38 - Faith, Filters, & Focus | Protect Your Mind, Change Your Outcomes

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson. Here to help you visualize what others cannot see. Create opportunities where others have failed and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Welcome to the Impact Podcast today with Eddie Wilson. You know, in life there are things that are foundational, there are things that are tactical, there are things that are practical. And each time that I come to the podcast, I oftentimes I'm trying to bring you something tactical or practical. Today I want to bring you something foundational. There are things that should anchor you in your life. And I think that one of the things that are consistently being talked about today are these anchors. And today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about one of the anchors that holds me into a position that allows me to find strength in my life. When you have these foundational pieces that the tactical or the practical sit upon, then it allows you to really find strength. I think that just being very open and candid today, I think that one of those foundational pieces is my faith. I think that today more than ever faith is being talked about. Faith is a catalyst for conversations. It also can be a great divider. It can be something that divides people. And I don't think that that should be its intention or it should be something that should be a desire of ours. But today, as I talk about a foundational truth, I'm actually going to use scripture as that foundation. You know, I think that in every person's life, you have a worldview. It's a lens by which you see the world. The lens by which I see the world is that there is a God. There is a higher power. There is a being that controls all things. And I believe that God is a creator God. I believe that all things consist because of Him and because of the creation that we are as a result of His existence. You may not have that same worldview. You may look at the world through the lens of there is no God. And so I think that understanding the lens or the framework by which we think about things, by the way that we view things, I think is an important conversation and something that should be explored. But because there is, in my opinion, enough evidence for God, enough feeling and relationship that I have with God, that it becomes very much a foundational lens by which I see everything. You know, I don't think that the things in this world are just happenstance. I believe that they do not just happen by chance. I believe that there's a great order. One of the apologists of the past talks heavily about how if there is a case for God, the greatest case for God would be the order by which we live in. You wouldn't look at a house and say, well, that's an amazing house that it just arrived by itself. You would look at the house and say, that's a beautiful house. I wonder who the architect was and or is. And I think that the same thing goes with our existence around us. I think that we look at this world around us and if you look at the marvel of the human body or you look at the universe and how its order is just perfectly placed. You look at the distance between the sun and the earth. You look at how the rotation of the planets happen and it just all sits in order. How things reproduce, how man reproduces, how how animals reproduce, how trees and plants reproduce. It has an order to it and I think that that order should point to a higher power, a true architect. And because I have that foundation, I have to get to a place where my truth sits on that foundation or the truth is the foundation. And so one of those truths or those foundations that I use in my life is the Bible and I do read the Bible often and I think that whether or not you are a person of faith, there is still truth in its words. There are whether you believe that there is a God or whether you believe in the person of Jesus Christ. There are still universal truths that are in Scripture. And so I hope that by what I'm saying today, it doesn't become a detractant for you. I hope that you'll see that the no matter what you believe or what faith you subscribe to, that there are foundational truths. And one of those foundational truths I want to talk about today is actually found in Proverbs 423, Proverbs 423. It says, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. What the Bible is saying here is that the condition of our heart determines the direction of our life and not just the direction but the quality by which we experience life. Guarting it doesn't necessarily mean locking it away, but protecting what goes into it so that what flows out of it is pure and strong. The Bible saying the condition of our heart will be directly correlated to the experiences of our life. And so I want to break down that verse because this is a foundational truth and it doesn't matter what faith you subscribe to, you'll find the truths of this principle in the underlying day to day. So let me break this concept down because I think that oftentimes we hear words and we hear the words based on the definition that we immediately subscribe to. But I want to redefine the words. If we don't have a universal language and a universal truth to build upon, then we're missing it. And so what the Bible means here by the word heart when it says keep thy heart, like keep your heart. It's talking about and this is evidenced all through the Bible is what the meaning of this is and I'll give you an example, but it says the Bible's definition of heart would be the center of our