Listen to Experience Victory Before the Finish Line

00:04 

Hey there and welcome. Are you a woman who is unapologetically ambitious, but you're also deeply focused on honoring God, loving your family well and pursuing meaningful work? Well, you've come to the right place. My name is Dana Byers and you and I are going to be fast friends. Let's get started. Before we get started today, I wanna share with you a client testimonial. Shannon says, what makes me so amazing now is my grit and my confidence. Shannon, I could not agree with you more. You are amazing. If you'd like to learn about what it looks like to work with me, go to dana byers coaching.com/get coached.  

 

00:53 

Well,  

 

00:53 

Hello everyone. Welcome back for another episode of Been There, learned that this is a podcast where Christian working women just like me and just like you explore living with authenticity. You know, things like overcoming people pleasing, finding purpose in our lives, all sorts of really important things that we care about, but that can be difficult for us to really grasp or connect with because we tend to be so busy or maybe focused on achieving things in the day in and day out of our lives. So I really want to dive into a very powerful concept today, and that is the idea of feeling the victory. Now, it's the concept of how to feel the emotions that you're longing for before you actually achieve your goals. Okay, so I know this might sound a little bit vague. We're gonna get into some very big specifics here in a moment.  

 

01:49 

I want you to know that we're gonna talk about an approach that can actually transform how you pursue your dreams, your desires, your goals, and how it can bring a sense of fulfillment to your life today before you even cross that finish line. Because the fact is, there are a lot of great methods for setting short term goals, but many of the things that you and I care about, you know, raising our kids well, being in godly marriages, if we're married, you know, having healthy lifelong careers, those things probably aren't going to come to pass in the next six months, maybe even this next six years. You know, maybe it might be six decades. I hope I have six more decades, at least with my husband in our marriage. So when we think about those long-term things that matter to us, I wanna talk about how we can experience the victory and the progress of the things we long for now to help us experience fulfillment before we ever cross that finish line.  

 

02:49 

But before we dive into that, I really wanna start first with a caveat that is probably gonna turn a little bit into me getting on a soap box. So there's your fair warning for that. Before we dive into talking about harnessing appropriately and authentically our emotions to help us succeed, I wanna make it abundantly clear to you that I'm not personally a proponent of the practice that you may have heard of, which is manifestation. Okay? I'll be completely honest, I've been known to joke about it. I've traveled a lot in the last month outside of America. I've been in four different countries, love traveling, love visiting other cultures and places. Don't really love going through customs and security for hours on end. So I remember making a joke to my husband, I think we were in Sweden and we got, he had to step aside and have his bags checked, and I did not.  

 

03:46 

And I jokingly said to him as he waited for a very long time, you know, I manifested not having to have my bags checked and having yours checked, which was not true. But I like to poke fun at the idea of it. But I will admit, I understand there are plenty of people who take manifestation very seriously. I'm not really trying to put that in a bad light, but I will tell you, I personally am not a proponent of it, and I'm gonna tell you why. And all seriousness, I wanna make sure that, you know, I'm not encouraging that here in my podcast or with my clients. And I wanna give you a little bit of context first, that I am actually a proponent of being in the world. I know not all believers agree with that, but when I say being in the world, it means carrying Jesus wherever I go and not being hesitant to go into places that may or may not have experienced Jesus.  

 

04:38 

Not, you know, going into relationships, friendships, businesses. I wanna make sure that I personally do not live in a Christian bubble. I have friends and acquaintances in many circles of life, and I have heard and seen a lot of things to be really frank with you. And as our kids were growing up, Chris and I were prayerfully and intentionally introducing them to many things so that we could discuss them with them and an effort for them to learn how to think critically. I didn't wanna raise my kids or myself to, I didn't want myself as an adult to experience life as someone who just says, well, that's what the Bible says, therefore I believe it. No, I really wanted to think critically and for my kids to think critically, to compare the things they're observing and hearing to the things they're learning in church, to the things they're reading in the Bible, to the things that they're seeing.  

