Christian Business Concepts
Christian Business Concepts
From Setbacks to Stepping Stones
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Discover how to master the art of self-motivation and turn challenges into stepping stones for success. Inspired by the stories of biblical figures like David and Elijah, this episode unpacks the essence of maintaining a victor mentality, even when the odds seem stacked against you. By drawing parallels with modern-day icons such as Michael Jordan, we explore the transformative power of self-belief and the importance of fostering a mindset that views setbacks as opportunities for growth.
In the face of adversity, motivation can often waver, but it need not be dictated by external circumstances. We explore practical strategies to reignite your drive, such as keeping track of personal wins and losses and the profound impact of positive thinking. With a focus on maintaining an empowering inner dialogue and environment, this episode provides actionable insights to help you sustain motivation through life's inevitable ups and downs. A humorous anecdote about the role of supportive environments in personal transformation serves to remind us all about the importance of community in our motivational journey.
To wrap up, we delve into the significance of sharing blessings and spreading positivity, underscoring the role of faith in achieving both personal and professional success. The episode is more than just a motivational booster; it's a call to action to remain steadfast in your journey of growth and improvement. Embrace the path to self-motivation and watch as it opens doors to new levels of success in business and life. Join us and cultivate the relentless belief in your potential to overcome any obstacle that comes your way.
Welcome to the Christian Business Concepts with your host, harold Milby. Christian Business Concepts is dedicated to guiding companies and business owners in becoming effective, efficient and successful through God's Word and godly principles. Now, here's your host, harold Milby.
Speaker 2:Thanks again, kelly, for that introduction. I want to thank all of you for making the decision to listen to this podcast. I always count it a privilege when you invite me into your life, and my prayer and my desire is to enlighten, encourage and empower those of you who follow this podcast. So let's jump right in today, because today I want to speak to you about the power of motivation and, more particularly, self-motivation. You know one of the key components or ingredients for success is being able to motivate yourself or re-motivate yourself. You know life is full of ups and downs, good and bad, and emotional highs and lows. You know, through these down times and bad times it's easy to lose our motivation. I mean, it happens to the most successful people, it happens to everyone. So if you're struggling right now with being motivated, don't feel bad, because there are lots of other people that go through that same thing. You know the ability to stay motivated or to regain that lost motivation is really critical to being successful in business or being successful in life. You know negative circumstances or being down emotionally does not have to be the determining factors of your motivation. I mean, let's be honest. I mean life is not always up, it's not always positive. Life itself deals us some pretty unfair blows from time to time, and there are times that we have emotional downtimes and we have circumstances that just seem like they're insurmountable. But as you look at your life and you look back at your life, you've had peaks and valleys, and what we're going to try to understand today is how to keep your motivation in those valleys. You know, your motivation does not have to be determined by your circumstances. I mean, let's look for a minute at one of the most successful people in the Old Testament, and that's David. David went from tending sheep to being king, and a very successful king at that. You know, according to God David, the Bible says David had a heart after God. But David also had his ups and downs. He had his good and bads, like all of us do. At one point his son was trying to kill him his own son, his own flesh and blood. Many of the leadership within the kingdom was trying to kill him his own son, his own flesh and blood. Many of the leadership within the kingdom was trying to kill him. And this is a little bit of what we find in 1 Samuel, chapter 30, and we'll go through and read these first six verses in 1 Samuel, chapter 30.
Speaker 2:The Bible says and it came to pass when David and his men were come to Ziglag, on the third day that the Amalekites. The Bible says so David and his men came to the city and, behold, it was burned with fire and their wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captives. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. Verse 5, it says and David's two wives were taken captives, ahenom the Jezreelitess, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. So you know this is a pretty tough time for David. You know I don't have to go into detail here because I just read it, but definitely David struggled at this point to be motivated, and he was.
