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 simple but powerful message:

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 one of my favorite reflections from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:

I once heard the story of a little boy attending church with his mother, and he kept standing up at the wrong times. His mother repeatedly told him to sit down, and finally she got pretty harsh with him about it, telling him emphatically, “Sit down now, or you’ll be in trouble when we get home!”

The little boy looked at her and said, “I’ll sit down, but I’m still going to be standing up on the inside.”

Standing up on the inside doesn’t mean being rebellious or having an angry attitude toward those who don’t understand us. It means having a quiet, inner confidence that takes us through to the finish line. Confidence means knowing that despite what is happening outside, everything is going to be all right because God is with you, and when He is present, nothing is impossible.

Source: Trusting God Day By Day – Joyce Meyer – pp. 410-411

How to Stop Holding On When You Should Let Go

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 longtime fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to receiving their daily emails. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt from a recent message:

So how can we stop holding on?

By realizing that there’s nothing to hold on to in the first place.

Most of the things we desperately try to hold on to, as if they’re real, solid, everlasting fixtures in our lives, aren’t really there. Or if they are there in some form, they’re changing, fluid, impermanent, or simply imagined in our minds.

Life gets a lot easier to deal with when we understand this.

Imagine you’re blindfolded and treading water in the center of a large swimming pool, and you’re struggling desperately to grab the edge of the pool that you think is nearby, but really it’s not—it’s far away. Trying to grab that imaginary edge is stressing you out, and tiring you out, as you splash around aimlessly trying to holding on to something that isn’t there.

Now imagine you pause, take a deep breath, and realize that there’s nothing nearby to hold on to. Just water around you. You can continue to struggle with grabbing at something that doesn’t exist… or you can accept that there’s only water around you, and relax, and float.

This is the process of letting GO. It can be liberating.

Truth be told, inner peace begins the moment you take a new breath and choose not to allow an uncontrollable circumstance to dominate you in the present. You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose to become in this moment. Let go, breathe, and begin…

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.

While rereading The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron, I stopped to reflect upon this excerpt:

The “next right thing” is usually something small. It may be finishing the essay–or the paragraph. It may be returning the call. It may be doing the laundry. The next right thing is not usually glamorous–in fact, the opposite. The next right thing is usually mundane, and it is always doable. It also always gives us a sense of satisfaction.

How often have we fretted about a relationship for hours, when, in fact, what we need to do was finish the report we were working on? In avoiding the report, we are creating drama–setting up a situation where we will have to rush to get it done or make an excuse for ourselves tomorrow, triggering feelings of guilt and self-attack. We know when we are not doing the next right thing, because the actual next right thing is bugging us, pestering us, dancing around our consciousness, tapping at our psyche.

Doing the next right thing, especially when that thing is small, takes courage. Doing the next right thing when people around us are dramatic or threatening takes even more courage. When we display humility and take the honest next step for ourselves, we are always rewarded with a sense of true accomplishment. Sometimes, the “next right thing” is as simple as “go to sleep.”

Source: The Prosperous Heart by Julia Cameron, pp. 194-195

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 quote from author and coach Barbara Sher:

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 book, Life is in the Transitions, Bruce Feiler writes about the power of positive language and transformative personal stories. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

The novelist John Steinbeck had a quirky logo he drew after signing his name. It was a pig with wings. He called it Pigasus, which he wrote out in Greek letters. Late in his life, he accompanied the illustration with the Latin words Ad Astra Per Alia Porci, which he translated (incorrectly, it turns out) as “to the stars on the wings of a pig.” His explanation: We must all try to attain the heavens, even though we are bound to the earth.

For half a millennium, the expression when pigs fly has been used in multiple languages to mean a circumstance so improbable that its completion is nearly impossible. It’s a figure of speech known as an adynaton, a way of saying something that will never happen. Steinbeck adopted this phrase because he had been told by a naysayer professor that he would be an author “when pigs fly.”

More recently, neuroscientists have discovered that imagining this kind of unimaginable outcome is vital to recovering from a life interrupted. The more we are able to conjure up a future that seems out of reach—I will find another job, I will laugh once more, I will love again—the more we’re able to advance toward it. A big reason is mirror neurons, the part of our brains that mimic the actions we observe. When we see someone jump, laugh, or cry, our brains imitate the same activity.

The same mirroring happens with stories we tell. If we tell ourselves we will get better, or calmer, or happier, our minds will begin to simulate that outcome. This response doesn’t mean we’ll achieve these results right away, but it does mean we set in motion that possibility.

Steinbeck was right: We can make pigs fly.

Source: Life is in the Transitions by Bruce Feiler, p. 290.