Sips from the Fountain
Learning to drink from Jesus, the Fountain of Living Water, isn’t as hard as I thought, especially when you just start with sips, and those will change everything.
Sips from the Fountain
The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Getting Stuff Done
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too, and it's okay. My name's Martha Gano, and in this podcast, we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. Sometimes it'll be just you and me. Sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about.
Martha Gano:Hey, hey, hey, everybody, and Happy New Year. This is our first episode of 2025, and I think it's absolutely hilarious that we're actually kicking this year off on what we now call National Quitters Day. It's the second Friday in January and I think it's hilarious. We're going to talk about it and we're going to have a lot of fun in this episode. In fact, I'm calling this episode the most fun you'll ever have getting stuff done, or it could also be called goal setting for wimps, but we're going to have a great time. You want to listen all the way to the end, because that's where the fun is.
Martha Gano:So everybody right now is talking about setting goals, making resolutions, the gyms are full and the weight loss and nutritional companies are flooding the aisles, the airwaves, and our algorithms At least they are mine, I think they probably are yours as well, I don't know.
Martha Gano:But we're coming at you today with a different take on this whole thing. You know, there's this train of thought that goals have to be big, hairy and audacious in order for us to be motivated enough to stick to what it's going to take to see them accomplished. But oh my word, I don't know about you guys, but from that I've ended up with the perception that any goal worth having is going to have to be hard and time consuming, and big and demanding and difficult, and, by inference, that means that I'm going to be miserable the whole time. And thus today, Quitters’ Day. I just learned about this. I don't know where I've been, but did you know that January 13 to 20th this year it's going to be called Quit Week and the second Friday in January is Quitters’ Day? Isn't that hilarious? And it's not going to be surprising to know that. It's because most people have given up on their New Year's resolutions, or they're at least waning by then. But after what we just said about this process of setting massive kind of overwhelming goals. It's not a surprise, right? But what if we didn't have to be miserable in this goal setting process? What if it wasn't big, hairy and audacious or go home? What if we could accomplish big goals, or even some goals, with small, doable steps that we enjoy along the way? In fact, did you know that most great things that are accomplished are the result of small, consistent action steps taken over time? And I don't know about you, but I have to have a good time doing the thing that I'm doing if I'm going to be consistent at it over time. So let's talk about that. What if today, just for a few minutes, we could put aside our traditional New Year's resolutions mindset and come down a different path, a low stakes path, no decisions necessary?
Martha Gano:My dear friend Susan gave me a gift one time. I was in the middle of a crisis and was going to need to make a decision soon, and I was kind of panicking about it and she said no, no, no, martha, you don't. You don't need to make the decision right now, you're just in research and information gathering phase, you guys. That has set me free. Since then, I give myself permission to just gather information, just do research, and often the solution or the plan or the answer it just rises to the surface once you let all of your information marinate. So just come with me today and let's explore some different ideas with this. So, to go with me, I am gonna need you to do something. I'm gonna need you to get your dreamer hat on Now.
Martha Gano:I know that a lot of us have stopped dreaming a long time ago, maybe even in childhood, and some of us have even forgotten how to dream, just caught up in the day to day. I get it. In fact, you know. They say that 45% of Americans will have set New Year's resolutions. But what does that mean about the other 55% of us? Meh, we don't bother, right? So we're not even into dreaming, right? But what if you could spend some time letting yourself revisit old dreams or imagine new ones, or maybe how you would like your life to be? They could be big, like a new career, or maybe a calling that you feel like you haven't fulfilled yet and you're willing to look at it again. Or it could be big, like a new career, or maybe a calling that you feel like you haven't fulfilled yet and you're willing to look at it again. Or it could be a small dream, like finally repainting the kitchen. I promise you it is amazing and so much fun if you'll just give yourself some time, get alone into a space and let yourself dream.
Martha Gano:A really great tool for dreaming about what you'd like your life to look like is something called the wheel of life, and you can find it all over the internet. Here's the basics of how it works. Take a piece of paper, you write down each of these different categories of your life and I'll give them to you. You put one per line down, but these categories can vary. You may have other things in your life that need to be a complete category, or some of these may not apply to you. Then your goal is just to have eight to 10, eight or 10 categories. These are the basics physical environment, spirituality, faith or personal development. You may call that Family and friends, or you may make those two separate categories romance, your partner, love, your career, money or finance, health and fun and recreation. So those are the basic categories.