thought, our desire and our will, the center of our thought, our desire and our will. And so what it's saying is is that we have to keep it, we have to protect it, we have to guard it, we have to protect our thoughts, we have to protect our desires, we have to protect our wills, we have to guard it, we have to be careful what influences it because out of those influences, out of that out of that space, our heart comes the issues of life or the experiences of life or the choices of life. We want to come out of our life what is pure and strong. And so what I would say is that if you are not satisfied, and this is where the reverse engineering comes into play is that if you are not satisfied with what is coming out of your life, you most likely have a problem with allowing something into your life. Think about this, if you're not satisfied with where you are in business, if you're not satisfied with where you are in your relationships, if you're not satisfied in where you are in your finances, if you're not satisfied in where you are with your children, it most likely has nothing to do with the actual outbound actions of your life, but it has everything to do with what you put into your life. And I know that this doesn't necessarily make sense just yet, but let me build upon this truth because when the Bible is talking about our heart, it's saying our thoughts, our desires, and a will, our will. And let me explain and give you just evidence of that. Again, and the beautiful thing about Scripture is that Scripture will prove itself. And so all you have to do is if you wonder if the truth of what you're reading is truly truth, you can then find something else to reference it because the Bible always prove itself true. Okay. So in Luke, which is a New Testament, so Proverbs is Old Testament written by King Solomon. You know, the Bible says that he's one of the wisest men that ever lived, he was the wise king of Israel. He was the son of David, the famous King David. And he is the one who wrote Proverbs, and that's where we get the verse, the reference verse from. In Luke, which is a New Testament passage, which is written by a physician that was in the time and life of Jesus Christ, he writes this, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good for the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaketh. What he's saying is that all of the good treasure, all of the good things that are coming out of your life are based on the good treasure that you're putting into your heart or into the center of your thought, your desires, and your will. So what he's saying here, and the point of this is, is that whatever fills our heart, whatever fills our desires, whatever fills our wills and our thoughts, will eventually spill out into our words, our decisions, and our relationships. I want you to think, I know that I'm talking to a lot of business owners here and people that are building businesses. And I want you to think about the outcomes that you're getting inside of your business today. What is coming out? Because whatever you're putting in is spilling out in your words, your decisions, and your relationships. Let me ask you this, and this is just a litmus test. Are the people around you gaining traction or getting better? Are they advancing? Can they say as a direct correlation to you and their life that their life is better? Their life is getting better, or their life is progressing, right? Is their intellect progressing? Is their forward momentum? Are they creating forward momentum? Are they growing in your business? Are they growing in their position? Are they growing or are they, are they, they're digressing? Because as a leader of your organization, whatever it is that you're sowing into them is also creating because if you think about this, this is an ongoing effect. What you put into your heart, right? Comes out of your mouth. What comes out of your mouth goes into their heart. What goes into their heart becomes the actions of their life. Do you see the cyclical nature of if we are not careful with the inputs of our lives? How that can affect everything around us? And from a leader standpoint, you are the one that is sowing into everyone. Okay? So number one, what does the Bible mean by heart? And what what we did is we described that the the heart is really our thoughts, our desires, and our will. Let's talk about what it means to guard our heart or what guarding the heart is not. Okay? Guarding our heart is not building walls. It's not being cold and it's not distrusting everyone. I think that when you you meet everyone with distrust or you are afraid that they're going to take advantage of you, you're afraid of what they're going to sow into your life, that that also sows into your heart those same actions. It is filtering influences, right? Think of your heart like a garden, right? Like if you are looking over this garden, you're trying to determine what is going to come out of this garden. What you're going to do is first of all, you're going to look at the soil. You're going to determine what you plant. Then you're going to you're going to determine what influences are allowed into that garden. Would it be water, rain, sunlight, right? So so on and so forth. Would you remove the weeds that begin to grow up in that garden? That's the natural tendencies of our life. I've said so many times that where there's a void or where there's space, negativity will fill in. Those can be the weeds that we have to pluck out when we have these negative thoughts or we have these negative experiences because whatever you're planting in your