How to Let Your Faith Rule

by desing | Faith & Purpose

What is it that guides your emotions, thoughts and actions? Are they easily swayed by what you see or anything that comes your way? Well, I’m telling you to let that type of attitude go and tell it to never come back because it’s part of what’s been holding you back!

Anyone can start anything. Anyone can start going back to school, enroll in the nearby gym, writing that book, or working on that business but only the committed will stay focused no matter what challenges may come your way and remain focused to see your goal through until the end.

If achieving success were easy, everyone would be doing it and we’d have a happier world. But because it’s so challenging to build a life that you desire most people settle into a mediocre life. I would love to tell you that pursuing your success is going to be easy but I would be lying to you. Everything good in this world is going to be met with opposition. You’re going to have to fight for what is rightfully yours, which includes your dreams, your family, your future and your success.

Along with perseverance and persistence, you must allow faith to rule your heart because that is where your power comes from. Whatever is in your heart will impact your thoughts and will be the words you choose to speak out of your mouth – which will influence what you attract into your life. When you truly have faith, you’re supposed to use it to work for you. Faith is your servant and it will do as you tell it to.

However, if you allow doubt, setbacks and the negative opinions of others to influence your heart, your faith will be frustrated. The goal of the opposition that you face is to steal your faith because without faith, you cannot receive the abundance of unlimited favor and success that has been laid out for you. If the opposition can steal your faith, it can steal everything else from you.

In spite of what you may see in front of you, remember that your creative power is in your heart, thoughts and most importantly your words. Stop claiming defeat, lack and failure. It’s time to let faith rule in your heart, your mind, your words and in your actions. Faith is not faith if it’s not working for you.

You must do and say everything in faith. Not in some “magical power type of attitude” but trusting that if God is for you then who can be against you. Trusting that God has the best for you and you can have confident trust in Him to work on your behalf. Instead of working overtime at hustling for your dreams, try working your faith overtime to bring to you what you’re hoping for!

Faith is the confidence and assurance that what you’re hoping for will happen but sometimes we must endure the test of faith to receive the very thing that we hope for. That happens because your faith is being perfected and if you don’t pass this test of faith, how will you pass the bigger tests of faith that life will inevitably throw your way?

Faith is a muscle and it must be exercised! It’s not something that you pull out in a motivating quote on social media; it’s a daily way of thinking, feeling and deciding. Both faith and fear are essentially the same thing, believing that something that hasn’t happen will happen but one believes what you hope for and the other believes the opposite. But you have the decision to choose which one will rule your life.

Let go of what has happened to you in the past, release anyone who has hurt you because lack of faith is often rooted in bitterness and make a decision to let faith rule your life. I guarantee that when you do, you will see the glory that has been promised to you!

Let faith rule!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy

What Breaks Your Heart?

by desing | Faith & Purpose

Happy New Year to you!! I know you’re probably thinking about the rest of 2016 in hopeful anticipation of favor, increase and blessings – which I know you will experience!

Blessings, favor and success are fantastic – but do you think that you’re living in your purpose? Or are you waiting year after year for something new to happen to you?

Everyone desires to be happy and we can get so caught up in ourselves that we forget what being successful truly means. It’s not about you, your success is tied to your purpose and if you’re not living in your purpose then you’re not succeeding. As you’ve probably heard me say before, your purpose is when you are using your natural gifts, talents and abilities to serve a human need.

Your purpose is waiting to be discovered by you and it’s not some sort of event. I challenge you to think about how you can grow in your purpose this year. A great way to start is to ask yourself this question which I heard from Pastor Andy Stanley – what breaks your heart?

What do you see on television or maybe hear on the news or see in your community or read about on social media that breaks your heart? You want to do something and you keep thinking about it but you feel like you can’t do much so you go back to your normal life. Someone else in this world is waiting for you to get up off your butt and use the gifts that you have to serve them.

Don’t confuse what I’m saying and think that you have to become the millennial Mother Teresa. You may hate seeing women feel less beautiful because of their skin troubles and you have the gift of make-up artistry, well part of your purpose may be to start using your expertise to make women feel beautiful and overcome low self-esteem. I hate seeing people allow fears and limited thinking to hold them back from achieving their dreams which is why I teach faith and success principles through my gift of communication.

Instead of complaining about the world around you, how are you going to be a catalyst of change in your life and in the lives of others around you? Who are you going to be a blessing to this year? Who are you going to open a door of opportunity to this year? How are you going to grow in your quality of loving others, your work ethic and your way of thinking in order to successfully achieve your pre-destined purpose?

Essentially, what are you going to do that you have the power to do to successfully live in your purpose?

