Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts

February 15, 2023

Live According to Truth

A student wanted to call his mother to tell her he was not having a good day. A teacher asked him why wasn't he having a good day, and he replied, "because nobody likes me." The teacher asked his permission to ask the class if they liked him, and he said, "no." This student has been operating from the belief that all the students at the school do not like him and that he does not fit in. The sad thing is he cannot provide solid proof to validate his feelings or assumptions.

There are a large number of people living according to the fallacy of their feelings! Feelings are tricky! They seldom can be solidified without facts. However, people would rather live in captivity by holding onto their feelings instead of seeking divine truth that can release them from the lies intertwined in their feelings. We were created in the image of God to serve Him and to live a victorious, abundant life! But if we do not realize why God created us, we will shortchange ourselves from experiencing God's unconditional love, hope, and joy!

John 8:32 (KJV) states, And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Make time to verify if what you believe is true according to the Word of God! You have one life to live, and you owe it to yourself and God to live according to His truth and not according to your feelings or the opinions of others.

February 27, 2022

When God Made You, He Spoke to Himself!

When God made you, He spoke to Himself. Everything God created outside of Himself, He spoke into existence (e.g., Let there be), and it was! When God made humanity, He spoke to Himself and said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness (Genesis 1:26).

The image of God is Triune (i.e., three beings in one)! He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The image of man is Triune too (i.e., Soul, Body, and Spirit). Being made in God’s image reflects His holiness, His righteous, and His love. When God spoke to Himself to form humanity, He wanted to demonstrate His love through fellowship when He said, “It’s not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Another part of being made in God’s image is the freedom to choose. Adam and Eve were righteous until they ate the forbidden fruit (i.e., rebel against God). Their rebellion marred the image of God within themselves and their decedents. And the scars of their decision (i.e., mentally, socially, morally, and physically) are present in our lives today.

The good news is the original image of God can be restored through God’s grace and faith in Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior. Redemption is available if you need to reconnect with God or establish a relationship with Him. The choice is yours.

Click here view journal pages associated with this blog post.

August 3, 2021

Black Women's Equal Pay Day

According to Fortune Magazine, the average Black woman will have finally earned the same amount the average non-Hispanic white man earned a year earlier—eight months later. That’s a problem, not just for Black women who lose out on $900,000 in lifetime earnings, but for everyone.

Black women who normally are the heads of their households (i.e., primary breadwinners) earn 63 cents of every dollar a white man makes. Shannon Williams, director of Equal Pay Today - a project of Equal Rights Advocates stated, "The issue of equal pay is not just a woman’s issue because it trickles down into our families, communities, and the overall economy."

The Black Women’s Wage Gap is a problem for everyone, but everyone isn’t working to address it! One way to close the wage gap is to close the skill gap. The SOFEI Group is working to decrease pay inequity among women of color through free professional, technical, and certification training for women who want to upgrade their skills to elevate their earnings! Please visit our website to view and purchase our NOMORE64 merchandise to empower women to take control of their skills and earning potential!

July 23, 2021

Don't Live Within Your Means

Living within your means is well-intended advice to prevent people from acquiring debt. But could this advice prevent individuals from believing and achieving a bigger and better life?

Mean among many definitions is average. Living outside your means spiritually, emotionally, and socially can lead to an extraordinary life. Here’s how:
  • Write your big dreams and read them daily
  • Create a vision board with images that coincide with your dreams
  • Review, envision, and mediate daily of you achieving your dreams
  • Surround yourself with people who have what you desire
  • Strive for purpose and not security
  • Live by faith and not fear

