Prayer For Focus And Productivity

55 Productivity Quotes For Work, Life and Making the Most of You

Productivity quotes on Everyday Power Blog. Enjoy!!

1.) “You can’t get much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.”
― Jerry West

2.) “Everyday that I procrastinate, everyday that I sit stagnant in fear, everyday that I fail to better myself, someone else out there with the same goals and dreams as me is doing the exact opposite.”  ― Noel DeJesus

3.) “The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.”
― Henry David Thoreau

3.) “Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks—cutting loose debris that’s impeding forward motion.”  ― David Allen

4.) “It’s not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.”
― Nathan W. Morris

5.) “It is not enought to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
― Henry David Thoreau

6.) The perfect is the enemy of the good. – Voltaire

Productivity Quotes For Work, Life and Making the Most of You

7.) There is no substitute for hard work. – Thomas A. Edison

8.) The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings. – Thomas Sowell

9.) No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. – Warren Buffett

10.) If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. – Bruce Lee

12.) If you commit to giving more time than you have to spend, you will constantly be running from time debt collectors. – Elizabeth Grace Saunders

13.) There is no waste in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed, and ineffective motions. – Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.

Productivity Quotes

14.) Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. – Stephen King

15.) My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do. – Francine Jay

16.) “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” ― Bruce Lee

17.) “As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

18.) “Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

19.) “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” ― David Allen

Choosing a Prayer Focus for 2016 + a simple prayer

For the last few years, I’ve chosen a word or phrase to focus on for the year. This has been SO much more fruitful than any New Years resolution I’ve made. The pressure to perform is eradicated. Instead of a focus on what I want to accomplish, this becomes for me a focus on what God wants to do in me. I simply bring the word or theme God has highlighted to me back to Him in prayer.

What Has Been Your Prayer Focus?

In 2014, my word was “intimacy.” One of the ways God prompted me to pursue intimacy was to set prayer alarms on my phone. On Monday morning, the alarm reminded me to ask God for a fearless marriage.

On Tuesday, the phone would alarm with a prompt to pray for a pride-free marriage. There were several other ways God prompted me to pray about intimacy throughout the year. Within 6 months, I had a major breakthrough. It came just a few days after starting a fast.

That one simple prayer focus in 2014 is still bearing fruit.

In 2015, my phrase has been “pure love.” God helped me to see that some of my motives in relationships were less than pure. As I began to research the concept of pure love in the Bible, God highlighted this verse:

One of my sweet friends who models a life of intercession gave me a copy of Jennifer Kennedy Dean’s book, He Restores My Soul. God used this book to help me see that I was relying on relationships with people to fill me instead of my relationship with Him. This launched a much healthier pursuit of His pure love which has greatly improved my experience of joy this year.

Bring on the Breakthrough

Just in the last few weeks, God has given me wisdom and breakthrough as a direct result of prayerfully pursuing “pure love.” He showed me how I have continually complained about a specific relationship rather than praying about it.

He reminded me how I had overcome self-pity in a different relationship problem by speaking blessings over the person (Luke 6:27-28).

This reminder helped me choose the life and peace that comes from focusing on the Source of pure love instead of the human frailties I was facing in myself and others (Romans 8:6).

Through His Word and the counsel of His Spirit, God has helped me step into peace. He is breathing life into this relationship. I am delighted to report that this simple act of obedience has helped me experience the reality of His yoke being easy and His burden being light. It is a beautiful thing.

What’s Next?

I’ve chosen “Abide” as my prayer focus for 2016. I have a tendency to pursue productivity over being still and seeking God. The less than funny thing about that is I don’t seem to accomplish much anyway. I want to be fruitful because I have heard from God and acted on His prompting. I don’t want to waste a moment pursuing something that seemed a good idea but wasn’t God’s idea.

I want to focus on worship, listening prayer, Bible study and renewing my mind for the soul purpose of my relationship with God. I don’t want to skimp on my time in His presence.

There are hurdles I need to overcome. I’m choosing not to make the hurdles the focus of my upcoming year. I know that living in a more consistent flow of communication with God is the key to receiving the insight and empowerment I need.

A Simple Prayer

I want to be more aware of Him, so I am using the word AWARE as an acrostic prayer to direct my attention to God. My hope is to rehearse this every morning before I have time to think of anything else.

A – Abiding in Awe. God, I am in awe of You and I am ready to abide in You today.

W – With me. I celebrate that You are with me today.

A – Alert. I am alert to Your presence and Your voice.

R – Rest. I am resting in Your love for me. I do not strive because I have a secure and glorious place in Your kingdom,

E – Expecting. I am expecting Your miraculous within the ordinary of my day. I await Your wisdom, Your generosity, Your leadership, and Your power to be made perfect in my weaknesses.

This song is one of the inspirations behind my choice of for this year’s word. The bridge rings in my heart:

Open up your doors, O my heart and soul

Open up your doors

Let the King come in, Let the King come in

Click here for the rest of the lyrics.

Did you choose a word for 2015? Have you seen God bring fruit from it?

What will your prayer focus be in 2016?  I’d love to hear your story. Please share it with me in the comment section of this post.