Speaker 2:The Bible says in verse 6, it says and David was greatly distressed, not a little, but greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning him. So not only did he lose his wives, not only did he lose the city, not only did the other people lose their wives and their children, but now the people were so upset with him, they were talking, there was mumbling and there were people talking behind his back about stoning him. And it goes on to say because the soul of all the people were grieved. And it goes on to say because the soul of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But this is key In that same verse verse 6, it says but David encouraged himself in the Lord, his God.
Speaker 2:So David lost his motivation. But look what happens. He encouraged himself. He wasn't looking to wait for the circumstances to be over. It wasn't after the circumstances were changed. It was in the midst of those circumstances that he encouraged himself. In the midst of those circumstances that he encouraged himself. That word encourage comes from a Hebrew word called zak and it means to harden, to be strong, to be courageous, to be firm and to grow rigid. So, in the midst of the circumstances, he decided to make a stand, and so he encouraged himself. And I want you to know that when you're in those low valleys and those low points in your life, that's when you find out who you really are, because at that point you have to make a decision whether you're going to encourage yourself and move forward or to stay greatly distressed. So you've got to make that choice.
Speaker 2:David chose to be a victor and not a victim. He decided to be a person who leans into his circumstances instead of a person who leans out. You know, there's always people that can give you reasons why they can't do something, but great leaders are the ones who are able to overcome those circumstances and tell you, and show you, more importantly, how they can do something. And so you either have to choose to be a victor or a victim. A victim mentality will keep you from God's best and it'll keep you from being successful in business and in life. Being a victim never works out well. You know, you can always blame somebody. You can always look at somebody and say, look what they did to me, or any of those types of situations that pop up. But you have to choose whether or not you're going to be a victim or a victor.
Speaker 2:In 1 Kings, chapter 18 is the story of Elijah and the 400 prophets of Baal, and this was the showdown. This is where that Elijah the prophet said to the people okay, you're going to choose today who you're going to serve. You're going to serve the God of Baal or you're going to serve the true and ever-living God. And so they go up to this mountain and they go up there and he says all right, you get a sacrifice, put it on the altar and then call on your God to consume your sacrifice. And as the story continues in 1 Kings 18, we find out that they called on their God day and night. Nothing ever happened. So Elijah said okay, and he took his sacrifice. And then they dug trenches around the sacrifice and he said fill the trenches with water, put water on the sacrifice. And he said let the true God answer with fire. And so Elijah prayed unto God and God actually consumed that sacrifice, consumed all the water. And it was a great victory for Elijah at that time. It was a great victory, it was a high point. Let's say it this way it was an extremely high point in his career.
Speaker 2:Now, when you go into chapter 19 of 1 Kings, you find Jezebel gets word about what happened and she sends word to Elijah and she tells Elijah by this time tomorrow, you're going to be like those prophets of Baal, because after that sacrifice they took the 400 prophets of Baal and they destroyed them, they killed them all. And so Jezebel sends word to Elijah that because of what happened she said, by this time tomorrow, you'll be like those prophets of Baal, you'll be dead. And so, in verse 4 of chapter 19, we find that Elijah runs into the wilderness, sits down under a juniper tree and asks God to take his life. He had totally went from the mountaintop to the valley in less than 24 hours because of what one person said. They hadn't done anything. Truly, his circumstances had not, you know, technically changed, but yet, because of what she said, it took him into a place of great emotional distress in his life. And so Elijah ran into the wilderness. He felt bad for himself and he sat under this juniper tree and he requested to die. He lost his motivation. Now I'm going to leave you to read the rest of 1 Kings, 19 and 20, and then you can find out how that story goes, if you don't already know. But he lost his motivation.
Speaker 2:So what happens in our lives? How do we lose motivation? Well, you know, first of all there's distractions. We get distracted with other things. We get distracted with situations. Maybe it's your wife is having an emotional time, or maybe there's an illness with a family member or a child, and we get distracted. And when you get distracted, you don't see clearly. And so that can happen and that can cause you to lose your motivation.
