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 recent release, Secrets of Adulthood, bestselling author Gretchen Rubin shares witty and thought-provoking reflections. Here’s one of my favorites:

Experience is a great teacher, but make sure that you’re not learning the wrong lesson.

In Aesop’s famous fable, the Hare challenged the Tortoise to a race. The Tortoise agreed, they set the course, and at the signal, they both started off. The Hare bounded ahead, but because he was so sure of winning, he stopped to take a nap. Meanwhile, the Tortoise plodded on. The Hare woke with a start just as the Tortoise was crossing the finish line.

The traditional moral of the fable is “Slow and steady wins the race.” But wouldn’t a more fitting moral be “Those with great gifts can be defeated by their own arrogance and idleness”? Or “Overconfidence fosters carelessness”? Or, as Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, “Since its famous victory over the hare, the tortoise thinks it’s a sprinter”—in other words, it’s easy to attribute a victory to our own abilities, when in fact we won due to circumstances or someone else’s mistakes.

Wisdom comes from discerning the truest lesson from an experience.

Source: Secrets of Adulthood, pp. 125-126

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:

We often yearn for a very small and selective range of life experiences — the fun times, the happy holidays, the things that make us feel comfortable. And yet the full range of our daily reality is often quite different. Life gives us an extensive array of experiences that evoke feelings ranging from sadness to uncertainty to frustration to curiosity to nervousness… to happiness to excitement and more. These feelings are all part of being alive.

So we can revolt against the wide-ranging experiences life naturally provides, or we can make the very best of them. Starting today, let’s do the latter…

This means embracing every moment with our full presence, being open and vulnerable to reality, being gentle with ourselves when times are tough, and practicing sincere gratitude whenever possible.

It means accepting life as it is, and accepting ourselves as we are.

It means not expecting the best to happen every time, but instead accepting whatever happens, and making the very best of it one step at a time.

And it won’t always be easy of course, but it’s worth working on.

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, The Art of Doing, Jesse Lipscombe shares simple and straight-forward tools that can help transform our lives. Here’s an inspiring excerpt:

Sometimes life hands us major opportunities—some people call them problems or obstacles. Whatever you call them, when they show up, we often steer away from the things that bring us joy. Maybe we stopped painting because life got heavy. Maybe we have writer’s block due to stressors in our lives. Whatever the reason, we tend to wait until the dark clouds pass before we get back into doing the things we love. I suggest we do the exact opposite: Lean into the darkness. Reframe those problems and obstacles as opportunities. Make it a habit to look at life through those lenses.

Some people want to wait for inspiration before they start something. They want to wait until they feel motivated or see a spark. Other people do not wait to begin. They do things when they are happy, they do things when they are sad, they do things when they are mad. They do things when they are stressed out, when they feel unmotivated, when they are tired—they do not let their current mood influence they dedication to act.

I think songwriters do it best. Both Beyoncé and Adele have made a living writing about heartache and pain. Most of the country music genre is littered with regret and loss. The Blues expressed the struggles of the time, and rap music offered a vehicle for narrating the hardships of a singer’s life. We celebrate and enjoy the fruits of that labor, the labor of leaning into the darkness.

When I think of some of the hardest times of my life, I know that it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever be in that exact emotional state again. Those moments were rare, and so are the feelings I was steeped in at the time. I like to ask myself, How can you use those feelings to create something you can be proud of, something that will resonate with everyone who experiences it? When you find yourself running away or avoiding the things you love in the presence of pain, shift and do the opposite. Let painful moments become a beacon of creation. If you perceive greatness in your creations, remind yourself that few people celebrate the achievements of average folks. No one writes about the mundane; no one reveres art that doesn’t evoke real emotion. When you are in an irregular, emotionally charged, dark place, use it, lean into it, and be courageous enough to keep creating through it. Not only will you be proud of what you made, but you’ll find the entire process very therapeutic.

