Posts by Brad Miller

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller. Episode Number 94. The power of vision.

Dr. Michael Hudson 0:10
Hi, this is Dr. Michael Hudson, of Michael Hudson. com. I help people unlock the power of their message so they can deliver it to the people that they’re here to deliver it to. Thank you for listening to the pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller helping you discover your life peace, prosperity, and purpose.

Brad Miller 0:29
You’re on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller. Brad believes every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad

hello good people and welcome to pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller. We are talking today about power, the power of vision. Vision can help carry you through and influence to help you to overcome the adversity, the adverse conditions that you experienced in your life, to achieve peace, prosperity and purpose. That’s what we’re about here at the pathway to promise to help you overcome adversity. And we do so on our website pathway, promise calm, where we’ve got lots of great teaching about overcoming adversity, and including lots of great interviews with lots of great guests, authors and teachers and leaders who have overcome some adverse condition in their life to achieve peace, prosperity and purpose. We got a free gift for you there and head on over there and it can be helpful to your life pick it up, if you will. Today, we’re talking about the power of a great vision Vision, if you want to have a have a leadership role in your life, if you want to have accomplished great things, if specially if you want to overcome adverse conditions in your life, you need to call upon the power of a vision that he has great. And there is great value then, in having a vision. I heard it said somewhere that every great work and every great person came under the influence of a vision that changed them and therefore changed others. You need to have a vision in your life of what your life can be. When you overcome that adversity. That is put in your mind’s eyes, think about it, dwell on it, focus on it, and find value in that. Let me just give you just a few concepts today that I think you will find impactful, so that you can learn understand that leaders and yourself who effectively communicate goals which, to their followers followers achieve those greater things than those who don’t? That’s casting vision. You need to cast vision for yourself, and therefore it can be contagious and go to others. So what is a powerful vision? What is a vision of value? Well, first of all, first thing is it starts with with from within you. It’s a gut level thing. If you want to know the temperature of yourself or of your organization or your church, or the thermometer, you can take it to yourself what you are about, you have a vision, and then you press on to being a leader. And then you pass it on to the people that you are responsible for. And that is what we’re about here. A second valuable vision is to build on the good things from your past. You’ve had success in the past. You’ve had times when you’ve had adverse conditions in your past, and you have dealt with them. That might have been when you were a kid, perhaps. But whenever it was, I bet there’s been some time in your life when you have had success, build on that. carry that with you. find value in that found power in your past successes and apply it to your present adverse conditions. And it does make a difference. When we have a valuable vision in our life, it speaks to our needs, or to the needs of others that we are responsible to. When we try to understand the needs and that speak to them, we are going to add value to the situation and the vision that we have will become practical and pragmatic. Another thing that we can do, to have a powerful vision is to challenge people including ourselves. We try to stay complacent, it just not going to work. It’s just not going to be any value in that. We have to understand that what we’re doing here is important, we have to understand that this is about being a winner. This is about encouraging ourselves and others to win, to succeed. And therefore there’s value in that there’s power in that to challenge ourselves and challenge others. Have you ever thought about a successful business or any successful sports team or music group that didn’t want to win really bad, and didn’t challenge one another in order to win, that’s having a greater vision. Another valuable vision is to be committed to solving problems. If you stay stuck, you’re not gonna be a problem solver. You’re going to let problems defeat you. That’s when adverse conditions come along in your life. They are circumstantial, they are of the moment, but if we allow them to block us then they become more than the moment they become a model. meant to our depressed state, or to our stuck state problems are unresolved or unsolved when we just let them sit there. It’s not that there’s such a big deal, that it’s that our vision is so small, we haven’t expanded our vision to see what all possibilities are. obstacles are always going to be there. But they are there only when we take our eyes off the big goal of achieving our big vision.

