I woke up this morning in a slump.

I was feeling negative and just a little discouraged. I'm really thankful for how quickly the morning changed, though. Sometimes when I wake up feeling like this, I allow it to last hours. But not today. :) God got a quick hold on my heart and helped me get some much needed perspective.

Honestly, most mornings I wake up feeling that way, it's a result of how I used the moments before I fell asleep. It's about what the condition of my heart was and what I allowed it to be. There's a big question: Did I read my bible? (Or 'Was I willing to listen to God instead of just going to sleep?') I'm NOT making this legalistic... I just know my heart can go in a bad direction really fast and I need all the encouragement and truth I can get to keep it pure and on the right track. God really wants to help us with that.

This morning as I made my bed and cleaned up my room a little bit, I was reminded of something by the Holy Spirit. When I feel this way, the solution is to be purposeful.

Let me say one thing... being purposeful is NOT the same as being busy.

In fact, being busy is probably the worst thing I can do when I feel like I did this morning. Want to know why? It's because I knew the empty, negativity I was feeling was simply a hunger to be with God.

I want to share a couple things that really helped me this morning in getting free from the slump I woke up in. I don't think I'm the only one who experiences this. And I know we don't have to live every day just ignoring how awful our hearts feel by being busy.

1. Make a decision to purposefully get out of the slump.
Half-hearted attempts don't usually work out. They just keep the cycle of discouragement going longer.

2. Clean up your environment.
For some reason, being purposeful about making the area around me look nice and restful really prepares me to take care of the condition of my heart, too. It gets my day going. I have to get out of bed and start improving something. It takes me out of the mindset of just letting things take their course. (It makes sense to me! :) )

3. Close the computer, stay away from the phone. 
Opening facebook and checking emails becomes way too distracting for me. Some mornings I'll be so confident that I want to start my day with prayer. But by the time Facebook is opened and I'm done thinking about the emails I just followed up with, I end up just wanting to be busy. I'd rather "do stuff" than share my heart with God and hear from him about his. It's really important to embrace that stillness we have in the morning... it's an awesome time to prepare for the work of the day.

4. Pray and write.
Just share with God what's on your heart. What has most of your attention and gets you excited right now? I get so excited about prayer all over again when I remember that God desires to give me wisdom and better insight into what I'm facing if I'll just listen. In prayer and listening, all of our plans, our relationships, and our thought life are refined and made much more beautiful. Journaling is a big thing for me. I spent a long time this morning doing the same thing I did in prayer. I finished writing feeling so encouraged. God is really, really good to me. He is to you, too... we just have to purposefully reflect on all we're seeing him do.

5. Be Encouraged.
This one has to do with your environment, too. Keep things in your room that remind you of how good God is. Our hearts naturally go toward selfishness. I keep cards on my window sill from some of the biggest encouragers in my life. They remind me why relationships, my faith, and the dreams God has given me are worth all the work and self discipline they require. (And they're pretty.) :)

6. Share what you learned.
That's what I'm doing here. I'm convinced that when God teaches us something big, especially something that is key to getting out of a trap we've found ourselves in before, the best thing we can do is teach it to someone else. We take ownership of that lesson and we help other people get free. We think through it in greater depth and understand why it works so well. It's the idea of pouring out what God gives to you so that you can receive even more from him.

Hope this helps!