episode 11. LIFE TOKENS

who do we follow? thelawdsway

Meaning – Importance – Application

In this post, I am going to talk about two life tokens I want to share with you all. These tokens being: finding your purpose, failure means consistency not defeat.

FINDING YOUR PURPOSE

Purpose.

It is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. It’s a person’s sense of resolve of determination. Purpose is to have as one’s intention or objective. It’s the ideology that an individual has built up through a plan to make it into a reality from its theoretical standpoint, by ensuring that they have walked on a path that will help them see this purpose through.

Faith

Everyone has a purpose.

Your purpose may have started from the day you were born, or it’s become known to you 10, 20, 30 even 40 or more years after the day you were born. It is the destiny that has been planted in your hands for you to live out in life. From my perspective, purpose is the destiny that has been laid out for you to live out. Now when I say laid out you may be wondering, well who was the one that laid it out to you?

God.

I’m a Christian born and raised and overtime I’ve been developing a strong personal relationship with God. For me, it’s through God that I have understood the meaning of what a purpose is and what it means to have one. A scripture that comes to mind in me saying this is from Jeremiah 29:11 CSB. It says:

“I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future that you hope for.”

He knows my purpose.

He knows my purpose because He was the one who created it in the first place. Through me building my personal relationship with God and making sure I continue in Bible Study and conversing with Him daily, each day He brings new insight to the dreams that He has laid out for me to experience and fulfil, dreams that came to me through the Spirit which I can call my own. I guess it’s safe to say that there may be people out here that may see my outlook to be biased in the sense that throughout whatever may be or come in life, I will always see life through a spiritual perspective. That is fine! We all have the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. All I can say is that, take it from me, God is truly real, and He has created the purpose in which you are living in right now. The purpose He has destined for you to achieve despite of whatever doubt may fill your mind or obstacle that comes your way.

Environmental

It is needless to say but your environment does have influence over the stage you are at in life and the process you need to take to get to where you want to be. Whether the influence is high or low, the matter of fact is that it will play a part in your journey of finding and achieving your purpose.

Environmental influence is the external conditions or surroundings in which a plant, animal or individual lives which tends to influence its development or behaviour. The environment in which you see your purpose thriving in, is it within the same environment that you are currently at? If yes, then that’s great and I urge you to continue to develop in this place. If your answer is no, then well, it may be time for some changes. See, change can come through the boundaries that you have in place within your environment, it can literally be a minor change to your morning or evening routine. It can be as big as changing locations, to as small as changing the thought process and what you allow to enter your mind. These changes that you implement in your life will also have environmental influence over you and will add to the state in which you will be able to achieve your purpose. So, make that the change.

Step In Process to Our Purpose?

The SMART criteria stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. It is an acronym used in helping individuals to set up their goals and objectives.

Understanding your goals is the pathway to finding your purpose.

You may not know the purpose of your life right now, but you may know the specific goal that you want to fulfil. How is the process going? What is the plan to obtain the goal? How have you overcome any setbacks, and have you put ideas in place to prevent or at least minimise the risk of said setback repeating itself?

How long do you think it will take to achieve your goal? Stop! Be careful with this question. Yes, it can be helpful in you measuring the length it will take for you to achieve your goal, but don’t depend on it in its entirety. When you start to focus more on the aspect of longevity of how long it will take for you to find your purpose, it can make you to lose sight of what you were looking for in the first place and staying genuine to the purpose that has been created for you to fulfil. Measurability is balanced out with both pros and cons as you search and undergo this journey of finding your purpose. Although sometimes in life, external circumstances can lead you to have to experience downfalls before you can get onto the path towards achieving your purpose. Though, this doesn’t mean that internal circumstances, actions which are made by yourself, should add to the outcome of you having to experience such downfall. Now this downfall is part of the cons of measurability by the fact that your focus on measuring the length of your success of finding your purpose, has become pressurised by societal standards. Pressurised that if you haven’t achieved so and so by a set date, you’re a failure. No. That is not how it works. The length it takes for you to find your purpose doesn’t matter, what matters is the measured endurance of you staying within this journey until you find your purpose.

