By Books Writer Denise Turney

You could save someone’s life if you don’t ignore what you see. That’s the most obvious reason to start responding to calls for help. What you choose to do could change your life forever, leaving you to rest or wrestle with memories.

When Responding to Calls for Help Is Legally Required

Laws offer a shield, protecting you from looking the other way when you find someone in need in certain situations. For example, there are countries where it’s illegal to leave someone stranded at sea. Depending on the law, you might have to at least try to rescue the person. Failing to return an abandoned child to her parents or to authorities is also an offense in some jurisdictions.

Another act that could be viewed as “empathy” or “sympathy” is not only about caring about someone. In some jurisdictions, seeing a crime and just walking away, failing to report the crime, is an offense. The legal intentions are good.

Yet, people do see others in dangers and walk away.

What would cause someone to look away, thinking that not responding to calls for help is their better choice? Furthermore, what’s the psychology behind this type of decision?

Why People Avoid Responding to Calls for Help

Surprisingly, even people who are victims of crimes don’t always report the offense. Legal Beagle reports that only about 42.6% of people who were the victim of crime in 2018 reported the crime.¹

Robberies were reported the most. Reasons people don’t report crimes, whether they were a victim or a witness, include:

• Wanting to keep what occurred a secret
• Fear that they might be harassed or targeted if they report the offense
• Thinking that there are so many other “major” crimes going on that the police won’t do anything if they do report what happened to them or what they witnessed happening to someone else

Time magazine shares that you might ignore what you see and become neglectful as it regards responding to calls for help because:

• You think someone else will report the offense or come to the aid of the person who’s in need²
• Determination to protect your own or another person’s reputation
• Feeling a connection to an abuser to the point that you think protecting that person is akin to protecting yourself or a larger group the person is a part of

Denial as a Great Way to Ignore What You See

There could also be an urge to deny what’s happened. If you ignore what you see, it might be a way to make the event “unreal”. It’s similar to being in shock, something that is used to protect yourself from the emotional weight of trauma.

If you’ve seen an auto accident, you might have witnessed dozens of drivers slowing down only long enough to observe how damaged a vehicle became following an accident. What you and other drivers might not do is make calls for help.

Something as simple as dialing 911 on your cell phone might never cross your mind. At the most, you might say a silent prayer for those involved in the accident, press the accelerator and drive further down the road. What if your actions could save someone’s life?

Certainly, you wouldn’t put yourself in danger. But perhaps you could make a telephone call, alerting trained authorities that someone needs assistance. Not only could that single act help another person, it could save you from guilt.

Why You Shouldn’t Ignore What You See

Here are more reasons why you shouldn’t ignore what you see, instead responding to calls for help:

• What you witness stays in your memory
• Not responding to calls for help could push an experience into your subconscious, the place from which nagging impulses could cause you to feel inadequate, fear or dread
• Your actions, your decision not to ignore what you see, could have a ripple effect

If you don’t ignore what you see and, instead, stir up the courage to respond to calls for help, you could help save someone who’s got a child. That, in turn, would impact at least two people in a single act. Because we aren’t islands, over time, what you did could positively impact an entire family.

Options for Responding to Calls for Help

Responding to calls for help could take place in different ways. For example, you could:

• Dial 9-1-1 (or the emergency number in the country you’re in when a need arises)
• Contact local services
• Create a signal fire, especially when stranded in snow or on an island, etc.
• Flashing light
• Waving bright orange or bright red clothing
• Placing a S-O-S signal on the ground using your foot, a rock, stick, etc.
• Blow a loud whistle
• Call a friend
• Go to a shelter
• Set off flares
• Place a severely injured person in a safe place while you hurry to get help

When you think about it, perhaps nothing that you do occurs in isolation. On top of that, you don’t know what’s coming in your life. It may be impossible to consciously know every experience you will have. Yet, that doesn’t mean that you can’t decide now that you’ll help someone in need without putting yourself in danger. It’s also a reason to bring emergency gear with you, especially while traveling, camping or vacationing.

After all, as happens with Clarissa in Escaping Toward Freedom, your moment of decision could come while you’re on vacation. Or it could come while you’re at home, at work or on the road.

