Why Spiritual Self-Awareness is the First Step to a Deeper Relationship with God

Russ Ewell 

Welcome to the Deep Spirituality podcast. Great to have everybody here today. I have Mike Query joining me. My name is Russ Ewell. We hope to have an exciting podcast today. Our goal with the podcast on this episode is to really help everyone understand what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to go with the idea of the Best Life series. Remember, the Best Life series, how God gives us the skills we need for an impactful life. That series oftentimes is being referred to accurately as a life skills series, but we believe it’s much more than life skills. We believe that it is much more about growing and being growth oriented. Some of you may be familiar with Carol Dweck’s book, Growth Mindset. It’s a little bit more about that. And so today we’re going to talk at the beginning about some of the experiences we’ve had and we see in Scripture about personal growth. And then we’re going to talk about the specific questions that Mike has come with that people are asking about the series and how it can help them and how they can grow. And so, we’ll have a beginning that’ll help, I think, all of us be able to get more inspired about what’s possible as an outcome of the work we’ll be doing, the growth work we’re doing with the Best Life series. And then we’ll take some questions and try to answer those. And hopefully what you’ll get is, I think you’re going to get a series of podcasts out of this that’ll be able to help everyone be inspired personally while you’re walking around on your own or doing an errand or a chore.

Also as groups, you may with your small group want to listen to one of these. We’re going to be doing more of them as I alluded to in our initial podcast. But that’s going to be what we do today. And right after this break, we’ll get started.

All right, we’re gonna keep on going. Today, I wanna get us thinking about the extraordinary power of God. And the Best Life Series to me, Mike, is about understanding that God has given us extraordinary power.

And sometimes I think people who hear about Christianity, learn about Christianity, people who think about Christianity, oftentimes remove the power part. Put the rules in, we get that set. Get the behaviors in. We get the schedule in. How many services do I need to go to? You know, we get all those things set up, but we neglect the power. What’s interesting about that, and I know a lot of people listening understand this, is that Jesus died on a cross, but he was resurrected with power.

And that power is made available to each one of us. And I think everything about the Holy Spirit in the Bible is in there to tell us just how powerful the power at work in us is.

I mentioned earlier that we’re going to talk about growth and so I want to start out with a proverb Proverbs 3:21 I ran into this this past week I’ve probably run into it more than just this past week but it landed on my mind and my heart this past week Proverbs 3 21 to 26 in the passion translation Be patient with me here as I read this scripture because it’s powerful 

“My child, never drift off course from these two goals for your life: to walk in wisdom and to discover your purpose. Don’t ever forget how they empower you, for they strengthen you inside and out and inspire you to do what’s right. You will be energized and refreshed by the healing they bring. They give you living hope to guide you, and not one of life’s tests will cause you to stumble. You will sleep like a baby, safe and sound. Your rest will be sweet and secure. You will not be subject to terror, for it will not terrify you. Nor will the disrespectful be able to push you aside. Because God is your confidence in times of crises, keeping your heart at rest in every situation.”

 There is an extraordinary power that God has made available to us. And I think it’s captured in this passage because this passage is talking about living the best life.

I like Ben Rector and he’s got a song and this phrase is popular, think, living your best life. And it’s why I was surprised, Mike, when you guys picked the best life as the title, because I was like, well, everybody uses that term. But it’s accurate. It was coincidence? How did you guys come up with that title?

Mike Query

Yeah, well, when we were talking, I think one of the things you helped us with, because, you came in with this idea and these different areas we could hit. And I think one of the things you mentioned was really helpful is like, we got to focus on, like you said, the power of God and where he’s trying to take us and where he’s trying to go. So at first, we wanted to call it life skills, because that makes sense, you know, it’s practical. But as we were thinking, well, where is God trying to take us? First, we want to call it the good life, because my wife, Amy, came up with that one. We liked it. But then somewhere in the discussion, she said, well, what’s better than good? Best. The best life. Actually that it’s the best life possible with God. I think that’s, what’s better than good? What’s better than good? Get better than this. That’s right. It doesn’t get any better.

Russ Ewell

What’s better than good? We could have called it that. We could have called it that. What’s better than good?

Is Eddie Vedder the best life? Or is Bruce Springsteen? Bruce Springsteen’s the best life, Eddie Vedder’s the good life.

Mike Query 

Careful, careful. You’re gonna take this to another pod if we have to litigate this. And well, they’re they’re friends. I think they did podcasts together those two. 

Russ Ewell

Yeah, yeah. You know, they’re, it reminds me of a podcast and it leads into…

That was a good segue. You kind of threw down on that right there. So one of my favorite podcasts was Renegades with Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. And in it, Barack Obama is talking for a long time about their relationship between the Springsteens and the Obamas and the time they spent together and how they were out, I don’t know if they were out to dinner or doing something, and Bruce Springsteen was talking about all the work he had done to be able to gain greater self-awareness and deal with issues in his life that he had not dealt with. And he talked about the help he got. And I guess while he was talking, he was talking about how that helped his marriage and their life, and his wife was talking. And after they left dinner, Michelle and Barack were going home, and Michelle turned to Barack and said, why aren’t you doing that work? You need to do some of that work.

Mike Query

Classic. Yeah.

Russ Ewell 

I think I recalled that pretty good. what I believe is that the work Bruce Springsteen was doing, the work Michelle Obama was saying Barack needed to do, which I’m not making a comment on whether he needed to do it or not. He seems like he’s done a lot of work and this isn’t a political advertisement. I’m just recalling the Renegades podcast. And the thing that I think is important for all of us to understand is the first skill in our series and we’ve already got the devotional out is it’s good to be you why the best things in life start with spiritual self-awareness and I think what Bruce Springsteen was doing was gaining self-awareness you know I’ve got a quote for you from a guy that I know that you admire and love: Albus Dumbledore. At least I hope you appreciate him.

Mike Query 

There we go. Wisdom. I need to reread those. 

Russ Ewell 

Oh, haven’t, you haven’t, haven’t, have you watched it?

Mike Query 

Well, I’ve watched the movie. They’re going to release a new audible narrated ebooks or narrated versions of the book, but with the cast recordings. So I’m waiting until that drops. Yeah, I think it’s later in the year. Then I’ll read it.

Russ Ewell 

No kidding, no kidding, no kidding. I’m looking forward to the new series. The new Harry Potter series is supposed to come out in two years and I forgot who’s gonna be the Dumbledore. It’s gonna be one of my favorite actors and I can’t remember his name. I’m gonna look that up. Keep talking. I’m gonna look that up. You gotta keep talking.

