Robin McGraw - Inside My Heart Guided Journal: Choosing to Live with Passion and Purpose

INSIDE MY HEART

GUIDED JOURNAL

INSIDE MY HEART

Choosing to Live with Passion and Purpose

GUIDED JOURNAL

ROBIN MCGRAW

Copyright 2007 by Robin McGraw

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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ISBN: 1-4185-1436-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-4185-1436-5

Printed in the United States of America
07 08 09 10 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to the millions of women who have so selflessly nurtured and cared for others as a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. My heart is to help women realize that they should never settle for anything less than the best for themselves and in their relationships.

CONTENTS

I am on a mission to get you excited about your life.

And let me tell you, Im excitednot only excited to be a woman, but to be a wife, a mother, an enthusiastic homemaker, and now an author. My greatest hope is that what I put down in these pages may inspire and help you and other women by offering an honest look inside at who I am: how Ive lived my life, the struggles Ive faced, the decisions Ive made, and how and why Ive made them. The journey hasnt always been easy and it sure hasnt always been fun, and Ive had my share of disappointments along the way. But it has all made me who I am today.

Stop and take a moment now just for you. Push everything else aside and embrace this time to reflect on the life youve lived thus far, and on the life you are living now. This is what this guided journal is all about to make a choice to put yourself first and to make the time to think about and create the life you want. Maybe its not the life you have now, but do you know that it can be? That the life you dream of is one you deserve to live?

So take a few (or many) moments to think about your lifethe easy times and the hard times; the joys and the disappointments; the struggles and the triumphs. Then record those significant times in the following space.

Im smart enough now to value the experiences Ive had over the half-century Ive been in this world, and I know that the ones that count are all a result of the choices Ive made. But I also know that many people arent aware that there are choices to be made, that they do have control over a lot of what happens to them. The freedom to choose the way we live our lives is one of the great gifts weve been given.

That is worth saying again: The freedom to choose the way we live our lives is one of the great gifts weve been given.

How do you feel about that statement? Do you believe it is true?

Have you been living your life with this perspective of freedom of choice? If so,describe how this freedom is allowing you to live. If what I have just said is news toyou, how could this perspective change your life?

A lot of people go through life without really thinking about who they are or why they do the things they do. Its as if were living on autopilot, staring straight ahead without seeing anything other than whats right in front of our faces. I know what this feels like because its happened to me.

Im usually able to snap out of my daze and get back in control pretty quickly, but I know how easy it is to go passive. We do things or agree to things or accept whatever comes our way without considering whether or not its right for us. And by passively accepting whatever happens, we give up chances every day to create the lives we want.

It doesnt have to be that way.

You can make choices in your lifein fact, you must make choicesin order to have the life you want. And whether or not youre aware of it, you do make choices all the time; even choosing not to choose is a choice.

Do you ever feel that you are living your life on autopilot? What do you thinkcauses you to live in a daze?

To what degree do you feel actively in control of whats happening in your life?

Are you naturally a proactive decision-maker, or do you tend to be more passive?

Out of the many, many choices youve made in your life, consider three significant ones youve made.

Specifically, how has each choice benefited you, and how has each one challengedyou?

Think of a time when you have chosen not to choose. What was the result? Do yourecognize any area(s) of your life in which you consistently avoid making choices,and just let things happen as they will?

Are you content to continue with your current track of decision-making?

I live every day of my life as an adventure, and I approach every aspect of my life as an event. Life has tried to knock that spirit out of me, and you probably know what that feels like. But I always have faith that things will get better. And it doesnt matter how old I get; I still wake up every morning grateful to be alive and healthy, and passionate about making the most of the day. And while Ive always known this about myself, it wasnt until I sat down to write this book that I thought about how I got that way, and how it is that my life turned out the way it has. I simply cannot imagine wanting to be anything or anyone other than who I am: a freethinking woman, wife of the man I love, and mother of two grown sons.

What events or people in your life have threatened to knock the spirit out of you?
What happened? Did they succeed? Did you recover? How did you handle it?

Whether you know it or not, youre constantly writing the book of your own life (regardless of whether you actually ever write anything down or not). You are ever-evolving, ever-changing, ever-growing. Keep this in mind as you go through this journal. Some things in your past will be hard to remember, while you will delight in remembering others. Embrace every step in your journey, for they have made you the woman you are.

I believe Im smarter today than I was yesterday, and I know Im a whole lot smarter than I was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. I dont know if fifty is the new thirty, but I do know that Im in my fifties now and I love it. I also know that I didnt become who I am through dumb luck; I did it by listening to Gods voice, knowing myself, and using all of that knowledge to create the life I wanted.

You see, I absolutely believe that in order for a woman to experience happiness, fulfillment, and peace, she needs to know two things: who she is, and who she is meant to be. Theyre not quite the same thing: the first one has to do with the reality of your life, and the second one has to do with your purpose for being in this world, which is something each of us has to discover for herself and cannot be dictated by any other person in our lives not by our husbands, parents, children, employers, or friends.

I absolutely believe that in order for a woman to experience happiness, fulfillment, and peace, she needs to know two things: who she is, and who she is meant to be.

I think its getting harder and harder to tell the difference between who we are and who were meant to be. So much of the time, we lose ourselves just trying to keep up with the frantic pace of life. We drag ourselves out of bed in the morning, already half an hour behind, and spend much of the day responding to the needs and demands of others. Somewhere along the line, we often lose track of the essential feminine selfthat unique, life-giving entity that invigorates our beings and warms the souls of the people we love.