Episode 181: Gaining True PoWER in Life

Do you ever wish you had greater power of control in your life?  In this episode, Jimmy shares his daily process to gain control of his mind, body, emotions, and spirit that gives him the power of growth in life.

Episode Keys

  • How to gain control over your focus, body, mind and spirit with a simple system developed by Jimmy.
  • When you should record your day’s events to gain the greatest clarity and understanding of life.
  • Why you should journal daily to gain power in your life!
  • The secret weapon to gaining understanding in life and developing wisdom is revealed in this episode.
  • How to give yourself one of the greatest educations from your own life!

Podcast Transcript

Good morning and greetings! What another beautiful fall day we’re having here in the greatest state of the United States. Folks, it’s not easy when you live in paradise to remain humble and so forth, but I am being very humble this morning when I tell you that if you had gotten up and seen that sun rise, which as you know now in the fall, that rises as much later time than what it used to in the summer. It just does something to empower your mind and give you that sense of really just being alive. Good morning again. This is Jimmy Williams, you’re host this morning for this Monday morning moments of motivation I hope to instill in you today something that I’ve used now for many years as a way of really bringing my best to those around me, whether it be in a work situation whether it just be in a personal relationship, whether it’s my family in my church, my civic group, wherever I might find myself, I truly want to be present and I want to be that type of person that can be there to contribute when asked.

So, I’m gonna share with you an acronym that I use because it’s, it’s coincidentally, the acronym spells the word power. It’s PoWER. The O is in smaller case letter, and I’ll explain that in just a few moments. But there’s one thing in the world that seems to be something that we all want to attain at some point. And at some level, you know, there’s tyrants in the world that gain power so they can hold dominion over others to tell them how they wish for them to live versus the freedoms to choose your own way of life. There’s power that comes through a raging river that if you’re in a canoe when you’re going down the river and you get sideways or obtuse of the river flow and you go up against a rock, can bend that aluminum canoe. It’s also the type of power you see in a jet engine when you’re getting ready to take off from the tarmac and the pilot just throws a fuel to that engine and you feel the pressure of gravity pushing you back in your seat.

That truly is types of power. But today I wanna talk about something even more powerful than the three I just mentioned. Not a power to be used in the negative sense of the word, but power to be used to do greater good and positivity. I wanna share a few minutes with you this morning that will help you focus and bring very keenly to mind what I look at on a daily basis to maintain a consistent mindset of being happy, kind and content. I did not say there are days that are stress free, some are, most aren’t, but I have found a way through this acronym that I can gain power over those things I can control to help guide me through a day that I can yield my greatest crop of kindness and positivity. So let’s get started with the first part of this word.

The capital P is lowercase old. This stands for me to ponder or think I ponder on my day. I do a tremendous amount of just quiet thinking if I’m in the car. You don’t have to listen to radio at all times. You can have some quiet moments to yourself. One of the greatest things you’ll hear in life is that there are so seldom places that you can go, restaurants, theaters, even of course ball games. You wouldn’t have any quiet time, but there are places you can go on the planet. You cannot get any quiet, peaceful time to yourself. There were some studies done about noise in our world today and how people are so accustomed to the loud noises around us that we have learned almost to automatically tune it out as if it’s just subconscious. We’ve learned how to tune out all this background noise.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed this noise seems to even be louder or my hearing is getting a little damaged. But it seems to me that things are getting louder. Now, if you’re a man, I know what you’re thinking. Your wife may be calling at you at a loud, high pitched voice and you have what is called selective hearing. That’s not what I’m referring to today. So at the end of the day, you got the power that comes through pondering your thoughts. So you got the first two letters, capital P, lower case O. Ponder your thoughts for the day. What good decisions did you make? What impression did you leave on those around you? What type of power did you instill in others to allow them to feel good about themselves? Ponder on the day what you did to help give you the best that you can take from that day, just as you should every day.