 

05:28 

Chris and me live out day to day in our lives. None of us are perfect examples, but it was really important to me that when my kids, you know, become adults out on their own, which they're practically living that sort of in a transitional phase of their lives right now, moving out on their own, I wanted them to be able to have a foundation for understanding why they do or don't support something in their walk with Christ. So that just kind of with that context in mind, it should come as no surprise to you that in my coaching practice, as a result, I am always learning and reading new things to see if they're going to be appropriately biblically applicable in my own life, but also for my clients. So as a result, I have read a lot about the practice and approach to manifestation over the years.  

 

06:16 

I have spent some serious time processing the idea, and personally, I'm not comfortable saying it's biblical or even practicing the idea of manifestation myself. And I'll tell you why. My understanding of the practice of manifestation is that it essentially puts you or me at the center of our lives. And that is to say, it kind of puts us in the position that personally I want God to be in. And I wanna say this carefully. I am by no stretch of the imagination, a perfect Christian. I am so far from who God is. I completely understand I'm not God. But I also can't stand here and say I'm a, I'm a woman without sin. I believe I'm a woman after God's own heart. I believe I am pursuing him, but I have a long way to go. So kind of take all this information with a grain of salt.  

 

07:03 

I want you to think critically about what you believe and how you live. But I'm gonna be sharing what's in this episode with you today out of a context of not encouraging this, this approach to manifestation. I personally don't want to be in the driver's seat in my life. I believe I have a lot of control. I believe I have a lot of influence. I think God gives me free will and decisions to do anything I want to do, which is why I am happy to submit and invite him in to lead me. You know, I really don't adopt the name it and claim it mentality because that puts me in the driver's seat and that says I can make everything happen. And I just, I know from experience that's not true. That's not true in my life. So if the entire result of my life and the goals and the dreams that I think God has given to me, if those results depended entirely on me, that would mean that I am God or that I have his power.  

 

07:57 

And frankly, I don't want that to be the case because as I said a few minutes ago, I know how imperfect I am. I know how human I am, and I want my life to depend on God's goodness. I want my life to depend on God's capacity and not my shortcomings as a human being with limited capacity. So all that to say I do love and have personally adopted an approach to goal setting and approach to living out the dreams that I think God has given me, that I believe is along the lines of what I want to discuss today. And that is identifying a goal or a dream, asking God to help me with it, inviting others into the process for their insight and their accountability and being unattached to the outcome that is remaining as best I can. Neutral. So that means, you know, my life isn't gonna be awful if it doesn't come to pass and my life isn't gonna be the best thing ever.  

 

08:54 

If it does, does come to pass. I'm not dependent on the outcome, I'm dependent on the com, on Christ, but also on the commitment I have to moving towards that and who I will become in the process. So for example, I really want my business, Dana, by coaching to succeed. I am taking the actions that are available to me right now to move it forward. I am asking God for help, but I'm also open to him redirecting how I run my business if I need to shift it. If you've known me for very long, you know that years ago I used to coach men and women. I love coaching men. I had a lot of success in that, and I think my clients had a lot of success in that as well. However, I really sense God leading me to niche down to hone in on women who follow Jesus, who are in the workplace to specifically make myself available to coach them.  

 

09:47 

So I don't think my business is any less successful necessarily, but I did get a redirection from God. And you see, I think the idea of approaching the long term for the goals that we have for our relationships, our work, our health, this is really in alignment with, I think it's in Isaiah, Isaiah 55, where we read that God's ways and his thoughts are higher than our ways and our thoughts. I don't know about you, but I want the higher, better outcomes that come from God and not from me. So in the example I just shared about shifting my business model, don't hear me say that was easy. I maybe just said 10 words about it, but it was a long season to be really honest with you of back and forth, you know, stressing, complaining, fear, anxiety, all sorts of things about God. Did I hear you right?  

 

10:37 

Is this really the right thing? And inviting people into my life and walking through that, but accepting what I believe was an invitation to redirect. I don't think I had to, but I accepted that invitation to move towards the greater outcome, the higher ways and the higher thoughts that I believe God has for my life that I just don't yet see. So if I were manifesting, you know, anything from getting a parking spot close to the store or earning a million dollars next year or getting 10 new clients today, I would be depending on my power alone and God would not get the glory for it. So that's why I want to not focus on this practice of manifesting, but instead focus on what it looks like to have God in the driver's seat of our lives and experience victory, experience wins, and feel the emotion to be able to celebrate what he is doing on the journey, even if we won't arrive for a long time, or even if we never arrive quite in the way that we thought we would.  

