I have a love hate relationship with something and I want to share it with you. I don't know if maybe you feel the same way. You can let me know either way if you want to go to the Facebook group or on Instagram and send me a direct message that let me know. How do you feel about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? How do you feel about that? I have mixed feelings about it. Every year I have mixed feelings about it. I suspect I actually like it, but I don't. Whenever my husband says, oh, do you want to watch this? I'm like, no, I don't want to watch this, but yet I do. It's so bizarre.
Here's why: I do love the messaging. I do love the many versions that I've seen of A Christmas Carol. I've read the book. I've seen it with Jim Carrey. I've seen it with Henry Winkler. I've seen it with cartoon characters. I mean, I've seen a Christmas Carol and I've actually read the Dickens story. There's value in all of it. The story is not missed. The story being that how we live impacts people's lives and being generous and helping people impacts them. We can impact them for good or for bad. The way we live our lives matters. In the end, what do we want to be known for? What do we want to have accomplished?
This is good, deep stuff, especially for someone like me who has a therapy background where it's like, well, of course I love talking about the stuff that makes life really important and significant. I don't do small talk. I do deep talk. I really love deep talk. Yet this is dark and it's inspirational. It's like when I read Holocaust books not because I like reading about the Holocaust, but because I like reading about how the human spirit and faith in God and people under the direst of circumstances caring for each other is inspirational. It's both awful and inspirational. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is both dark and inspirational because life often has more than one feeling at the same time, more than one observation at the same time.
It got me thinking about if I'm feeling this way, where, oh, I remember these things of Christmas past that were so good and you might be too. If you're feeling nostalgia towards the things of the past and you are sad because they're not here today and you wish that they were, I want to encourage you that it can be both. It can both be that it's not like it was, and it can be that you can enjoy today as well. It can be that you can make good memories today for tomorrow, so when you or your kids or grandkids look back, they can see these were the good old days for them. That doesn't mean that the future days in their present or your present in the future won't be good for you too. Both can coexist.
I want to talk about that today in the sense that, just like with a Christmas Carol, I can have both a love/hate relationship with it. I can take the good from it, and I cannot like a lot of the stuff that makes me sad or want to cringe when I watch it, right? We can do that with our lives. When we look back and we think about how great things were or even how bad things were, I mean, some people did not have a great Christmas historically. If that's you, you can do this kind of in reverse of what I'm saying as well. You get to places where you look back and things either aren't like that now and you wish they were, or they're better now and you're glad they aren't like that.
What do we do with it when we feel like we're remembering something and it's bringing up something unpleasant, like longing or sadness or regrets or a hope for something that we can no longer have, like people to be with us that can't be here anymore. I want to encourage you to look at those things as something you can do something about in the present. Because when we get wistful, when we look back, we're forgetting that those things help contribute to who we are today. When you can see who we are today. Just like Scrooge, right? He was able to look back with the Ghost of Christmas Past and go, that's how I live my life. That's what led to this stuff. I can change it going forward. Well, it's the same thing with good stuff, but we can't get stuck in the past wishing for those good things and missing out on today's good stuff.
I want you to realize, just like with me and having both a love/hate relationship with A Christmas Carol, you can have both feelings. You can have feelings of nostalgia and longing and grief and loss and sadness. And at the same time, hope and excitement and new experiences and new traditions can await you as well. It's not the end of the story whether the past was good or the past was bad.
If it was good, you can carry it with you. Bring Grandma's favorite recipes to the table. Play a game like you used to play when you were a kid. Bring out the old movies for a little bit.
If it was bad, do something to gain what you didn't have back then. Maybe you didn't get toys, so take yourself out and get yourself something nice. Maybe you didn't have a church family, so go to a church service today. Maybe you didn't have supportive network, so find a support group somewhere.
Don't let the past or your emotions, whether positive or negative, whether abundance or lack, take away from the fact that you are a human being who can experience all of the awarenesses, positive and negative, good and bad, abundance and lack, and they can coexist. Today you get to acknowledge the fact that, yep, that's your experience. Simply part of the human experience, right?
