On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

Here’s a thought-provoking reflection from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:

Being relaxed feels wonderful. Being nervous, tense, and worried are not so wonderful. Why aren’t more people relaxed? Jesus said if we are weary and overburdened, we should go to Him and He will give us rest, relaxation, and ease. Jesus wants to teach us the right way to live, which is different from the way most of the world lives.

It would be putting it mildly to say that I was an uptight woman for the first half of my life. I simply did not know how to relax, and it was due to me not being willing to completely trust God. I trusted God for things, but not in things. I kept trying to be the one in control. Even though God was in the driver’s seat of my life, I kept one hand on the wheel just in case He took a wrong turn. Relaxation is impossible without trust!

If you know you can’t fix the problem you have, then why not relax while God is working on it? It sounds easy, but it took many years for me to be able to do this. I know from experience that the ability to relax and go with the flow in life is dependent upon our willingness to trust God completely. If things don’t go your way, instead of being upset, you can believe that getting your way was not what you needed. God knew that, so He gave you what was best for you, instead of what you wanted.

If you are waiting much longer than you had hoped to , you can get frustrated, angry, and upset, or you can say, “God’s timing is perfect. He is never late. And my steps are ordered by the Lord.” Now you can relax and simply go with the flow of what is happening in your life. When it comes to things that are out of our control, we can either ruin the day or relax and enjoy it while God is working on the situation. As long as we believe, God keeps working!

Source: Trusting God Day by Day by Joyce Meyer

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In The Rules of Life, international bestselling author Richard Templar shares a personal code for living a better, happier, more successful kind of life. Here is an excerpt from Rule 18, “Don’t Be Afraid to Dream”:

This may seem incredibly obvious, incredibly easy but you would be surprised how many people seriously limit their dreams. They’re your dreams for heaven’s sake. There should be no limit to them. Plans have to be realistic; dreams don’t.

You are allowed to dream as high, as wide, as big, as extravagant, as impossible, as wacky, as silly, as bizarre, as unrealistically nonsensical as you want.

You are allowed to wish for anything you want as well. Look, wishes and dreams are all private affairs. There are no wish police, no dream doctors who are on the rampage, looking out for unrealistic demands. It is a private thing, between you…and that’s it. Between you and absolutely no one else at all.

The only note of caution here—and I do speak from personal experience—is to be very careful of what you do wish for, what you dream of, it might just come true. And where would you be then?

A lot of people think their dreams have to be realistic to be worth dreaming about. But that’s a plan and that is something quite different. I have plans and I take logical steps to make them come to fruition. Dreams are allowed to be so improbable that they are never likely to come true. And don’t go thinking you’ll never achieve anything by sitting around day-dreaming all day. Some of the most successful people have also been those who have dared to dream the most. It isn’t a coincidence.

Source: The Rules of Life, pp. 38-39.

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

Here’s a thought-provoking reflection from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:

Life can become complicated when people do not know how to make decisions and stick with them.

We often labor over the choices and options before us when, actually, we just need to make a decision and let it stand. For example, when you stand in front of your closet in the morning looking at all your clothes, just choose something and put it on. Don’t go back and forth until you make yourself late for work!

When you get ready to go out to eat, pick a restaurant and go. Don’t become so confused that you feel there is no one place that will satisfy you. Sometimes, I would like the coffee from restaurant A, the salad from restaurant B, my favorite chicken dish from restaurant C, and dessert from restaurant D. Obviously, I cannot have everything I want at the same time, so I need to pick one of those places and eat there. I can go to the others later.

Let me encourage you to start making decisions without second-guessing yourself or worrying about the choices you make. Don’t be double-minded. Doubting your decisions after you make them will steal the enjoyment from everything you do. Make the best decision you can, and trust God with the results. Don’t be anxious or afraid of being wrong. If your heart is right and you make a decision not in accordance with God’s will, He will forgive you and help you move on.

Source: Trusting God Day by Day by Joyce Meyer

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

Discomfort can be a form of pain, but it isn’t a deep pain—it’s a shallow one. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve stepped outside of your comfort zone. The idea of exercising in many people’s minds, for example, brings discomfort, so they don’t do it. Eating a spinach and kale salad brings discomfort too. So does meditating, or writing in a journal, or focusing on a difficult task, or saying “no” to others. Of course these are just examples, because different people find discomfort in different things, but you get the gist.

The key thing to understand is that most forms of discomfort actually help us grow into our strongest and smartest selves. However, many of us were raised by loving parents who did so much to make our childhoods comfortable, that we inadvertently grew up to subconsciously believe that we don’t need discomfort in our lives. So now we run from it constantly. The problem with this is that, by running from discomfort, we are constrained to partake in only the activities and opportunities within our comfort zones. And since our comfort zones are relativity small, we miss out on most of life’s greatest and healthiest experiences, and we get stuck in a debilitating cycle.

Let’s use diet and exercise as an example…
• First, we become unhealthy because eating healthy food and exercising feels uncomfortable, so we opt for comfort food and mindless TV watching instead.
• But then, being unhealthy is also uncomfortable, so we seek to distract ourselves from the reality of our unhealthy bodies by eating more unhealthy food and watching more unhealthy entertainment and going to the mall to shop for things we don’t really want or need. And our discomfort just gets worse.

Amazingly, the simple act of accepting a little discomfort every day and taking it one small step at a time can solve most of our common problems, and make our minds happier, healthier, and stronger in the long run.

But again, it’s hard sometimes—really, really hard! There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. That’s not how we’re made. We’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall here and there. Because that’s part of living—to face discomfort, learn from it, and adapt over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.

So when you find yourself cocooned in isolation and cannot find your way out of the darkness, remember that this is similar to the place where caterpillars go to grow their wings. Just because today is uncomfortable and stressful, doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be wonderful. You just got to get there.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

“Starting over is not an option!”

Unfortunately that’s a lie many of us hold on to until the bitter end.

The idea of starting over being a bad thing is baked right into the fabric of our society’s education system. We send our children to a university when they’re 17 or 18, and basically tell them to choose a career path they’ll be happy with for the next 40 years. “But what if I choose wrong?” I remember thinking to myself. And that’s exactly what I did, in more ways than one. Over the years, however, I’ve learned the truth through experience: you can change paths anytime you want to, and oftentimes it’s absolutely necessary that you do.

Yes, starting over and making substantial changes in your life is almost always feasible. It won’t be easy of course, but neither is being stuck with a lifelong career you naively chose when you were a teenager. And neither is holding on to something that’s not meant to be, or something that’s already long gone.

The truth is, no one wins a game of chess by only moving forward; sometimes you have to move backward to put yourself in a position to win. And this is a perfect metaphor for life. Sometimes when it feels like you’re running into one dead end after another, it’s actually a sign that you’re not on the right path. Maybe you were meant to hang a left back when you took a right, and that’s perfectly fine. Life gradually teaches us that U-turns are allowed. So turn around when you must! There’s a big difference between giving up and starting over in the right direction. And there are three little words that can release you from your past mistakes and regrets, and get you back on track. These words are: “From now on…”

So from now on what should you do?

Mix it up a little bit. Take one step at a time. Find ways to provide a healthy challenge to your current understanding of life, and you will discover and experience far more of life’s magic in the days ahead.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.