“I Thought…” | How Your Thoughts Are Blocking God | Steven Furtick & Brendon Burchard

Pastor Steven: We have so many
misconceptions about what God

needs to use to bless us or what we
need to move forward, right? Like,

okay, I need a team. Someone might
say, and then I’ll start this thing.

Or I need somebody to come along and
support me, or back me or finance me,

or I need this perfect church. Or we get all this
list of what we think we need for God to do it,

right? And so we’re holding onto that. Don’t
you think that a lot of what keeps us from

moving forward. Is what we won’t let go of.
Mm-Hmm. Our idea of how it should be. Mm-Hmm. Our

idea of the way we thought God was gonna
make, I thought I’d be married and I’m

twenty-five. And I was planning to get married
at twenty-two. Well, that’s the way I thought

God was gonna make. Right. So I love what you
said, like not only what God did in the past,

but what I thought he was supposed to do.
Right. And now I can’t go forward. So. Let’s have

a little therapeutic coaching. I know you’re not
an is a Psychologist or a nutritionist. You know,

I know that you’re a coach, so let’s coach
somebody in faith who won’t let go of something

that they thought was supposed to happen.
Mm-Hmm. In order to go forward into the way

God is making, they can’t even see right now.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. I think the, too often

our vision becomes myopic on what was, and
we’re operating from here. What we should

be operating from is our potential and into our
future and the best of who we are. Mm-Hmm. And

so I always tell people never limit your
vision for who you can be based on your

past stories or your current circumstances.
Because every great successful person there

was that part of their story where they were
broke down and out struggling and they just

didn’t choose to live there. They choose
to work through it because they believe

something good would happen. And so I think
the first part is going, where is your vision?

Where are you operating from? Are you operating
from the past time zone or the current struggle

time zone? Or are you living into and being
the best of who you can be for the future? You,

which is what your book is about? Yeah.
And that’s really powerful. Where are

you operating and where’s your vision?
And then we also have to set up these

rhythms in our life where we choose to
release the tension and the disappointment.

Pastor Steven: I love that rhythms
where we choose to release our tension

and disappointment. Yeah. So it’s like,
what are your rhythms of release? Write

that down in the comments. Rhythms of release.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. ’cause what happens is,

you know, inevitably stuff builds up and we get
disappointed, we get angry, we get hurt. And if

we never release that, it’s like a pressure cooker
and one day it will release and it will release.

A pipe burst. It’ll release in an inappropriate
way for people. That’s why therapy’s so powerful.

You, you go every week or you talk to a coach, you
talk to him every week. It’s a place that you go

to release your thoughts and your concepts
and your frustrations and your plans and,

but it can’t just be releasing. It has to be
what I always call you. Release the tension of

that and you set the intention for what’s next.
So I’m somebody, I have to do this every hour.

I’m easily distracted. I’m so enthusiastic.
I wanna do this, I wanna do this, I wanna do

this. And I know this about myself. So
every hour, no matter what’s happening,

when I’m working at my desk, every hour a little
timer goes off. I have next to my computer, press

it start fifty-five minutes stops, and I push back
and close my eyes, and I just start breathing.

And I release the tension in my
body, and I just repeat this little

mantra to myself. Release, release, release.
Brendon Burchard: Release, and I might only do

this for 2, 4, 5 minutes. Just release, release,
trying to release all thoughts, all feelings,

all emotions and tension in my body. Once I feel
like I’m in a good place, open my eyes and I ask,

okay, what’s my intention for this next hour?
And I learned that in helping a lot of people

through grief and trauma. You know, sometimes we
think our vision has to be this huge new thing,

but when you’re really struggling, what’s the
intention for the next hour? You know what,

I’m gonna go pick up the kids and
I’m gonna share some love with them.

That’s, that’s the intention for the next hour.
Yeah. But I don’t wanna go pick up the kids

carrying all that stuff. I always say before
every significant interaction with somebody,

if you can just release the tension.
I teach people all the time if,

if you’re the one who goes to work and you come
home to your partner or your spouse or the kids,

when you pull up to that house, tell you what.
Put the chair back, close your eyes,

do a release meditation for about five minutes
and say, what’s my intention? Oh, my intention is

go be a good dad. Go be a good mom. Go be a good
provider. Go be a good servant, whatever it is,

and these little moments that you’re just
releasing all this frustration and this tension.

’cause people carry a lot of tension and they
get lost in the tension unless you release that.

You know, you can use the metaphor of releasing
baggage, but I don’t like that metaphor as much,

but. It’s just releasing the tension
and setting intention. It’s a constant

recalibration into the future and into your faith.
Mm. And when you can recalibrate into my future,

into my faith, then I can
survive this moment. Now,

Pastor Steven: what I love about this is
how you broke it down and shrunk it. Because

sometimes when we talk about letting go of
the past, moving forward into the future,

which is a lot of what this mindset is
about with God, there’s always a way.

