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:

It’s easy to assume that accomplishing a difficult task would be easier at a different moment: “Before I had kids.” “Next summer.” “Ten years ago.”

In 1512, after competing the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo wrote to his father:

“I have finished the chapel I was painting: the pope is very happy with it, but other things haven’t turned out as well as I hoped. I blame the times which are so unfavorable to our art.”

Michelangelo was then living in the middle of the High Renaissance, a period that’s considered a pinnacle in the history of Western art.

When we’re doing something hard, it feels like the times are hard.

Source: Secrets of Adulthood, p. 88

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 thought-provoking reflection from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:

Have you ever tried to suggest to someone who is seriously stressed out that they learn how to delegate some of their responsibilities to other people? If so, have you ever heard them answer, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done”? I have heard those words, and I have also felt that way personally.

It is fairly easy to keep picking up responsibilities as we go through life, but sometimes we have a false sense of responsibility, and the end result is stress that can cause many problems. A lack of joy is only one of a long list of stress-related struggles. If you are feeling controlled and overwhelmed by your schedule, remember that you are the one who makes it, and only you can change it.

Some people keep the “it’s all up to me” attitude because it makes them feel important and needed. But our sense of worth and value should never come from what we do; it comes from who we are in Christ.

Ask yourself if you need to let some things go so you can enjoy your life. It is true that depending on other people is often disappointing, because they don’t always do what you depend on them to do, but there are many wonderful, faithful people who can be trusted and won’t let you down. If your first attempts at delegation do not work, keep trying until you find something that works for you.

Source: Strength for Each Day by Joyce Meyer

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.