The most exciting part of any journey always happens right before you begin. Before you begin your journey, their are no travel delays, no hiccups in your plan, no crazy encounters with random people, no lost passports ... only the potential for an incredible journey exists...
I just happen to believe that Happily Ever After is a state of mind more than it is a way of life...
I am a big fan of these two questions...
To me, these two questions are critical tools in which allow us to consider our hopes and our dreams, and contrast them with our reality. To say it in another way, these questions allow me to figure out if my hands and are fulfilling the dreams and visions which I hold so dear inside of me.
Have you ever asked yourself, am I moving in the right direction. Cameron Diaz, in all her wisdom, told Jimmy Fallon last week that if we aren't aging then we are dead. It's an interesting thought, which led me to this idea: your life is moving forward whether you like it or not, the direction that you are headed though, is determined either by design or by default.
Happy Friday! Here's a special FRIDAY JAM just for you!
Most of us live our lives much like I did in the story above. We wander through life, and the circumstances thereof, and we find a way to navigate it through this life completely unscathed. It is a modern day miracle...
One thing I am really good at is rationalization. I can rationalize anything. Trying to lose weight? YES! Trying to be healthy? YES! Do you want some dessert? YES! Shouldn't you be skipping that? Well.... here's the thing, I walked XXXXX number of steps today, and I've made healthy choices for the last three weeks, and I'm really missing a few of the vitamins that are going to be in that fruit topping, so really the healthy choice for me is to eat at least two pieces, so that I can get that my daily inputs up of Vitamin C...
At some level, we all hate change. But what if I told you that the life that you are living is not the best possible life that you could be living? A better version of you will be living a better version of your life. You may not have 2.9 billion reasons to change, but I can tell you that if you are willing to dive deep into yourself and begin some open heart surgery, the updates that you make are most certainly going to pay off. There is a guaranteed Return On Investment. How do I know that? Because that was the plan all along.
We spend a lot of time hoping and dreaming about once in a lifetime opportunities that will change our lives, but the real question is, what am I going to do with the opportunity when it comes? We like to imagine what our lives could be like after the opportunity, but have you thought about what your life will be like if you walk through that open door of opportunity?
What is it about people with the letters D-R in front of their name? It seems like that no matter what they might practice I am always waiting for Doctors.
I go to the Dentist... WAITING
I go to the Doctor (Medical) ... WAITING
I go to the Emergency Room ... WAITING
I go to the Chiropractor... WAITING
When you look out the window what do you see? Do you see the same old back yard or the same old street scape? Do you see the same blank cubicle staring back at you? Sometimes I wonder, what do you see? If I'm being honest, most of the time when I look out the window I am unimpressed. Not because I do not enjoy what I see, or because I am not proud of my home or my backyard, but mostly because I struggle with wonder...
I would like to personally thank you for reading this blog and following along with me on this incredibly exciting journey we call life! I wanted to take a moment and invite you to come and celebrate Easter with me and my family at Engage City Church!
Hope to see you there! Be sure to come and say hi!
Brett Esslinger is a Husband, Dad, Son, Brother, Pastor, Speaker, Leader, Writer whose life goal is to help people unlock their potential and fulfill their life's purpose.
Follow Brett on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @brettesslinger and of course over on Snapchat at: brett.esslinger
What am I even doing with my life? What have I accomplished so far? How did I get here? Why am I so dissatisfied with where I am right now? Sound familiar? These are questions that many of us wrestle with on a regular basis. While the frequency might change, from once an hour, to once a minute, to once every 10 seconds, these are questions that we are forced to deal with.
Often we think of inspiration of a mythical beast, a magical unicorn that randomly appears. We like to think of inspiration as a flash of lightning, and I believe we like to do this to take some of the pressure off.
Today is a good day. There were bumps in the road. There were wins and losses. There were a handful of feelings, emotions and situations that tried to de-rail me, but at this point in the day, things are going pretty well. Here are 5 tips to Overcoming A Bad Day.
Yesterday, I was working in one of those hipster, third wave, coffee shops, and no... I was wasn't working on growing out my beard. Depending on the place, and the vibe of the room, I often like to work without headphones. There is something soothing about the gentle roar of non-descript voices chattering away. I find the white noise acts a platform for my creativity, where music for me, at times, can become a distraction in and of itself.
The chatter over my shoulder began to soak the atmosphere of the room, it was even more palpable than the aroma of freshly ground coffee.
We need to embrace the tension points in our lives. I've written before about growing up in Church and then discovering that things aren't always as they appeared. It is in these moments of realization that we usually start getting really, really mad. The reason we get mad is because we feel like we've been deceived, like we've been lied to. We start discovering that things weren't always what we thought they were. We learn that their is a lot more humanity going on than we would like to admit, and our temperature starts to rise. You feel deceived, like you've played the fool, but in reality, all you've done is grow up.
Growing up in a charismatic, conservative Christian environment, l spent a great deal of my youth viewing life through Black & White tinged glasses. I thought I understood the rights and the wrongs, and I lived my life, the best I could according to these ideals. However, the longer I have followed Christ, the more I have come to realize that these same glasses are transforming and I find myself viewing the world through glasses with a grey hue. (You should also know that I struggled over the usage of gray or grey, but went with the 'e" because it looked good next to the word 'hue.')
I LOVE the idea of the road less travelled. Sure, it's an old turn of phrase, but there is something magical about this thought. Innovating, doing something new, doing something that no one has ever thought of, changing the game, these ideas are so incredibly powerful. The the road less travelled is romantic, it's full of feelings of adventure and excitement, and just the thought of it causes our hearts to race faster, and our eyes to fill with wonder...
I am tired of living this way... running on the hamster wheel, only to realize that every night when I head to bed that I haven't made any forward progress.
