Well, hello. This is Steve Reed with Stephen Reed Ministries and Stephen Reed Coaching. And you are listening to and watching Maximize Mission Success. Let me tell you a little bit about this podcast. Number one, we are all about success for you. You define what success is, not me. It may be success in your personal life. It may be success in your business life. Whatever that is, I want to help empower you and help you get past those things that are holding you back so that you can achieve the success that you are desiring.
Now, we’ll be talking about goals. We’ll be talking about your vision, your mission, your purpose, those kinds of things. We’ll be talking about your why and what makes you tick. What are the things that drive you on a day-to-day basis? Why do you get out of bed, whenever that is—morning, afternoon, evening—depending on your work and personal life? But before you can get to that level of success that you are looking for, there are certain things that we have to evaluate and the obstacles that are holding you back.
One of the biggest challenges that we run into is that people often don’t look at the obstacles. They just keep plowing forward. And I heard a couple of baseball players many, many years ago—Mickey Mantle and, I believe it was Ted Williams—they had two different missions or two different ideas for moving forward. One of them, Mickey Mantle, he just kept swinging and swinging and swinging. Ted Williams, I believe, instead started to review and analyze everything that he was doing. What was causing the challenges? What were the obstacles? What did he have to change?
Are you one of those people that just plows through? Or are you one of those people that steps back and evaluates and figures out, “Oh, that’s not working. We need to change that”? I’ll give you, for instance, one of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein: “You cannot solve the problems that you have using the same way of thinking or the same mindset you had when you created the problem.” So that’s what we’re going to be talking about. We’re going to be talking about some of those obstacles that we are confronted with.
Now, here’s one. One of the challenges sometimes is that the obstacles are things that we create ourselves. Are the obstacles financial obstacles? Is it health-related issues? Is it people that you know or don’t know? Here’s another thought for you: Is it things from your past? Now, as a coach for over 30 years, I’ve helped people through a lot of these types of obstacles. Since 2009, I’ve spent a lot of time helping people deal with emotional obstacles or emotional trauma that they’ve had to deal with in their lives. Sometimes it’s emotional trauma that they had when they were a young child—you know, four, five, six, ten, 15 years old. Sometimes the obstacle or the challenge, that trauma was from something in their 20s or 30s. Sometimes it was a long time ago. Sometimes it just happened last week. The key is how you deal with those obstacles and that trauma. It really can define how well you do on your journey towards success. So think about what the obstacles are or what that trauma has been in your past.
For instance, I had a client several years ago. She was a teacher. She was, in fact, a second-grade teacher. And she had been teaching for a number of years. She was in her early 40s. And we had had several conversations and she was feeling this uneasy, with intense thing going on. She was feeling stifled and stuck. I’m trying to help her through some of those things. We’re making some good progress. About two-thirds of the way through our third session, she threw out a comment that I was not expecting at all. She says, “Well, I’m just ugly, fat, and stupid.” Wow. Where did that come from?
Now, that’s before I started doing things in video conferencing. This was over a phone call. And prior to that phone call, the first or second phone call, I did a little bit of investigating. And I found her on social media. And she was neither ugly, I couldn’t tell if she was stupid or not based on a photograph. And so, as we were talking, I started asking her some questions. “How long have you felt ugly, fat, and stupid?” She says, “All my life.” So, well, let’s not say all your life. When did you first start feeling it? She said, “I was about 10 years old.” Okay. “What happened when you were 10?” “What do you mean, ‘What happened when I was 10?’ Was there a major event that took place when you were 10 years old?” “Well, the only thing I can think of was my grandfather died.” “Tell me about your relationship.”
And as it turns out, she was the oldest of all of the grandchildren. And she thought that she was the favorite of the grandkids. Her grandparents poured into her on a daily basis. They only lived a few houses away, so they were together on a very regular basis. I said, “So how did you handle your grandfather dying?” And she says, “Well, I don’t know. I just handled it.” I said, “Okay, I’m going to ask you a couple, a couple of rather crazy questions.
