Your Joyful Order With Leslie Martinez
Ever wish you had your own personal cheerleader or coach in your ear, whispering encouraging words? Telling you how to kick butt in life, plus showing you how to get there? That’s exactly what you’ll get when you tune into Your Joyful Order Podcast. Each week you’ll get a mixture of preaching and teaching from your host Leslie Martinez who is a Certified Life Coach, Business Owner, Wife and Mom. Listen along for some entertaining real talk about life, business and relationships. Leslie wants to help you to reach your goals and motivate you to live out your God given purpose, by bringing you insightful knowledge, resources and sharing some tips and tricks to take action. No topic is off the table here, just know that faith will always be the foundation of our conversations and an occasional kick in the butt might come in the most loving way! Get ready to take your life to the next level and learn how to chase joy!
Your Joyful Order With Leslie Martinez
#80 Embracing Life's Pauses: Navigating Setbacks & Finding Purpose While You Wait
Ever felt stuck and wondered if there’s a purpose in those moments of stillness? Imagine having your dreams halted by unexpected life events—health issues, financial setbacks, or a global pandemic. I’ve been there too, and in our 80th episode of the Joyful Order podcast, I open up about my personal journey through these challenges. You’ll hear about my struggles with COVID-19, the impact on my goals, and how I’ve navigated these turbulent waters. I’m also thrilled to give you an exclusive sneak peek into my latest project that only you my special listeners get to hear about first!
I'll share how trusting in God’s plan and embracing these pauses has deepened my understanding of scripture and allowed me to embark on meaningful projects. This episode will inspire you to recognize these interruptions as opportunities to learn new skills and prepare for future success. Discover the power of consistent effort and adaptation, and learn how maintaining authenticity and faith can lead to genuine success. Join us in celebrating this milestone 80th episode as we look forward to many more inspiring episodes together.
This episode ends our 4th season! We will be back in fall of 2024 as we launch season 5 of the podcast!
Connect with Leslie:
Follow on IG: @yourjoyfulorderstyle
Website: https://www.yourjoyfulorder.com/
Email: lmartinez@yourjoyfulorder.com
to schedule- Speaking Events, Interviews or Life Coaching Sessions
Shop my SOAP the Gospels Journal on Shopify:
https://shopjoyfulorder.com/
Listen to this Episode on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXoAYIM2mfclNtYiaOzIUw
Shop my Journal (Gratitude, Goals & Prayer Journal) on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/09Djvaw
Book a FREE 30 Minute Discovery Coaching Call: https://tidycal.com/joyfulordermedia/30-minute-meeting
Hey everyone, I'm Leslie Martinez and you're listening to your Joyful Order podcast. Each week I will bring you joyful stories that will motivate and inspire you and, at the same time, bring order to your everyday life. Let's just say the show will be a mixture of preaching and teaching, with a kick of motivation from your girl here. Welcome to your joyful order podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey friend, welcome back to the 80th episode of your joyful order podcast. Y'all, I can't believe we've made it to 80 episodes. We had so many ups and downs in getting here, but I am so proud to have persevered to get to 80 episodes. So thank you, thank you, thank you and just a huge thank you to you, the listener that hits play on this episode weekend and week out. I do my best to bring you content that will bring you joy and order to your everyday life and I hope to make you laugh. I hope to make you laugh, I hope to bring you joy and I hope to bring you wisdom that just inspires you and wants you to just keep going. At the end of the day, my podcast was created simply out of obedience to God. He put a fire in my heart to do this as a ministry, to serve you, to just bring you wisdom and just good things that will help you to elevate not just your walk with God, but elevate your life and bring some joy into your everyday life. So thank you for being here on this 80th episode. And on this episode I wanted to share a little bit about some personal challenges that I've been having and I think it will bring some light to maybe some challenges that you might be having, particularly when it comes to chasing your goals or really trying to chase after those dreams that God put in your heart. I am certain that at one point or another, life just got in your way of the goals or the plan that you had. Right. Things happen. We have health challenges, financial challenges, relationship challenges. Just dealing with life in itself, it sometimes has its unexpected challenges that can halt our progress, our plan, our path, and then oftentimes we just get defeated. Well, in this episode I want to just kind of give you some different outlooks and different perspectives on what to do when life presses pause on your goals or your plan, because it happens to all of us, it happens to the best of us, no matter how well prepared you are, how well thought of a plan that you have. Life just happens. And I think that we could really reflect back and just look at COVID, the pandemic that hit. I mean talk about putting pause on your goals or your plans, and life just happens right Things that are completely out of our control. A pandemic was completely out of your control, out of my control. The pandemic actually impacted this podcast from launching. It was supposed to launch a lot sooner than it did, but the pandemic happened. And then my husband and I actually got COVID right. When the recording of this podcast was supposed to happen, I got what you want to call long COVID, or I had this like onset cough that lasted for months and life just happened.
