(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
(0:00 - 0:10)
Beloved, there's a version of your life that you keep imagining. I know there is. Maybe you don't talk about it very often, but you can see pieces of it.
(0:11 - 3:26)
It might look something like, well, you're doing work that matters, but it doesn't consume you. You're present with the people you love instead of physically being there, while your mind is somewhere else. Your faith feels less like another responsibility you're trying to get right, and more like this beautiful resource, this beautiful place where you actually live.
You have energy and margin. You're making decisions without second-guessing every one of them. In fact, you're making decisions from a position of strength and confidence.
And maybe for the first time in a long time, you don't feel as though you're constantly trying to catch up with your very own life. And here's what I want you to hear today. That life probably isn't one enormous, courageous decision away.
It's a whole lot closer than that. It's being built right now. One ordinary decision at a time.
Welcome to Goals and Grace. I'm Rev. Dr. Juliet Spencer, a Certified High-Performance Coach and the Spirit-Led Strategist. I equip high-performing Christian leaders to get out of their own way, reconnect with the wisdom and guidance that they already have available to them, and perform at the high level they know they're capable of doing, without believing that they have to sacrifice themselves to do it.
Today, we're bringing this series home. For the last several weeks, we've been talking about the decisions beneath the decisions. In other words, who am I becoming through the way I'm living? Who am I becoming through the way that I'm living? And that might be the most important strategy question we ever ask.
Think about where we've been. We began this season with a deceptively simple question, is this the life I'm intentionally building? It was a huge wake-up call to me when I realized you could build an entirely successful life that you never consciously chose. And then we talked about what happens when everything matters, when work and family, faith, health, friends, church, the future, when all of it matters, then nothing gets your best attention.
So, we asked, what deserves my best? Then we talked about the exhaustion of being the reliable one. You know what I mean, the person everybody knows will handle it, fix it, remember it, find it, carry it. And we asked, what am I carrying that I really ought to put down? Next, we talked about fear and especially the additional burden Christian leaders sometimes put on themselves when they're afraid, because sometimes they add a layer of guilt.
I shouldn't feel this way. If my faith were stronger, I'd be more confident. If I really trusted God, I wouldn't be scared.
(3:26 - 5:36)
So, we changed that, because courage doesn't require the absence of fear. So, we asked, where do I need courage before confidence? Last week, we talked about something even deeper. What am I trying to prove? Sometimes our drive isn't really coming from our purpose.
I know that's happened to me more than once. It can come from our proving, our need to prove that we're capable, successful and valuable. Maybe we're even proving to ourselves, as well as to other people, or maybe even to God, that we are enough.
And so, now we've arrived at one final question. What do I want to build? Now, you'll notice I didn't say what do other people expect me to build or what would look the most impressive. I certainly didn't say what would prove that I've made it, but what do I really want to build with this one life that I've been given? Here's what I've learned after more than three decades of leadership.
Most lives aren't changed by one dramatic decision. They're shaped by hundreds of ordinary ones. The kind where, well, whether you have the conversation or avoid it, whether you protect the hour or give it away, whether you say yes, because it's right or because you're afraid to disappoint someone, whether you rest when your body says, Hey, I need rest.
Whether you make the phone call, whether you pray before reacting, whether you keep carrying something that never should have or no longer belongs to you, and whether you spend another year saying someday. None of those decisions look particularly dramatic on a Tuesday afternoon, but you stack enough Tuesdays together and eventually you have a life. That's why I care so much about decisions.
(5:37 - 6:41)
Your future isn't something that simply happens to you. I mean, there are certainly things that you can't control. Loss, illness, opportunities might disappear.
Relationships change. And despite our best efforts, sometimes doors close that you were certain would stay open. Life always contains circumstances that you didn't choose, but even here you still get to participate in what comes next because you get to decide how you will meet the life that's in front of you.
And those decisions become direction. Direction repeated long enough becomes a life. So I want to give you five areas to think about today.
And please don't turn this into another performance review. Just think of them as five windows through which you can look at the life you're already building. They are faith, relationships, work, well-being, and contribution.
(6:42 - 7:22)
I want you to imagine something. Imagine that you and I are sitting together one year from today. Maybe we're grabbing a cup of coffee.