July 8, 2021

Management Essentials

When you’re a manager, there are some basic, essential skills everyone should have. Whether it’s setting clear work priorities, building great teamwork, listening well to others, or performing a performance review. Each of the skills impact how effective you’ll be as a manager. The Management Essentials e-course will help you build these skills and others. By giving you on the job development exercises to evaluate performance, set clear expectations, and create the right level of challenging work, you’ll build the skills required to be a great and motivating manager for each of your employees. This bite-sized course includes:
  • Giving Clear Work Priorities
  • What Employees Need
  • Reinforce Great Teamwork
  • Valuing Employees
  • Listening to Others’ Ideas and Opinions
  • Problem Solving Expectations
  • The Right Workload for Employees
  • The Great Things Employees Do
  • An Ethics and Integrity Discussion
  • Perform a Performance Review
  • Creating Challenging Work
  • Receive Feedback From Your
  • Creating a Great Work Situation
  • Evaluating Performance in the Right Way
  • Perform a Departure Review
After successful completion of this course, you will acquire skills to build basic management practices to coach employees, deliver valuable feedback, and recognize the achievements of others. Click here to learn more or to get started.

June 16, 2017

She's Not a B****, She's Confident

Why are women called a B**** when they exude confidence? Confidence has nothing to do with lewdness, selfishness, or being a female dog. It has everything to do with relying on an inner power and strength to achieve and succeed in life. Once a woman reaches a level of self-confidence, she doesn’t need to be torn down. No one knows her journey to reach her height and our level of confidence will never increase when we tear women down.

We've launched a tee-shirt campaign to end negative languages and images associated with confident women and women in general. And you can show your support here.

June 9, 2017

Allow People to Grow

Women of color spend a great deal of time tending to the needs of immediate and extended family members to prevent them from dealing with the consequences of their choices. Women will:
  • Mortgage their homes to prevent a loved one from going to jail.
  • Expend their retirement to prevent foreclosure or pay for college.
  • Become a custodian to their abandoned or neglected grandchildren.
  • Decrease their savings to pay their children’s expenses to keep their lives afloat.
Stepping in to tend to the needs of family members every time they experience a set-back, doesn’t help them become accountable or responsible for their choices. It teaches them to stay on the path of self-destruction because they know they have access to a reliable source that will catch them before they fall.

Every one can’t be saved from the consequences of their choices. Part of the growth and healing process is to learn from the error of our ways. So if they’re old enough to get into a ‘pickle’ let them grow up to get out of it.

October 19, 2015

Identity

Have you ever attended a special occasion and observed how individuals describe themselves? “I’m a doctor, lawyer, an accountant, or an entrepreneur." If accomplishments, titles, degrees, or material things were taken away, how would they be identified?

The social arena is inundated with individuals pretending to be something they're not. And what's startling is people who are normally content with their identity, become discontent after interacting with a new social group or environment.

The Apostle Paul was a persecutor of the followers of Christ, and was miraculously converted to a follower himself. Paul realized it was God's grace that made him who he had become - an Ambassador for Christ. As an Ambassador, Paul traveled to different countries to organize churches and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was not ashamed of being a servant of God and did not waiver in his new identity with Him.

If you have a relationship with God without titles or a series of letters behind your name, be proud to be His servant. Accomplishments without a relationship with Him are good, but their value outside His will may not hold much weight.

Praise God for who you are - His workmanship for good works preordained before the foundation of the earth (Ephesians 2:10). And walk boldly in your creation because you were fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God (Psalm 139:14).

June 8, 2015

Feelings vs. Facts

Feelings can be a challenge to prove in the workplace. They’re challenging because some feelings aren’t based on current realities, but on experiences that can cloud the truth.

If you’ve experienced an offence at work, think before you respond or react. And if you want an apology or resolve from the offender, here are a few things to consider:

  • Was the offence intentional? If so, can you prove it?
  • What was your emotional state when the offence occurred?
  • Are you viewing the current offence through the lens of your past?
  • What impact does the offence have on you and the company as a whole if it’s not addressed and resolved?
Telling someone how we feel in the workplace may be impossible to validate without tangible proof. One sure way to get heard is to measure offensive behaviors against the company’s mission and core values which should be outlined in the company’s employee handbook. Also, make sure you have the ability to show your value to the company as a problem-solver, not a complainer or whiner. You can do so when you speak more about what your company does and less about how you feel.