 

11:37 

You know, there is something I believe is powerful and it's not really against what I read in the Bible. This is something I've learned from people who do practice manifestation and that is the element of faith. And it's funny to me that this secular practice about manifestation often includes the element of faith or belief. Well, we talk about that all the time in the church, but I think that's something that for those of us who follow Jesus, who are working, you know, in the workplace, maybe outside of home, I think it's easy for us to forget about the element of faith or belief. It's so easy for us, you know, to be focused on, you know, we're, we're maybe high achievers. We follow Jesus. We completely believe in his ability and his capacity. We work our buns off, but we allow ourselves to doubt that the opportunity that God's given us is actually going to come to pass.  

 

12:26 

I'm gonna say that again. We follow Jesus, we love him, we trust him, we do our part, we work, work, work, work, work. We contribute, we wait, we listen, we do all those things, but we still nurture big doubts about things actually coming to pass. You see, we lose faith, not in God, but in the, in the possibility we lose faith as the process goes on because you know, the possibilities seem to not be as strong sometimes whenever things don't go exactly as we thought they would. Or when we don't navigate our emotions well. And here's, here's where it kind of falls apart. You see, we understand that God is capable of all things. We understand that we've got a part to contribute, we take action, but we fail to manage our emotions properly, to support ourselves on the journey when things haven't yet worked out.  

 

13:22 

So for me personally, the times that I have crammed down my emotions or fail to support myself and support myself in a variety of ways, you know, whether it's making sure I've got social time with friends, asking for prayer, working with my coach, seeing a counselor when I have failed to support myself are when things tend to go off the rails for me energetically. You've probably heard me say, I used to be in a cycle of burnout. I always loved my family, always loved my job, wouldn't say I felt distant from God, but would work, work, work, work, work. And I was kind of working against myself, my own doubts and beliefs that things really weren't going to work out would get in the way. It was like, you know, the idea of building a house all day long and then tearing it down overnight.  

 

14:08 

You know, I would experience so much frustration because I would start over and over again with some of my goals or relationships and then I would start to doubt God sometimes. And it really, he had done nothing wrong. He hadn't moved away from me at all, but I had let doubt creep in. I think doubt is an emotion that we are allowed to feel, and it's one that we don't want to shove down. It's one we want to fully acknowledge and look in the face and really confess that we're feeling that way and be able to, instead of kind of pushing our emotions under the rug or cramming them down, instead support ourselves, encourage ourselves and the Lord, get the habits built into our lives that help us keep going for the long term. Because I would begin burning out because I didn't see results.  

 

14:54 

And sometimes I would become controlling about my circumstances or desperate who knew how I would respond, right? It would kind of vary based upon the day. And it makes me think of in Proverbs 13, 12, I love this verse, we read that hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is like a tree of life. So if we defer our hope, that means we put it off, we delay it. So we're like, you know what, God, I'm not gonna have hope. I'm not going to feel encouraged about this thing, this opportunity until it happens. Think about that. That seems a little bit ludicrous. That would be like, okay, here's an example. Let's say you are in love, you've met the person you're going to marry, and you aren't married yet you are engaged. And you're like, you know what? I'm not gonna enjoy this relationship until we're married.  

 

15:44 

That's putting off hope. That's not allowing yourself to enjoy things as they are right now. You aren't yet married and you want to be married. But between now and then you can also enjoy that relationship and experience God and love your partner and have all of these beautiful things happen in your life, even though you aren't yet where you want to be. We tend to cut ourselves off. Like it says in the passage here in Proverbs, a longing fulfilled is like a tree of life. We say, you know what? I have longing for things, but they aren't fulfilled. So I'm just going to delay my hope that it's going to work out until I see evidence. So that's, you know, when the going gets tough and when the going gets tough and we say, I'm not sure I'm going to allow myself vulnerably to hope or to have belief in this thing, you know what we do?  

