7 Steps to Breakthrough part 2

I hope you had a productive homework time after the last post. Even if you only did one of the suggestions, you have taken a step forward! Get ready for more tools to help us find ways to be powerful and take ownership of where we are at. 

4. Use Your Voice

The next way to find our power is something we teach our little ones very early: use your words. What this means is speaking up to verbalize where my boundaries are. 

Abi said, ‘powerful people know their needs and know how to communicate them’. This involves ownership again. It is easier to expect others to do the thinking for us and read our minds as to what we need, and sometimes we aren’t self-aware enough to know what we need and too lazy or scared to find out. Powerless people tend to communicate through intense emotions. They build up intensity inside them and hope to have us feel it and get the message without them having to use words. But as much as we may want others to read our minds (which for those of us who are more intuitive, just seems to be a matter of being sensitive) we can’t expect anyone to read our minds and emotions. If I expect others to read my mind, I am powerless, because then everything hinges on others getting what I am not saying. I wonder if we sometimes don’t say what we need, because we are afraid or already expect that our needs will not be met and our words will not be listened to anyway. Just because this has happened in the past doesn’t mean I give up my voice. If I give up my voice I am now giving up my power and do not stand up for myself which is the ultimate betrayal. I need to tell people what I need.

I have an example where I just recently have communicated this. In my family Sundays have not been much different from any other day. But I have really felt the need to make Sundays more restful, less interrupted by stuff, quiet and more honoring of God. I announced that whatever chores needed doing needed to be done Saturday, because I was not going to want to be interrupted from my day of rest due to questions about chores and need to inspect. That pretty quickly got tossed by the wayside by the people involved, saying they weren’t going to ask any questions, which they were unable to do two weeks in a row. I initially communicated my needs because I could tell I was getting really upset, frustrated and cranky with all the interruptions. I am not talking about relational interruptions, by the way, I am solely talking about work related interruptions. It felt good to have been able to voice my desire. It did not feel so good to have my desires overrun and disregarded the last two Sundays. I need to spend some time working out how to enforce my boundaries, otherwise using my voice will feel powerless again.

There are countless examples about setting boundaries with my words that I could share. Any time I find myself frustrated I need to ask myself, have I used my words to communicate what I need in this situation?

Justin explained how we can still use our voice, even when our boundaries are not getting listened to. He modeled it by saying that we just tell the person not respecting the stated boundaries that they are being disrespectful, that they are not listening to any of the stated boundaries, violating every space and that if they keep it up then we are going to need to leave. The leaving part obviously only works in certain situations. In my above example I am going to have to work on something else if the boundaries continue to be violated. Practicing to see what options I have, I am going to try to list some things I can do. Per Abi’s example of sticking fingers in the ears, I could just wear ear plugs. Not sure how healthy that would be, maybe if it was accompanied by a sign that said something along the lines of no work-related interruptions… I could leave the house for the day and spend it outside if it’s nice, or at the library or some other quiet place. I could remove privileges if the chores aren’t done by Saturday night. Any other suggestions?

Some people think leaving is punishment or abandonment. I suppose it could be interpreted that way. But it is neither punishment nor abandonment, it is simply standing up for myself and stating my boundaries in love to the best of my ability.

For more on Boundaries, look at Henry Cloud’s book on the topic.

5. Choose What You Visualize

Have you ever worked yourself into a stress level or fear level of immense proportions simply because you assumed something was going to work out a certain way? I know I have. Abi and Justin call this Future Gazing…. And they make the very astute point that when we do so, we never visualize our future in a positive way or with an unconditionally loving God coming to meet us in the situation. What we do is imagining the worst future scenarios which don’t even exist. We make up a world where the god of that world is fear. Then we get worked up about something we have constructed in our minds, something we have no way of knowing if it will ever even materialize. We cause ourselves a lot of pain by making up these non-existent futures. 