May 14, 2015

Pursue Your Greatest Self

In 1996, The SOFEI Group started in the apartment living room of its current Chief Empowerment Officer (CEO) under the umbrella of Virtuous Enterprises, Inc. The organization’s foundation was spiritually and biblically-based because the CEO discovered the challenges many women faced stemmed from how they viewed themselves and their lack of faith and belief in a Being higher than themselves; not because of limited access to resources.

We set our heights to empower women to transform their lives by transforming their minds through biblically-based fellowships and our quarterly newsletter - Inspirational Expressions. As we evolved, we realized we lost focus on our spiritual core.

What was true at our origin stands true today; women cannot achieve or be their greatest without knowing their true power. Unfortunately, this power has been decreased to sexuality and looks, and this power isn’t sustainable like our innate power during seasonal challenges.

Oprah Winfrey states, “Everyone is trying to pursue their greatest being of their true selves.” If this is true for you, here are a few things to consider:

  • Seek God first and His wisdom (Matthew 6:13; James 1:5).
  • Pray and give thanks always (I Thessalonians 5:17-18).
  • See yourself as God does because we were fearfully and wonderfully made in His image (Genesis 1:26; Psalm 139:14).
  • Get rid of limited beliefs about God and your potential because through Him all things are possible and we can do any and every thing through His power and strength (Matthew 19:26; Philippians 4:13).
  • Govern your life according to God’s will because He will not withhold things that are good from people that walk upright (Psalm 84:11).
  • Live life with abundance filled with joy, hope, love, and contentment (John 10:10).
  • Trust God with your heart, mind, and soul (Proverbs 3:5).
We are three-dimensional beings and in order to be our true selves we have to connect to our spirit. Our spirit is like our heart, we can’t live without it. If we attempt to live without an ignited spirit, we’re existing and not living the life God intended.

April 23, 2015

Fret Not

Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at the wicked. – Psalm 24:19

Fretting is energy that can leave you stagnant. Quite frankly, it’s wasted energy. Whether your co-worker gets your dream job without much effort, a friend with a promiscuous past gets married during your season of singleness, a surprise break-up, or a family member moves into their luxury abode while you struggle to pay rent, envy will leave you powerless.

The hurt or disappointment does not entitle you to live a life looking through the lens of anger, rage, or worry. It does give you an opportunity to learn how to accept and deal with the growing prevalence of evil, ill-treatment, and personal deficiencies. Critic Samuel Johnson advised, "He who has so little knowledge of human nature to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove."

Thinking, talking, and hoarding envy, keeps it alive and seeking revenge can rob you of positive creativity and internal peace.

According to Roman 12:19, “vengeance belongs to God and He will repay.” So, turn every negative situation and person over to God and put envy to rest.

October 23, 2014

We Plunged

Right into doing something we’ve never done before – host a Zumbathon® Charity Event! Since we’ve been out of the lime-light, we thought hosting a Zumbathon® would be a fun way to reconnect with friends and supporters, and make new ones.

We’ve supported Zumbathon® events to benefit heart disease and ovarian cancer. And one-year later we’re hosting our own to benefit women experiencing poverty in the Washington region.

The Zumba® Corporate Office approved our Zumbathon® Charity Event within two-hours of submission - a process that normally takes two-business days, and within four-weeks, only 10% of our desired participants have registered.

Lesson learned, we’re doing something we’ve never done before and its success can’t be measured solely on who showed up; but, on our commitment to work and move the weight of poverty off the shoulders of women who live with it daily right in our backyard.

Not achieving the desired results from this plunge will not stop us from doing it again. Poverty is growing, and we do not have time to be stagnated by fear, skepticism, or resistance.

If you want to experience growth and enthusiasm click here - this can result from trying something new.

September 30, 2014

A World without Women

What would the world look like without women? Take a few minutes to ponder this thought. What did you come up with?

