How to Change Your Life in 10 Minutes/Day

Does this sound a bit Drastic? To change your life in 10 minutes per day? Yes…..but truly no.

I’m a very ordinary person – my life is probably very similar to yours – unless you count things like my youngest riding his bike yesterday with a dead racoon tied to it – maybe that’s not normal – To explain, he loves hunting, trapping, all the things like that. Living where we do we have to sometimes deal with varmits – so after my boys “took care” of the varmit, my youngest disposed of it by riding off on his bike away from other things, where likely the coyotes will get it, which is another thing that sometimes needs dealt with….but that’s for another day! If I haven’t lost you yet, back to me having a very “normal” life much like you.

I do love to learn and grow, but often get frustrated because the process feels slow, and as much as I desire to do good things and have great intentions, good intentions are never enough! Change requires action. Whether it’s changing our diet, our exercise (or lack thereof) routine, you fill in the blank. You get it, none of us are immune to wanting to do better, yet struggling to change – because let’s face it – change is often just plain HARD!

Sometimes it’s the biggest changes that have huge impact…..but more often than not, it’s the little changes and choices that stick and have true lasting effect. Say you desire to workout – you begin by going to the gym an hour a day. Yes this will have drastic impact, but is that sustainable? Maybe yes maybe no…..but say you commit to working out for 15-30 minutes/day 4 times/week…..over the course of the day in and day out, it may be more doable to have that as the baseline, and the hour long workouts added in here and there.

I’m not saying you can’t commit to working out for an hour or that you will fail – not necessarily true at all…..what I’m saying is that sometimes we never “start” because we get overwhelmed by the size of the change that needs to take place.

I can more easily set my alarm to wake up 15 min earlier a day and gradually work up to earlier, than to just start with an hour a day. Now sometimes it is easier to go all or nothing, so I’m not saying that doesn’t work…..but in general if you think over the choices and changes of your life, it’s often the smaller shifts that make the most ongoing and lasting impact.

So how can I propose that 10 minutes can be lifechanging? Prayer. If you’ve been around here long, you know that I desire to live my life for Christ and encourage others in this pursuit as well. There are so many things we have little to zero control over. When this became especially evident to me was when I was pregnant with my first son – Tucker. He’s now 16, so it’s been just a bit ago!

I started praying before the Lord in a whole new way – I had so many things I wanted to be as a mom, ways I wanted to change, things I wanted for my boy. I would start out praying and end up thinking of something completely unrelated. Maybe it’s just me, but if I try to be still and just think, my mind jumps a hundred different directions, it can be hard to focus. So I found if I had the things that seemed most important to me jotted down on a piece of paper I could go through the list and stay on track.

Then I decided to type it out and glue it to a piece of cardstock. I then made a sheet of prayers I wanted to pray over my husband, and prayers specific for myself as well. I still have that original cardstock in my Bible. It’s scribbled all over with additional notes. And as I look over it, I see how God has been so faithful to answer so many of the prayers on that list……things I’ve prayed for my boys since before they were born.

Now before you think that it’s due to all my great effort, please hear me clearly when I say that it really has little to do with me. Philippians 4:6-7 says “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

I simply chose – and continue to choose, to bring my family before the Lord. You can too.

So today I want to encourage you….and it doesn’t matter if your kids are 4 or 40 – it is NEVER too late as long as you have breath in you to pray purposefully before the Lord on behalf of your family. Prayer is directly talking to God – lifting up things on your heart that only He knows and can help with…..Prayer is lifechanging.

With that, the last thing that satan wants is for us to have a vibrant prayer life – because there is power in prayer – and so often we get caught up in busyness, the distractions, and just the plain “to-dos” of everyday that need done. Taking time to sit for 10 min and just pray before the Lord more often than not can get pushed out. I’m going to ask a hard question though – and it’s one that has convicted me numerous times. Here goes……how long do you scroll social media? Or read other peoples’ words or books or even ideas for things? I’m raising my hand, I’m certain I spend 10 minutes a day on those things and often times much much more!

But sometimes I find myself falling into bed at night and realizing I never purposefully prayed – sure I talked to God that day – I prayed urgent prayers like “I need wisdom for this” or “please help my friend” or “please help me know how to help so and so with math” or even “keep them safe as they drive”. Yes, not a day goes by I’m not uttering those quick prayers – and those DO MATTER and are good!! But I also want to pray for so much more than just the urgent – or what’s right in front of me……

So today I challenge you…..write out a list of prayers for yourself, your spouse, each of your children. Type it, write it, tweak it. Go for a 10 minute walk/day – this is when I find I do my most focused praying – I grab my prayer card and walk down our country road! Keep it in your purse so when you have that extra 10 minutes you can grab it instead of your phone. Or maybe by your bed at night. I’m guilty at scrolling social media for about 10 minutes right before bed – just last night though I grabbed a prayer card and spent maybe 5 minutes praying right before bed instead.

These steps are simple, easy…..but we have to follow through with being intentional in this area! If you’re interested, I have on my store page premade prayer card prompts – they contain many of the actual prayer prompts I’ve used for my family for the last 16 years. You can click on this link here to order. But you can also just write up your own – no purchase necessary! That’s the neat thing about prayer…..monetarily it doesn’t cost us a thing, and what it costs us in “time” is what I believe is some of the most well spent time of your day!