Chunking Down

by:  Staci Stallings

This lesson is a great one for the holidays because let’s face it, we have overcrowded lives already, and then you add this HUGE amount of baking, buying, wrapping, decorating, packing, driving/flying, celebrating, and then cleaning up on top of it.  It can get to be WAY too much.

The essence of this lesson is very simple:  Don’t try to do a whole task, especially an overwhelming one, all at once.

Chunk it down.

What does that mean?

It means instead of trying to do ALL of the Christmas cards in one sitting, do 10 of them and then go do something else.  Rotating through 3 or 4 different tasks, for me, makes things go faster and I don’t get as frazzled.

I do this with my books.  Obviously you can’t write or edit a 400-page book in one sitting.  So I chunk it down.  I set a goal of say five written pages or 10 edited pages.  When that amount is done, I then have the option of doing a few more or going to do something else.

I often do this around the house too.  Instead of saying, “I’m going to clean the kitchen” when it is an absolute mess.  I say, “I’m going to put 25 things into the dishwasher.”  Often by the time I get to 25, there are only a few things left, and I can finish it with no trouble.  If there are a lot of things left, I do something else for a few minutes and then do 25 more things.”

This one lesson has kept me from going crazy because I don’t look at the overwhelmingness of what I’m doing–I do what I CAN do and come back later to do another little chunk.

So what do you have that is overwhelming?  Maybe it’s cleaning out a closet.  Do one shelf at a time instead of all of it.

Maybe it’s a school project, chunk it down in to smaller pieces and do one or two small pieces.  As you do a few smaller pieces, the whole thing will stop looking so overwhelming until the point when you just say, “I’m going to finish this” or to the point that finishing it looks doable.

Good luck chunking things down!  And I hope your holidays are happy and filled with peace and joy!

*~*

Look what’s on Free Kindle Today and Tomorrow…

Click here to get your FREE copy of Cowboy!

Life As Rocket Science, Part 6: Making Adjustments

by:  Staci Stallings

I have another friend who is also working on losing weight.  This one found a program that was really going well for her.  She was jazzed to be on it, and it was working.  Then suddenly one day she sent a chat message to the effect of… she had been too into the weight loss and had taken her eyes off God and so she was not going to the meeting… blah, blah, blah.

To which I said, “Wait. Wait. Wait.  Hold up a second.  You’re wanting to stop all of it, something that’s working, because you’ve seen issues with what you’ve been doing?”

Let me explain this thinking this way…

You are the pilot on a flight from the mainland to Hawaii.  You take off and you are flying.  Suddenly you realize that you are off course!  In the direction you are flying, you will MISS Hawaii and instead be in Japan!

What to do?  What to do?

Well, of course, you turn back around and go back where you started, right?

Oh.

Really?

You don’t turn around and go back?

What’s that?

You can make an adjustment?

Why, I believe you are right!  You can, in fact, make an adjustment and get back on course!

So if you’re doing your experiments and you realize you’ve gotten off course, make an adjustment!  If you are balancing your checkbook and miss a month, make the adjustment–do that month–and go on with life.  Don’t say, “Oh, forget it! I can’t do this anyway! I give up!”  Make an adjustment.

The good news is my friend did make an adjustment, put the program back in perspective and kept going.  The even better news is Hawaii (where she really wanted to be) is now on her radar screen!  Woohoo!

 

*~*

For Amazon Kindle Click here.

For BN Nook, Click here.

For More Info, click here.

Life As Rocket Science, Part 1

by:  Staci Stallings

Today we will turn our attention from the Sowers and the Seed to something equally fascinating and just as fundamental.

This idea sprang from a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine who has tried about everything she can think of to lose weight all to no avail.  This has been going on for years.  Our conversation started with her telling me that she had decided she was a failure, that nothing worked, and that she was just tired of it all.

I could understand and relate.

However, instead of following that with, “That’s it. I’m just going to give up.”  She came back with.  “I don’t know.  Yesterday, I worked on a menu for like 3 hours…”

It occurred to me, and I told her, that far from being a failure, she had a great amount of courage!  After all of those attempts, after all of this time, she’s STILL searching for the answer.

Then I related the story about Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb.  Now I don’t know the exact details of the story, so I’ll tell you what I know.  Thomas Edison decided to harness electricity into something that was useable–a light bulb.  But at the time, no one had ever seen a light bulb or imagined a light bulb.  He had nothing to go on other than the belief that he could make a light bulb.

