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 her empowering guide, Be Mighty, Jill Stoddard offers practical advice and support to women who struggle with stress and anxiety. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt:

As you pilot your plane through life, despite a carefully crafted flight plan, the sky will get dark, the weather will get stormy, and a bird may even fly into your engine. Hijackers will show up, further attempting to steer you off course with their taunts: “Stop navigating toward health, self-care, and authenticity—you don’t deserve it, and who are you kidding, you can’t bear cravings or stress, you have no idea how to handle real problems.”

The hijackers have pushed your detonator, so now what! You could grab your pinot and pizza parachute, abandon your aircraft, and allow it to blow to smithereens. Or you could send a Mayday signal to air traffic control, turn up the volume on your headset, and listen for some wise guidance: “Remember the flyer you admire. Now hold the yoke steady and persevere through the turbulence; pull back with your determination and courage to climb above the storm. Your integrity is illuminating the runway.” Air traffic control—your values—will always be there, 24/7/365, to guide you and keep you on course through the roughest of conditions. All you have to do is listen and course correct.

Source: Be Mighty, p. 86

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:

If you are experiencing emotional or physical pain—no matter how big or how small—it can seem overwhelming. But here is something to hold on to: a struggle or personal loss doesn’t have to overshadow every part of your life. You can still have joy even in the midst of sorrow.

Joy isn’t always extreme hilarity; sometimes joy is simply a calm delight. And you can delight yourself in God and in his promise to always be with you even when times are difficult—especially when times are difficult.

The key is to trust God. He knows what you’re going through, and if you trust Him, He will restore your joy. You may not see how it’s gong to work out or how you’re going to get over it, but know that God is in control, and He can do the impossible.

Source: Quiet Times with God 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 his recent release, Hidden Potential, organizational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant shares the character skills and motivational structures that can help people realize their potential. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt:

Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.

Knowing your principles doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to practice them, particularly under stress or pressure. It’s easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well. The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how your respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

Personality is not your destiny—it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits you have—it’s what you decide to do with them. Wherever you are today, there’s no reason why you can’t grow your character skills starting now.

Source: Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, pp. 20-21

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.

Entrepreneur Shane Parrish shares insights about overcoming unconscious reactions and making better decisions in his recent release, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results. Here’s an excerpt:

While no one chooses difficult circumstances, adversity provides opportunity. The test isn’t against other people, though; it’s against our former selves. Are we better than we were yesterday? When circumstances are easy, it’s hard to distinguish ordinary people from extraordinary ones, or to see the extraordinary within ourselves. As the Roman slave Publilius Syrus once said, “Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.”

The path to being exceptional begins when you decide to be responsible for your actions no matter what the situation. Exceptional people know they can’t change the hand they’ve been dealt, and don’t waste time wishing for a better one. They focus instead on how they’re going to play the cards they have to achieve the best result. They don’t hide behind others. The best people rise to the challenge—whatever it is. They choose to live up to their best self-image instead of surrendering to their defaults.

One of the most common mistakes people make is bargaining with how the world should work instead of accepting how it does work. Anytime you find yourself or your colleagues complaining “that’s not right,” or “that’s not fair,” or “it shouldn’t be that way,” you’re bargaining not accepting. You want the world to work in a way that it doesn’t.

Failing to accept how the world really works puts your time and energy toward proving how right you are. When the desired results don’t materialize, it’s easy to blame circumstances or others. I call this the wrong side of right. You’re focused on your ego not the outcome.

Solutions appear when you stop bargaining and start accepting the reality of the situation. That’s because focusing on the next move, rather than how you got here in the first place, opens you up to a lot of possibilities. When you put outcome over ego, you get better results.

Source: Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish, pp. 49-50.

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 a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, novelist Lisa Janice Cohen shared thought-provoking insights about hope and fear. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

I recently watched a documentary about Molly Kawahata, a young climate activist who is also an ice climber. It’s called The Scale of Hope. As she talked about the challenge of climbing a steep ice wall in Alaska, it felt as if she were talking to me about writing a novel. One of the things she says in the documentary is this:

“You don’t try to climb something that’s literally impossible. You have to know that you could get to the top.”

That’s hope. And yet, her time on the ice is always tempered by fear, by the knowledge that failure is a possible outcome.

Those of us who write are scaling mountains of a different kind. Writing, like climbing, has its own technical skills and to persevere is to believe you can get to the top.

Kawahata brings that same sensibility to her work as a climate activist. And even more challenging is her personal history of living with a mental illness. She is very frank about her own mind being both her antagonist and her protagonist.

Regardless of our specific neurochemistry and limitations, we all bring our full selves to the table in the act of creation. The only way to get to the top of that particular mountain is to first know that it’s possible.

There is one additional aspect to Kawahata’s climbing experience: preparation. As writers, our preparation includes craft and community, research and practice. We would not even attempt to climb without having the right gear, the appropriate training, backup, and knowledge. Communities like Writer Unboxed, conferences, craft books, writing groups, and beta readers are some of our essential tools. However, all the preparation in the world can’t eliminate the fear; it only gives us the resources to draw upon when the work challenges us.

The mountain we set out to climb when we begin a novel isn’t a sheer cliff of ice, but it’s just as slippery and difficult to maintain traction and balance. At any given point, we are looking up to see how much of the face we have left to climb and looking down to see how far we’ve come. It’s all too easy to let fear leave us clinging to the ice, unable to move. But, if we rely on our preparation and equipment, understand that fear is necessary, we can set our toeholds and keep climbing one sentence, one word at a time.

Reach higher. I believe in myself and I believe in you.

What are you climbing?

What fears do you face?

How do you harness your joy to keep moving through the fear?

Source: Writer Unboxed