Waking Back Up to the Life You Were Meant to Live

Have you qietly stopped dreaming? In this episode, we talk about what happens when life goes on autopilot- and how to gently wake back up to the life God may still be calling you into. I'm sharing 5 powerful questions that will help you reconnect with purpose, possibility, and the desires on your heart. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, I am Christy Ballard Filaney. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced, kids off to college, and having never dated in my adult life. I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin. I am so excited that you are here. And if this is your first time listening, just allow me to introduce myself. My name is Christy Filaney, and I am a life coach for women. I am so excited to share today's episode with you. I have a very, very important question for you. So are you ready to dive in? So here's the question: Have you stopped dreaming? Not in a dramatic, I'm giving up on life kind of way, but in the quiet, subtle way that it happens for so many of us, where life just becomes automatic. You wake up, you go through the routine day after day, you take care of everyone else, and somewhere along the way, you stopped asking yourself what you actually want. Now, ladies, if this is you, I want to tell you that this is perfectly normal and it can be changed. So I'm hope you're ready for this episode. Because I don't think this happens because we become lazy or we are unmotivated. I think it happens because life gets full. It gets full with all the shoulds and all the have-to's, right? What ends up happening is that our responsibilities start to increase. Sometimes disappointment happens, prayers don't get answered the way that we hoped. And without even realizing it, we shift from living with expectation to just maintaining what is. But here's what I believe fully in my heart. God did not create us just to survive this life. He didn't place desires and gifts and callings inside of you so that you could sit dormant under routine and responsibility. You see, scripture tells us that we've been given a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. And in case you did not know, that is my personal scripture for this year. So, no, he did not create us with a spirit of fear. He created us with a power with a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline, or better yet, steady-mindedness. So not fear, not shrinking back, not settling for the norm, not settling for just routine. So if you're not sure, if you are in that space of no longer dreaming, I want to give you some examples of what that might look like for you. Maybe you feel a little bored or numb in your current season. Maybe you've stopped setting goals that actually excite you and get you going and get you motivated. Maybe it's that you can't remember the last time you felt inspired. Maybe you've convinced yourself this is just how life is. And maybe the hardest part is that everything looks fine on the outside. You see, I recently attended a conference and the facilitator asked us five simple questions. And I'll be honest, they stopped me in my tracks because they weren't about productivity, they weren't about doing more, they were about remembering who you are and what God may be stirring within you. So are you ready for them? I would highly suggest that you listen to them the first time around and then hit pause and rewind and listen to them again. If you are driving, I would highly suggest to mark in your phone, on your brain, where you pause this recording and go back and write these questions down. I would highly suggest that you sit and that you spend time with them. You ready for them? Let's take a deep breath. Number one, how do you want to live? Not how am I currently living, but how do you want to live? Number two, what do I want to contribute? Like what is inside of me that's meant to be given away? That is contribution. Number three, who do I want to help? Who are the women, the people, the lives that I feel drawn towards? And number four, how can I make an impact? Not small, safe impact, but meaningful kingdom impact. And number five, what do I need to learn? What growth, what skills or courage is required for the life that I'm being called into. Because it doesn't matter what your current profession is, it doesn't matter what your day-to-day life looks like. We are all called to connect with each other, to love on one another, and to help each other out. And so all of these questions will help you to start dreaming again and start thinking outside of yourself to the connections and the way that you want to live your life in community with others. So something that I want to encourage you about is that you don't need all of the answers right now. If some of these questions are kind of stumping you up, you don't need all of the answers right now. Allow yourself to spend time with them. Allow yourself to evolve and to come up with the answers as you are growing. But you do need to be willing to ask yourself these questions. You need to have an open heart and an open mind around every single one of them because dreaming again isn't about having a perfect plan, it's about becoming open again. Now, if you don't mind, I want to share a story with you. A couple of years ago, I had this amazing idea of wanting to host a women's retreat. I was so excited about the potential for the location, and I was so excited about the women that would come. And I had this vision inside my head of what this might look like. All of this happened, this idea, this dream happened as I was laid up in bed right after having foot surgery. And I knew that the foot surgery was going to take quite a bit of time to recover. And what I noticed in that time was that I was so excited about this dream, but I also knew what my limitations were at that moment in time. And so I allowed the dream to slip away. And then over the next year, my husband and I would go through a series of other trials with his health. And I allowed that dream to stay stagnant. And I allowed my heart to stay closed in the idea that, oh, maybe this is not gonna happen. Maybe this isn't something that is going to come to fruition. Well, if you've listened to the podcast, you know that in three short weeks, I am hosting my very first women's getaway. So something that I want you to understand in me sharing this story is that don't let your dreams go by the wayside. Don't let the circumstances that are happening for you right now to allow you to believe that those dreams are not for you. Maybe it is an idea that needs some seasoning, some time to come into fruition. So don't allow that closed-heartedness or even fear to make you think that that dream isn't for you. Because, as I mentioned, this year I am surrounding myself with a framework, and I mentioned it on one of my earlier podcasts, but with a framework that is helping me to really move into the answers to those five questions. If you'll recall, my word for this year is release. So I am in the posture of releasing fear, releasing limiting beliefs, releasing those ideas that maybe this is not for me when my dream comes back up. I'm also using my scripture of the year, which I shared with you earlier in this episode, the scripture around God did not give us a spirit of fear and timidity. He gave us a spirit of power, of love, so that we can love each other well and so that we can love on and connect with other Christians and like-minded people, and even connect and love on those who need to come to Christ. And then also my theme song, which is I lived by one republic. So I'm using this framework to help me to remind myself that my dreams are valid, that my dreams do have a season, and I can choose to cultivate them, to allow them to come into fruition. So, what I'm saying to you is I want you to keep an open mind, an openness to possibilities, an openness to growth, and an openness to the idea that your life is not finished being shaped. Because when we stop dreaming, it's often because we've forgotten who we are. But when you reconnect with your identity, a woman created on purpose for a purpose, dreaming becomes a natural overflow again. It doesn't feel like pressure, it doesn't feel like striving, it feels like alignment, which is exactly how this retreat came into fruition. How the women who are going came into signing up and creating that space for themselves in doing so, it felt like alignment. So here's what I want you to do: don't just listen to this episode and then move on. Don't just listen to the story that I shared with you and think to yourself, oh, that's amazing for her. Don't do that. Sit down with these questions, journal them, pray through them, ask God to reveal to you what maybe you've either buried or ignored, because the life that you are longing for, it might not be as far away as you actually think, it might just be waiting for you to start again. Now, something that I want to offer you is that if you are struggling with the answers to these questions, or if you are struggling to even answer them, I want to invite you into my one-on-one coaching program. I have a very specific 12-week framework where we talk about your goals, where we talk about your dreams and your desires, and we discover what could be hidden as to why you've stopped dreaming. And so I encourage you to reach out to me at Christy at Christy Filanecoaching.com through email if this is the gift that you would like to give for yourself this year. I would love the opportunity to work with you one-on-one. I'm going to drop a link inside the show notes so that all you have to do is click on that link to connect with me. You're also welcome to connect with me either through Facebook or through Instagram. I would love to hear what you are dreaming about this year. Do you need a life coach? Wouldn't it be amazing to have a listening ear who understands where you're coming from? We could work on challenges, goals, relationships, and so much more. Email me at KBFwaney. That's K B F A L A N Y at gmail.com. I have created an online coaching business to help you ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time.