That is what you should be measuring only.

I think the last three words within the SMART criteria (achievable, realistic, and timely) goes hand in hand together. The goals you have set out to help you find your purpose must be achievable. In me saying this, I don’t want you to go to the place where you have stored your goals and diminish it because you have already been in the stage of giving up and you hearing this may have reaffirmed to you that your goals are just fantasies. Rather, I’d urge you to firstly, not develop this mindset of giving up. Now that you have overcome those negative thoughts, go back to the place where you have stored your goals. Look at how much you have done so far and repeat after me: I did that. For you to achieve your goals you must be proud of the actions you’re taking that’s bringing you closer to completion.

You must congratulate yourself.

Now, look at the areas in your plan that may need some tweaking. Set out realistic to do lists that you genuinely can see yourself being determined to fulfil and write it out. Each day check in on your to do list and check out the things you have completed so far. Being in this frame of mind is transforming the lifestyle that you are living into a lifestyle where you stay driven and achieve all that you needed and wanted to achieve.

Time is immeasurable.

All you need to do is use it wisely, but don’t forget to use that time for rest as well. Draining out all your energy on a short-term basis, will not help you in the long term to consistently work hard to achieve your goal- to find your purpose. Go, but take breaks. In time you will reach your goal, and in time you will find your purpose.

There are so many good and positive ways you can go in helping you finding your purpose. I’ve only just outlined three in this part of the post, but the list is endless! Find what works for you and start the journey of finding your purpose.

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FAILURE MEANS CONSISTENCY NOT DEFEAT

When we have failed time and time again, it’s so easy to experience the emotions of defeat. We feel that we won’t make it and the confidence we needed to help us achieve our goals slowly slips away. It’s interesting how all that time when we were trying and trying again, we did not feel proud of ourselves in knowing that yes, we didn’t win the battle this time, or yes, we didn’t reach the next step, but we still got back up and tried again. We still underwent the preparations, the planning, the actions, the emotions, the experiences just to try again to achieve that goal.

It’s in the process of our trials that we become more consistent and persistent in altering our focus to see our failures as a chance to try again and keep going.

We shouldn’t see them as becoming defeated. Understandably though from that one time, the one time that we tried again and still didn’t make it, we decided to lose hope. We decided to let this failure produce a negative outcome and outlook on that goal. Although we have every right to feel defeated when all the doors that we have been trying to open have stayed close, we shouldn’t give up. The beauty in staying consistent, especially through the trials, challenges, barriers, closed doors, problems, and issues that we may face, is that while we are going through those troubles, it is a process of character building as we become more resilient and hungrier for that win.

Hope can live on a thin thread as soon as you decide to start letting the perception of defeat to live in your mind.

Where your hope is on a higher scale, that failure that you may be going through, it will not last. You will overcome it. You will get back up. You will keep at it. You will go through the preparations, the planning, actions, emotions, and experiences again and again and again until that sense of failure become the sense of success.

The day we decide to allow the definitions and connotations of defeat to become a part of our livelihoods, is the day that we lost the battle.

Going through and experiencing failures is important. I’ve gone through some failures in my life, where I didn’t obtain the grade, I expected to obtain, I didn’t reach that level of strength in gym or the failure in communicating how I felt about a situation. Failure comes in all shapes and sizes. It comes even when you least expect it. This is why, whenever you are working on a goal, or trying to accomplish a task, you need to have embodied the personal characteristic of being consistent and the act of perseverance.

When you are consistent you have the power in deciding how a situation turns out and how it will leave a positive impact on you. You have the power to recharge your mind and regain your focus. You have the power that even where all may feel lost, your inner light is still burning just waiting for you to believe in yourself again. Never lose sight of your consistency to create a better change, a better outcome for your life and this is particularly crucial as you go through failures.

All it takes is one day to change the outcome of your story.

Remember, Trust in the Lord, Love like the Lord and Walk with the Lord. TLW

who do we follow? thelawdsway