Three "G's" Worth Tattooing On Your Heart
It's January and everybody's promising a program that will make this year amazing. Some have merit; others are money-making tactics. There are three "G's", however, that will absolutely impact how you finish 2025 -- and years beyond!
Three key attitudes: gratitude, grit, and a generational perspective shape us and others far more than is evident at first glance.
- Developing an attitude of gratitude can significantly enhance resilience and grace.
- Embracing grit means choosing to act decisively rather than remaining passive and living like a couch potato.
- Thinking generationally encourages selflessness and cultivates deep thinkers.
- A perspective of gratitude combats feelings of entitlement that are prevalent in society.
- Living intentionally is crucial; no one drifts into success or maturity without effort.
Without intentionally practicing these three attitudes, we'll default to cynicism, selfishness, victim thinking, laziness, and an entire stew of destructive traits.
But by integrating these three attitudes into our daily lives, we can create a more meaningful existence and positively influence those around us.
Empower yourself and your family to engage fully in God’s grand story. Subscribe to Hi(Impact) at Stephanie Presents for insights, encouragement, and practical resources!
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Transcript
If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.
Stephanie Smith:Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.
Stephanie Smith:If you're a parent, you also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.
Stephanie Smith:Let's get started.
Speaker B:Welcome back to the Lives Kids Podcast.
Speaker B: ill be the middle of January,: Speaker B:And maybe you are one of those people who pick a word of the year, a theme for the year, and maybe you're not.
Speaker B:Maybe you're like, oh, I've tried that before and it never works.
Speaker B:Or maybe you've never tried that before.
Speaker B:Well, I want to propose to you that there are three words.
Speaker B:Actually, they're more like three attitudes that can make all the difference as you go through this year.
Speaker B: ning to this and It's July of: Speaker B:This is still relevant.
Speaker B:This is one of those evergreen episodes, because what we're going to talk about here over the next few minutes applies at any time for any person, for any stage of life.
Speaker B:What are three words, three attitudes that can truly make a difference in your life?
Speaker B:Now, maybe it's the middle of January and you're listening to this when this initially airs, or right around this time of the year, and you are kind of fed up with all of the ads that come out in January about do this exercise program, try this mindset application, read this book, set these goals, and it will transform your life.
Speaker B:Now, let me say I don't want to throw all of those under the bus because I think there's tremendous value in a, in using a new month of the, the first month of a new year and to be able to examine our life and to be intentional about our life.
Speaker B:It's one of the things you're going to hear me come back to over and over again is the, the importance of living our lives intentionally.
Speaker B:Because here's the truth.
Speaker B:Nobody drifts to success, nobody drifts to maturity.
Speaker B:Nobody drifts and just finds their way haplessly into being a person of good character, success, maturity, effectiveness, you name it.
Speaker B:It only happens with intentionality.
Speaker B:Now, it's true that we don't control 100% of the outcomes of our life when it comes to situations.
Speaker B:But intentionality is one of those things that makes a big difference.
Speaker B:But that's not one of the words that I'm going to propose to you.
Speaker B:Now, I will tell you this.
Speaker B:The first word that I propose, you might tend to go, oh, yeah, whatever.
Speaker B:You know, that sounds like one of those words, like a mission statement that an organization crafts and then they stick it in a plaque and it gets all dusty somewhere hanging on the back wall.
Speaker B:Because it doesn't really mean anything in terms of how the organization conducts itself.
Speaker B:Well, that can be how people approach this first word.
Speaker B:But just because some people just kind of throw it out there without making it relevant doesn't diminish the impact of truly living this first word out.
Speaker B:And the second one, well, maybe you've heard of it and maybe it'll surprise you and maybe it won't, but I bet the third one, well, so stick around for all three.
Speaker B:And that first word for the year.
Speaker B:To have the attitude, the perspective, the mindset of gratitude, of living with gratefulness, with appreciation, not just focusing on what we don't have, what we.
Speaker B:What we don't get, what's happened to us in.
Speaker B:In the past that we think is unfair and we're still holding onto and things that we haven't resolved because we've determined that they're just saying we're just not going to be grateful for.