Mike Query 

Is that a prequel? that, that’s a, okay, I’ll fill some space. Well, I’ll just say my daughter is seven now. So maybe when that comes out, she’ll be at the age of Harry Potter-ness. I’m not sure when kids typically start.

Russ Ewell 

Hey, seven years old, that’s heavy reading age to me. It might be so, she’s liking reading. 

Mike Query

Graphic novels are kind of big at her age group now. So maybe a little.

Russ Ewell 

You know, I never got into graphic novels. John Litgow. He’s gonna…

Mike Query 

yeah, yeah. He was wasn’t he Churchill in one of the shows? I think he was. I’m to look it up. Crown. Yes, yes. 

Russ Ewell 

in one of what shows? that’s in Crown. Crown. you’re the one who came, exactly, you’re the one who told me that. But he’s also in Shrek. He’s a voice in Shrek. He’s also in the Hulu series, The Old Man, which I loved.

Mike Query 

yeah. yeah. Yeah. Don’t know that one. The old man.

Russ Ewell 

I love the old man. There’s two Rottweilers in there. It’s a long story. The John Lithgow, he’s gonna be awesome in Harry Potter. But anyway, I wanna give you this quote from Albus Dumbledore:

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be. 

Mike Query 

Ooh, love it. Love it.

Russ Ewell 

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

Pew Research just came out with a new, I think it’s called Religious Landscape Survey, where they go through and they examine what are the trends religiously in America. And they showed a leveling off in the decline, a leveling off of the decline of people’s interest in or involvement in Christianity. And they noted that people are very interested in the spirituality, that many more pray and do a lot of spiritual things. They may not be going to church, but they do all those things. Why do I mention this? Because I think people want to grow.

I think every human being wants to grow. I think we have a natural hunger and thirst to become something. And that, to me, is what the series is about, the Best Life series. And I could tell a story about this, and I will tell a story about this right after that break. 

Russ Ewell

So we were talking, Mike, about it. matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be by Albus Dumbledore and I want to tell a story. It’s an interesting story. And I wrote it out. I wrote it out because I wanted to be able to share with our listeners the process of not just self-awareness, but growth into self-awareness. And let me go ahead and share this because it has to do with bookstores. Bookstores and libraries were my sanctuary when I was young.

My mom had dropped me off at the library when she taught summer school. And for about three hours, I was able to consume a variety of influential thinkers, entertainers, and writers capable of transporting and transforming. I remember reading through all of the Sports Illustrateds from the beginning of Sports Illustrated publishing to the year I was in. And they had them all bound, the library did, and I read all the way through them.

Mike Query 

Episode one, huh? First issue.

Russ Ewell 

 Absolutely.

While the internet and all things derived from and connected to our extraordinary global network, one writer called the invisible continent, while that’s all amazing, it cannot achieve the randomness of walking in the midst of books, wandering, exploring, free of algorithms and advertisements. I use Amazon for books, but I can tell you, even to this day, when I go into a Barnes and Noble’s, I discover new things more at Barnes and Noble’s than I do with Amazon, because Amazon’s always trying to predict what I want and guess what I want. Whereas Barnes and Noble’s isn’t doing that. It’s just putting it all out there and saying, here’s books that we think you might be interested in, or it may be that a publisher is pushing or promoting. It was on just such a walk that I discovered a book called Adult Children of Alcoholics. They created a breakthrough for me in self-awareness and helping me apply the Bible as I’d never applied it before. Digging deep, removing thorns, removing rocks, dealing with the hard places in my heart, softening them, helping me to declutter my mind to understand my whys and my hows and the influence they had on my what’s so I could rebuild my relationship with God in my life in my 30s. Bookstores are unmatched as are libraries for their browsing experience. I’m not a luddite; I’m not saying let’s get rid of technology. What I’m saying is that there was a book that opened my mind. Self-awareness is about being able to look at yourself honestly. John 8:31-32 says that when we embrace the teachings of Jesus, that we know the truth and then the truth will set us free.

I think that’s what this first, you know, section of our spiritual life skills of our Best Life series is about. 

So what’s interesting about all this is that depth is something that Jesus experienced. Again, what I really want to set up for everybody right now is that this series is about growth. And I actually think there’s sometimes a divide between Christians who believe that we ought to always grow and Christians who believe that once you become a Christian and you’re saved, you just sort of enjoy being in that state. I think God has a plan for our life. Philippians 3 talks about Paul saying that he wants to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of him. That there’s a purpose that God has in our lives and I think we grow into that purpose if we want to. 

In Luke chapter 2 in verse 39 through 40, 

“when Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth…” 

Now listen to this one Mike, 

“…and the child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was on him.”

Long before Jesus walked on the earth as the Son of God, he was the Son of Joseph and Mary. This was part of saving mankind. He had to be human and had to experience being human and one of the keys to being human is the development of skills to live life.

If Jesus never learned life skills, he would never have become the Son of God. Can you imagine if Jesus never learned to take care of himself and instead demanded that his parents figure out everything in his life for him? This is why the Bible makes a point of the fact that Jesus grew. Not everyone is willing to grow. Not everybody’s willing to say, hey, I’ve got to grow as a human being. Then in Luke 2 and verse 41,

 “Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover. When he was 12 years old, they went up to the festival according to the custom.” 

Now, when he went on up to that Passover, he ended up talking with all these teachers at 12 years old. So, he was a little bit of a phenom. But what was he a phenom at? He’d grown into being somebody at age 12 that could manifest a level of awareness, both spiritual, emotional, mental, physical awareness, that I think meant he had grown. And then in Luke 2:52 it says:

“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.”

That there was just something about that kid. And I think people saw him and I think they were like, there’s something about that kid. What was it? He was growing. He wasn’t getting stunted or stagnated by the challenges of life. And I think that we need to understand. People say, well, that’s just normal growth. No, it’s not. When people grow up, sometimes we face difficulties and pains in life that can stunt our growth. One of the beauties of becoming a Christian is you can overcome those stunts and you can overcome that stagnation of your growth. 

In Hebrews 5:14, in fact, the writer in Hebrews says, 

“Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.”

So there’s a growth that Jesus experienced and that God wants us to experience that’s about getting to that point where you’re able to possess the kind of skills that allow you to fulfill the purposes that God has in mind for you and allow you to function in a life in a way that you can fulfill those purposes. In Ephesians 3.20 it says, 

“Now to him who’s able to do it measurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever amen.”

