How To Change Your Mindset and Change Your Life

We’re going to get all up in our feels today and discuss how feelings are clues and are really good indicators of where you are on your journey to walking out peace on purpose.

feelings are a gauge

If the very basis of having peace on purpose is to worry less and have faith that God is up to something good on your behalf, then feelings are a really great way to gauge where you’re at in your journey. They’re like a diagnostic. If you are feeling overwhelmed and you’re feeling worried, or you’re just feeling stressed, those are good indicators that you are being invited into realigning with the Lord and moving forward from a position of peace. This means first acknowledging how you feel and uncovering where those feelings are coming from, so you can get into realignment and experience more fruit of the spirit in your life.  Feelings are clues. So if you really want to know what you believe, get to know your emotions. The good news about emotions is that they come and they go, they ebb and they flow.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people will feel something really, really strongly. This is human behavior 101. You actually carry out all of your actions from a place of your emotions. And so we have to go back to what are we thinking and discover how that’s producing these emotions. In order to move forward from a position of peace and experience more rootedness and grounding in our faith walk, in our finances, in our family, in our friendships, in our fitness, and in our field, we really have to take on a growth mindset in this area. New thoughts, new habits, new ways to look at the situation and this lead to new possibilities. 

the beginning of Peace on Purpose

I’ve said this before, but you make all your decisions and you react and you respond to others based off of your emotions. When you can get an idea of where your emotions are coming from, then you can move forward with how to guide your emotions from a much more rooted place. Today I want to talk about how your feelings are clues and I’m going to give you a tool that we actually were given about eight years ago that you can use the next time you want to decode your feelings. This was the beginning of peace on purpose for our family. This was the first step was taking inventory of our feelings and figuring out what our feelings meant. Our feelings are not always a true depiction of truth, nor are they a sign of weakness. For example, when someone experiences fear they can often go to worse case scenario and negative belief systems. When the truth of the situation is crowded out by emotions like fear, it can difficult to make good and grounded decisions. In this case, it’s tough to be wise. We’re invited back to being anchored in the truth and fixing our eyes on Jesus in such a way that it provides us a way forward. This way forward is wise, grounded and rooted in truth. This powerful tool that I’m going to share with you today comes from my husband. He introduced me to these new ideas eight years ago. 

Eight years ago, we were at a turning point in our marriage. I found out my husband was being unfaithful to me with a coworker. I was pregnant with our third child at the time and it had been going on since I was pregnant with our second child. So it was ugly, to say the least. I’ve talked about this on my blog, in podcast episodes and on social media. It was a very tender time. My husband was unaware of his feelings. He was numbing out. He was checked out. He was overworked, absolutely miserable, hated his job. He would distance himself from the family. 

I could never put my finger on why he was unhappy. I just knew he was miserable.

When I discovered that he was being unfaithful, the most confusing part was that he was a Christian attending church every Sunday when this happened. And, even worse, he was on staff with a church during the entire affair. It’s safe to say that our marriage was the polar opposite of peaceful. We did not have peace on purpose back then. It was  a very hard time, but when I look back, I realize that this is where our Peace on Purpose journey was conceived.

Today, I  am proudly married to my husband after times of incredible transformation. He is a strong, faithful man who is very good at knowing what he feels. He’s also not afraid to uncover what his emotions actually reveal. He’s not afraid to get to the root of it. Today he walks in full integrity and faithfulness. He knows what to do when he veers off his purpose-filled path. He doesn’t just attend church on Sunday anymore. He’s not aloof. He knows God intimately and connects with him daily in ways that he never could before. He’s no longer trying to fool himself, others, or God. I love, love, love, love that man. 

a powerful tool for healing

We walked through the thick of healing our marriage under the guidance of a gifted Christian counselor who specializes in sexual addiction and he taught us so many new skills. Here’s a link to more information about our counselor. During counseling, my husband was given the task of completing a 30 day feelings check-in challenge. He would set an alarm for three times a day for 30 days. And first, he would pick a feeling from this worksheet called the feelings wheel.  The first step to using it is to pick a feeling from the feelings wheel that feels true in the moment and write it down. Then you write down why you feel that way. Then you write down what you’re going to do about it. He repeated this 3 times a day for 30 days. 

He was sharing this journal with our counselor at the time. During this challenge, he was doing the hard work and he was changing right before my eyes. Up until then, he was unaware of how his emotions were ruining our family. But everything changed and he adopted a different perspective when he was forced to pay attention to his feelings and emotions and then do something about it. 

rebuilding trust

You know, his choice to feel something and then consciously choose not to act on it was the foundation to rebuilding trust in our marriage. It was life changing. It is the springboard for improving the quality of your life. I’ve heard it said that adults have about 60,000 thoughts running through their mind every single day. 60,000. And 80 percent of them are negative. But here’s the thing. Every single thought that you have produces an emotion you will feel. If 80% of 60,000 is 48,000, then that means you are experiencing about 48,000 negative emotions a day. You know what else that means? That means you’re only going to feel about 12,000 positive emotions. So, it’s no wonder we don’t experience peace. 

What if we flipped it? So now let’s say, on a daily basis, your thoughts are 80% positive and grounded and rooted in the Lord.  Why do you think he told you to learn to take your thoughts captive, to renew your mind?  

We have to ask ourselves: do I believe God is going to show up and something good is going to happen or do I believe Satan is going to show up and everything is going to fall apart?  Taking inventory of your feelings and seeing them on paper for 30 days is the foundation and it will be one of the best ways to begin transformation. It’s like the admittance.The first way to cure a problem is to confess that you have a problem. And how you find out if you have a problem unless you take inventory of your emotions and see where you’re at and put them on paper. It’s a simple, yet profound exercise. It’s the starting block, honestly, of living a life of peace of purpose. 