This year is indeed a year of incredible blessing for you but you have to be willing to give in order to receive. One of the traps of success is that we focus so much on the destination that we forget to grow in our character and purpose during the process.

If you begin to think of yourself as a servant to others with your gifts, you will be led into what your purpose is. Your purpose is not to get up, go to work, check your social media, answer some texts, eat, drink, sleep and do it again. This is your year to get out of the rat race and start to pursue your purpose!

The way you can begin to do that is to take the focus off of yourself for a minute and ask yourself, what am I good at and how can I use it to help the need of someone else? This will empower you to live in your purpose and that’s the essence of your legacy. Your legacy is the impact of your contributions to this world while you are here and it how it outlives you after you are long gone.

Truthfully, you don’t know how much time you have left. You can make a commitment to live in the legacy you want to leave now or you can allow the frustrations of life to continue to stop from entering the destiny that you deserve.

Will you be committed to be a woman of purpose in 2016? You better because it’s time to you don’t have time to waste!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy

When It’s Not Your Season of Victory

by desing | Faith & Purpose

So the other day I received an email from someone who was celebrating a monumental success; she had succeeded at something that I failed at tremendously this year. Although I was happy for her, there was a part of me that felt disappointment and then those feelings of envy started to creep in – until I checked my thoughts.

Sometimes it can be difficult to celebrate the success of others when they’re in their season of victory and you’ve been in a season of wilderness, failures and setbacks. Have you ever experienced a time where you’ve tried everything to prosper at your dreams and nothing is working? It seems like the harder you try, the more resistance you experience?

Well, that’s because not every season is your season of victory. There will be times of your life where you’ll have to endure some uncomfortable, faith-stretching, character-testing circumstances. To add insult to injury, it will seem like everyone else around you is winning and feel like God has forgotten about you.

We all go through those seasons and tend to compare our behind-the-scenes to the highlight reel of others in this social media world. In those seasons, you have a choice to continue moving forward or to abort mission.

Although these seasons may be a wilderness that you weren’t expecting, they are always followed by a promised land. After winter, always comes spring. The most excruciating and frequent pains of pregnancy are right before birth. You may be one last push away from receiving all that you’ve prayed, hoped and cried for and that’s why it’s getting harder for you right now. All hell might be trying to break loose in your life and you think that your prosperity and success is still years away, but I’m here to tell you that you’ve come way to far from where you started to abort your mission now.

Something new is on the horizon for you. Until it manifests, wait for it with joy and expectancy. Even if it’s hard, celebrate and support the success of others and be committed to walking in love. How you wait for your Promised Land shows a lot about your character; so carefully choose your attitude. If someone has offended you, forgive them because that lack of forgiveness could be what’s holding you back from experiencing your success.

I have such an overwhelming feeling that 2016 is your “something new” year. God is going to do a new thing in your life and open doors for you that are so blessed that it will be worth every tear you’ve cried. Your finances, family, relationships, businesses and careers will be blessed and restored.

Don’t allow the disappointments of your past to dictate what God can do for your future. You may think about how things didn’t work out before and it will stop you from believing for better. I want you to forget those former things and press on towards what is ahead. Don’t even consider disappointment as an option and believe that 2016 is your “something new and promised land” year!

Leave your wilderness behind and walk into your new season of victory!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy

If You Haven’t Started Planning 2016, You’re Already Behind

by desing | Faith & Purpose

I have some bad news for you. If you haven’t started to plan your 2016 or to work on your 2016 goals, then you’re already behind my dear! But no worries because we’re about to fix that!

One of the greatest keys to success is clarity of vision. If you don’t know what you want, how will you know when you’ve reached it? Better yet, how will you make your plans to achieve it if you don’t know what you want?

Once you determine what you want, you can start to set goals to help you get there. I like to call it my “cause and effect” strategy or simply working backwards. Don’t wait until 2016 to start planning 2016, determine what you want to happen in 2016 and start setting your goals now.

Get specific with your goals. “Gaining weight” is not an effective goal neither is “Getting closer to God” or “Be happy.” Neither of these goals is specific and measurable with deadlines. Your goals must be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Specific.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. That’s why it’s vital to set your 2016 goals now, not on January 15^th. I set my 2016 goals about a month ago. Once I did that, I set my December goals as action steps to help me accomplish my 2016 goals. Instead of looking behind, press on towards the rewards of your future. You have to be proactive in manifesting your vision for 2016. Vague goals will produce vague results.

Instead of a goal being, “Getting closer to God” change it around to be “I will spend 15 minutes a day in prayer and meditation on God’s word, five times a week.” Or instead of saying “make more money,” change it to “I will get new job making an annual salary of at least $70,000.” The latter goals are more descriptive and it dictates the action that you need to take to accomplish your goal.

