Take a look at this self-evaluation quote:

Picture your life twenty years from now. Have you ever wondered what your purpose in life is and what your future holds?… Does your current lifestyle predict that you will be happy and fulfilled, or disappointed and frustrated? Think about it. What does your bank account look like? How much retirement money have you set aside? How much debt do you owe? What are you doing to improve your health and well-being? How is your family really doing? The answers to these questions may be an indication that a few changes need to be made.(1- see below “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want”)

Were the emotions you experienced from reading these questions positive or negative? Emotions result from the thoughts you’ve been thinking. As a result, those emotions dramatically impact your decisions.

If you are going to improve the quality of your decisions, you must first improve the quality of the words you speak/think about your life.

Controlling the words that you speak and think about your life is a foundational point for improving your life. Much like the Law of Attraction, if you are speaking and thinking negative words about your life, you will attract negative circumstances as well as negative responses from other people because that is what you are resonating from your own person about your life.

How can you expect to have positive, life-changing ideas to accomplish your goals if your words and thoughts are focused on the negative? How will positive, successful people offer you productive opportunities if you are emanating defeat? It is essential to realize here that, even if your present circumstances are actually negative, speaking and thinking about the negative will only keep you there.

You alone are responsible for making changes to your words, thoughts, emotions, and ultimately-your decisions.

Since getting past the negative emotions that presently form your decisions is overcome by speaking and thinking positively about your needs and goals, it is a change that only you can make. Quit blaming others for holding you back. Start taking in positive input from articles or talks given by life coaches or successful business people that you admire. Reading the “8 Steps to Create…” by Creflo Dollar about his approach of taking control of your life by speaking and thinking positively has already greatly influenced myself and my spouse.

Here are some past posts on Controlling Your Thoughts/Words that will be helpful to you in the move to positive words and thoughts:

Take Charge of Your Thoughts, Take Charge of Your Life
Better Thoughts for a Better Life
Making Real Change to Thoughts, Feelings, or Behavior
Practical Ideas for Overcoming Fear

I challenge you to take responsibility now for improving your decisions until there are no negative emotions forming the decisions you make.

There is a famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt regarding taking responsibility for your own decisions. It says,

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.(2)

1. Creflo Dollar, 8 Steps to Create the Life You Want, p. 28
2. Eleanor Roosevelt Quote, QuotationsBook.com http://quotationsbook.com/quote/6544/

Table of contents for From Rejection to Self Esteem

1. From Rejection to Self Esteem Part 1
2. From Rejection to Self Esteem Part 2

Rejection comes to each of us, but we can take steps to heal and move forward with the productive life we deserve and desire.

Many readers have asked for help in dealing with rejection from parents and other relationships. Whether rejection comes from a family member, friend, co-worker, or even a mere stranger, it leaves us with a wide variety of emotions, such as pain and guilt, and questions as to why someone would feel that way about us. Let’s cover several steps that help us to heal and move forward to a happier life.

First, don’t spend a great deal of time questioning why.

Unless the person broke off the relationship due to a major personality flaw on your part which they directly communicated to you as the cause of the rejection — and you already know you need to work on that aspect — quit questioning why. If there was no such communication on the offender’s part, speculation will not help you for the following reason. If the cause was a personality flaw on your part and they were not willing to communicate in such a way as to allow for healing and reconciliation in the relationship, the rejector is not presently, and may never be, in a mental/emotional state to have a long-term, healthy relationship. As it is, it is much more likely, since they were unwilling to communicate in a way as to provide for reconciliation, that the major emotional issues are on their part.

Second, quit being too hard on yourself.

If you are aware of certain mistakes you made that contributed to the rejection, you can always work on changing those behaviors, even getting profession help if needed. However, you must be realistic in accessing your failures. Usually a person who is suffering from rejection is too hard on him or herself, taking more than their share of the blame. Full blame in a relationship failure is never solely due to one person, even if it is something such as the lack of the other person being willing to communicate in such a way that adjustments in the relationship could have been made.

Similar to overcoming depression, you must replace incorrect, harmful thoughts with positive ones.  

Why? Because your thoughts will influence the direction of your life.  A book by Creflo Dollar describes the pattern of our lives very effectively. He describes it this way:

-Your thoughts, whether positive or negative, will create your emotions.
-Those emotions will then influence your decisions.
-Your decisions cause you to take action.
-Actions form habits or your lifestyle.
-Those habits determine your destiny — the final destination of your life.