Resources:

1.  Why Don’t People Report Crimes to the Police? (legalbeagle.com)
2. Bystander Psychology: Why Some Witnesses to Crime Do Nothing | TIME.com

By African American Books Author Denise Turney

To live your best life, you must exercise courage. There’s no way around this fact. As a start, it takes courage to admit the truth to yourself. For instance, it takes courage to admit that you’re stuck, feel fear or are conflicted. More importantly, it takes courage to do what it takes to get to where you most want to be. And it takes courage to make hard choices, a necessity to move forward.

Courage Is Key

However, maybe you’re thinking the way that I used to. Perhaps you don’t think courage is the key.

Years ago, I thought that getting to where I wanted to be required me to always be kind, reliable and accommodating. Looking back, I can see where the “accommodating” part held me back. Why?

A goal to be accommodating requires you to keep your thumb on the pulse of what other people are thinking and feeling. Before you know it, you’re no longer pursuing your “real” goal. Instead, you’re aiming to make other people happy or satisfied. And that’s a job that never ends.

Now, I realize that achieving your goals requires courage. It’s not about how nice you are (not that being nice isn’t good; it is).

Look At This

Here’s another way of looking at this. Think about the people you admire. No. Really. Is there a common trait that these people share? This trait might be the very thing that you need to put into action to move forward. If you look close at the people you admire, it wouldn’t be surprising to see these people using courage to make hard choices.

Considering people you admire, Harriet Tubman is my all-time heroine. Other women who I admire include Mary McLeod Bethune, Shirley Chisholm, Amelia Earhart and Joan of Arc. For years, I focused on specific acts that these women are known for.

Then, it hit me. All these women are champions because they each exercised courage, and not just once. They exercised courage over and over. They made hard choices that held tremendous impact for their own lives and the lives of others. In fact, they faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. These women champions did what had for so long appeared to be impossible.

What Champions Do

But, that’s what champions do. They face their fears, stir up their courage and get it done.

Back to your heroes and heroines, what common thread moves between them? Do you recognize this common thread in yourself? If not, what would your life be like if you applied this same trait to what you do?

What would your life be like if you applied courage to thoughts, decisions and actions that you take? Live with courage and you might not reach the end of your earth journey only to look up with regret as you consider all the things you wished that you had done but never gathered the courage to do.

Just know that along the way, you may need to exercise courage to make a hard choice. That hard choice could come when someone ask you to lie to cover a mistake or a wrong or when you’re tempted to scheme your way through a storm. A hard choice could also point toward whether or not you are going to keep working a job that you know you don’t like, a job that drains you of joy-energy, or unplug and go after your wildest dreams!

Stir Up Your Courage

Quick tips to stir up courage include watching videos of people who are using courage to make hard choices that expand love for everyone. Reading books about people who use courage to progress may also help. Here’s another tip that’s easy to implement.

Pay attention (really pay attention) to how you feel. Yes – pay attention to how you feel when you’re doing work that you only engage in for a paycheck. Then, pay attention to how you feel when you’re doing what you love. Depending on the extent of the contrast, you could feel an immediate shift as soon as you start doing what you love.

Value joy? Consider listing specific actions that you can take to get from where you are to where you want to be. Write these specific actions down. You also might need to be willing to take smart risks. Measure the results of your actions. Keep going. After all, would you rather live a life of endurance (where you just endure situations) or would you rather exercise courage, make hard, smart choices and move forward in joy?

By Books Writer Denise Turney

Photo by Chinmay Singh

Knowing what’s coming next in your life feels great, especially if you’re about to receive a blessing. Simply living with clear insight is satisfying, offering comfort, confidence, hope and security. Gone is the guessing, no more dealing with life mysteries. Also, gone is the urge to prepare for a range of possibilities.

Life Mysteries – Don’t You Wish You Had a Crystal Ball

Don’t you wish that you had a crystal ball or an internal magnet that led you into the right relationships and experiences at the right time? It would be nice. Yet, life doesn’t often progress in a way that allows you to clearly know what’s coming next.

Instead, life presents mysteries. Some of life’s mysteries are fascinating, exciting. These types of mysteries include an offer for a legitimate job that you weren’t even looking for, request to go on a date with someone you’ve long admired or a record-breaking athletic performance. Ask an athlete who’s been in the flow what it feels like to make score after score, seemingly on auto pilot, and they’d likely tell you that it was one of the more exhilarating experiences they’ve had.

Talk about a great life mystery.

