Have you ever tried to be more positive?  By sheer will power you try to to bring joy to your life by acting as if problems don't exist and that everything is just fine.

My guest today, my good friend Laurie Fratarcangeli, describes the difference between being positive and having a positive mental attitude. 

We all wish that the stressful things we are going through would just hurry up and get done so we could move on to better times, but Laurie says that it is in this life journey, in this process, that we find ultimate joy. 

Laurie shares how when she hit rock bottom... her dad was diagnosed with cancer, she was believing for her miracle pregnancy, and then the life threatening medical issues of her daughter happened...when all she could do was have utter dependence on God and zero control...is when she finally came alive as if for the first time.

You won't want to miss a second of this insightful conversation.

About my guest: Laurie Fratarcangeli
Partner/Business Development ● Fr...

I recently heard someone say they felt like life was an uphill slosh through molasses.  Can you relate?  Sometimes it seems like everything is sooooo hard. Everything is a struggle. Nothing goes easy or goes as planned. Everything feels overwhelming! You end up stressed or depressed.

Well, what I’ve discovered is 80-90% of the time when a person has anxiety or depression, they have a sleep problem too.  In fact, when I recently asked some of my Stress Busters what topic they wanted to hear more about, sleep topped the list.

Stress and sleep form a cycle: You are stressed so you have a hard time sleeping.  The lack of sleep causes you to feel less productive, more irritated and more stressed or depressed.  This causes even more sleep problems.  

What you may not know is behind the scenes the cycle actually happening in your body is this: elevated cortisol levels from stress cause insomnia, and insomnia and fatigue create stress, which causes more cortisol production. Getting at least...

When the body becomes overly stressed and hyperstimulated, it can interfere with, and even prevent, our God given "Sleep System" from working properly. 

Research has found that if a person gets 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night rather than 6.5 to 8 hours, the body produces almost 40 percent more cortisol throughout the day than it normally would as a way of compensating for the reduction in sleep.

A vicious cycle of high cortisol leading to insomnia that then leads to stress which produces more cortisol which leads to insomnia....well you get the idea.

So, in this podcast I give you 17 simple ideas that can help you get to sleep faster, stay asleep longer and get a more restful sleep.

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If you were brutally honest, have you received everything you wanted out of your relationship with God?  Or is there a deep cry in your heart that says there HAS to be more!?!?

The deep cries of our heart are really only reflecting the deep call of God. 

God tells me there IS more to life than what I've been experiencing.  And when I find it, stress, worry, fear, coping and defense mechanisms, anxiety, depression, and addictions play such a smaller role in my life.

Join me today and let's get brutally honest about the "deep calling to deep" that's happening in our lives.

CLICK HERE for free download of A Brutally Honest Journaling Worksheet if you'd like to dig into this deeper.

I’m going to be brutally honest.  I’ve always been discontent with my relationship with God.  Even when I was spending a good amount of time in Bible study, prayer, going to church and volunteering, I felt that I was missing something.  It wasn’t all I wanted it to be.  

There was something deep within me that knew there should be more.  I wanted more.  I felt like God wanted more.  When I say more, I don’t mean He wanted me to do more, pray more, or believe more.  I mean He wanted a more intimate relationship like I did.  He wanted a more vibrant, interconnected life with me.  

I had moments of deep connection during a women’s retreat or even a special time of worship in my own home, but they were like visits from God instead of a life union with Him.  

I was stressed by life - financial issues, health issues, work issues, relationship issues.  And my relationship with God was giving me limited results in these areas.

Adding in this discontentment for my relationship with God only...

How many times have you used what you learned in chemistry or algebra in real life since you left school?  None?  Yeah, me too.  Now, how many times have you experienced disappointment or failure in life?  A lot? Yeah, me too.  It seems to be a part of life that we can’t avoid so it sure would have been handy to have some teaching on that subject.

