"I just don't feel like I'm getting anywhere"

I've thought this so many times


Reflect on how far you've come
What habits got you to where you are? Are you only seeing and thinking about the negative outcomes? Andy Stanley has a great video series that may help some of you called Starting Over. This helped me when I was working for a college that was ... well it was just awful. I thought it was going to help me achieve my goals, but those goals were more like having to pay for medical tests you don't really need to rule out what the problem might be. For me, I knew God wanted me to solely be a pastor, but I wanted to be in academia. I was constantly starting over, just in the wrong area of life that I needed to be in. Thanks be to God, he brought me around through a major ordeal of humility. 

I often think about starting over in the gym. I really hate missing more than a few days, and I (at this point) have not been consistent for a month. I need to start over again ... and I just don't want to go today to do so. 

But I am.

You should too in whatever it is you have been too scared, or lazy, to do.

One small course correction
Make one tiny change in your routine that you can do every day that will make you feel like you are making some progress rather than no progress. I could even be just making your bed (see this great video). Find something you could do each day to start the journey toward your goal. If you don't have any goals, then start writing down some off the wall, crazy ideas that you feel you can never do. Save those. Then after a couple weeks re-read them and see if there is a common theme, talent, dream, idea, thought, etc that you see in those wild-eyed fantasies. You just may see something forming that you begin to believe you can actually do. 

Then start watching some videos online in the area you see with your ideas. Hopefully, that will be enough to get you dreaming again, then turning your day-dream into a reality. Search my archives for another blog post on that thought.

Just do it
Great phrase nike came up with. Sometimes our feelings get in the way of what we need to do. The more we can focus on a goal, or something we want, and do something small each day to reach that goal, the better we can become at managing those feelings that lead to thoughts that make us feel stuck. 

Here's the stone cold reality. You are stuck because you choose to be. 

You may also be stuck because you don't know what you don't know. If you do the same old same old each day, you remain ignorant of your potential. Therefore, you won't know the potential you have - and you do have it - because you remain ignorant of what is "out there." So start searching.

Again, what it is that you are searching for? If you are searching to be happy, searching for a feeling won't do anything for you! Feelings are today's fantasies. It's the work that brings reality. So work for what you want, that's the only way to achieve it, and feel good about it and yourself. 

So get out of your feeling-though-rut and choose to do something today, and tomorrow, and the next day, etc. 

I did it. Others did it. You can do it. You have a brain and are created in the image of God - the CREATOR. Allow him to move in you, allow Him to refocus you, and perhaps ask Him to work with you through something rather than do something for you. One day after I prayed for Him to work with me rather than just outright do something, things began to happen. 

Allow God to work with you! 

​Press on my friends.