Hi there. I'm Jill Allen and this is find your fierce, the show designed for women to discover your fierce, unlock and unstoppable mindset. Build unbreakable courage and completely transform how you show up every single day. Each week I will bring ideas, methods and strategies that will inspire you to step into your greatness and live life on purpose. Let's be fit, fierce and unstoppable.
(00:35): Hey there, gang. Welcome to find your fierce. Love that you are with us. Once again, today's chat is about overcoming the hard, but first I have to thank you for your love and support. I appreciate all your feedback, your reviews, and I love that you share this podcast with your friends and family. And so I ask if you can keep on doing that, it helps reach more women and impacts more lives. And that is what we're all about here when it comes to find your fierce. So thank you so very much for all that you do for who you are and for listening in each week. And I'm excited to kind of dive into this topic. We're going to really jump into how we can overcome the heart in our life as we continue to set free journey. And so at first I wanted to define what it means to overcome and it's to get the better of an, a struggle or conflict to conquer, to defeat, to overcome the enemy.
(01:28): So let's think about all the things we need to overcome in a lifetime or even on a daily basis for that matter. I mean how to overcome fear, depression, anxiety, maybe a death, a loss, a Rocky relationship, how to overcome divorce, a job loss, or maybe it's a forced career change, financial struggles, a parenting fail, or how to overcome times with teenagers or kids in general. It doesn't matter what age overcome our health stress, shyness, shame, the guilt, the jealousy, the comparison, the loneliness, how to overcome insecurities, overcome negative. Self-Talk the doubt that lack of confidence, limiting beliefs, low self-esteem. And I, as I'm rolling these things off, we are faced with challenges each and every day. And we're faced with these mountains at any given moment. So how do we make the climb? How do we overcome the Rocky terrain that we are faced with?
(02:21): How do we overcome the hard the storm, or how do we get out of the pit that we are sometimes in, and that we are guaranteed to experience in our life at some point, and you may be going through a hard season right now. So many have gone through a lot of hard stuff, especially in this past year, or maybe you thought you've healed from something in your past, but it is continuing to pop up in your life. You know, maybe it's rearing its ugly head and showing up as the depression or the anger or the doubt and the stress. So to put it out there, guys, I get it. Life is hard. It really is. And I know it may seem like I always paint this perfect picture or how happy or positive I am in life. But that doesn't mean I don't face hard, too hard is just part of life.
(03:06): And I've learned to grow through that process and shift my perspective now, no, when I share that it doesn't mean the hard or the things and the challenges that I face, that, that it doesn't hurt that I don't cry or I have emotions or I have calm waters all day long. I just learned to kind of lean into the heart a bit more, sit with it, go through all the feelings, work through it, rely on the Lord and ask, what do I need to know about this? And what do I need to do about it? And so a few things we can do to help us through the hard times is one, identify what it is that you are up against. What is the battle? What is the hard, how is the enemy attacking you? Oftentimes the attack is on our mind, our thoughts, our beliefs, and I have to share with you, one of my sons, he's had a rough baseball season, to be honest, he's had a rough baseball career and it doesn't come easy for him.
(04:05): It's like, there's been this black cloud over him with the sport always has been. And it's just like, can you please get a break one day of sunshine one day where there's a breakthrough, a win. Okay. So here we go. He finally gets in as a pinch runner the other night and he explodes off the third base to head home. And it looked like he tripped, he dropped to the ground. I mean, it's like bod get up. And he scrambles up and he hops back on one leg to third base, somehow safe, somewhat. I have no idea how, you know, he was safe on the tag and then he drops again. His knee popped out. He dislocated his kneecap, same thing he did last year. So he's out. And so this rain cloud covers, you know, he's beat down and beat down and he has the wind and the rain and the sleep, the Hale.
