Showing posts with label changing your perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label changing your perspective. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Word of Encouragement from the Counselor’s Corner: Change Your Perspective


If you have endured a long season of hardships and setbacks, you may have already come to realize the circumstances in your life may not change but your perspective about them can.

A definition of perspective is a particular attitude or way or regarding something. Changing your perspective can change your attitude. How you react to your circumstances is largely based on how you perceive your circumstances.

Optimism is a choice! Being optimistic or pessimistic is something you become through your perspective of experiences. How can two different people experience the same set of circumstances and one chooses to look at the “glass half full” and the other person chooses to see the “glass half empty?” CHOICE. You can CHOOSE to play the victim, and believe if you just did not have this or that in your life your life could be so much easier. You can CHOOSE to blame others for your hardships. Or you can CHOOSE to take full responsibility for your life and stop blaming others for your circumstances. Flip every difficult circumstance in your life to see what is good and if you can’t see any good in your situation then began to thank God for how He is going to cause good to come from the bad in your life (Romans 8:28).

Be mindful how you speak about your circumstances. The words you speak will have a huge impact on your attitude, not to mention speaking out how you feel can give the enemy an open door to bring more trouble into your life. Retrain your thoughts and eventually you will rewire your brain. If you are not used to speaking faith and positivity over your difficulties, retraining your brain can seem foreign but watch and see how much better you begin to feel when you do!

Reflect or journal: What are you saying about your challenging circumstances? What or who in your life is causing you unrest? What is your attitude toward that circumstance or person? How could trusting God more in these situations alter your attitude or perspective?

Sometimes our trials can change for the better and other times we change how we begin to look at them. Perhaps you are a black and white think, either your situations are all bad or they are all good but what if you began not to just see the bad in a situation but the good?

Inner peace that comes from God does not have to reflect our outward conditions. If you are a child of God, peace can be with you at all times and everywhere! Accepting your life brings inner harmony. Be wise to know what you can change in your life and what you cannot, and accept what you can’t.

Change your focus. If your circumstances are beginning to pile up and you can’t seem to make any sense of anything, do something else. Take a mental break from thinking about your problems, and plug into something that is refreshing.

Changing your perspective about your difficult situations can cause you to have more peace, joy, contentment and improve your physical health.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

How to be More Contented



I always had in mind what I believed would bring me contentment, house with a white-picket fence and 2.5 children. God however had other plans for me than my picture-perfect idea of what I thought satisfaction was. I struggled for years accepting that my life had turned out differently than I had hoped. I lost my contentment by focusing on all my desires that were unfulfilled.


Not that I speak in regard to need, for I learned in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Philippians 4:11-12

I have learned that contentment is accepting God’s control over all my circumstances. Most of us are content when our circumstances are going well, but God wants us to have contentment in all things and in all seasons in our lives.

Be joy-filled today, not when your circumstances will be perfect or you have everything that you want. Enjoy your life right now. Surrender all to God and release all control to Him. Do not dwell, ponder, wish or wonder when, why, or how come things have happened or nor happened.

Contentment is satisfaction with God’s sufficient provision. Satisfied. Not needing anything else. Contentment means not wanting more than what God has given you. Stop and ask yourself how content you are really? Do you wish you had a different family, a spouse, a child, more money, or a different home? I am not saying never desire or want anything, but when that thing you desire becomes an idol (putting anything above God) than you are risking not living content. Not being content will make you a miserable person.

Instead of talking about how big your problems are, start thanking and praising God instead, it will confuse the enemy! Try not to complain about your life’s circumstances and instead have a thankful and appreciative heart. It will do wonders for you to keep an attitude of gratitude.

Change your perspective! How do you handle life’s problems? Talk non-stop about them, complain, worry, become stressed or anxious or do you thank God that He will cause good to come from your troubles (Romans 8:28).

One of the biggest lies of the enemy is that God is a cosmic vending machine, and He is supposed to be my self-help genie.

7 practical steps to gaining contentment:

1.      Ask God to forgive you for wanting anything more than Him.
2.      Surrender ALL your desires and wants to God.
3.      Take it one day at a time. Try not saying, “Things will ALWAYS be this way.”
4.      Be thankful for what you do have.
5.      Believe God is in control and He knows what is best for your life.
6.      Do not compare your life with anyone else’s.
7.      Don’t complain about anything, the weather, your job, or what you are lacking.
The enemy will keep you focused on what you do not have, but that is a tactic of the enemy to keep you discontent. Contentment comes when we want God more than anything else.

We can complain that rose bushes have thorns, or we can rejoice that thorn bushes have roses. Abraham Lincoln.

What has you discontent with life, and what practical steps can you take today to gain contentment?






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