2 Powerful Practices to Level Up Your Creative Life This Year

00:00:00
It's what are the two things that will set you on the right path all the way through this year in your creative life? Well, I don't know all of the answers, but I do know people who do know all the answers. And you're going to hear from one of our established creative experts in the God in the geeks community who's going to share one of her best tips for how to level up in 2024. And I'm tell telling you, this is going to absolutely set the standard and help you reach those goals, those dreams and those aspirations that God has put in your heart for this year. Just give me a moment to welcome those of you who are new to God and gigs, and then we'll get into this fascinating and important conversation.

00:00:57
Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. And if you are new to our show, thank you so much for giving us a chance. Let me tell you why you're in the right place at the right time. First of all, let me introduce myself.

00:01:15
My name is Allen C. Paul. I'm the host and founder of God and gigs. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a musician and creative. And I'm forgiven.

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I am here with the rest of our creative community to help you to become the creative that God created you to be. Whether you're an artist, musician, filmmaker, poet, wherever you fit in the art, to entertainment space, but also with a heart for God and probably a heart for ministry, even a job or a place in a local church. And you want to figure out how to integrate these worlds without compromising your faith or getting overwhelmed in the creative life. That's what we are here to help you do at God and gigs. We've been here for years and we're going to stay here to help you to do all those things, to be the creative that God created you to be.

00:02:01
Now, to help you do that, we're going to try a whole new format, as I'm recording here in 2024. Now, last year we gave out some tips and some strategies from what we call our established creative experts. These are people who have written books, who are already mentoring, who are doing amazing things as creatives in their own right, but they also wanted to share with our community. And so I invited them in. And some people already have access to a bunch of tips to help them level up in 2024 because they took us up on our offer.

00:02:32
But maybe you didn't get a chance to hear or see that offer. Maybe you missed out and that's okay because I thought this was too good to leave inside our membership. God and gigs 360 even though I still invite all of you to check that out, what I'm going to do is as many of these tips as I can share. I'm going to release them in our creative checkup episodes. So you get these tips straight from the people who are doing the most amazing work and who are connecting with God and have the faith and the knowledge that you need to level up this year and any year.

00:03:06
Our first tip is coming from an amazing dear friend of mine, Marlita Hill. Now, I can't give you her whole bio. Go check out episode 148 if you want to hear from her fully where we really broke down some amazing things about the way to be a faithful creative and to hear God's voice. But let me tell you quickly that she is a dancer and choreographer and mentor for christian creatives who has been doing this for years and she is the founder of the Kingdom Artist Institute. So you definitely want to check her out, make sure that you stay connected with her.

00:03:45
She'll read all of her stuff at the end of this tip, but let's get right into her talking about mindset, about systems and about how these things can help you become a leveled up creative in 2024.

00:04:02
Hello God and Gigs family, Marlita Hill here from the Kingdom Artists Institute. And first of all, I just want to say happy holidays, happy new year, and I'm so excited for what God is going to do for you in 2024. So for my tip, I have two. Actually, I have one spiritual and one practical. For me as a fellow builder just like you, something that has been really remarkable for me to see is how much my mindset has affected my ability to move forward in the things that I know God is telling me to do.

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I did not realize how many internal things I would have had to get over my fears and insecurities and weird ways of thinking that I didn't even know I had that were hindering me from moving forward. And what has really become important to me is romans twelve two that talks about being transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what is that good, perfect, acceptable will of God. And what I've come to realize through my own experience is you can't move forward in certain dimensions of God's vision and will for your life if you don't get your mind right. So something that I want to encourage you to do, that I have done for myself as I have prayed, Lord, show me the places where I'm getting in my own way. Show me the fears and the insecurities that I have that are stopping me from moving forward, that are causing me to get myself into the same mess again and again.

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I don't know what I'm doing that's stopping me. And I realized that some of the actions that I was taking, some of the places that I kept finding myself, messes I kept finding myself in were because of things that I believed about myself, didn't believe about myself. So that was one thing I prayed, Lord, show me where I'm getting in my own way. What are the fears and weird thinking and stuff that needs to be corrected so I can move forward? And then the second thing I did on the opposite side of that was I said, lord, show me how you see me.

00:06:27
Let me see how you see me, how you see my art, this vision that you have for my life and my career. And then I wrote it down, and I keep going back to what I wrote down. When the weird thinking and the insecurities and the fears want to pop up, I go back to what he said and I bury my faith in it. So that's what I want you to do. That's the spiritual thing, the practical thing that I want to encourage you to do is to set up systems.

00:06:58
I remember there was, please forgive me for not remembering, but there was somebody that said, don't set goals, set systems. And I have been working on that myself about what are the systems, the processes, the habits that I need to put in place that are going to help me reach the goals that I want. Right. So I don't think set systems, not goals, but set up systems so that you can meet your goals. And very practically, that has been something as small as using a Google calendar because I was forgetting things and missing things that I wrote down in my calendar.

00:07:42
I was disciplined about that, but I wasn't disciplined about going and looking at the things I wrote in my calendar. So I needed another part of the process in place. I needed another step in my system, which was to actually put those dates in my phone and set an alarm that would let me know that something that I needed automated so I wouldn't forget dates and tasks and those kinds of things. So setting up systems for something as small as that to. I want to produce a podcast episode every week.

00:08:18
Well, there are several steps to that, and I need to set a process in place because what I was doing was flying by the seat of my pants, and then I wasn't meeting my weekly deadline, so I needed to think about, okay, what's the best time to write? Okay, I need to figure out a regular process to write my episodes. What's the easiest process to put in place so I can record my episodes? Oh, I'll record them. I'll send them out to somebody else to edit them.

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So those kinds of things, systems, processes, habits, disciplines to help you set your goals. Because I'm so excited for what God is going to do for you and for me and for his people who will trust him and believe him. The dream's not dead. So move forward. Move forward.

00:09:08
All right, family, I'll see you in the new year.

00:09:15
You, my friend. Now do you see why I wanted you to hear this tip? Did you hear all of that? I can't break it all down, but I'm going to try to just give you that reminder of why those tips were so powerful. That section on mindset on romans twelve and two, the idea that God can't even really bless us as creatives if we're still stuck in our mindsets is like the old wine and new wine skins thing that Jesus tells us about.

00:09:43
You just can't mix the two. If you're still thinking the way you used to think and then think, you're going to level up in your next season of your creative life, whatever it is, you're going to have to exchange that old thinking for new thinking. And I love her comment about praying to God to see how we see how he sees us. That's really so powerful. And then the systems, man, if I could just get that right in my life, I know so much of my life in the creative space would be going better.

00:10:11
I'd be more productive, I'd be more inspired. I'd be getting more done because I'd be thinking of how to do things versus just trying to do all the things. And that's what she said. So I encourage you, go follow Marlita right now in all of her platforms. You'll see them all in the descriptions.

00:10:29
Make sure to connect with her because she has such a heart for creatives, just like we do. That's why she's part of God and gigs. That's why she is sharing inside the 360 membership. That's why other creatives like her keep coming back, because this is the kind of information and inspiration I want you to have, not just this year as I'm recording, but every year of your creative life. So that was our first creative checkup.

00:10:54
As you can see, it's a little shorter, but it gets right to the point. It gives you a tip from another established creative expert. I can't get the words out. Established creative expert. And that way you can continue to grow as a creative from all of the people that we are so blessed to have relationships with in our community.

00:11:15
So that's our show for today. Make sure you stay connected with us in all the socials. You can see all that in the descriptions. And until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be. God bless, and we'll see you next episode.