Another thing that a great vision of powerful vision does is it provides guidance to our life. It gives us a direction to go when we have this direction, that makes all the difference in the world. And that way you can start to facilitate things and do you know develop strategy and develop tactical approaches to whatever the situation is at hand and to deal with it when we have guidance that helps us and we can draw upon our own experience and the experience of others to help guide this vision. Another point that we haven’t we, when we have a valuable vision or a vision of power, is it’s going to attract winners, you’re going to be a winner. And other people want to be around you who are winners as well. Winners want to be around winners, and you are going to bring people together who want to be on your team. Which brings me to another point is that a big vision, a valuable vision will unite people around one common cause. It’s you can have different sets of understandings. But people will get behind a person with a big vision and go with them. It’s a vision is a vehicle than which change rides, you’re going to be a change maker have a great vision. And the final thing I want to share with you today is that vision is all about energy. If you have a great vision, if you have a powerful vision, a valuable vision is going to give you energy and I’ll give those who you lead energy as well. It is then it’s then you begin to see that the impossible seemingly can become possible that the invisible seemingly will suddenly become visible. And you will see that the invisible can do the impossible. So that’s what I want to invite you to do friends to get vision, a powerful vision in your life. And it will make a difference to you. Let me encourage you here on the pathway to promise podcast to check out our website, pathway promise com, where you can hear great visionary leaders, authors and leaders who share their stories about how they dealt with the problems in their life. They dealt with adverse conditions, and overcame them. And success is a good thing. So invite you to do just that. So until next time, friends, this is Dr. Brad Miller, encouraging you to keep your promises because there’s power Promise. Thanks so much for taking the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web at pathway promise.com. Until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller, Episode Number 93. The battle plan for living.

Unknown Speaker 0:08
Hi, this is Dan Miller from 48

Unknown Speaker 0:09
days calm where

Unknown Speaker 0:11
I help folks like you find the true path to meaningful, purposeful and profitable life in 48 days. Dr. Brad Miller is here to guide you on your path to your promise like a peace, prosperity and purpose and a pathway to promise podcast.

Brad Miller 0:30
You’re on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller. Brad believes every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad Hello, good people Welcome to pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller What an honor. While how cool is for you to join me today, as we talk a little bit about something special that’s happening as I record this message here today for you. It’s Veterans Day, Veterans Day weekend. And I prepared a message for you today called the battle plan for living based on understanding some military leaders, particularly General Douglas MacArthur and his strategy for winning. Here at the pathway to promise podcast we’re all about helping you win in your life, helping you to overcome those things that can get you down those things which we call adverse conditions, things like death of a family member or depression or divorce or breakup of a relationship, maybe getting a diagnosis of some terrible disease, maybe your debt. These are all things that can happen and we are here to help you head on over to pathway promised calm, we’ve got a free gift for you there. And we also have some great to back episodes, a pathway to promise with some great leaders, teachers, authors, and some teaching that can be helpful to your life today. Battle Plan for living, a commemorative edition for Veterans Day remembering some veterans have been pleased in my life. I’m not a veteran myself. But I’ve been pleased in my life to get to know some people who are military veterans, and they are awesome people. And they always have a sense of vitality and life and a sense of discipline and duty, which I really, really admire. One of the things that as I studied people who have been stressful situations, be it in business or education or athletics or anything else like that. People in military have almost always been in some stressful situations. And many times those who are successful and Situations understand that problems are a given that, that there is always going to be situations that are messed up. snafu as they call them in the military often, and the problems are to be understood, and then dealt with and overcome. And it oftentimes takes a battle plan in order to overcome those problems. And then to implement the plan but also know that a part of a battle plan is to adjust. So let me share with you a few thoughts today from some from things about having a battle plan for living in your life. But just say you got some big obstacles, some big adversity to overcome, maybe have a health issue, maybe you really want to lose 15 pounds before the first first of the New Year. You just did. That kind of thing just doesn’t just happen. You need to have a plan and then a process to get that done. Here’s some thoughts here. problems will never leave you alone. Problems adverse conditions are will always be there. In order to deal with that you need a plan, a battle plan, if you will.