There’s a power that God puts in us. The Bible teaches us in Acts 2:38 that we receive the Holy Spirit and when we receive the Holy Spirit, people got baptized they receive the Holy Spirit. When we receive the Holy Spirit we receive power and what’s that power for? The Bible says in Ephesians 3:20 it’s at work within us to do something. It’s not just for us to just sit there, it’s for us to become something. 

Now this is profound. A friend of mine who passed away recently named Sam Lang, he used to speak and talk about this, that Jesus had no strengths because he had no weaknesses. And I always found that a really cool statement. That means total balanced growth. And I think the best life, now I don’t think we’re going to attain to the level of growth Jesus attained to. That’s like the full maximum potential of a human being, which I mean, we can strive for it, but we’d have to have absolutely no sin to get there because that’s the key with sin. Sin we should think about as prohibitive to growth, that it slows our growth. Instead of us always putting sin in the shame category or the embarrassment category or the less category, we should just say, those are the things that are going to inhibit my growth. If I don’t grow in my love, there’s probably a sin doing that to me. If I don’t grow in my confidence, there’s probably a sin that’s being used against me, maybe to give me false guilt, but it’s being used against me. And so to me, think one of the things I want to go back, know, is Albus Dumbledore. We go back to that quote. I love it. It matters not what someone is born but what they grow to be. I think it’s important that everybody understand that our series is to help people grow. You may have a special need like my sons. You may have a learning disability. You may have a mental health challenge. You may have a physical disability. You may have a relationship problem that has been in your life for a long time that has caused you to have some damage to your life going forward. Whatever it may be, the best life is about being able to get the tools to overcome and accomplish.

So, Mike, one of the things I’m thinking about as I talk about that is, one, what are your thoughts on all that and what questions might have come up that relate to some of these things?

Mike Query 

Sure, mean, well, first thing, I think the way that you’re framing it is super helpful. And even when we started this, like I mentioned, this project was, it was exciting to look at first, right? To look at, man, look at all these, it’s very applicable. I think this is gonna be great stuff, right? But I think the approach, at least for me and some of the others on the team was a little off because we go, eventually it becomes a sort of a behavior audit, right? Where I kind of go like, what are the… What are my deficiencies? What are the areas I wish was done better? And I feel like the longer I think about that, inevitably I just start getting a little discouraged because I run up into how much I can kind of do on my own. I think what helped both in framing it in the best life versus life skills, but even with self-awareness, the study that you put together that kicked the whole series off was, man, I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. And I think it made me go, I think I could compartmentalize. I go, what are the things I know I have to do? And then how do I fit God into that, into those plans? Okay, I need to be better with my time. Let me find some time related scripture to sort of motivate myself, right?

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, yeah, that’s normal, but yeah.

Mike Query 

 It’s just kind of, it’s not, yeah, and it’s, I guess maybe logical to some degree, but I think what the study really helped me with was going and kind of what you’re saying now, these scriptures, like God’s trying to help me grow in specific areas to become a type of person. And it’s just a very different– It made me realize my approach has been off for a long time in the way I view growth and change and even living by the Bible. So you had a scripture in that first study about self-awareness and one of the points in there is Proverbs 20 verse five and it’s in the voice translation, it says, 

“Real motives come from deep within a person as from deep waters, but a discerning person is able to draw them up and expose them.”

Well, first of all, I was like, okay, what does motives mean? I looked that one up: a reason for doing something, especially one that is hidden or not obvious. And so I think that with the scripture really me go, okay, there’s a lot of, I think what I thought self awareness was, was let me sort of figure out what I’m doing in my life, notably, what am I doing wrong that I need to get? And I think, but motives go, I don’t often ask the why, like what’s going on that led me to that. And I feel like my wife Amy is always trying to help me when we talk to get to that place. Like when we talk and I’ve blown it again with getting out of the house on time. That’s our recurring fight. I’m always, but like what happened? Like why? And I’m like, what do mean why? Why is that important? But I realized, okay, why? So the study helped me. Okay, why am I constantly avoiding scheduling? Right? Well, I’m anxious. There’s stuff that I know I need to do that I’m worried about how it’s going to go. So I procrastinate, right? There was a motive behind that action, right? When I get short with my daughter, sometimes I oscillate from like the really playful, like, yeah, cool dad, kind of dad, you know, with my daughter or all of a sudden I’ll go curt like, hey, to bed now, kind of mode, you know, and Amy goes, why is that going on? Well, I was trying to obey the scripture a little better. Like, well, you know, I got a lot of insecurity as a dad. I got a lot of fear, how I’m going to do a lot of worries that I don’t often deal with or think about or talk about, so I overcompensate. So I’m just starting the journey. I don’t have like a whole lot of wise things to say about this other than the way that you’re framing it really helped me kind of go, before I tackle, I think that’s why you had a great suggestion of like, hey, let’s really camp on the self-awareness for a bit before we dive into a lot of the others because everything stems from this. And I really believe that after our discussions and reading through this study a couple of times.

Russ Ewell 

It’s interesting what you’re saying because when I was traveling in Asia, I was going from…

I don’t remember from, I think maybe Cambodia to the Philippines or the other way. And when I was in Cambodia, I noticed it’s a country where I saw a lot of poverty and there’d been a lot of history of pain with Pol Pot and some of the disastrous things that took place there, where people were murdered and killed at a mass scale. Academics, artists, all kinds of things like that went on that I think traumatized the nation.