Source: The Art of Doing, pp. 152-153

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 recent release, Consider This: Reflections for Finding Peace, bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab shares inspiring advice for setting boundaries, rising above drama, and expressing ourselves with clarity and integrity. Here’s a thought-provoking reflection:

It’s a lifelong learning process to become acquainted with who you are. After all, you are constantly learning and changing even if you don’t realize it.

On average, I read about forty books a year. I love to read, and books have been my companion since childhood. When I share how many I read, some people say they’d like to read more. But reading for pleasure is not the same as having to read for school. People are uncomfortable acknowledging that they only read for utility purposes. But no one has to read unless they truly enjoy it.

Perhaps you don’t like to try new things as much as you’d like to be seen as someone who wants to try new things.

Perhaps you don’t like being in a group setting despite wanting to be more social.

Perhaps you are not as much of this or that as you’d like.

You are who you are, and you may not fit the ideal of who you’d like to be. But embracing who you are will simplify your journey in life.

Change is possible if it’s what you really want to do. However, accepting yourself is freeing. Sometimes, becoming yourself is about simply allowing yourself to be as you are.

Source: Consider This, p. 258.

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 interview, bestselling author Brianna Wiest shared the following advice for anyone who may be feeling lost:

If you are feeling lost, you’re actually making way more progress than you think you are. And you’re doing a lot better than you think you are. Most people don’t even let themselves get to the point of feeling or admitting that they are lost. They are gripping so tightly to the old narrative and the old programming to even stop and say, ‘I don’t know what’s next. I feel lost.’ So, if you feel lost right now, that is your first signal that you have left the life that was wanting to go behind. So, step one is to acknowledge that Feeling lost is a victory, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.

The second part is in that space of not knowing, anything becomes possible. You have no idea what kind of miracle is at your feet right now. You have no idea what you’ve actually opened up within your life.

Also, part of that feeling lost is the grieving and mourning of what you’ve had to let go of, and that’s okay, too. That’s a process that takes time.

It’s also about coming up with your vision. I think it’s about finding your next muse and figuring out What inspires me now. We’re meant to evolve, and I think people miss that. When we don’t move with life, ultimately, things do come to a grinding halt, and then we’re forced to let go. So, if you’re feeling lost, there’s nothing wrong with you. Actually, there’s something very right with you.

Brianna Wiest’s latest release, The Life that’s Waiting, is now available.

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, The Art of Doing, Jesse Lipscombe shares simple and straight-forward tools that can help transform our lives. Here’s an inspiring excerpt:

I’m sure all of us, at some point, have fantasized about stumbling upon a genie in a bottle. I know I have. What would your three wishes be? Would you wish for a billion dollars? World peace? Good health?

If only life worked that way.

This is just another example of how we keep looking outward for ways to fulfill our dreams when we should be looking inward. You and only you are the magical vessel you need to find to achieve your goals. And the coolest part about this realization is that you’re not locked into the whole three-wish paradigm. You can grant yourself as many wishes as you like. You simply need to give yourself permission to do it first.

For some of us, that’s the hardest thing in the world. It has been ingrained in us from our very beginnings that we have to look externally for permission.

Parents are the first people to give us permission, and the first people we have to ask for permission when we want something. If we wanted a second helping of dinner, we had to ask. If we wanted to watch TV or stay out late, we had to ask. Learning to give ourselves permission is a process that happens as we grow. The more we practice doing it, the easier it becomes.

We live in a world that promotes hustle culture, where working every waking hour with few breaks is seen as the norm. We complain about our co-workers, our bosses, and the fact that we never have enough time off or don’t get paid what we’re worth. We lament that there is never enough time. What we fail to do is give ourselves permission to change it all.

I like to put it this way: A person wouldn’t ask a professional hockey player how to fix their car, so why would you ask anyone else to “fix” your life? Granting ourselves permission—permission to do something new, to act differently, to change our circumstances, even to disappoint others or fail at something—is the key to being the genie of our own bottle.

Source: The Act of Doing, pp. 107-109