 

16:35 

We, we decide, you know what, I'm just gonna work harder or I'm gonna quit. But instead of forcing ourselves to work harder or instead of quitting, we could instead shift and lean into our faith so that we do not put off our hope. You see what I'm saying is you don't have to wait to be fulfilled. I believe that in Jesus, you and I can experience fulfillment while we wait for the dream to come true or the goal to be reached. And this is such a biblical thought. If you think about it, think about your personal faith journey with Christ, whether you recently committed your life to him, or if you've been following him from decade for decades. Think of it this way. You are a woman after God's own heart and you are becoming a woman after God's own heart, right? We aren't perfect, but we are being made whole as we are in relationship with him.  

 

17:29 

We know that someday we will be completely healed, full and whole when we are uni reunited with Jesus and that day we don't know when it's gonna come. But we don't have to put off our hope in who he is and what he's done for us until it's fulfilled. We can experience the joy of our salvation today. That's why I'm saying you don't have to wait to be fulfilled. And if you can take that understanding of that principle and apply it to the things that you are moving towards in your life, the opportunities that God has given you, it's going to allow you to exhale, friend. It's going to allow you to exhale. Yes, we wanna take these things seriously, but we don't have to take ourselves so seriously. God is in the driver's seat. You are not responsible for the outcomes of all of these things.  

 

18:20 

And in fact, if you're getting your hand in there and you're, you know, you're messing with the mix a little bit, you might be causing some problems. You don't have to do anything more than God invites you to do. In fact, you might be causing your own source of stress. So I'm gonna take you through a series of coaching questions right now to help you shift out of either the quitting mindset or the overworking or overproduction mindset and to shift you into a sense of feeling progress or even victory, the feeling that you want to feel right now before you even reach the goal. So it's important to point out here that we are not going to make up feelings. We aren't going to come up with false affirmations to force ourself to believe something. We're just going to think about how to be quiet and in our minds, in our hearts, let God the Holy Spirit, show us what our longings are and invite him in to help us start embracing that in our lives today, regardless of evidence that may or may not yet exist.  

 

19:25 

So the first question I have for you is, what do you want? When I first mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you know, goals, dreams, aspirations, relationships, maybe it's a career path or your business, or who knows, maybe it's a financial goal, whatever that is. What do you want? And I'm not gonna get into this for the purpose of our, our episode today, but I believe you probably are thinking of something that is godly, something that is a dream that God has put in your heart, something that you've already processed through and done the filter through scripture and see what that looks like. You know, not just kind of a selfish desire, but something that you really want to see come to pass in your life. So bring that to mind and I wanna ask you this question, how do you think you'll feel when you achieve this thing that you want?  

 

20:16 

So for example, when I think about having a successful business, I imagine myself feeling the feeling that I get when I'm helping someone. The feeling I get when I know I'm making a positive impact, that there is an influence there that is bringing transformation. And it is encouraging helping women, women that I've asked this question of have told me whenever they think about the goals they're moving towards, they think they are going to feel confident, they're going to feel successful, wise, smart, and healthy. Those are just some of the answers I've heard. In fact, I once asked the client, she was on a weight loss journey and I asked her how she thought she would feel when she reached her weight loss goal. And she said, I imagine myself feeling confident in my clothes while I'm speaking to audiences and people. So that was part of her job was she would speak a lot on stage and she wanted to feel confident in her clothes.  

 

21:13 

In fact, she said, I don't even wanna think about how I'm looking. I don't wanna feel uncomfortable in my body when I'm speaking. That's how I'm going to feel. And so the incredible thing is we can express and experience those emotions now regardless of our external evidence. So by doing this, we are moving closer to the desired outcome without having this kind of graspy sense of lack or a graspy sense of desperation, I have to make this happen. I absolutely need this in my life. No. Instead, we approach the desires of our hearts with a mindset of abundance, a mindset of possibility, a mindset of maybe this is possible. We become more open to the way God is moving us towards the accomplishment or the thing that we desire to see come about in our lives. You see, we aren't manifesting or creating an outcome in our own power.  

