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.

Originally designed for entrepreneurs, the following infographic can be also be applied to creative ventures.

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 email:

No matter what the specifics of your troubled times are, taking a moment to look inward at what you could have done differently and how could potentially avoid similar situations in the future can be a healthy exercise. This is not to blame yourself or to shame yourself, but simply to give you the opportunity to learn, on a higher level, from your experiences.

It’s about learning to choose the most effective response in a difficult, uncontrollable life situation.

It’s about learning to think better so you can ultimately live better, not matter what.

The key is to realize that no matter what happens, you can choose your attitude and inner dialog, which dictates pretty much everything that happens next. Truly, the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another—to train our minds to see the good in what we’ve got, even when it’s far less than we expected.

It’s about choosing: Will I allow this to upset me? Will I choose to make this bad or good? Will I choose to stay or walk away? Will I choose to yell or whisper? Will I choose to react or take the time to respond?

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.

Here’s a motivating excerpt from Heather Havrilesky’s best-selling book, How to Be a Person in the World:

Make this your new religion: You are funny and talented, and you’re going to try something new. This is the exact right time for that. This is the most important year of your life, and for once you are NOT going to let yourself down. If you fall down and feel depressed, you will get back up. If you feel lethargic and scared, you will try something new: a new routine, a healthier diet.

You will work tirelessly and take pride in your tireless work. And you will take time every few hours to stop and say to yourself, “Look at me. I’m doing it. I’m chasing my dream. I am following my calling.”

It doesn’t matter if your dreams come true, if agents swoon and audiences cheer. Trust me on that: It truly doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling that you’re doing it, every day.

What matters is the work—diving in, feeling your wary in the dark, finding the words, trusting yourself, embracing your weird voice, celebrating your quirks on the page, believing in all of it. What matters is the feeling that you’re not following someone else around, that you’re not waiting for something to happen, that you’re not waiting for your whole life to start.

Savor that precious space. That space will feel like purgatory at first, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you. That space will feel like salvation eventually, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you.

Source: How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky

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.

Each Sunday, I receive an inspirational email from Reid Tracy, the CEO of Hay House. I found this past Sunday’s message a thought-provoking one:

I heard a great quote on my way to the Hay House office last week: “The grass is greener where you water it.”

Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers football team, said this when he was asked about the possibility that he may be changing teams and whether he felt the grass was greener on the other side of the fence.

I really love the idea that you don’t have to go anywhere to make things better; you just have to put effort into making things better where you are.

It’s so easy to look at a situation from the outside and think, “that person has it better,” and the only solution is to move in the same direction and try to achieve or get what they have. But the truth is, their success is likely a result of their actions, not simply because they are in a different place.

I know I’ve done that before while working here at Hay House. For example, I’ve attributed the success of other companies to better circumstances, not because they worked hard to nourish it.

And of course, I have also done this on a personal level (as I think many of us have). I’ve found myself feeling envious of someone else’s situation, not realizing they probably put in a lot of effort to get to where they are. Again, they took the time to water the grass.

So this week, I challenge you to think of some things in your life that you want to improve, and take at least one small step towards achieving your goals. Of course, it may take more than a week to see the result you want, but hopefully you will see some progress this week.

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 receiving their emails. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt from a recent email:

1. Sometimes you have to try not to care, no matter how much you do. Because sometimes you can mean almost nothing to someone who means so much to you. It’s not pride, it’s self-respect. Don’t expect to see positive changes in your life if you constantly surround yourself with negative people. Don’t give part-time people a full-time position in your life. Know your value and what you have to offer.

2. Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU.

3. Perspective is everything. When faced with long check-out lines, traffic jams, or waiting an hour past your appointment time, you have two choices: You can get frustrated and enraged, or you can view it as life’s way of giving you a guilt-free breather from rushing, and spend that time daydreaming, conversing, or watching the clouds. The first choice will raise your blood pressure. The second choice will raise your consciousness.

4. Twenty years from now it won’t really matter what shoes you wore today, how your hair looked, or what brand of jeans you bought. What will matter is how you thought about yourself, how you lived, what you learned, and where you applied this knowledge.

The bottom line is, despite the real-world challenges you face, the biggest and most complex obstacle you will have to personally overcome on a daily basis is your own mind. In other words, you aren’t responsible for everything that happens to you in life, but you ARE responsible for undoing the self-defeating thinking patterns that these undesirable experiences create.

YES, YOU CAN THINK BETTER, which means you can ultimately live better.

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.

One of my go-to books for inspiration is Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing compassion for others. Compassion is a sympathetic feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love for that person. It’s the recognition that other people’s problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own—often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.

Compassion is something you can develop with practice. It involves two things: intention and action. Intention simply means you remember to open your heart to others; you expand what and who matters, from yourself to other people. Action is simply the “what you do about it.” You might donate a little money or time (or both) on a regular basis to a cause near to your heart. Or perhaps you’ll offer a beautiful smile and genuine “hello” to the people you meet on the street. It’s not so important what you do, just that you do something. As Mother Teresa reminds us, “We cannot do great things on this earth. We can only do small things with great love.”

Compassion develops your sense of gratitude by taking your attention off all the little things that most of us have learned to take too seriously. When you take time, often, to reflect on the miracle of life—the miracle that you are even able to read this book—the gift of sight, of love, and all the rest, it can help to remind you that many of the things that you think of as “big stuff” are really just “small stuff” that your are turning into big stuff.

Source: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, pp. 17-18.

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 email:

Many of us are still hopelessly trying to “find our passion” – something we believe will ultimately lead us closer to happiness, success, or the life situation we ultimately want. And I say “hopelessly” primarily because passion can’t really be found. When we say we’re trying to find our passion, it implies that our passion is somehow hiding behind a tree or under a rock somewhere. But that’s far from the truth. The truth is, our passion comes from doing things right. If you’re waiting to somehow “find your passion” somewhere outside yourself, so you finally have a reason to put your whole heart and soul into your life and the changes you need to make, you’ll likely be waiting around for an eternity.

On the other hand, if you’re tired of waiting, and you’d rather live more passionately starting today and experience small positive changes, it’s time to proactively inject passion into the very next thing you do. Think about it:

When was the last time you sat down and had a conversation with someone nearby, with zero distractions and 100 percent focus?

When was the last time you exercised and put every bit of effort you could muster into it?

When was the last time you truly tried – truly tried – to do your very best?

Like most of us, you’re likely putting a half-hearted effort into most of the things you do on a daily basis. Because you’re still waiting. You’re still waiting to “find” something to be passionate about – some magical reason to step into the life you want to create for yourself. But you need to do the exact opposite!

Of course, we can’t do it all and we can’t have it all. Sometimes we have to say no to good things to be able to say yes to the most important things. Sometimes we have to take little risks with our time and energy. But in life, if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.

So go ahead and take a little risk today.

Feel some passion.

Discover love.

Run free.

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.

One of my go-to books for inspiration is Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

The back burner of your mind works in the same way as the back burner of a stove. While on low heat, the cooking process mixes, blends, and simmers the ingredients into a tasty meal. The way you prepared this meal was to throw the various ingredients into the pot, mix them up, and leave them alone. Often the less you interfere, the better the result.

In much the same way, we can solve many of life’s problems (serious and otherwise) if we feed the back burner of our mind with a list of problems, facts, and variables, and possible solutions. Just as when we make soup or a sauce, the thoughts and ideas we feed the back burner of our mind must be left alone to simmer properly.

Whether you are struggling to solve a problem or can’t remember a person’s name, your back burner is always available to help you. It puts our quieter, softer, and sometimes most intelligent source of thinking to work for us on issues that we have no immediate answer for. The back burner is not a prescription for denial or procrastination. In other words, while you do wat to put your problems on your back burner, you don’t want to turn the burner off. Instead, you want to gently hold the problem in your mind without actively analyzing it. This simple technique will help you solve many problems and will greatly reduce the stress and effort in your life.

Source: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, pp. 63-64.