Thanks And Subscribe

SPEAKER_01 31:57

has been another episode of I'll Just Let Myself In, the podcast, where we don't wait for an imaginary permission slip or a seat at an imaginary table. We let ourselves through our God-given doors. And when you walk through those doors, baby, the blessings will follow. If you listen on Holy Culture Sirius XM channel 140 at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Monday night, we thank you for listening there. If you've watched on Holy Culture's YouTube, we thank you for watching there. And if you're watching on my YouTube, we thank you for being here. Please make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss any of the other content that we have over here at Lish Speaks. And I'll see you guys same time, same place next week. Peace.