Also, start to expect goodness, miracles and favor to come your way for 2016. Expectation sets the atmosphere for a miracle and too many of us have been bamboozled to think negatively or have limited thinking. Limited thinking will breed limited results.

Speak out loud what you want to see happen in 2016. Write out a list of things that you want to see realized in your life and read it out loud daily until you see it happen. Confess it and declare it in faith. You are to walk and live by faith, not by sight. If there’s one thing that I challenge you to do differently, is to change the way you think and speak. Stop focusing on what you can do in your own strength, and start to speak out what God can do for you simply because of His grace. You don’t earn it; you just believe it and receive it.

You’ll get what you expect and you’ll attract what you believe. It’s time to leave the limited thinking and the faithless attitude in 2015. If you’ve been disappointed in 2015, don’t let your disappointment steal your expectation. Without expectation, change will never be made visible in your life.

Last year, I shared this exercise with you and I want you to do it again to help you determine what areas of your life need a little bit more transforming than others for 2016. Below is a photo of “The Wheel of Life” which is broken down into the following areas: career, finance, personal growth, health, family, spirituality, social life, and attitude.

Within each category, there are numbers between 1-10 which are there to help you rate your life in that category; 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. After you rate your life in the corresponding category, you then color into the number you rated the category which is depicted in the wheel above. If there are categories that are low, then it’s time to live with intention and fix it. Why is it low? What do you think you need to learn from this situation? What measures are you going to take to raise that category in 2016? If you have several low ranking categories, then attack one category at a time and start with the easiest one first and move on to the next.

I declare that 2016 is your year of restoration, reconciliation and recompense. This is your year for change and although you’ve been praying for change, it’s time for you to exercise the power and ability living inside of you to create change with your thoughts, words, actions, expectation and attitude.

2016 is your year to become legendary!
XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy 

You’re Not Your Mistakes

by desing | Faith & Purpose

There are probably parts of your past that you would want to keep a secret forever in fear of judgment or rejection. It can be easier to forgive someone else but a lot harder to forgive ourselves of mistakes, right?

Mistakes can be brutally painful which can lead to feelings of resentment, regret and even bitterness. But you are NOT defined by your past or current mistakes and instead of getting bitter, get better.

Lies will try to convince you that you’re never going to change or that because of past or current disappointments that you’ll never succeed. But those are all lies.

If you’re still breathing, then that means that God still has a plan for you. And that mess that you’re currently in or the one you keep dwelling on from your past will be transformed into your message.

A righteous person may fall down seven times but gets back up again. It’s in those mistakes that often lay the precious jewels of wisdom that life can offer. What defines you is how you choose to respond to the lesson that you learned in your failure.

It’s been said that experience is the best teacher and that’s because once you go through an experience that teaches you a valuable lesson, you will gain an understanding that no one can take away from you. That’s the hidden beauty in making mistakes.

Also, a mistake may be a part of God’s overall plan for your life. He’s the great architect so He already knew the decisions you would make and with His power and infinite wisdom, He still ordered your steps to experience the wonderful destiny and plans He already predestined for you.

You are NOT your mistakes, you are NOT your pitfalls and you are NOT defined by your current or past circumstances. It took me a few years to understand that nothing that happens to me defines me and that’s a lesson that I’m sharing with you. Often it’s in your pain that you will discover your purpose.

If you keep making the same mistake, then perhaps you haven’t learned the lesson that you need to learn in order to qualify getting to the next level in your life. Maybe there needs to be a change but you keep missing it. It’s time to discern what lesson it is that you’re to learn.

Your lesson may be to learn to manage your emotions, or to change your attitude, or to learn to depend on God instead of allowing your ego to “edge God out.” Whatever the lesson is that you’re supposed to learn, embrace the wisdom, get back up again and begin to apply that new understanding to your life.

The key to overcoming your mistakes is rooted in your relationship with yourself. Stop being so hard on yourself and make a commitment to have a healthy, positive and secure relationship with you. You are not perfect, none of us are and none of us ever will be. That’s not an excuse to be lazy in your growth as woman but it’s time to release those shackles of “perfection” imprisonment.

Don’t be afraid to pray for wisdom either. Instead of jumping head first into your decisions, ask God for guidance so that you don’t make the same mistake as before. And if you don’t have peace about it, then don’t do it. I’m at point in my life where I will not move on anything if I don’t feel like its God’s best for me. But it took me years of making the same mistakes to arrive to this point.

That wisdom you gain from your mistakes will help you inspire someone else in the future. Don’t have a limited view on your experience because you never know how it will benefit someone else because it usually does.

So shut down the RSVP’s to your pity party, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back up again, even if it’s for the 99^th time!

XOXO,

Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy