If you don’t sacrifice for your dream, your dream becomes your sacrifice. We all have to invest something into our dreams and goals. It could be energy, time, or even money. I want to encourage you today to be “all in” for your goals. You won’t regret it!
Resources Mentioned:
Renew180 Christian Coaching: https://ashleyvarner.com/180
Weekly Reset Guide (free): https://renewedmind.lpages.co/weekly-reset/
Highlights From the Episode
We all have dreams and goals that we want to accomplish. We all look forward to New Years and really dreaming about what we can be and what we can be like at this time next year. Well, I wanna talk to you about one of the biggest reasons why maybe you are not seeing results in your goals. And I’m gonna show you how you can overcome it. Today, we’re gonna talk about how you can invest in your dreams and why that’s so important. Let’s get started.
Hello there, my friends, and welcome back to The Renewed Mind. Welcome. If you are brand new, I just wanna say thank you for being here. So today I wanna talk to you about one of the biggest reasons why some people see their goals actually happen and some don’t. And the difference is those people who meet their goals usually are investing in their dreams.
Now, before you just hit stop and don’t listen anymore, I’m not just talking about throwing money at a dream. I’m not talking about just that kind of investing. I’m talking about investing a lot of different parts of you into the dreams that God has placed on your heart.
Invest Your Energy
So let’s first talk about how you can invest your energy. Some people have dreams and goals in their lives, but they don’t make the sacrifice to accomplish those goals. I have heard it said, if you don’t sacrifice for your dreams, your dreams become your sacrifice. And that’s kind of a sad statement, but it is so true.
So often I see people who have dreams and goals but they’re not willing to sacrifice for them. And one way that you do that is by investing your energy into the dreams and the goals that God has put on your heart. If you want to accomplish big things, if you have these big, God-sized goals and dreams, but you’re not willing to sacrifice your energy for them, then you are not gonna see them come into existence. So what do I mean by investing your energy?
Well, it means putting in the work. It means being thoughtful and intentional about where you’re going. And I think putting in the work can sometimes come across as crass or maybe cliche, but really it’s about the day-to-day actions that you take. So you can have a big goal. But if every day you’re thinking, “Okay, I’ll work on it tomorrow,” maybe your goal is to write a book and you have this huge dream, you know that God has put this information on your heart and you wanna write the book, but you’re not putting in the work. Every day, you’re thinking, “Okay, yeah, I’ll start on that next week,” or, “I’ll start on that tomorrow,” or, “Man, today was just so busy. I don’t have time to do it.” If you are not investing your energy, you’re not going to see the results that you wanna see.
Invest Your Time
So another area that this might be is getting up early. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of kids. And that changes a lot because we also foster. So my schedule can get really chaotic at times. And I have to make time for the things, the dreams, the visions that I have on my heart. And I wanna do that because I don’t want to sacrifice the time that I have with my kids either.
So a lot of times, what I do is I go to bed early instead of watching TV. You know, after the kids go to bed, I go to bed at the same time so that I can wake up early and accomplish those things and really put the work in on those things before they get up. That way, I’m not sacrificing family time. I’m just sacrificing things like time I would regularly watch TV.
Balance is Important
I want you also to remember that as you are investing your energy, realize that it’s for a season. So I talk a lot about balance and I think that balance is important, especially for those of us who are moms.
But it’s important to see that sometimes there’s seasons in your life that are gonna be more busy than others. I know that summer for us is really busy. And I also know that during the wintertime, we are less busy. So that November, December, I can plan on investing more time into certain things.
But as you are looking at your dreams and your goals, remember that it is gonna be for a season. So there might be times whenever you have to wake up early to do something but realize it’s not gonna be forever, right?
All these things, investing your energy starts with your mindset, to say, “If I don’t do this now, if I don’t put in the work every day, then I’m not gonna see the results.” Say, let’s go back to that example of writing a book. It’s not just going to magically appear on December 31st if you haven’t been doing the work every day to accomplish that goal. Now, if you want to write a book quicker than one year, that’s definitely doable but you’re gonna have to invest more of your energy.
Set Aside Both Time and Energy
Now, let’s talk about investing your time. And some people might think that this is the same as investing your energy. But there are times that I have the time to do something but I don’t have the energy to do it, right? Or I have the energy to do something but I don’t have the time.
So I wanted to break them up here as I’m talking about investing in your dreams. Because not only do you have to set aside your energy, but you have to set aside time. And I think that this is important to remember because we all seem to think that we don’t have any time. We all seem to think that we’re too busy.
Time Audit Your Day
But if you were to do a time audit on your day, you’re gonna find that there are so many pockets of time that are wasted. Now, I like to watch television. I have, you know, a certain… I love the old classic movies. But what I try to do, especially if I’m in a season of investing in my dreams, I will plan ahead of time, one movie that I’m gonna watch on the weekend. Maybe it’ll be from one o’clock to three o’clock when the kids are taking a nap, or something like that. I block off that time to watch that old Audrey Hepburn movie or whatever it is that I wanna watch. And then I know, at that time, it’s gonna be a time of rest for me. I’m going to be able to just kind of zone out a little bit.