Speaker B:And I am not suggesting in any way that we should be grateful for trauma and pain and terrible things that happen to us.
Speaker B:That's not it.
Speaker B:But rather to say that we are a resilient creature that God has designed who have the capacity to choose to move forward with gratitude for what we can become, for who we can be, for what we can yet achieve, regardless of what has happened to us in the past, whether that is because we have endured things because of somebody else's flaws and.
Speaker B:And mistakes and nonsense, or sometimes, and oftentimes this is the harder thing.
Speaker B:And that is when it's ourselves that have brought things on ourselves.
Speaker B:You see, one of the benefits of having this attitude of gratitude is that it causes us to become people of resilience and people of grace.
Speaker B:When I approach life with this attitude of thankfulness and appreciation, I become more inclined to respond to others with grace.
Speaker B:Because the opposite of gratitude is entitlement.
Speaker B:And have we seen enough of that in our world?
Speaker B:I mean, I certainly have.
Speaker B:And we're either going to have one of those two attitudes.
Speaker B:We're either going to intentionally cultivate an attitude of gratitude, or we will default to an attitude of entitlement.
Speaker B:And entitlement and arrogance are not the same thing.
Speaker B:We can have a very sweet exterior, but we can still have an attitude of entitlement that we hide underneath that sweet exterior.
Speaker B:We might even become blind to how entitled we think we are without even realizing it.
Speaker B:You know, one of the ways that we can assess, am I really living with this perspective and attitude of gratitude, or am I being a little bit more motivated or a lot more motivated by an entitlement mentality than I would like?
Speaker B:Well, one of the ways that we can measure that is how do we respond to life's interruptions?
Speaker B:How do we respond when things don't go the way that we think that they should or the way that they had planned?
Speaker B:And these might be little interruptions like the toddler who spills their milk all over the floor just as you are getting ready to walk out the door after you've gone through all the hassle and headache of getting them and, and maybe one or two siblings ready to head out the door.
Speaker B:But it can also be the much bigger things in life.
Speaker B:You know, as I record this, there are devastating wildfires that are occurring in the state of California.
Speaker B:I have family members who live in those, in some of those areas.
Speaker B:And while they are not currently being impacted directly by those fires, they are going to be impacted.
Speaker B:All of us will end up being impacted in some respect or another because of the extent of that devastation.
Speaker B:Last fall, I served with Samaritan's Purse in Georgia as a result of the devastating and historic floods that, and.
Speaker B:And tornadoes and storms that went through the, the south and the Southeast there.
Speaker B:And we want to live with these attitudes of gratitude because sometimes life hands us interruptions that are a whole lot bigger than having a toddler who spills their.
Speaker B:Their drink or somebody who cuts us off on the highway or the crabby clerk at the store, you know, who messes up our order and we have to stand in line, then we're late, you, 15 minutes and blah, blah, blah, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker B:Another discovery that I have made throughout my life is that when we have an attitude of gratitude and we're intentional to cultivate that, it also makes us people of greater resilience.
Speaker B:You know, as a species, we.
Speaker B:We are this remarkable blend of both tremendous frailty, we're very vulnerable, and yet we are astoundingly resilient as well.
Speaker B:And resilience is not just, oh, I'm just going to plow through and, and where we're hiding things or we're not dealing with things, and, and then eventually, you know, they catch up to us.
Speaker B:But resilience is being able to come back from those interruptions or those devastating impacts that, that life can hand to us as those circumstances, those situations, and being able to Come back with gratitude, with grace, with hope, with a commitment to living a life of meaning and significance.
Speaker B:So practice gratitude now.
Speaker B:There's no shortage of, of ways that you can just find online to make this real and relevant and applicable in your life.
Speaker B:For myself, what I've been doing now for.
Speaker B:I don't actually know when I started this.
Speaker B:I'd have to go back and look at the date.
Speaker B:But I just have a very simple gratitude journal now.
Speaker B:Journal can scare some people and it's exciting to other people.
Speaker B:Personally, I have found I like buying journals a whole lot more than I like filling them out.