Women who are abused, neglected, or subjected to sexism, are invisible. And, women weren’t created to be second-class citizens to men, but equally to build a fruitful and noble world for all humanity to enjoy. Subjection of women can stem from pride and ignorance. It’s ignorance when people don’t know the reason for women’s existence; pride when people are self-serving and would do anything to fulfill their wants and needs.

If women want to strengthen their presence and voice in society, they should:
  • Discover their purpose and not allow people or external circumstances deter them from their destined path.
  • Live according to their uniqueness and convictions; not societal norms.
  • Know their rights as a citizen and in the workplace and hold people accountable who inflict harm to them.
  • Increase and stabilize their self- and net-worth to create personal and financial stability.
  • Stop defining their value based on their sexuality or possessions.
  • Connect with people who exalt others and not themselves.
  • Be decisive and fearless about their beliefs and choices.
Eve was created to serve as Adam’s helpmate; not his doormat. If women want to make their presence known and voices heard, they should stop walking in the shadow of mankind, and consider walking in the shadow of their Creator - God.

August 12, 2014

SOFEI's Top Ten

Following is a list of The SOFEI Group's top ten YouTube videos for motivation, inspiration, and hope:

March 31, 2014

It's Time to Clean House

An elderly woman lost her life in a house fire because she hoarded stuff that didn't add value. Her neighbors recognized how hazardous her house had become and offered assistance to help her clean, to no prevail.

Just as the elderly woman collected worthless items, there are many people who gather and hold onto people and things that deplete or bring detriment to their spiritual or emotional well-being. Worthless items like negative thinking, self-denial, stressful living, defeat, deceit, jealousy, fear, anger, covetousness, envy, anxiety, lack of self-control, hatred, low self-worth and self-esteem.

When we pray and ask God for deliverance from our trials and tribulations, healing from a broken or wounded heart, or for a financial blessing, He can't deliver when our internal being is cluttered. For example, when a pilot attempts to land a plane, the pilot verifies if the pathway is clear. If it isn't, the pilot goes into a holding pattern. God is like the pilot! He wants to deliver your blessing or deliverance, but your pathway isn’t clear.

Your blessing or deliverance is on hold and God is willing, able, and ready to release it; but, you have to clean house! Get rid of everyone and everything that's cluttering your life. It will take commitment, determination, and patience. Don't look for quick cleaning methods or solutions, but roll up your sleeves, and clear areas often missed or overlooked. A clean house (i.e., internal) will make room to receive everything you need to live a focused, fulfilled, and joyous life.

March 26, 2014

Jewel in The Hands of an Inexperienced Jeweler

Genesis 34 talks about a young virgin woman, named Dinah who “went out to see the daughters of the land” (Genesis 34:1). She was spotted by Shechem - a victim of lust at first sight, who took Dinah and violated her virginity (Genesis 34:2). A Jewel, such as Dinah, was defiled and violated because of Shechem’s strong sexual desire to have her (Genesis 34:3). In Hebrew, the definition of violated or defiled, means to be taken by force (i.e., raped). Shechem’s actions resulted in harm instead of satisfaction because Dinah’s brothers, Levi and Simeon lied, stole, and murdered for revenge.

Dinah was a Jewel taken by force, but there are many women (Jewels) who voluntarily place themselves in the hands of Inexperienced Jewelers due to:

Soft Spoken Words

According to Genesis 34:3, Shechem spake kindly unto the damsel. Women can become prey to soft spoken words if they were raised in negative environments, were victims of verbal, emotional, or physical abuse and never heard or experienced unconditional love.

Low Self-Esteem

Some women with low self-esteem try to validate their self-worth by clinging to the arms of wrong men.

The Biological Clock

Some women rush into marriage based on their biological clock instead of God's. Their friends have gotten married, and started families, and they feel like timing is running out for Mr. Right.