To me, that is different than coming home and just binging on whatever’s on Netflix without thinking about it. So it’s really about intention. I would really recommend that you do a time audit of your day to see those pockets of time that are being wasted.
So it might be that you could, if you have an online business and you need to post to social media every day, maybe you do that while you’re waiting in line to pick up your kids from school. And that’s whenever you post. Because as soon as the kids get in the car, you have to turn off your phone. And that kind of cuts off the time for social media. We all know that we can waste time on social media.
So for me, on my iPhone, I have set up a setting on my screen time where I’m only allowed to be on social media sites, like Facebook or Instagram, for 15 minutes a day. That gives me enough time to post to The Renewed Mind Instagram or Facebook page. But it doesn’t give me so much time that I feel like I’m wasting time.
Pay Attention to Where You Spend Your Time
As you do time audits of your day, just be paying attention to where you spend your time. Are you taking an hour for a task that really could take 20 minutes? Are you spending more time watching television or scrolling on social media than you think that you are? All of those things add up at the end of the day. And so if you are looking for ways to invest time into your dreams, then that’s something that you should look at because I think that we all can feel like we don’t have enough time in our day.
But if we are really honest, we would say, “Yeah, I have time. I have just as much time as anybody else, but I’ve been wasting it.” And I say that without any judgment because, like I said, I enjoy, you know, watching old movies and things like that, but I really try to plan that time ahead of time so it serves a purpose. And I’m in charge of it instead of it being in charge of me.
Invest Your Money
All right, the last area that I wanna talk about is investing your money into your dreams. Now, I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna include this because so much of our dreams depend on the energy and the the time that we put into them. But we put our money where our treasures are.
So where your priority is, is where you’re going to put your money. If you prioritize your fitness and your health, then you’re going to put money into that. If you are prioritizing anything, you’re going to put your money where your treasure is.
Things like buying parenting books or, you know, I purchased some devotionals for my kids just the last couple of weeks that we are going to be working on and reading through together because my kids’ spiritual walk is important to me. So I am investing in those devotionals. You know, we can invest in all of those see-through organizer boxes from the Home Edit if we really care about our home being organized. We are constantly putting our money where our treasure is.
So I want you to be thinking about where you can invest in your dreams. And I’m not saying it has to be huge amounts of money, but I would say that you can look at where you’ve been spending money. And that’s gonna tell you where some of your priorities are already.
So if your goal is to better your fitness but you look at your credit card statement and it’s like just coffee every day or fast food every day, then you can say, “You know, I’m not investing my money where I should. Maybe I should invest in some high-quality fruits and vegetables instead.”
So why are we so shy about investing in our dreams?
I just want you to see that we are kind of prone to being shy about investing in the things that we want or investing in the dreams that we have. Why? Why are we so shy about investing in our dreams?
I think that investing in things like online training or coaching, that’s one reason why I offer Renewed 180 for women because I want them to be able to invest in their dreams with someone who is Christian, who is biblically sound in their teaching, but also someone who knows where they’re coming from. I’ve had a lot of transformation in my life.
You can look at the YouTube channel and just scroll back to old videos to see even a physical transformation that I’ve had, but also in the way that I parent, in the way I respond to my husband, in the way we’ve grown our businesses, there has been transformation in my life that you can learn from. And if you invest in coaching, that’s what you get. You get the benefit of kind of jumping past all of those obstacles to get to your own transformation that much faster.
There are other ways you can invest money in your dreams that aren’t directly related to the dream itself, but a way that you can invest your money so that you have more time and energy. And that is maybe investing in help.
Investing in Help
So if you are running a business and you need to hire an assistant, you can do that. That is part of investing your money in your dreams. I know a woman who does a lot of aesthetic work. She’s an aesthetician. And she does like makeup and all that kind of stuff. And she was very busy. She is one of the best in our area. And whenever I called to to make an appointment with her, she said, “Okay, my assistant,” or I texted her and she said, “My assistant will be getting back with you about scheduling.”
She had invested her money to hire an assistant to handle all that stuff so that she could actually do what she’s the best at, what she enjoys doing. That’s part of investing your money in your dream, is finding help or delegating tasks.
So that might mean that if you have the means to have someone come in and help you clean your house on like every other week or once a month, it could be that you have help at work or with your business. It could be that you just delegate things to your children instead of doing that all yourself. Those are ways that you can invest in your dreams. And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that.
God Has Given Us All Dreams
Whether you’re investing your money, your energy, your time, the truth is God has given us all dreams. And if we are just laissez-faire or relaxed about them, then we’re really not being good stewards of the dreams and the goals that He’s put on our hearts.
If you have a dream, if you have a goal that God has placed on your heart for the following year, be considerate of ways that you can invest in it. Maybe that means waking up early. It might mean investing in coaching. Maybe that means investing extra time or turning off the television so that you can find the time to invest in that dream. It could be writing a book. Maybe it could be recording a song. It could be any type of thing. Or it could even be starting a catering business or doing meals on wheels or something like that for people who need it.
Whatever your dream is, I really hope that you consider investing in it with your energy, with your time, and even with your money.
All right, that is it. That is all I have for you this week. We have one more video of this year. And I’m really excited to share it with you. It’s all about how to live your dream life. I will see you guys next time. Have a great week.