Because sometimes problems are bigger than we expected. We can’t just let it slide. So here’s a couple of questions to ask ourselves before we enter into a battle. Let’s say we want to lose that 15 pounds. First question is, is victory achievable? And the second question is victory believable? So let’s just say you want to lose 15 pounds in two months time, is it achievable? Yes, more than likely it is it’s going to be a challenge. But it’s it’s a doable thing. Can you lose 100 pounds in two months? Unlikely. unlikely. You said I’m saying make your goals and this achievable range. And the second thing is is believable. This is the The inner, the mind games the mind the being mindful that we need to play with with ourselves our mindset, we need to believe it will make it a part of our fiber that we believe that we can do it we can believe that we can lose that 15 pounds and therefore victory is a an achievable Win It is also believable. So we have to ask ourselves that questions we have to convince ourselves of that. Digital Douglas martech Arthur, Gail outlined four or three actual strategies for winning his case for battle planning for winning. The first one is having a purpose for your battle. Is this a cause worth dying for? You need to assess that is losing that 15 pounds, super important to you? Is it a cause that can save your life in many cases it is you get your health together. It can help you with diabetes and heart disease, and other things that can impact the quality of your life, you need to ramp up the emotions of that. What is the purpose of your battle plan of the battle that you’re going after? And a second thing that there’s three P’s here, the first P is for purpose. The second P is for provision. What are your resources for battle? And are they adequate? And do you have the what you need to do this? What are your resources to get involved with this battle? With your resources you’re going to lose weight might be a diet regimen or exercise regimen or joining gym or getting a workout partner or consuming YouTube videos and other information about the various the diet plan or the eating plan that we want to take on. I use intermittent fasting myself with some success. What is your strategy? What is your provision? What are your resources that you need to do this? Do you Want to get some special, you know vitamins or a, our protein shakes or any other specific specific food items that you want to have? What are your resources? Ok. So the and then so the so you’ve got purpose and you’ve got provision. And the other thing we need is preparation. That is, is there any special training we need or any personnel we need to bring into your life, you’re gonna lose 15 pounds, maybe you want to hire a chef or maybe you want to go to the gym and hire a personal trainer. You might be you want to have someone you work out with a workout partner, maybe your spouse, or someone you get together with a friend or somebody at the gym. And you also then so you need that you need that resource that preparation but the other side of that another part of the preparation is kind of is to know your enemy, to know your enemy. For many of us the enemy is resistance. That’s the thing when we start to do something good resistance wants to do drag us down and prove prevent us from doing good stuff. We need to battle resistance because it will eat you alive if you allow it to. And there’s lots of good works and lots of good things about understanding this, this concept of resistance. So let’s unpack this just a little bit more. When we talk about purpose, what is a cause? worth dying for? What is your battle plan for a living? And what does it cause worth want or for worth dying for? A couple things to think about? What are your motives for doing this? Why am I doing this? Am I doing this for other people? Am I doing for myself? Why is simply question Why do you want to do this? Is it just a vanity thing? If so, that’s okay, too. But own it own? What are your motives for doing this? And the second thing we could think of in terms of a purpose or what are the values that are going to be enhanced or You need to employ when you want to go to attack this, this battle plan that you have the values weathers help others if you lose that weight for instance, whether it be an example to other people in your life, your children or your parents or your spouse, why am I doing this? So the motives is why am I doing this right motives are more important than the right moves in many cases. And the values have to do with this, how we, what we’re doing is indicator of our own personal values that we have and how we can then share those with with other people. So I want to encourage you to be about that values have to do with how will it help others. And the thing is, if you do what you do and helps other people, that’s a win for you, too. It’s a double win. Ziegler’s, the one who famously said in a lot of his training, you can get everything you want in life if you help other people to get what they want. So you got purpose and you Got, we give God the preparation. And the other thing is provision provisions. That is the resources that that we need. One of the resources that we can call upon is people, you know other people in our life, to speak into our life that might be a coach that might be a leader. It might be from a book or a tape or podcast, or YouTube videos, something we can understand about that help. Put surround ourselves with people who can speak into our life and give us good stuff into our life. This isn’t about just having people just to pat us on the back all the time, by the way, it’s having people who can coach us and hold us accountable and to help us to grow and to go on to defeat our enemy. Do you think and military leaders that they hold back if there is a true enemy to be to be defeated? They don’t just, you know, play nice all the time. It is about achieving the risk Salt of winning. And that’s what we want to do with the people another resource we might need as money when MIT other resources we need to understand what is it going to cost us to do this? If we do this diet thing for the weight loss thing, for instance, if that is our goal to achieve, what’s it going to take over again? Is this diet, we’re going to do want to join a gym? Do we want to have a coach, you want to have a diet system? You want to have an online system that you use? What kind of options does investing money in this process give you and what are you willing to invest that way? See it when you do this? It that’s understanding that what it’s going to cost to achieve things and many times we have to see if it’s worth the value, I would contend to you most most of time it is certainly military leaders need the resources monetarily and of the various things that they need to apply to the situation at hand. Another resource we have and this is where I want to get spiritual with you for a minute because we need to Call upon the resource of God or higher power, it can be at our life. That is another provision that we need. In the Bible it says and flip hands for God shall supply all your needs according to his riches, and his glory in Christ Jesus. And wherever you’re at in your life, my friends, whether you’re a Christian, a follower, Christ or not, I would invite you to call upon a power higher than yourself to speak into your life that will help you an awful lot. So it has to do with the purpose. The preparation piece of this has to do with getting the training that that that we need, we need to practice we need to do the things that we need to do and to the to use it as a part of our daily routine. If you want to lose that weight, you need to make your eating habits part of your daily life. You need to make your workout habits a part of your regular life. You need to make it a part of your team. Your habits that’s preparing to succeed. A lot of coaches will say that the games of athletic contest, basketball games, football games are won not on the field so much of the play, but in the time it takes a preparation and practice, I want to encourage you to be people who are winners, I having a great battle plan in your life, and then apply it any in your life. Here in this Veterans Day time, we can learn some things from other people, some military leaders, and apply it to your life. While we’re out here at the pathway to promise is practical, applicable solutions to help you to deal with adversity, adverse conditions in your life, to help you get through that time and achieve your promise life of peace, prosperity, and purpose. And we encourage you to do that head on over to pathway promise calm, you can see some back issues of the podcast there had some other resources for you, and some other things that we could do to be helpful to you. That’s what we’re do get a free gift for you there. We invite you to check out pathway promise. com.