Speaker 2:So what happens when life presses pause on your goals? The first thing that you want to understand is just understanding the pause in itself. Those challenges can completely halt our progress and, like I said before, sometimes you know it's a worldwide pandemic. You know it's a worldwide pandemic. It can be health issues, it can be family responsibilities, financial challenges, relationship challenges. All of these are common experiences that can just pause our goals or our plan. More recently, I had a pause on a huge goal that I was aiming and it was frustrating. I will be completely honest. It has been completely frustrating. Life got in the way and then I had just thought that I had gotten to the point where I was done.
Speaker 2:I've been working on something new and I'm going to give you, my podcast audience, a special insight into what I have been working on, and I'm sharing this with you one because you're my insiders the real, true people, are the ones that press play on this episode. So I'm giving you exclusive access to knowing what my next moves are, and I don't put this out on social media a lot. I am very wary about sharing my goals with people because oftentimes I don't know when these goals are going to be launched or sometimes I don't know. I'm just very, very diligent about who I share them with. But something in my heart, coming up with this episode, felt that it would be good for me to share with you what I've been working on and that way I can tie this into this podcast. Here you get just a better transparency of me, first off and second, a better transparency so that you can relate my challenges and my struggles with what you're going through and how I work through these challenges and these pauses, so to say, of my goals and my plans.
Speaker 2:Now it's probably no surprise that I would be working on a new journal. I have a huge goal to release a line of journals for you, the listeners and so many other people to use as a resource to grow as a person, to grow as a follower of Jesus, and just so much more. This is what God has put on my heart to create resources for women, for men, for young adults, for children, that will help to grow them and shape them into the person that God called them to be. Now I already have a journal that is released or that has been released. So, again, like I said, it's probably no surprise to you. It's no surprise that your girl would be working on more journals.
Speaker 2:Now, my first journal that I released, as many of you know, I used Amazon KDP, self-publishing, and I'm going to be completely honest, it did not go as I wanted it to go. I used that kind of as a testing platform to see one, am I able to do this on my own? And two, is Amazon the platform that I want to do and is there an audience for this? I answered yes to all of these, but it didn't go the way that I wanted to, because working with Amazon KDP- was not the best.
Speaker 2:It was very limited on what I wanted to put out but, like I said, the journal that I put out was basically a tester journal. Can I do this? Can I put this out? I have a desire in my heart to create a priceless, gorgeous, well-thought, high quality journal for you, the woman that needs to journal, that needs prompts, that needs a way to study the Bible in a way that's just super easy. And I sought out really, really truly. I believe this is all just ordained, divine God working his magic to bring me someone to help me.
Speaker 2:I enrolled in something called print school and it is this like mastermind course of someone who has basically printed several journals, several planners, and has created the school to help other women just like me to create paper products.
Speaker 2:I did invest in this course so that I can learn to do this on my own and bring you high quality paper products, and I've been working through since January. I enrolled in this in January and I had a goal of having my journal, my sample, my first draft, basically done by the end of March, send it out to printers. I am working with printers oversee and it is a timely process, you know, going back and forth and working on this. Well, I sent my copy my master copy, what you would call to the woman that I'm working with. Her name is Polly, and I sent her the master copy and I asked for her input to look at it. You know, give me some feedback before I work with the printer to get my sample created. I sent it to her and she gave me some great feedback, and one of the things that she gave- me as far as feedback is, she gave me a brilliant idea.