I believe it’s possible

The Lord purposefully put you here on this earth. He put you in your circle of influence among human beings for his glory and the advancement of the kingdom. According to the numbers I mentioned above, you run the risk of giving up hope  if you haven’t already.  Because no one can sustain the sheer volume of negative thoughts if you’re not checking your yourself. That’s why I’m so compelled to talk about this Peace on Purpose message and help so many homemakers and female entrepreneurs check their thoughts, learn the skills required for new thinking and bring them back to the obedience of Christ. I believe you can feel 80% positive about your life and experience positive change. I believe this about all the areas of your life and make decisions from that peace-filled state of mind.  

When you flip your feelings to experiencing 80% positive, then your longevity and your vibrance in the Lord will sustain you for all your days.You will, as Paul would say, fight the good fight. 

God the Father is near. He has a plan and He’s been nudging you for a while now to trust Him deeper. You know that. So you start the process in discomfort by getting curious about your feelings and, at this point, your goal of peace may feel a long way off. But you persist with writing down the way you feel and then yourself what you’re going to do about it.  

3 major reasons why

There are three major reasons why you need to take inventory of your emotions from day to day.

Number one: you increase your awareness of your feelings and how they are affecting you through small steps. Increasing your awareness is really important. By being unaware of how we’re feeling, we’re not able to ask ourselves why we feel that way.  And when we don’t do that, we never get to the root of the problem. So taking time to purposefully stop and check in is what primed my husband for revelation and transformation, which is a necessary step for real change.

Number two: it’s a great idea to take inventory of your emotions because knowing that every action, good or bad, is initiated by how you feel, helps you with your responses. The way that you respond to someone today–your husband, your children, your workplace, your business–it all stems from an emotion that you’re feeling right now or it stems from an emotion that you’re trying to avoid.  

That’s me, by the way. My husband now is very good at embracing his emotions and feeling them and letting them pass through and understanding that they’re temporary. Me, I’m all like, Nope. Disappointment is dangerous. I don’t want to feel disappointment because if I do, it’s never going to go away. The first thing that comes up for me here is that I am a work in progress. I like to avoid feelings, but this is the thing. Like every action I take, every action that you take today is based off of an emotion that we’re trying to avoid or that we are currently feeling. It drives every decision that you need to make. That’s why it’s important to check in with your emotions because how you respond impacts everyone and everything around you. You make better decisions and respond graciously from a position of peace and through a change of heart instead of a position of panic. 

Number three: A major reason why you need to take inventory of your emotions or start the process of learning how to do that and creating a habit out of it is that feelings are clues that reveal what you really believe. Most of us truthfully think that our belief in God is pretty good. Like, I believe God. He’s always good. But our emotions often reveal our need for a serious realignment of our faith. Those who believe that God is going to show up with good things will experience all the fruit of his Holy Spirit. They will walk in victory.  But those who believe the enemy will show up with evil and he will prevail, they will not be able to live out peace on purpose. It’s impossible. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And you know what else the scriptures say? The scriptures say that we must search for peace and work to maintain it.

faith questions

That’s Psalm 34:14. Most of your negative emotions are provoked from a deep faith of who you believe is more powerful, the Lord or the enemy. So feelings are really clues to what you believe and living a life of peace on purpose is getting to that point where you understand that God’s thoughts are not your thoughts, but he invites you to think what he thinks. But how do you know what God thinks? Well, he writes it in his word. That’s why he says to meditate on his word and hide it deep in your heart because there are going to be influences in this world. This is where long-term success in taking your thoughts captive is found.

The way that we cultivate peace on purpose is we align with God’s thoughts and we align with what he has to say and what he thinks. This is the only way to produce lasting peace.  And that is how we provoke the fruit of the spirit. That’s called abiding in the Holy Spirit.  

So I have a couple of questions for you.  

How are you feeling lately? 

Are you feeling good about the way that you respond to others and make decisions?  

How deeply connected and peaceful are you in your relationship with God? 

What emotions come up for you in the first place when I ask these things? 

a challenge for you

What if you just committed to the next 30 days? Some might say that’s a tiny goal. Others would say that is lofty. It seems like a good way to start to me. What if you commit to picking up clues, writing down your emotions, asking yourself those questions that my husband asked himself all those years ago–because your emotions are clues and you’re going to need these clues as we dive deeper into the journey of cultivating peace on purpose. These powerful techniques have the potential to change your life for the better and take your faith to a deeper level.

This is how I started. This is how I have learned to become immovable. And again, I am still on this journey. I’m only going to be 40 this year. I’ve got another 50 years of learning this and unpacking this, but I really do believe that peace on purpose is absolutely possible. When we take our thoughts captive and we realign and we believe and we truly ask God to help us believe that he is the one in control, we can lay down our fears and we can give the power  back to the Lord where belongs. We realize that the enemy is just pretending to be all powerful. God is way more powerful than he is. He has more authority over your family. In fact, he holds all things together by the word of his power. That’s from Colossians.  

will you begin?

This is not what everybody else is doing, but we choose a different way. Peace on Purpose is not what everybody else is doing, but it’s your turn to have a peace that passes all understanding in all areas of your life. It’s your turn to improve the quality of your thoughts and, by doing so, the quality of your life and your eternal impact on the world.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me for this today. This is the beginning of cultivating peace on purpose. More people need to know that they never, ever have to lay down their peace. If you liked what you read here, I have more content in other places. You can find me over on Instagram and Facebook. You can also find out ways that you can partner with me or work with me for a season. You can get more information at leslieburris. com.