Inexperienced Jeweler Doesn't Know Her Value

This can happen for women with a history of broken and abusive relationships, as well as other issues they haven't allowed God to cleanse and heal.

Fornication

Many women are in the hands of Inexperienced Jewelers for the sake of Eros (lustful) love and have convinced themselves that if the sex is good, everything else in the relationship will fall into place. However, sex was designed to be good under the Union of Holy Matrimony.

Hungry for Love and Affection

If an employee partakes of an unhealthy snack to satisfy their hunger, this can prevent them from enjoying a healthy, nutritious meal because they have become full from the snack. When we're hungry for love and affection we too indulge in unhealthy snacking (i.e., relationships) which blocks us from receiving the main entrée - a man designed especially for us.

So, are You a Jewel In The Hands of An Inexperienced Jeweler?

March 17, 2014

Responsiblity

  • Be responsible for your actions. No one can make you behave the way you do.
  • Be responsible for your thoughts. No one can make you think what you think.
  • Take ownership of your feelings. No one can make you feel good or bad.
  • Be responsible for your life. No one can make you have a fulfilled or dreadful life.
  • Be responsible for your well being. No one can define who you are or your purpose for living.
  • Be responsible for how you are treated. You are treated the way you allow yourself to be treated.
  • Be responsible for how you treat others. No one can make you respect or disrespect him or her.
  • Be responsible for your relationship with God and others. God and no one can make you love them. The choice is ultimately yours.

I Weep for Sisters Looking

I weep for Sisters looking
For a man that’s so hard to find
My sisters try, they trip, they tremble
Because the search goes on all the time.

I weep for Sisters looking
For security in masculine form
They’re tossed and thrown by emotions
Like a small ship in a big storm.

I weep for Sisters looking
For a “brother” whom they can respect
Not a pretty boy or millionaire
Just someone
With whom
They can connect.

I weep for Sisters looking
Because of the pain and heartbreak
They endure
The loneliness that turns to emptiness
Will there ever be a cure?

I say Yes, Dear Sisters,
There is a cure
A real cure from my point of view
For perhaps wisdom is dictating
That you pray and wait,
Serve and work
Until
Mr. Right
Finds You!

By Evangelist Emanuel Scott, Jr.

March 12, 2014

Hate your job, what are you doing about it?

If you’re not happy with your job, whose fault is it? Is it your manager’s, co-worker, the economy, your bills, or you? What impact does your hatred have on the people you serve through your job? To show up every day to a job you hate doesn’t benefit anyone but your creditors. Hatred is difficult to hide. It will resonate through your attitude and your work.

Staying at a job you hate may seem logical with the high percentage of unemployed and underemployed people. But if you choose to stay, why hate it? Why waste your time and your employer's? It’s challenging to have a servant attitude through hatred. If you’re not willing to serve, you’re not willing to work at your best capacity.

Work isn’t solely about us! It’s about service. If we’re filled with hatred about our work, does it mean we’re too full of ourselves? Sure, people can be difficult and challenging, but their actions should not contribute to our hatred. Every day we show up for work, we should know our purpose and the contribution we will make on our employer's bottom line and their clients.

Don’t allow finances and fear hold you hostage to a job you hate. You have the power to transform your job into a career you enjoy and love. If you're ready, you can start here.

March 10, 2014

Fearfully Made

A young girl ran to her mother after school and said, "Let’s hurry and get to the car because I don’t want to get a tan." Mother’s response, "Why are you so afraid of getting a tan?" Her daughter’s response, "I’m not, but a girl in my group asked me if I was dark skinned because of the sun?"

A portion of Psalm 139:14 states, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are thy works. Humanity was created in the image of God and He has never spoken negatively to Himself or to the people He chose to make an impact throughout the world based on their uniqueness.

Our children are our future. Let’s be vigilant of what we feed them – directly or indirectly. Critiquing or teasing people about their looks (especially their hues) is a waste of time. Everything God made is good and was created for His glory. If God can see the beauty, good, and glory in His creation, why can't we?