So until next time, friends this is Dr. Brad Miller and I want to encourage you to keep your promises because there’s power in our promise. Thanks so much for taking the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web at pathway promise.com. Until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller Episode Number 92. How to be contented

Unknown Speaker 0:09
Hey, this is Cliff Ravenscroft from podcast Answer Man calm and you’re listening to Dr. Brad Miller. He is going to help you do all the good

Unknown Speaker 0:18
you can.

Brad Miller 0:21
You are on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller Bradley’s every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad hello good people. Welcome back to pathway to promise podcast where we are all about helping you overcome adversity, to achieve your promise life of peace, prosperity and purpose. We do that by sharing good news of your life. One of the good news things that you can have in your life is to understand what it means to be happy, what it means to be a contented person. We’re going to talk about that today here on pathway to promise, we want you to know you can always go to our website pathway promise com, you can find past episodes of the podcast, where we some great teachers and leaders and authors who speak into your life about how helping you to overcome whatever adversities you have in your life, to achieve great things in your life, overcome things and to achieve peace, prosperity and purpose. We have a free gift for you there and we invite you to go to pathway promise calm and to get connected to our community there. contentment, and our last episode of the pathway to problems we talked about a formula or a way to be discontented and I certainly believe that being discontented or being annoyed fulfilled is an epidemic proportions in our world. People are unsatisfied people are in bad places, and that leads to destructive behavior. It leads to very rude and nasty attitudes that people treat one another. And it leads to just a sense of loneliness, and guilt and pain. That doesn’t have to be that way. Doesn’t have to be that way. I just want to share with you friends that it is a choice whether we are discontented with our life, or whether we are contented with our life. But it means we need to take some action and to do something about it. And I want to share with you a few thoughts today about how we develop our strengthen our sense of contentment in our life. Let me share with you a few thoughts here today about that. I develop contentment in my life when I sense that someone else cares for me Now I want to share with you a little bit more about that. This means sometimes we have to look for this, because we have some of us who have had lonely existence. But we know we have to seek out positive relationships. We have to surround ourselves with people who do care about us. And if we don’t feel like anybody cares about it, then invest in somebody else, and show them that you care. And the Law of Reciprocity will come around and will impact in your life almost surely. I want you to know that there’s lessons from other people and there’s lessons from the Bible, which can speak into your life. I know the Apostle Paul talks about this where he said, when he was in prison, he wrote an encouraging letter to folks, and he shared with them about what I share. You have done well to share with me and my affliction. That is what Paul was saying. Even as wrote encouraging letters from prison. He also shared that he was thankful for the support he got from other people. He was thankful. One doctor has said that there are different emotions that produce disease and human beings. And those emotions are fear and frustration, rage, resentment, hatred, envy, and jealousy. And the really the only antidote that can save people from being destroyed by these factors. This research doctor said is the emotion of love. The emotion of love.

