Welcome to Season 6 of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined.

Our program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend and he's helped me and my family in everything

from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning.

I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him at

205-326736-3-64. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started.

Hey, welcome back. I really hope the first week of 2024 was a great one for you, that you feel

optimistic about the year, that you've started some things that you know really matter and I'm

super hopeful that the content today can give you some of the tools to keep all of that going

even when the shine wears off a little bit and it starts to become a bit more arduous and

difficult. My strategy this year for myself and for you is not to get super detailed on what

those things need to be. I am increasingly convinced that most of us know exactly what those things are.

I mean, we have access to information instantly on our devices. There's no confusion on what

can get you better. So we're not putting as much detail on the what

other than a few examples here and there. We want to figure out the why, which we talked about

quite a bit last week, and the how, which will be a centerpiece for today. Now let's quickly go back

for a warm up to last week's episode entitled I Dare You, based on the

1931 book by William Danforth, where he effectively challenges each one of us to honor the way

God designed us to be balanced in all areas of life, that which comes more natural to us,

and that which doesn't. What I hope you got out of that episode is that

all four corners of the four square Christian are important. They are simply defined as physical,

mental, social, and spiritual. If you gave yourself a grade in 23 on how much attention you gave to discipline and growth in each

of those four areas, chances are there would be different letters given out. Maybe you get an A for

...