Speaker 2:Another big thing that can happen is failure. You know some people fail and then that just totally zaps all of their motivation out of their life. And failure doesn't have to have that kind of effect. We all fail, but it doesn't mean you're a failure. We all make mistakes, but it doesn't mean you're a failure. So you need to look at failure for what it is. You tried something, didn't work. You failed at it. Whatever, get back up on your feet, move forward, stay motivated. Don't let the failure dictate to you if you're going to be successful or not. You decide if you're going to be successful or not. Another thing is complacency. You know we get in a rut, we get complacent and we just soon lose our motivation. That happens to the best of us. Another is loss of confidence. When you lose your confidence, sometimes you know you lose your motivation.
Speaker 2:You know Michael Jordan, who happens to be one of the greatest basketball players in history, when in his sophomore year he tried out for the high school basketball team. Well, when they put the notice up on the bulletin board of those players who made the team, his name wasn't on it. He failed to make the high school basketball team in his sophomore year and he was devastated. I mean, he was absolutely devastated. He felt like a complete failure. But after a while he decided to take control of his circumstances and he began practicing hours a day. He practiced everything he understood about basketball and he took and broke it down and he practiced so he could get better and better and better. And so the next year he tried out again. This was his junior year. Not only did he make the basketball team, but that year he averaged 20 points a game. What a difference, right. And it all was because he became motivated. His senior year he had triple doubles every game. So again he motivated himself.
Speaker 2:And when somebody asked him you know, when you have a time like that where you feel like things just aren't firing on all cylinders, what happens? How do you get out of that? He said I always, even when I became a professional basketball player, even during my college years every time I had an off game or I felt bad, he said, or I just felt like I couldn't give any more than what I was giving, he said I would think about that paper on the bulletin board in high school that didn't have my name on it, and he said that would motivate me to go back out and put more effort in. So he figured out how to motivate himself. So you don't have to have a loss of confidence that controls your motivation.
Speaker 2:Another thing is avoiding pain. There's a lot of people who don't want to do things. They lose their motivation because of a personal choice to decide. Well, you know, maybe I'll fail at it or whatever, but it's actually just they're trying to avoid pain. It's commonly accepted that many of our daily actions are done to avoid pain. That's a lot of what motivates us. It's a lot about the decisions that we make is try to avoid pain.
Speaker 2:Another thing is lack of focus. You lose your focus. Again, we talked in the beginning about distractions. Distractions help you lose your focus and then you lose that focus and then before long you find out that you're not very motivated. So lack of focus. And then the other is negative circumstances. And so you know your circumstances are not your source of motivation. Keep that in mind. Let me say it again your circumstances are not your source of motivation. Your motivation too. And I'm sure there's probably other things that you could come up with or maybe some experiences that you've had of why you lost your motivation.
Speaker 2:But how do you regain your motivation?
Speaker 2:How do you better?
Speaker 2:Yet?
Speaker 2:How do you keep your motivation? Let's don't lose it, let's just keep it right. So how do you regain your motivation? Well, let me say this the number one thing. The number one thing is you must believe in yourself and you must believe you can do better. Now, you can believe in yourself but then not believe you can do better. You've got to believe in both of those things. You've got to believe in yourself and believe you can do better. You know Psalms 23 and 7, I love this passage. I say it all the time, for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. So as a man thinks in his heart, so is he what you think you are. You are what you think you are, you become. So the number one thing you've got to believe in yourself and then believe that you can do better.
Speaker 2:Walt Disney is quoted as saying if you can dream it, you can do it. All dreams come true if we have the courage to pursue them. Now here's a wisdom seed for you Proof of desire is pursuit. If you tell me you have a great desire for something but you're not pursuing it, then you really don't have a great desire for it. You know, there's a story told about the great philosopher Socrates and a young man came to him and he said you know, great Socrates, I want knowledge.