You know, this is the case, don’t you? You know, this is the case. When we show people love and love happens, it helps them and when people love us, it helps us as well. Tell people that you love them. Tell people that you care, and you’re much more likely to have someone tell you that they care about you. Now, that can be a simple thing. It can be a verbal thing in the family. It might be a Facebook post where you share a good word with somebody and do it even beyond their birthday, things like that. Share posts, write a card, write a card just because do those things. And you will get some reciprocity back in your life. Do you want to be content in your life, then show appreciation for others, then you will have this important factor of sensing and knowing and feeling confident that you are cared for. Another way to develop contentment in your life is to know that you are growing. Get to know you’re growing is to do good things I like to call dark humidity. We have here on the made a promise to good people. And good people do good things. And good things mean we are growing people. Good thing might be reading a book, it might be listening to a podcast, it might be growing, growing our knowledge, or it might be serving in a soup kitchen or it might be serving in some other way. Be confident in your life that when you do good things, God will do good things in you. And the Bible that says among other things, he says, God who began to good your good work and you will perfect it in you. Until the day of Christ Jesus goes on to say, it is God who is at work in you both to willing to work for his good pleasure. You see, friends, if you’re a believer, then you believe you’re going on to perfection someday to be with Christ. But for all of us, I believe when you do good stuff, it helps you grow. And I want to encourage you to be good people do Good stuff up for others, but do you do good things for other people, you will grow and guess what, you will become more content because you are contributing to what? The greater good, you’re good you have established for yourself a goal, which gives you purpose here and the pathway to progress, we like to say that we are all about helping you develop your peace and, and prosperity and purpose and the purpose place means that we have a contract. The purpose, peace means that we have a contribution to make for the greater good. We have a sense of understanding that we have a reason to exist. We have goals and our life, growth produces happiness. Art Linkletter said this. He was a entertainer from the 60s and 70s. He said this growth is happiness. I never want to be what I want to be because there’s always Always something out there yet for me, I get a kick out of living in the here and now. But I never want to feel I know the best way how there’s always one Hill higher with a better view, something waiting to be learned that I never knew to my days are over and never fully Fill my cup. Let me keep on growing up, had some good things there. A couple more things about growing your contentment. I tried to understand your circumstances in light of a bigger plan. Circumstances happened to us here on the pathway to promise we talk about adverse conditions, the five DS of death and depression and divorce and debt and, and and depression and disease. Those things that can happen to all of us those are circumstantial, but we can’t overcome those if we choose to. And we see things in a bigger plan especially we see things in life God’s bigger plan for us how God uses our circumstances, God uses our situations to grow us as people, then we could have a much better attitude and better understanding of being content in all circumstances.