 

22:09 

We aren't forcing it, but we are leaning into God's power to help us live a life where we are not deferring our hope. So the example of the client I mentioned earlier, we talked about what it would look like for her the next time she was on stage in front of people to feel confident in her clothes and what she was wearing and to think less about how she appeared regardless of her weight on that day. You see, we are trusting that there is plenty to go around. There's plenty of possibility around us. We trust that we can experience life with a deep sense of abundance instead of fear that we're gonna be the one left out fear that we're gonna be the one who is lacking what we desire. Fear that we're gonna be the first person who God did not deliver for. That's for one of you today listening to this.  

 

22:57 

You might be afraid that you're gonna be the first woman who didn't get the thing that she believed was a dream God put in her heart. I personally don't believe that's going to happen. But if you are experiencing that doubt, I want you to really bring awareness to that, that you are choosing to doubt the possibility of God's provision. And instead of focusing on the feelings that you actually want, I think what you want is not really what you want. I think what you want on the surface might seem the thing that you want, but the emotions that are attached to that desire, that's what really has meaning for you. And it's gonna be easy for you to think about the thing you want on the surface. You know, for example, this client and how she appeared on stage, that felt a little bit silly to her.  

 

23:48 

I'm really proud of her for admitting that vulnerably to me because it's easy to dismiss. It might even seem unnecessary or silly to say, I just wanna feel that I don't look silly in my clothes in front of all these people. But the emotions attached to that desire is what held the true meaning for her. So instead of judging that feeling and that desire, we got curious. You know, we got really curious and I asked her a question, it was a question, I think I heard this question from a writer named Jennifer Blanchard. And, and the question was, where in your life do you already experience that emotion? So I remember the first question I asked you was, you know, when you think about what you want, how do you think you'll feel when you achieve what you want? And then the second question is, where in your life do you already experience that emotion?  

 

24:34 

When I asked my client that, she said, you know what? I never think about how I look when I'm hanging out with my family. I just don't think about it. It's not a problem for me. And I said, okay. So we've already identified very quickly that there is an area in your life where you experience that emotion that you're longing to experience elsewhere. So how can you increase your experience of that emotion in your life? The longing, again, was not necessarily to look amazing in front of people when she's on stage, but the longing was to feel confident in how she appeared when she was on stage. So how could we help her increase her experience of that emotion to have it more in her life, more authentically? So in your case, take the emotion you want to feel maybe at work or in your business.  

 

25:24 

Let's say you want to feel successful. And then you would start by determining what already makes you feel successful in your business. Maybe it's the testimonials from the women that you've helped notes or cards you've received, emails, or maybe if you're in an industry where you earn certifications or awards for a specific milestone, those are things that you have personally attributed to contributing to the sense of success that you're feeling at work or in your business. Today. Before I sat down to record my podcast, I had the sweetest direct message on social media from a woman that I've coached before and she said, Hey, I listened to last week's episode and man, it was exactly what I needed to hear. God really encouraged me in it. Thank you so much for taking the time to share that. That is something that contributes to the sense of success I have in my work.  

 

26:15 

And it has absolutely nothing to do with a dollar sign. It has absolutely nothing to do with a title. I am so thankful that over the years I've learned to recognize, oh, there are plenty of things that I experience without forcing myself to. They just happen in my life. God brings them about in my life to continue to support and contribute to the sense of success that I'm feeling. Even though my business is not yet where the vision I have for it down the road, it's, it's not there yet. But I'm experiencing the feeling of success along the journey because of my ability to focus on the emotions where I'm letting doubt in and where I'm intentionally inviting hope in. You see, when we identify how you can increase your experience of the emotion that you're longing for and you're, and you're spending more time on those activities, it's going to authentically increase the sense of energy.  

 

27:12 

You bring your physical, spiritual, mental and emotional energy, four types of energy there. They're all very different and they're all very important. If you're feeling drained today, you need to let yourself know which area am I drained in? Physical, spiritual, mental, or emotional. Okay? So I want you to spend time on the activities where you naturally and easily increase your experience of the emotion that you're longing for. So for instance, like I said, I review emails from clients. I will sit in journal about my progress, review some old notes or old journals that remind me of how far I've come. A couple months ago I looked back, I pulled out an old journal 'cause I was looking for some notes on something and I just took some time to read through it and I literally laughed out loud about something that was really stressing me that day.  

