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How many of you take time to nurture your emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being? Do you realize that nurturing ourselves is essential to living a happy, healthy, and abundant life? If you reflect on the times, you may have neglected yourself, give thought to what you were thinking and what you were feeling. It is so important to realize that there are consequences when you forget to pause. While we can become swamped, overwhelmed from exhaustion, or get distracted, failing to break causes us to:

We have to prioritize the pause for those of us who desire to find peace in the middle of the pause.

We are in a particular time when peace is most needed. But what is it that we are seeking? Is it that inner peace of being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually at ease in the face of life stresses, anxieties, disturbances, and chaos? Or is it consciously keeping our mind at peace regardless of external circumstances over which we have no control? Let’s take a deeper dive into finding genuine peace that inspires.

A Deeper Dive into Finding Genuine Peace

Before the pandemic, how many of us ran from one meeting to the next or ate lunch on the run, if at all, due to conference calls and meetings, or lastly, found ourselves up late at night checking and sending emails? What is sad is that some mistakenly thought this level of busyness is how we grow and find peace.

Some of us have gotten caught up measuring our worth not only by the results we achieve but by how much of our time we spend doing stuff or the ugly culprit of measuring our success with others. One of the most frustrating things some of us have experienced is trying to have a conversation with someone distracted by incoming calls or sending messages via their Apple Watch! Too often, we take a similar attitude to the work we do and our engagement with other people and with ourselves.

Sadly, we live frantic lives, constantly on the go, at least in part because it makes us feel good about ourselves. To put it mildly, it makes absolutely no sense and by no means is it nourishment to our spirit. So how do we make room for a level of peace that inspires?

Making Room for Peace that Inspires

Do you want to experience God’s peace in your life – NOW? If you responded “yes,” then it’s time to do some mental decluttering. For those who don’t know me – I can hear my family laughing at what I’m about to say, but I am a neat, organizational freak better known as OCD! I have this insatiable need for things to be in order and sometimes find it hard to function if things are cluttered and out of place. To fulfill this need, I periodically engage in a process of decluttering. Decluttering allows me to experience a deeper sense of calm and helps me to flow in a more fantastic realm of peace.

Not only do I declutter physical spaces but mental spaces as well. To make room for a level of peace that inspires requires that our minds are free of all unwanted anxiety.  For God’s perfect peace to take residence in our lives we must free our minds of clutter. The decluttering of spaces was an absolute Godsend in that it empowered me to get rid of even the residue of things that weighed me down and consumed my time and energy. Making intentional room for peace enables us to use time wisely to embrace the life God desires for us entirely.

Understanding the importance of nurturing ourselves and finding a greater level of peace encourages us to:

Action Steps to Make Room for Greater Peace

To find greater peace, we need to know when to engage as well as when to disengage. A purposeful pause is precisely what we need, especially when our brains are constantly being stretched. When we take moments to pause, we are empowered to see the path that can help us to reclaim a productive life.

Pausing allows us to bring our entire being into our work and in our lives. Finding greater peace helps us to spend our time on the things that matter most to us while dismantling the lie that taking time to pause will diminish our productivity.

How often have you faced adversity and yelled, “I can’t take it anymore” and contemplated whether or not to quit? How often have you heard ‘no’ and you perceived it as a form of rejection as if you or it didn’t matter? Or discovered yourself engaged in self-sabotage due to limiting beliefs? Lastly, as you faced a whirlwind of uncertainty and difficulty managing change, you found yourself feeling defeated? These are some of the many reasons people think they don’t matter. They aren’t good enough or want to give up. Beloved, different motivations drive each of these. One of them is the struggle of what I have coined as the Comparison Syndrome.

An Exposure of the Comparison Syndrome

We can sometimes find ourselves challenged by judging ourselves very harshly and rather than walking out of the challenges we face, we are tempted to walk away, assuming that we have failed. How many of you recognize that this challenge is often a result of comparing ourselves to others? In actuality, while comparison is something that we all do, the problem lies at the root of our comparison. Specifically, are we trying to figure out how good we are or trying to make ourselves feel better? The critical principle lies in understanding the root of our motivation, and to weed out unhealthy comparisons.