heart, whatever is allowed into the heart, whatever is allowed into the thoughts, desires, and wills will come out. And so a garden in the heart is not is not building walls being cold or distrusting everybody. What I'm saying, what I want to do is give you a practical way to get out of your life exactly everything you want. Okay? So here are some steps in order to guard your heart and in guarding your heart, you'll actually get the outcomes of your life. This is it's like an equation where you have the answer that when you plug the answer and you get the right result. And by the way, this truth is universal. You could go back to your life and you could look at every negative choice, every negative thing you've done and you could directly correlate it to an input that was there, right? Think about it maybe in the context of being hurt, right? Have you ever lashed out at someone? Have you ever have you ever negatively gone after someone in some way? Like you said, something negative or hurtful or painful? Well, do you know where that comes from? It comes from the inputs of the life in your life. It might be that you have already been hurt by somebody else. Have you ever heard of the phrase hurt people hurt people? And that's exactly what's happening. And so we have to guard it, right? So let me just give you some practical things to guard your heart or guard your thoughts, wills desires so that you could have the outputs that you actually desire in life. Number one, you have to guard your input. There's another biblical truth that says whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, we should think on these things. True, honest, just instead of pondering the unjust pondering the negative, you know, we have just gone through one of the most, I believe, shocking experiences that I've ever experienced in my own lifetime. Watching a man be assassinated in full high definition, where you watch his life go out of him at the hands of an assassin's bullet, I don't know that anything shocked me to my core. And I've had a lot of loss in my life. I lost my sister. I've lost my brother. I've lost grandparents. I've lost aunts and I've lost people in my life. And that is shocking. It's jarring. But there was something about watching a person who was speaking to be what is their truth. And for that, losing their life. And the problem with that is that you can perceive that one way or the other, you can walk out of that experience and you could only dwell on the negative. And what you see is is that when the person that dwells on the negative, the person who dwells on the injustice, the person who dwells on the lies that are being told potentially by media or whatever it is, what happens is that same thing comes out of your life. How you perceive these issues are how you will react in life. I think one of the greatest gifts that Charlie Kirk's wife gave us was allowing us to see the actions of the unjust in the just. She was trying to explain maybe this from a God view, from a God point of view. And then the fact that she said that she forgave. If we are in the situation, we have a chance to dwell on the things that are unlovely, not just the things that are not honest and out of that will come the issues of your life. Out of that will be the outcomes of your life. You will experience that as an outcome. Or you can look at it from the point that I believe that his wife was trying to create for a lot of people, which is it may be unjust, but maybe it's for a purpose. Maybe there's a higher power, a higher purpose at play. There's a chance to look at this through the lens of love and forgiveness. And in that, you, if you could dwell on those things, now it comes out of your life. The ability to see something greater that seems so unjust. The ability to love in a way that seems only God-like. And so we have to guard our inputs. We have to be mindful of media and music and conversations. We have to be careful about what goes into our life. One of the rules that my parents, which have been so amazing in my life, would constantly talk to me about was Eddie Trashin Trashow. I used to hear those words a lot for my parents. So it's a, the reason we don't allow you to watch these things is because Trashin Trashow. What you allow into your life will come out at some point. The second thing that I want you to do is to anchor into truth. You know, truth for me is a capital-teacher. I think that there are little teachers in our lives and there's capital-teacherous in our lives. The little teachers in our lives are the experiences that we believe to be true. However, the capital-teacherous are the ones that we know are universally true that cannot be disproven. Right? And so I want to anchor into that truth. You know, as a as a child, I would learn Bible verses. My mom and dad would actually read them to me and we would memorize them. And and I know that, you know, if you go back to Jewish culture, one of the big things in Jewish culture was literally taking the scriptures and binding them about your head and putting them over your doorpost. And you know, it's this constant idea of anchoring in truth. And so no matter if you're a Christian or if you are, you have to find a universal truth. You know, one of the greatest things that we have in America today is the Constitution of the United States because therefore we can have a supreme court, the ultimate court that has a document by which we judge all things. There is a capital-teacherous, that's the Constitution. That means that all things will be judged by this truth that we all adhere to. I think that in