And we all know that is extra strong and black for me. But we're talking about the year you've just lived. And you look at me and say, Juliet, this year changed me.
Well, what would need to be different? Let's consider faith. What would have changed in your relationship with God? Maybe you don't need to know more about God. Maybe you need to trust more deeply that God is already present.
(7:23 - 9:42)
Maybe prayer becomes less about finding the perfect answer and more about becoming quiet enough to recognize the wisdom that's already stirring in you. Maybe you stop assuming every difficult decision has one divinely approved answer and your job is somehow to discover it without making a mistake. Maybe your faith becomes spacious again, joyful again, life-giving in a way that doesn't feel like work, but just feels like love.
And so what would make you say, my faith changed me this year? And in relationships, what about the people you love? Would you be more present? Would there be a conversation that you finally had that you've been putting off? A boundary you established that you've known in your heart you needed to, but for a whole host of excuses, you didn't. Maybe you need to forgive somebody, not because they deserve the forgiveness necessarily. And in fact, they might not even know it, but so that your heart can feel free.
Is there somebody that you stopped trying to fix? Would your spouse, your children, your closest friends experience more of you rather than whatever energy you have left after everybody else gets their share? What would need to change? And of course, there's work. For many of you, you're really good at what you do, which is part of the problem. If there's one thing being a pastor has taught me, and certainly being a coach, is that capable people can succeed for a really long time at work.
They were never meant to keep doing in the same way. So a year from now, what would you want to be able to say? Would you say, I finally asked for the promotion. I started my own business.
I hired help or wrote the book. I stopped doing the work that someone else could do or should do. I spoke up and took a risk.
(9:42 - 10:55)
I stopped measuring my worth by my productivity. Maybe the change isn't more achievement. Maybe it's finally allowing your work to occupy the right sized place in your life, which leads us to wellbeing.
So what about you? Your body, your energy, your emotional life, your ability to rest, taking care of yourself does make you more productive, but that's not the primary reason. You're not just a productivity system. You're a whole person.
And so if this is not the year that you're choosing to take the most care of your physical self, your emotional self, your mental and spiritual self, then I'm going to pray for you that this is the year, the next 12 months that you get really serious about it because you are a beloved child of God, worthy of investing in yourself. So what if one year from now, you could say, I learned to notice what I need before I was completely exhausted. I stopped treating depletion like evidence of faithfulness.
(10:55 - 11:52)
I slept. I moved. I ate better.
I laughed more. I stopped apologizing for needing my own space and room to breathe. I learned that rest didn't make me less committed.
What would need to change for your body and your mind to know that they are included in the life you're building? And finally, contribution. What do you want to give? And when I say, what do you want to contribute? What do you want to give? I hope you know by now, it's not because you need to prove anything and you don't need to prove your usefulness or your worth, but to do so because there's something in you, something that God has placed in you, a story, a gift, an experience, but something that the world needs. It might be leadership, wisdom, or generosity.
(11:53 - 12:46)
It might be your creativity or simple encouragement, mentoring, teaching, service. Maybe your contribution is much quieter than you once imagined it would be, and that's okay. Impact and visibility aren't the same thing.
In fact, you can make an enormous difference in someone's life with a simple, hello, how are you? And taking 30 seconds actually to listen. But in what way are you intending to leave the people around you and to leave your space on the planet better than when you arrived? So what would you love to know you gave, you contributed this year? And here's where I want to shift the question. And I do this because if we're not careful, then even this exercise can become just another list of goals.
(12:47 - 16:16)
I don't want us simply to ask, what did I accomplish? But who did I become? Did you become more courageous, peaceful? Were you more honest in the relationships that really mattered, including the one with yourself? Were you more present, more willing to trust yourself? Were you more generous with your time in a constructive way, with your finances? Were you more comfortable disappointing people when taking care of yourself or other responsibilities required it? Were you more able to distinguish between what God's asking of you and what other people are expecting from you? It's important to know that you can accomplish an extraordinary amount and become someone you don't particularly enjoy being. And that is not, beloved, that is not building the life that God wants for you. You can have a year in which some of your plans completely fall apart and still become more fully the person you were created to be.
And as far as I'm concerned, that's a successful year. Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with an image of two people building houses. In Matthew chapter 7, he describes the person who hears his words and acts on them as being like a wise person who built a house on rock.
