Leslie Vernick
July 21st, 2015                                                                                
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Ten Questions That Can Change Your Life

By Leslie Vernick
 


So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12


This newsletter will be short. I promise! But after you read it, it will require you to take some time to think through your life.  Many people sleep walk through life. They live by the clock and the calendar instead of having an internal compass that directs their steps.  

Take a minute and honestly answer these ten (10) questions!

You will get to know yourself better. You’ll discover what really matters to you and what you need to stop doing right now in order to free up your time and energy to become all that God has called you to be.  
What if….

10 Questions that Can Change Your Life


1. What if you inherited a bundle of money how would you spend it?

2. What if you inherited a bundle of money and did not need to continue working for a living, what would you change about what you do with your time and energy?

3. What if everything was the same for question #2 except you knew you only had 10 more years to live. What would you now do differently with the rest of your life?

4. What if everything was the same for question # 2, but now you only had one year to live. What would you immediately stop doing? What would you start doing differently?

5. What if you lived more often from your best self, what change would others most notice about you?

6. What if you could do yesterday over again, what would you do differently?

7. What if you truly believed (trusted) God loved you, forgave you and was for you, how would you feel different?

8. What if you truly believed (trusted) God’s version of reality, that this life is temporal. That there really is a heaven and really is a hell. What impact would it have on the way you lived today?  

9. What if you measured your life by only one standard, not by how much you got done or how much money you made, but how well you loved God and loved others?  How would you score?

10. What if you took some of the insights gained from honestly answering these questions and made changes to your life right now? What would they be?  How would you feel?

Don’t wait.  

You can start today to live differently. 

 
 
 
 Self Compassion – Shows Strength, Not Weakness
 
Excerpt From My Interview with Kim Hendrickson – Author of “Give Yourself A Break”

Kim, what prompted you to write a book about self-compassion?

As I was looking for books on this theme for my clients, I couldn’t find any written from a Biblical perspective. I thought, how could there be nothing written about self-compassion from a faith perspective? If anyone should write about this it is believers.
God is an overflowing source of love, compassion and grace to those who are suffering…which is everyone created to some extent. He wants us to spread that love, grace and kindness to ourselves, and out of that flows to others. For some reason, in the Christian world, little is taught how to show the same type of compassion to ourselves that we readily show to others.
 
What is self-compassion and why is it important?

Self-compassion is having the same concern for our own pain and welfare as we would have for someone else’s. Out of self-compassion flow self-care and protection from harm.

However, self-compassion is not self-pity, where we wallow in the shame of what we have done. It is not self-complacency, where we just accept where we are. Instead, it is the idea that we can be kind to ourselves when we fail and treat ourselves with the caring support we would give another who is struggling.

Self-compassion is a balance of truth (Yes, I made a mistake) with grace (I have worth and value, and I will address this mistake directly). Self-compassion is absolutely essential for healthy, balanced living.
 
It provides huge benefits including emotional resiliency, stress reduction, contentment, and healthier relationships. Without it we are vulnerable to the opinions of others and find it difficult to deal with and let go of our mistakes.

It is tough enough to go through a difficult situation, especially when we think we had a part in creating it. It is another kind of torture to never be able to let go of self-criticism and blame.

Self-compassion increases resilience and self-worth, aids in stress reduction, and helps us recover from painful experiences. Lack of self-compassion is linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, lack of resilience, inability to forgive one’s self and problems in relationships.

Self-compassion gives you a friend to go through life with, rather than an internal critic or bully.

Some people fear self-compassion because they equate it with self-pity, as looking at oneself as a pathetic and sorry excuse for a person. That isn’t self-compassion; it is self-disdain.

Self-compassion is looking at our humanness and our situation with empathy, concern, and kindness. Self-compassion is also pausing to look back and feel compassion for the difficult times you’ve been through.

Life is hard even in the best of families or situations. No one can stop sin; hardships; the effects of mental illness, abuse, or neglect; or the effects of living in a busy, mixed-up world.
 
Sometimes I think people fear if we’re too easy on ourselves when we mess up, then we’ll just go down the tubes and sin more. Is that true?

While I can understand that concern, the opposite is actually true. When we don’t have self-compassion (and instead carry a lot of self-contempt and self-criticism), we feel a lot of deep hurt and shame.These feelings are so painful that we can rarely tolerate them for long. We push them down, but eventually they come up—and usually with a fury.
 