So he started, and he failed.  And he failed.  And he failed.  And he failed.

ONE THOUSAND times, he failed.

But is Thomas Edison remembered as a failure?

Of course not.  Why?

I submit it is not only because he was eventually a success.  Most of all, it was because he was willing to keep trying!

I told my friend that what she’s been doing her whole life is experimenting, and she’s simply found a lot of things that don’t work.

However, the truth is, she has also found some things that do work as well.

The problem is, she is allowing the don’t work experiments to cloud her vision to those things that do work.

So let’s say Thomas Edison is working, and he’s had five consecutive “don’t works.”  What does he do?  One of two things:  Either, he imagines something completely new that he hasn’t tried before, OR he fashions some of the “almost workeds” together to see if there’s a different combination he hasn’t tried yet that will work.

As I told my friend, I did and tried and worked for 16 years to get my books in the hands of readers.  I did “experiments” on the Internet, in person, in bookstores, with my blog, in groups, etc.  I tried everything I could think to do. Some things were more successful than others.  Some things were outright disasters.

From the more successful things, I gleaned information that I could cobble together to try something else new.  From the outright disasters, I learned it was not smart to go down that road again.

But the truth is, in EVERY situation, I learned–what worked, what worked for me, what not to do, what I could tweak and try again.

As I told my friend, “That’s all of life!  Experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t!”

So in the next couple of days, we are going to explore this idea and see what new things we can learn from it.  I think that you too will begin to see that Life really might be like rocket science, but in a really cool, adventure kind of way!

*~*

Special SALE!

For the month of September Only,

Amazon is featuring

DEEP IN THE HEART

in their 100 books for $3.99 or less sale!

Get your copy today for only $2.99…

That’s almost $5 off the regular price!

Click here to get this extra-special offer!

Who’s Got the Remote?

By: Staci Stallings

I live with three children.  Okay.  They live with me, but sometimes it feels the other way around.  My temperament likes to sit and write and read and think.  That doesn’t always mesh with theirs.

The thing that drives me the craziest is the fighting.  True story:  My sister and I did not fight at home.  We honestly didn’t.  We had one fight that we both remember which resulted in her stomping out of the room and slamming the door.  That was it.

Somehow that cool, levelheadedness did not make the generation jump especially with my youngest two.

Now maybe I’m being too hard on them.  Maybe they are just immature in their social skills but they fight more than any two people I’ve ever been around on a long-term basis.

And they fight over goofy stuff that makes no difference at all.  In fact, sometimes I think they fight just to fight!

That’s why when I heard something today it clicked.  It wasn’t a long something, but it was profound.  It was about our emotional state and how when we live and make decisions from an emotional state, we are literally handing over the remote of our reactions to someone else.

Have you ever sat down to watch television and someone else had the remote?  Then you probably can relate to this lesson.

No matter what you want to watch, if you don’t have the remote, they will annoy you.  Guaranteed.

At commercial, you may want to flip over and see something else–the score of the game or how that flambe is turning out on the cooking channel.  They don’t change the channel.  Or worse, they change it to something else–boxing or baseball.  Or worse, the football game that happened six years ago.

This is exactly what happens when you choose to operate solely from your emotions.  Everyone else can push your buttons at will.

I believe this is what is happening with my kids.  They know how to push each others’ buttons.  It might be something as simple as an eye-roll or a shake of the head and off we go.  They magnify through their emotions the action of the other person.  They take the action, think the worst thing possible, and the fight starts.

Are you like that?  Do you live through your emotions?  Can someone set you off just by ignoring you or not doing what you want them to do?  Maybe it’s time to take a little emotional check and take back the remote control.

When someone does something you don’t like, remember YOU have the choice how to react.  YOU get to decide how to respond.  YOU do.  Not them.

Don’t let someone else hold the remote control of your state, or you will be in for a very long and miserable time. In fact, better than you holding the remote, why don’t you give it to God?  let Him decide how to respond.  Let Him filter the situation through His Love and show you what to do about it.

I’m telling you, that is a WHOLE lot better than being yanked around at the whims of others or at the white-knuckled grip of yourself.

So who’s holding the remote control of you life?

