Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Katie Brazelton, PhD, MDiv, MA, is the author of the bestselling Pathway to Purpose for Women and its companion books, Praying for Purpose and Conversations on Purpose. The founder of Lie Purpose Coaching Centers International®, she lives in Southern California near her grown children, daughter-in-law, and grandson.

Shelley Leith is on staff at Saddleback Church where she developed the 40 Days of Purpose Campaign. She’s the co-author of Character Makeover: 40 Days With a Life Coach to Create the Best You, and has combined the character makeover concepts from the book with the appeal of television reality shows in a teen girls’ curriculum, Head-to-Soul Makeover: Helping Teen Girls Become Real in a Fake World. Shelley is a popular speaker on the topics of character makeover, self-esteem, marriage and parenting, topics in which she’s had plenty of practice with her husband of 30 years and their five children. Authors URL: http://shelleyleith.com/

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Get the kind of makeover that will transform your life!

Bestselling author and life coach Katie Brazelton takes you on a deeply personal forty-day journey of developing your character. Discover how to close the gap between understanding God's purpose for your life and carrying it out as you put an end to well-worn patterns of defeat, woundedness, insecurity, unworthiness, and self-centeredness.

Teaming up with coauthor Shelley Leith, who is a highly sought-after speaker on strengthening marriages and family, Brazelton focuses on eight character traits essential to living a purpose-filled life: humility, confidence, courage, self-control, patience, contentment, generosity, and perseverance. Step-by-step you'll experience a complete character makeover--and become the best “you” God intended you to be.

Ideal for small groups, women's church ministry, and one-on-one study.

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Character Makeover

Zondervan

Contents

Remaking Your Character through Grace-Filled Coaching..........................9Part 1 The Making of a Right Relationship to God1. Humility....................................................................21Part 2 The Making of a Right Relationship to Myself2. Confidence..................................................................593. Courage.....................................................................93Part 3 The Making of a Right Relationship to Others4. Self-Control................................................................1355. Patience....................................................................175Part 4 The Making of a Right Relationship to Things6. Contentment.................................................................2117. Generosity..................................................................245Part 5 The Making of a Right Relationship to My Future8. Perseverance................................................................277Afterword......................................................................317Appendix A: Master Action Plan.................................................322Appendix B: Scripture-Rich Prayer for Each Character Trait.....................323Appendix C: Fresh Start with Jesus.............................................331Acknowledgments................................................................333How to Contact the Authors.....................................................334

Chapter One

Spiritual transformation is essential, not optional for Christ-followers. Spiritual transformation is a process, not an event. Spiritual transformation is God's work, but requires my participation. John Ortberg, pastor, author

Your Personal, Virtual Coach

Have you ever wished that there was such a thing as a "life makeover," similar to when a salon fusses over your hair or a personal shopper over your wardrobe, and you come away transformed? I wish getting a life makeover were as painless as those times when I've dabbled in the surface-level, cosmetic approach to changing my outward appearance. Whether it was for a milestone birthday or for a family portrait, I must admit that I have found makeovers to be a lot of fun. In fact, I wish every woman could be treated at least once in her life to such a day of pampering!

I've also experienced a minor house remodel during which a fresh coat of paint and some new carpet profoundly changed the look of my home; the improvement was fairly quick and obvious. But there are also deeper renovations, the kind where families are displaced for months as a construction crew repairs a house foundation, removes walls, rewires electricity, or updates the plumbing. These types of changes are much more painstaking, messy, and costly-often emotionally and physically stressful-and they typically require the help of more than one expert.

Shelley Leith (my coauthor) and I have both delved deeply into the concept of remodeling character, or doing a character makeover. For Shelley and her husband, Greg, the approach they have used in raising their five children has been something she would call character-based parenting. They established the character traits they felt their kids needed in order to live as fruitful Christians, then set out to build those traits into them throughout their years at home. From another angle, Shelley and Greg are speakers for marriage conferences, and they have seen time and time again that the lack of strong character traits such as humility, contentment, self-control, patience, or perseverance can drive couples to the brink of divorce.

For me, this matter of character development has become my passion for different reasons. For years I have been a Life Purpose Coach[R], helping women discover-to borrow Billy Crystal's phrase from the movie City Slickers-their "one big thing." I have been interested not only in helping them discover their unique purpose in life, but in creating a life plan to ensure that they leave a legacy. I even wrote a series of books (Pathway to Purpose, Praying for Purpose, Conversations on Purpose, and Pathway to Purpose Personal Journal) to help women find their specific, second-half-of-life mission.

Yet, it became evident to me after analyzing my own life patterns and those of my life plan clients for more than a decade, that some of us experience a gap between understanding our God-designed legacy and actually realizing that magnificent purpose. We self-sabotage, succumbing to well-worn patterns of defeat, woundedness, insecurity, unworthiness, or self-centeredness that keep us from carrying out God's best intentions for our lives.

You can know everything there is to know about yourself, your potential, and your goals, but if you are hesitant about developing some of the essential character qualities it takes to fulfill your godly dreams (such as humility, generosity, and confidence), you'll get derailed from your life's calling at every turn. I began to see that my coaching had to go further. Thus, Character Makeover was born. In this book, I become your personal, virtual coach-taking you on a forty-day adventure of deepening your character as you collaborate with God, role models, and myself ... preparing you to fulfill your legacy.

Pat Summitt of the University of Tennessee is the all-time winningest college basketball coach. Her 900-plus victories make her the only coach, male or female, to surpass the previous record of 900 wins. A college coach likely dreams about many things: coaching a national championship team, coaching an Olympic team, coaching players who become All-Americans and pros, being elected to the Hall of Fame. Summitt has achieved all of these pinnacles-in some cases, multiple times! In her book Reach for the Summit (Broadway Books, 1998), she has this to say about the role of coaching:

Our players understand that all I'm trying to do is help them. They want to win a national championship. Well, I'm going to do everything I can to see to it.... Their long-term, repetitive success is a matter of building Remaking Your Character through Grace-Filled Coaching: a principled system and sticking to it. Principles are anchors; without them you will drift.

That sums up the essence of this book. Are you reaching for a personal dream-your "national championship," if you will? Character Makeover will coach you to realize your dreams by "building a principled system and sticking to it." Without character, as Summitt says, "you will drift," and drifters don't reach their goals!

Frankly, I'll be a good Character Coach for you, because I have been terribly hard on myself until the last six or seven years, and I distinctly remember what it was like to suffer from the "I'm not good enough" syndrome. You can trust that I now fully realize what a privilege it is to walk alongside you on this grace-filled (imagine that word underlined three times!) journey toward truth in your own life. This must be an exercise into newness and joy, not one that causes you to feel defeated. The latter would break my heart to hear. Life has enough struggles without me coming along and...