“I don’t like ___. It’s too hard,” is a common phrase I hear. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it is from one of my toddlers, or a full grown adult, I tend to hear the phrase often. In our house, my response tends to be, “It’s ok to do hard things.” However, adults often don’t think that message applies to them. Our culture seems to promote that we should always be happy, or comfortable. If we are uncomfortable, everyone around us should change so we can be comfortable, or we should remove ourselves from the situation. Yet, I believe perseverance is an important character trait. If we always quit…

I have always been a high achieving, performance based person. Goals were things to be conquered and I had a lot of them. I spun many plates at the same time and prided myself on being able to balance it all. Eventually, I realized that I had an unknown, underlying theme to working so hard. I thought that if I performed well enough, or worked hard enough, I would be accepted. Maybe the people around me would love me more. Maybe God would approve of me and bless me because I was doing enough to please Him. There was some sort of acceptance that I was trying to achieve through…

How do you love difficult people? It’s easy to love people who are similar to us. In fact, the Bible even tells us that everyone loves people who are like them. The challenge comes when we have to love someone who is different from us, or even our enemies. Our society celebrates connecting with people like us. It celebrates finding your tribe, your culture, or your people, and unfollowing people who have different beliefs than you on social media. Connecting with people whom we easily get along with is great. I like connecting with like minded people and growing and becoming better. I also believe that we are called to…

What does personal growth mean and how do you do it? Personal growth means a lot of things to different people. To me, personal growth is improving myself. It is not becoming someone I am not. Personal growth is improving upon my gifts and talents, while learning how to soften my rough edges and minimize my weaknesses. One of the first steps to self improvement is to identify what areas you want to improve. Next, create a plan. Along with a plan, it’s a good idea to get a coach or mentor to help you along the way. There are a lot of different coaches for different things. As I…