Speaker 2:So not only did she give me feedback of like, oh, I would adjust your margins and you, and maybe you could put it on two pages rather than one, and just minor details. But then she gave me a brilliant idea. She was like Leslie, why don't you add an entire new page for each section of the journal that you're working on, and without giving you too much of what I'm working on? Um, this is something that requires a lot more work and effort in my part. And, like here, I thought I was almost done right. I was like I'm just going to ask her to kind of give her final look, her final glance. Let me tweak the little things that she was giving me feedback on. But then her feedback to give me a whole new idea of and this doesn't change the context or anything, it is enhancing it so much more. And so now I'm like, okay, let me do this, let me add to it and it is requiring some extensive research just diving into the Bible, let's just put that I am creating a Bible study type of journal. I'm also releasing another type of journal and I'm not going to give too much away the feedback that she gave me. It's changing the course of what this journal is going to look like. It paused me. It paused me to make it better. So I'm going back to the table and I'm adding a ton more stuff to improve my project. So, rather than feeling frustrated, I'm taking my time to do this well, taking her input to heart, and I'm learning to not rush a goal just because I set a date to it.
Speaker 2:And this is hard for me understanding the pause, and not to mention, let's throw in the fact that life has been happening along with this and there's been some slight hiccups in life that have also been distracting me from really putting my like 100% effort into this. For those that may not know, my husband and I do photography on the side and we just so happen to be in the midst of what we call grad season right now, where we have several grad graduation shoots that we were booking, and to do that, you know, we have to go through thousands of photos to give our clients their galleries, and that has kind of consumed much of my time recently. And then we just had life. There were things that we had to deal with with my son, with his college, other things that have come up in laws with health, you know hiccups and been distracted by that rather than focusing everything on creating this new journal. Now, understanding the pause, I am understanding that I cannot be frustrated with it. I can't rush it. I have to sit where I'm at and be okay. Yes, my goal date was to have my sample set in April. If you're listening right now, this is end of May and I still haven't finished. I haven't completed adding those extra pages to make it that much more better.
Speaker 2:Now I sit and remind you that understanding the pause is probably the biggest and most challenging thing to kind of get through. When working through a goal, you don't want to understand why you're paused and if you're like that goal getter hustler that just wants to chase after things I used to be that mate like years ago and I have learned to slow down it drives my husband batty and he's probably, as he's editing this, he's probably going to laugh and he's going to say, yeah, because there's no time for a pause, there's no time, you just got to keep going, going, going. That's his mentality. He and I have very different mentalities when it comes to this stuff. Now God has had me pause for a reason because I had to sit with him.
Speaker 2:I have to completely understand the layout of what I am creating for you, the listeners, for you, the person that's going to pick up my journal and really read the content of it and learn from it. I have to understand it in a way to break it down for my people that are going to be buying it. And in order for me to do that, I have to sit and pause. I have to sit with the Bible. I have to sit with the gospels that God gave me to create this Bible study. And that's what I've been doing. I've been sitting. I've been sitting with Paul, I've been sitting with Matthew, with Mark, with Luke, really trying to understand and grasp their view of the Bible so that I can bring insightful wisdom to this journal that I am creating for someone who has never studied the Bible before. So I just got completely choked up right now.
Speaker 2:I hope that looking at pauses in life and on your goals, on your dreams, will just put you at the feet of Jesus during it, and that's where I'm finding myself right now in the pause is just sitting at his feet. And I want to share this verse with you, because this has been a verse that has been kind of pushing me through Ecclesiastes 3, 1. And it says there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. Pauses can be seen as part of God's plan and timing and I am trusting his pause in this journal because I know that once it is done and once the release of it comes, it's going to be in his timing and everything's just going to work out in the timing of when he wants it to come out. And I hope that, whatever goal it is that you are working on right now, that has been pause, that you can sit and you can determine.
Speaker 2:How am I? You know what? Why is there a pause? What is it? Is it just life getting in the way? Is there a lesson that I have to learn? Is there a character trait I need to build in this? Sit with the pause and understand it rather than try to get frustrated with it.
Speaker 2:Now, the next thing that we need to do, in kind of understanding why these pauses happen, is our reaction to the pause. We have to accept and reflect right here, and this is what I'm telling you to do. We have to sit and understand. Why don't fight it? Just understand. Why encourage self-reflection right here. Understand what. What is, what is the lesson here? God Pray, remember this verse right here, psalms 46.10. Be still and know that I am God. It is important to be still and trust God's plan during these times of uncertainty.
Speaker 2:Reacting out of frustration, out of anger, out of defeat that is what the enemy wants to happen. If God put a goal in your heart, a fire, a desire, and you're persevering towards it, you are working towards that goal, and all these distractions start to happen, don't you think that there's some like opposition that you're going to have to face in order to just like know that this is something, one that you want and something to to test your faith? The enemy will shake you up so hard to make you think that you are not meant to to do this goal or whatever, because it's something that God put in your heart. It's something that is going to help people, it is something that is going to bless people. It is something that is going to change people's relationship with God, and do you think the enemy wants it to happen? Of course not. So he is going to distract you in so many different ways You're going to get kicked sideways up, ways out, ways in ways You're going to be stretched beyond measure because he wants you to give up the goal. He wants you to give up and say you're not smart enough to do this. You can't do it on your own. You're not, you just can't do it. That's what he wants to get in your head. You're not worthy enough, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough, you're not capable enough. People aren't going to want to get this from you.
Speaker 2:Like everything that I'm telling you right now, the enemy has fed into my head one point or another of the last decade, of everything that God put in my heart to do. I've shared so many times how this podcast wasn't even going to be a thing, because I was like no, I'm not. I'm the last person that needs to have a microphone in her hand, her hand. And I know now that that was just the enemy's way of trying to. You know, come against me to not put this ministry, this message that God put in my heart, to share with you. And there are weeks that I look at the numbers and I do still feel defeated and I'm like that's how many people are downloading the podcast. You know how much work we put into this.
Speaker 2:But then I'm reminded it's just for the one, so I can react to these pauses and get angry and frustrated. But who's like? What good is that going to do anybody? But who's like? What good is that going to do anybody? It's not going to do anybody any good other than feed in to the lies that the enemy is telling me. And I'm not one to give into the enemy, like I'm not. I'm not the one that is going to not pursue something because I caved in to the battlefield in my mind. We have a constant battlefield in our mind of things that are going, all the doubts and insecurities that we have.
Speaker 2:But that's where I have to go heavy with God's word and remind myself who I am and whose I am and what he called me to do. And in this season, right now, he called me to focus on this journal and getting it out. And that's what I've been doing. And distractions have come yes, they have, but I'm going to persevere and I'm going to keep doing and working on it so that I can say God, look, I created what you put in my heart to help people grow closer to you. And I have to remind myself of that each and every day. Now, the next thing that we must do during the pause is we need to find purpose in the pause. During the pause is we need to find purpose in the pause. We have to grow and learn during this time. Pauses can be an opportunity for us to learn something new.
Speaker 2:Now, in this pause where I'm out with the journal, I am learning more about Matthew, mark, luke, john Paul than I ever have before, because this, this pause, is a really good pause. It's not because I got COVID, like the podcast, it's not because I'm sick, it's. It's none of that. I mean, there have been distractions that have been taking away, like the quality of time, or I actually I shouldn't say quality the quantity of time that I want to spend working on this journal. However, it's not taking away the time that I spend with God that I still make sure. If you listen to last week's episode of my morning routine, you know that I have non-negotiables and my morning time in the Bible is what has been helping me to have a better insight of what I am going to add in to these additional pages that I additional inserts into the journal, of giving you like a overview of the book of the gospels. It's just really allowing me to learn. So I'm finding purpose in the pause right here.
Speaker 2:For you, it may be an opportunity to learn a new skill that can allow your goal to level up. Maybe you're trying to launch a podcast. Maybe this time, right here, is time for you to dive in in creating content looking at laying out episodes, looking at how you're going to bring new guests, connecting with new guests. Maybe you're looking to launch a new business. Maybe this is the time where you are networking with other people in the same industry to help to develop the skills that you need and connections that you need to launch that new business that God put on your heart. There is so much to learn and do, even during the pause, the pause and I look at this verse and I want to share that here during um in in just kind of talking about finding purpose in the pause, and it comes from James one, two through four and the the.
Speaker 2:This is like one of my favorite verses that I come to often when I'm struggling, and in James 1, verse 2 through 4, it says consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Y'all, when it comes to perseverance, like I feel that I wear the crown because I I feel like I just keep going, keep going Like I'm. I feel like all these chains are on me, like people are trying to hold me back. The enemy is just like with this chain on me, holding me back and I'm just fighting, I'm just struggling and I'm just like I'm. I'm still going, I'm trekking through mud, I'm scraping my knees, I'm fighting the opposition so much because there is so much inside of me that wants to quit, so much inside of me wants to quit, so much inside of me wants to quit, quit the podcast, quit the journals, quit. Like, quit all of this. Just go back to the classroom and teach full-time, because it's what I know, it's what's easy, and all this stuff of creating a podcast, doing journals, becoming a life coach, like it's so hard and hard as in trying to have a steady income, hard as in trying to create content that you just don't know if it's going to work and it messes with your self-esteem. I'm not going to lie, but I consider it pure joy and it produces perseverance and my perseverance keeps going and going and going and knowing that the breakthrough is just around the corner, and that's what keeps me finding purpose in the pause.
