Giving Your Best Life
Join Stephanie Jones aka Giving Gal, as she chats about “Giving Your Best Life"! In each episode, she shares intentional ways to give to yourself and others, how giving and gratitude changes your life and ways to go after living your big dreams and accomplishing goals.
Giving Your Best Life
Episode 105: Navigating Life's Distractions to Pursue Your Purpose (Part II)
Have you ever felt the weight of your possessions taking up physical and mental space to distract you from pursuing your calling? Join me, Stephanie, as I reveal the transformation that unfolded when I cleared out a space for my prayer closet, inviting a deeper connection with the divine. Our latest heart-to-heart dissects the poignant message of 1 John 2:15-17, shedding light on the traps of materialism and the overshadowing of our faith by worldly distractions. Together, we tackle the tough questions about what really holds value in our lives and how the love for the ephemeral can lead us astray from a fulfilling spiritual journey. I invite you to reflect on your own life and consider whether the spaces you inhabit are nurturing your faith or cluttering your mind.
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Hey friends, it's Stephanie here with episode number 105 of Giving your Best Life, and I'm diving into part two of navigating life's distractions. So if you missed part one, go back to episode 102 and that'll give you kind of a good basis for where I'm coming at with this episode. And I want to jump right in. So the last time I gave you two verses to look into 1 Corinthians, 10, 12 through 13, and then Luke 10, 38 through 42. In this episode we are going to turn our Bibles to 1 John, 2, 15 through 17. And it reads Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world and then this is in parentheses the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away with all its desires, but the person who does the will of God remains forever.
Speaker 1:As I was preparing for this, I was actually sitting in my prayer closet and I have not had a prayer closet for that long maybe a couple of months, if that Um, but I really, really felt compelled to clear out a closet and put paper up on the walls. That's how I've done it. I've seen a lot of people do it in different ways, but I've got paper and, um, you know, and then I just sit in there and pray. I write on those walls uh, prayers, prayers for people, prayers for forgiveness. Um, just what a lot of times I'm sitting, being still and just listening to what God has to say. And one of the first things that and that's really what has driven this whole topic on distraction was around things because we cannot have a prayer closet. Many people I know can't have a prayer closet because their closets are full of things. They don't have any room, it's full of stuff.
Speaker 1:And if we go back to that verse, it talks about things of the world, material possessions. All these things that are filling our closets, filling our homes, how we spend our money, is a distraction. All of it is a distraction for what God is calling us to do. Now, I'm not saying that books and things in your life aren't like. You can't have them. Hello, I probably have a thousand books in my house, but, being a former professional organizer, I would still consider myself a professional organizer, I could go into anybody's home and help them.
Speaker 1:Today I'm just not living as a professional organizer, but what I have found is when your home, your space, space, your environment is full of stuff and clutter, it is a distraction, it prevents you from doing a lot of things in life and, at the end of the day, giving your best life is all about doing what God has called you to do, like getting getting your life in order, having your foundation in faith and pursuing the calling that God has had on your life. And if you are distracted by stuff and material things and I fully believe after being a professional organizer for 10 years is that your physical clutter causes a lot of mental clutter, a lot of anxiety, a lot of other problems. That is more than just the physical clutter, and so one of the things that I am going to challenge you to do is get real about two things. One is taking an inventory of your environment and going are the walls closing in? Are my closets full? Do I have a bunch of stuff that I don't use anymore? Is not serving a purpose, is a distraction for me, is mentally cluttering my mind and I don't have space to one?
Speaker 1:Have a prayer closet where it's just maybe you have a closet that's just full of junk. I have so many homes, just said junk closets, Like people would say I don't even know what's in there. And I'm not talking about people who are like, hey, I live in an apartment or hey, I have a little house and I have like three closets and it's got, you know, things I need and use. I'm not talking about that, but I would say a significant portion of America, me included is there a space in your homes that could be cleared out for a prayer closet? Let's think about this, folks. What are our priorities in life and our faith? Our faith should be our number one priority in our life being in communion, making time, making space to have conversations with our heavenly father.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying you have to have a prayer closet, but it has been life changing and it is kind of this. That's what really got me thinking about, like the clutter and the priority that we put on things versus, you know, this quiet space where we go to the Lord and we can have conversation and we can cry and call out to him. This hidden space, I don't know. So that was just something that hit me. I don't know. I feel like it was God saying like, hey, we don't have prayer closets in our homes because they're full of stuff, and stuff is a distraction. It's also how we spend, and we waste a lot, a lot of money on this stuff.
