Gregory Dickow - Self Mastery and Conquering Fear - Part 2
Welcome champions to our inspirational podcast and our international podcast. Think like a champion. We exist to create a community of champions and a culture of champion level thinking. Now, I want to thank everyone who's written a review or shared this podcast on social media. I appreciate you partnering with me to help expand our community of champions. That's what we're building. You're part of something special. Let's keep building it and let's keep discovering the champion within. Right.
And I want to get right into today's content because we started talking about self-mastery and Exorcizing, which or casting out, if you will, the spirit of fear, right? Exorcizing or eliminating the spirit of fear in our lives. And we knew we know in second Timothy chapter one, verse seven, God has not given us the spirit of fear. We don't have that. He hasn't given that to us, but he's given us three things that overcome fear. Three things that dismantle fear. Three things that destroy the power and undermine fear. What are they? Power, love and a sound mind. We talked about power. We talked about love in our last podcast on this topic of self-mastery and conquering fear. But I want to get right into this spirit of discipline because it is a spirit of discipline that God has given us.
So many people say, I wish I had more discipline, but what we really need to do is to discover the discipline we do have. The Greek word for this word discipline is the word: sophronismos. Which is a word meaning self-control or a sound mind having self-control or a sound mind. It comes from two words original word source, sos, S-O-S, which means safe and phren which means mind. So it suggests a safe way, a mind that is delivered and protected, a mind that is saved, delivered, protected. It's a discipline, an self-controlled way of thinking. It's being in control rather than being out of control. Okay. We have the ability you have the ability to make wise decisions and to develop excellent habits. You have the ability to control your impulses, your desires, your need for immediate gratification. You have the discipline for delayed gratification. You've just been told all your life.
Only people in the military have that kind of discipline are only the most successful athletes have that kind of discipline or only the smartest people have that kind of discipline. But everybody has it. It's just a matter of exercising it, using it, just like everybody has the same number of muscles in their body. It's really about whether you develop them or not. You have the spirit of discipline. You have the gift of discipline. God's given you that gift, but you have to exercise it. So when you stand in the mirror, you got to remind yourself who you are in Christ. You got to remember that you have a divine birthright to power love in a sound mind that you don't have to live in fear or live in timidity or be intimidated by life. We're not one of the ten spies that Moses sent out, and they were afraid of the giants in the land.
We're like the two spies that say, No, we're not the grasshoppers. They're the grasshoppers. The ten spies that were afraid said they're the giants. We're the grasshoppers and they're the giants. But the two spies, Joshua and Caleb said, Wait a minute. No, they're the grasshoppers. We're the giants. Because the Bible says that greater is he that is in you than he's in the world. You've got to know that this is who you are. You're big inside, don't live under intimidation and the intimidating tactics of the enemy. Okay, So listen, many people talk themselves into believing that they don't have discipline because they're comparing their behaviors in their weakest areas to other people's behaviors in their strongest areas. Or they're focusing on the few areas where they struggle with discipline rather than the many areas where they regularly exhibit it.
If you realized how how disciplined you actually are when you wake up, maybe you always have coffee, maybe you always brush your teeth, maybe you always read something online, maybe you always pray, maybe you always read your Bible. Those might be things you just automatically do think about that. That's that proves that you have discipline. Anything that you do on a regular basis proves it. It doesn't create discipline. It proves you have discipline. And you should use it to say, you know what, if I brush my teeth every morning and every night, I guess I could speak God's word every morning and every night I guess I could wake up and say something good is going to happen to me. Every morning, I guess I go to bed and say, Something good's going to happen to me while I'm sleeping. You could add that as a part of the routine of your daily living, because you have already proven that you have the discipline to brush your teeth every day.