 

27:59 

Now I wanna validate it. It was very stressful that day. I think this journal was from just a little over a year ago, and I know now what happened then. And it was a very minor, insignificant outcome. Really nothing at all to have worried about. But I love seeing that even that experience became laughable and encouraged me. And I visualize myself, you know, I like to visualize myself already having these outcomes of the dreams that I desire. You know, what does it look like 10, 20 years down the road for Chris and me as we continue to love on our family and our community and to, to focus on giving generously? What does that look like? And I bring those emotions that I feel when I think about what I believe God is doing, even if it hasn't happened yet, my faith in his capacity and not mine.  

 

28:48 

And supporting myself to have the self-care. I need to be able to show up and live out these things without burning out. I bring those emotions into my imagination and into my prayers. So when I think about that, I typically will do it once a month, you know, going through some emails, things that clients have sent over the last couple months, reviewing my journal. But if it's a, if it's a sense of where, maybe it's a season where peak performance is needed or I have a pretty strong goal I'm moving towards, I will look at those things. I'll schedule just a little bit of time, 10, 15 minutes to look at them every week and to ask God to give me his perspective on three things. Okay? Three things. Take note here. Unless you're driving, don't, don't take note. Maybe take a mental note but don't write it down.  

 

29:37 

But it's, it's nothing more and nothing less than this. I ask myself, what's working? Always start with what's working. We wanna start with focusing on the positive. If we start with what's not working, we're gonna get stuck in a downward spiral. Just personal experience there. Okay, ladies, take my advice on that. Ask yourself these three questions. What's working, what's not working? What might I do differently? And that's where we invite God into that. God, is there something, a different approach I could take to this? I'm happy to say the course, but if you want to give me a new perspective, I am open to it. Okay. So I started talking a little bit about visualization. I wanna get back on track with that and talk about visualization is very powerful. Okay? Visualization is using the brains that God gave us, which are massive supercomputers, using them to our advantage.  

 

30:29 

I want you to picture yourself already successful. Picture yourself doing the thing that you are moving towards. Imagine the finish line. Feel the emotions that you long to experience. And you know, whenever we doubt we shut off almost like a valve, we shut off those feelings as a protective mechanism. We don't wanna let ourselves hope too much, right? Don't wanna be silly or foolish. We don't wanna be too vulnerable and say what we would love to see come about. 'cause if it doesn't come about, then we look stupid, right? Well, actually we don't, but we tell ourselves that we do. So if you acknowledge how far you've come and you consider the possibility that you're closer than you think, you can start feeling authentically those emotions today. So for example, on my 33rd birthday, I ran a half marathon with some girlfriends for the church.  

 

31:22 

And what was incredible to me was I knew I was going to finish the race once I started it. Now finish the race can be a lot of definitions, right? I mean, if I'd had an injury or something else, I guess I would've finished. But I, I imagine myself crossing that finish line, every mile was a celebration and I was having fun with friends, which made it much more doable. I haven't done it since then, but I gotta tell you, I felt like I had already earned that race trophy just by starting the race. It was incredible. And I could feel myself crossing that finish line months before when I was training with my friends. It was such an incredible experience and it's something that's really impacted how I view my long-term goals. Now, I don't wanna just enjoy the race when I'm crossing the finish line.  

 

32:10 

I wanna enjoy it from day one. So here's a mindset I wanna offer you to consider to adopt for yourself. You've started your race, so why not start feeling experiencing authentically the victory now? So whether here's, here's question three actually. So whether this is day one of your journey towards any type of victory, any goal that you're moving towards, or maybe it's day 1000, wherever it is, you've started your journey. So the question is, what's already working? What's already working? I told you just a few moments ago, you know, I wanna start with what's working because it's so natural for us in the west to point out all the things that aren't working and why we can't consider something a win. And there's a time and place for that. But really, really what is already working? Did you get in a workout this week? Did you say no to dessert when you weren't hungry?  

