Hello, welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Welcome back to the program. Today we're going to talk about your three circles. I want to see if I

can get you to visualize these. If you're able to do that, I think you will get a lot out of what we're going to talk about today.

Imagine a target, like maybe for a bow and arrow, or perhaps like the actual symbol for the Target Superstore.

Can you imagine that?

You have a circle in the middle, and then a larger circle around it, and then a third

circle around that. If you can imagine that, then I have some things to talk to you about today.

These circles represent the way you choose to process uncomfortable or tempting or negative thoughts that come into your head. It would be

nice if I could tell you that there was some secret to never feel any of those things.

Never have a negative thought, never feel defeated, never crave instant gratification, even if you know it's not the best thing for you.

But I can't tell you that.

You will live your entire life having to deal with or process negative or tempting or troubling thoughts.

Some of that comes by virtue of what happens around you, what people say to you,

how other people behave. But I really need you to understand this early on today. Your journey in

excelling, in actually going out and doing great things, in building life-changing habits, in restoring and excelling in relationships,

all of those outward things you will do will only happen consistently and over the long term

if you first learn how to process negative energy or thoughts inside of you.

I've seen it in my life over and over. I've got a great thing going. I'm making all these

great strides in my marriage. I'm running three days a week. Everything is right where it ought to be.

And then I get some little tempting negative thought inside of me. And maybe I don't deal with that very well. I don't process it

...