________________________

“I just absolutely loved this book… I am a sucker for Cowboy’s in Wrangler jeans and boots”

COWBOY by: Staci Stallings

Now just $2.99 Cents on Kindle & Nook!

http://ow.ly/79VkM

Get your copy today!

Take it to the Next Level

By:  Staci Stallings

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Dr. Lee A. Simpson information I’ve been posting and something occurred to me the other day.  He’s missing a step!

Not a step in the process necessarily but a step at the end.  Because after you’ve started where you are, used what you had, and maximized that state, then what?

Well, let’s take my pumpkin pie example.

I started where I was… pretty much clueless how to make a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin and not terribly excited about learning.  However, my daughter wanted to.  So we used what we had–a downloaded set of instructions from the Internet, every pan, bowl, and bit of counter space in my kitchen, and the pie crust I bought at the store.  And we maximized our state and made a pumpkin pie.

Very good.  But looking beyond that initial pie, there is more to the story!

You see, we didn’t stop there, and neither should you.  If you stop after your first attempt, you will never get good at anything.  The last step is, now that you’re on a new level of understanding and skill, you analyze what you did–what worked, what didn’t.  Then you gather new information, refine your process and start over at the next level.

So we looked at what worked–the pie was terrific.  What didn’t–took WAY too long (7 1/2 hours!) and made way too big of a mess.  We share our result–I called my mom and told her the story.  She shared how she used to make pumpkins in the oven.  We took that advice and refined our process.

Now we were at the NEXT LEVEL.  We were no longer pumpkin pie neophytes!

We started over.  We started where we were with our new information.  We used what we had (an oven and a new pumpkin).  We maximized our new state.

The only problem was according to my mom’s directions, we were supposed to cook the pumpkin at 250 degrees for two hours, but when we checked, it wasn’t even close to ready.  So we increased the temperature and let it go another hour, at which time it was closer to done and nearly time for bed, so we went with what we had.

What did we do after the second pumpkin?  Well, we started over… starting where we were with all of our accumulated pumpkin making knowledge, we used what we had, and we maximized our state.  We set the oven hotter and knowing that when the pumpkin skin looks burned, it’s done, we knew now how long to cook it.

We had entered the next level!

Now we figured out that our oven doesn’t cook evenly.  So 30 minutes into the cook time with the last pumpkin, we turned it around.  PRESTO!  That worked.

Get it?  That’s how you learn to do anything.

Start where you are.  Use what you have.  Maximize that State.  Learn and move to the next level.

So what are you learning to do that you’re going to use this on?

Maggie and Keith will hook you and run you through a gamut of emotions. Check out…

DEEP IN THE HEART by Staci Stallings http://ow.ly/7booS

On sale now for Kindle and  Nook!

Maximize Your State

By:  Staci Stallings

We have been talking about Dr. Lee A. Simpson’s workshop on maximizing your state in life.  The three steps to doing that are these:

1) Start where you are.

2) Use what you have.

3) Maximize your state.

Dr. Simpson says that your “state” is condition or position you are in at a particular moment.

So you’re state right now might be happy, or angry, or frazzled, or meditative.  The state of your life right now may be chaotic or tranquil, haphazard or organized.

Right now, please write down three words to describe the state of your LIFE right now.

Okay.  Take a look at what you wrote.  Are there changes to be made in any of those areas?

Let’s say that you wrote “stressed.”  That would be an area that you need to see some change in.  After all, you don’t want to maximize stress, you want to live a maximum life–an optimal life.

So if you’re stressed, let’s go back to #1.

#1 Start where you are.  “I am stressed.”  Be honest about it.  Don’t say, “Well, yes, but look what I have to be stressed about.”  Are there things to be stressed about in your life right now? Almost certainly.  But do you have to live “stressed”?  No.  You don’t.  But be honest that that’s where you are.

#2 Use what you have.  One of the things you have is the ability to breathe and to pray.  No matter what the situation, you can choose to breathe for a moment, close your eyes, and invite God into this situation.  USE IT!  When things are ratcheting up and out of control, consciously STOP.  Take a breath and ask God to come in.  When you do this, the situation that was out of control comes down a notch–in your heart if nothing else.

#3 Maximize your state.  Living stressed out is not maximized living.  It is existence at best. So if you’re living stressed, maximize those times of quiet and peace.  Maybe it’s for five minutes just before you go to sleep.  Maximize it.  Shut off the television and focus on relaxing.  Stop watching those violent shows that ramp up your blood pressure and adrenaline just before you go to bed.  Drink something soothing.  Take a warm shower or a warm bath.  Give yourself some me time–even if it’s just five minutes.  The stretch that to six minutes the next night.

