Who else grew up feeling that if you had money you were greedy? Or that having money or wanting money and success was bad? How often as Christians did we have it drilled into our heads that money and wanting it was bad? After all we are told to not worship money right? So how does this fit into your true every day life? Are you ready and willing to dig into this a bit with me.......Because I was there, I am still working on getting OUT of that mindset.

First I am going to address the idea of money being bad from a Christian standpoint. Here is a famous verse that is well known "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." 1 Timothy 6:10 Well gosh...that must mean that money is bad right? WRONG! It is our attitude towards money that is the issue. It is worshiping money and putting money before God that is the problem. NOT money itself. There is so much more I could say about this topic. And if you want to dig deeper into it here is a wonderful link to look over and ponder: https://www.stewardship.com/articles/3-most-misunderstood-bible-verses-on-money

But let's move on....so how do we change our mindset around money? First we need to realize that money is not bad. That when we have success we can help so many others around us. We have to understand that we have GREATNESS in us. That we have a fire inside of us that right now might be small and dim as we have been letting the world tell us we are not destined for greatness. But the world is WRONG. There are such HUGE and amazing plans for you and your life. Just sit back and imagine all the amazing things you can accomplish. Do these things feel like they are so huge that they will never happen? Do they feel that they are only meant for others? I am here to tell you that is NOT TRUE. You deserve greatness and you deserve for your dreams to come true.

"You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?" - Rumi

One of hte first things you can do to help see your dreams to reality is to conduct yourself as though you already have whatever it is that you want. Is this debt paid off, the car in the driveway, the trip, the mission trip, helping others so freely. Start envisioning your life to the very small details of every piece of these dreams. Think on this often. Pray about it fervently.

Once you see these things in fine detail you will start to get ideas of how to make them happen. DO NOT WAIT. The timing is never going to be just right. If you get a thought, act on it! It may or may not pan out but do not wait. I fully believe that when we deeply and humbly come to God with our dreams that in His time they will happen. Some of these dreams may not actually happen until after we are gone from this earth, but do NOT give up on chasing them as there is a reason they are happening when they do. Take a step, even the smallest one, towards your dreams. Each step forward is one step closer.

I am going to say this here and now....and it makes me a bit nervous to do so.....

I want to be wealthy. And I have no shame in that. I want to be wealthy so I can deeply help others who need it. I want to be wealthy so I have the means to at any time drop what I am doing to follow exactly the plan God has in store for my life. When we give deeply, we are blessed deeply.

This was not an easy post to write. It stirs up a lot of feelings. I am sure it stirs them up in you as well. Let's talk about them. Feel free to message me. I don't mind being challenged from other perspectives either. We can grow together. And oh the bond and friendship we could make.

I will leave you with this. Poverty, helps no one! Can someone in poverty give... OF COURSE. I would encourage it in fact. But does poverty help make BIG things happen to those around our world? Lets ALL dream big. Lets all GIVE big right where we are at at this time. As our GIVE BIG will be blessed so much more and it will allow us to continue to give bigger and more freely long term. Oh how our world could be impacted!

Positive thinking and positive talk go hand in hand. It is Monday....and many times Monday brings groans from adults as they head back to work after a weekend. It even brings groans from my kiddo during the school year on having to go back to school. Now while this blog can reach anyone around the world I am going to focus on the USA here. We are so incredibly blessed here in the USA from education to work force.

Today I was reading my book "The Positive Dog" and it was about how we need to work on changing just one word in our vocabulary to change our whole outlook on our day and even life.

Instead of saying "I Have to".....say "I GET to".

I get to go to work
I get to go to School
I get to go worship
I get to have quiet time
I get to go run
I get to have kids
I get to have a husband
I get to go to a dog show
I get to play sports

And so on and so forth. Changing one word can and will change our entire outlook on life. And pretty soon so much more will follow. So if you struggle with the idea of positive thinking and how huge that sounds and sometimes feels....take this one small step and just change the word HAVE to GET and see how your day and week changes!