And and yet I noticed that people smiled a lot and they were they were able to be you know, they were able to be happy and and and it kind of I kind of was like I don’t know how you know, they’re doing this and when I was leaving I was at the airport and I saw this book and it was about the people of Cambodia and it said what’s behind that smile and I think that what you’re talking about with regard to motive is Self-awareness begins internally and we’re going to talk a little bit about how to specifically break down and start to attack these areas of self-awareness in our life. How do we develop them? But I think the capacity to even be aware of our motives, the ability to be aware of ourselves, to be aware of how we impact people and how people impact us. That’s why reading the book, Adult children of Alcoholics, it gives you four different categories of reactions, depends on which books you read. But I’ll just say four different categories of reactions and it kind of details who the people are. I know one of them is like a rebel and another is like a lost child and one’s hero and the hero goes and tries to control their environment because they so much don’t want to experience uncertainty and unpredictability of life. And that was me. And become very structured. They create structure. They end up wanting to control outcomes, and so they’re constantly, you know, really working hard and are driven and motivated. When I read that book, it opened my eyes to the fact that there was a lot more behind the sins I committed. There was a lot more behind the stress I felt. There was a lot more behind the ambition I had for accomplishment than I realized. And this is what we’re talking about. I think a lot of times people, well, when I say people, we as people, we’re not aware of our impact on other people because we’re not aware of ourselves. And I actually think the environment in America today and to some degree the world, the friction, the polarization, the animosity, our inability to handle social media with graciousness, our inability to be silent instead of always feeling like we have to say something publicly. I think a lot of that is built on the fact that when we don’t have self-awareness, we can’t get to peace, we can’t get to contentment, we can’t get to happiness, we can’t get away from feeling like, why is that person getting more than I’m getting? Why is that person having more than I’m having? And I think I see the world today in a place where it is dependent so much on humanistic and secular solutions to the emotional challenges of life and neglected the spiritual solutions that there’s an imbalance that has produced a low level of self-awareness. Even sometimes when you look at emotional intelligence and people talking about emotional intelligence in my view, this is just my point of view, even though it’s really, really great, it’s lacking something because nobody wants to go, there’s a spirituality that has to be involved with the emotions in order to get the full understanding of how we feel or what we think. And I think you’ve touched on that. And so for those who are listening, this Best Life series is really not just about, let us give you the life skills to know how to manage your time better. Or let us give you the life skills to know how to set goals. I’m not sure, well, I’m late to stuff. mean, none of us have, I haven’t mastered these things. And so, but what it is, is I think more important than like, can we accomplish it? Remember last episode I talked about the Western mindset versus the Eastern mindset? The Western mindset about growth is generally individualistic. It’s just about me and me accomplishing. Where the Eastern mindset about growth, it usually has to do more with community. The Western mindset about growth is about drive and forcing it to happen. The Eastern mindset about growth is about flow. It’s about letting it happen. It’s about not forcing it. It’s about enjoying the process, you know, enjoying the journey. And I think there’s a lot of things like that that the Bible talks about, but because the Bible is excluded from society in a lot of ways, because everybody thinks that, well, if you let Christianity or you let the Bible in, then there’s rules and you’re just going to feel embarrassed about yourself. No, when you let the Bible in and you actually look at it holistically, not just looking at what does it say you shouldn’t do, look at what it says you can do, should do, could do, possibly could do, how it will transfer. When you get into that part of the Bible, which unfortunately is not out there enough, then one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast is we want to get out there the view the Bible can transform your life. When you do that, the level of self-awareness you can develop, I believe, is far, far greater than anything that simply secular solutions will provide or humanistic effort will provide. I believe in psychology, psychiatry. I believe in grit. I believe mindset, but if you don’t have a huge dose of spirituality, then I think you’re just going to be limited in your awareness. And yeah, my situatedness, that’s what academics call when you talk about what are your mindsets and your positions in life, my situatedness is as a Christian. And so obviously I believe the Bible does all that. And I’m trying to make the case for those who believe and for those who may not know if they want to believe that this is how you get to the maximum level of self-awareness in your life. And when you get to the maximum self-awareness in your life, that’s when you’re able to maximize your talents. That’s when you’re able to develop emotional depth, intellectual clarity, and all these things that we’ll talk about when we come back. 

Mike Query

All right. Well, we as a team had some conversations, talked with some folks and Russ, the series that you put together that you got us going on, you kicked it off with self-awareness. So we thought it might be helpful for us and our learning and for those listening to, we pulled some questions together to ask you a little bit about what went on when you were writing it and what we can learn from it, how we can go about really learning, processing, and then applying it to our lives. So let’s get into it. First question is about self-awareness. The idea of being self-aware is scary to me. How do I overcome my desire to avoid self-awareness because of my fear of the negative feelings that might initially come with it?

Russ Ewell 

Well, first thing you gotta do is you gotta find the right music. That’s the key. That’s the key to life. You gotta find the right music. One of my favorite new guys is Ben Rector. I really enjoy Ben Rector. I recommend that, but… Yeah, I think this idea of it’ll be scary. First, let’s help everybody understand the Best Life series. I would describe my role as creator, creating it. And everybody needs to know the team has worked on the content, and we’re even expanding it to invite some additional contributors to contribute stories. And so what you should be aware of is that we’re going to do things a little differently than we even thought we were going to do them starting out, which is we’re going to put a little bit more time in between each skill, each sort of chapter if you would, so that people are able to digest it. I think one of the, we did a survey some time ago where a lot of you gave us the input that when they come out too quickly, you don’t have time to process it. You don’t have time to really go to work on it. And so we’re going to try to do that more. And so if you go on the site, it says that each Monday you’ll get a new study. That may remain true, but we’ll keep you up to date on these because we want to help everybody grow. But more importantly, we want to grow ourselves. This has been a real growth opportunity for me.

So the issue of scary, maybe the best way to look at it is to watch an old episode or maybe a current episode of American Idol.

One of the things that I always found interesting about American Idol is that these young singers, more often than not, younger than me anyway, would come in and they’d be judged by people. And back in the days when Simon Cowell, I think his name’s Cowell, when Simon was there, it could get a little rough, because Simon would just tell somebody they weren’t any good at singing, you know? But I felt like what it was was sort of a real experiment to me, social experiment, in how do people deal with what other people think of them, if it does not match what they think of themselves. So this happened to me in my life a lot. I often thought, well, I’m a really cool guy. That girl will like me. Didn’t happen. I’m a really great athlete. My coach is going to put me in the starting lineup. Didn’t happen, you know what I’m saying? I had a lot of things in my head that I thought about myself. I was on Twitter or X yesterday and I was watching, or I was looking at my feed and one of them came up and it said the difference between men and women, it had a man looking in a mirror and a woman looking in a mirror.

The woman looking in the mirror was totally fine. She was just, you know, she looked great. She was fine. It’s a cartoon. But when she looked in the mirror, she saw somebody who didn’t look fine, who looked terrible. And so you see an image in the mirror of this woman who’s very normal looking in a positive way. And she looks in the mirror and she sees a woman who’s not normal looking. It looks like disheveled, overweight, hair is messed up. But the woman is totally fine. And so that’s it. Then you look at the man. And the man is disheveled, he’s not in good shape, and he looks in the mirror and he sees a guy with washboard abs. Looks awesome. That is…

Mike Query 

You’re right, right, right. That’s my morning routine. That’s my morning routine.