The Bible is full of examples relating to this. Remember the Israelites when they saw the giants in the land? They did some serious negative future gazing and God made it rather clear that he was not in that kind of thinking at all. I take this to heart. Thinking about the future without making room for God to show up in it is going to need to be something I must take captive. I need to train myself to become alert enough to do this consistently. It is similar to making a list of all the choices I actually have in a situation. Next time I catch myself future gazing the old way, I want to make a list of scenarios of all the ways the future could turn out great because of God showing up in it. It might be kind of fun to write these all down and then compare them with what God did in the end. Better yet, I can spend some time with God and ask him about my future.

Abi shared the huge fear she had that Justin was going to die. She apparently future gazed about this a lot and was afraid of what she imagined. About how devastated she would be, about how painful it would be. She realized she could not actually control when Justin was going to die, and that she was giving her power to this future scenario she had fabricated in her mind. She mentioned that some people are good about just stopping future gazing and living in the moment. She said she was not able to do so but took back her power by future gazing in a way that helped her see she could conquer the pain, and that it would not have the power to take her out. That she was going to see God’s comfort and presence and redemption in it all. She also told herself that whatever fear she has, like a goliath, is actually not bigger than her. That she is bigger than the fear because she can face the fear and overcome it.

6. Choose what you believe and think

Remember, we are not powerless over our beliefs. Let’s say I believe I have no worth, and my feelings have fully partnered with that belief. I don’t need to wait for my feelings to change. I can believe what God says about me. And if he says I have worth and tells me to love myself, then I can actually start making decisions that speak of me being valuable even if I don’t feel it. Changing my actions will change my feelings. Hopefully you remember the posts on where our emotions come from. It would be good to read those for a refresher. This even goes beyond myself. I can also choose to put boundaries in place for people in my life who don’t love me well. It is showing that I value myself enough to stand up for myself, even if I don’t feel it just yet.

The same is true for thoughts. I have mentioned Dr. Leaf so many times already, you may be getting tired of hearing about her. However, her work is so amazing in helping us see that we are in control of our thoughts, and that we can wire out of our physical brains thoughts we have come to identify as harmful and create real, physical, new, healthy thoughts to replace those with. If you would like to learn a step by step guide, she has created one of how to do this with your thoughts, I highly recommend you read some of her books or listen to her podcasts or do some of her programs. Speaking from experience, her material is so loaded, I had to keep coming back to it after implementing little things I could understand and then return for more. It will be way worth your time. Let us take back the power we have over our thoughts.

Our habits are also not written in stone. We are not subject to what we are used to. Any habits we identify as unhealthy or unhelpful, we have the power to change. It is a natural progression from changing our thinking, because as we change our thinking we will automatically begin to choose to act differently and plan steps to wire out habits just like we have wired out unhealthy thoughts.

7. Choose Growth

Another powerful reality we need to embrace is that we have the power to grow. Abi shared about a vision she had that helped her understand how much power she had in her life. She had grown up feeling like she was simply not good at certain things. She assumed she was just born with some gifts and talents and not others, and that there was nothing she could do about it. She ended up seeing nine screaming babies and one adult in a vision. The adult was Abi’s emotional intelligence, something she felt she was good at and operated in well. She recognized the adult, because she had believed since early on that she was good at emotional intelligence, which is why she read about it, studied and learned, talked and had become an adult in that area. She had a baby of emotional intelligence and she had picked it up and fed it to adulthood. The nine other ones were things she never saw she had any power over to grow. Creativity, femininity, communications, and so forth. She realized, all she had to do is pick up those babies and nurture them, feed them grow them. That it wasn’t a matter of her either having this or not.