And when the rain comes, the floods come, the wind blows, what happens? The house remains. I don't think the promise is that faithful people get better weather. We don't.
The storms still come and they will. I've lived long enough to know that and I am pretty sure so have you. Faith doesn't give us control over the weather and it doesn't give us control over the circumstances every aspect of our lives.
But it does give us somewhere to stand when the weather changes. I think that it's worth remembering when we're talking about building a life. You aren't trying to create a life so perfectly designed that nothing painful ever happens because you couldn't even if you tried.
Neither can I. We're building something much deeper. A life anchored strongly enough that when circumstances change, and they will, you still know who you are and you know what matters. You still know the value of the things that matter most and then you can decide what comes next.
That's what I really mean when I call myself the spirit-led strategist. Strategy matters. Planning matters.
Goals matter. Habits, high performance, all of those things matter. But none of them should be running your life.
They're just tools. And for those of you who are people of faith, strategy begins much deeper than a calendar or a goal sheet. It begins by listening, by paying attention, noticing where we're being invited to grow and recognizing the difference between fear and wisdom, between obligation and calling, and between proving and purpose, and then having the courage to make a decision that aligns with what we know.
(16:16 - 19:05)
That is spirit-led strategy. It's not waiting for God to hand you a detailed blueprint for the next 10 years. It's listening deeply with your heart, with your being, with your soul.
It's choosing faithfully based on your own values that God has put within you. And it's moving courageously, trusting that God will be with you as you go. And sometimes what you do will be successful, and sometimes they won't, and you'll still be beloved.
So although my work has evolved, and you've heard me use a new name this season, there's one architect's question from our time together that I don't want to lose. And so consider this our final architect's question. What decision can I make today that my future self will thank me for? Maybe your future self will thank you for making the appointment, for hiring a coach, for sending the email, for going to church, for saying no, for saying yes, for taking that walk and spending time outside, for starting that savings account or blocking the morning, for having the conversation that you don't want to have, for applying for that job or actually resting on the Sabbath, for closing the laptop, putting the phone in the other room and spending time with the people you love uninterrupted, for writing that first page or asking for help, or finally admitting, I don't want to keep living this way.
There are aspects of my life that I know could be better. One decision. That's all you need to make.
Momentum rarely begins dramatically. It begins when you say what you want and you start moving in the same direction to get you there. Here's today's move, my friend.
Take out a journal or your phone or whatever you use to make notes and write these five words and they'll also be in the show notes. Faith, relationships, work, well-being, contribution, and give yourself a few minutes and ask if I were sitting together with Juliet one year from today, what would need to be different in each of these areas for me to say this year changed me? And then underneath it all, finish this sentence. The life I'm building is... Don't worry if somebody else were to read it and say, well, that's not very impressive.
(19:05 - 19:16)
That doesn't matter. Just make it true. For example, I've had clients who've said, the life I'm building is peaceful or has room for the people I love.
(19:17 - 19:49)
The life I'm building allows me to do meaningful work without losing myself. The life I'm building is courageous or generous, is rooted in God and spacious enough for joy. Whatever it is that's true for you, write it down and then choose one decision this week that provides evidence that you mean it.
And that's the part that matters. Great intentions don't amount to much. They're just a nice idea if there's no evidence to support that you're really taking action to achieve it.
(19:50 - 20:37)
We've asked a lot of questions during these six episodes. Is this the life I'm intentionally building? What deserves my best? What am I carrying that I need to put down? Where do I need courage before confidence? What am I trying to prove? And finally, what do I want to build? So a year from now, I hope you can look back at this season of your life and recognize something. The change didn't happen all at once.
There wasn't one magical decision that fixed all of it. There were simple, ordinary moments when you began choosing differently. And those choices accumulated until one day you looked around and realized, hey, I'm not just planning the life I want anymore.
(20:38 - 21:09)
I'm living it. I'm Reverend Dr. Juliet Spencer, the Spirit-Led Strategist, and this is Goals in Grace. If I can be of assistance in helping you to build this dream life, the vision God has planted in your heart, then sign up for a free coaching call.
The link will be in the show notes. Until next time, remember, the life you're building tomorrow is being shaped by the decisions you're making today. So make one your future self will thank you for.
(21:10 - 21:13)
And may God bless you with goals and grace.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
