Extreme Makeover – Is it time for yours?

While on a cruise recently, I was in my cabin watching the show Extreme Makeover. (Yeah, I know, right?) You know how it works - the foundation of the show is based on a person or families who have a situation in their life which prevents them from being able to live in a “suitable” home. The Extreme Makeover team comes in and builds the family a new home to help their life improve. In a sense, they change the external to work to improve the internal. I wondered how many of us realize that we should each experience our own extreme makeover –but from the inside out!

I recently met a young man who is embarking on a new path in his life. He has a passion for sports and a heart for children – and is trying to combine those two. He originally was not considering starting a business, but the more he shared with me the more I could see his vision become a new business. He had been laid off and not having success in finding another job and I told him that perhaps this is why. I saw a light in his eyes when he would begin to talk about working with those kids and what he wanted to do to make an impact in their lives. I shared with him some foundational knowledge that I had as a previous business owner and a corporate administrator. He then began to talk about his image and the difficult time he is having in changing the way he dresses, speaks, and those he associates with. Not that his “associates” are the wrong ones, just on a different levels. He doesn’t want to disrespect his friends, but has a sincere desire to be a better man – both spiritually and mentally. I told him that I could see God at work in his life. I also shared with him that sometimes we have to have two different personalities – a professional side and a personal side – and there is nothing wrong with it! The key is to discover how to balance the two so that there isn’t a situation that could be “discovered” that would destroy either side. I shared with him that sometimes, it takes one individual to have the courage to be begin the change process for others to follow suite. “Don’t follow the trend”, I said to him, “set the trend”!

Its so important to recognize that who you are as a person –be it a business owner, professional, or just as an “ordinary Joe” is SO much more than what you present on the outside – its who you are inside – and ‘that’ comes shining through. Consider this statement “You can take the person out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the person” – why is that? It is because “country” is who that person is on the inside. It shines through not matter what type of clothing you wear or what type of car you drive. There is a “still small voice” that whispers to you when you know that you are at a point to elevate yourself from your current situation.

2009 was a year of change for me - marital status, financial, career – and my initial fear was how I was going to “look” to others in this new start, and as a result, I tried to reinvent myself – externally – with some positive and some negative results. As God continues to work on me, I began to understand that it was not my external but some internal changes that were in order. Not that I am a horrible person, but a few of the things that were hindering my elevation to who HE would have me to be in order to become complete in HIM were the things that I was trying to keep from happening on the inside. When I started to allow the internal to change, the external changes caused people to say “What has happened to you? You have this GLOW!”

My friend, Tony Haynes, wrote a poem called, “Live As If You Have Arrived”

Live as if…
Y ou have arrived to that place
O f revelation
U nforgettably described as destiny & destination

A lthough still on your journey to a
R ainbow pre-archived
E very sign tells you…

…To live as if you have arrived

I n the flesh to that space called Soul Salvation
N irvana for a passenger who purposefully passes…

T hrough the portal of presumption to
H ail the proclamation that
E vokes power & persuasion to the masses

D ive in wholeheartedly
R evel in your parted sea
I n a way that channels Moses once you've dived
V ersus Pharaoh and his army be
E xcursion ready
R eadily
S et to live your life as if you have arrived

S o those with trepidation
E xit from their station
A rmed with a sense of hope in overdrive
T o wander less and from this day …

As you do - so will they
Believe before they leave they have arrived


When you go through an internal makeover, you begin to live as if you have arrived. You begin to walk in your destiny and feel the power that has been in you all along. YOU ARE IN THE DRIVERS SEAT – but God has the best GPS system available! Let 2010 be the year of your Extreme Makeover!