Episode 1089: How To Recognize Your Life Influences

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1089 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey guys, this is

[00:00:08] Matt Ham: Matt Ham from you print. I want to encourage you to find your own journey to living your life's calling. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:21] Scott Maderer: That influence and having more and more of the positive influences will begin to have positive momentum on your life and cause you to move in a direction where you gain and recognize that you have more control over these influences than you may be believed you did in the past. And what's more that you have control over your reaction to these influences as well.

[00:00:47] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and [00:01:00] your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your.

[00:01:10] So that you can impact the world.

[00:01:13] And today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about how you have both positive and negative influences in your life. I share a technique to begin to identify those. And I also share what you can do to improve those influences. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books.

[00:01:37] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign. And you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, and you can pick one and listen your [00:02:00] way to developing your talents via audible.

[00:02:03] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible. To get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. One of the things we need to realize when we're trying to make changes in our life. When we're trying to improve on things, is that we're all surrounding. By positive and negative influences on our life.

[00:02:28] And often when we go to make changes in our life, those changes fall flat because we haven't paid attention to what's influencing us. So one of the first things you can do, one of the easiest exercises that you can do is brainstorming and writing down what are positive and negative influences in your life.

[00:02:49] Take a sheet of paper divided in half down the middle on the left-hand side, write positive influence and on the right-hand side and right. Negative influences. And then begin to [00:03:00] brainstorm people, places, activities, events, things from your past and things that you're doing today, things in your environment, physical things, emotional things, internal and external events.

[00:03:14] What are things that make you feel positive, upbeat, empowered. What are things that give you? And similarly down the negative list, brainstorm people and places and events from your past or from your present that make you feel weak, worthless, depressed, that drain energy from. And the next thing you want to do is actually go down the list of items and begin to reflect to yourself.

[00:03:44] Why is these items? Why is the things on the positive side and why are the things on the negative side? What is it about the positive influences that give you energy? Is it that you learn from them? Is it something that gives you a positive [00:04:00] emotion when you think about. Is it something that caused you to get rest or energy or enabled you or inspire you or challenge you?

[00:04:10] What are the emotions around it? What are the things behind just the event or the person or the place? And the truth is recognize that sometimes there's going to be things that you put on this positive list that as you begin to dwell on it, you recognize, wait a minute, maybe it wasn't as positive. As I thought, or maybe there's some negative associated with it also that's normal because the truth is most of the events in our life don't come as pure, positive, or pure negative.

[00:04:43] So be okay with that, but just get the feelings out and identify, look for patterns, do the same thing for the negative. Look at the things that cause you to Le lose energy or feel more sad or less [00:05:00] worried. Look at the people that may be tend to treat you in a hostile way or cause issues that cause you to minimize yourself and your own emotions, things that drain energy from you, look for events that have caused issues in your life.

[00:05:18] Look for internal things too. Is there things about your internal self-talk that are negative influences on your ability to get things done? Be open and honest and get these things out on paper, because as you examine the patterns behind that, you will begin to identify things that actually you want to avoid the negative and things that you want to invite more of in your own.

[00:05:46] And recognize when you see things that cause you to gain energy that cause positives in your life, what can you do to invite more of that into your life? What can you do to [00:06:00] push yourself, to examine and have more of those feelings? Do you need a sense of community? Do you need more time alone? Do you need people around you here to encourage and lift you up?

[00:06:13] Do you need people who challenge you and push you to do more? What is it that you need more of in your life? And similarly, look at the negative side and think what can I do to reduce some of these influences? Even if it's not getting rid of it completely, what can I do about my own reaction to them that can cause them to have less influence over my life.

[00:06:41] And as you do that and begin to make those changes, recognize that influence and having more and more of the positive influences will begin to. Positive momentum on your life and cause you to move in a direction where you gain and recognize that you have more [00:07:00] control over these influences than you may be believed you did in the past.

[00:07:05] And what's more that you have control over your reaction to these influences as well. And as you recognize that it will allow you to grow and make more improvement and make change that actually lasts and sticks. Thanks for listening.

[00:07:23] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent inside.

[00:07:50] For our five week series on the stewardship of talent, or if you're in the U S you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 [00:08:00] talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.