One of the things I’ve a person journals a lot when they interested, anything interesting things that you can do is go back and look at your old journals, or an old diary from say, five or 10 years ago. And sometimes you may write in there something that was happening at that at the time, which was a big deal. You know, a big situation, maybe buying a home or maybe you had to change jobs, or maybe you had to deal with a health issue or relationship matter. But oftentimes, if you go to your present cert present situation, you look back on it, you’ll see that in retrospect, it was handled, it was dealt with, it was cared for, and you might even think, man, it wasn’t such a big deal after all, but the time it was View your circumstances and a bigger picture and on the panorama of your life, one of the panorama of your relationships, that this is a moment. But this is a moment that you do not have to be stuck in circumstances can turn out to be a part of the process of growing for the greater good. Just because you may be seemingly in prison right now, the day can come when you can get out of prison, and you can speak into the world out of your experience. See friends that if we have pain in our life, that’s one thing. But if we get stuck in the malaise of mediocrity, if we get stuck in our on our pain, then what purpose is it? Sure sir. So there is no greater pain really than pain without purpose. So use the pain in your life and use it to move forward in your life. I would just also contend to us that as people of faith, you just need to desire something greater than yourself. For some of us that may be a life of faith or life of Jesus, but have something greater than yourself that you could strive for. And to know that you have something that you want to die for something you’re willing to give up everything for. And that’s what I want to encourage you to do here today to have contentment in your life. Couple more things that we can do is that to sink on good stuff, fill your mind with good things, hang around other contented people. You know, it said that we are highly influenced by the people around us who are contented. Well, I encourage you to do that. To allow yourself to be surrounded by those folks if we can be helpful here at the pathway to promise we want to do just that. And understand that our circumstances and contentment are related as We already talked about that a little bit. Rely on a power greater than ourselves here at the pathway to promise we want to help you do those things we hope to want to build contentment in your life to give you some tools and some processes in order to move through your adversities to achieve your life of peace, prosperity and purpose. You over to our website pathway promise calm and you can find some good stuff there. They can help build your life of contentment. They’ll build your life of good stuff. And we invite you to do just that. We have a free gift for you their pathway promised calm you can pick that up. Also, you can also hear great teaching from other people we’ve interviewed on the pathway to promise we can help fill your life with good things. So until next time, friends, live a life of contentment. Choose contentment or discontentment and remember to keep your promises because there’s power and a promise kept. Thanks so much for taking the path later. Promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web at pathway promise.com. Until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller Episode Number 91. How to be discontent Hi, I’m Jeff Brown from the read to lead podcast and every great leader not only reads but is committed to overcoming any barriers to their vision. The pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller will help you do just that. You’re on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller Bradley’s every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad Hello, good people. Welcome to pathway to problems with Dr. Brad Miller. Thank you so much for joining me today as we have some conversation about important matters in life about how to be happy or how to be not happy. Today we’re going to talk about what it means to be dis content, which I believe is a malady that affects a lot a lot of people in our world, people who are unsatisfied, who are not content with their state in life, and who are searching for meaningfulness and sense meaning less deaths in their life, which is indicated by being unhappy or being discontent with their life situation. Here at the pathway to promise podcast we are all about helping you get through times like that. There are circumstances we all face, we like to call them are adversities or add various conditions. Things like death in the family are having a disease diagnosis or at being a geek being in debt or going through a divorce or a breakup of a relationship or depression, these things which can put us on the sidelines, which can make us discontent if we choose it for them to and the pathway to promise we believe that God has given you an opportunity to have peace, prosperity and purpose. And our podcast episodes on our blog pathway promise, calm is here to be helpful to you in that process to help you find a pathway. A way to get through we like to call it a 40 day way. So head on over to our website pathway promise calm, get our free gift there and get connected with our community. Dis contentment. Have you ever been discontent? I bet you have. And if we allow ourselves to we can stay stuck in discontentment. So I’m going to share with you a few thoughts today on how to be discontent if we want to be. Well let’s talk about then what it means to be content because the opposite of that would be to be discontented. So, contentment is not about containing my emotions. So, if we want to be discontented, we let our emotions go crazy go rapid, we ruled by our emotions that contentment is not maintaining the present situation or the status quo. So, be discontent means we choose to stay stuck to accept the status quo. If you want to be discontented, we need to understand that the definition of contentment is about, of contentment is not about attaining more possessions. So, just contentment would be about thinking that getting more stuff will somehow solve our inner life or issues of discontentment. That’s not the case. Webster’s dictionary says that happy that happy enough with what one contentment means. One is happy enough with what one has not desired something more or different, satisfied. If you’re feeling unsatisfied with your present situation, then you are just content.