And by faith I will find it. We set that finder
so far out in the future, five years from now,

I want to be here. And sometimes what
we really need to release happened five

minutes ago. Mm-Hmm. Not five years ago.
And I love that you used the word rhythm

because I like music so much that I thought,
well that’s brilliant because I’ve thought

of letting go of what was as something I do.
Maybe once. Like I let it go, God, how they

hurt me, I let it go God. But when you put it
in the term of a rhythm, that’s not a rhythm,

uh-Huh? Unless I do that. That right. That,
that. So letting it go isn’t letting it go

unless I let it go every time it comes back up.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. The stuff that your

parents did or something that frustrates you.
It’s gonna come up over and over, and you let it

go over and over. It’s hard. You gotta let it go
over and over. So this belief that one day you’re,

you know, completely spiritually free of
all pain and problems in the past, maybe

some people have that, but for most people, the
difficulties of life happen on a recurring basis.

There’s a rhythm to that too. And so when it
comes up again, oh, you know what? That’s my

old demons. They’re fighting me again. You know
what? That’s that old behavior. I used to do that

because he taught me to do that, or she said
that. And so as it comes up, again, it’s an

active release process you’re actively releasing.
But here’s the thing, if you just release it and

you don’t set intention for what’s next, you’ll
keep falling prey. It’ll keep pulling you back

in. You have to set an intention that is higher
or part of something that is higher. And that

is where I meant by you have to set intention to
your future and your faith over and over and over.

It’s like recalibrating back into him, back
into spirit, because these things often they’re

dispiriting and you gotta connect to the spirit
again. And so release the dispiriting things, tap

back in to the spirited things. And when you teach
yourself to do this over and over and over again,

you suddenly realize I got a pretty good mindset.
Pastor Steven: Because. If our brain is operating

off of the neural pathways that have created
our thought pattern and our mindset is to think

a different way, then we can basically say that
seeing the way that God is making is a product

of thinking the way God thinks. Mm-Hmm. So we’re
possibly looking at something right now that would

be an opportunity, or you could reconcile or.
You could actually have love in your life

or support in your life, right? And you’re
telling yourself you can’t. And the reason

you’re telling yourself that you can’t right
now is because the way that you are thinking.

I like how we call God a way maker, but
there are also God blockers in our life.

Mm-Hmm. Like think about if God is the way maker.
There are God blockers. Those are the thoughts,

the thoughts that cause us to say. Well, if
it would’ve happened, uh, five years ago,

I believe it, but it would’ve happened by
now if it was going to happen. Mm-Hmm. Or

things like that don’t happen to me. They
don’t happen for me, they happen for others.

Or maybe somebody told you, like, I remember my
dad was, we, we both shared about our dads today

and Yeah. I learned a little bit more about
your dad and I didn’t tell you much about

my dad. We just realized our dads both went
to heaven when we were about the same age.

About thirty-two or thirty-three years old.
Yeah. And, you know, my dad was, he was a

passionate guy. Um, one time somebody was telling
me, you’ll never be able to go to college. Um,

you won’t be able to afford it. Mm-Hmm. And
they were saying, I didn’t go to college.

And so you’re not gonna go to college and
you need to make peace with it. It sounds

like a weird thing for somebody to tell a kid.
Right. And it kind of was, I was only like 10

or 11. Oh, wow. And I don’t even know why they
were saying that, but my dad goes, um. Shut your

stupid mouth to this other person. And this is
not probably recommended parental advice. He said,

if I have to kill somebody to get the money
to send that boy to college, if he makes good

grades and wants to go to college, he’ll go
to college and I got a scholarship instead.

So I went to college, he’d have to kill anybody.
The story doesn’t have a weird ending. Where

then that’s the day my dad died.
Brendon Burchard: Uh, the, the,

Pastor Steven: the point of it was that. He
wasn’t gonna have me limited. Mm-Hmm. We’ve

talked in the previous mindsets and I want
you to go back and watch all of them. ’cause

we talked about I’m not stuck unless I stop.
We talk about coming from abundance in the

mindset Christ is in me. I’m enough. But now we’re
moving deeper into this to say our, your thoughts,

the result of seeds that someone planted and
that someone wasn’t God. And if they were,

can you go back by faith? Uproot those through
the process. Well, what does that look like?

I love Brendan’s Handles. Release attention
set the intention. The intention of what? The

intention of your future and your faith with God.
There’s always a way by faith. I will find it,

and maybe that’s why you haven’t found
it yet, right? Mm-hmm. Because you’re not

looking by faith, right? You’re looking by sight.
And so I don’t see it and I’ve never seen it and

I’ve never been it and I’ve never done it. But
this mindset is by faith, I will find it. So how

does faith open up your eyes to possibilities
that we’re there all along and, and how do

you tap into it practically? Because a lot of
people will say, so I’m just supposed to, what?

Lift my hands. Mm-Hmm. I’m just
supposed to quote a Bible verse. Well,

yeah. All of that’s good. Yeah. Yeah. But
there’s an actual way to activate faith too.