Speaker B:So every year I have to say, no, no, no, you can't keep buying journal stuff unless you are really going to have a defined use for that.
Speaker B:And I'm actually going to use it.
Speaker B:But we're kind of getting off the sidetrack there.
Speaker B:But back to the whole journal thing.
Speaker B:I don't write long narratives about all the things that I'm grateful for.
Speaker B:Other people do that and it's awesome and it's great.
Speaker B:There's not a right and a wrong way here.
Speaker B:For myself, it's just a simple matter of generally it's like a line item and, and usually I will try every night to think of at least one thing that I can be grateful for that day that I can take the time to record.
Speaker B:And as I've done this long enough now, it's interesting to be able to go back and to see those things and say, oh, yes, I remember that.
Speaker B:And I am freshly reminded.
Speaker B:It's like I get a new faith hit.
Speaker B:I get a new dose of hope, of encouragement, of strength.
Speaker B:When I go back and I see the things in my past where God's faithfulness has showed up for me, where other people have shown me kindness and compassion and strength and encouragement, where I've just had something really great to.
Speaker B:To work out, not just for myself, but also on behalf of my family and friends and, and people that I love.
Speaker B:Okay, so that's the first word attitude of the year.
Speaker B:I'm going to suggest to you the second one.
Speaker B:And I didn't set out for it to all for all three of these to begin with the same letter.
Speaker B:It just happened to work out that way.
Speaker B:The second one is grit.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:You know, that word is is a word that kind of feels like when you say it the way the word is, it just feels gritty in your mouth to say the word grit.
Speaker B:Grit is not the word that just rolls off your tongue like velvet or it doesn't hop off your tongue like sunshine.
Speaker B:It kind of feels like it is in real life.
Speaker B:It kind of like you kind of gotta spit it out there a little bit like grit, because that's really what life is about when it comes to determination, to persistence, to saying, I won't give up.
Speaker B:I am going to keep going.
Speaker B:One of the hallmarks of people of grit is these are people of action.
Speaker B:Now, it's not automatically that somebody who is always active is a person of grit, because that is not the case.
Speaker B:Because you can have people who are active for a lot of different reasons, sometimes because they're kind of into drama or chaos or just bouncing from one thing to another.
Speaker B:But what you won't find is you won't find people of grit who remain passive and inactive for long periods of time.
Speaker B:To be certain, there is a difference between intentional waiting even when it's hard.
Speaker B:That's where grit kicks in.
Speaker B:Because sometimes it is much harder to wait and to not act than it is to act.
Speaker B:Anybody else been in a situation where it was so easy to smart off back to somebody and give somebody a verbal response to something, and then later you wish, oh, I wish I would have just not acted.
Speaker B:Yeah, sometimes we do need to say, it's not time for me to act.
Speaker B:I just need to wait.
Speaker B:But people of grit are not couch potatoes.
Speaker B:They are people who sometimes, yes, they're waiting, but overall action, not reaction.
Speaker B:But action is going to be a hallmark of their life.
Speaker B:And one of the byproducts of action is it builds an attitude of empowerment.
Speaker B:And a person of empowerment is a person who is going to be a person of grit.
Speaker B:You know, if we don't have attitudes of empowerment, then what we tend to default into is to have a position of being victims of being oppressed.
Speaker B:Certainly it is true that there are people who are oppressed and victimized in this world, Entire people groups for whom that is true.
Speaker B:But what I'm talking about here is for most of us, it is a mindset.
Speaker B:It's the attitude.
Speaker B:It's the perspective that we show up with every day in our situations and in our everyday life.
Speaker B:And just like when people do not choose to have an attitude of gratitude, they will by default.
Speaker B:It doesn't require any intentionality.
Speaker B:It will happen by default that if we do not cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we will become increasingly bitter or cynical or sarcastic or resentful.
Speaker B:We will not become people of grace, and we will even lose our resilience.
Speaker B:In the same way, people who do not practice grit, like it's hard.
Speaker B:Get up, pull on your big girl boots, pull on your big boy boots and go deal with what needs to be done.
Speaker B:If that is the equivalent emotionally or relationally or physically even of mucking out the barn.