And the next letter is a W. This letter stands for me to write in my journal on a consistent basis. I recommend that you do a 30 day journal challenge. It’s only 30 days, so you got one month out of 12. If you would purposefully set time each day to write down your thoughts, concerns, the issues of which you think the world needs to be resolved, how you would resolve them, what would you do if you were king for a day with the power and authority you would have. Write these things down. No one’s going to look at this journal except you. What I do in my journals each day is ask myself certain questions. And these are leading questions that help me think on paper, what I have done for the day and how I could improve my responses, my actions, and even even my looks of my face, for example, when I’m interacting with people.

Now I know what you’re thinking there. You’re saying, Well, it’s just different when you’re not in a big city. I’ve got news for you. People are everywhere and people are made of the same carbon material. We all are made with blood, bone, and skin. We all have a brain. We all have the need for compassion and kindness in our life. Some may need it worse than others, but by writing in that journal on a consistent basis, you will find that you have emptied the thoughts that may keep you up at night, that you know where you just can’t shut the brain off and it just continues to run a muck. Now, I’ll confess to you, I still from time to time, can’t shut it off. At the end of the day I a steam sauna for 20 minutes to 30 minutes in my steam shower.

I may take a cool shower, jump right in the bed, read one of my favorite books to go to sleep and sit there and read for a couple of hours. That just happens in life to some of us. But I am not sitting there worried about the day’s events. I have poured out my thoughts, concerns, and challenges in my journal. That writing to get it from the mind through the fingertips to the paper has a means of discharging those thoughts from your brain to go somewhere else for a while. Now, I’m not saying you won’t pick them back up the next day, next week, whenever. If the same environment comes about that created a negative issue and you wrote about it in your journal, it may rise again. But this time I’m hoping you’ll be equipped through your thoughts of how you can control your responses perhaps better than previously. The w though of writing on the journal paper is something to me that has such a release of endorphins. It’s as if I do not have to listen to anyone around me. I don’t even have to use good grammar if I don’t wish. What I can do though, is I can unleash those thoughts and just ride as much or as little as I wish.

Prolific journals throughout life such as Leonardo DaVinci, he realized the power of creativity that was unleashed in the pages of his journals, His writings have brought about scientific discovery such as the power of flight, the human body biology, These things all came about because he had the mindset to draw diagrams, consider scientific discoveries that he made in the days of his world. Imagine where we’d be today had he not been a prolific journaler. We may have missed out on some of mankind’s greatest discoveries in life that he initially had started but not completely discovered. So PO means we ponder the day. The W means we write the thoughts from our mind to the journal pages, the letter E every day, if you ponder and you write in your journal every day, this consistently helps your mind as if you were exercising your physical body. Let me explain what I mean by that.

I like to do some form of physical exercise or exertion on a daily basis. To me, it just takes the stress off the body and you just breathe deeply and drop your shoulders as in a slouch and just go, Ugh, I can re relax now. I like to be in a situation where I have to exert something to stretch the muscle, to help build the frame, help get things off my mind by exerting that energy through some of the force, whether you’re jogging, whether you’re lifting weights, whether you’re just doing weight calisthenics in your home, whatever it may be, every day though, when you consistently start that routine as it becomes habit, you find yourself getting deeper and deeper in the capability to control your body, control your mind, control your emotions, and that’s where the real power of life lies. Have you ever been around someone that you didn’t feel like they were mature enough of their emotions, they just couldn’t contain their sadness, their anger, their joy perhaps shouldn’t be contained, but we might need to depending on certain circumstances.

You know, at the end of the day, your ability to grow the muscle of control of the mind is like working the muscles of your arms or legs or your stomach. You have to work on those muscles on a daily basis to see the growth and progress to maturity of the body. The same works for your mind. The more you write in that journal, the more you think in a quiet space and time about the day, the challenges you faced. Perhaps you may discover the real answer to the questions that are been puzzling you be at your employment or at your your family time or whatever. But that everyday consistency will give you a release of those things that are holding you back. So now, maybe tomorrow you can think more freely, clearer, have the greatest of clarity toward whatever problem you face.