Brendon Burchard: That’s practical. Yeah. I think
you begin, if you are looking backwards, look

backwards and notice that all the big moves in
your life and all the big random things that look

so random, they happened when you were in motion.
You were in motion, and Serendipity happened. You

were in motion and you met this person.
Who gave you this lesson that helped open

this door later? It’s like Steve Jobs said,
you never connect the dots until you look

backwards. And I think that when you do look
backwards, you start to realizing, oh wait.

Wow. God’s grace is right there. I never thought
about that. Huh? God opened the door right there.

I didn’t know that. And what happens is you
start to realize that all these things have

already opened for you, but they always happen
when you’re in motion. You made a decision,

you went for it. You tried something.
And some big lesson or a failure or a pivotal

point happened, but they always happen when you’re
in motion. And so when you trust in that, you say,

interesting doors looking backwards. I can see
doors open when I was in motion. Let me get

in motion now ’cause I want new doors to open.
Hmm, come on. I want new doors to open for me.

So I have to be in motion. I have
this belief, I have this desire,

I have this dream. Move. Yeah. And you write so
eloquently about this in the book, it’s like,

move, move. Because when you move, the doors
are open or you’re gonna blast through ’em and

discover something. But for the most often. I
think that what people discover is, wow, when I

get in motion, amazing things start happening.
Yeah. These random people come into my

life. Yeah, that’s when I met my wife, or
that’s when I met this business partner,

or that’s when I got that first sale that led
to this sale, and they can start, connect,

connect that forward again with that trust and the
faith that will happen again. I think coming from

that standpoint, it’s like it’s evidence-based.
There’s a lot of evidence that great things

happen when you are in motion and a lot
of things when you are stopping yourself.

Fearing yourself. You know, laying on
the couch week after week in self-pity.

There wasn’t nothing that happening. Nothing was
happening. You were in the 17th bag of Cheetos.

Nothing happened. But when
you got in motion, oh, okay,

you got tired of sitting around and you tried
something, something opened. So I think first,

stepping into that. Truth in the smallest motion.
Brendon Burchard: Small motion. Get outta the

house today. Yeah, get the shower today. Go
Pastor Steven: ask for help today. I didn’t

tell you the story, but I’ll, I’ll give it
to you now and maybe I’ve shared it publicly,

but I don’t think that I have,
I feel like I should though,

when it was time for me to write this
book and I felt like you’re either

gonna do this now and write this because
the message was coming alive in me, but.

I had become pretty discouraged
about the writing process, you know,

going from the spoken word, which I’m more
comfortable with. Mm-Hmm. And I have a lot

of muscle memory with to the written word and
the way I would judge it. And I would think,

this is not very literary. So everything in me was
telling me you’re not, um, you’re not an author.

You know, back to the identity, Christ is in me.
I am enough arguing for your limitations. All

of these mindsets build on each other, right?
Yeah. Which is really why I want you to share

every session and read the book. But the book
actually was completely stalled out in my mind.

I tried to write another book, and I remember the
day that I had a blank afternoon on my calendar

and something told me that today was the day.
To set the book in motion. And when you said

motion, something jumped in me. ’cause I wanted
to say this for the person who is like, I, I know

that there’s something that, that God has put out
in front of me in my future, but I am completely

paralyzed by what I feel. And here’s what I did
that day. I went in my closet, I put on a suit.

I never wear suits, but I put on a suit and
I drove to my office. I called my literary

agent and I stood there in a suit, not on a Zoom
call, a phone call. So why am I wearing a suit?

To set it in motion? It was my way of saying to
myself, I’m in business, and this wasn’t when I

was twenty-three just starting out in ministry.
This is recently that I had to do this for myself.

Yes, to let myself know we mean business. And the
series of meetings that were set up on that day,

standing there in a suit that was, by the way,
a little too tight because I hadn’t put it on

in a couple of years. And as the suit squeezed
the blood out of me, the faith began to blow.

And one of the reasons that the book
is here today is because, like I said,

instead of sitting and waiting for God
to deliver away or make it obvious, I,

I chose motion. Mm-hmm. And I think set it in
motion is a great thing to add to this mindset.

It’s not just the mindset, but it’s setting that
mindset in motion that even the smallest step of

putting on a suit, even the smallest step mm-hmm.
Of setting up a call, even the smallest step of

Flushing it, and telling somebody to ask you
about that addiction and asking somebody to,

to check in on you. Did you set up the
meeting with the therapist that you’ve

been saying you’re gonna do whatever that
move is? A lot of times I think the paralysis

of the entire path blocks us from the next step.
Yes. Because if I’m looking that far out to see,

well, God’s gonna make a way and then it’s
gonna lead to this, and this, and this and this,

we are essentially trying to calculate the
next five ways that God is gonna make when

all we really need to do is step through
the door that’s open right in front of us.