You prove you have the discipline to eat. Every day you prove you have the discipline to stop at a restaurant or cook something to eat every day. Unless you're fasting, you do that every day. You don't think it's discipline, but it is is a habit. You go to school every day. It's just proves you have discipline. Go to work every day. It proves you have discipline. You get gas for your car every time it's near empty. That proves you have discipline. It proves you know how to control things when they have to be controlled. So now just use that to teach yourself that you really are more in control than you realize. Discipline is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Instead of saying I don't have it, remind yourself this is a free gift from God. And God gave it to you. And the great news is you already have all the seeds of discipline within you. So what are some action steps that we can take to help cultivate this gift of discipline and self-mastery? It's really important steps you can take. And they're simple. Let me give them to you.
Number one, acknowledge your current state, acknowledge your current condition. Recognize and accept the level you're at in life. Stop deceiving yourself and telling yourself that you're at a better, higher level. Look at the level you're at and accept it honestly. Be honest about your strengths. Be honest about your weaknesses. Don't make excuses for your current situation. Don't make, but instead take ownership of it and say, okay, here's where I'm at. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you at in daily habits? Where are you at in taking care of your mind, taking care of your emotions, taking care of your relationships? Where are you at and taking care of your body or your money. It's not identify what level you're at so that you can beat yourself up about it, identify what level you're at, so you have a starting place, a launching pad from where you're at. You can't launch from a place you are not at yet. Yet you can only launch from the place you're at.
So we have to be honest about that. It may be sobering. You know what? On a scale of 1 to 10, I'm like at a three. Well, great. You got seven numbers of opportunity. You got you got seven levels of opportunity ahead of you. Wow. You should look at it like that rather than. Oh, I'm a three. I'm at three. I'll never get. Hey, you're at three. That means you're three ahead of zero. Wow. One step in the right direction might take you to a four. You know, I'm not trying to make you assign yourself a number. It's just a inner way of identifying where you're at so that you can move the ball forward in your life, so that you can move your business forward. If we don't admit where we're at in our health, we're never going to move our health forward if we don't admit where we're at with our money.
You know what I'm spending more than I'm making, I admit it. And now I've got to take the steps to do it. I got to take Dave Ramsey steps or somebody else's steps, but I got to take some steps here. And there is such access to the steps and in the knowledge that we need. But we've been deceiving ourselves by two things. We've been deceiving ourselves into thinking that we don't actually have discipline or we've been deceiving ourselves into thinking that we actually at a higher place in life than we actually are in the main areas of our life, like our relationships, like our relationship with our our relationship with God, our relationship with self, our relationship with our family, our relationship with money, our relationship with food, our relationship with our habits are we have to be willing to honestly assess where we're at and then what do we do?
Then we make a decision to move beyond where we're at. We have to want it. You know, there was a man that was lame for some 40 years that Jesus talks about in chapter five of John, and it says he was in that condition for 40 years. But whenever there was a stirring of the water that he was laying in front of, whenever an angel would come and stir up the waters, the first person that got into the water would be healed of whatever sickness or disease that they had. And this was something that was happening. More miraculous things were happening in the in the turbulence of that water, in the stirring of those of that water. So Jesus shows up at that pool where this man was for 40 years or so, and Jesus says to him, Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be made well?
And the first thing the man said was, Well, I don't have anybody to help me. Nobody puts me in the water. Nobody's my friend. Nobody's concerned about my condition. Like he just started to make an excuse and Jesus stopped him and interrupted him. And we need to interrupt ourselves from the excuses that were making it. Somebody said, Well, I don't have enough time in the day. If you actually measured how much time that we actually waste, the amount of time that we are just scrolling through Instagram with the amount of time that we're just sitting around, the amount of time where we're getting ready slowly, the amount of time at work where we could be doing something productive. But instead we're chatting, you know, we should have a good environment and whatever work environment we're in. But we we should like roll up our sleeves and get busy doing stuff.
Instead of thinking we don't have time, we need to evaluate what we're doing with our time. Everybody has the same amount of time. Everybody. It's just a matter of how you're looking at it, how you're using it, how you're utilizing it, how you're maximizing it, how you're leveraging it. You know what? I think it would be good right now if we just pause and ask God for some supernatural, heavenly wisdom. You know, the Bible says that if we ask if we lack wisdom, let them ask of God, who gives to all men generously. So can we ask God for wisdom? Because wisdom is how to take knowledge and put it into action.