Speaker 2:And Socrates, you know he could tell. You know, he was young and maybe not necessarily sincere in what he was asking for. So he grabbed him by his shirt and he took him out to this fountain and he put him in the fountain and he held his head underwater for about 30 seconds and then he asked him he said what is it that you seek? And the young man again said oh great, socrates, I want knowledge you seek. And the young man again said oh great, socrates, I want knowledge. And he put his head back underwater for another 30 seconds and he's sputtering and spitting and water's coming out of his nose and mouth and he says what is it that you want? He says oh great, socrates, I want knowledge. Back under the water, he went.
Speaker 2:This time he came out gurgling and he says what is it that you want? And he started to say you know, I want knowledge. And he put him right back down again. This time he held him down a little bit longer this time when he come up, socrates said what is it that you want? And the young man said air. I got to have air, I want air. And Socrates said when you want knowledge as much as you want air in this moment, then you'll have knowledge. And so you know what a great example when we look at that story of pursuit and what we really want and what we really desire, right? So make sure that you understand that the number one thing is you got to believe in yourself and believe that you can do better. Now the next thing you must always keep the right perspective, because circumstances can be good, can be bad. You know, it just happens in life, right? So you always got to keep the right perspective.
Speaker 2:You know Oprah Winfrey, most of you know, one of the wealthiest women in the world. Oprah was born into a very poor family. She was abused, she was a minority. She had very, very bad circumstances in her life. It looked very grim for her, but at a young age she adopted this life philosophy that she even has said that that's everything about her. Show everything that what she does is guided by this one philosophy and is this she says you are responsible for your life. That's a simple statement, but it is a powerful, powerful statement. Think about it. You are responsible for your life. If you don't like the way things are going in your life, change it. Don't make excuses. Change it Now.
Speaker 2:The next thing that you do is do not focus on your past failures. We talked about failures right, but don't focus on your past failures. Keep them about failures right, but don't focus on your past failures. Keep them in the rearview mirror. You ever noticed that in your car? You ever noticed that the rearview mirror is really small compared to the front windshield? That's because you should be paying more attention to what's in front of you instead of what's behind you. So make sure that you don't focus on your past failures. You know, winston Churchill said success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm, and I think he's right, because I think that even though we have one failure after another failure, sometimes we still don't have to lose and we can still keep our enthusiasm right.
Speaker 2:So when you focus on your failures, what it does is it conditions you to fail, because you continually look at what happened in the past. You continually look at what took place when you failed, and if you do that, then you begin to teach yourself that you're always going to fail. You're conditioning yourself. So you don't want to do that right. So don't focus on your failures. It conditions you and let me give you an example of that.
Speaker 2:There was a guy one time and he was at the circus and he noticed that these huge, massive elephants actually had a small rope around their ankle of one leg and then there was a small stake in the ground and the elephants never tore that out of the ground, never. He said how do these elephants, how do you keep these elephants under control and to keep them from running off with such a small rope and a very small stake? And he said well, that's easy. He said we put that rope on them and we put that stake in the ground when they're baby elephants, when they're really little, and that rope truly can hold them and keep them, and it conditions them so that when they're older and we put that same rope and same stake in the ground, they just assume, because they've conditioned their self, that they can't get away, so they don't even try. So that's what happens when you continually focus on your failures is you condition yourself and you think, well, this is the way it's always going to be.
Speaker 2:You know, another thing that you can do to help keep your focus or regain your focus is keep a track record of all your wins and losses and whenever you feel like you've lost your motivation, go into the wins and start remembering reading what you wrote down. Maybe it happened two years ago, maybe it happened six months ago, but you put those wins and you list those wins so that you can go back when you're having a tough time. You go back and you look at those wins and I will tell you that I've done that. I'm not just saying this, I'm telling you. This is something that I've had to do to stay motivated or regain motivation. At times I got to go back and look at my wins, because it's not all failures. You've got some wins and, trust me, if I spent time with you and you told me I don't have any wins, I bet you I could find you at least a half a dozen within the first five minutes that you and I speak. You know so keep track of your wins and losses.