So the last letter of the word power is the letter R. It does no good for us to write these situations down, these challenges we face and put ’em all on paper if we don’t reflect on them to see how much we’ve grown. There’s something I learned in one of the coaching programs in which I’ve been now 11, 12, 13 years. It’s called Strategic Coach, and we talk about how you can go in the gap and that is where you measure your performance based on an ideal situation. Now, I don’t know about you now. I am not perfect. I’ve told you many times I’m married though a perfect woman, you are not perfect. I’m not perfect. So why would we wish to measure our performance, our thoughts, our activities toward an ideal situation? Now, never in my life have I run across something that was just perfectly ideal in a transaction or a relationship or anything of that nature, Something that was just spot on.

Perfectly ideal and no blemish. But I have learned a new way of measuring my progress. So every week that I reflect on my journal writing that Sunday night, I sat down on another page of the journal and I just looked back and I made a table of contents and I, I basically write down the topical words and the pages numbers in my journal so I can quickly find them again should I need to. You see, it’s powerful to write it down, but it’s even more so exponentially powerful to be able to find it quickly to reflect on and use for a situation that may arise with similar facts. For example, I do believe it’s awesome to sit down and reflect in your journal, your writings for the week so that you can see or where there are certain people that gave you certain challenges during the week.

And maybe we need to understand the environment we find ourself when that help happens. Or perhaps it’s a certain type of project that you are really just not passionate about you. You’re, you’re good at this type of skill, but you’re just not passionate enough that you’re putting all of your being toward a final product that is just excellent. You’ll learn about that in your journals cuz you will have written about it at the end of each day and then you’re finding out by that reflection period that those times are the ones where you need to find another who instead of working on the how. The critical thing about journaling or any type of activity is that you must spend time reflecting. I liken this to even a football player or baseball player, even in high school. In today’s sports, the kids will watch film to evaluate their performance.

Coaches use it to teach their positions and how the boys could improve in their positions on the football team or how a certain pitcher has tails that when you get up to bat and you see this picture again, you’ll understand perhaps what his better pitches are, so you’ll know how to face that person and get better hits. Or you might watch yourself as you run track and as you see what you’re doing in terms of draft behind someone in front of you or how your foot’s positioned, or perhaps it’s a type of shoe you’re wearing, causing your stride to be different, whatever it may be. But the only way you can learn to improve is by the reflection of your activity.

So summing this up, it’s real simple. It’s capital P, lowercase O, and then capital letters w e r. If you truly wish to gain power over your mind, your attitude, your disposition, your life, you must learn to ponder on the day’s events. You learn to write those thoughts down in some form, journal, book, whatever you’d like. You must do this on a consistent or everyday basis and then ultimately reflect on what you have written so that you can gain a better perspective, a growth of maturity over life so that you can grow abundantly on a periodic basis. Thank you for joining me today. Your challenge this week is just that take an opportunity. I don’t care if it’s a spiral bound notebook, I don’t care what it is, but get some kind of book this week. Take the time if it’s nothing more than a few sentences, write down how you feel, what you’re thinking about, what went well, what didn’t go well, who did you meet?

How did you perceive them? How did they think about you? Gather your thoughts in this journal entry and at the end of one week reflect on what you’ve written. Give yourself some grace and some time to understand that you too are truly a human trying to improve in life. You want the same thing that everyone else wants, and that’s a life of peace and in abundance. Again, thank you for joining me Lori Few and I’ll be back together next week. We look forward to bringing her back from a very extended time off and she is looking forward to joining you. Thank you again. Go look us up on our Facebook page at Live A Life By Design Community. Give us your thoughts on what this journaling has done for you. Give us some ideas of what you think about and write about on a daily basis as far as keywords or topics. And the main thing I want you to take from this, you are a powerful person. That power you hold is over your own thoughts. Go ahead. Live your life by design.

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