Instead, most of us have probably learned about disappointment through what they call the school of hard knocks.  Yeah, I’m singing It’s a Hard Knock Life from Annie in my head too right now.  “'Stead of treated, We get tricked, 'Stead of kisses, We get kicked, It's the hard-knock life, Don't it feel like the wind is always howl'n? Don't it seem like there's never any light! Once a day, don't you wanna throw the towel in? It's easier than puttin' up a fight.”

One difference between overly stressed people and others is the way they handle the disappointment. Disappointment that isn’t handled well can even become depression.

Disappointment c...

This is for the weary ones.  The tired, burdened ones.  The ones who are having trouble feeling very thankful right now.

I was having my quiet time with God one day and using a journaling practice that I highly recommend.  Quiet down and then ask yourself, “What do you see?”  What do you see in your life right now?  

For me at the time, I recognized that I saw weight gain, health issues, lack of results in some areas of life, a little bit of boredom and monotony.  I kept going with this line of questioning and going deeper.  I was “seeing” some hopelessness in these areas.  I found myself thinking things like, “It’s too hard, I can’t do it, it doesn’t matter anyways.”

When you get to the root issue instead of the surface issues, you can now deal with it spiritually.  The root issue for me in the moment was a lack of hope and the surface issue was the weight gain, health issues and lack of results.  

So, now I knew how to spend the rest of my quiet time with God.  I needed to work o...

Watch the video above or read the blog below.

You have a painting in your mind that is titled, “The Perfect Christmas,” whether you mean to or not.  You have preconceived ideas and desires for what would make it perfect or dreamy. If you watch any Hallmark Christmas movie (which I love!) you might think that the perfect Christmas includes a snowball fight, ice skating and building a gingerbread house but the perfect Christmas looks different for each of us.

So, I’ve got two questions for you…

1. Does your perfect Christmas image look peaceful, calm and joy filled or energy sucking, chaotic and stress filled? 
2. Does your Christmas usually look like your perfect Christmas image?  

I’m betting that I already know your answers.  Of course your perfect Christmas looks peaceful, calm and joy filled and no, it never looks like that.  

Let me guess, your normal Christmas looks like you staying up until 2 am trying to assemble the toy you bought for your child (like the year my husband an...

I don’t believe you can bust through stress without knowing what God’s will is on the matter.  You won’t have faith to believe for a light and free life if you don’t see that as being a natural part of God’s Kingdom life - His will.  Learning about how things work in God’s Kingdom has been critical to me finding joy and peace.  

I’ve had to be intentional about  ‘searching and learning’ because the way things work in God’s Kingdom is so counterintuitive to the way things work in the kingdom of the world.  My kingdom of the world experiences, mindsets and preconceived ideas don’t apply to the Kingdom of God and if I insist on bringing them with me, I’ll not only be limited but I’ll be robbed of the fullness of life that I could have otherwise had.

Physical healing is one of those areas.  In the Kingdom of God, healing and wholeness is natural and to be expected.  No one is sick in heaven.  Our world experience tells us that everyone gets sick, that even those who love the Lord and wor...

Even strong Christians feel what you feel. Just because you feel anxious doesn’t mean you are actually weak.  It doesn't mean you don't have faith.  It means that the enemy has planted a thought that has turned into an emotion that makes you feel weak.  

Fear is not the absence of faith but an attack on our faith. If we tolerate fear, it can lead to us putting our faith into the wrong thing.  If we quickly deal with the attack of fear, recognize the lie and return to the truth (primarily what Jesus accomplished on the cross and who we are in Him), we are using our faith to overcome the fear.

I find this concept so important because without it we feel shame and condemnation for feeling fear.  We feel weak under the attack and more likely to run and hide.  Instead we need to recognize the fear as a fiery dart of the enemy and quickly extinguish it in brave, confident, warrior fashion.

Bill Johnson of Bethel Church has a son Brian that is co-founder of Bethel Music.  His music has been enj...