Personal Development Archives | Rowlett Christian Counseling

Divine Desires: Strategies for Singles to Dethrone Shame

Divine Desires: Strategies for Singles to Dethrone Shame

Kate Motaung2024-12-05T17:23:02+00:00November 29th, 2024|Featured, Personal Development, Relationship Issues, Spiritual Development|

Movies, media, and memes have jested about the plight of the single protagonist left to the mercy of prying, though well-meaning family. Whether seated around the holiday table or enjoying a barbecue with friends and family, unmarried relatives are targeted, cornered, and interrogated. In a society that glorifies couples, tension surfaces when others offer unsolicited opinions about our romantic life as singles. Our holistic needs and concerns seem minimized in relation to those of our married counterparts. For those of us whose single life has been imposed by spousal death or divorce, extended due to education, career, or not yet finding a match, those feelings of exclusion also creep from culture into the churches where we fellowship. Our leaders may mean well, but they may not have experienced widowhood, divorce, or an extended period of singleness. They may lack empathy, insight, or feel insufficiently equipped to teach or offer programming that addresses singles’ raw needs. Outreach and events for a variety of subgroups get spotlighted, but singles are seated at the “kid’s table” of ministry, often lumped with those whose demographics and needs may vastly differ. Between later marriages and climbing divorce rates, unmarried believers comprise a significant portion of our congregations, but ministry has not necessarily adapted with the change. The church has room to grow in how it engages, disciples, and serves singles as valued and integral parts of the body of Christ. Dueling Desires For singles, navigating desire is at the core of many external and internal conversations, whether public or private, secular, or spiritual. Enter the contrasting narratives. The world clamors endlessly about sex, but by contrast, the church seems curiously silent. We need strategies in how to walk out our single state, desiring God, and fulfillment in all the ways we are created. The [...]

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The Effects of Over-Exercising on Your Mental Health

The Effects of Over-Exercising on Your Mental Health

Grace Mavindidze2024-09-27T10:57:10+00:00August 7th, 2024|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development|

If the phrase over-exercising is new to you, I’m sure you’re wondering how you can tell if you’ve breached that fine line and what it has to do with your mental health. We live in a highly active society where we are constantly bombarded with messages about maintaining our physical health everywhere we turn. It seems as if every second advertisement that we see these days will include some “start your exercise now!” or “get fit fast!” tips. While there is no denying that exercise is great for us, it’s good for you to know where to draw the line between safe exercising and over-exercising before your workout regimes suck the life out of you physically and mentally. Rest is an important and often overlooked part of training that not only allows your body to recover for your next workout but also gives you an emotional reprieve from the constant stress exercising puts you through. Mental stress signs to look out for when exercising Pushing your body too hard for too long will always backfire and increase your stress levels. Physical signals that you are going beyond your limits are easier to pick up on than mental or emotional ones. It is obvious when you work out too much if you feel faint or suffer a physical injury, but mental red flags can be easily missed. Studies have shown that at times, over-exercising your body leads to overstimulation of nerves that regulate your heart rate, which can lead to increased stress levels or high anxiety. Signs that your mental health is suffering due to over-exercising include: Difficulty focusing or performing at work or school at your usual level after exercising. Feeling unmotivated, sad, or depressed after working out. Needing longer periods of rest than usual after your workouts. Constantly [...]

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Self-Improvement Tips to Get You Started

Self-Improvement Tips to Get You Started

Melissa Plantz2024-09-27T10:56:34+00:00February 8th, 2024|Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development|

To grow as a person, you need to improve. Jim Rohn, an American motivational public speaker used to say, “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” If you want to change your life, you must change yourself. This means self-improvement of thoughts, behaviors, and skills. Self-improvement tips to get you started. Eat better. Eating better has less to do with maintaining a healthy weight (although that is encouraged for physical health) and more about the mental aspects of consuming nutritious foods. Food full of preservatives, dyes, and chemicals can leave you lethargic. You do not think as well when you consume foods that trigger inflammation. Train your body. Physical fitness is the foundation of self-improvement. If you are physically sick, your other work will suffer. Your relationships suffer when you cannot physically do what you want. Stop thinking of exercise as working out. Instead, think of it as training to do God’s work. You must be strong, balanced, and flexible to do many required tasks. Even if you have a desk job, you need your heart and lungs to be in excellent health so that you do not succumb to cardiorespiratory illnesses from less movement. Train your body and consider it a temple for the Holy Spirit. Make rest a priority. Much of our culture values hustle. We are told that if we give 110%, then we will see results. Although this is true, God created us with a need for rest. We can give our best effort, but we need to set aside time to rest. In the Bible, God commanded the people to take the Sabbath as a day of rest. This was not just to spend the day worshipping God and fellowshipping with one another. It was also to force the [...]