You can follow the reference to read more about Creflo’s book. Realize now the absolute necessity of not allowing your thoughts of the rejection to continue. If you do, those thoughts  of rejection will produce self-defeating emotions and decisions, leading to destructive lifestyle habits. You will cause your destiny to be directed by a harmful person! Instead, you must choose to change your thoughts to beneficial ones that will direct you to the destiny you desire! (1)

This is Part 1 of a 2 part post.  In Part 2, we will cover several ways to replace thoughts of rejection as well as how to move forward with your life.

(1) Click here to read the article on Determining Your Destiny which lists Creflo’s 8 steps to direct the course of your life to your goals and restoration.

 What emotions do you experience when you think of your future?

Take a look at this self-evaluation quote from “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want:”

Have you ever wondered what your purpose in life is and what your future holds?…Picture your life twenty years from now. Does your current lifestyle predict that you will be happy and fulfilled, or disappointed and frustrated? Think about it. What does your bank account look like? How much retirement money have you set aside? How much debt do you owe? What are you doing to improve your health and well-being? How is your family really doing? The answers to these questions may be an indication that a few changes need to be made.(1)

Were the emotions you experienced from reading these questions positive or negative? Emotions result from the thoughts you’ve been thinking. As a result, those emotions dramatically impact your decisions.

If you are going to improve the quality of your decisions, you must first improve the quality of the words you speak/think about your life.

Controlling the words that you speak and think about your life is a foundational point for improving your life. Much like the Law of Attraction, if you are speaking and thinking negative words about your life, you will attract negative circumstances as well as negative responses from other people because that is what you are putting forth from your own person about your life.

How can you expect to have positive, life-changing ideas to accomplish your goals if your words and thoughts are focused on the negative? How will positive, successful people offer you productive opportunities if you are emanating defeat? It is essential to realize here that, even if your present circumstances are actually negative, speaking and thinking about the negative will only keep you there.

You alone are responsible for making changes to your words, thoughts, emotions, and ultimately-your decisions.

Since getting past the negative emotions that presently form your decisions is overcome by speaking and thinking positively about your needs and goals, it is a change that only you can make. Quit blaming others for holding you back. Start taking in positive input from articles or talks given by life coaches or successful business people that you admire. I’m now reading through the “8 Steps to Create…” by Creflo Dollar as his approach to life of taking control of your life by speaking and thinking positively has already greatly influenced myself and my spouse.

Here are some past posts on Controlling Your Thoughts/Words that will be helpful to you in the move to positive words and thoughts:

Take Charge of Your Thoughts, Take Charge of Your Life
Better Thoughts for a Better Life
Making Real Change to Thoughts, Feelings, or Behavior
Practical Ideas for Overcoming Fear

I challenge you to take responsibility now for improving your decisions until there are no negative emotions forming the decisions you make.

There is a famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt regarding taking responsibility for your own decisions. It says,

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.(2)

1. Creflo Dollar, 8 Steps to Create the Life You Want, p. 28
2. Eleanor Roosevelt Quote, QuotationsBook.com http://quotationsbook.com/quote/6544/

Learning to make stress, trials, and problems work for your benefit can often be a matter of choice.

If you are going through an extreme situation right now, you may think, “That is not possible.” However, contemplate all the people who have found out that they had various types of cancer or other serious diseases, and became well-known role models because they chose to find personal benefit in the midst of traumatic situations. It can be done. Some of them even credit this personal mindset as the reason they overcame non-curable illnesses.

Chose a perspective in which you can learn to benefit from it in some way, rather than be defeated by it.

Start looking for ways this particular pressure can work for you. This is actually a scriptural principle. Look at this quote:

For our light and momentary troubles, which are for the moment, works for us [or achieves for us] eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we don’t look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:17,18)
Amplified v. 17- For our light and momentary affliction, this distress of the passing hour, is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving in us an everlasting glory.

Troubles can work for you. They can prepare and produce and achieve some good for and in you. The good it can work for you or achieve in you may not be something that is physically seen. The personal growth and accomplishment spoken of by the famous people referred to above, who are going through or have been through serious illness, are not things they themselves, or anyone else, can physically see, but no one would deny the existence of their achievements.