Russ Ewell 

That’s the perfect illustration of self-awareness, but it’s also why self-awareness is scary. And James 1 talks about the fact that the Bible is like a mirror. The beauty of a mirror is you’re able to look at it and see what you look like before you leave the house. And so what I recommend to people who are scary is something that I mentioned Sam Lang, you know, again, he passed away some time ago and not some time ago recently, a really inspiring man of God, a really inspiring friend. And he taught me something when I was in the process of getting married. I sat down with him and I said, you know, I’m really insecure I just, you know, I get these insecure feelings and I describe my insecure feelings as a leader, my insecure feelings because I was feeling like I’m always sinful, I’m always bad, you know, that kind of thing. And I’m anxious a lot that, you know, something’s going to come up or someone’s going to bring something up to me or someone’s going to say something to me. And he said, well, Russ, one of the things I think that has helped me with that is in my relationship with God, I’m always completely honest with God about everything. When I read my Bible, I let God show me whatever he needs to show me. I don’t run away from it. I try to dive into it. And so what I began to do is get my Bible out and say, I want to know the truth. I want to know the positive truths, but I want to know the not so positive truths. I want to know the areas where I’m strong, but I also want to know the areas where I’m weak. And when I did that, and I listened to his instruction, what happened is that I got to a place where I was way less insecure because I wasn’t going to be surprised by anything. Now why wasn’t I surprised? Sam told me, whenever you’re transparent with God and you’re honest with God, no one will ever surprise you with something they say to you or something they bring up to you or a critique of you. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, you know, going back to American Idol. When I watched American Idol, there would be people who would walk in there who did not think they were great singers. And the reason they didn’t think they were great singers is they had mentors who gave them an idea of how good they were. And so they had other people coaching them up or giving them some honest input. And so when they walked in, they were pleasantly surprised to hear positive feedback. But there were other people who said, oh, everybody told me I’m great. But those people clearly hadn’t told them the truth. And so those people were crushed. Well, what do we learn from that? One, God can help us be aware of where we are and whether we have strengths or weaknesses. Our weaknesses are good. 2 Corinthians 12 says that God’s power is perfected in weakness. So our weaknesses are useful because God can be glorified through the way he helps us overcome those weaknesses and conquer them and our strengths can be a benefit, but God can use those in a powerful way. So whether your strengths and weaknesses shouldn’t lead to us being negative or positive about ourselves, it should lead to us being aware of ourselves. And so me, because of the things I said, I want to control outcomes, I want to be driven, I want structure. My wife is great because she doesn’t feel the need for, she can relax. And so we’re a perfect complement. She’s motivated, she’s driven, but she’s not neurotic.She can go ahead and do those things. And it complements me. So sometimes the way our weaknesses are strengthened is by being honest with other people who can complement those weaknesses. They may bring their strengths to the table to compensate for our weakness and our strengths may compensate for their weaknesses. So when it comes to being scary, I think what we have to start with is, get a relationship with God where you can be confident when you tell God your strengths, your weaknesses, your hopes, your dreams, your sad moments and your losses whatever they may be, you’re aware of them, you already know from your relationship with God about them, so if it comes up, or if you’re in a situation, like I’m afraid of heights, I mean like really afraid of heights. I was at Facebook doing a virtual reality kind of testing, it wasn’t a test, it was, I was trying out the virtual reality in their lab, and I did it, and I was, it was going through all these different things, it was awesome, and all of sudden it had me on like the Empire State Building and I started to sweat and get nervous. 

Mike Query 

no. Yeah. Those are intense. They feel real. messes with your brain.

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, and I was on solid ground, there was no risk. Yeah, and that’s how afraid I am of heights. Okay, that’s just the nature of who I am. The only way I’m going to be negative of myself on that is if I’m not aware of it and then I end up being afraid of heights and then I get embarrassed about it and feel terrible about it and the way not to get there is to have the awareness. I’m afraid of heights, it’s a weakness I have. Can I overcome it? Yeah, there’s different things I can do but at the end of the day I don’t need to hate myself for it and I don’t need to feel less than myself for it. I just need to make sure that I don’t go hang gliding with you and end up weeping and crying because I’m stuck in the air, you know what I’m saying? So I guess the scary part, those are some answers to how to deal with the scary part. And I could go into getting relationships of love, understanding God loves you, there’s a lot there, but that’s some of the stuff people can do.

Mike Query 

Well, yeah, that makes me think I’ve had that experience in band settings. I’ve had times where I got to sing a part and I go a little stray, a little too far. And I’ve had our friend John, I can’t remember if he’s been on this podcast or not, but you go, hey, bro, you don’t need to be doing that, man. You need to reel it back in a little. That’s not your place. That’s not your zone. I’m like, okay.

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s a difference between Bruce Springsteen and Celine Dion. There’s a difference between Bob Dylan and Luther Vandross. I mean, there’s a difference. And you know what? That’s okay.

Mike Query 

Right, right. And yeah. Well, and the other way, too, right, like I’ve had times where I’m a little more self-conscious playing a guitar part out of my is no good. Then, know, from Brandon, it be like, what are you doing, man? Play that louder. That’s what the song needs. So in both cases, the song is better. Right. Me reeling it in and get my ego in check and learning to like not be so self-conscious. 

Russ Ewell 

Yes, exactly. That’s right, 100 %

Mike Query 

All right, well, how about I hit you with, so that’s a good self-awareness question. We’ve got one more for you just about the series as a whole. So when we look at the best life series as a whole, how do I look at the areas that I’m behind in and not lose faith, give up or get overwhelmed? So for those, for context, for those who haven’t looked, we got 20 total in the queue that are gonna be coming out over the next, you know, months or so.

And so yeah, you may look at them and several may click with you and that for some might feel you might get a little overwhelmed by that. So Russ, what would you say to someone who looks at that and gets a little overwhelmed?

Russ Ewell 

You know, I was at a conference once and I was listening to a guy talk and he was talking about all these things and I was getting wound up because I was like, I don’t do that, I don’t do this, I don’t do that, I don’t do this, I’ve never done that, I do that badly, and that’s kind how I was traveling through it. And I talked to a friend after and I was like, I don’t know what to do with this, and he said, well first of all, it’s not true that you don’t do those three things well. He said, you do those three things well, you shouldn’t even be worried about that. The last thing you need to do is work more on those. You don’t need to get stronger at those strengths. You need to look at these other two, three areas, and those are areas you can grow, but you need to pick one of them, not pick all three of them. 

And so, I think one thing is that people need to, and I’ll talk about this in a minute, because we’re going to break down, I think, how do I tackle self-awareness? Because I really think the foundation of this is being courageous enough to look and understand who we are. But that’s a bigger thing than I’m even saying.