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What to Do When You Feel Insecure: Overcoming Insecurity

What to Do When You Feel Insecure: Overcoming Insecurity

Kate Motaung2024-10-29T11:22:50+00:00November 30th, 2023|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Spiritual Development|

Feeling insecure, self-doubt, and a lack of self-confidence can make life difficult. Sometimes, even after a significant success, a gnawing feeling undermines the sense of victory by instilling doubts about your accomplishment. You start to ask if you deserve it, whether you really are as good as the award you just received says you are, or if you really are loveable even though you’re with an amazing person who thinks the world of you. Feeling insecure can happen in any aspect of life – at work, in your relationships, or in social situations like at a party or family gathering. Being able to cope with and handle your insecurities well can help you enjoy your life and your successes more. What is insecurity and where does it come from? One way to think about insecurity is that it is a feeling that you are not good enough or that you are inadequate in a particular situation. Some of the causes of insecurity include: A recent and significant failure, rejection, or betrayal. Traumatic experiences like being bullied or body shamed that instilled negative beliefs about yourself. Experiences like abandonment and neglect can foster an insecure attachment style in relationships. Having critical parents or caregivers who undermined your confidence and set an impossible standard for you to achieve . Deep-seated perfectionism, which makes you unsure that you can ever do or be enough. Emotional dependence on or attachment to a person, then losing that relationship. General A person who experiences unpredictable upsets in daily life will tend to feel insecure about routine things. How insecurity affects you. One of the main things that insecurity does is it makes you uncertain. It will often produce anxiety in you about your goals, relationships, and ability to handle certain situations or problems. Your insecurity can [...]

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How to Implement Sabbath in Your Busy Life

How to Implement Sabbath in Your Busy Life

Kate Motaung2024-09-27T11:00:54+00:00January 7th, 2023|Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Spiritual Development|

Listen to this article Believers hear a lot about the importance of a Sabbath in their lives. In today’s busy world, it can be hard to find the time for the Sabbath, especially if you don’t understand just how helpful it can be. Sabbath goes beyond following a rule outlined in the Bible. It is a principle for wellness and a relationship with God. Even this, however, isn’t enough for many people. The reality is that implementing a Sabbath often feels impossible. But you can make a weekly Sabbath part of your life. But first, you need to understand it. What is Sabbath? The concept many are most familiar with is first introduced early in Genesis when the Bible describes creation. After the Bible describes the creation of the heavens and the earth, night and day, waters and sky, vegetation, sun and moon, sea creatures and birds, land animals, and finally man, all of creation is declared to be good. (Genesis 1) The first six days described are full of life, creation, and work. As we continue, something different happens: By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. – Genesis 2:2-3, NIV This is the first time we see the concept of the Sabbath in the Bible though it isn't called that. It is simply God modeling the rhythm of work and rest. The very first idea of the Sabbath wasn’t introduced with rules dictated by God. It was modeled for us in the work and the rest of God. Since most people are reading [...]

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5 Stress Management Tips from a Christian Perspective

5 Stress Management Tips from a Christian Perspective

Kate Motaung2024-09-27T11:00:42+00:00June 6th, 2022|Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Professional Development|

Stress management is important because daily stress exacts a heavy price on our overall health. It can cost us dearly in our work, relationships, physical health, and even spiritual wellbeing. We can all use more stress management tips to help manage our stress loads. Two Types of Stress Not all stress is bad in your life. You need some stress to push you toward meeting your goals. A little bit of stress related to a deadline can serve as a motivating factor. So, your goal should not be to eliminate this good type of stress, but cut out as much bad stress as possible. Bad stress is the kind that takes more than it gives. It is fueled by adrenaline and cortisol, hormones that work well in short-term situations but wreak havoc on our minds and bodies in the long term. We need to learn to control what we can about bad stress, so we limit its impact on us. Let’s look at a couple of examples. Some stressful situations just happen to us without our control – your car gets wrecked; you receive an unfavorable diagnosis; or a pipe freezes and bursts, flooding your house. These situations would be stressful to anyone, but your level of stress can be controlled by how intentionally you respond to these situations. You can admit that the situation causes you stress and take steps to actively manage it. Or you can allow your emotions to get out of control and cause you additional stress over the same situation. Some stressful situations can be prevented. You may be taking on more work than you can manage, spending more than your budget allows, or procrastinating your work tasks. These situations all cause stress, but they can be prevented by employing techniques of stress management. [...]

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