Here are 2 illustrations to assist you in mentally and emotionally grasping hold of this concept so you can put it into action during your times of trouble, stress, or trauma.

Though these are everyday life illustrations, I cannot take credit for them. I heard them in a talk by Creflo Dollar on “Dominating the Physical Realm.” Most of us have lifted weights at some time. If not, we are all familiar with the process of starting out with a lower level of weights and then, through time, overcoming that particular level of weight or “pressure.” Eventually, that level of “pressure” that was difficult to deal with will become so light that it won’t feel like a pressure to you at all. It will take a far greater weight or pressure to make you struggle than the one you have already worked out with. Similarly, you can chose for each trial or difficulty to work for you. The development taking place in you now from your present pressure can make you ready for future pressures. In weight lifting, you could choose to misuse the pressure of the weights and be physically harmed, though it would be a foolish choice. With your problem, you can misuse the pressure and create unnecessary harm for yourself. Or, instead, you can develop above that problem’s ability to hurt you so that you will hardly even notice it in the future, hardly even consider it a problem because you’ve been through, benefited from, and conquered it before. The trauma that came to destroy you, you can instead use as a stepping stone.

The other beneficial illustration was of a vaccine. A vaccine is an injection of the actual disease into you but you are using actually using the disease itself to prevent the disease from harming you in the future. Like a vaccine, you use that problem/stress/trial for your future benefit. Scripture says to see problems in the physical realm as “light, momentary afflictions.” In other words, like weight lifting, what started off as a heavy pressure now, as you cause it to work for you, will be lighter the next time. Your present pressure should work for you so that, in the future, the same pressure or similar level of pressure not affect you physically, emotionally, and spiritually like it did before. Exercising this trial, stress, or pressure will develop you beyond that pressures ability to do to you and your life what it used to do to you.

Determine to look for ways to make each pressure work for you so that you will receive lasting results you can benefit from your whole life.

Table of contents for Healing Words

1. Healing Words
2. Healing Words Part 2

Reading Level: Leisurely

As each word that you speak affects every nerve in your body, your commitment to health and healing needs to begin with your words.

Most of us, more often than not, are not too concerned about the proportion of careless words, as opposed to well-thought out words, that come out of our mouths. We have all heard motivational speakers refer to our need to speak positively of our present and future, but here is some science to back it up.

The brain has a specific lobe for speech. The nerves in our brain link to the rest of our bodies in an incredibly extensive way. C. John Holcombe, in his article on Brain Functioning, describes it this way:

Though the greatest mass of nerve cells is collected in the brain, the nervous system links all parts of the body, in a most intimate way, the nerve cells ramifying into and connecting the cells in the bone, skin, organs of digestion, perception, respiration, etc. (1)

So the nerves in our brain connect to the cells in our skin, bones, organs, etc. Though you speak words with your mouth, the nerves in your brain send responses throughout the all the cells of your body. Yomi Akinpelu has a thorough discussion of it in his book, “A Matter of Life and Death.”

All the body functions including the brain are controlled by words. Scientists discovered years ago that the nerves at the center of the brain control the nerves that control all other parts of the body. That is to say that the part of the brain which controls human speech is connected to every nerve of the body. Therefore, every word we speak is reverberated or echoed through every nerve ending in our body…The words affect you because your whole body responds accordingly to the words you speak. (2)

As the Creator is fully aware of how His creation functions, this information makes more clear the words in Scripture which say, “The tongue has the power of life and death (Pr. 18:21).” What are you speaking into every cell of your body? Are you speaking life or death? Are you speaking cancer or healing? Are you speaking creativity and success or failure?

The direction of your life, whether or not you reach your destiny of healing and wholeness of life, is steered by your words.

Follow these two examples:

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or, take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go (Jms. 3:3,4).

Though a horse is far more powerful than any human, what is in his mouth controls his direction. The destination of an enormous ship is determined by a proportionately tiny rudder. Now I would like you to focus on the imagery of how just a few degrees off course for a ship or plane causes the vessels to end up at completely wrong destinations. Your negative words may be small and even few, but they affect every cell of your being and can still cause you to arrive at a completely wrong destination from what you desire. For healing, wholeness, for achieving one’s destiny, start speaking the words which send messages of healing, wholeness, and destiny to every cell of your being.

God Himself speaks what He desires as a goal or destination, rather than what He presently sees.