Shocking Experiences and Life Mysteries

Then, there’s the shocking telephone call from a relative or friend informing you that someone you’re close to has passed. Or maybe you get called into a private office at work, the place where human resources tells you that you’ve been laid off. Of course, there’s the chance that when you visit the auto mechanic for a simple oil change, you learn that your brakes and transmission need to be replaced.

To deal with these and other life mysteries, you could do your darndest to prepare for the future. For starters, you could buy life, auto and homeowners/renter’s insurance (smart moves). Additionally, you could eavesdrop on private conversations, doing your best to pinpoint what other people are thinking, planning and doing. That, or you could ask people questions that reveal what they’re planning.

But you’d risk being perceived as nosey.

Another option would be to research-research-research every idea and opportunity before you make a decision. While this option might seem to offer comfort, it could push you into perfectionism and procrastination. On top of that, it could add stress to your life.

Check Out These Smart Decisions to Deal with Life Mysteries

Smart ways to deal with life mysteries require your mind to be open. You definitely can’t go around thinking that you know everything or that your perceptions and beliefs are always right. In addition to keeping an open mind, you could:

• Write down your dreams, as they offer clues to what you’re focusing on (sometimes dreams also offer glimpses into what’s coming next)
• Journal to tap into your subconscious and work through mental blocks
• Eat a healthy diet, including drinking healthy beverages
• Get outside at least once a day (oh, the wonder of nature)
• Read books about mysteries that appear in your life, particularly how other people handled similar mysteries when they showed up in their life
• Talk through unexpected experiences with a good friend
• Join a support group that focuses on the specific type of experience you’re working to move through

Mysteries pop up now and then. Even if you plan, prepare and live a rote life filled with repetition, there will be mysteries and surprises. Although some of these surprises might lend to sorrow or frustration, when you think about it, absent mysteries, life can become boring.

What You Learn About Yourself When Life Gets Mysterious

It can definitely help to accept that your conscious mind does not know everything. Pay attention to your dreams and emotional guidance system. Doing so could clue you in to what’s coming next. Above all, accept that you’re capable of more than you imagine.

You might even find it helpful to review how you’ve handled previous mysteries. For certain, you survived those surprises. If you’re happy and at peace, you also bounced back. That’s a sign that you’re flexible and resilient.

Still taking smart risks? For certain, you’re courageous! All in all, life mysteries reveal a lot about you. Before the next mystery shows up, it might prove a blessing to examine just how resilient, courageous, confident and faithful you are. Here’s to what’s coming next!

By Books Author Denise Turney

Even in today’s hectic world, it’s not necessary to live with prolonged stress. That’s right. There’s no good reason to carry stress around from experience to experience or day to day. But you might not accept that truth if living with stress has become a habit for you. Should that be the case, the way out might prove more beneficial if it’s laid out in short actions, small choices that have long-term effects. The small actions listed in this article, actions that highlight how you can de-stress in less than 5 minutes, may prove particularly rewarding for you.

Start to De-Stress

Whatever you choose to do, start to shift out of stress. Why? Stress is a culprit that has far reaching impact. It affects your heart, brain, sleep, mental health, mood and more. In fact, there isn’t a single part of the human body that it doesn’t affect, particularly once you enter prolonged stress. If you’re like me, you may have heard about the dangers of stress for years. Yet, it may not be until you have a firsthand encounter with a build-up of stress that you more clearly see the role that stress is playing in your life.

This is an experience that I recently had, an unwanted experience at that. For two years, my workload had been consistently high, at a point of overwhelm. Because I’m a “go-getter” it took a while for the heightened work level to start to produce symptoms. What happened?

One Saturday around 3pm I felt a surge of joy. Right away, I expressed appreciation for what I felt. Then, a few weeks later, it happened again. That second or third time it happened on a late Saturday afternoon I became curious, wondering what was causing the emotional surge.

Stress Working in the Body

It didn’t take long to realize that I had been carrying stress in my body all week and felt joy upon releasing the stress. Another thing I realized straightaway was that carrying stress for an entire week was not good, wasn’t healthy. So, I committed to meditating more and sitting in stillness.

That’s what I promised myself I would do. But that’s not how the next weeks went. What really happened was that I remained in states of overwhelm, constantly working, doing one thing after another. And when I wasn’t working, there seemed to be something related to a project or initiative that was on my mind.

Certainly not the way to rest and de-stress. A visit to the doctor several months later woke me up. Fortunately, my health is very good, but I did receive a wakeup call through my biometric numbers. Now, I incorporate activities into each day to ensure I de-stress. These activities often protect me from entering a state of prolonged stress to begin with which is a real win.