Speaker 2:Next, I want to talk to you about planning and preparing for the future. Kind of during this time of pausing, when life is just really coming at you Now, if you are not able to particularly work on your goal, this is where you can sit and say well, maybe I can plan, maybe maybe you already have a plan and you have a plan for your plan. If you're that person like me, I'm like look, I have plan A, b, c through Q and I've laid it all out. Well, maybe it's time to plan X, y and Z now. Maybe you don't have A through Z, maybe you're just on A right now. Well, let's look at what B and C looks like.
Speaker 2:This is where sometimes you might need to set new goals, also set realistic goals during the pause. And maybe right now your goal isn't realistic enough. That's why you're hot, that's why it's out of pause. Maybe it's not that life has gotten in its way. Maybe you know it's not that you're enhancing the goal. Maybe you know it's not that you're enhancing the goal. Maybe your goal just isn't really laid out well enough. Maybe your goal just really isn't a goal, it's just a pipe dream.
Speaker 2:This is where you have to sit back, kind of come back to the drawing board and say is my goal specific enough? I've talked about this many times. You need to write your goal out in the SMART goal formula. Smart goal is is it specific, is it measurable, is it attainable, is it realistic and is it timely? Go back and rewrite your goal using the SMART goal formula, because that is a true specific goal.
Speaker 2:My goal for the journal I had a specific goal of create the blank journal I'm not going to tell you the name the blank journal by a certain date, and that is like I had to create it, right. I had a goal to have it created and done by a certain date. After that goal was met, the next goal was going to be have the sample done of X print of external by the state, launch journal X on this state, like so forth and so forth. I make many goals for each one. I have all of those set set up already. Now the dates aren't lining up the way I want them to, so I have to kind of reassess the dates. However, my goal is specific. I have the product, I have a date and I know that the date probably is what wasn't attainable. And that's where I have to reevaluate and look and say, okay, what is within measurable like reality?
Speaker 2:And another thing to look at is do you have the habits to sustain the goal? Because in preparing for your future, you have to have habits that sustain where it is that you're trying to go On where it is that you are trying to go. Your habits to achieve this goal need conditioning, just like your muscles. If you want to get a six pack guess what? You probably need to get in the gym very frequently. You probably need to cut in the gym very frequently. You probably need to cut back on fatty foods. You probably need to get some cardio in. You have to keep working on that muscle to activate it.
Speaker 2:In order for you to create the habits to sustain your goal, you need to condition it. What does that mean? You need to get reps in. My husband and I always like kind of talk, this lingo. We say we just got to get more reps in. We got to get more reps this last grad season. This is the most clients that we've had in one grad season we had several clients and it was a good problem to have, for sure. It meant a lot of editing, a lot of you know creation of galleries and good Lord, a lot of photos to go through. Like I mean y'all, I probably looked at well over 5,000 photos and I'm not going to lie to create my art, clients, galleries. We're getting reps in and you know what. We've done grad sessions so many times that now, like I just told my husband after this last grad season that we did, I said I feel that this is our niche, that we did. I said I feel that this is our niche. I feel that we got a niche with grad pictures because they're just so good now, like it's just so easy for us to pose our grads. We know exactly like the lighting and when we're um, we've been at our local high school where our sons went and go. Our son graduated from last year and our current son is out right now and we just know the campus so good. We know where the light, the good light is, we know where we get the good poses and we know how to work with the campus and where we get the good quality shots and y'all, all it took is just getting reps in what. What are the habits that we had to create for that? We had to know and understand our environment, we had to learn and understand our clients and we had to just keep shooting. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to. We gotta keep shooting, we gotta keep practicing with our camera, we gotta keep getting out there and practicing and saying, okay, I understand my camera, I understand the tool that I have and I want to get it to work to my benefit. And you know what y'all? I'm gonna tell you a secret. This is like I'm exposing secrets here that I normally don't tell people, and I may or may not share this on social media We'll see but today I think we got and this is going to sound crazy to you, but if I have any fellow creators or photographers out there, you're you're going to know exactly what this meant to us.