Question number one is, “You’re a second-grade teacher. Yes, okay. As a second-grade teacher, I’m guessing you got out of eighth grade and started teaching immediately.” She says, “No, I graduated from college.” “Oh, okay. You graduated from college and then you started teaching and you became successful.” “Well, I got a master’s degree.” “Okay, all right. We’re gonna, we’re gonna scratch that ‘stupid’ thing off the list because you don’t get a master’s degree in anything if you’re stupid.” And all of a sudden, she thought, “Oh, you’ve got a point.”
“Okay, number two crazy question. I mean, this is really crazy. Um, you’re married, right?” She says, “Yes.” I said, “Okay, does your husband have reasonably good vision?” “Well, well, he wears glasses, but yeah, he’s, yes, okay.” “How, how smart is he? Would you say that he’s reasonably smart?” “Well, yeah, he’s got a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.” “Okay, great. So now, do you have any children?” I knew she did. She said, “Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got two children.” So, “Okay, do you know anybody in their right mind that would make love to a woman multiple times if they think that she is ugly, especially if they’ve got reasonably good eyesight and they are reasonably intelligent?” With that, she started to laugh. “Well, I guess I see your point.”
“Okay, here’s the third one. You see, you said ‘ugly, fat, and stupid.’ You know what? We can all stand to lose a couple of pounds. Let’s not deal with that. That’s not who you are. So, when did you start believing you were ugly, fat, and stupid? When you were 10 years old? Did it start happening after your grandfather passed away?” “Yeah, I guess it did.” “Why?” “Because my grandfather, who poured into me all the time, was no longer there to do that. So, you started listening to the negative influences of your peers.” Now, Zig Ziglar used to call that being a “SNIOP,” susceptible to the negative influences of other people. So, what if you started to believe that you were smart, you’re intelligent, you’re attractive? Yeah, again, we could all stand to lose a couple of pounds, but what if you started planting those seeds in your mind instead of listening to your playground buddies thinking they know all about you?
And all of a sudden, the light bulbs started to come on. I could sense it through the phone. I said, “Here’s what I want you to do. Did you ever forgive your grandfather for dying early?” She said, “I already dealt with that?” Well, as she’s talking, I could hear a little sniffle, a little whimper going on in her voice. So I’m going to ask you another crazy question. “Did you ever forgive God for taking your grandfather from you when he was so young and you were so young?” That whimper very quickly turned into a full sob. And almost immediately, she said, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go pick up my kids.” And she hung up.
The next week, we got together, and she says, “You changed my life in a radical way. I never realized how much I was holding on to from that pain from my past. So know, understand God’s perfect. He doesn’t do anything wrong. But as a 10-year-old, could you have had that perception that he did do something wrong? So, when you deal with that pain now, you can start to deal with the trauma and start moving on to a more victorious life.”
So, stop and think about this. What pain are you holding on to from your childhood? Were you also told that you’re ugly, fat, stupid? Were you told that you were worthless, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re a deadbeat? How about you’re as dumb as a rock? How about, “Why are you even trying? That you can’t do that?” How about, “Why can’t you be as smart as your siblings?” Oh, here’s another one: “You know what? You keep acting that way, you’re going to end up in prison, just like your Uncle Jesse.” A little side statistic: Research that was done many years ago discovered that over 70% of the people that were incarcerated at that time had had a parent or another relative that had told them repeatedly, “You keep doing that, and you’re going to end up in prison.” And sure enough, those words manifested themselves.
So, what are you telling yourself, and what are you listening to? Are you listening to people telling you that you’re ugly, fat, and stupid? Or are you listening to the truth about who you are? You’re strong, you’re confident, you’re beautiful, you’re handsome, you’re wise, you’re giving, you’re thoughtful, you’re caring, you’re kind. What are you listening to? What are you telling yourself?
One of the biggest challenges that we run into is that we listen to all of the wrong things in life, and we don’t give as much credence to the good things in our lives. So, when are you going to start listening to the good and ignoring the negative and the bad?