Martha Gano:Again, you can modify it and customize it based on what your life is, but the basic concept is, once you've got them written down, you now you go through and just kind of quickly like what is your first response as you think about that area of your life, you rate how satisfied am I with this current state of where I am in each area on a scale of one to 10? What's your first reaction? Now it may surprise you what your first reaction is, and you may have to spend some time thinking about it before you even have a number come to you. Whether you, even before you, even know where to even start with that, because we're not often good at knowing where our discontent is coming from sometimes, and this can be a great spot to do what I call the Jamie Winship Lord. What do you want me to know about this?
Martha Gano:Right, and once you've assigned your numbers, one to 10, to each of your category here's the cool part. Now you get to draw a circle. This is where the wheel comes in. You're going to take your category. Here's the cool part. Now you get to draw a circle. This is where the wheel comes in. You're going to take your circle. You're going to divide it into however many categories you chose. Let's say you did eight categories, so you're going to make eight wedges in your circle and you're going to give each category a wedge, so write the name of the category in the wedge. Now, if the center of the circle is a zero and the outer edge of the circle is a 10, you're going to draw a line across each wedge representing where, on the 1 to 10 scale, you rated each category. If that doesn't make sense at all, just open up YouTube and look up Wheel of Life and you'll see what I mean, because here's where the wheel comes in.
Martha Gano:If your life is rolling along on this wheel, the question is, what is the ride like? So let's say that one category is an eight, the next category is a three, the next one is a four, the next one is a seven, the next one is a two. How smooth is your ride? Is it smooth where all parts of your life are in balance, or are you getting bumped and jolted along the way because there's some imbalance? Or are you getting bumped and jolted along the way because there's some imbalance? Because you know how you can feel wonky and never quite know why. Sometimes this is the reason. Is there a possibility that one or more categories is the source of some discontent in your life? It's a pretty cool visual, right. So for me, I'm just going to be transparent with you guys here.
Martha Gano:For me, I've done this in the past and it's been a number of years actually, and this year I was like I want to do a Wheel of Life. I want to really be intentional about what I'm doing. I just felt like there was some imbalance in my life, so I sat down with it. The truth is, about a year and a half ago I started a new job and I've been in a pretty steep learning curve and having a ton of fun. So that's resulted in some imbalance in some other areas in my life and what. What's suffered a little bit. What's a little bit lower on my one to 10 scale is several categories friends and family fun. That doesn't work, for I mean, I have fun all along the way, but I need to. We'll get to that.
Martha Gano:And then my personal time with God. I felt kind of thin, like when I feel on edge or I feel like things aren't just quite right. It is not uncommon that it's because I'm hungry for more time with the Lord and that's what's going to satisfy me. And then, fiscally, there are times in my life I've been much more focused than I am and I need to just get a get to get a standard on where I am and get a handle on it, be more intentional with my finance. So Now, those are the things I wrote down.
Martha Gano:Now, what do I do with that? Here's the fun part. Here's where the dreaming comes in. So I'm going to take that wheel or that list, and for each category that is not where I want it to be. I'm going to start dreaming Now.
Martha Gano:I recommend that we start simple, like what are one to two things that you could do this year in each area that would make that area less deficient? I'm not kidding you. Now, just one or two things. You know, this podcast is being released on what's now called Quitters Day, right, because people set goals that were too massive and overwhelming and it wasn't sustainable. So we want to start small for real, especially as you're learning the practice of setting goals. Let's take those baby steps, yes, and keep things doable. So just one or two things in each category that you'd like to improve.
Martha Gano:So, for example, in my life, those several areas that I mentioned, what am I going to do? So I've started dreaming about them and I've come up with some things that I want to do, and I'm still thinking about other things, but, for example, for friends and family, for that category, one thing that I'm making a change in. It's super simple, and that's just deciding that, instead of using drive time to listen to things, I'm going to use drive time to call my people. Oh, I feel a little bit teary right now, actually, because I've already feeling more connected to my people, because that that's what I've been doing for a week, you guys. So I can tell it's going to make a difference in my relationships. I also have started setting, like monthly or even quarterly, regular on a monthly or quarterly basis, what I call standing meetings with certain folks that I want to stay connected to, because life has changed and I'm not seeing them as often or in the same circumstances as I used to see them regularly, and I'm going to have to make space for it. So I'm doing that and I'm thinking of other things in this area too. I'm not quite sure, but I'm still dreaming on that one.