(04:58): And from the outside, it's sad. It's heartbreaking. Like, why is this happening? Just give the kid a break. It doesn't make it like a sense. The kid just wants to play baseball. He always has. And it's like, what is the purpose in all of this? And to be honest, there's been times he's wanting to quit and you may be going through something similar at this exact moment, whatever the storm is for you. Maybe you just want to quit, give up or worse yet. Never begin. But here's the thing. We know that he's going to get a break. You will get a break one day, God promises us that. But before God brings us to the promise before our prayers are answered, he will walk us through the process. God walks us through a process on the way to every single promise. And we know that God works all things together for good, for those who love him.
(05:56): Now, I'm not saying that dislocated his kneecap. I'm not saying that God created the storm, that you are currently in bad things happen sometimes without explanation, but the struggles and the hard we face somehow God's going to work them all together. In the end, who we become, the person who can overcome the hard, the person that can persevere resist will all be used for his purpose. All of a sudden that doesn't make sense. All the hurt, the pain, the loss, the struggles, the battle. I know it hurts, but it will shape who we are meant to be, who we have been created to be. So we need to find ourselves drawing closer to God during the hard listening to him, seeking him. And as a result, we will find the things in our life coming together for our good and for his glory now, because we are listening to him, it leads us to number two, don't take the bait.
(06:51): Okay? So we're in the middle of the heart, the battle, the struggle. What do you think the enemy wants most? He wants you to stay there. He wants you to have a pity party, to be the victim. He will manipulate your mind. Your thoughts with the right kind of bait to snag you. Let me tell you guys, he is a master at it. He carefully considers and calculates your current situation, your current heart, taking into account your weaknesses. He takes into account your strengths, your interests, your tendencies, your history, your past abuses, everything, and he's going to use it. He will reel you in and it's so personalized. What is it that you're feeding your mind right now? Because the enemy wants to create, will you, so of course the heart heart, the self that seems so real. The loneliness seems so lonely. The hard relationships and the struggles, the battles are blowing up right in front of your face.
(07:44): The fear is showing up as the sure thing. However, it shows up in your life. It is right there as the bait. The question is, can you identify it? Can you not only identify what you see the heart you see with your very own eyes, but also the stuff that is connected to what you don't see, the stuff that is going on behind the scenes, the outward appearances are deceptive. I mean, it is what it's what's within them. Beneath them behind them is what matters. We have to cut through these illusions and start seeing and focusing on what things really are, how they truly are the truth. But will you take the bait? Number three, we have a choice. We need to recognize the power we have. When it comes to our perception, we decide what we will make of each and every situation we can decide, whether we will break or whether we will resist.
(08:36): That is the best part of the free will that God gave us. We decide whether we climbed out of the pit or we stay there. Noah, you can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue. Our perceptions are the things that we are in control of, and we can be hit hard time and time again. And we can be challenged hopelessness in what feels like an impossible event, but we are never completely powerless. Our mind is our, Oh, think about this. Two people hit with the same challenge, but have two completely outcomes to one person. A situation may be negative to another. It may be positive. I know we've all probably heard the story of the two young men, both raised by an abusive alcoholic father. One boy grows up into a man with a family successful career. He's loving, he's kind.
(09:23): He's, he's living a life full of love. And the other boy grows up with broken relationships. He's an addict, he's homeless and he's struggling. And you ask both men, why are you on the path that you were on? And they both said because of the, your father, think about that, responds to the heart, their perception, the same heart, two different outcomes, two different things. People can experience the same event, but take away an entirely different meaning from their experience. And I'm not saying that we need to see the world through delusional Rose colored glasses, but to simply choose to see each situation for what it could be accompanied by hard work, have an upbeat spirit, have the Lord on your side. Others make the opposite choice. And that is how obstacles become obstacles. It is a story we tell ourselves about what it means, the thought and the thinking that changes everything.