Speaker B:And for some people are like, what is mucking out the barn?
Speaker B:Well, I grew up in a farm, so mucking out a barn means that you get a shovel or a rake or a pitchfork and you clean up all of the animal poop, manure, any of the straw that has been trodden into the mud, and anything else that has found its way all over the floor of the barn and you clean it out.
Speaker B:That requires grit.
Speaker B:Because the truth is, life sometimes dumps on us, dumps around us, and somebody's got to go clean up the mess.
Speaker B:And that takes grit.
Speaker B:But again, we want to be people of action who live with an empowered mindset, because by default, if we don't do this, we will become people who approach life with a poor me, I'm a victim, I'm helpless.
Speaker B:I'm disempowered.
Speaker B:I can't do anything to affect this situation.
Speaker B:I'm just dumb, I'm just stupid, I'm just inept or just whatever.
Speaker B:Or we can also become people who are lazy and we cover it up with other more socially appropriate words.
Speaker B:Or in Christianity, sometimes we have the equivalent of what I call spiritually correct language.
Speaker B:Oh, I'm.
Speaker B:I'm just waiting on God to be certain.
Speaker B:There is such a thing as waiting on God.
Speaker B:But that can become a cover for not acting, for living with a helpless mindset.
Speaker B:As women especially, sometimes we can not use the agency that God has given us because we hide behind the idea of male leadership.
Speaker B:Now, I'm not going to get off into a big discussion on that, but that is one of the things that I have seen happen.
Speaker B:And a woman can say, oh, I'm just being submissive, when in fact she's being lazy.
Speaker B:She's having a helpless, disempowered mindset because she's afraid of dealing with the situation that's in front of her.
Speaker B:So we want to be people of grit.
Speaker B:We stick to it.
Speaker B:We get the job done.
Speaker B:We don't quit.
Speaker B:We keep on keeping on.
Speaker B:There's a verse in Galatians that tells us to not grow weary in doing well, for we will reap in due season if we do not give up, if we don't faint.
Speaker B:And that is all about grit.
Speaker B:Now, the last word might be the one that surprises you, but I want to challenge you to really think about this word and to ponder it and to assess how might this impact how you show up especially, but not only as a parent.
Speaker B:And that is the word generationally now as a much longer word than gratitude or regret.
Speaker B:And we don't typically go around talking about generationally, but what I mean by that is that you approach life and you think and you act thinking in terms of the generational impact that you're going to have, because you're going to have one.
Speaker B:It's not a matter of if.
Speaker B:It's just going to be what kind of generational impact will you have?
Speaker B:Now, I know that sometimes that we can feel like we hardly have any impact just in the lives that, that are around us, much less think in terms of, oh, I'm, I'm going to impact generations to come.
Speaker B:I mean, who am I?
Speaker B:I, I don't have this kind of position or, I mean, only a few people might do that, but, but not me.
Speaker B:But every one of you have an impact that truly is generational.
Speaker B:And again, it will either be for good or bad, or it might be for a combination of those things.
Speaker B:You see, when we think generationally, the byproduct of this is that we are going to reduce our selfishness.
Speaker B:We will become selfless people because we're not just going to think in terms of what's good for me and my life, but we're going to think about what's good, good for others.
Speaker B:How is this mindset, how are these decisions that I am making?
Speaker B:How is my character, how is my maturity going to impact those who are coming after me?
Speaker B:Now, of course, this applies especially to parents who are raising kids.
Speaker B:But don't think that it doesn't apply to you if you're not a parent.
Speaker B:Maybe you've already raised your kids.
Speaker B:Maybe you are waiting to have children.
Speaker B:Maybe you have no desire to ever have children.
Speaker B:It's not just our children that we impact generationally because we really do have this, this broader impact.
Speaker B:It is also the culture that we are, that we are leaving to future generations.
Speaker B:So it's not just in terms of our lineage.
Speaker B:It's in terms of the culture and the communities that we are creating that will impact the generations to come.
Speaker B:Another byproduct of another advantage of living and thinking generationally is that we become people of more thoughtfulness.
