So let's explore some habits we can get into to help us find our own unique content. I'm going to give you five things you can do. The first one is to watch. Watch. Use your eyes. Be a noticeer. Notice the behavior of individuals in your life or two people as they interact with each other. Take note of nature. Observe how objects work. Look at life all around you to see if you might come up with something that will serve as a perfect illustration or it will help to illuminate a hard to understand concept. You know who did this? Jesus. In Matthew 6, he says this. Consider the birds of the sky. They don't sew or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon and all of his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God closed the grass of the field, which is here to get today and then tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, won't he do much more for you? So if Jesus watched and then used things he saw as he taught, we can too. So the first one. Watch. The second habit is to listen, to listen, to eavesdrop, while sort of tune your ears to the conversations happening all around you, whether it's with family members or with friends. I remember one day being with a new friend of mine, her name was Laurel, and she was a breast cancer survivor. And she was telling me about the time that she discovered that she had breast cancer. She was up early in the morning with her Bible in her hands and a mug of coffee on the table. And she said she went to reach for her mug, and as she did, she held her well-worn leather Bible with its thin pages close to her heart and leaned forward. And it was through the pages of scripture that she discovered a cancerous lump that was growing. And when she told me that story, I had this aha moment. I thought not about it in the physical sense, but how often maybe we need to press our Bible is close to our heart to see if something cancerous is growing in our soul. So I used it as an illustration to open a devotion that I wrote. So listen to those conversations happening all around you. Next is ask questions. Be curious. Be inquisitive. Ask people who are over-repairing something at your house about their profession or what it is they're fixing or how that object works. I do this often, my family kind gets mad at me when we go on trips. I'm always asking the different people that are leading us through the museum or giving the tour about their jobs. But I've learned some great things this way. I remember one time in specific I was watching television and I heard in this news report that there are two different ways to fly an airplane. So I have a friend whose husband is a pilot. I thought, oh, maybe I can interview him and ask him some questions. So I arranged a phone call with him through my friend and I asked him about these two different ways to fly an airplane. And he told me that indeed that was true. The first way is called VFR visual flight rules. It's when the sky is sunny. It's a clear day and you can see well. So all you need to do is line the wings of the airplane up with a horizon and you can fly using your sight. The second way to fly an airplane is called instrumental flight rules. And that's where it's not a clear day. It's stormy out or it's black dark night. And so instead you need to learn to fly the airplane. Not looking out your window. You can't use your sight. You have to stare at that instrumental panel. And the number one instrument you need to stare at to fly safely. Guess what it's called? The attitude indicator. Boy, did I get all kinds of material from that interview with my friend's husband about the difference between walking by faith and walking by sight and what our attitude has to do with it. So be inquisitive and ask questions. The next habit is to read. Now I don't mean to read in order to come up with ideas. Maybe might spark an idea. We certainly don't want to be just a compiler that's taking ideas from what we read. But we read to replenish our minds and our souls. Cranking out content can be very depleting and we need to fill back up. And do you know that your brain uses a different, or you use a different part of your brain when you are cranking out content, then you do when you are taking in content. And it's good to balance those two. So read some practical nonfiction, read some, take me far away fiction that'll help to fill your soul back up. And of course we most importantly want to be reading our Bibles. Not just reading it, but studying it and memorizing it and living it out loud. When you read the Bible, sometimes you'll just come across a word and you want to stop and dig down deeper into the original Greek or Hebrew meaning of that word. My favorite resource for doing this online is called Bible Hub. You might want to check that out. Secondly, look for themes. Perhaps you come across a verse about worry. Well, cross reference that and use it in concordance or Bible Gateway.com and search out other verses on worry to get a full picture of what scripture says about it. Beyond words or themes, look at characters. Do you come across a character in the Old Testament? Well, don't just stop reading there. They might be discussed further in the New Testament. So look for other places in scripture where that character is mentioned. Maybe questions arise when you are studying scripture, write them down. Perhaps it'll spark a piece of writing or something you can use in one of your talks as you have your own questions as you interact with the text. And then also think about any corresponding cultural conditions that the scripture you're studying might remedy or might relate to. Now, I really want to caution you to not do one thing. Don't approach your time with God simply to get material that you can then use for public display. That's not why we interact with the Bible. That's not why we read it and study it and memorize it. We do it to grow our relationship with Christ. And then when we feel the go ahead from God and we've learned the lesson well, then maybe we can use those things we've learned in our writing and speaking. And the fifth habit is reminisce. Reminisce. Of course, you're going to have stories from your current life, but there are also stories that have happened and experiences you've gone through in your past that you can use in your writing as well. It's not too late to use those stories. I like to encourage people to get a piece of paper, make a timeline, putting hash marks, maybe every two to five years depending on your age. And then think back about those years in your life. What milestones did you have? Was there a move? Was there a joyous occasion, a triumph, a tragedy, a new school, a death? Who did you work with? Where did you travel? Who did you hang out with? Maybe as you look over those years and you jot these experiences and these people down, a story will rise to the surface. One thing I do when I coach writers is I often have them do this little class participation thing about this subject. I have them reach in their purse and grab out a coin and look down at the coin and see what year it was minted. And unless it was minted before they were born or when they were a toddler, they usually can think of a couple stories from that year that they could use in their writing and speaking. So go back in time and reminisce.