So what I what I think you do is just enjoy the process coach Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide, which some people may not like that team. I really enjoyed Nick Saban’s leadership, but he used to build the team and talk a lot about process that he tells the kid don’t focus on going to the NFL. Don’t get focused on being an All-American. Focus on the process and what he’s talking about is getting to the dream is something I mentioned

in the first podcast, and I like to call it spiritual incrementalism. It’s the tortoise in the hare. It’s being willing to do the things each day. And I have a hard time with this, but I’m really working hard on this. Do the things each day to get where you need to get to. When I was really out of shape, and I still need to get in better shape, but when I was really out of shape, one things I had to do was not get overwhelmed and go, I need to lose 25 pounds right now. And instead I said, okay, what are the things I need to add to my life? What do I need to do with my diet, and then forget about it, and just do those things. And then you wake up three years later, or two years later, and you’re more what you want to be. And so I think some of this is, people ought to just love and enjoy getting a better relationship with God, seeking a best life. And if you’re in your 20s, or your 30s, or your teen years, you really shouldn’t worry about how quickly am I putting it all together. You should be more about, am I aware of where I’m at in life, in space, and am I making progress? As I alluded to, think again on the previous podcast, one of the earlier podcasts, I had a friend of mine, Howard Kiyuna, a good friend of mine, his brother, was a professor at Fresno State, and I met with him to talk about what do you do in churches with, you know, how do you handle the mental health issues? And he gave me a lot of advice, and one thing he kept repeating to me, he goes, I believe that awareness is health.

And I think what we have to do as we go through the Best Life Series is say, if I’m aware that time management is a challenge for me, and I’m working on it, then that’s positive. We do not have to accomplish. It’s what I said about the difference between Western thinking and Eastern thinking. Are we going for accomplishment or are we going for growth? And I think we need to be more growth oriented and less accomplishment oriented and we’ll get there. So that’d be the answer to that one. 

Mike Query 

One last question for you Russ. This is again about self-awareness, bringing it back to that. So final question, how can we go from self-aware to changing our hearts?

Okay?

Russ Ewell 

Oh! Great question. Perfect. Because it leads into some stuff I think we should talk about before we go. How do go from being self-aware to changing our hearts? So the first thing is, our heart changes as soon as we become self-aware. So that’s the key. Like that self-awareness is a change of heart. When I read the Adulteration of Alcoholics book and did a lot of other work on my life, just doing that work changed my heart. And the way to think about it is that if you are going through life and you just think, and I’ve got people that I know like this, you just think school is incredibly difficult. It’s always hard. But then you get tested and you find out you have dyslexia and suddenly you’re like, wait a minute. Now I understand. And I know a lot of people who are older who in school, they were just considered dumb or, you know, unmanageable, all these terrible things. But what it was is the people in the classroom or the people in the school

were not paying attention to the fact that they had a learning challenge. And so self-awareness in and of itself can change your heart the same way having a test given to you to tell you what you may be struggling with as far as a disability or a learning challenge. I’m not sure, I can’t remember the current language that’s best used, but you have a learning challenge. The reason that that’s important is so that instead of you feeling dumb, you’re able to go, I just need

to have some facilitation. I need to have some accommodation to make it possible for me to be successful. And that’s what I like about the world we live in today, as opposed to the one I grew up in. There’s a lot more recognition that there’s different styles of learning and so we have to think about it the same way. When I understand myself better, I feel less stress about who I am. I’m more generous and gracious to myself. And I can also take advantage of the tools that will help get where I need to be, if that makes sense.

Now this funnels really well into what I want to do before we go. I think, you know, a lot of people are trying to tackle self-awareness and I think they’re going to work on it in their relationship with God, in their relationship with people, in life, but they want a blueprint. Well, how do I think about it? How do I process it? Let me read a scripture, Psalm 32:8. 

The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control. 

Now I referred to this in our last podcast or one of our past podcasts but I want to go over this scripture and I want to allude to a few others. Again he says, Lord says, will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Psalm 32, 8 and 9. You can also go back and read Hebrews chapter 12 which in the NIV and I think the NASB and several of the

translations talks about the discipline of God, but I like the NIRV because the NIRV gives us, think, a better understanding of the original languages as opposed to the language and words we use today, and it uses the word training. God is like a parent, and He’s constantly, when He says He’s advising us and watching over us, it’s like a parent helping us to grow, helping us to crawl, helping us to talk. Helping us to get the skills we need to be able to become the human being, the adult, whatever that we need to be. And what it says after verse 8 is, not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bed and bridle to keep it under control. The key to self-awareness is to be sensitive, not senseless. Awareness is knowing where you are spiritually, knowing where you are socially knowing where you are emotionally, knowing where you are intellectually. Do those kind of make sense, Mike.

Mike Query 

Yes, I think so. I think it, even the part in the beginning about self-awareness is already part of change. that, that helps me initially, cause I can probably make too much, put too much emphasis on behavior before, know, putting the cart before the horse, you know, like, Hey, just getting aware of this stuff is part of what you were talking about even earlier, like journey, like there’s lots of growth happening. So I think, I think that nails it for me.

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, the way to look at the skills we’ll talk about is there are tools to help us get where we need to be. They’re not, they’re not the where we need to be. So time management is not the where you need to be. You don’t sit around and go, I’m bad at time. There are some really brilliant people who aren’t great at time management. So it’s not like, oh yeah, if I don’t have all these, it’s not worthwhile. What you have to do is you have to go, well, what do I want? What do I believe God wants to do with my life? Then let me look at the tools. We call them 20 and that’s what people go, that 20, that’s too many. just try to not count and try to enjoy. That’d be all I’d say.

Mike Query 

Well, and coming back to something you said earlier about, I you were sharing about with you and Gail and your friends and stuff, like in talking about these with the team, naturally what happens is some are better at some things than others, naturally, right? Got the way God makes us. And it made me more, and even how you were sharing made me think more like, this will be a lot more fun process if I start matching up and pairing up with folks who are maybe a little farther along or have something a little more to say about a certain area. And we’re all, it’s part of the growing together. If I can make, have conversations about, man, I’m really excited about growing in this and like, hey, that me too. Or like, hey, you’re really good at the time thing. Can you help me with my skin? Like there’s a lot of really fun conversations that can come from it. Because naturally I think we’re all going to be in different stages and farther along in some areas and others, especially if we’re at different life points. I’m a different guy now as a parent of a seven year old than I was when I was in college. Right. 

Russ Ewell 

Yeah, yeah.

