Monday, July 2, 2012

How to Win ANY Battle in Life

Steve Arterburn 
You've tried it your way and failed. Don't give up! Choose to stay in the game and see how God even takes our mistakes and builds them into our greatest victories. 
How many times have we heard this one: “It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game that counts.” Some of us realized winning meant a lot when we noticed that the guys who got the girls were the ones who won the starting positions on the team. Even if how they played the game was anything but nice, they still won and got the girls.
Go out in life thinking that winning does not matter and you will be very disappointed. Winning matters a lot.
Winners get the best stuff. The world talks about and celebrates winners, while it shuns the loser who seems to not have what it takes or has it for a while and then loses it. Few can tell you who raced in the Indianapolis 500 in any given year. The winners are the ones that count.
Your Personal Battles 
Everybody struggles with something and battles it day after day. Your main battle might be overeating, pornography, drinking, anger, depression or one of many other things that could have been tripping you up, perhaps for years.
You have made two choices that most everybody else has made: (1) You have tried real hard to fix it yourself; (2) You have asked God to take the battle from you and just heal it right now.
You may have begged Him and even questioned whether or not there actually is a God, or whether or not He loves you based on the fact that your battle has continued. You may have even defended your problem, saying it is just the way God made you since He hasn't seen fit to change it for you.
It is always good to ask for God's healing, but if you are still struggling, still losing the battle, now is the time to make some different choices that will turn your life around.
When dealing with your innermost battles, keep in mind that winners are not just those men who develop a plan for their life, go out and execute it and then watch everything fall perfectly in place. Winning also comes from the response we choose when things don't go so well.
Great coaches train the team to go out and win. But championship coaches take it a step further: They train their teams to respond when the other team scores first. Great teams know how to come back when they are behind. It is the response to things not going well that often determines whether or not a team wins or loses. The same goes with individuals.
You have a choice of how to respond when things go wrong. Most likely there is some area, some battle in which you have experienced defeat over and over again. Now you have choices before you that will either turn your life into a succession of loss upon loss or a life defined in every way by winning.
Giving Up Old Choices
One choice in response to mistakes and personal failures is arrogant defensiveness. This is the choice to justify, rationalize and stand your ground. It is the choice down a path of repeated failures and stunted growth. I have used this response often and have to surrender it up every day.
It always feels good for the moment to exercise my right to defend what I did and stand my ground. But it never helps me move forward, and, eventually, I have to acknowledge my arrogance and let it go.
I have to replace the choice to remain stubborn, resistant, arrogant and defensive with the choice of a winner. It is the unattractive choice of humble willingness.
The Choice of Humble Willingness
Those who are both humble and willing realize they do not have all the answers, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to find them. This place of humility allows them to seek help from others and shift their reliance from themselves to God.
Proverbs 3:5-7 tells us to not lean on our own understanding and to not be wise in our own eyes. A humble willingness to do whatever it takes, to reach out and get the help that is needed is a sign of character and strength. It is the beginning of the path to the victory circle. But to get there you have to allow God to use your struggle to teach you to rely less on your own resources and totally on Him.
Over the years I have watched people reach this crucial point where they are willing to do whatever it takes, and I have watched everything in their lives turn around. I have also seen those who reach the point and turn and run in the opposite direction. The biggest reason is that they are unwilling to make a bold move toward healing.
You can't just declare yourself a winner. You have to heal the things that are preventing you from having victory. The biggest reason you have lost the battle is that you have relied on your own strength, trying to win on your own.
Once you are humbly willing, you can move to connect your life with others who can help you. This means that you are willing to call someone or get in the car and go to a meeting or find a counselor to help you. In humble willingness, tell your wife or close friend that you are finally willing to look into getting some help that they suggested. Humbly acknowledge that you are only as sick as your secrets, and you must break out of secrecy and into connection that heals and helps you to win whatever battles you are facing.
The winning life starts by moving beyond trying harder and merely asking for healing. You give up the old ways and defending the old ways, and you are willing to become involved in the healing by reaching out and connecting.
The connection begins the healing process that will include several difficult processes, such as grieving your past losses so you can move forward. It may involve forgiving those who have hurt you, and giving up old resentments and grudges. And rather than numb your feelings or deny they are there, you will need to acknowledge them and feel the depths of your emotions.
Then, as the reality of your situation becomes clearer, it will require that you embrace your life, the good and the bad of it all, and allow God to do with it what only God can do.
Embracing Rather Than Rejecting Life
God takes our mistakes and blends them and builds them into our biggest wins. I know that may sound strange, but it is true.
You're probably familiar with the Old Testament story of Joseph. The guy went from being the favorite son in his father's house to the depths of an Egyptian prison. Some would say that he had it coming.
