Category: Success Tips

A new day, a new month, what choices are you going to make for a better you moving into the future? The choices you make create habits. These habits dictate your responses. Your responses, more often than not, are the result of what? Is it not your feelings and what you think you perceive about the environment and situations of your life? How many times have you heard, or even said, “I don’t feel like . . .?”

The question so often asked, “How are you?” is generally considered to be a feelings question and people respond accordingly. Make a choice to start interpreting this question as an opportunity to declare a statement of faith and belief, rather than as a feelings response. Acknowledge this question by what God’s word says about you, rather than how you feel in the moment.

When you meet someone you have a choice in how you respond. Seize the moment and launch an opportunity to inaugurate a beneficial change in the life of others. Stop asking, “How are you?” and create new interaction questions which will draw out answers which move others away from their feelings, which are often negatively controlling their lives. Get them to think beyond their momentary feelings to a more solid foundation built upon God’s Word.

Shifting your own habits on how you make contact with others may take conscious competency training, but in the long term, you will benefit and so will they.

Ask questions like, “What is the best thing that has happened in your day?” “What are you hoping for, trusting, or believing (pick one of these) to happen this week?” In response to the question, “How are you?” thrown your way, consider responses like, “Terrific,” “Blessed,” “Good and getting better.” It is your Choice, Launch an Opportunity to Inaugurate Beneficial Change in your life and that of others.

The picture attached to this post is representative of the weather yesterday afternoon. Wind speeds are 40 km gusting to 60 km. The temperature is -20 degrees C. (-18 degrees C. is 0 F.) with wind a chill temperature of -35 degrees C. Since this has been going on for a couple of days now, the car that was towed to the garage remains there and the snow drifts continue to grow in our driveway. To snow blow out the drifts only to have them fill in, seems like a futile waste of time in these temperatures. So, staying inside where it is warmer, though with the wind the temperature has dropped several degrees in the last hour in the office. It is now below 66 F. in the office. The furnace has a challenge in keeping this room warm when the winds blow from a specific direction.

Why am I writing about the weather? Maybe it is because when I was young, I wanted to be a meteorologist and I still have a fascination with weather more than fifty years later. Through the training I received from my mentor, Joel Bauer, I came to the realization the “whys” for what I wanted to do from the time I was five years old through my final years of high school were exactly the same as they have been for the last fifty years. My underlying intentions, out of which my thoughts, beliefs, words and actions came, have always been about seeking to help people and make each day a good day despite what may be happening in the environment around them.

In the beginning of shifting my attention to the spiritual realm, I thought my intentions were different, more heavenly oriented. I have since learned, our spiritual life and connections to God are far more connected to what happens here on earth than what happens in the eternal heavenly realms. My wife’s “JOY” blog articles (you can find them on Face Book under Maxine R McLellan) are a constant reminder of the value of looking for JOY in whatever the circumstances you may be facing in daily living. This includes dealing with the poor visibility caused by strong winds and blowing snow.

While I am not able to be physically present with my friends at the Global Information Network Family Reunion Event in the Dominican Republic this week, I can energetically connect with them as they learn and grow in the process of becoming a better version of themselves. Blessings from the cold north to the warmth of your hearts.

In this moment of time I can choose to look out the office window and see a miserable, frigidly cold winter day and think about what I am missing by being here, or I can look out the window and see the snow and remind myself of Isaiah 1:18, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says Yahweh. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’” Or how about Psalm 51:7, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” Your focus is what you see, experience and live.