The Bible says to forget the former things, God is doing a new thing. It also talks about remembrance, and I think that's indicative of a place for both leaving behind what is past and pressing forward to the goals in Christ Jesus, but also being informed. We have scripture to look back so that we know the story of where we came from and where we are today. Both are important, but it's the story that you and God are writing today that is where you have your power.
Don't be like the one relative that I have who lost her mom and then all of a sudden didn't go out for special occasions on holidays like, oh, no, I'm not going out. Her mother's the one who died. She acted like she did. She still had time to enjoy, and yet she wouldn't celebrate with anybody because she just wanted to stay home. I get that sometimes you feel like staying home, but this was almost like she set up a shrine and said, my mother died, so I can't go out for the holidays. I want to encourage you that that is not how you have to live. You can both honor somebody or honor a memory and bring the life they lived or the good things from the memory with you into the future or learn from it and do something with it in the present, in the future that makes it good or helps you remember or makes you feel better and honors somebody's memory without losing your present power, your present self. Because the future, when you look back, these are going to be the good old days or the days that you're like, oh, that was really rough.
What you do today becomes tomorrow's past. Just be real about it. It can coexist and that can give you peace. Because you don't have to try to pretend everything's perfect. You don't have to get everything perfect for the holidays. Holidays are not perfect. They're human things. Humans are involved in them; therefore, they're not going to be perfect. The fact that they are perfect is the fact that they're imperfect. We know that the holidays are going to have some highs and some bumps in the road, and that's okay. When we can accept that both exist and we don't have to get stuck, we don't have to make it like, oh, everything's ruined because the turkey got burnt. So what? That becomes a good memory.
Going forward, don't take yourself or life too seriously. Enjoy today and be wise about the story you tell yourself. It's not often either or. Highs and lows can coexist. Good memories and sad memories and present hopes and futures of hope can exist, as can stressors. It's okay to know that this is just part of the human experience. It doesn't have to throw me, but I can grieve when I need to, I can celebrate when I want to, I can remember as I wish, and I can move on and do new things. It's all healthy, flexible empowerment. I hope that helps lighten your load today for the holidays!
Do you ever feel like you're grinding your wheels, like you're going around a hamster wheel over and over again and expecting different results, but not getting them because things just continue the way they've been going and you really long for change, but you're starting to get discouraged and finding it difficult to meet your goals? If that's you, I want to tell you that there is a difference between someone who is successful at reaching their goals and someone who isn't. That difference can come down oftentimes to one of four things. It can come down to a difference in belief, a difference in habits, a difference in perseverance, and a difference in supports. I want to into that for you, so that you can see what contributes to success and what contributes to failure or lack of moving forward.