Whatever your situation, whatever state you’re in that you don’t want to be in, there is a way out.  Start where you are by being honest about it.  Use what you have and enlist help if necessary and possible.  And make the most out of what you’ve been given.  When you do this, you begin to see that you don’t have to live the way you were living.  There is a different way, a better way, a more abundant way.

Ask God to show you His best for you.  What does He call maximum in your life.  You will be amazed how different things feel after you do this!

*~*

Heartbreaking yet hopeful…

Ben Warren is footloose and fancy free, and that’s how he likes it.

Then one night the unthinkable happens.

What happens when this playboy suddenly has to grow up?

Find out in…

COMING UNDONE!

“Incredibly moving and poignant…”

Get it on Kindle TODAY Click Here!

Flaufle Ball: Learning How to Learn

By:  Staci Stallings

Okay.  This morning we are going to play Flaufle Ball.  I’m going to give you this grabber and this little oval ball.  Now. I will stand over here.  Are you ready?  Great!  Let’s play!

Oh.  What?

You don’t know how to play flaufle ball?

Well, sure you do.  It’s easy.  Trust me.  You’ll learn as we go.  Are you ready now?  Great.  Let’s play.

What?  You still don’t know how to play.  What do you mean?  I already told you, it’s easy…

So, are you frustrated with me yet?  I’m frustrated with me, and I’m not even you!

The problem with how I’m attempting to “teach you” is that I’m expecting you to know everything I know about Flaufle Ball without explaining anything, right?

Really it’s not hard to see the problem with “teaching” like this except that we try to do this to each other and to ourselves every day.  But the thing is, no one can learn like this.

To learn to do anything new, you must go through 5 steps:  Watch, Listen, Question, Practice, Learn.  If you skip a step, it will be much harder to learn whatever it is you are trying to do.

If you wanted to learn to play flaufle ball (which is not a real game by the way), first it would be helpful to watch others play it.  Go to a few games or watch it on TV.  My nephew used to do this when he was very young — like 2 years old.  He would sit in his living room and intently watch baseball.  Then he would take his tiny hands and mimic what the players were doing.  He would get books on how to play sports and look at the pictures and then try it.  Is it any wonder the kid is a phenomenal sports player at 15?

The second component in learning to do something well is to listen.  You get a coach or a teacher who is good at it, and you listen to them.  When they tell you to choke up on your grip, or put your elbow down, or hold the ball like this… LISTEN!  If you don’t, you will never correct what you are doing wrong and you will stay at the level where you are indefinitely.

The next component is to question.  This is where learning often breaks down in an authoritarian classroom.  The teacher says to do it, and the students are supposed to do it without asking questions, but that does not work.  A student or anyone learning something new MUST be given the chance to ask questions.  If I tell you this is a compound-complex sentence and I can’t tell you why, that doesn’t help you at all.  But if I can explain it and you can work with it enough to understand it, then you have my knowledge and can use it for yourself.

However, in order to know what to question, you have to try it for yourself.  You have to do it a few times (or a few thousand).  As you do it, you will come up against issues that you will need further guidance with.  “Why do you do it like that?”  “How do I use this kind of sentence?”  “When I throw it, I’m not getting the power behind the throw like I need.  How do I get that power?”  Practice is essential.  I can tell you how to do it all day long. I can draw diagrams of the field or the sentence.  I can explain the rules of the game and the strategies of the game, but if you never get to practice it for yourself, it is simply head-knowledge and nothing else.

When you put all of these elements together, real learning takes place.  Learning is not a one-shot, one-time thing.  Learning is a process.  In fact, it is doing the other four elements over and over and over again.  You watch, you listen, you question, you do, you learn.

This process can be applied to reading, sports, music… even spirituality and life.  Tune in next time to find out how!

Always Remember

By:  Staci Stallings

I love quotations.  Always have.  They can convey so much in so very few words.  I’ve got quotation books, and I always read the quotes when I get a Guideposts from my mom.  Wisdom is something you can find if you just look a little bit.