Speaker B:We stop, we think, we ponder through things a little bit more.
Speaker B:It's not just that rat a tat tat kind of thinking that we has come with our technology these days.
Speaker B:It is the kind of thinking that that causes us to stop, to meditate, to consider.
Speaker B:Now, that doesn't mean that you've got to, you know, spend an hour in meditation every day thinking about every last decision that you make.
Speaker B:And how is this going to impact three generations?
Speaker B:I'm not talking about being, you know, weird with it, but what I'm talking about is when we think in terms of, you know, let's say for a parent, how is my attitude today shaping the children in my home?
Speaker B:Maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and I am just grouchy, and I just feel like being a grouch.
Speaker B:So I'm just going to be a grouch.
Speaker B:And maybe we're not doing anything that's terribly wrong, but we're just walking around with kind of a sour attitude that has an impact.
Speaker B:You know, one of the most significant forming elements in a child's life is the environment that they grow up in.
Speaker B:It's not just about the activities that they're a part of.
Speaker B:It's not just about their academics.
Speaker B:It is about the.
Speaker B:The emotional, the mental, the spiritual environment that they grow up in.
Speaker B:And I'm going to talk about that more in.
Speaker B:In a future podcast episode, because this is where, especially as Christians, we have to be very mindful that if we're trying to teach our children the correct theological beliefs, but at the same time, they're experiencing a home environment that's just bland.
Speaker B:It's boring.
Speaker B:It's kind of an entitlement mentality that everybody's walking around with.
Speaker B:It's not filled with grit and gratitude.
Speaker B:It's not filled with people who.
Speaker B:Who are selfless and think generationally well, that will have a significant impact on what that child decides to do with those theological beliefs.
Speaker B:So thinking generationally on a day where I might just rather feel like a grump and be grouchy all day will help me to have the grit to say, you know what?
Speaker B:Maybe that's just how I feel.
Speaker B:But I have agency because I'm a person of grit.
Speaker B:I'm a person of action.
Speaker B:I can live with an empowered mindset, so I can decide, you know, today I'm going to be really intentional about living with an attitude of gratitude.
Speaker B:So these three really do work together.
Speaker B:They help us to think less of ourselves, not in a, you know, identity kind of way, but in a we're not going to be selfish kind of way.
Speaker B:They help us to build an attitude of empowerment, and we are people of action.
Speaker B:They help us to become people who are filled with grace with compassion for others, we become more resilient and we become people of greater thought.
Speaker B:And couldn't the world use people who took the time to stop and think things through a little bit more before they made decisions or, or said certain things or took on different positions?
Speaker B:I think we would all cheer for that.
Speaker B:Well, that's going to wrap us up for today.
Speaker B:So I challenge you to take those three words and don't just let them become, you know, some words that you write down and then you stick on a dry erase board or, or you, you jot a note down and then they don't mean anything.
Speaker B:Have those words mean something to you.
Speaker B:Now, I do encourage you put them up in visual places where you will see them, because you can hear this today and have the greatest intention.
Speaker B:But if you don't act on this, then probably within just a matter of hours or days, the thought might leave you.
Speaker B:It doesn't take long to just write down three words.
Speaker B:Gratitude, grit, and generationally.
Speaker B:Or you can shorten it and just say generations.
Speaker B:Write those down in more than one place.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to be anything fancy so that you are constantly reminded to come back to those and use those as a metric for how you are showing up in everyday life.
Speaker B:If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe on the YouTube channel, subscribe on your podcast player Apple, and visit the website Stephanie presents dot com.
Speaker B:You can see there the speaking engagements that I offer as well as other resources.
Speaker B:And remember this, my friend, you have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal and irreplaceable.
Speaker B:I'll see you next time.
Stephanie Smith:Thank you for listening.
Stephanie Smith:Visit the website stephaniepresents.com and sign up for High Impact to join the mission of building spiritually strong, emotionally healthy and relationally smart women and families.
Stephanie Smith:You can also book Stephanie to speak at your event and check out additional resources.
Stephanie Smith:Together we can invite and equip generations to engage fully in God's grand story.