Источник: //www.jenniferowhite.com/abide/

Does Prayer or Meditation Help with Personal Finance?

When people are struggling in life, they often turn to prayer and meditation to help them to deal with those problems. People who believe in God often pray to their maker, while those who have other theistic views might choose to meditate to bring them spiritual guidance. Some people choose to do both.

Regardless of whether you believe someone is listening to your prayer or whether you’re simply meditating for the purpose of your own personal focus and peace of mind, I believe that prayer and meditation can actually help. Here’s how.

First, meditation and focused prayer have health benefits. These practices raise our tolerance of common aches and pains.

These practices thicken the prefrontal cortex, strengthening our mental acuity. It lowers the risk of heart disease, lowers blood pressure, and strengthens the immune system.

Those things all result in less productivity lost and lower health care expenses.

Most importantly, meditation and focused prayer can reduce stress. The amygdala is the part of our brains that is directly altered by stress and thickens when we’re feeling continuous stress. Prayer and meditation have been shown to reduce the thickness of the amygdala.

Second, meditation and focused prayer provides us with an opportunity to mentally focus on what we need to change in our lives. Regardless of whether we’re focused on financial success or any other aspect of our life, both prayer and meditation give us a chance to mentally focus on those things.

Third, the mental focus provided by focused prayer and meditation carries over into the rest of your life. The thing that you focus on during your meditation and prayer silently becomes more important in your life and you tend to make better decisions in those areas, consciously or otherwise.

If you do it for a week or two, you’ll start slowly noticing a real permanent shift in your mindset in the areas you were focusing on. Keep going with it and you’ll see the benefits spreading throughout your life.

I’ve witnessed this phenomenon countless times in my own life. Time spent meditating or praying on something causes me to subtly make better decisions in that area in my life. Those better decisions lead to better results. Those better results essentially appear as a positive outcome to that prayer or meditation.

How to Meditate or Pray in a Focused Way

For me, there is little functional difference between prayer and meditation. Both simply revolve around focusing on some specific aspect of your life, usually in the form of some central word or phrase or short poem, but it can be other things. The biggest difference between the two comes from whether you are calling out to a higher power, which is really up to you.

When I do this, I usually decide in advance that I want to focus on something specific. I usually try to find some aspect of my life that I wish I was doing better than I currently am.

Maybe I want to be a better parent. Maybe I want to make better financial decisions. Maybe I want to improve my financial shape. Maybe I want to be a better husband. Maybe I want to get in better physical shape.

Maybe I want to be a better friend.

Whatever the focus, I think of a way to describe the change I want to see in myself. Sometimes, it’s a simple sentence. At other times, it might be longer – a paragraph or two in length. Sometimes I’ll write these things myself; at other times, I’ll find pre-written ones; at still other times, I’ll do them completely off the top of my head.

Then, I spend some time quietly focusing on that phrase or sentence or paragraph that I’ve chosen. I close my eyes, attempt to relax, and run through the text in my head, usually a word or a phrase at a time.

I focus on the word and phrase, repeating it and turning it over in my mind and think about what it really means to me and how I’m thankful for what I have and what improvements I want to implement regarding that piece.

I’ll go through the text, then repeat back through it a time or two, usually up to about fifteen minutes or so.

For those of you who would an example of a meditation (one that doesn’t call out to a higher power) and a prayer (one that does) for personal finance success, here they are. I’ve chosen a short and long version of each one.

A Short Meditation for Financial Success and Prosperity

This is a short meditation I wrote myself. Focus on each key word – choose, moderation, discipline, spirituality, and abundance.

I choose to live a life of moderation, discipline, and spirituality. My life is prosperous, and moderation, discipline, and spirituality will lead me to greater abundance.

A Longer Meditation for Financial Success and Prosperity

This is a modified version of this meditation for when you’re stressing about money found at MindBodyGreen.

It is in giving that we receive. As we sow abundantly, we reap abundantly.

My life is blessed with so much abundance, so much prosperity, so much success.

As I give and share generously and abundantly, my life is blessed with great prosperity. I am so blessed with this tremendous prosperity.

I choose to live a life of moderation, discipline and spirituality.

I am healthy and very happy. I am enjoying every moment of my life.

May every person, every being be blessed with good health, happiness, prosperity and spirituality.

With thanks and in full faith. So be it.

A Short Prayer for Financial Success and Prosperity

This is a short prayer I wrote myself. Recite it slowly in your mind or aloud, as you feel is appropriate.

Dear God, thank you so much for the abundance I already have. Help me to be free of anxiety and stress and to have the awareness I need to make better money decisions. Amen.

A Longer Prayer for Financial Success and Prosperity

This is a modified version of a prayer for financial success found at BeliefNet.

Dear God,

I ask that you remove my worries, anxieties, and fears about money, and replace them with faith.

I ask you to help me understand my purpose in life and to act on that purpose with courage and strength. I know that prosperity will come, in part, by doing work I love. Please help me use my skills and knowledge to be of service in the world.

I ask you for the strength I need to make difficult financial choices, to change my daily money decisions, and to get rid of my debts and build for my future.