Martha Gano:And then, in terms of fun, you know I love to travel and one of the things that I've started doing recently I'm going to continue doing it is I do some travel for work, and I found it can be really affordable and doable to put my personal travel on the front or back end of a work trip, and so I'm going to keep doing that. Where my deficiency really is here is the outdoors. I love being outside, I love hiking, I love adventures, and I haven't been doing much of that at all. So what I'm thinking in my brain right now and you can hear you guys as we talk through it it's still processing in my brain. That's okay. Like I'm thinking, I want to plan some smaller, more close by excursions where I'm going to be able to hike and find cool outdoor spaces, and I can combine this with the family and friends piece too, right.
Martha Gano:And then another area for me is finance. So actually I actually met with a financial planner this morning, so that was a simple step that I could go ahead and schedule. That I've already done and we have now have specific steps that I'm going to be taking to move forward in that area. And then spiritual I mentioned this earlier. I just really want to create more daily time or weekly time to spend that with the Lord. So here's the thing Once I've written down my goals, once you've written down your goals, did you know that statistics tell us that they are already 42% more likely to get done just from writing them down.
Martha Gano:Then here comes the magic Once you've decided something that you want to get done, we're going to break those things down into teeny, tiny, bite-sized pieces. Remember, the goal here is that we want to be sustainable, we want to be doable, reasonable and we want to have a good time at it. So let's go back to that example of painting the kitchen. So what you want to do is, especially if you're starting small, I recommend what if we make a goal once a month, we're going to do one thing a month, let's say, because when you think about painting a kitchen, oh my goodness, it feels massive, doesn't it? So let's break it down, let's make it more simple.
Martha Gano:So let's say, the first month I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to get paint strip samples and I'm going to tape them to the wall and I'm going to look at them for a month, maybe month two. My goal is I'm going to decide on two or three finalists. Once I decide on those, I'm going to go get small, you know, pints, whatever, quartz, whatever they'll give me, and I'm going to paint a patch on my wall so I can watch it for a month and decide what color I want. Now, clearly, if you already know what color you want, you don't have to do these things. And then, maybe month three, I'm going to schedule the paint job. So I would recommend something like this breaking it down even more scheduling two weekends, and the first weekend is simply to get the kitchen good and clean and maybe tape it, because taping a kitchen and bathroom, that is another thing, that that's a project in itself. So maybe you tape one weekend and maybe the next weekend you block that off for the painting. So let's say that's month. Let me see one, two, three, month three all I'm going to do is do the scheduling. Month four I'm going to go buy all of my supplies so I have everything I need. And then maybe month five, that's the month that contains the weekend to tape and the weekend to paint. So now, five months later, my kitchen is painted. Now you can say to me that's ridiculous that you would take five months to paint a kitchen. But here's the thing you haven't done it for the last five years, right? So who cares if it takes five or six months or a year to break it down and make it doable so I actually accomplish it.
Martha Gano:Another example is actually this podcast, when I felt like I was hearing the Lord move me toward doing this. It was terrifying. Just to be honest with you guys, I had long believed a lie about myself, and that is that I don't do technical things, I don't get digital things, I have no education or training in it, that my brain isn't wired like that. I mean, it was like layers of lies on top of it. So this idea of starting something like this was terrifying. So I felt like I heard the Lord say to me I want you to do 15 minutes a day on the internet. Just Google how to start a podcast. And you guys, that's what I did.
Martha Gano:I did it in the morning before my day started. I would watch it for 15 minutes and I would literally like feel my breathing get shallow, like, oh my gosh, I don't even understand most of these words. And I would hear the Holy Spirit say to me hey, it's been 15 minutes. Back up, back up, back up, get away, that's enough. And I would look yep, sure enough, it's been 15 minutes. And I would step back from it. And then that was it. I didn't do anything else, didn't think about it until the next morning and I kept going.