I like I’m a pastor church and so I like to draw some lessons life lessons out of the Bible. And Phillip Ian’s chapter four, it talks about some things I just want to share with you now, whether you’re a person of faith or not, I think there’s some good things that you can control out of this. And Paul says, finally, Brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely. Whatever is a good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. The things you’ve learned and received and heard and not seen in me, practice These things, and the God of peace shall be with you. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. So those words there help us understand and what contentment is not what contentment is. So I want to share with you this bit of a formula debt is the secret of contentment. And so if we do the opposite of that, damn, where we’re discontent in this where a lot of people are at, the first thing is attitude. That is how we think right? So we want to be discontent. We have stinking thinking, as I’ve heard, it said, we don’t think about good stuff. But you want to think about good stuff and you can be to be and you can be content. Then you add to that action, action, attitude plus action and that is doing the right thing. So if you want to be discontent, do the wrong thing. And most of the times we know what the wrong thing is. It is making that bad decision at work or on our relationship or saying the wrong thing or and somehow out. throwing a fit can be a way of indicating our discontentment. If we take positive action that can lead us to contentment. And then that leads us to a sense of adequacy mean at the beat to have enough that’s the feeling right? That’s the emotional piece. So if we don’t feel right, if we allow our emotions be in turmoil, then that’s going to mess up everything else we could choose and whether where you are contented, or dis contentment. So let me unpack this a little bit further. I believe that contentment is a quality that is learned. So if we want to be discontent, then we choose not to learn. We choose not to read. We choose not to think we choose not to listen to great teachers, whether it’s live or into the classroom setting or in a podcast or, or other forums where we can learn from others. We want to stay stuck, we want to sit closed off, we want to stay walled in. Like in the Bible scripture read, Paul said, I have learned to be content. So that’s an active thing to do. Learn to be content. So I want to invite you to think about that. If you want to stay discontented. Don’t learn. Don’t pick up a book, don’t do anything else to give yourself the opportunity to expand your brain, expand your sense of the resources that you have.

contentment does not depend on our circumstances. So that means if we are discontented, we are ruled by our circumstances. We feel like, man, all this bad stuff happens to me. Things just don’t go right for me, and sometimes saying things don’t go right. But they are circumstance Bad things happen to all people. They do. You can have all these things we like to call the adversities, the five DS of adversity we talked about here on the pathway to promise. Those are things like the one D is depression, another one is debt. Another the third D is disease and other DS divorce or rather large relationships and breakup. And the fifth D is death is the death death of a loved one, or thinking about that. We can get stuck in any of those places. Those are all circumstances that happened to all people, but our level of contentment or discontentment depends on how much we are ruled by those. We choose that Ben Franklin said to be the D to the discount discontented man, no chair is easy. So I will continue friends, we believe from the pathway to promise that God has given you a god given life of peace, prosperity and purpose. And so if we’re Be discontented, then we don’t believe that. We don’t believe that good things can come to us. And we understand that contentment means we draw strength from a power greater than ourselves. We draw strength from I like to feel about God. And as a Christian is Jesus Christ who I draw, draw strength from. It works like this friends, there’s four stages for gifts I believe that God gives us that help us to overpower discontentment. One is the bold is to take bold action, and we talked about that. That’s the formula like to say it’s the Be bold action. Take taking action is an antidote to being stuck. The second thing is drawing on a higher power. That’s the PBP power means that we draw in a higher power than ourselves. That means we have a meditative life we have an inner life. I like to say say we have a spiritual life that we draw on a higher power. And those of us who are people of faith, we draw Our power greater than ourselves that we know that on our own, we just can’t do this. And the then the next thing is love. We need to have a love of self love of others. I love a family and friends that helps fuel us, strengthen us, give us the energy in order to overcome our circumstances, overcome our adversity. And then that so there’s a B for bold action, the P for power and the hell for love. And then the fourth element here, the fourth gift from God is D for discipline or self discipline. That’s the cognitive piece. That’s how we learn action. We do habits and other things that happen that we can do actively. It’s the implementation of the action that we take in order to be content with our situation in life. It’s looking to get better, not better, and doing the things we need to do. For one things I like to do is journal. The things I like to do is be in prayer. Another thing I like to do is be in conversation, deep conversation, as we try to do here on the pathway to promise. These are some things that can help you. If you choose to be discontented, your choice, you can do it. I just gave you the formula or the or the the recipe for that. But I think you know, that the choice is really up to you, whether you’re going to be content, or discontent, and our next episode of the pathway to promise we’re going to talk about how to enhance and to develop and to strengthen our contentment. So I invite you to tune in to Episode 92 for that. So until next time, friends, this is Dr. Brad Miller. Just want to encourage you to keep your promises because there’s power, get a promise kept. Thanks so much for taking the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web. pathway promise.com until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

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