The # 1 Dream Killer

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Sometimes we start to feel like living at our purpose is more like a fantasy than a reality. And in fantasies, everything goes well. It's amazing. But in reality, there's bumps in the road. There's resistance. There's uncertainty. There's self-doubt. There's some confusion. But all of those things are not reasons why you should give up on what you feel like God is stirring on your heart to do and pursue.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VIEW THIS EPSIODE OF THE CALLED FORTH PODCAST, YOU CAN COPY AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK: https://youtu.be/CeeOufnZnW8

Oftentimes, we when we think about our purpose and what we want to do, we just have this vision in our head like, hey, if I'm living out my purpose, it's just going to flow out of me. It's going to be natural because I'm naturally gifted in this particular area, because of course we want to we want our passions and our interests and our gifting to line up with our purpose.

So we think, okay, if I'm in this vein, if I get in this zone of my purpose, then it's just going to flow. And oftentimes we hear stories. I have even good friends who've shared that when they walked out their purpose. You know, they just didn't feel stress. It just it was it was great. It flowed. But I want to tell you, that is not everybody's story.

And I would say a good measure of the time. That's not the majority of the average person's experience. And so when you hear these stories, when you see the successes of other people online about how they had a half a million dollar launch or they created something and it just sort of flying out the shelves or people started asking them to create a product or service, and they did.

And that just developed into this amazing, huge business. We can sometimes feel discouraged when we ourselves have contended for a really long time for something, and it still hasn't happened for us. We experienced resistance. So one of the first things that you do in combating resistance is recognizing that just because you're good at something, just because you feel like something is your purpose and you have a natural interest and passion, and it doesn't mean it always just flows out so easily and just unfolds beautifully.

And it just is this amazing doves flying through the air experience. And so sometimes we start to feel like living at our purpose is more like a fantasy than a reality. And in fantasies, everything goes well. It's it's amazing. But in reality, there's bumps in the road. There's resistance, there's uncertainty, there's self-doubt, there's some confusion. But all of those things are not reasons why you should give up on what you feel like God is stirring on your heart to do and pursue.

I want you to understand that if you are pursuing your purpose, there is still going to be mistakes that are made along the way, and there are times where you are going to have to press on even when it doesn't make sense, even when it feels like, Gosh, shouldn't this be easier? And I'm not saying that there's times where you are out of alignment and you need to reevaluate because maybe you are going down the wrong path.

Maybe this isn't the right road for you. It's always wise to evaluate where you're at and why you're experiencing the resistance. But the line I want to draw on the sand really is understanding that resistance is a part of the process. Just because, you know, if you were gifted with an amazing singing voice, you would still need to practice.

You would still still need to develop that. I always use the example with my kids that Picasso didn't come out of the womb as a master artist creating masterpieces. He had to learn and develop that skill. He had to develop hours at it. Was there a natural gifting to her? It was probably easier for him. Maybe then the next person who absolutely doesn't have that skillset or natural ability at all.

Yeah, I think you can definitely intelligently say there's differences in where we're naturally gifted, but just because you're naturally gifted in something doesn't mean that you're not going to experience a level of resistance and you're not still going to have to pour time and effort energy into developing whatever skill it is that you want to become an expert at.

And so, as I said in previous episodes, sometimes we have to take our proverbial or virtual knife and we have to slash up this image or fantasy of what something supposed to look like. Because when we get this image in our head of what some things will look like and then it doesn't. We get unmet expectations, we get disappointment, we get discouraged and we get frustrated and we just want to walk away or we get the idea that this isn't what it was supposed to be.

So maybe this isn't the thing when in reality it could very well be the thing. We just need to press through this resistance. And again, I don't know your particular circumstance, so if you're feeling like you're in this place of misalignment and you don't know, I do encourage you to evaluate where you're at. But at the same time, hear me out on this resistance piece.

I like to tell this next particular story. When I'm in conferences or speeches, because I think it's so powerful. Have you ever heard of the product WD 40? Did you know that the story behind the name WD 40 is because it took the inventor 40 tries before he found the right formula? And I love this story because it's a prime example of if he had stopped at Formula 39, he would not have his claim to fame and his amazing product that has made tons of money and helped tons of people.

WD 40 If he had stopped at Formula 39, the person that created this product experienced resistance. And so this successful entrepreneur is no different than you are. You will have to press through levels of resistance when you're pursuing your purpose. I also love the story of the pastor, Michael Todd. Michael Todd took over this church in Oklahoma and he invested money in camera equipment and sound equipment, and he was recording and putting it on YouTube and it was getting very little views, like minimal, not much at all.

And then I want to say, it was like two years later he had a video that he had produced or put out on YouTube two years prior, get shared by an individual. And it had an amazing reaction and it went viral of something he had created two years prior. But if he had stopped after he realized, okay, it's been two years now and I'm not getting views, maybe this isn't the right thing.

Who knows how the story would have unfolded? We might not have the amazing transformation church that there is now that's helping lives and making the impact that it's making. And so I share that story to say, if you are in the phase of pursuing your purpose, where it is like the behind the scenes grind and nobody gets the amount of hours it's taking you to learn a skill set, to really pray and be intentional with God and just pour into your relationship with him where you're just like developing the inside of you, you know, like your character pursuing inner healing, pursuing like mindset work, and you're doing that behind the scenes stuff.

I want to encourage you that all of that time that you're spending is not in vain. You are pursuing your purpose, even though from the outside looking in it might look like nothing's happening or there's minimal results from all of the effort that you're pouring in. But regardless of what it looks like, the years and the time and the effort and energy that you're spending will yield a result.