That's what the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is information. It's knowing something, but wisdom is knowing what to do with that information, knowing what action to take with that information. So I know we all have a lot of knowledge. We know that we have 24 hours in a day. We know that we waste some time in our lives. We know that we're at a level we probably wish we weren't at and would like to be at a higher level. So now that we have the knowledge of those things, the honest acknowledgment, let's ask God for wisdom on what steps to take. Ask God for the wisdom to take the knowledge we have about our current condition and get us to the next level in our life. Let's ask God right now. Lord, you said... Come on, pray with me.
Heavenly Father, You said, if we lack wisdom to ask of you. You said you would give it generously. So I'm asking for an enormous amount of wisdom to match up with the knowledge that I have about where I am and where you promised I can be. I ask you for the wisdom to take the right action steps, show me what to do and how to do it. In Jesus name, Amen.
Now, believe you received it. I believe you've received that wisdom. And now write down what God shows you. Maybe he'll show you. Okay, Start making a financial goal. Okay, So I'm going to write down to be out of debt. That's goal number one. Goal number two, to have $1,000 money saved in the bank for anything to happen in anything that happens. Number three, you know, a 20% increase in revenue in my life, whether that's through a side hustle or whether that's through an investment, like there's there's always a way. Write down your goals. Maybe a goal is to get in the right shape, get in a healthy condition physically, whatever it is. Make your relationship better, write it down, and then break it down into a step by step action plan. I realize that most people probably will not do this and they won't make it. They won't make a list of what their goals are, and they won't make a list of the steps they take. But we're not those people. We think like champions.
So we will make a list of the goals we have and we will make a list of the action steps to take. Take a moment right now. Write down something. Write down a goal, whether it's financial, physical, relational, write down a goal and then take the wisdom that we asked God for and start writing down the steps to achieve that goal. And then I want to encourage you to be clear about your goals to develop an action plan. You know, when, says Habakkuk chapter two: write down the vision and make it plain, so every time you read it, you can run with it. It's really a powerful passage of scripture and it talks about pride in that chapter too, because pride would tell you, you don't need to write it down. You don't need to make action steps. That's for babies, that's for children, that's for stupid people. Then you know what? Be a baby, be a child and be a stupid people, If that's what that is, do it. Because that's what God says is going to cause the vision to come to pass. Write it down, make it plain.
So every time you read it, you can run with what you wrote. You can take the next step and stick to what you wrote, Write down the vision and then take the step towards it each and every day. And then I really encourage you to become aware of the power of your decision making skill. Like you. If you realized that a quality decision is one in which there is no retreat and one in which there is no debate, if you would stop making mamsy pamsy wishy washy decisions and make quality decisions a quality decision, what's the difference? A quality decision is one that when you make it, you are going to you are going to respect yourself enough to make sure that that decision is something you're going to stick to. So make a quality decision is a decision from which there is no retreat and which there is no debate.
Most people are losing in life not because they're making all the wrong decisions... They're just not making quality decisions. They make decisions that they easily retreat from, and they make decisions that they easily debate themself and talk themself out of. If you would learn the power of quality decisions, if you would realize that we can choose life, we can choose death, it's our choice. It's in the Bible, it's in life, choose life, choose death. Realizing the power of a quality decision, the difference between the everyday decisions you used to make that used to break all the time the promises you make to yourself that you break all the time instead, don't make a promise to yourself until you're ready to make a quality decision about what you're going to do.
Can't say I'm going to get in shape and then not sign up at a gym. Can't say I'm going to get in shape or not get a by a band, you know, an elastic band of some sort. Like you can't you can't say you're going to you're going to have a healthier budget and then spend 6 or $7 on a cup of coffee. That's not a quality decision. That's a lack in quality decision. It's a weak decision because it's not one that you will stick to until you believe in the quality of your decisions because you respect yourself enough to not make a decision unless you are going to back it up. And what is a quality decision? One in which there is no retreat and one in which there is no debate.