Teaching art frequently, I have heard the comment about some people simply not believing they are any good at art. It helps them to hear of a study I learned about that made a case for the fact that most human brains are equally right and left brain until we stick our kids into school. Pretty soon after that the right brain, where artistic expression is housed, starts to atrophy, so to speak, because our school systems are so heavily focused on nurturing the left brain. It is empowering to know that it is a matter of nurture rather than of not having it at all. Anyone who has had a leg in a cast doesn’t just walk around the rest of their life limping saying they are simply not good at walking. They will do physical therapy to help that atrophied leg get back in shape. I believe it is really similar in other underdeveloped areas in my life. I don’t have to be stuck any more, thinking I wasn’t given a certain quality. Saying I’m just not good at whatever it is, is really more of a statement of “I haven’t taken the time to grow that muscle”.

I just recently chose to begin growing the muscle of technology. I have pretty good 24-hr tech support in my house due to my husband knowing so much about computers. It was honestly just easier to let him take care of any computer issues instead of figuring them out myself. But when I felt like God was inviting me to start this blog, I knew I had to accept the hard work and learn how to design my website and learn how to make it work on my own. Did I ever run into obstacles! The learning curve was steep and sometimes painfully slow! But I decided to have a growth mindset. It helped knowing that there are so many who have gone before me. I found myself in the shoes of those who tell me they are bad at art and I say, “but it’s just a matter of practice”. Now I was the one who frequently thought it would be easier to just pay someone to do it, but I embraced the truth that I have the power to stick with it and get better at it the more time I spend on it. It’s good to remind ourselves that as we set out to grow something new in our lives, taking little steps is the key. Too high goals too soon will just cause us to feel defeated.

Another thing I have been growing this year has been my mind muscle. Dr. Leaf has a program called the 21-day brain detox. I had realized I was rather weak in the area of managing my thoughts with my mind and decided this was the year to learn how to become powerful in it. I signed up for the program, began and almost instantly felt overwhelmed. It felt so hard. I felt I wasn’t doing it right, and I thought because I wasn’t doing it right it wasn’t going to work. Many doubts and struggles showed up right away. I was tempted to give up several times. It sure helped that Dr. Leaf was pointing out that this was a normal phenomenon and to stick with it. I did. Cycle two of the detox was so much easier and three even more. My mind has become much more grown up as a result. I do want to share though, that there came a time where I was beginning to feel overwhelmed with the constant work. It’s even something Abi mentioned in one of her talks. How much consistent, very hard work it takes to take power back and to do the mind work. I am sharing the following story, even though it is long, because in it God helped me start to put together so many of the things I have been learning in this course, and I thought it might help you to see how it might work out in action.

All week, maybe even a couple of weeks, I had been feeling overwhelmed with the constant work aspect of being powerful. I have been doing ‘active reaches’ per Dr. Leaf’s program for more than three months and doing those seven times a day and keeping track of it and making sure the mind stays alert and involved just began feeling so hard. So very exhausting. I even began feeling discouraged because I was losing momentum and worrying that the new thinking was not going to take because I don’t do it per the seven times and all of that.

By the time Abi said it was hard mind work I was pretty overwhelmed. I even wrote down that it was overwhelming, and that I needed to really learn how to balance doing the hard work and at the same time giving myself compassion for the times when I just feel exhausted by it all.

I was getting all emotional about it and put my hand on my heart and began telling it that it was ok. But the more I did that the more emotional I was becoming. I realized my heart was feeling overwhelmed with it all and I guess me speaking compassionately to it was putting me over the edge, and I just began crying.

I realized that I needed to trust God in the process. Trusting him that he makes up for the gaps that were created by me only being able to do so much, that I needed to trust him that he would honor my efforts even if it wasn’t the seven times or whatever that my idea of success was.

