Motivation needs a spark

 

“The strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from change is you”

How many times we are so passionate in making a change in our mind, but little chance that we have brought that into action. We have fantasy picture in our mind, thinking that if I have done this, I would have blah blah blah.However, in all these time, we are in lack of a spark to bring our thoughts into action. It is because the strongest enemy in your life that hinder you from changes is you, if you can step out of your comfort zone, you can start to change.

“The greatest hold up to your healing of your hang up is you”

We always have a lot of things that we are planned to do, for example, learn something new, expand our social circle, pick up a new habit. We know that these things are good to ourselves and we “want ” to make a change. However, take these thoughts into action require a spark, which provides you enough determination and strength to make a difference. I have been thinking to start a fitness-Instagram page for months, because being fit becomes my passion and I want to motivate people around me to stay healthy and fit. During these months, I cannot take this thought into actions because maintaining a page is sort of tiring, and requires you a lot of energy. Until this week, I realized that my befit journey actually can influence people around me to pick up their fitness journey, and some of my friends message me and asked where can I gym, how can I lose weight. Even more, one of the studio re-posted my workout photo in their Instagram page, and at that moment, I felt like what I am doing is worth it and actually can make a difference to myself and to others. Although I am not qualified to say that I am a professional trainer, I feel so satisfied about my gradual change physically and mentally. You do not have to compete with others about how far you go, because you are the only one you should be responsible for, not others. Until yesterday, I summoned up my courage, I opened a fitness Instagram for myself. I do not know if I can be successful in maintaining the page, but I know that if I do not try, I can never succeed. No matter what the result is, at least I tried and paid effort, I will not feel regret in the future of not doing that.

“No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light”

Sometimes, a spark in the darkness can light up the sky and give you direction about where you should go because with a tiny spark may burst a mighty flame. Whenever you get the spark and hold on to it, it is easier for you to follow the sign of light of your journey. The beginning is the hardest part because you have no idea about where to start. Bu when you have started, the rest become easy as you know the direction of where to go. But before that, find your spark, find the passion in your life that can keep you growing and glowing. A spark can come from the people around you , the places that you have been to or the message that you have read. The more you get in touch with various things, there are more sources of spark that you can explore. Trust yourself, and trust our Father will guide us the way that we want to go, he can give us strength and faith if we put our trust on him. John 8:12-  Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

 

 

Action speaks louder than words

Beautiful words are attractive, and sometimes clouded our eyes and our heart. “I Love You” is such a powerful sentence but how many people can really live up to the meaning of that? It is not difficult for us to say a hundred times of “I Love You”, but it is difficult for us to carry out every action to show that “I Love You”.

With the invention of different App (e.g. Facebook, whatsapp…), people tend to share many of their thoughts and feeling in this virtual platform without a concrete physical connection with people. We become so afraid to express love to the person we care in face and so worried about speaking up for our opinions in public. There are a lot of people, shared a lot of articles and their points of view in social media, expressing how disappointing we are to the society but how many of us really take our belief into action? Influencing power is not only consist of powerful words, what’s more important is what you are doing to fight for what you believe. Action speaks louder than words, people always “tell” people what they want to do, but not many of them can bring them into action.

“Influencing power starts by building your behaviour”

In order to bring influences to others, we should start to change our own behaviour first. Think about when you ask people not to play phone during dinner, but you keep looking at your phone and upload different posts, how convincing does it sound like? Nobody is gonna follow what you said. Instead, if we are responsible for our own action, people around you can feel your change and start to follow you. Maybe it doesn’t work for one time, but eventually if our positive behaviour is consistent, people around you will listen to you one day. Your action is actually more influencing than what you speak, people will be impressed if you are behaving in a good way. Who don’t want to be better off, if they see what you are doing can make themselves be a better person, I guess everyone will take a lead to change.

“Change needs action ” 

Change of behaviour takes courage and determination, when your faith is not sufficient, your action will not be consistent. One month ago, by coincidence, I bumped into an old friend S, whom we actually have not been contacted for a year. My friend and I were quite interested where her positive energy came from and why she could always be so energetic. Especially during the low time in my life, at that moment, I really do need some positive energy to influence my life. And then she shared a little about her faith journey with God and her community in church that brought her energy and faith. She invited me and my friend to Alpha to have a look, to understand more about christianity and receive blessing from God. At that time, I would give myself any chance to make myself move on from the darkness and I felt like it is not bad to give it a try. Since then, my connection with God is kept strengthening.

“You can change anything if your faith is strong enough”

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” – James 4:7.This belief made me realise a lot of cracks that happened in my life, which is far more than I imagined. And in order to heal those cracks, we have to throw away our old bad habit and pick up new one. In these two to three weeks, I really do take away many of my old habits and replace them with new ones. In the past, I filled my leisure time with having dinner with my friends after work, finding people to drink on friday night or weekend, watching different dramas which are no value-added to me. True, these activities can bring instant enjoyment or happiness to me, but after a period of time, we feel even emptier and lonelier. Why I felt like that before? The reason is we are so empty inside and there is no faith and determination to keep us feel rich inside. In order to move on and get myself to become a better one,  I start to pick up regular exercises every week after work, cut off alcohol and those drinking parties, read more books, go to church and write blog everyday. Surprisingly, these changes make me to become positive in mind and I become so peaceful at my alone time. Many of my friends are so surprised that why I did not go out for partying or have a chill drink after work, and then they asked about the reason behind. I understood that those enjoyment are not helping me in my healing journey, instead, they will make me even more painful. And what driven me to be such determined, it’s my faith on God. Without him, I am not sure if I can really persist for so long because CHANGE need a lot of strength, it is something easier to say but hundred times difficult to do it.

“Change by changing yourself first”

When you are living up to what you said, your action can actually influence the people around you. Instead of “telling” people around you what is christianity, how about we strengthen ourselves with strong faith and positive mind first, the real changes by your action speaks louder than you fancy beautiful words for thousands of time. When you can influence your friend, then your friend will pass the message to others, and one follow by one till the message and wisdom is spread in spider-net. Don’t under estimate your influencing power, cause when spider webs unit, they can tie up a lion!