As I wrap up week 4 of using the DFT BURN and start out week 5 it is time for another update. This past week was a lot of time spent with family and friends over the 4th of July here in the US. When we spend a lot of time out and about and doing fun adventures I tend to not eat as well as I would in a normal week.

Exciting news though is that there was no gain in weight or inches. Everything stayed status quo. I was also able to get back into the routine of running 3 times this week and got a really long bike ride in this week as well. Super fun! But this also goes to show  that exercise alone will not make our weight loss goals happen. That nutrition plays a key roll.

I would like to invite you to watch my live video update below on how this past week went and would love to hear your comments as well. This week we will have a more "normal" week and I hope to get to you guys on some blog posts I have been wanting to make just have fallen through the cracks.

Also anyone with fun and healthy food recipes, hopefully EASY ones as I am not the biggest fan of cooking, please shoot them my way! We need some new ideas.

I started a new book this week. This book has been sitting around my house for probably 6 months or more. And when I was in the car on the way to dock jumping on Sunday I saw it. So decided to read. MIND BLOWING. Just one chapter in and so much in good stuff to take away.

So much focus on having a mindset of gratitude. We all have obstacle. Some large some small. It is how we look at those obstacle. Things will show up when we are truly ready for them. Though on the journey to get there we will have challenges. Many of the challenges we face are not things we would choose or want. But we need to look at the challenges as things that needed to happen. When we get to the end of the journey, or down the road from the obstacle we will be able to look back and see them as they are. That they are reasons for these things to happen and we will realize that they actually have built us up to get where we needed to be and to what was really in store for us. So when we are faced with a challenge. Let's take it head on and realize that this challenge is exactly what we need to get to our divine purpose and our abundant life.

To see this abundance we need to take the word "impossible out of our vocabulary. To see success and to see abundance we need to think as a successful person. Failure comes to only those who allow their minds to think this way. A mindset of success is one that will become successful and have an abundant life. For example. Lets look at Facebook. How many people do we see that post negative thoughts and feelings. Hating the world around them, the weather, who is in office and their circumstances? Then what happens.... their friends all comment and agree. This person is now feeding the negative dog in their personality. And this negativity grows. Someone with a negative mindset and outlook on life, and one who keeps feeding that will not ever have an abundant life. Or the life that they are capable of having. They seek negativity and are ok with being there even if they say they are not.

Someone who is success drive, abundance driven and gratitude driven looks for the positive. They surround themselves with positive people. They do not delve into the negative and say "whoa is me". I would like to challenge each of you to take a look at my Facebook page. Can you find a time where something of negative thought was posted? If so please bring it to my attention as I do not want to feed the negative dog in my life. As I know there is abundance out there for me. I know that the life I am in right now is abundant but that there is so much more still in store for me.

A couple quotes from the book written by Ray Higdon that I am reading:

"When you focus on your thoughts, your results in life will change."

"The most powerful thing you can do for this world is to lead an abundant life. Lead a life that inspires, touches moves other people and yourself."

How incredible. I am excited to see where this life takes me and I am hoping I hold nothing back when it comes to helping others. Each chapter in the book I am reading has homework. This chapters home work was the following:

1.Write down three things that you can do, action steps that you can take when you are feeling down, when you are feeling depressed or when you are feeling bad about your temporary circumstances.

2. Write down 100 things that you are grateful for. If you are in a very negative space write down 100 things daily. And see how your mindset and your world changes.

I did both of these yesterday. Some of my random things that I wrote down that I am thankful for (not my entire list but some of it): Plumbing, Snow, Smiles, Dentist, zoos, God, Worship, sight, taste, family, job, running, toothpaste......

And honestly I felt strange writing some of them down. They seemed so minor. But do you realize how many people would feel that their world was forever changed by something like toothpaste? No thing is too small to be grateful for. I would love for you to take this homework challenge and see what you come up with. I would love your feedback and to hear some of the things that you are grateful for and how it made you feel when you wrote them down. Below is my live video on FB about this as well. Please do check it out and give me your thoughts! I love to hear them.