Fast Ways to De-Stress

So, what are these ways to de-stress in less than five minutes? Well, here they are:

• Raise your hands in appreciation upon rising or waking from sleep. Simply stand on the floor, raise your hands and let yourself feel appreciation. There’s no need to focus on a topic or event, but you certainly could. The goal is to feel appreciation and allow it to flow through your being. Ten seconds can do a good work.
• Sit on a chair or sofa for 5 minutes after you shower, wash up and do your hair. Just sit still in silence. If you want, you could read a passage from a poetry book, the Bible or another book that inspires, motivates or empowers you. I often read from A Course In Miracles before I sit still.
• Focus on your breathing, inhaling and exhaling deeply 10 times.
• Enjoy a 3-minute walk outdoors.
• Listen to a song that you love, music that soothes you.
• Soak in a warm bubble bath for a few minutes.
• Send family and friends a funny joke or loving greeting. It’ll feel good when your family and friends start sending you back funny messages or messages that share how much they love and care for you.
• Drink a warm cup of tea, even a few sips could find you feeling less stressful.
• Write in a journal for 3 to 4 minutes, expressing your thoughts and feelings with honesty.
• Stand up and go to the bathroom – a tricky, amazing stress reducer.
• Play with your pet for two minutes.
• Do three minutes of chair yoga.

Love and Care for Yourself by Managing Stress

See how many other ways to de-stress you can come up with on your own. Spread these actions throughout your day and see if you don’t start to feel better.

Another thing you may find especially helpful is to pay attention to how you respond to stimuli. The world is busy, full of opportunities, activities, deadlines, projects and more. It’s up to you to learn how to respond to what you hear, see, perceive, and experience.

Respond in ways that are rooted in love instead of fear. See yourself succeeding and living a joyous, peaceful, balanced life. Should you start to feel stress building, try a de-stress activity. It’s a sweet way to love and care for yourself!

By Books Blogger Denise Turney

Completely escaping bondage is a powerful act of love. At first glance, getting free is evidence that you love yourself. Dig deeper and it becomes clear that completing getting free is also evidence that you love everyone.

Pay Attention

Getting completely free licenses others to stop worrying about you, giving them the energy to create a better life. If you’ve worried, you may be familiar with how weighty, how heavy, worry feels. Should you not be familiar with how heavy worry feels, keep experiencing this world.

Pay attention. Let the contrast between what it feels like to worry vs. what it feels like to love (love being the absence of fear), and you may soon notice the difference between worry and love.

Worry and you might feel as if you’re carrying a weight, a heaviness. Stop worrying and you might instantly feel lighter, unburdened.

The next time you give into worry, pay attention to how you feel. Also, notice how you feel when you stop worrying.

This single shift can alert you to how much worry, and any other form of fear, is bondage. Enter into fear and you really don’t feel free.

Bondage Forms

Then, there’s physical bondage, financial bondage, sexual and work bondage, to name a few other forms of non-freedom. Just as a kidnapper might allow the person who they’re using to experience the illusion of being in control to roam a room in their house absent handcuffs, the ego part of your mind might allow you to feel free from one or more bondage forms, but only for a while.

For example, if you’ve spent time in financial debt, you might reach a point where you put your foot down and decide to create a budget. And, you might stick to the budget for several weeks, maybe even several months.

Yet, like a yo-yo or boomerang, you go back to spending too much money. It’s as if you don’t want to get completely free.

Back and forth you go, never completely cutting the cord.

Is Bondage Normal To You?

After a while, you start to think that living in some form of bondage is normal. Believing this could be one of the worse parts of not doing what it takes to get completely free.

It’s doubtful that you want this. You don’t want to believe that hanging on, getting by or surviving is normal or the best that you can ever do. To make a clean break, start small.

Revisiting the financial bondage example, if you’re several thousand dollars in debt, make a plan to pay the debt down one hundred dollars a month. Yes. It might take two years to pay the debt off, but it’s progress.

During those two years, you might accept the truth about your situation. You might accept that you really do have the power to live free. With each monthly paydown, you have evidence that you can live without financial debt.

Do this and you’ll take a giant step forward. After all, many are convinced that living in some form of debt is just the way it is, again as if living in debt is normal. 