I proceeded to validate myself about how hard it was, especially with no one in the house being on the same journey or even wanting to know about it. But then I felt prompted to ask God, where this came from. Digging for the root. Why was I feeling what I was feeling? I was reminded of the time when I was in fourth grade and I had to take an exam that was going to decide if I was going to be going to junior high with the “dumb” kids or the “smart” kids. That is not how the school presents it, but it was the way everyone thought about it. My two brothers before me and my twin sister all passed, I failed. In my performance driven family, it felt like a sentence. ‘I’m not as smart as they are.’ Any good grades I brought home felt like they got challenged because it was ‘good’ grades compared with the ‘dumb’ kids, and that my good grades wouldn’t be good compared with the ‘smart’ ones. After fifth grade with the ‘dumb’ kids, I had one more shot of making it to the ‘smart’ kids but I would be held back a year. In the unwritten thinking of the general public, that was disgraceful. A blot on your record. 

I did pass, and I did do well and maintain great grades in that crowd, but I was behind a year, so of course my grades should be better. It felt like I had gotten set up to compete all the time. I am still not sure exactly what my beliefs would have sounded like had they been verbalized, but I think something inside of me believed I had to always maximize everything, make the most of everything, make up for lost time, excel. That didn’t allow for much rest, grace or enjoyment. I feel that in the current setting where I am trying to become the best me I can be, I have fallen into that thinking. 

In contrast, just to give a frame of reference, I had been doing this 21-day detox program for the fourth time already while someone else who started before me didn’t make it past day 3 of the first round. Yet here I was, feeling stressed about not doing it right on the fourth round and getting behind. It helps me realize that my standards are definitely on the high end and it has been stressing out my heart. I don’t know that I have been verbally saying things to my heart, but in actions, I have always pushed my heart to work hard, keep going, do more, not give up. All those things are good things, but I was never giving my heart compassion. There was no room for compassion when I had catching up to do and something to prove. 

As I was realizing all this, I began apologizing to my heart for beating it up with all this slaving. I renounced being the slave driver and set the heart free to take its time. I even asked God what he wanted to say to me and I felt he said: ‘you were never made to be compared. You never needed to measure up to them. You were unique and made for a specific purpose that did not depend on whether you passed a test or made a grade that counted with the same weight as another. The values they had are not the values you need to be measured by. I don’t have a time table for you to get things right by or you will be left in the dust. That is man’s rules, not mine.’

I also realized that by believing their standards I had allowed them to define if I was successful or had worth or not. I took my ball of worth back. I did not realize I had given it away and caused my heart so much stress in the process. I am giving my heart peace to take a slower pace when needed. Slowing down does not mean I am becoming lazy and irresponsible. I am going to ask God what there is grace to do each day instead of driving myself to the brink of exhaustion.

I can’t help wondering, what other screaming babies are there that I haven’t picked up? Are you aware of any in your life? Abi shared how she used to be very serious (I can relate), and how she realized she had a screaming baby as far as joy was concerned. She shared how she began growing joy by watching comedy shows, practicing not taking herself so seriously, hanging with joyful people etc. If you have never seen Abi, she is such a bouncy, fun loving person with such a sense of humor and joy! You done did grow up that baby, Abi!

What are you going to grow this year?

Way early in the course we learned that feelings are not meant to drive us. This means we have power over them. There are many ways we can exercise power over our feelings. For instance, we can remember that feelings are flags pointing to something needing investigation and attention. As part of that investigation, we can discover hooks that show us pain that needs healing. As we heal the pain, we have taken stewardship over the emotion it triggered. Deciding that I will not be driven by my emotions really helps me avoid feeling powerless. Other things I can do when I am in the middle of a feeling is talk it out with someone, or journal about it. I can pray, I can declare biblical truth that counters the feeling, I can worship, I can choose to stand against it (as in not allowing fear to force me to choose something). I can talk to my heart, validate it and focus on taking the thoughts behind the feeling captive. Sometimes just putting a smile on my face or singing a joyful song or standing up straight and breathing deeply can help me change my feelings.

Do you have any other ways you take charge over your feelings?