I ask you to help me release all negative thoughts about money, and know that prosperity is my true state.

I know and trust that my debts will be paid and money will flow into my life. I have only to look to nature to see proof of the abundance you provide.

I commit to being grateful for all that I now have in my life.

Thank you, God.

Amen

Final Thoughts

My perspective, having used both prayer and meditation in my life, is that they often have a similar effect on the mind and body. I usually feel far more relaxed after prayer or meditation, for example, and my stress level usually falls quite a bit. I usually find that I follow prayer and meditation with better decisions in the short term.

More than that, when this practice is a part of my life on a regular basis, a calmer state of mind and somewhat better decisions seem to come utterly naturally. I firmly believe that a regular practice of meditation or prayer (depending on your spiritual beliefs or preferred practice) can do a lot to improve your mindset that can really help your financial state.

I personally attribute this practice as playing a major role in my ability to turn my spending habits around, which led directly to our family’s financial turnaround. This practice went a long way toward convincing me that I didn’t really need a lot of the stuff I was spending my money on, as it forced me to really consider what I was doing and what the long-term cost is.

Источник: //www.thesimpledollar.com/does-prayer-or-meditation-help-with-personal-finance/

How a Right View of Prayer Can Make You a More Effective Pastor

Last week I wrote about how a Christian’s approach to productivity should be radically different from the world’s. Indeed, our productivity should be distinctly Christian.

And when I think about things that are available to the Christian that would enable us to more efficiently fulfill our purpose, prayer is the first which jumps to mind.

 One distinctly Christian productivity method is prayer.

Prayer is a vital component to a thriving Christian life. It is a means of our sanctification, fellowship with God, expression of love for our fellow believers, an opportunity for worship, and a conduit for God’s blessings.

But if that’s not enough to get you to pray more, allow me to propose one more benefit of prayer. Christian prayer offers a profound advantage in the fight to accomplish all that a pastor must do in a week. 

Here are three truths about prayer that should encourage you to pray more as a pastor.Prayer is Supremely Necessary

In sermon prep, do you ever get 15-20 minutes into studying a passage and realize you forgot to pray?

Sir, are you insane?

But it happens. Doesn’t it?

And how many days do we forget to draw near to the Lord in the morning, or ask for His wisdom before a discipleship appointment, or request discernment as we read the daily news? How foolish of us.

For pastors—and for any Christian—prayer is not just a nice-to-have, it is a necessity.

Ministry is a spiritual task that is not possible apart from God’s aid. So, we must pray for that help. Prayer is supremely necessary for productivity because God uses it to give us power, motivation, wisdom, and focus, for the many tasks we undertake.

But prayer is also supremely necessary for the sake of God’s glory. Because if we see seemingly great things done through our ministries—a knockout sermon, a thriving church, or an edifying men’s breakfast—if we accomplish those things apart from deliberate reliance on Christ’s power, those accomplishments are hollow. Why? Because when we do things in our own strength they serve only to glorify us (our ability, our knowledge, our charisma) and not God. But when we are plainly and even publically reliant upon God in prayer, He alone gets the glory.

Prayer is Supernaturally Beneficial

The last several years have seen the rise in popularity on what has been called “mindfulness.” It’s basically a secular alternative to prayer where you just sit and think about your feet and stuff.

Maybe it calms you down and makes you more present in the moment or something, but it has no external force behind it. It has no supernatural power (at least not a good supernatural power). But prayer does.

Do you ever stop and think about it?

We may share the benefits of Pomodoros and mindmaps with unbelievers, but in prayer, we have something they do not have. We have distinctly Christian productivity which is supernaturally beneficial.

Prayer is a Superior Use of Time

Though we would never say it out loud, we often feel that we are too busy to pray. But the truth is that we are too busy not to pray.

You think, I’ve got this many appointments, I need to take the car in, and on top of all that I need to finish this sermon before Sunday. But Michael Fabarez points out in his book Preaching That Changes Lives, “The urgency of sermon deadlines should not lure us away from our time of prayer, but rather to it.”

Consider again what prayer is, you are calling upon the Maker. So, the next time you catch yourself going down this path mentally, “I need to skip prayer this morning because I need to get in early so I can start preparing for that meeting and I have a dentist appointment that’s going to throw the whole day off. . .” Slow down, Rev!

You’ve got a packed schedule, but the answer is not to skip time with the Lord. Reschedule the dentist appointment or just face the consequences of not being prepared for that meeting.

And guess what.

God may enable you to accomplish all of those tasks in a shorter period of time that it normally takes you to do them as a result of you being faithful to put time with Him ahead of other matters. Oh yeah, because He literally invented time (imagine a cool hourglass .gif here with stars and galaxies behind it).

Just be faithful to fence off time for prayer and trust that you will be able to get done just what God has for you to do today.

Conclusion

Pastor, God has given you such a boon for your productivity in the gift of prayer. Do not neglect this distinctly Christian form of productivity for the sake of mere earthly tricks and tips, because prayer is supremely necessary, supernaturally beneficial, and a superior use of time.

“I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer”

—Martin Luther

Источник: //www.redeemingproductivity.com/distinctly-christian-productivity-prayer/