your life, you need to find these truths. I think that so much of the human experience is is is unanchored. It's tied to our emotions and our emotions in my opinion are the thing that betray us the most, right? Our emotions change. They shift. They're not real. They are controlled. We can create our own perceptions. So we have to anchor in truth. I as a child, my parents would read this verse to me, Psalms 119, this says, that I word of I hidden my heart that I might not sin against thee. Is this constant understanding of if I have truth in my heart that I'm not going to go against that truth, right? The more truth I put into my heart, the more truth that I put into my daily experience than the more I'm going to have truth come out of my life. Number three, we got to monitor our thoughts. So in the human experience, it typically starts in the heart, right? It's our mind, our it's our will, it's our it's these emotions, right? And then it goes into our thought process. So it's our heart that then moves into the mind and then the mind typically moves to the mouth, right? It's then we speak or we act. It's the mouth of the hands, right? It's like what we what we take in what we allow and the experiences of our life, we begin to ponder on, we begin to think about. And then as we think about them, then they come out of our out of our mouths. Have you ever said something? You're like, I wonder why I said that? All you have to do is trace it back to what you've been thinking about and the inputs that you've allowed into your heart. We need to monitor our thought for as we think as a man thinks so is he, right? For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Replace lies or negativity with truth. You have to constantly seek out the lies that you believe. You know, a great place, some of the early podcasts I did where I said, I believe that the things that trigger you the most are the things that need the most light shed on them. Because oftentimes the things that trigger you are a great indicator of where the untruths or the lives the lies are, right? Think about the things that trigger you. You know, it's like you believe that you're not good enough or you believe that you don't have the right physique or body type or you're not pretty enough or whatever it is that plagues you or that triggers you, right? If you search into that, what you'll find is a seed of untruth and that seed has been sewn into you and now you've allowed it to take root in your life. It's in your garden and in that garden it's growing and now you look at that as truth when it's technically a lie and then out of that truth comes the words or the actions of our life. Number four, we have to set relational boundaries. If we're going to guard our heart, we have to set relational boundaries. Not every person you've allowed in your life is a great influence into your life. You need to constantly look at the people that are in your life and the times that they are in your life. I've often heard that we are the the aggregation of the five people or with the average of the five people that we allow to be in our lives and I think that you can be stronger than that. You know, I heard pace more be one time say, well, then then every mom that has five children is doomed because she's going to be so her thoughts are going to be so determined by her her own children's issues and you can be stronger than those five. But I think that there is something to be said about the influences that we allow in our lives. We when you allow negative communications, it creates corrupt manners. Evil communications create our corrupt good manners. Evil communications corrupt good manners. We have to carefully choose who has access to our heart. It's the trash and trash out rule, but specifically on relationships. Number five, we have to protect our emotions. There's a Bible verse in the book of Proverbs that says, a full uttereth all is mind, but a wise man keepeth it until afterwards. That is great, great advice that we have to protect the emotions. There's nothing more settling than someone who has control of their emotions at all times and nothing more unsettling that people are than someone who allows their emotions to just flare at every time that they're stoked. And as a leader, whether it's in your home or in your business, you have to protect your emotions. You have to be someone who does not allow emotions to create the first action. Typically, all reactions come from an emotional status in our emotional state, but all actions come from a thought, all actions, which is that predetermined space. And we need to be people of action, not reaction. Emotions are those things that are real, but they don't have to rule us. You can be angry and it can be real. You can be hurt and it can be real. You can be betrayed and it can be real, but they don't have to rule you. There's a difference between experiencing an emotion and allowing the emotion to rule you. That emotion will ultimately create those emotions are the weeds that grow up in the garden, that concept of guarding or protecting your heart. And then lastly, we need to stay spiritually alert. I actually believe that all issues of life, and if you have a biblical perspective or a biblical worldview or a faith worldview, I believe that we don't wrestle against humans. I don't believe that we are in a warfare with humanity. I believe that there is spiritual darkness. I do believe that there are greater things at play. And so for me, I can take away the power of the person who may be fighting me by understanding that there's something else at play