Get Completely Free

Allow yourself to live free of financial debt. Get real accustomed to how it feels to be financially free. Just don’t stop there.

Take an honest look at your entire life. See if there are other areas where you need to get completely free. Examples include unhealthy eating habits, lack of exercise, sleeping through the weekend, getting addicted to watching television and worrying.

Just as you worked your way out of financial debt into money freedom, consider taking small steps toward freedom in other areas where you’ve been living in bondage. Commit to gaining complete freedom.

Forget shifting back and forth, moving from bondage to freedom back to bondage. Get completely free. Should you get stuck along the way, seek support, qualified support from someone with integrity. Mark your progress. Each week examine your life and your progress truthfully, with honesty. Above all, keep your eye on the goal – completely escaping bondage.

By Books Writer Denise Turney

Funny how the mind creates the illusion that it’s Simple Simon easy to fulfill goals. You see the end before you start pursuing a goal. Within seconds, the beat of your heart picks up. Images of your success float with clarity across your mind. Joy, peace, and hope are constant emotions, remaining with you like faithful friends. Certainty is your friend. Then, you start working to fulfill your goal. Day after day, you’re forced to wait. Weeks and months pass – little change in your life. How do you keep going when faced with delayed success?

Facing Delayed Success

Do you give up, forfeit your goal? Although this choice could save you time, money, and disappointment, it won’t erase your goal. Deep within, the seed of your dream remains. Even if years pass, regret could jab you. So, you try again.

Perhaps you work a demanding job to gain access to funds to invest in your goal. At most, you’re rewarded with minimal success. Creatives aren’t the only people who experience this. Business owners, educators, inventors, scientists, healthcare professionals, ministers, and community leaders walk this path.

In a way, it’s as if the mind is playing a game, planting twists, turns, and setbacks on your path to see if you’ll figure out what’s really going on. At some point, you start to witness and accept the link between your hidden thoughts and what transpires in your life.

Get To Know Yourself When Success Is Delayed

And you start to get to know yourself better.

Keep going. The goal or dream is within you for a reason. Fulfilling it will show you a lot about yourself, more than you might discover any other way.

Yet, you can’t keep doing what you’ve already done. Following someone else’s path also may not yield the results you’re seeking. Instead, you must pivot.

Just don’t pivot too soon. The only guidance that will work comes from within you. So, you must listen to your true Self. Finally, you must connect with your true Self.

Should you have been on the path of pursuing your goal for decades absent good results, you could be stuck. In this case, you might not be willing to try a different strategy. Push. Demand. Push. Trying the same old approach again and again might have become so familiar that you dare not consider trying a new way.

Delayed Success and Getting Stuck

Signs that this has occurred and that you’re stuck include:

• Unwillingness to track the return on your efforts (if you hate looking at reports, analytics, and spreadsheets, you might not want to examine the results of your best efforts)
• Focusing your energy on fantasy (daydreaming and inventing night dreams of you achieving success even as you move further away from the fulfillment of your goal)
• Feeling angry when someone ask you if you’ve achieved success yet
• Telling yourself that your ability to fulfill your goal rests with a source that’s beyond you, outside your realm of responsibility (in this case, you’d have to “wait” for this external source to magically give you what you want)

Avoid Digging In Your Heels Against Success

Dig in your heels as it regards dream fulfillment, and you may be forced to face reality. As tempting as it might be to hide in fantasy, don’t turn to illusion. Face what’s happening and pivot.

To repeat an earlier statement, consider using analytics to “face” what’s happening. This is important because great effort doesn’t always yield great success. It took me years to accept this. Deep down, I knew this truth, but I wasn’t willing to face it.

Combined with the belief that putting more effort into my goal would get me what I wanted; I had the belief that the goal would be fulfilled at a specific time. Today it seems “silly” that I believed that. Once I became aware of what I was doing, I focused on stopping, de-escalating, and removing myself from that mind-habit.

Working Hard For Success and Waiting

Despite my efforts, I kept believing that hard work and “waiting” for a “special” day to arrive would fulfill my goal. Talk about a painful dance.

If you’ve done this, you know what that struggle feels like. Life becomes a dance of “harder work” and “waiting”. Back and forth you go.