Speaker 2:So we, we curate pictures and we give our clients, um, we're, we're very, very different types of photographers, because we give our clients their images and they pick the images that they want to edit. So we give them access to the entire gallery. And why do we do that? Because we have very high quality cameras that we use, that, if we have our settings right, there is very minimal editing that needs to be done on any of these pictures. Now we give our clients access to all the pictures and we tell them we want you to select the images that we edit for you, because one they're paying for them.
Speaker 2:And what if I pick a pose or a look of a client and for them they're like I don't like that picture of me, I don't like how my smile is, I don't like that side of my face. I don't like how my smile is. I don't like that side of my face, I don't like how my hair looks. It happens so many times to us. So that's why we let them pick the pictures, because we pick the pictures and then the clients were like oh well, yeah, those are good, but can you also edit this one and this one and this one for me, because those are the ones that we really like? So, rather than giving ourselves more work, we're working smarter, not harder. We're like you know what Look? We're going to give you all the pictures that we took, all the good pictures, mind you. We give them all the good pictures that we take and then we say look, pending on their package, this is the amount of edits that you have. You tell us what pictures you want us to edit for you.
Speaker 2:Well, today we woke up to an email from one of our grad clients that the parent responded to us and said we are so happy with every single picture that you captured and we don't need you to edit any pictures. Y'all do you know like the level of compliment as a photographer that that is, that they are asking for no edits of the pictures that we gave them. This is freaking insane. That means that we got every single setting of our cameras perfectly, in every single spot that we took pictures of, because we're created habits that allowed us to make sure that we're on point. We knew the environment, we learned where it was that we were working with, the conditions we were getting reps in of doing doing um photo sessions, making sure that we're out there using our camera. And then we got the best compliment today of a gallery delivered and the client said we don't need any edits like this is mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing. I sent I screenshot the email and I sent it to Steve and he was like no way like this. This is amazing.
Speaker 2:Now, I share that all with you in this, in talking about um planning and preparing, because we did go into this grad season with a different mindset. We planned it out strategically. We and before now, this client that also says she didn't need any edits also so happened to be our very last client of the season. So at this point we had gotten so many reps in before that by the time she got to us she had an hour session, but we got everything that we needed in probably less than an hour and we even went off location with her. So we started on campus and then we went to the field and we got the most amazing, amazing pictures of her on the field in her element, and we could not be more stoked about it. But we were getting the reps in. So planning and preparing for your goals is just huge, and I want to remind you of this Bible verse right here, proverbs 16, nine in their hearts, humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps and y'all. I cannot tell you how blessed we were with each and every one of our grad clients that we have this last season.
Speaker 2:I pray for our clients Like I do. I don't want crappy. You know um clients that come and they're like can you like Photoshop everything? Can you make me look 15 pounds lighter? And can you suck my face in and make my lips look bigger? And can you like, take off every single fly away of my hair? And the clients that come late and don't value your time and that complain about your pictures that you do like, no, I don't want those clients.
Speaker 2:We we've had those kinds of clients. We have, believe me, we have, um I've we've had clients that have literally asked us can you take the roll off of my stomach out, like? Can like the fat roll? Can you take that out? Like no, I'm sorry, we can't do that. And I've had clients that I have told them that we do not do any type of AI or altering of their natural beauty. And we've had clients like, kind of like not so much get upset, but they're like oh, you don't, we're not going to like, we're not plastic surgeons, we're not going to turn you into someone that you're not like. We're capturing your authentic beauty and if that is not what you want, then we're not the photographers for you.
Speaker 2:But I pray for my clients and I truly believe that God plans our course in that we plan for it, but it's all in God's timing and his steps. So I could not have prayed for better clients this year, and I know that that has so much to do because I made an effort to pray for each and every single one of them as I wrote their names down in our calendar. I was just like Lord, I just pray a special blessing and I pray a special blessing over them as I'm going through their pictures. You know how many times I cry going through these graduation pictures and some of these people like I met for the first time taking their photo and I get emotional looking through it because I'm just thinking of the emotions behind being a high school graduate and even as a parent and as a graduate, there's so much emotions going through that we planned for this, and then I can look on the flip side where there's been goals that I have not planned for, that did not go well and I was just like whoa, I need to go back to the drawing board and I need to sit and allow this to carry out in a more planned, thought out way is how to move forward with faith, and this is just taking small, tiny steps towards your goal. You may have this big, huge goal and you think that you're never going to get there, and I've talked about this time and time before. All it takes is one small step. What can you do today? That will be kind of like a catalyst move to move you forward.