 

33:07 

You know, there are plenty of things that are working that you may not be willing to accept because you have really high standards. Well, I gotta tell your friend, those high standards will get you very far, but they also can be a real detriment to your performance if you're not willing to acknowledge how far you've come. So this applies to all areas of your life. You know, recognizing whether it's day one or day 1000 or way beyond, you are on a journey. You're identifying what's already working. I like to think about this when it comes to your financial goals, for example. So celebrating small milestones helped me so much, helped our family go from broke to financial independence. You know, a big milestone was saving our first $100, you know, having goals towards generosity, opening up a 401k, automating our bills. I want you to visualize reaching these goals and let the emotions of that motivate you.  

 

34:06 

We're not going to manipulate ourselves into making up a feeling. We are going to really sit with how does it feel to be a person who contributes to a 401k every month? What does that feel like? You know, that can bring up really strong emotions for us, and a deep appreciation for who God is and who he is helping us become. And I'm saying this specific example, because I know some of you who've shared with me, you've grown up in environments where either your loved ones didn't have any financial education or didn't handle money well, or maybe gambled, gambled away family savings. And so it feels very scary to be able to think of yourself as being someone who could manage money. Well, I believe it's entirely possible for you if you allow yourself to take this journey with God. So like in my milestone, in my journey, some milestones I had, you know, when we went from broke to financial independence was really building an emergency fund.  

 

35:04 

You know, I, I even had this practice that I was still, when I think of it, I mean this was 20 years ago. The, the idea of setting aside just a little bit of money every month in our budget so that we could pay cash when it came time for Christmas gifts in December, wanted to have a holiday budget that we could stick to. So every month I would set aside just a little bit of money and then when December 1st came, that money was there and it's all the money we had, but it also wasn't going to cause us to put money on a credit card or have any debt from that. That was so, I was so proud of that, you know, I was so grateful that I came up with that idea that I was able to move towards it and I could see it serving our family.  

 

35:43 

A big milestone was the idea of paying off our mortgage that motivated me. And it was very emotional for me for many years. See, personally, I had prayed and focused on budgeting for many, many years with the dream of paying off our mortgage. So when Chris and I went to the bank to pay off our mortgage in 2018, I took a photo of my husband signing the paperwork, and right there in the middle of the bank, I cried. I still remember that. I mean, that was six years ago. I had anticipated that moment for many, many years. And that moment was fulfilling. But so is the awareness and the realization of the woman that God developed me into, the woman that I got to become to trust myself with money across that entire journey. You know, there were countless months and years of consistency that led us there.  

 

36:34 

And now I can use the experience of that victory, of that special moment to fuel myself and to encourage myself in the Lord and who he is and what he has done as I now have shifted to focus on new and different dreams. So a quick point I wanna make here is a point on timing. See there were some unexpected positive experiences that did accelerate our family's financial progress, but there were also some unexpected opportunities that actually potentially slowed it down significantly. Like when our family, we cashed out our savings to start a nonprofit and to move overseas. Back in 2007, Chris and I were very involved in the early years of developing something that is now known as church online, but it wasn't really a thing back then. So we had to cash out our savings to start the nonprofit and to raise funds to live overseas for a few years to really expand that globally.  

 

37:30 

And do I regret that? Absolutely not. Thank God for that opportunity. But there was a season of fear and anxiety that I had about knowing how it might significantly impact our finances for the rest of our lives. And so when we think about timing and we think about a limited timetable, and when we think we should lose the 10 pounds or when we think we should pay off our mortgage, whatever that looks like, that is a mindset that's going to keep us moving towards burnout. We are going to try to work harder to control things, we're going to doubt more, and we are not going to stay as close to God as we could if we let our limiting beliefs about our timetables and the human timetables step into our goals. You see, we cannot control the timeline, but we can manage our obedience and our emotions and being able to really look at our emotions and feel them authentically and encourage ourselves in the Lord is what helps us move towards those goals.  

 

38:29 

If you wanna learn more about some of those financial milestones in my life and how I align them with my personal values and some, some actual financial models and calculations, then you can check out the money module in my course, the 10 hour Confidence Transformation. Okay, so now I wanna get more back into the idea of our mindset, our prayer, and how we are able to not manipulate emotions, but really recognize them in our lives. See, sometimes we're so busy we don't allow ourselves to feel our emotions. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about the idea of meditative prayer and how meditative prayer can expand your life. It can help you experience what you're dreaming of. I want you to imagine something you already have that you are grateful for. Maybe it's your apartment, it could be your family, your dog, your job, whatever it is.  