Return to analytics. Are you scaling upward? Or are you spinning in circles? Evidence that you’re scaling upward include:

• Increased sales, engagement, improved tests results, more peaceful relationships, etc.
• Decreased time, energy, and financial investment to yield increased sales, engagement, etc.
• Improved mental state (more peace and appreciation)
• More positive energy
• Feeling of openness, a welcomed lightness

Building Success Confidence

Confidence that you can achieve your goal is real, not fantasy, when you’re scaling upward. Why? You have evidence that the goal is coming to pass. For example, if your goal is to earn $250,000 a year from the sale of soups, salads, and sandwiches at your downtown café, your confidence would build the first year you netted $220,000, especially if the most you had previously netted annually was $150,000.

Gaining these results isn’t magic. Considering the above example, to yield better results, it wouldn’t be a surprise if somewhere along the way, you pivoted. You faced results and realized that you must pivot to fulfill your goal.

Signs It’s Time To Pivot

Here are signs that you must pivot to fulfill your goal:

• You’re committed to fulfill your goal and refuse to quit
• Results prove that you’re stuck
• Analytics show that instead of moving closer to your goal, you’re drifting away from your goal
• Fear that you will fail has become a constant companion
• Distrust in your true Self as it relates to your goal and your broader life has grown

If you believe that something is innately wrong with you, and that’s why you haven’t fulfilled your goal, that’s another sign that it’s time to pivot. Don’t give up on your dream. There’s nothing innately wrong with you. You can do it!

How To Pivot Toward Success

Pivot. Try a different strategy. Ways to pivot include:

• Meditating, getting still, and entering silence – until you receive inner guidance as to what you should do
• Adding new products and services to your catalog
• Updating existing products and services
• Partnering with a different business, creative, educator, agent, minister, etc., someone who has already achieved what you are trying to achieve
• Utilizing different messaging or marketing tools and techniques (if your goal involves sales)
• Earning a different certification, license, or degree
• Ending an abusive relationship to give yourself space to heal
• Listening to deep meditation tapes at night while you sleep
• Eliminated financial debt
• Taking money management courses
• Journaling to encourage hidden parts of your thought system to surface to your consciousness
• Incorporating actions into your day that help you love yourself
• Working with a career or life coach and holding yourself responsible for improving your circumstances

Balance And Success Strategies

The above list is not exhaustive. Seek strategies and actions you can take to pivot, to start moving closer to your goal. To stay balanced and encouraged while you pivot and continue doing what it takes to achieve your goal:

• Sleep deeply at night
• Eat a healthy diet
• Drink plenty of fresh water
• Exercise
• Read empowering books
• Surround yourself with positive, empowered people
• Trust Source
• Search for good in each day
• Practice appreciation

Pivot Your Way To Success

Trust what created you. Trust the Creator. Continue to trust what planted the dream in you. Although you might not see it, someone is watching you. It’s as if someone has been planted to be the witness to what happens when you pivot, don’t quit, and fulfill your goal – a good goal.

Let that happen, and your life could impact hundreds, thousands, or more people. That’s what happens when a Source given goal is fulfilled. The fulfilled goal blesses many people. So, keep going. Pivot. Succeed.

By Books Writer Denise Turney

New beginnings are disguised as challenges, setbacks, hardships and, surprisingly, boredom. Feeling bored with the routines in your life? You could be ready to make a change. Does life feel like one hardship, setback or challenge after another?

Somewhere within yourself there could be an ongoing request for you to make a life shift. Sounds great. If only it were easy. One way to make shifting into new beginnings easier is to do the work to get clear about what you truly want.

Do You Really Know What You Want?

Here are a few steps that could help you discover what you really want. Try taking these steps at the same time each day, as this could help you to spot consistency in your thinking. Taking these steps at the same time each day can also help to reveal when and how slight routine changes (i.e., getting out of bed earlier or later, working three extra hours in a single day, hiking for the first time in 10 years) impact your overall convictions, mood, insights and desires.

• Sit still for three to five minutes when you wake. Pay attention to the first thoughts that enter your awareness.
• Write your early thoughts in a journal. Another option is to type your early thoughts in a spreadsheet. This technique can make it easy to spot consistencies and shifts in thoughts that cross your mind.
• Talk with a licensed counselor or a trustworthy friend about areas of your life that concern you. After a month of conversation ask the counselor or friend to tell you about trends in your day-to-day life that they’ve noticed based on what you shared.
• Should you be experiencing an emotion predominantly (i.e., sadness, anger, excitement, fear, hope, peace), sit with a blank journal and ask yourself why this emotion keeps surfacing, sticking to you like glue. Don’t worry. It’s possible to work through any emotion. For now, find out why your mind is functioning the way that it is.
• Before you retire to bed, draw two pictures – one that describes your day and the other that describes how you feel about the day. At the end of the month, look at the pictures with an open mind. Again, see if you spot consistent patterns. Also, take note of changes in the pictures.