Let’s say there’s someone whose craft is impeccable, and you find yourself seeking an understanding of the quality of your work. This is, frankly speaking, a healthy motivation. On the flip side, if you find that you are comparing yourself to others to boost your self-esteem, this is an unhealthy motivation and will create some problems. These problems mask themselves in the following ways and can rob you of your joy when:

Have you ever had a fearless conversation that stretched you beyond your greatest imagination? To take it a step further, have you ever been challenged to do one thing every day that literally scares you?  God has and continues to meet women in pivotal periods of our lives and intentionally interrupts broken belief systems, misguided self-narratives, tragic stories of shame and regret and exposed ‘hiding places” in order to free them to walk in fearless confidence; accessing promises meant to be kept and used as a weapon to unravel the lies of the enemy.

Exposing the Root of Fear

All too often we have dreams of what we desire our life to look like, but can easily become trapped in expending energy and time addressing the fruits of fear, anxiety and stress.   What we sadly don’t give enough attention to is focusing on the root of our fear.  In an attempt to expose the root of fear, please recognize that fear is first, ALWAYS rooted in something that we repeatedly replay in our thoughts and are still holding on to.  On our journey to becoming fearless, we must address the root cause of what is triggering our fear so that we can be liberated from its effects by letting it go.  In doing so, we are no longer bound to fear, anxiety and stress and its ugly hold on our lives.

At the onset of the pandemic, how many of you like me, were challenged by acquired spiritual principles that forced you into action.  I recall being faced with the choice to take a leap of faith and walk whole-heartedly in what I had been equipped to do; or I could remain bound by fear and stay trapped in a realm of fear and uncertainty

As destiny would have it, I made the bold decision to no longer stay stuck in my comfort zone.  I stopped allowing fear to hold me captive and chose to move towards living on purpose to reach my potential.

Mindset Shift – Overcoming the 3 F’s of Fear

The choice to boldly become fearless requires an intentional mindset shift.  Making a decision to overcome fear empowers you to keep moving forward.   I personally found the following 3 F’s most empowering in shifting my thoughts about overcoming fear.  They were:

It’s almost Fall and the season will be changing soon. Some people may find themselves excited about the end of summer activities, which are limited due to safety concerns related to COVID-19 and this new variant. For others, it may be a time centered around sadness, feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and fear. So how do you execute courage over fear?

Courage Over Fear

The beginning of the pandemic was one of significant challenges. I found myself, at times, fighting back feelings of fear and anxiety. I paused to question whether I would let feelings of fear and worry consume me or encourage myself to execute courage over fear.  As a Mindset and Wellness Coach, I found myself engaging in some practices that I typically teach others. I recall sitting on the couch in my office, taking time to intentionally do some deep breathing to relax, and engaged in a period of transcendental meditation, a technique used to recharge one’s mind to create a more positive state of mind. This created opportunity for me to clear my thoughts, allowing me to realize that while there will always be moments of testing, it was imperative that I stepped up my game and made courageous decisions because both fear and courage can be habit-forming.

Fear is described as an unpleasant emotion caused by our belief system. If we make a habit of succumbing to feelings of fear, then we will become paralyzed by it. The secret to developing courage is found in facing our fears. As we face our fears, we build confidence, and that confidence helps us execute courage over fear.

As situations that cause emotional distress arise in our lives, fear is one of the most powerful and can substantially impact our mindset and decision-making ability. Rather than allow fear to control your decisions, you have to determine what is accurate and imagined. I was challenged to remain courageous and look at what was real and valid in my situation. I needed to make decisions based on the facts and not let my emotions dictate my thoughts and actions.

How Fear Impacts our Mindset

As we face challenges and potential setbacks, our brains will react in predictable ways.  Our brain will immediately respond to signals from the amygdala instead of taking the time to process that which we are facing. This is why it is imperative to find a calming remedy that works for you, which creates needful moments to process what you are dealing with. Rather than overacting, we can position ourselves to process the events we encounter rationally and remain courageous in the very face of fear.

A Paradigm Shift to Overcoming Fear

Taking a needful pause at the beginning of the pandemic allowed me to recall past fearful situations and how I addressed them. These and other practical steps strengthened my ability to release fear and become courageous in the face of the fear. Trust me, it was and continues to be nothing less than a walk of faith. Some of the strategies I learned along the way which are valuable in remaining courageous are: