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:

Coping certainly isn’t an easy practice and I’m not suggesting that it is. What I am suggesting is that it’s worth your while. With practice, effective coping allows you to find better ways of managing life’s continuous stream of unexpected and uncontrollable events. For example…

*A task is harder than you expected it to be. — Instead of running from a daunting and overwhelming task, you can accept it and see what it’s like to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed, and still take action anyway. Writing a book, for example, is daunting and overwhelming, but you can still write one even with those feelings rolling through you

*An interaction with someone you love angers or frustrates you. — Instead of lashing out at a loved one when you’re upset with them, you can sit quietly with your difficult feelings and just be open to what it’s like to feel them. And then, once you’ve had a moment to breathe, you can see what it’s like to deal compassionately with someone you love who you’re also upset with. To try to understand them instead of just judging them at their worst.

*Unhealthy cravings overwhelm you out of nowhere. — You may be inclined to indulge in unhealthy cravings like alcohol and sweets for comfort when you’re feeling stressed out. But you can sit with these feelings and be open to them instead, and then gradually build positive daily rituals for coping in healthier ways — taking walks, meditating, talking with someone about your feelings, and journaling.

*You are forced to deal with a loved one’s death. — When someone you love passes away the loss can seem overwhelming. At that point, it’s incredibly easy to succumb to unhealthy ways of alleviating the pain. But you have to practice doing the opposite — to give yourself compassion, to sit with the powerfully difficult thoughts and feelings you have, and to open your mind to what lies ahead. Gradually it becomes evident that death isn’t just an ending, but also a beginning. Because while you have lost someone special, this ending is also a moment of reinvention. Although deeply sad, their passing forces you to reinvent your life, and in this transition is an opportunity to experience beauty in new, unseen ways and places.

And of course, we’ve merely just scratched the surface of a deep pool of possibilities for effective coping. The key thing to understand is that by learning to internally cope more effectively, you are better equipped to handle anything life throws your way. Because in the end the world is as you are inside — what you think, you see, and you ultimately become.

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.

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:

In their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. One: they obsess about details that don’t matter. They’re so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems that they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Two: they avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. That leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones. Three: they berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.

If perfectionism were a medication, the label would alert us to common side effects. Warning: may cause stunted growth. Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance: it prevents us from seeing larger problems and limits us to mastering increasingly narrow skills.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a perfectionist, you’ve probably experienced those tendencies on tasks that are important to you. On the projects that matter deeply to us, we’ve all felt the urge to keep revising and refining until it’s exactly right. But traveling great distances depends on recognizing that perfection is a mirage—and learning to tolerate the right imperfections.

Source: Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, pp. 67-68

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:

When you discover something that nourishes your soul and brings you joy — something that truly matters to you — care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life. And if you find that you don’t have enough time for what matters, stop doing things that don’t. In other words, start subtracting what isn’t working for you.

Every time you subtract negative from your life, you make room for more positive. Let that sink in. When things aren’t adding up in your life, begin subtracting. Life gets a lot simpler and more enjoyable when you clear the emotional and physical clutter that makes it unnecessarily complicated. And there’s so much you can let go of in life without losing a thing. It’s called growth. Letting go of the old makes way for the new. Letting go of what isn’t working makes way for what will. When the pain of holding on is worse than the pain of letting go, it’s time to let go and grow.

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.

In her book, Let It Be Easy: Simple Ways to Stop Stressing & Start Living, life coach Susie Moore shares insightful gems. Here’s one of my favorites:

I love the story of a tribe in Africa that is always called on when there is a drought because, somehow, they can always make it rain with their dancing rituals. It confused anthropologists. How can dancing create rain? Surely not. But they were reported to have a 100 percent success rate.

They did nothing that the other tribes in the region didn’t do: they offered the same prayers, the same incantations, the same moves. All the rituals were very similar to those of the tribes around them. And like all the other tribes, they would dance for days or weeks. But this tribe opened the skies and the rain came down.

A member of the tribe was interviewed and asked the question: “How do you always make it rain? It seems impossible!”

He answered something that I repeat to myself whenever I want to give up.

“Oh, we dance until it rains.”

Persistence wins. It’s not glamorous or magical, which is good news. Anyone can do it, if they’re willing.

Source: Let It Be Easy, p. 242

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:

You can’t tell where people will land from where they begin. With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things. Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance traveled.

For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who ascend slowly and bloom late. They’re not born with invisible superpowers; most of their gifts are homegrown or homemade. People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.

Neglecting the impact of nurture has dire consequences. It leads us to underestimate the amount of ground that can be gained and the range of talents that can be learned. As a result, we limit ourselves and the people around us. We cling to our narrow comfort zones and miss out on broader possibilities. We fail to see the promise in others and close the door to opportunities. We deprive the world of greater things.

Source: Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, pp. 5-7

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.

Last week, Norman Lear died. A visionary, he wove social commentary into mainstream comedy and revolutionized the sitcom genre. While reading many of the tributes, I came across a letter that he wrote in the late 1970s. A man named Michael Hurwitz approached and asked if Norman could write a letter to his infant niece, Lisa—a message she could open on her 21st birthday. Here’s the letter:

February 2, 1978

Dear Lisa:

The first thing you must know is that you have a remarkable uncle in the person of Michael Hurwitz. That he would be thinking about your 21st birthday while you are still in your second year, makes him very special indeed.

You’re special, too, Lisa. There is only one of you, one only in all the world, and that fact is among the things I would want you to know.

Another is an ancient definition of happiness which has meant a lot to me: “Happiness is the exercise of one’s vital abilities along lines of excellence in a life that affords them scope.”

Actually, that means two things, Lisa. First, it means that you will be happy if you are doing your thing — not necessarily achieving excellence, simply reaching for it — in a life that allows you to do so. But, it also means that happiness is something we all deliver to ourselves. No man can deliver happiness to you. No amount of loving children. No money, no status, etc. Only Lisa can make Lisa happy — and then all those wonderful alternatives like husbands, and children and money and other material things, however important they may be (and I do not mean to minimize their importance) are all extras. I repeat that I don’t mean to minimize the love of a mate or a child. I intend only to emphasize that you cannot accept that love until you deliver the essence of happiness to yourself.

There is a hope that I have for you, too. It is the hope that you go through life trusting and not wary. If you go through life trusting, you may get hurt just a little bit more, but you will never miss any of the action. If you go through life a little too wary, you may not get stepped on here and there, but you will miss far more than you will avoid.

The last thing that I would like to offer you, at the invitation of your uncle, is to remember that success is a question of how you collect your minutes. From the time you wake up each morning and do the first thing you promised yourself you would do last night, you are dealing with success or failure. For example, you promise yourself that you would get up promptly at eight and you do it. Success! Tell yourself that, immediately upon arising, you will do ten minutes of calisthenics, and you don’t. Failure! Try to make the successes outnumber the failures — and most important, count them all. If you start each day counting all the tiny successes — they have a way of adding up. Each one takes you to another plateau and so you climb through your days, your successes escalating all the while.

Have a good, happy, healthy and productive life, Lisa.

Sincerely,
Norman Lear

Source: Letters of Note website