In Genesis 1, there was emptiness and darkness. God saw it, but rather than speaking about how unpleasant the darkness was, God said, “Let there be light” and spoke light into existence. I heard Creflo Dollar speak a great point regarding this, “When God saw something that didn’t agree with His will, He spoke what He desired.” Don’t speak the unpleasantness of your life, even in joking. Be like God. Speak the healing you desire, the restoration to wholeness for your life, and the destiny that you believe is yours.

To add the powerful element of faith to the already powerful, physical effects of our words, we must believe what we speak.

“What you believe is in vain if you speak otherwise.” This is another valuable point Creflo expressed. In James 1:26, God says, “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.” A person’s religion is a complex system of beliefs. And yet God says that one’s entire system of religious beliefs can be made worthless by careless words. In the same way, if you have mentally, emotionally, and spiritually focused your life on healing and restoration, believing that you will be healthy, that you will have wholeness, and that you will reach the destiny for which you were created, you must consistently speak out these truths that you believe and refuse to make your beliefs worthless or of no effect by speaking careless negative words.

Speak Health! Receive Health!

(1) Brain Functioning, C. John Holcombe

(2) A Matter of Life and Death. Yomi Akinpelu, p. 26

Rejection comes to each of us, but we can take steps to heal and move forward with the productive life we deserve and desire.

Many readers have asked for help in dealing with rejection from parents and other relationships. Whether rejection comes from a family member, friend, co-worker, or even a mere stranger, it leaves us with a wide variety of emotions, such as pain and guilt, and questions as to why would someone feel that way about us. Let’s cover several steps that help us to heal and move forward to a happier life.

First, don’t spend a great deal of time questioning why.

Unless the person broke the relationship due to a major personality flaw on your part which they directly communicated to you as the cause of the rejection–and you already know you need to work on that aspect–quit questioning why. If there was no such communication on the offender’s part, speculation will not help you for the following reason. If the cause was a personality flaw on your part and they were not willing to communicate in such as way as to allow for healing and reconciliation in the relationship, the offender is not presently, and may never be, in a mental/emotional state to have a long-term, healthy relationship. As it is, it is much more likely, since they were unwilling to communicate in a way as to provide for reconciliation, that the major emotional issues are on their part.

Second, quit being too hard on yourself.

If you are aware of certain mistakes you made that contributed to the rejection, you can always work on changing those behaviors, even getting profession help if needed. However, you must be realistic in accessing your failures. Usually a person who is suffering from rejection is too hard on him or herself, taking more than their share of the blame. Full blame in a relationship failure is never solely due to one person, even if it is something such as the lack of the other person being willing to communicate in such a way that adjustments in the relationship could have been made.

Similar to overcoming depression, you must replace incorrect, harmful thoughts with positive ones.

Why? Because your thoughts will influence the direction of your life. I referred to a book before by Creflo Dollar which describes the pattern of our lives very effectively. He describes it this way.

-Your thoughts, whether positive or negative, will create your emotions.
-Those emotions will then influence your decisions.
-Your decisions cause you to take action.
-Actions form habits or your lifestyle.
-Those habits determine your destiny-the final destination of your life.

You can follow the reference to read more about Creflo’s book. Realize now the absolute necessity of not allowing your thoughts of the rejection to continue. If you do, those thoughts will produce self-defeating emotions and decisions, leading to destructive lifestyle habits. You will cause your destiny to be directed by a harmful person! Instead, you must choose to change your thoughts to beneficial ones that will direct you to the destiny you desire! (1)

Fourth, realize that negative thoughts cannot be changed without replacing them with positive ones.

To overcome the negativity that is overrunning your thought life as a result of the rejection, you must actively make yourself think on thoughts that will move you forward to the productive life you should be living. There are 3 main ways to replace thoughts of rejection.

1. Base your value on God’s value of you. With all the beauty that exists in creation, with all the billions of people, God still loves you and considers you precious and honored in His sight (Is. 43:4). Scripture describes that God saw your unformed body before you were born, already knew all the days of your life before it began, and that His thoughts of you outnumber the grains of sand-because He thinks so often about you. (Ps. 139:15-18) Throughout the up’s and down’s of life, it is essential that you base your value of yourself on the value God sees in you. This is the only way your value of yourself can remain constant. It cannot be based on people because people come and go in our lives, even if it is by death. Your value cannot be based on your career or other abilities because, one day, you will no longer be able to do those things.