100%. Well, I’m gonna think about, we’re talking about bands a lot. I like sports too. I’ll stay with the band analogy. You know, the Beatles, the E Street Band, James Brown’s bands, all these bands, you know, today bands like Coldplay or I learned about a new guy, I gotta go get his name that I’ve been sort of listening to. But you have drummers, you have saxophone players, you have lead guitar players, you have bass players, know, rhythm guitar players. You have percussion you know, and then you have piano. There’s all these instruments that when they’re together they make harmony. So what we have to think about is how do I create my team? So if I’m really strong in two of these 20 areas, I might want to, if I’m going to try to build a team that’s going to do something or reach a goal or we want to even have fun together, I might want to say, these are the kind of people I want to compliment me. So there’s a whole lot of ways to look at this and to enjoy doing it. But let’s just stick with the first one because I think the first one is non-negotiable. If you and I don’t develop self-awareness, we won’t even know who we need. And if we don’t develop self-awareness, guess who we won’t need? We won’t see our need for God. I actually think without deep self-awareness you don’t. So let me break it down. What are the really the four areas of what I want to call biblical self-awareness? And I’m just going to run through these and maybe we’ll come back to them in another time. Because I think there’s a difference between self-awareness and biblical self-awareness. Biblical self-awareness leads to a lot of healthy things, but sometimes just self-awareness can put a lot of emphasis on the self part. So let me start with the steps. You know, the Bible talks about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I think that’s a really good framework for understanding self-awareness. Number one. When God advises and watches over us, He doesn’t want us to be senseless. He wants us to be aware. He wants us to have sensitivity. The number one thing is spiritual awareness. That’s seeing life through God’s eyes. It’s discerning His presence, His purpose, His power.

It’s what Romans 1 talks about, when you look at nature, you see God. Spiritual awareness is being able to see spiritual things. It’s recognizing that there are invisible, mysterious, beyond human power things going on in the world today. Ephesians 6 talks about that there’s a spiritual battle between light and darkness going on. And so part of self-awareness is where am I spiritually? Where is the culture I live in spiritually? What’s happening spiritually, that’s my soul. That’s my soul. That’s where I’m at on that. I’ve got a soul awareness. That’s what spiritual awareness is. I think a lot of times in society, it’s the soul that’s being ignored.

It’s the soul that’s not being looked at at a really constant basis. And that many times people aren’t even aware of. They’re not even aware of the fact that, I’ve got a soul. What’s going on there? Then social awareness, understanding people, culture, and the world around us. That’s what social awareness is. Being able to what am I consuming on social media? How is that influencing me? What is the culture telling me to do? And is that really the best thing for my life? If I’m in a social setting, also social awareness is, what is the other person feeling? Not just what am I feeling? Social awareness. Then number three is emotional awareness, recognizing and responding to emotions. Recognizing your own emotions, one of the keys to that, there’s a number of books I’ve read on this, we’ll talk about them at another time, but it’s being able to label your emotions. And the reason that is labeling your emotions is recognizing your emotions. And many times we get consumed by one or two emotions but we’re not really recognizing. You talked about motives earlier. We have to go back and go, what’s the trigger that got me going? So maybe we’re angry, but we don’t recognize that the emotion that started that anger was we were sad and the sadness led to the anger. And oftentimes we try to deal with the anger because we haven’t properly labeled the emotions we’ve experienced that produce the anger. And that’s another way to get to emotional awareness. What’s under the hood or as I alluded to earlier, what’s behind that smile or that grimace or whatever may be the case. 

The fourth aspect I think of developing self-awareness is intellectual awareness the ability to be aware of what you’re thinking. It’s the ability to think critically. It’s the ability to think biblically about the world. It’s knowing what’s on your mind. A lot of times we don’t process how we’re thinking. We just react. We just go. Or we retreat and we isolate. But we don’t evaluate our thinking or we become consumed by our thoughts. I think when we start breaking it down and saying, am I spiritually aware? Am I socially aware? Am I emotionally aware, am I intellectually aware, that’s biblical self-awareness. And so how does it kind of break down again? Number one, when we have our soul on straight, when we’re paying attention to our soul life, and we’ve got an article on the web of Deep Spirituality about Blueprint for Spirituality that really spells out how to be aware of your soul life. But when we’re aware of our soul life, we become aware of God. When we’re aware of our emotions, we become aware of our own heart, how it’s feeling, what we’re going through, but we also become better at being aware of what others are going through. Sometimes we think we’re aware emotionally, but we’re really being consumed by our emotions. We’re not being aware of our emotions. Just to know we have an emotion doesn’t mean we need to dive into it. You know what saying? If you see a swamp with water and a hot day, you don’t just dive in because there can be some alligators in there. You go, okay, I’m aware that I’m hot and I’m aware that that water is cool, but I’m also aware there’s some alligators in there. Maybe I shouldn’t jump in there. We shouldn’t just dive all the way in our emotions. We should be aware of them, but not always consumed by them. And when we’re aware of our emotions, not consumed by them, we’re better at being aware of other people’s emotions, which puts us in a really good place. 

Aware of our spirituality, again, that’s also the soul. It’s that soul awareness. Aware of our thinking, the culture, what’s going on in our head thoughts are not just we thinking, but what thoughts are we being caused to think? I mean, how many of us absolutely feel the need to eat a box of Krispy Kreme donuts? Really? Is that really good for us? No. But after I watch a couple of Krispy Kreme commercials, I feel the need to consume Krispy Kreme donuts on a mass level. When I go buy Dunkin’ Donuts, I feel the need to support Dunkin’ Donuts with every fiber of my being and eat as many donuts as possible. So we have to be aware of what’s making me think it. That advertising making. Why do I suddenly want that? Why do I suddenly need that? Or why do I hate myself? Because I just got done watching some ad that told me what a guy needs to look like or what a woman needs to look like that really I don’t need to look. We have to be aware of our mind and our thinking. 

Aware of our purpose, our strengths, our gifts, our talents, and why God gave them to us.

That’s part of self-awareness to be able to go, you’re a good musician, I’m not. Okay, well does that mean? How do we work as partners together? Maybe my role in your life is just to admire what you’re good at. Sometimes people forget that being an admirer of people is an important thing. And oftentimes we’re so consumed by ourselves we don’t see, I’ll never forget I was talking to my good friend we know, Sam Manuel, was a Division I college player at NFL football.