 

39:23 

I want you to think of the, wow, God, you did that in my life. You know, those types of moments, those types of provision, like the one I shared earlier about whenever we paid off our mortgage. I want you to start with the gratitude you feel as you bring to mind those moments as you bring to mind God's provision. And I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about relationships, all sorts of things. The wow, God, you did that in my life. As you bring to mind those things and visualize those, I want you to bring in the images of what you believe in faith God is also doing right now in your life. He's already provided your dog or your job or your home or the things that you already feel gratitude for, but you also have a sense, a spiritual intuition from the Holy Spirit that he is bringing something else into your life.  

 

40:11 

It could be this health goal, it could be, you know, expanding whatever it is you're getting to do at work or a relationship. And I think it's important to pair what we've already seen God do with gratitude and praying and praising him for that, but also letting the meditative prayer of God. This is the desire of my heart. I'm revealing to you what I see, what I envision and imagine, and I'm thanking you for what you are already doing. I don't understand your timetable. I don't know everything that's happening behind the scenes, but I genuinely praise you for your plan. Well, why is this important? Well, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of us have faith in God, but we can't imagine these things happening yet because we haven't seen them. So if we use the brains he gave us to envision a possibility, you know, instead of struggling to imagine being promoted to a role, or instead of struggling to imagine maintaining a tidy home, or struggling to imagine being a woman who exercises regularly, just, you know, we struggle with that because we haven't done it before, we haven't seen it in reality.  

 

41:17 

And our brains get really rational and practical when we start to dream and encourage, you know, and and encourage us. Our brains encourage us to keep things realistic. You know, don't get too vulnerable. Don't share your dreams. And we forget that hope, deferred hope put off makes our heart sick. So we can spend so much time prayerfully imagining and asking God to help us dream instead of putting off our hope and making our heart sick. So what I'm saying here is God's given you a brain. It's gonna tell you to be realistic all the time so that you don't get hurt or embarrassed. I'm asking you to consider using your brain to visualize and connect with God so that you are able to stay the course in the direction that he's leading you. So as I've worked on this approach on how to identify how I would like to feel and finding targeted ways of support myself to achieve those goals without burning out, it has given me the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical energy to stay the race in my business, in relationships, in my own health journey.  

 

42:23 

So today, when I use this type of meditative prayer, when I'm in conversation with God, one of the things I envision is what's ahead for Dana Buyer's Coaching. You know, that includes visualizing a community of women, all of us supporting each other, living our lives to the full, bringing accountability, breaking free from financial and emotional constraints. I see myself leading small groups of women through transformational coaching sessions. You know, speaking to women, you know, whether it's at a conference on a small stage, on a big stage, doesn't matter to me. Just speaking to women who want to know God better and supporting my clients and their goals, I visualize the joy of celebrating their successes. This keeps me motivated, the thought of showing up for women and watching them show up for themselves. So by imagining these scenarios, I feel the emotions that I long for to happen someday when all those things happen, but I can experience those authentically now.  

 

43:20 

This fuels my journey. I want you to start giving yourself permission to feel the victory now as you move towards the finish line of the dreams that God has placed on your heart. Friend, I know you are entirely capable of this. If you want help, reach out and I would love to be part of your journey. Thank you so much for joining me today. Remember, you can start experiencing the feelings of accomplishment and success that you long for now by inviting God into your journey, leaning on him, keeping him in the driver's seat, and not letting doubt creep in. If you want to dive deeper into these concepts, check out my course, the 10 hour Confidence Transformation. Until next time, keep moving forward with a heartful of gratitude and a mind full of possibilities for all that God can do in your life. Are you a Christian working woman who is looking to boost your confidence and transform your life? Well, I have got just the thing for you. My online course. The 10 Hour Confidence Transformation is available now. This course is designed to fit into your busy schedule and provide you with actionable strategies to increase your confidence. Plus, with your purchase, you will get access to a private monthly group coaching call where we can connect and grow together. Get all the details right now at dana buyer's coaching.com.