I found this quote the other day in a Guideposts, and I love it–especially with my newfound “love” of exercise:

“Always remember that dead last is better than did not finish, which is way better than did not start.”  — from the blog “From Couch Potato To Runner” by New York Times health columnist Tara Parker-Pope

This applies to so many of life’s “I Want to’s.”  You know those things you want to do but never quite find the time to get started.  Like gardening or writing that book or volunteering or exercising.  You’re going to…  Until you WERE going to but….

I think one of the things that stops people is the fear of failure.  And failure can be a BIG stopping point.  But the thing is, I think too many of us make anything less than first place the first time we go out for something “failure.”  We set the standard of “not failure” so high that no matter how good we do, we’re always left with the feeling that we should have done better.

I’ve been reading several self-coaching books by Brooke Castillo, and I love her philosophy that you have to be willing to suck at something if you ever want to get great at it.

Doing “Walk It Out” on my Wii is a great example.  At first, WOW was I lost.  I got dumped off in this whole new world and all there were were these little floating things EVERYWHERE.  At first, I clicked on all of them as I went by so that the song was playing as it kept going “QUE! QUE!  QUE!”

After who knows how long of this, I learned that clicking on every one doesn’t work.  You have to click on one or two and then collect steps to get them.  I have just started my third game, and I’m so much better at it now.  Since I’ve gotten the whole town and country once, I’m not so totally lost this time.  Plus, I’ve learned that it’s more fun for me if I get each goal in half the steps (one of the settings I didn’t know could be changed the first time I did it).

But here’s the thing… I could have been so scared of being bad at it to begin with that I never started.  I could have told myself (as I have in the past) that I just am not good at exercising, so why even try?  I could have… but I didn’t.

So I really like the philosophy of giving yourself credit for running the “race” even if you finish dead last and for starting even if you don’t finish.

What might you be putting off that you’re going to be trapped in “did not start” if you don’t go for it now?  Don’t wait.  You might not get this chance again.

Asking the Right Questions

By:  Staci Stallings

This is fascinating.  Did you know that your brain will come up with an answer to any question you ask it–even if the question is illogical and not true?

So long as you don’t stop the process by saying, “I don’t know,” your brain will search until it comes up with an answer.

If I ask you, why are your teeth purple?

Stop for a moment and observe what your brain does with that question.  First, it searches for an answer until maybe it questions the question.  “Purple? My teeth aren’t purple.”  But first it looked for an answer to a completely illogical question.

Here’s the thing:  What questions are you asking your brain to find answers for?

Are you asking questions like:  Why can I never lose weight?

Your brain comes back with:  Because I’m lazy and I can’t stick to a diet.

How about this one:  Why don’t I like to exercise?

Because I’m fat and I’m lazy.  Because exercise is no fun.  Because exercise is not meant to be fun, it’s meant to be torture!

See how easy this is?

Why am I so tired?

Because you haven’t been to bed before midnight in a month.

Why do I always eat junk food?

Because it tastes so good you can’t help yourself.

Why is my house a mess?

Because you spend too much time on the phone and watching television and not enough with the vacuum and dust rag.

See how easy this is?

But what if you CHANGED the questions you’re asking yourself?

What can I do to help me enjoy exercising?

Hmm… I can put on some music.  I can do an exercise I like. I can call a friend to see if they’ll walk with me.  I can give myself a small reward if I do.

How can I get this room cleaned?

Pick up 10 things at a time.  Ask husband for help.  Ask kids for help.  Have everyone pick up 10 things.

How can I make this meal enjoyable?

I can make my favorite vegetables.  I can put candles on the table.  I can turn on some music.  I can invite a friend over to eat with me.

The truth is, you are going to get an answer to whatever question you ask.  The question is:  Are you asking the right kinds of questions to move you in the direction you want to go?

The Power of Quitting

By:  Staci Stallings

As I wrote last time, I grew up with a lot of positive thinking training.  One of the mantras of the positive thinking crowd is this:  Never give up.  Do not quit.  Power through.  Make it happen.

And boy, did I believe THAT lie.

I know.  I know.  You’ve probably been told that too.   Maybe you even believe it, and my saying it’s a lie makes you really uncomfortable.

Stay with me a minute, and maybe you’ll see that “never giving up” is not all it’s cracked up to be.

My daughter recently started school.  Now this daughter happens to be very good at a lot of different things–school work, music, and sports top the list.  She is a dynamic, fun, energetic kid who loves to learn and is highly responsible.  (And that’s not just her mom talking either… she really is!)