And he and I were talking, I was talking about how I played basketball and I schooled and didn’t go as far as I wanted to. And I remember he goes, well, know Russ, height’s a talent too. Until that moment, I never considered that height was a talent. Why? Because I’m not super tall, right? But he opened my eyes to the fact, height’s a talent. So I didn’t get that one, which meant, well, I’m not supposed to be in the NBA. That’s not a bad thing. That’s me being aware. But all of a sudden then I started admiring people more, going, they’ve been given physical gifts I don’t have. So when I watch great athletes like my favorite college player right now, Cooper Flagg, I can admire him as opposed to wish I could be him. And so being aware of our purpose, why am I given my talents? Why is this person given their talents? All of that produces a biblical self-awareness. And so if you want to walk away and you want to go, how do I work on my

life? How do I start to get awareness? I’m going to give a few more things and then you can sort of say what you think about them. We have to be aware that when we handle the awareness in our life, the self-awareness in our life in an unhealthy way, we become self-conscious instead of self-aware. We become self-hating instead of self-aware. We become self-destructive instead of self-aware. We can even self-sabotage instead of being self-aware. We can be self-indulgent instead of self-aware. We can self-medicate instead of self-aware. Self-awareness does not mean that we turn in on ourselves. So it means with self-consciousness, it means instead of choosing insecurity, we choose humility and emotional honesty and transparency. With self-hate, instead of listening to the untrue, the unhelpful, and the unhealthy and unproductive thoughts, we embrace and pursue gracious, generous, and growth-oriented thoughts. Instead of being self-destructive, where we let dysfunctional reactions to unfortunate or unjust events in our life, instead of letting those control us and maybe make us be self-destructive. We choose biblical reactions and we spiritually process the things that have happened with some life and let them point us toward growth and being able to become something out of our pain, finding purpose in our pain, instead of being crushed by our pain.

Self-sabotage instead of becoming a professional quitter we become a focused finisher. Instead of always going, my solution to pain and difficulty is I’ll just quit. I’ll find a reason to quit. Maybe people out there can relate to that. Where you see yourself having a great opportunity, but you sabotage yourself. Wake up late. You don’t prepare because you don’t think you’re getting selected. It’s self-sabotage. 

Self-indulgence, where we become pleasure-driven instead of purpose-driven. And self-medicating. There’s a band, I forgot which band sang this song called Comfortably Numb. But when we become self-medicating, look to be comfortably numb instead of emotionally attached. All these are ways to take each day and go, am I aware on that level?

Am I operating in that space? When I open my Bible, am I looking at that? If I feel self-hating thoughts, am I willing to identify those thoughts as untrue, unhelpful, unhealthy, unproductive? Because if you’re hating yourself, then whatever you’re thinking is wrong. That’s the bottom line, it’s wrong. Because God did not design us to hate ourselves. And so instead you work on having gracious, generous, and growth-oriented thoughts that, maybe I’m not good at this, that’s an opportunity for me to grow. If I’m not good at this, if I’m not good at playing guitar, that’s an opportunity for me to become friends with Mike and enjoy listening to him play and give him my selections, you know? But anyway, those are some of the breakdowns that I have, wish we could do more, some of the breakdowns I have about how to attack self-awareness and develop it deeper in our life in a practical way. Any thoughts on that, Mike, before we go?

Mike Query 

Yeah, well first is Pink Floyd is the band that does comfortably numb. So I get that out of the way. Yeah, we couldn’t let that go unaddressed. But man, otherwise, I feel like that’s a super helpful place to sort of send us off to get to work. And even like I’m going to go back and I mean, we’re never gonna be done with this, like you said, right. But I think the unhealthy unproductive point you were talking about, I just I don’t know if it’s just being in church for a time being religious as a person, but I tend to approach this stuff from a pretty negative bent, you know, like it’s, it’s, uh, and maybe it was, I didn’t really come up, grow up really hyper competitive or I want to be super type a, uh, so, but I tend to view like, okay, what’s wrong with me and how do I need to like correct that? Right. So it’s, it’s, I don’t even know. I’m not even always aware that I’m doing that, but I think when you’re, the way you’re talking about this now is very encouraging because I feel like, Oh, okay. This is really, like trying to view the whole picture, the whole painting of the type of person God made me to be, right? And so it’s like, it makes me think I’m not just, I’m not just trying to get self-aware of my errors and my flaws and my corrections that need to be made. I’m trying to get aware of like, who God made me to be in this particular space and time, right? So that’s really deep and it’s exciting. And it’s something I remember actually when working on one of the parts of the series, know, Amy, my wife was helping me going, you know, I think, you remember when you were looking at this stuff, it should be some freedom because, know, it’s, I’m not actually like some scum, terrible person who just gets a kick out of flaking on people. like, no, you just have an area of guys trying to develop in you and it should be an aha moment. Like, okay. And that helped me, what you just said helped me. Even the point about, I mean, there’s a lot, even the multiple dimensions of awareness, the culture, I’m like, yeah, like I’m totally, I read news articles this week that just totally like set my head spinning. You know what mean? That’s gonna affect how I view stuff, you know, just because the media just nothing gets clicks like just negative news, right? And just even being aware of what my purpose, talents are. think as I get into my life point now of being a parent of a young kid, so much can feel like it’s just trying to get through the day, right? So it can be easy to lose sight of like, outside when you’re done with the job and taking care of kids. What’s God doing in these settings for me? Like what my purpose is not gone. It’s still there. It’s stronger than ever. So I’m really excited. I think that’s an excellent way to jump off and get working on this stuff. And for me personally, it just gives me whole new dimensions and I’m excited to jump back into it because these are really helpful.

Russ Ewell 

I’m excited to keep growing and all of you for joining us on the journey. Please email us, let us know any tips, insights, books you’ve read, articles you’ve read, scriptures you’ve read, things you’ve thought of, because we’ll put them on the podcast and we’ll use them because they’ll help us grow. And I want to leave this scripture as I remind you to subscribe to our podcast, get on YouTube and not that I like being on camera at all, but get on YouTube and subscribe there too. And why? Because it helps us reach more people and we think people want to, in the midst of all the voices they hear, they want to be able to hear the voice of God through scripture and ideas that are built around His voice that help them be able to grow and when they grow be able to live the best life they can live. Philippians 1:11, New Living Translation. 

“May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation, the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ, for this will bring much glory and praise to God.

Know this, that whatever you do, wherever you do it, when you do it well to the best of your ability, God will be glorified. And when you do amazing, God will be glorified. And that makes the world not only a better place to have your best life, but it also inspires other people to pursue their best life. Thanks for listening to our podcast. We’ll be back in the future, hopefully with more, you know, things to get you thinking, and hopefully get you inspired and have your faith increase, or maybe make you take a look at God for the first time. That’s Deep Spirituality Podcast. Subscribe and like us. Have a wonderful week.