Speaker 1:I also think about stuff is, even if I look at my desk, which is a constant battle, just because I'm a professional organizer, my desk is a constant resemblance. I always say of my mind and what's in my mind. But what I found is it is really hard for me to write or that's the story I tell myself if my desk is a mess and if it is full of clutter, I actually now force myself not to allow myself to get organized before I write. If I have scheduled writing on my calendar and my desk is a mess, guess what I am going to have to write with a messy desk. Because what I found is, again, that can be a distraction. Cleaning, organizing, clearing our clutter, making space, just right. That can be a distraction of doing sitting down and doing what God has called us to do or whatever activity we might be supposed to be doing. That is moving forward on a goal or something that you are called to do the other thing too.
Speaker 1:Last time we talked a bit about our phones, what's on the phones, and I will tell you this will be really, really difficult, but I have done this. I actually just canceled Netflix, and not that I was a big, big consumer of Netflix, but I would find every once in a while, if I wanted to avoid doing something is I would pull up a documentary. I love documentaries. I can kind of get obsessed with it Everest or stories of people who've done challenging things, pushing themselves mentally, and so I just canceled Netflix. I was like it is a distraction in my life. I don't need it, and so I want you to. Here's something actionable that you can take is go through your phone, look at apps that are a distraction. The other thing that you can do is and I don't know if Androids are like this or Google phones, but with an iPhone is, you can actually see how much time you're spending on your phone and what apps you're spending time on. So I challenge you Sometimes we lie to ourselves included me of, oh, I'm not spending that much time on my phone, and then I go pull up to see how much time I'm spending on my phone.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh my gosh, um, over over time, I've deleted social media apps and then I would just reload them if I want to post, just so I couldn't, like, just by habit, click on them. Um, I saw John Acuff. He's someone that that I follow, an author. I really love him, you know. He posted the other day, I think in his week he spent 11 hours on Instagram. 11 hours. And it's like oh my gosh, what can you do with 11 hours? And I'm not like that isn't a dig on John. I appreciated him for being honest.
Speaker 1:But it's like, a lot of times we say we don't have time to do what God is calling us to do, like, oh, I'll do that when I retire, I'll do that when fill in the blank. And it's like, no, if you have priorities in our life of what we should be doing, how you're spending our time, then 11, like, if we're spending 11 hours on a social media app, then then we do have time in our lives. Um, I want to wrap up with like how? So I've kind of given you, you know, um, some tips, um, oh, there's one more thing Sorry, I just saw this in my notes that I wanted to say of distractions. This is.
Speaker 1:This came to me during prayer time also is excuses can be a distraction. So I hear it all the time. In coaching, which my clients I'll like coach the excuse out of you, because excuses are really, I think, a mindset and you have to start to change your mindset. You have to. A lot of times we don't even acknowledge the excuses that we're making because we've been making them for so long. And in coaching, it's really hard to make excuses because when you start to talk about why you're not doing X, y and Z, me as your coach is going to call you out and say, hey, is that reality, is that an excuse? And then, if we figure out like it is an excuse, we may be able to dig a little bit deeper into that.
Speaker 1:But what I want to say is be cognizant of the excuses that you're making. So the one that we just touched on was the time. I don't have any time to do X, y and Z. I don't have any space in my home to have a prayer closet. Well, really, check yourself and go. Is that true? Do I really not have any time? And then you know, pull up your phone and see how much time you've spent on Netflix or social media app or whatever. Maybe it's zero, maybe you haven't spent any time, that's fine. That's actually awesome, amazing. If you pull up your phone and it's zeros, please let me know. And let me know how you do that Same with like the clutter in the closet. So, anyways, that's just something to be cognizant of.
Speaker 1:To start to think about is the excuses that you're making in your life. So I want to wrap up with just a couple of tips. Pick one of these. Start somewhere. If you're like Stephanie, I really God is calling me to do X, y and Z, but I am very distracted. I am all over the place. Um, but I am very distracted, I am all over the place.
Speaker 1:One, start with prayer. You know, lord, show me what my biggest distraction is, how I'm avoiding doing what you're calling me to do. And then two is be patient and listen to see what is revealed. What has God told you. And then three is take action on that. So that might be deleting an app on your phone. It might be getting organized, getting rid of stuff in your house. It might be putting your phone.
Speaker 1:Last episode we talked about like taking your phone and moving it somewhere else, creating boundaries around your phone and the other thing, too, that, as I was in my prayer time, is, you know, god really just saying strip away the things that you don't need. And if you look at those things is strip away what's on your phone that you don't need. Strip away what's on your phone that you don't need. Strip away the things in your home that you don't need. Strip away the things that are sucking the time and the life out of you, um, from you know, following the path that God has lead, leading you, and, um, you know the calling that he has on your life. So I want to wrap up there today. Hopefully, this part two is going to help you lessen the distractions. Part three will be coming up and it'll be about people who distract you in your life and what do you do about it. So, friends, this is just another episode of how you get to giving your best life.