One of the biggest challenges that we have in dealing with all of these things is they tend to leave a lasting impression on our hearts and on our minds. You know, I’ve heard it said that habits are formed in 21 days. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s actually closer to 60 to 70 days that a habit is truly formed. But along with that, if somebody throws negative things at you, and you don’t deal with those negative things quickly, they can last, or they can bring on a lasting impression. So, what do you do?
How do you deflect those negative things? Well, the phrase that I teach to all of my clients that I’m working with on a coaching level is, “I will consider your opinion.” Now, you don’t necessarily have to say that out loud, but think it to yourself. If somebody gives you some wrong information, “I will consider your opinion.” If they tell you you’re handsome, you’re smart, you’re a quality person, you’re courageous, receive those things. But if somebody tells you you’re ugly, fat, and stupid, reject those things immediately and deflect them as quickly as you possibly can. You don’t need to hold on to those things because it’s not the truth. You need to listen to the truth as much as you possibly can.
Now, I’m going to put my email address on here. info@stephenreedministries.com. If you’d like more information or you’d like to spend some time dealing with some of the negatives, some of the lies that maybe you’ve been holding on to over the years, send me an email. Better yet, that QR code up in the corner here, why don’t you schedule a meeting, and let’s sit down and let’s visit for a few minutes. Now, I’ve got clients literally from coast to coast. I’ve got clients from New York to California. I even had some clients I was working with in Alaska not too long ago. I do everything by video conferencing, so I’d love to visit with you. Let’s help you get past some of those obstacles. Let’s figure out first what’s holding you back. What are the chains that are wrapped around you? Is it something that we can deal with quickly? Is it something that just happened in the past few weeks? Or is it something that you dealt with when you were a youngster?
I had one of my clients a couple of years ago that he was 65 years old. He was feeling stifled, and he had some marriage and relationship issues that were going on. And one of the things that we discovered was, I’m not going to say “hate,” because that’s a little bit too strong, but his strong dislike with his mother. Why? When he was a young boy, first he was about three years old, and we managed to pull out some little facts, some incidents that took place. And as it turns out, his father used to think it was funny to put cigarettes out on his arms and his legs. His mom and dad divorced not too long after that, but his mom wasn’t protecting him the way she should have. As it turns out, his mom had a drinking problem. And one day, he was in the kitchen, and she picked up a chair and threw it across the room at him. He held that memory for over 60 years.
After working with him for a number of sessions, he was able to release the pain and that emotional trauma that he’d been holding on to and realized how much more free he was feeling as a result of getting rid of that pain.
So what pain are you dealing with? What trauma are you dealing with? Is it pain or trauma from a parent? Maybe it was a grandparent, maybe it was a sibling, maybe it was a spouse or an ex-spouse, maybe it was a best friend or a coworker, maybe it was a boss, maybe it was something that somebody from the government did to you, maybe it was another organization. I’ve helped people through all of those different types of relationships to help them heal and be able to move on to the next place in their lives.
So, I want you to consider some of the things that may have happened to you in your past that could be holding you stifled and stuck, and sometimes even trapped. Maybe you feel like you are wrapped in chains. We need to break those chains.
Well, in our next session, we’re going to be talking about some of those things that you can do to alleviate some of the pain and some of the trauma. But in the meantime, again, if you’d like to get together, I’m going to throw this out. I’m going to give you a 30-minute complimentary session. Let’s start to discuss and figure out what those things are. Maybe we just need to expose some of the junk that you’ve been holding on to. You don’t need to hold on to those things anymore. So, it’s time we release those things so that you can live a more victorious life.
So, keep in mind, we are all about maximizing your success. What is your mission for success? My goal is plain and simple: I want to bring salt and light and hope into your life so that you can live a more victorious life. This is Steve Reed, Stephen Reed Ministries, Stephen Reed Coaching, and you’ve been watching and listening to Maximize Mission Success. Keep going. You deserve the best. You have a blessed day today. Goodbye for now. Now.