Going into middle school was a big change, but one of the tough things to navigate was that with so many different talents, how do you choose which to pursue?  She went back and forth, up and down the four electives:  band, choir, theatre, art.  She likes them all and would probably be good at them all.  Finally she settled on choir (which she really loves now).  She also decided to play volleyball after school.  That knocked out her ability to play violin with the junior symphony, but there are only so many hours in a day!

So the first day, she went to volleyball.  Now she had played in elementary, in fact, since the second grade, and she had done very well.  The problem was volleyball was every day, after school, for an hour and a half.  That meant all kinds of logistical nightmares for the other two kids, but I was willing to make it work as long as she was enjoying playing.

That didn’t last long.

(This is the same child that played basketball with Kids, Inc. for six minutes and broke her finger, thus ending her basketball career.  However, she loved volleyball, so I didn’t think that would come into play. )

Well, after the first practice, I went to pick her up.  I asked how it was, and she didn’t answer.  In fact, she kept her head down and wouldn’t even look at me.  It was a very quiet, long 20-minute ride home.  When we got home, things went downhill.  First she started crying and wouldn’t stop.  Then she started telling me about practice.  With only 7 girls, she didn’t have a teammate partner, so a parent was her partner.  That meant when the others did 20 digs, she got to do both sets–or 40.  The other girls never wanted to stop for a rest or drink break, so they didn’t.

She couldn’t serve overhanded because her upper body strength is just not there, but they won’t let you serve underhanded.  So she did 10 serves and then backed up and did ten more and then backed up and did ten more…  By the time I got her home, she was exhausted and completely overwhelmed.

We talked that night about it and decided that she didn’t want to play volleyball.

Then we ran into the “you really should give it a week” crowd the next day.

Thankfully, I had learned my lesson on this in a very personal and painful way in college.  I wrote for the newspaper, and I gave it my all.  Unfortunately, my all was not enough, nor appreciated until I was literally at my emotional breaking point.  That’s when I told the editors I was done.  I was quitting.  That’s when they all said, “Just stay a couple more weeks.  Please, we can’t lose you.  It’ll get better.  We promise. We didn’t realize… please, don’t quit.”  And so I didn’t.  Because I’d been taught how awful of a person you were if you did quit.  I didn’t want to be a “quitter.”

The truth?

I should have quit.  I stayed on, and over the next weekend, I broke my foot.  I think psychologically I had determined I was not going back, and then I didn’t have to because I literally couldn’t.  I’ll never forget walking (on crutches) into the newsroom that morning.  The first editor looked up.  “What happened to you?”  “I broke my foot.  I’m not going to be able to stay on.”  To which she said, “Oh, that’s too bad.  AMY!  You’ve got Staci’s beat now.”  That was the end of my newspaper career.

It was a very, VERY valuable lesson.  I knew the newspaper was wrong for me.  I knew I was not enjoying it.  It was horrible.  I was miserable.  I was exhausted from trying to make them happy and pursue my other goals for my own life.  Moreover, I was making stupid decisions to keep them happy that were putting me in dangerous situations that I was not comfortable with being in.  That should have been enough, but because of the “don’t quit” thing, it wasn’t.

So, with my daughter, I stood our ground.  No.  She was not going to give it another week.  She was already a stressed out mess (the next morning her younger brother asked if I had noticed she was “particularly jumpy this morning.”  Yes.  I had.  She forgot a book, her paper, her notecards.  She had to go up to get something for me to sign… twice because she brought the wrong thing.  That’s NOT her.  And that’s no way to live life.  Giving it a week or a month or a semester wasn’t going to change that.)

Here’s a secret no one will tell you:  There is real power in quitting things that are not right for you.  Staying in them to make everyone else happy is the best way I know to run yourself into the ground, and it’s just not worth it.  Because when you drop out, they will just say, “Oh, that’s too bad.  AMY!  You’ve got Staci’s beat now.”  They will go on, and you will be left to pick up the pieces.

Now I’m not saying just give up when you first hit hard–if it’s something you love and really value, stay with it.  But if it’s not, get out.  Now.  Don’t wreck yourself for things that ultimately don’t matter a wit.

God will tell you which it is if you will go to Him and listen.  Who knows?  You might not even have to break your foot to make a good decision about it!