You think about it like the lawn, the harvest, you plant a seed, and the seed doesn't result in a harvest right away. It takes time. And in the seasons of life that we're in, sometimes the harvest takes way longer than we want it to, but we especially want it to because we look at other people who are getting results quickly.

We look at the people who go viral or have a business that just seems to take off. But we don't know the businesses that failed before they found the business that succeeded because maybe they learned. Well, I guarantee they learned so much along the way of those from those failed businesses that they then applied to the business that was successful.

But if you're comparing your day one to somebody else's year five, there's going to be a gap because there should be a gap. I remember experiencing this when I co-hosted Co-developed, a conference called the Live Your Purpose Conference back in 2019. And I had a 30 minute talk and I did everything you could think of to do to prep for that.

I practiced in front of people. I practiced in a safe place, you know, in front of a small audience of my family, my close, the people that I was close with. I practiced like breathing technique to make sure I could call my nerves down. I practiced visualization, like all of the things that you hear that you should do to prep for an event and then when I got there and I knew the person ahead of me was wrapping up and I was going to go next, I felt those nerves building and I was doing all my breathing techniques to try to call my nerves down.

I finally get on stage and it was a hot mess. Oh, my goodness. I knew in that moment I'm going to be seeing these people. This is my hometown. I'm going to see them in Hy-Vee the next day at the grocery store. And I just like my tongue wouldn't work. I couldn't form words. I apologize to the audience.

And it wasn't until I got into the personal story of the speech that I knew, like the back of my hand, that things started to flow a little bit better. But I remember walking off that stage completely shocked because I had done all the right things, at least that I knew up to that point to prep for the event.

But what I learned from that experience is, number one, don't compare your first try at something or your first big try at something to somebody else's longer down the road, more experience. Experience. And number two, you can't fast forward or microwaved the painful process of development. I mean, we want to. Right. We don't want to have that immature experience or the failure or the mistakes that come along with developing something from scratch.

Who wants that? Who wants to to experience that? But that's just a part of the process. If we can just recognize that just because we're starting at square one of something doesn't mean that's where we're going to stay. You will evolve. You will develop, things will improve, and you will be better for this process of growth and development than you would have been had everything just developed perfectly, because life is not perfect.

And even if you have a perfect launch, which I don't know that there's such thing as a perfect launch, I would venture to say, you miss out on all of the lessons that come along with a bumpy ride and those lessons serve you moving forward. So what I want you to do when it comes to resistance is, number one, expect it, not that you're calling it out or speaking something bad over what you're going to do, but just acknowledge that, hey, and when I pursue this, I might experience a level of resistance.

And the reason why I say to expect it so that you can be prepared for it. Meaning if you know from the get go I'm going to experience some resistance, you know that you need to press through anyway. You'll know not to let those thoughts of comparison eat at you and you will be more likely to stay focused on the lane that you're in.

And lastly, I want to share something that I shared on social media the other day, which is that you're stronger than you think you are. And I shared the story of how I went through five years of depression. And in the middle of that five years of depression, I remember coming to a point where I just felt like I couldn't take it anymore.

I had had a really rough night. I was just so sad and just I felt like I was in this muddy pit that no matter what I do, I couldn't get out of. And I had a really rough night. And I'm like, God, I can't do this anymore. You promised in your word that you would never give us more than we could handle.

And granted, I'll pause here to say my understanding that Scripture was not what it is today. So I was totally misinterpreting that Scripture. But in my head that's what I knew. So I had said to him, God, you said you would never give me more than I could handle, but I can't handle this. And I went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning.

The first thought that came to my head was, Well, I guess you can, because you took a breath this morning and you woke up. And while when I first, you know, thought that it my first reaction was like, this is kind of harsh. That was like a harsh response to my what I was feeling. But secondly, I just realized, you know what, I can't handle this.

This is hard, it's frustrating. I can't change what I can't change. But apparently I can handle it or I wouldn't be here right now really to peel back the layers of what I experienced and from that was just that I was stronger than I realized. And so for you, I want you to recognize that in your weakest moments, you're stronger than you think you are.

Because I believe that God gives us the strength in the season that we're in. So while it might be easy to feel like you're just weak and you can't handle things, and that's why you're facing such frustration and disappointment and discouragement, I would counteract that. And I would say, you're strong. You are so strong. You have thought the same.

You've gone around the same mountain over and over again. You've been pounding on the same doors repeatedly. And while your inner critic would tell you, Well, you're just crazy, that's why you're still going after it. You're just you know, you're just a glutton for punishment. And the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

So you're just crazy. Well, I would counteract that thought and say, you're not crazy, you're resilient, you're gritty, you're persistent, you're determined. And again, our Pete, there's always an opportunity to evaluate if you're misaligned. And maybe you do need to pivot to the left or the right. But I would also venture to guess that you're experiencing a level of resistance right now, and you have to get with God and decide, is this a misalignment or is this a resistance?

Any depressant to. And I can't answer that question for you, but I believe that as you seek and pursue that, you're going to get clarity. So the number one dream killer or one of the biggest dream killers is resistance. So if that's something you're experiencing right now, I just want to encourage you. You're not abnormal. This is very much a normal process of pursuing your purpose, is feeling some resistance that you have to press through and present to.

So I hope this encouraged you today to put some things in perspective so that you can be encouraged and inspired to keep pressing in. Don't forget, if there's something you loved from today's episode, share it to your stories. Tag me. I would love to hear what your gold nugget of wisdom was from today and until next time.