Joseph was so arrogant that he was not smart enough to edit what he tells his brothers about God's plan for his life: “One night Joseph had a dream and promptly reported the details to his brothers, causing them to hate him even more. 'Listen to this dream,' he announced. 'We were out in the field tying up bundles of grain. My bundle stood up, and then your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before it!' 'So you are going to be our king, are you?' his brothers taunted. And they hated him all the more for his dream and what he had said” (Gen. 37:5-8, NLT).
So Joseph's brothers decided to kill him, but they changed their minds and sold him into slavery instead. He found favor with his new master only to be thrown in jail after the lady of the house lied about Joseph, accusing him of an impropriety. At some point, I'm sure Joseph was kicking himself for the way he had bragged to his brothers, which started the chain of events leading to his imprisonment. But he didn't give up.
In prison he connected with his fellow inmates, telling them what their dreams meant and that eventually led to his release. Once again, he gained favor by telling Pharaoh what his dreams meant and ended up running the country, enabling him to save his family and, ultimately, an entire nation.
Now, I don't think God meant for those mean brothers to sell Joseph or for him to be falsely accused and thrown in prison. But, somehow, God worked out a big win in the end. As Joseph notes, “God turned into good” what his brothers meant for evil (Gen. 50:20).
You may feel like you are living in your own self-constructed prison. You may think your life is wasted and you are the loser of all losers. But it is not true. If you will stay true to God, God will work with your circumstances and weave them into a wonderful win. But you must humble yourself and become willing to do whatever it takes to heal.
You must reach out and connect with others, getting support, accountability and even treatment for the character defects within you. You must open up your life to others and allow God to manage the outcome. Then you must embrace the reality of your life and allow God to use the things you are most ashamed of. Allow God to weave them and wind them into your future.
Perseverance
The final element to win at anything is perseverance. Whether it is a personal battle or a new project, be in it for the long haul.
Too often, we want the quick fix and the instant solution. We want the big win now and when it does not happen, we give up, throw in the towel and walk away a loser. But if we persevere, hang on and hang in, the win we so badly want may be just around the corner.
Here is how perseverance worked for me. One of the things I feel best about in my life is the creation of the Women of Faith conference. God gave me a vision for discouraged and disappointed women, and we began conferences for women in 1996. Now, almost 10 years later, they are stronger than ever with more than 3 million women having attended, more than 400,000 attending each year. Nothing has ever made me feel more like a winner than the success of Women of Faith and the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been changed by it.
But in 1995, the year before the conferences started, I felt like the biggest loser around. It was then that I created a traveling conference that toured the country in 12 cities. That year, my efforts at creating conferences resulted in a grand total of less than 1,000 people showing up … total.
I remember the grand ballroom in Chicago where we had less than 30. No one looked like or felt like a bigger loser than me. But I did not take the loss as an indictment on who I was. A losing idea and the mistakes I made in implementing it did not make me a total failure. So I persevered with conferences, and it was the next year that Women of Faith started filling every seat available.
Had I given up, I would have never experienced the joy of seeing Women of Faith become the ministry that it is today. The win was not in pulling it off. The win was persevering with God and watching Him do what I had proved I could not do alone.
Perhaps you are about to give up. You don't feel there is any hope for you. If I were sitting there with you, I would encourage you to look for the big win just around the bend or just over the next hill. You may not see it, but it is there.
Stand strong in God's Spirit and resist Satan's lies that you will fail. Take Paul's encouragement in Ephesians 6:10-13 to heart: “Be strong with the Lord's mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil. For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms. Use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil, so that after the battle you will still be standing firm.”
No matter how low you feel or the degree of humiliation you have experienced, you can choose to keep going and stay in the game rather than quit right before you see what God is about to do. Your loss could actually be the springboard to living the life of a winner because of what you have experienced and what you have learned in the heat of battle. But to experience the life of a winner, you must have a willingness to wait on God and to persevere.
Rather than give up on life, I encourage you to give up your old ways of handling your battles and turn your life over to God. Trust in Him and those He chooses to use to help you. You will heal, and you will win. And, you will find purpose for your life that you never dreamed possible.
Romans 8:28 will unfold before your eyes over your lifetime: God really “causes everything to work together for the good.” But first you must choose to win His way and not your own. And once you experience winning God's way, you will want to share the message with others and help them understand the path toward creating a winning life.
KEYS TO WINNING ANY BATTLE
• Give up your old ways of trying to win.
• Give up arrogant defensiveness and stubborn resistance.
• Humble yourself and become willing to do whatever it takes.
• Reach out and connect with those who can help you heal.
• Heal old wounds by grieving your losses, forgiving those who hurt you and feeling the depths of your emotions.
• Embrace the reality of your life, including the past you want to forget.
• Persevere and watch God create something amazing from it all.
• Reach out to others who need to find the way to win.