2. Be your own cheerleader. This is a self-help tip that I’ve heard Joel Osteen say many times and it is worth repeating. Every day, get up in the morning and be your own cheerleader. Say good things about yourself to yourself! Speak to yourself about God’s value of you. Throughout the day, remind yourself of your value and your abilities. And, it doesn’t hurt to aim high. It is like the Law of Attraction. You speak those positive things to yourself even if you are not there yet so that you will eventually develop those qualities. Here is a sample list that I compiled from a couple of Joel’s broadcasts:

-I have unprecedented favor today.
-I have new opportunities for my career and personal life.
-God is in love with me.
-People like me.
-I am talented.
-I am creative.
-I am strong.
-I have excellence and determination.
-Whatever I do prospers and succeeds.

You can add to that list accomplishments which you desire that have not taken place yet, speaking them in present tense. Such as, “I have many loving people in my life. I am free from debt. I’m taking my dream vacation, etc.” As in the Law of Attraction, speaking positively to yourself about things that you desire to accomplish will make you more creative and more aware of opportunities to help you fulfill those goals.

3. Think repeatedly throughout day about those who do love you. Most of us have several people in our lives whom we value and who value us, even though it may be at varying levels of love. Even if you are temporarily in a stage where you think the only person who values you is your pet, think throughout the day about those who do love you or who care about your well-being.

Move forward.

The past is never worth staying in. It is time to move forward. In addition to ways we’ve already mentioned, move forward by taking time in your schedule for people who do love or care about you. Maybe the person who rejected you was a former friend in whom you had invested a great deal of time. Move forward by spending time with those positive relationships that may have been neglected while you were focused on that other person, such as relatives, other friends, or even co-workers. Also move forward by accomplishing a project around the house or online course you have put off doing due to time constraints from the past relationship. Or, do something for yourself you have always wanted to do, such as a certain vacation.

Finally, always encourage yourself with God’s unfailing, unchanging love for you.

People’s love may change, people may move in and out of your life, or they may reject you and never even give themselves the opportunity to get to know you. God, however, will never reject you. He says in John 6:37, “The person who comes to me I will never reject.” In James 4:8, He promises, “Come near to Me and I will come near to you.” In other words, God will be responsive to your desire to know Him and have a close relationship with Him. You can trust Him! His love for you will not fail you! “I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever (Ps. 52:8).”

(1) Click here to read the article on Determining Your Destiny which lists Creflo’s 8 steps to direct the course of your life to your goals and restoration.

Other Related Posts:
Handling the Fear of God’s Rejection

Hope for the Betrayed Heart

Depression is the result of external pressure getting inside and weighing down your thoughts/emotions.

There is a depression that has its root in physical causes, such as a deficiency of certain naturally occurring chemicals in the brain, the 3 main ones being serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Sometimes, in mild cases, these chemicals can be replaced by protein drinks with tyrosine and phenalylanine. I read that the late Dr. Atkins has such a diet available. If you suspect you’re your depression is physically related rather than from circumstancial pressures, you may want to see your doctor for a blood test to determine a proper course of treatment. Probably the most common form of depression, however, is due to allowing the pressure of circumstances to conform one’s thoughts. I’ve mentioned this quote before, “Above all else, guard your heart [mind and will], for it is the wellspring of life (Prov. 4:23).” We must admit to the absolute necessity of controlling our thoughts for the wellbeing of our lives. Another passage says, “For as the thoughts of man’s heart are, so is he (Prov. 23:7).”

Thoughts form our emotions.

The other week I referred you to a new book out, called “Eight Steps to Create the Life You Want.” I quoted the premise for the chapters in this book of how the whole course of one’s life starts with the positive or negative words we speak; those words form our thoughts; our thoughts create emotions, etc. I’ll reference the post below if you still need to read it. The eight steps in this book illustrate how the whole direction of one’s life is altered by words, thoughts, and emotions. I listened to a talk today on depression by the author of that book, Creflo Dollar. He used to be a professional therapist in a ward for suicidal teens before becoming a pastor.