When we are in this state of emotional pain without a way to process these feelings, we will do anything to not feel them. This is when we are most likely to sin or act out our pain through negative behaviors and addictions.

Self-compassion doesn’t take away the sin, the mistake, or the need to change. It soothes the hurt and self-contempt. This soothing makes us less likely to act out our pain through our behaviors. 
 
You write that if we don’t have a loving, compassionate relationship with ourselves, we fall into two camps regarding handling the mistakes we make in life. Please explain.

The two camps are Narcissism or Self-Contempt.

If our mistakes as children were not met in a healthy way with both grace and truth, we will experience great pain when we see a mistake we’ve made, or when someone else points out a mistake we’ve made.
 
This is because we have not developed a way to internally to accept our humanness and resolve the incident. We tend to either say we did nothing wrong at all and it was all the other person’s fault (narcissism), or say we are the worst person in the world and we don’t deserve to be forgiven (shame and self-contempt).

This happens because we never learned how to forgive ourselves for our part in the situation. This lack of self-compassion causes significant problems in our relationships.

This often leads to difficulty resolving the normal problems that happen in every relationship. In an attempt to not experience pain, we come up with every reason possible to not see or own up to the mistake we made.
 
Read the full interview by clicking here.
Connect With Me
 
 
 
IN THIS ISSUE
 
ARTICLE

Ten Questions That Can Change Your Life

 

COACHING 
Accepting Coaching Applications
Click here to get started.
 
WHAT'S NEW? 
Take a look at the upcoming events to watch for from Leslie
 
GIVEAWAY 
Moving From Fear To Freedom
 
LESLIE ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS
Self Compassion –
Shows Strength, Not Weakness
 
 
COACHING INFORMATION
For more information on Leslie's coaching program, please click below:

 

Coaching Programs

 
 
GIVEAWAY
how to live right when our life goes wrong
Moving From Fear To Freedom
by
Grace Fox


Fear was not part of God's original agenda for his creation. It slithered onto the scene when Adam and Eve sinned, causing a tear in their relationship with God. And even though fear touches every life and can still debilitate people today, the news isn't all bad. Popular speaker and author Grace Fox demonstrates how believers can face their fear and actually let it be a catalyst for change.

Readers will learn how to stop hiding from God and instead develop a deeper relationship with Him. This is what she calls “the upside of fear”: When we cry out to God for help, He answers, and we experience Him in new ways.

“Read this book and you'll find yourself saying, “That's me,” or “Maybe this is how I can minister to my hurting friend.” Grace has her finger on the pulse of what women think and are often afraid to admit so that they could truly live in freedom.

 

Grace is a diligent researcher, who conducted many personal interviews to get just the right stories to make her book real. The end-of-chapter questions, focus scriptures, and prayer bring reminder that no fear is beyond God's help. Get it for yourself and to use in a women's Bible study.”

 

-Jeanne Z.

 

If you would like to enter to win, you can click here to provide your name and email address.

Winners of the Stirling Silver Courage Charm by Susan Michel are Stacy J. & Jeaneta W.

 
 
 
UPCOMING EVENTS
 

Sept. 22-26, 2015

AACC World Conference

Nashville, TN

 

Oct 9-10th, 2015

Providence Presbyterian Church

Conference For Abused Women

Details Coming Soon

 

 
 
HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT LESLIE'S COACHING.
 


Coaching with Leslie Vernick helped me recognize and replace my old destructive relational habits with healthy new ways to approach my spouse. Now I’m beginning to live and relate from my CORE, a place that keeps me focused on the LORD and is so strong to rescue me from feeling like I’m drowning in my circumstances and emotions.

 

Now my marriage is on a renewed and better track. 

I can definitely see a
positive turn in my attitude and this, by the grace of God, has invited my spouse to begin to relate to me differently too; the LORD is at work! Leslie’s approach was both practical and spiritual. 

 

She provided scripture to bolster me along the way and her suggestions were right on target to help. To anyone wanting to escape the burden of a repetitious harmful behaviors in life I would recommend, without reservation, Leslie Vernick as a coach!”


— SH
 

 

 
 
LESLIE WELCOMES YOUR QUESTIONS
 

Leslie wants to help you grow in your personal and relational effectiveness. Please submit your questions by clicking here.


Then, visit Leslie's Blog as she posts her responses to one question per week.


Note: Due to the volume of questions that Leslie receives, she is unable to respond to every question.

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Leslie Vernick PO Box 5312 Sun City West, Arizona 85376 United States