Stephen Arterburn is the author and co-author of more than 60 books, including Every Man's Battle. Contact him at newlife.com.

http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/new-man/faith/25226-how-to-win-any-battle-in-life




Are you only as young as you feel?



In her book Counterclockwise, Harvard professor Ellen Langer recounts a groundbreaking study she did in 1979 that has since become the stuff of legend.

She took a group of male research subjects in their 70's and 80's on a retreat. The environment had been manipulated to make it seem like it was twenty years prior.

The residents were all aware of the real year but being immersed in the world of 1959 and being encouraged to act like they were younger men had powerful effects on them:

The experimental group showed greater improvement on joint flexibility, finger length (their arthritis diminished and they were able to straighten their fingers more), and manual dexterity. On intelligence tests, 63 percent of the experimental group improved their scores, compared to only 44 percent of the control group. There were also improvements in height, weight, gait and posture. Finally, we asked people unaware of the study's purpose to compare photos taken of the participants at the end of the week to those submitted at the beginning of the study. Those objective observers judged that all of the experimental participants looked noticeably younger at the end of the study.
Other research shows people who held positive beliefs about getting older lived 7.5 years longer and were healthier.

Women who dye their hair not only report feeling younger but their blood pressure drops and they are rated as looking younger in photos -- photos where their hair is cropped out.

"Will to live" has been shown to make a difference in when you die.

Langer cites studies showing that women with younger spouses live longer and those with older spouses die younger. How we think about aging affects how we age:
The psychologist Bernice Neugarten suggested that we are deeply influenced by "social clocks" -- that we gauge our lives by the implicit belief that is a "right age" for certain behaviors or attitudes.
Our mind may have more control over our body than we think. Processes we long believed to be out of our control, like heart rate and blood pressure, proved not to be.

Via Counterclockwise:
In 1961, Yale psychologist Neal Miller suggested that the autonomic nervous system, which controls blood pressure and heart rate, could be trained just like a voluntary system, which allows us to raise and lower our arm and other deliberate acts. His suggestion was met with a great deal of skepticism. Everyone knew that the autonomic nervous system was just that, autonomous and beyond our control. Yet his subsequent work on biofeedback -- which makes autonomic processes such as heart rate visible by hooking people up to monitors -- found that people could be taught to control them.
Radiolab did an amazing piece explaining how exhaustion is more in the mind than the body and how athletes manipulate this to complete marathons and Ironman competitions.
How strong is the power of belief in our lives? Can we make our lives better by changing what we believe? 

Placebo Effect

We've all heard of the placebo effect. If I give you a sugar pill and tell you it'll improve X, X often improves just because you believe the pill is working.

The placebo effect means that voodoo curses really can kill you, AXE body spray can make men sexier, and fake steroids can make you stronger. What's truly amazing is the placebo effect can work even when you know it's a placebo.

The placebo effect might even have a role in exercise and health. Four weeks after being told their efforts at work qualified as exercise women studied had lost weight and were healthier vs a control group. Researchers speculate that believing something is exercise may make it have the results of exercise.

In Counterclockwise Langer cites studies that showed that when a medical therapy was believed in, it was 70-90% effective but only 30-40% effective when the patient was skeptical. Subjects exposed to fake poison ivy developed rashes and fake caffeine spiked heart rate and motor performance.

Priming

Priming is when you're unconsciously influenced by a concept and it affects how you behave. 

There has been a torrent of priming studies in recent years showing just how much words and ideas in our environment can affect how we act:
And these aren't just theoretical. They can be used to improve performance.

Being primed to feel happy before a challenge can make us perform better. Thinking about college professors before a test can get you a better grade.

Overconfidence

I've posted before about the multitude of benefits a little delusion can offer:
    Optimism

    Just believing you can become smarter and can become a better negotiator have both been shown to increase improvement.

    Optimism is associated with better health and a longer life. It can make you happier. The army teaches soldiers to be optimistic because it makes them tougher and more resourceful. Hope predicts academic achievement better than intelligence, personality, or previous grades.

    Being socially optimistic -- expecting people to like you -- makes people like you more. Expecting a positive outcome from negotiations made groups more likely to come to a deal and to be happy with it


    Dangers of Too Much Belief

    Being totally delusional, paranoid or believing in things that are patently untrue is obviously not good. I'm not recommending that.

    Optimism can blind us. The happiest people and the most trusting peopleboth had sub-optimal outcomes. Those who think they have the most willpower are actually the most likely to give in to temptation. The reason you can predict your friends' behavior better than they can is because we are allrealistic about others' actions and optimistic about our own. Some priming studies have been disputed


    Recommendations

    So what can we do to improve our lives with belief? Here are a few suggestions:













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