(10:15): I think about how the COVID pandemic impacted businesses over the past year, how some close and others thrived. And I know when we looked at ours, it could have gone either way, but we chose to look at it as it being exactly what was needed. It was the Swift kick we needed. We took advantage where we could have closed the doors it's to come to anger, fear victim mode, but we chose opportunity growth. We pulled together as a team. And when life knocks you down, what do you do? Do you dust yourself off and keep moving forward? Or do you curl up in a ball? Give up adversity, takes many forms. And, and, and I know it affects each person differently. What matters most is how you choose to read it when adversity strikes. And if you want to master your life, you need to learn how to overcome adversity and hard times.
(11:04): And the reason I know that is guys I've been faced with some big challenges in my life that have tested my strength, you know, by making the choice to overcome adversity, you know, we're able to make room for healthier relationships, financial abundance, greater confidence, and a heightened level of like this personal fulfillment and joy, a greater faith and a deeper relationship with the Lord. And I know you may not be able to see it now, but adversity is actually a blessing in disguise. It is an opportunity for you to prove to yourself how strong you really are. You're stronger than you think. And I know we don't develop courage by being happy. Every single day, we develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity. And it's not the events of life that matter the most, but rather the meaning that we create from those events, whether or not you create an empowering or disempowering, meaning from hard times in your life is entirely up to you.
(11:55): Resilient people don't focus on how hard times broke them in the first place. You know, they pay attention to an embrace, the actions that they took in order to get through the difficult times. They wake up every day and consciously choose growth and focus on what they can control. And I believe that everything in life happens for a reason. It doesn't always make sense. It doesn't always feel good yet. I'm so grateful for all the hard times. I've been through everything that I've gone through in my life has made me the person I am today. And the same goes for you. Some of the biggest breakthroughs that I've experienced in my life happened right after I was able to overcome massive adversity. And to this day, when something negative happens, I always ask myself, what's great about this experience and what can I learn from it?
(12:40): I want to share a passage from my step free book. It's from chapter five called overcoming, okay. And it goes like this of all the races I've run with an eye toward the finish line. I cannot help, but think it all pales in comparison to the journey of life. Jesus has set before us. It is a journey intended to strengthen our spiritual faith. God has called on us to take part in that journey at our own pace at our own time and will in every moment do we realize it's a path of ups and downs of personal training, not the finish line that defines who we are or be trained for our God-given goals and purpose. How long does it take until we reach that breakthrough? Do we quit when it gets hard? We can't know when when a blow will hit our family.
(13:25): When a Rocky spot will hit our marriage or when our kids will push back and challenge us, we can't anticipate when a friend will betray us or abandoned us when our career will hit a slump or when the illness or sudden death of a loved one will strike out of the blue. God cannot guarantee calm waters at every moment, but he can give us the strength and faith to overcome them life. Isn't about perfection and control, but about overcoming adversity and discovering our personal strength and ladies, that is just another glimpse of what is about to be released. I cannot wait to share with you my book set free releasing possibly today, depending on what data says as I record weeks in advance. So if you ever felt like something was missing, either within yourself or in your life as if there's this boy you can't define, and yet can't escape, even trying to find your purpose. And sometimes you even question whether you have one, I will help answer these questions and share how I discovered the way to show up as the woman. You want to be the woman God designed and created you to be. And I'm going to share with you some of my struggles, some of my wins
(14:27): Game-Changing moments, and I'm going
(14:27): To trace my path to where I am today. And I will give you every step I took along the journey that led me to God's unconditional love. So you can take these exact steps to freedom and enjoy his peace too. I pray that you realize with God, you can overcome anything. I invite you to take a sneak peek of set free and join us at free book club, go to Jill Allen, coaching.com or depending on when this is, you can check on Amazon to see if it is available. Heads up on the next episode, a special guest will be joining us. My friend, Jennifer Jenkins, founder, and certified health coach at rooted health coaching. So I'm so excited that she will be with us sharing her heart and all of her wisdom. So be sure to come back next week. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please subscribe, share this episode, link on your social media. If you felt encouraged or inspired, as we all know, someone that can benefit. And I would love it. If you would give some feedback and a review as well, talk with you next time, be fit be fierce, be unstoppable.
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