and they're not against me. I don't need to war against them. Just a quick daily heart check routine. You ready? Let me give you all the teaching points. Let me give you just a quick heart check routine. Number one, I want you to audit what goes in and what goes out. I think from a tactical or practical standpoint, what music, what media, and what communication is going into your life, limit the amount of negative media, music, and communication. If you will limit that, you will be amazed at what will change in your life. If you will take some time in the morning and put some good music into your life, if you'll take some time and you'll read something or meditate on something that allows something good into your life, you will be amazed at the output that happens during the day. Number two, we need to have a thought audit. So number one, we need to make sure that we have what we what I call a true thought it, which is all the trash in that's coming in, monitor that. Number two, we need to have a thought audit. And that's what's been on my mind. Does it align with the truths that I believe or the outcomes that I want? Think about the current anxiety that you feel or the negativity that you feel. Audit it. Think about it. Don't just allow it to happen. So much of our mind is just on autopilot and in the subconscious and just the things that just run through it. And get very intentional and audit those thoughts. Number three, create a reset by creating gratitude. I believe that all of us have the ability to find something good in our lives. I don't care where you are. I was in Mexico a few weeks ago and was at the orphanage of the girls orphanage that we have there. Two of the girls had been rescued from the cartel by the government and given to our orphanage. These girls were slaves to the cartel. These girls were 12 12 to 14 years old. And were literally chained by the cartel used for their sexual pleasure as often as they chose to. And the government came in and they released these girls and they gave them to us into our girls orphanage to now care and love for them. When I met these girls with huge smiles on their faces, they began to thank me and thank us for the ability for their freedom and for the food that they eat every day. And the loving examples that the directors and the people that have there, they thanked us for the environment. The one girl thanked me for her bed. She said, I slept on a concrete floor for over three years. She was, she was in tears thanking me for a mattress. And I'm telling you that if you could get into a place of gratitude, it will reset all things. If you've allowed the negativity into your heart, you haven't guarded it. It's a garden that's full of emotional weeds that are choking out the the opportunity and the desire and the outcomes of your life. Gratitude will be the greatest and easiest way to reset it. Gratitude removes the weeds. Gratitude resets the actual foundation that you want to live from. Every day you have to spend time thinking about gratitude today in a practical way, you could take three things and just dwell on what you're grateful for. Just what are you grateful for? Family, for food, for whatever it is, life, for this morning, I got out and walked a little bit and it was warm and it was overcast. And I could hear the waves in the distance. I was close to the beach. And I just remember in gratitude saying how grateful I was. And I remember as I began to think about how grateful I was for just the experience of life and health and children and the sound of the waves and the warmth on my skin and the ability to work. And it was like it literally gave me a reset. It was like my, you know, I'm running hot with things that are going on. It's life is busy and work is hard. And I remember, I just felt my nervous system that was running hot literally just began to melt into this space of gratitude and Thanksgiving. Number four, a relational filter. We need a truth filter or we need a truth audit, a thought audit, a gratitude reset and a relational filter. Relational filter is really important. And that's who are you going to give your energy to today? Who is going to so into you and who are you going to so into and be intentional about it? And then last thing, I'm just going to call it a prayer or meditation release. You know, you don't have to care your anxieties. I believe that there is a God. And I believe that that God that you could you could take the very essence into one thought and one concept and that is love. I believe that the evidence of God proves that that he exists, but even more so, it proves that there is a foundation by which he lives by. And that is the foundation of love. I believe that God is love. And if God is love, then I have the ability to walk out my anxieties, my temptations, my frustrations, my anger, and I can give it to him. I can actually talk it through with him, the creator God who created all things. And so, wherever you are today, I want you to guard your heart because out of it comes the issues of life, the experiences of life. And I want you to have an amazing life. I want you to have a life that's abundant. I want you to have a life that's filled with love and connection. I want you to have a life that's filled with success. I want you to see and feel and experience the success that you've created in your life, your business or the relationships you have. And in order to do that, you have to guard the inputs. Hope that helps today. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further and you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.