Martha Gano:You guys, I did that for two years, but in the process it was about so much more than just figuring out the text to do a podcast on my own. It was about the Lord breaking that lie over me and healing a lot of things and setting me up for the future to accomplish other things that I had fear about, to overcome that, and so what a gift. But back to that point, right that most great things are accomplished from simple, small, consistent action steps over time. So what is it in your life that you could break down into bite size and doable pieces that you could accomplish it? Here's another pro tip you can make it even more likely that you're going to accomplish your goals with just 10 seconds a week. Here it is you ready Just by reading your goals. Isn't that crazy? Like whether you keep a journal, you can write it on the first page, or for me it would probably be a note on my notes app.
Martha Gano:Let's say, sunday night, you pull out your goals and you just take 10 seconds to read what your goals are for this year, you actually, and go research this you. Science will tell you that you trigger your subconscious mind to start moving you toward those goals the more you put them in front of your brain and your eyeballs. Plus, you remind your conscious mind and you can take a step or rebook one that you missed. Right, and this is hugely important In this process of goals for this year, you want to just massively celebrate your progress and then refuse to roll around in your missteps, your missed action steps, your failures, whatever you want to call them. You're only going to look at them long enough to regroup, rebook and move forward. Right, because when we feel like we're winning, we want to keep going. But here's the catcher we're the ones who tell ourselves whether we're winning or whether we're losing with the exact same set of circumstances let's say the kitchen, for example.
Martha Gano:Let's say I get through the third month and then I miss what I was supposed to do, month four. Well, if I focus on how much I haven't done, or I missed that step, I beat myself up because of it then I'm going to start avoiding that goal. Actually, because I was really unpleasant. Nobody wants to be around someone who's beating you up. Actually, because I was really unpleasant. Nobody wants to be around someone who's beating you up, including myself, right. But if I celebrate the steps that I've taken and congratulate myself on them, and congratulate myself on setting the goal in the first place, recognizing that nothing would have even been accomplished at all if I hadn't set the goal, then I do want to keep going. It's so important.
Martha Gano:Pastor Chris Vallotton says that our words create worlds. I mean, we are made in the image of God, right, and he spoke creation into being. He spoke it with his words. I've always wondered about different scriptures like life and death is in the power of the tongue, wow. So do you want to create failure or success when it comes to your goals? You want to choose really carefully what you speak into, what you're telling yourself about these goals. I mean, this is way bigger in all of life, right, but we're talking about goals today. Do I want to speak life into these goals in this process, or do I want to speak death into it? And then, how about that scripture that says speak the things that are not as though they are? So if that's a dynamic, which side do you want to give that dynamic into? Your failures? The things that you didn't do or the things that you did well. So energy is going to follow that focus. This scripture too.
Martha Gano:Have you ever heard the scripture that the Lord inhabits the praises of his people? Well, who do you think inhabits the negativity, and which one do you want to partner with? Right, because everybody wants to be on a winning team, including I. Want to be on my own winning team and no one wants I mentioned this. No one wants to be around. I don't want to be around somebody who's going to beat me up for my shortfalls, the things I didn't do, the things I did wrong, including myself.
Martha Gano:And if you remember, way back in episode 11 and 12, we actually talked about this concept of beating ourselves up, that when we beat ourselves up, we have to do the beating and survive it simultaneously. It's exhausting, it's incredibly damaging. It's actually one of the major strategies that the enemy uses to keep us from fulfilling our destinies, because if he can keep us punishing ourselves for what Jesus already paid for, we're too distracted and damaged and wounded and recovering and trying to figure it all out to fulfill our destiny and to actually accomplish things in our lives. So I say that Quitters Day can actually be a great thing if our goals were unrealistic and overwhelming. Quitters Day can actually empower us to do what it takes to break down what it is that we really want, dream big about it, set it in small, simple action steps. Schedule out how we're going to do it over time and actually accomplish some things this year. Ask the Lord what he has for you, and I cannot wait to hear about it.
Martha Gano:All right, thanks so much for joining me today. You guys, happy New Year and we will see you soon. Hey you guys, happy New Year and we will see you soon. Hey, you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you got some refreshment from this sip from the fountain. If you're curious to hear more, or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to yours, or follow our Instagram account, sips from the fountain or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for Cover Art Photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much. Love y'all. Thank you.