Here are the 4 steps Dr. Dollar mentioned for recovery from depression due to external circumstances:

1. Watch over your heart. Jesus said in Jn. 14:1, “Do not let your heart be troubled…believe in [trust in] Me.” You are not always in control of your circumstances but you can control what thoughts get into your heart [mind]. If you plant seeds or thoughts of trouble, you will grow trouble. If you plant thoughts of trust in God for what you need, you will grow peace.

This is not much different from Dr. Wayne Dyer’s “Laws of Intention” or the philosophy of the Law of Attraction. You must take responsibility for your thoughts, for positive thoughts, to properly and effectively direct the course of your life.

2. Speak to your problems instead of about your problems. In Mk. 11:23, 24, Jesus said, “I truly tell you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea!’ and does not doubt at all in his heart [mind], but believes that what he says will take place, it will be done for him. For this reason, I am telling you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe-trust and be confident-that it is granted to you, and you will receive it.” (AMP) Speak to your circumstances about how they will change; make it a one-way conversation. Do not let the circumstances speak to you.

3. If something is missing in your life, ask God for it. How do you receive? By believing when you ask that you have already received it, that God has answered. Faith is believing whether or not it looks like you have received it yet. Ask, receive, and the joy will come.
Supporting verses:
If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer (Mt. 21:22).
Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete (Jn. 16:24).
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Heb 11:1).

4. Thank God for everything that is good in your life. Thankfulness pushes back depression. If you have a job, be thankful that you do; some people do not. If you have a working car, be thankful that you do; some people do not. Be thankful for your health, home, friends, family, good weather, a day off work, etc. Expand it to anything imaginable. I had a college professor who used to say, “Be thankful for toilet tissue. I mean really!” Thank God for every aspect of His personality, such as His unending love for you, His mercy, His faithfulness, His watchfulness. Even if the worst of circumstances, there is good to be thankful for, even if it is just that you have the breath of life.

As I mentioned earlier, though this process may sound oversimplified, these religious concepts have been used by many people in secular vocations, such as Life Coaches, to achieve restoration. I’ll end with a quote by Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian Jew who was sent to a concentration camp with his family during World War II. He discovered the truth that the ultimate freedom is the freedom to choose your attitude. Similarly, we have the freedom to choose the thoughts which create our emotions.

Frankl says, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl

Click here to read the article on Determining Your Destiny which lists Creflo’s 8 steps to direct the course of your life to your goals and restoration.

If you are interested in reading the whole book, click here for 8 Steps to Create the Life You Want by Creflo A. Dollar.

We all want to achieve the purpose(s) for our existence, but how do we overcome the apparent roadblocks?

It is important to have a sense of destiny, of purpose for your life. For this post, we are assuming you already have your destiny in view. If you were to rate yourself between 1 and 10, how effective do you feel that you are in accomplishing the actions and goals necessary for fulfilling your destiny? Even when we have a clear destiny in mind, most of us feel that there are numerous roadblocks to either fulfilling your destiny at all or fulfilling it as effectively as you envision.

My spouse and I have been listening to a series for the past month on the blood covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 15 and the significance of it in that culture and point in history. The man teaching the series has put out a new book on achieving your destiny, called, “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want.” In describing his book, he explains an 8 step process to achieving your destiny and how you can evaluate the roadblocks to your destiny by seeing where you are at in this 8 step process.

Here are the 8 Steps:

1. Change your words to be positive and in line with the promises of God.
2. Your words will then change your way of thinking.
3. Your way of thinking will produce how you feel.
4. The way you feel produces the decisions you make.
5. The decisions you make produce the actions you take.
6. The actions you take produce your life habits.
7. Your life habits, if proper and healthy, produce godly character.
8. Character will bring you to your destiny.

Here are a few examples of how to use this list to evaluate the roadblocks to fulfilling your destiny:

For example, if you know that you are lacking in character, adjustment will need to be made to your life habits to enable you to be a person a character. If you know that your feelings are consistently negative and it is a constant struggle to speak positively about your future, start guarding your words; the negative words are the snag creating defeatist feelings. If your decisions are usually poor, realize that consistently negative feelings will be giving birth to those poor decisions.

Take advantage of this list as a tool to remove the roadblocks to your destiny. It’s there! It’s reachable! It’s the plan of God for your life! Be willing to change! Be willing to be creative! You can determine your destiny!

If you are interested in reading the whole book, click here for 8 Steps to Create the Life You Want by Creflo A. Dollar.