Speaker 2:Next thing is develop positive thoughts. Now think about this Thoughts create attitudes and attitudes create actions. So if you have the wrong thoughts, you create the wrong attitudes, which create the wrong actions. You know, some people have a really bad habit of really bad self-talk. They're always saying negative things in their mind. They're always down on their self and their mind and it's something that they have created and that creates bad attitudes. And those attitudes create actions that are actually contrary to the positive things that they're trying to accomplish in their life or the success that they're trying to have in their life.
Speaker 2:You know, philippians 4, 8 says finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of a good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. So you've got to learn to get your thinking right. You know the Bible says that we're to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, that we are to be transformed. The Bible says, by the renewing of our minds. So our minds are very important in our success. How we think is very important to our success. You need to make sure you read the right things, you watch the right things, you listen to the right things, because those are the things that affect your thoughts the most. So make sure that you develop positive thoughts.
Speaker 2:Next, develop the vocabulary, and this kind of goes in with this. Develop positive thoughts, develop the vocabulary of a victor, not a victim. You know, in Luke, chapter 6 and verse 45, it says A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth that which is good, and an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, brings forth that which is evil. For of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. So what is truly deep down in your heart is going to come out of your mouth. Now let me give you this wisdom seed the words you speak give direction to your feet. What you continually speak forth out of your mouth will control the direction that you go in. It's like the rudder of a ship, and so you've got to stop talking the negative things in your life. I'll never amount to anything, I'll never find success, I'll never be good at this job. I'll never be able to overcome this. I'll never be able to overcome that. You need to speak and have a vocabulary of a victor and not of a victim. So stop saying those negative things. Next, create an environment that feeds your motivation. Create an environment that feeds your motivation.
Speaker 2:Now let me tell you this story. There was a 350-pound young man, single young man, and he was struggling to lose weight. He tried diets, he just couldn't lose any weight. So he went to his pastor and he told him about the struggles that he was having and this burning desire that he had to lose weight. But he had tried everything. So the pastor told him. He said I'll tell you what. Tomorrow morning, monday morning, I'm going to help you. Be ready, somebody will be knocking at the door that morning. So the next morning the doorbell rang and when he opened the door he really expected to see the pastor. But what he saw there instead was a young, beautiful woman. She was in running shoes and a jogging suit. She said the pastor sent me and told me to tell you if you can catch me, you can have me. So she met him each morning and he ran and he did his best to catch her and in five months he had lost about 150 pounds. Of course he was in great shape and one day he said this is the day I know, this is the day I'm going to catch her. And so he was ready, he was motivated and when the doorbell rang that morning he was excited as he knew that it was going to be like the days before. But today I was going to catch her. But instead of this beautifully fit woman on his doorstep there was a 300-pound woman in a very large sweatsuit and she said the pastor told me, if I catch you, I can have you. So I wanted to kind of leave you with that just kind of a humorous anecdotal story.
Speaker 2:But the power of motivation will help you reach your destiny. The power of motivation will help you have great success. Lord, I thank you for those listening to this podcast. I ask that you help each of them learn to regain their motivation in their life and to keep their motivation in their career. Lord, I pray that you, lord, help them to not allow their motivation to be affected by their circumstances. Lord, help them to practice self-motivation, self-motivation and, lord, when you do that, I pray, lord, that you help them to stay on that path to great success. Lord, and I ask it in the name of Jesus, amen, thanks again for downloading this podcast. I just really appreciate you listening and downloading and begin to share with others this podcast if it's been a blessing to you. And I just want you to remember this last thing Jesus is Lord and he wants you blessed.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's Christian Business Concepts podcast. Go to ChristianBusinessConceptscom for more information and resources. Be sure to check out other podcasts that will help you take your business and your personal life to a whole new level of success.