Bonus: See Others as Powerful

The last way Abi and Justin taught us to take back our power was introduced with a story. Justin was at In-n-Out with his friend Jeremy, when Jeremy offered Justin a 20 dollar bill. Justin refused, saying he was ok. Jeremy asked him a couple more times if he was sure and Justin continued declining. The next thing he knew, a waitress was walking by, Jeremy waved the bill in the air and asked if she wanted it. She took it gratefully and walked off. This was an unexpected turn of events to say the least. Jeremy explained that he was going to give away that bill that day, whether to Justin or someone else. He said, ‘You decided you wanted to manage me and my finances rather than trust me with giving this money to you.’ Ouch. Justin was being overly responsible for his friend.

How often have I turned down someone’s offer because I decided they can’t afford it as much as me or something else like it? It’s not that we intentionally try to offend them; we try to be nice to them and look out, but by declining their offer we are really seeing them as a victim. Seeing them poorer than us. We think we have to help them make a powerful decision by not accepting their offer. In the process we miss out on many gifts and blessings because we don’t see others as powerful.

The moral of the story: See people as powerful. Don’t guess what they need. Don’t assume you know what they can and cannot afford. We do not have to manage others. Trust that what they are deciding is them making a powerful decision, even if it looks powerless to me. Even if lots of people communicate passive aggressively, which is a powerless form of communication, that is on them; they are making that choice. They are powerful to choose that or something more powerful. If they don’t communicate and just hint around, we can just tell them that we would love to hear what they would like to say. In Abi’s case, (if you haven’t heard her story, Abi’s mom  fell into depression and from the sound of it took no responsibility to get back out). She decided her mom was making a powerful decision to stay in bed. The bottom line is that people who act powerlessly are actually using their power to make powerless decisions. If they were offered other options and turned them down, we need to treat them like powerful people.

I had an experience that fits into this topic. It had to do with a person who, granted, had had many heavy blows dealt her. There were huge health issues to deal with, challenging financial situation and other things to complicate this situation. I supported this person by making meals for a while. After a period of time I got the sense my kids and I should pray about how to help going forward. We all listened to God individually and all got the same idea, to offer to teach the teens in the house how to cook so that when physical issues reared their ugly head, they would not be at friend’s or take out’s mercy any longer. I also offered the person to teach her how to preserve pre-prepared meals ahead of time for emergencies. The person never took me up on either offer. We had gotten out of touch for a period because she was only communicating in group posts on Facebook and I had been weaning myself off Facebook. It was after the fact that I found out she had had another ordeal and could have used some help. She had never personally asked me for help, she only addressed people at large on Facebook. When I saw what had been going on the past couple of weeks, I did not jump at the situation. I felt guilty, to be sure. I found it helpful to learn in this session, that it is healthy to treat people as powerful. I think that is what I did, not understanding at the time. She had been given other options. She could have made those powerful and proactive choices but had chosen not to. I felt like if I went to do anything, I would be feeling powerless because I would have done it out of guilt, and I would also have felt that I was somehow enabling her choices. I am not aware of any personal rules that may have gotten mixed up in this exchange. Maybe there are. Maybe God will show me what else may have gotten triggered in me which I need to deal with. I still don’t feel good about this whole issue. Maybe I’ll see more to this as I process further. For the time being, I am doing the best I know how and give myself grace for any shortcomings. I certainly do not want to minimize the ordeals this person has to endure continuously. But she is still has power to look for options and own her choices.

Seeing everyone around us as powerful brings us a lot more peace. We can be ok with people choosing not to be ok. Every human being is making powerful decisions every day, but some of them make decisions that look passive and are perceived as powerless.

If you haven’t already, look at your life and find an example of how you can be or have been powerful.

Use your words to establish boundaries in an area where you have felt powerless.

Look carefully at what you have been speculating about the future and dream about scenarios where God is lovingly involved in the outcome.

Pay attention to things you felt you were bad at, and pick one thing you want to start growing.

Assess where you have been seeing people as powerless and start treating them as powerful people.