Speaker 2:What does that look like? Does that look like maybe you want to launch a podcast? Does that mean just buying the microphone for your podcast? Does that mean maybe just signing up for the platform that's going to house your, your podcast, like Buzzsprout? Buzzsprout houses my podcast. If you guys want to learn more on how to launch your own podcast and how Buzzsprout can help you, just send me a DM or a message and say Buzzsprout and I will send you a link. A little commercial break there for Buzzsprout. However, what does that look like? Maybe it means signing up for like a coaching or a masterclass, like I did. I wanted to create my own line of journals and I wanted to create them in the way that I wanted to create something beautiful, something just that Amazon couldn't give me. So I signed up for a masterclass and now I'm working with somebody that has her own line of journals and I'm doing it the way that I want to do it.
Speaker 2:Maybe it looks like you know buying some equipment for your business. Maybe you want to be um, you know you want to launch like a baking business. So maybe you just need to go to like a baking wholesale or place and maybe buy some cookie sheets or some baking supplies that you need. Sometimes we just need one small catalyst move that'll get us there. And what is that catalyst move that will help you move forward? You want to start. Small will help you move forward. You want to start small. You want to take manageable steps that will help you to get back on track with your goal.
Speaker 2:So if you have a goal that has been sitting for a long time you just haven't even touched it in any way whatsoever, take like five minutes, sit down and make a list and say what catalyst move can I take in the next few days that will help me to get back on track and move forward? And maybe that catalyst move is just getting on your hands and knees and praying to God. Maybe that catalyst move is getting connected in a community group at your church so that you're surrounded with people faithful people that will pray for you. Maybe that catalyst move is just going and asking for prayer after church, or maybe that catalyst move is just going to church. You need to make a catalyst move that is going to put your faith into action, to move your goal forward. Give yourself patience and you must be gritty. You need to have some persistence and just keep going. But just look like sometimes you just need a small win. What does that small win look like for you? Because that small little win today will cattle, catapult you into just moving forward with the goal.
Speaker 2:Now let me just review briefly the main points that I touched upon in when life presses pause on your goal, and that is just understanding the pause, reacting to the pause how are you going to react to it? Finding purpose in the pause, planning and preparing for the future and moving forward with faith. And I just want to end with this verse that is always encouraging to me, and it's Isaiah 40, 31. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. I want to encourage you to draw strength from your faith as you move forward with your goal.
Speaker 2:Now, as we end this 80th episode, you, the listener, you got insight into something that is coming up and, as we actually have the last couple of years, we typically take a break during the summertime. So this 80th episode is our last episode of season four. Y'all, I can't believe. We've done four seasons. Four seasons, that's basically 20 seasons in episode 20, 40, 60, 80.
Speaker 2:We are ending the fourth season here with episode 80, and we will be launching back soon, probably in the fall, with season five, and I am hoping that by that time I will be launching some new product for you also. But I am going to take this time off the next few months to really go all in focus, 100% of my time, uh, to creating these journals that I am hoping to release this year to you and really spending some time sitting at Jesus's feet so that I can prepare my heart to bring you what you need to use this journal as a tool to help you to get closer to God. So thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for supporting the podcast all this time. I am hoping that when we come back that you're on fire for God that there's, and I'm hoping that I have a new fire and I really want to reevaluate how I use this platform also and the type of content that we bring. So I am hoping that season five just brings a fresh, new platform for you with new, new guests, new topics and just a new fire to bring joy in order to your everyday life.
Speaker 2:And, who knows, we might have some bonus episodes in between, because I'm not sure when we will relaunch. I think we just need a good break for now. But I might drop some bonus episode with some special guests, maybe, or I don't know, but I might drop some bonus episode with some special guests maybe, or I don't know. Maybe I'll save those special guests for the new season, but just stay tuned. Follow me on IG at your joyful order style so that you can stay tuned and stay connected. But until next time, my friend, I love you, thank you for your support and continue to chase joy.