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 an inspiring excerpt from Mary Morrissey’s recent release, Brave Thinking:

William H. Murray was a highly respected Scottish mountain climber who knew something about commitment—and courage. As a young man, he climbed some of the world’s tallest mountains.

As a soldier in World War II, he was captured and spent three years in prisoner of war camps. While in a German prison camp, using the only things he could find—rough toilet paper—he wrote a philosophical book about mountain climbing. The Gestapo discovered his manuscript and promptly destroyed it. When Murray began to write the book a second time, again on toilet paper, his fellow prisoners were amazed. The odds of his succeeding were almost nil. Murray’s health had deteriorated because of near starvation. He didn’t know if he would ever be strong enough to climb again. And should the Nazis find his second manuscript, he knew they would destroy it in an instant. And yet, both Murray and his book survived.

Emaciated after the war, Murray spent two years rebuilding his strength. Mountaineering in Scotland was published in 1947, rekindling national interest in mountain climbing. Murray himself went on to complete three landmark Himalayan expeditions, including the one that paved the way for Sir Edmund Hillary’s milestone ascent of Mount Everest in 1954.

Murray spent his later years as an environmentalist, determined to protect the Scottish Highlands that so inspired him.

Source: Brave Thinking, p. 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.

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 blog post:

Embrace change and realize that, although messy, in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now…

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event.

And these events are always happening — like all the senseless violence and drama we see in our world today.

So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.

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 an inspiring excerpt from Mary Morrissey’s recent release, Brave Thinking:

We live in a spiral galaxy that is governed by immutable laws. Our very DNA is a spiral. Like gravity, there is an unrelenting pull of being. We all have the capacity to grow into what we could be. This is life in action. It is the blade of grass pushing through that crack in the sidewalk, stretching into the next version of itself. That bit of green breaks through the cement seeking the light that causes it to grow. This is true for all of us because that same source of life—what I call the Infinite—lives inside us too.

You feel the pull when you notice and pay attention to it. Notice what you are noticing; tune your awareness to your emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations. And in that place of awareness, you will be free to imagine a life you would love.

Source: Brave Thinking, p. 47

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.

Bestselling author Barbara O’Neal shared the following excellent advice in recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog:

A short time ago, a minister I knew passed away. We had not been in contact for quite a long time, but it was still piercing. He went too young, and it was a surprise, and as we all know, those are the deaths that catch us off guard, and I found myself thinking about him, about legacies, and what I learned from him. His most compelling physical trait was a twinkle in his eye, like he knew something magical he was about to impart.

And he did know magical things. The best thing I learned from him was something that keeps me company all the time:

What is mine to do?

What is MINE to do?

It’s a great phrase to keep in your back pocket. It can help sort out big and small questions alike: a busy holiday meal with too many people: what is mine to do here? Everything to make it the most perfect holiday of all time? Probably not. It’s probably more like feed everyone and make sure they all have a place to sit.

And a big question like, in writing, what is yours to do?

This is a pretty magical longing, this desire to write. Writing is healing, not just for you, but for the people who need your work, and I don’t mean in a self-help, elevated, or even literary way. Books don’t have to be mighty, big things to be powerful. Who among us has not been saved by a book, maybe many times?

I sure have been. So many times.

What is yours to do?

Who do you want to communicate with? Think about that. Maybe it’s your depressed, despairing 15- year-old self. Maybe it’s your professor from junior year in college, or your mom, or your future self, or the woman who is going through a divorce and doesn’t know how to get through it.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote that book, Eat Pray Love, and the women who responded in such enormous numbers knew exactly what she was saying to them. She was saying, it’s going to be okay. You can do this. You will find magic if you are true to yourself.

Source: Writer Unboxed

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, writer Kelly Allgood shared the following excellent advice:

About a year ago, I was feeling completely stuck in my writing. I’d finished the third full rewrite of a book I’d been working on for years, then trunked it after feeling so bogged down in the details of its convoluted plot that I couldn’t tell up from down. I’d drafted another book that felt like it was between genres, and had no idea how I’d pitch it to agents once I got to that point. I felt, in essence, like writing was quicksand, and that I was rapidly sinking beneath all the pressure I’d been putting on myself to write something good, to get an agent, to get published, to start my career, and on and on.

I wish I could remember what prompted me to do this, but one cold winter’s day, I decided to sit down and write something that would never see the light of day. No pressure to publish, to get feedback, to make it good. It could be the worst piece of writing that ever existed and it wouldn’t matter, because no one would ever see it. So I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. The block I’d been sitting before shattered in front of my eyes.

It is honestly some of the best writing I have ever done, and it would never have existed had I not given myself permission to write badly.

Source: Writer Unboxed

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.

I look forward to receiving weekly emails from Robert Holden, a British psychologist, author, and broadcaster, who works in the field of positive psychology and well-being. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

Describing joy is very difficult and very worthwhile. The more you tune in to joy and let yourself feel it, the more you learn about what true happiness is. I encourage my students to describe joy by meditating on joy, by painting joy, by singing joy, by dancing joy, by crafting a poem on joy, or by finding a symbol, in nature, for instance, that represents joy. What emerge are commonly felt qualities of joy, five of which I will share with you now.

Joy is Constant

When people tune in to the feeling of joy, what often emerges is an awareness that this joy is somehow always with us. Joy is quietly, invisibly ever-present. It is not “out there,” and it is not “in here”; rather, it is simply everywhere we are. Joy feels somehow beyond space and time. Joy does not come and go; what comes and goes is our awareness of joy. Ironically, we often feel the presence of joy the most when we stop chasing pleasure and we stop trying to satisfy our ego.

Joy Inspires Creativity

Upon discovering this joy, many people experience a greater sense of creativity that rushes through them. Your ego may get the byline, but really joy is the author. Joy is the doer. Joy is the thinker. Joy is the creative principle. In one of my favorite Upanishads, classic sacred texts of Indian literature, it is written: “From joy springs all creation, / By joy it is sustained. / Towards joy it proceeds, / and to joy it returns. No wonder so many artists take the course.

Joy is Often Unreasonable

I like to describe joy as “unreasonable happiness” because it doesn’t seem to need a reason. It is a happiness that is based on nothing. In other words, it doesn’t need a cause or an effect in order to exist. Certainly good things, favorable circumstances, and a happy state of mind can make you more receptive to joy; but joy still exists even when you are not receptive to it. Joy needs no reason. And this is why we can be surprised by joy even in the most ordinary moments.

Joy is Untroubled

Unlike pleasure and satisfaction, joy does not have an opposite. It does not swing up and down, as our moods do. And it does not wrestle with positives and negatives, as our mind does. Joy does, however, have a twin. If pleasure’s twin is pain, and satisfaction’s twin is dissatisfaction, then joy’s twin is love. When people describe joy to me they always mention love—even the lawyers, the politicians, and the psychologists.
Like love, joy is fearless and untroubled by the world. It is as if nothing in the world can tarnish or diminish the essence of joy. As such, it is free.

Joy is Enough

Many people describe a sense of emptiness and a “fall from grace” that follows an encounter with great pleasure and satisfaction. This is not the case with joy, however. One of the most beautiful qualities of joy is the abiding sense of “enoughness.” Unlike the ephemeral states of pleasure and satisfaction, joy does not induce a craving for more, because joy is enough. If ever we feel joy is missing, it is because we are absent-minded-caught up, probably, in some grief over a passing pleasure or preoccupied with a new object of desire.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Robert Holden’s website.