That's how much power you have. Decision is the doorway into reality. Decision is the doorway into the reality of having the thing that you want, whether that's divine health, whether that's wisdom, whether that's success in finances, whether that's success in your family, whether that's health in your body, health in your mind. When you realize the decision is the doorway into the reality. And the reality you're living in right now is because of the decisions that you've made up until that point. The reality you're in right now exists because the door of decision was opened at that level of your of your life, and that's given you the reality you have. If you want a different reality, you've got to make quality decisions about what it is you want to go after in life. And then I want to encourage you that the spirit of discipline operates in incremental habits.
So often people don't start anything because they think, Well, I can't finish this or I, I don't have all the steps to this or I don't have time or the discipline to create healthy habits. Start with just one healthy habit. Start with one healthy habit of waking up every day and thanking God. Start with that healthy habit. Start with the hope you have a healthy habit of saying thank you to God for the life that He gives you and life that he gave you for the day that you have every new opportunity. Every new day. Wow. Make a quality decision to be grateful and to express that gratitude in words, in praise, in thankfulness, in worship. That's one healthy habit that you can start right now. I've started a habit of saying this, praying this prayer, and you can take this because this is a great prayer to pray every day. "Heavenly Father, help me to see Jesus more clearly so I can love Him more dearly and I can follow him more nearly".
What if you made that your prayer every day and made that your healthy habit every day? I guarantee you you will see so much good happening in your life, so much blessing overtaking your life, so much joy, so much peace. Because when you see Jesus more clearly, you're seeing love more clearly, You're experiencing love more clearly and you will fall in love with what you see. When you see the more clearly you see him, the more the more dearly you'll love him, the more nearly you'll follow him.
Start with that healthy habit or cut out paying for coffee at a per cup and brew your own or drink tea. Or better yet, just stick to water. Make that a healthy habit. Drink a gallon of water half a gallon to a gallon of water every day. I know these are you may think those are just silly little habits, but each little habit adds up and snowballs into great habits of living and I want you to also realize and I'll try to wrap this up with this point, and that is a step you can take is give yourself credit for being resilient, like realize how resilient you actually are and realize that you've had a lot of setbacks and you're still standing. You may be wobbly, but you're still standing right now.
Today, if you look back on your life, you've made it through the trials you've had, the things you thought you would never overcome, the trials you thought were the worst thing that ever happened to you. When you're on this side of it, you realize you made it. You made it like, give yourself some credit, encourage yourself, tell yourself, You know what? I'm proud of you. Self. God's proud of you and I'm proud of you. That makes two of us. We overrule all the lies that you're telling yourself that you don't have a reason to have dignity. Listen, we have fallen. In everything in life, you have to fail to succeed, whether it's walking. Every child falls when they're learning to walk. But if if they don't fall and get back up, they'll never learn to walk. Everything in life we do, we fail at to become good at.
Michael Jordan failed at making free throws and failed at making winning shots until he stopped failing at those things. Taking enough of the failed shots led to taking the winning shots. You can't get to winning without some failing along the way. But every time you fail and every time you fall, you're failing forward. You're falling forward and you're getting back up. But this is really the secret to life, in my opinion. And Proverbs chapter 24, verse 16 says, A righteous man falls seven times, but he gets back up. Really, seven is the number of perfection in the Bible, but it's a number of completion.
So it really what he's saying is you're going to fall a lot, but just get back up one more time then how many times you fell because you're the righteousness of God in Christ and you have the right to get back up. You have the right to get back up. A lot of us stay down because we think we deserve to be down there. We're ashamed and we think we're getting what we deserve. But you have the right to get back up. So get back up and move forward. Taken one step at a time. Okay. So you have the spirit of discipline. You have the gift discipline. Let's let's obliterate the lie that we don't have it and say this out loud. Say:
In the name of Jesus, I have the gift of discipline. I have the spirit of discipline. I can develop healthy habits for my life to become the most successful and happy version of myself, in Jesus name.
God promised that to you. Now get up, believe that, and walk in your gifts, power, love, and discipline. Glory to God.