Focus on your JOY and be an inspiration to everyone around you!

If any of you are like me, you have found yourself lately stressing over the future and trying to figure everything out, every single detail. From the very first day I was home, I was stressing over reading, doing webinars, learning, growing, getting better, feeling better. What started as good intentions very quickly began to consume me. I got to where as soon as I jumped out of bed and did my morning routine, I would come straight to my office and was obsessed with doing anything to make me feel like I was growing in some way. It literally began to consume me. Three weeks in, my mom told me I needed to stop, and just be, and relax and clear my mind. I couldn’t I said! I have to do something, I don’t know what’s happening in the future. She finally just let me be, but that particular Monday, as I set down and opened my laptop I felt God say to me rest your mind. I literally closed my laptop, got up, shut off my office light and didn’t return to my office that entire week. I barely read that week either. Instead, I worked in my yard and with my plants and around my house. As I began to relax, I realized that what everybody was trying to tell me, was right, just be still!

Do you ever find yourself trying to do too much in life? Do you find yourself overwhelmed and tired, not just mentally but physically and you feel like you can’t go one more minute? I think one lesson we’re all learning right now is to just stop and be. Just stop and focus on our joy! Just stop and focus on our peace! Just stop and focus on all the things that are important in our lives. Too often we can run ourselves ragged trying to do and be for everybody else. When we are in that place, we become stressed and depressed and it feels like life is literally falling in at our feet. We were not meant to live that way! Yes life can be so very hard, and right now the uncertainty of life is almost overwhelming, but you know that it is possible, yes even right now, to just rest and just be!

I think for me, and maybe you, it’s a way to control things, but there are so many things we cannot control, no matter what we do. You cannot control what other people are going to do. You cannot control the economy. You cannot control things that can happen in your health. You cannot control never being hurt. You cannot control the weather. I love a saying I saw recently that said our hair is put on our head to teach us simply there are things we cannot control. Now that’s funny but how true? Does your hair look perfect every single day no matter if you do the exact the same thing? No! It doesn’t even look the same every single day regardless. So why do we think we can control what is going on around us by busying ourselves and driving ourselves crazy? We cannot control everything!

If anybody finds themselves where I found myself, I urge to stop! Stop and smell the roses! Stop and be kind to yourself! Stop and find your joy! Stop and find your inspiration. For me, that is in God and the Bible, for you, you may call it something else, but wherever you go to find that peace and that strength and that rest, go there! I urge you to just stop and be! Your inspiration and your direction for life will be there when you just stop and be!

Go run through the flowers and watch the birds! Pay attention to the wind blowing and the chimes making beautiful music! Smell the crisp air and watch a beautiful sunrise or sunset, or the sound of the ocean waves. Just be still! You will get your inspiration and direction for the future, and you will be an inspiration to those around you!

With love for you all,

Shauna