4 Things that Make a Difference in Success or Failure at Meeting Goals
- Belief: Belief that it is possible is something that those who achieve have many times, whereas those who don't achieve it don't know they can do it. So, if they don't believe it, they don't follow through on the things that will actually pay off and get it. When I wanted to go back to school for my master's degree in professional counseling, I did not know if I could do it. I was already in my mid-30s, and I had three kids at home and was homeschooling and didn't know if I was going to even get into the program because I had to pass a statistics class to be able to qualify to get into the program. So, statistics is math. I am good with words. I am not good with math. I know my strengths and my limitations, and it was really hard to get through that statistics class, but I did. I didn't succeed on the first test. I got an F on the first test. I remember just crying, thinking I thought I was called to this. I thought I was supposed to be a counselor, but I can't get past this first test in statistics. I had studied so hard. I really studied hard. I thought I understood as well as I was going to. I went in there and I bombed the test, and I didn't know how. I thought, oh my goodness, I'm going to waste my family's money and take time away from my kids all for something that I'm just going to throw time and money away. It's just heartbreaking. I remember my husband and I went out to eat at a nice little Italian cafe place, and I remember that moment. It was between will I continue or will I not? I seriously cried trying to decide. It was so hard because it looked like everything was against me. It did not look to me like I could succeed. I only knew what God had called me to and what I desired, yet this statistics class, this first test was standing in my way. As my husband and I thought about it, and we probably prayed about it, too, I don't really recall at this point, but we just decided that it was worth it to go for it because I was there telling myself that I couldn't pass, but in reality, I probably could pass. I just would have to not fail all of the tests, right? I did end up with a C in that class. That was the hardest class of my whole master's program for me. No matter how many A's I got, that C is the one I am the proudest of because I didn't give up and I worked so hard for it, and I believed that I could at least pass that class. I got a C, and that was good enough for me because that's all I needed, was to have a statistics class under my belt. I already had a sociology class and a psychology class from my undergrad degree, so that was it. I could get into the program. It was wonderful because the rest of it was a piece of cake compared to statistics. I was just so thrilled that I didn't give up. So, the belief that I could do something like pass a class, even though I had failed the first test, was a huge, huge shift in what I thought I could do, because I thought it was all over right then and there. But when I chose to believe that it was possible and that God was calling me forward to do it, it was something that I accomplished with God's strength and my husband's help with math tutoring. I did accomplish it.
- Habits: The habits that actually move someone towards success is another difference. The things that we do on the daily, everyday moments, the things that we do when we're trying to set ourselves up for success and for goals are so important. It's not that we have to be perfect or never slip up, but those things that we do over and over again are the things that set the patterns, and those patterns set the outcomes. If you want to achieve your goals, it's important to set effective habits that you follow through on and do regularly, quite possibly even daily.
- Perseverance: Continue to persevere, just like I did through that statistics class. You don't give up. You keep going. Even when things seem hard or seem impossible, you persevere, you keep showing up, and eventually you get through to the other side and you get to see the success and be so proud of yourself for not giving up.
- Support: Have the right supports along the way if you're going to be successful. People who are successful know people who can mentor them, or they get education from others, whether that's through books, courses, mentorship, counseling, or coaching. Whatever it is that they need, they obtain it. They seek out others who can encourage them. They seek out others who can help lead them on to good things, hold them accountable, and show them what is possible. These supports in mentoring, education, encouragement, and teaching, all of these amazing characteristics of what it takes to get to a certain outcome are the people and the things that are in the environment of successful people. See, successful people don't always have everything given to them. Sometimes they have to seek it out.
It's not that things are just naturally easier for people who succeed towards their goals. It's that the people who succeed towards their goals employ these four steps. They believe that they can, they do the actions and the habits that move them forward. They don't give up and they continue to persevere, and they seek out what they need in the way of supports, knowledge, the education, the encouragement, accountability, and mentorship to make it possible.
Scripture for Reaching Your Goals
I can back these things up scripturally, too. If you are looking to meet your goals and you feel like you've just been running on a hamster wheel or a treadmill and cannot get any traction, I want to encourage you with these scripture verses belief that your success is possible.
Philippians 4:13 says, I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
The second one is that you can decide that you will do healthy habits that move you forward towards your goal. I Corinthians 9:24-27 says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we for an imperishable wreath. So I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. It's like training. It's like training in sports. It's something that you get your system to do again and again.
Then when you think about not giving up, about persevering. Galatians 6:9 might be helpful to you, and that is, let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. The Bible tells us we will reap what we sow. We will reap a harvest if we do not give up. If we sow good things and if we put that in the ground, those actions will produce good results and outcomes, especially when the Lord has called us to it. When the Lord is stirring our hearts to do something like me going for my counseling degree, we can trust His voice even if we don't see how it's possible because He won't leave us. He will empower us, and He will go before us and make a way.
Finally, Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks to the importance of having others around you who can help which says, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Then, to get knowledge is also supported in Proverbs 16:16 biblically and says, how much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver?