How to See Beneath the Surface to Enter New Beginnings

Meditating may prove effective when it comes to surfacing thoughts and beliefs buried in your subconscious. Regardless of the action you choose the biggest investment you will make is time. When it comes to discovering what you truly want, it’s a wise investment.

Give yourself a month. See what you find. As a tip, you might unbury core erroneous beliefs if you practice two or more steps a day.

Another tip is to seek professional support should you feel or think that you need it. Each person is different, and you might need deep subconscious work, the type of work that you need a professionally licensed and experienced therapist to work through.

After you discover what you’re focusing on daily, which emotions are currently dominant in your life and why these emotions keep showing up in your life, it’s time to consider exactly what you want now. Play, becoming a student who’s learning for the first time, and exploration can work wonders with this.

Steps to Shift into New Beginnings

For starters, give yourself 10 minutes a day to play. That’s right. Even adults can play. Pay attention to what you gravitate toward. These following explorative activities could also help you discover what you want:

• Look through different types of magazines (i.e., arts, music, home and garden, fishing, archeology, cooking, education). See if you can spot magazine articles or pictures that capture your attention. Set these pictures and articles aside with journal writings, pictures you drew in the daily practices, etc. Together they could provide strong clues to what you most want to do now.
• Search college course catalogs and see if you’re drawn to a specific course. No need to enroll in a course; for now, you’re simply exploring.
• Ask yourself what you would do if you could do anything that you wanted, considering that the goal is to find work that pays a good income and work that causes you to feel happiness.
• Attend several networking group events, asking attendees what they do and how they enjoy it. Something someone shares might give you insight into what you want to do now.

Stay Open – More New Beginnings are Coming

Throughout the process, keep an open mind. Be open to trying different things too. Keep exploring until you make your life’s new big discovery – surfacing what you most want to do now.

Believe it or not, exploration, asking questions, talking with other people, etc. is how you got to where you currently are. In other words, you’ve already done what you’re trying to do. Because of that, you know you can do it again.

Be patient with yourself. After all, you’re the best friend you have. Make sure you’re a real good friend to yourself. Care enough about yourself to get clear about what you want to do now, to discover how you want your life to change, move and flow.

It might not look like it, but what you’re going through is ongoing. Why? Life in this world is constant motion above and below the surface. Things are always changing in this world.

Ways to Stay Motivated as You Fulfill New Starts

Motivate yourself by celebrating each daily practice, each explorative step, and each action you take to step into new beginnings. Fortunately, there are many ways to celebrate stepping into new beginnings. For example, you could:

• Leave work an hour early, with your manager’s approval if you work for an employer, to celebrate a significant career move, starting a healthy exercise routine, leaving an abusive relationship or seeking help to end an addiction.
• Spend a Saturday simply relaxing, doing no chores – nothing you don’t want to do
• Sleep an hour later the day after you make a change
• Treat yourself to a bowl of fresh fruit or a delicious vegetable smoothie
• Take an out-of-town trip to a town you’ve wanted to visit for months, perhaps years

The list goes on. In fact, for fun – see how many additional ways to celebrate stepping into new beginnings you can add to the list.

Continue until you step all the way inside newness. Journal writings, spreadsheets and other documents you use to record your progress may prove profoundly helpful when you face your next life shift. So, consider keeping those documents. And treasure the change you’re moving through. Stay positive and expect the best.

By African American Books Author Denise Turney

Put healthy laughter on your list of life goals. Commit to laughing at least once a day. Looking for reasons to laugh is a great way to exercise creativity. For starters, you could laugh at how you look when you yawn in the morning. Or you could laugh if your hair pops up like Alfalfa’s hair did on Our Gang Comedy.

Time To Be Silly Laughing!

Catch yourself being silly? Greet the experience with a hearty laugh. Nieces, nephews, grandkids and, of course, your kids, offer countless opportunities to laugh each day. Kids are so free! They haven’t learned to put weight on how someone perceives them. So, they say the first thing that pops into their minds. And they do what they want, without regard to how what they do will be received.

A lot of what kids say and do is downright funny. Facial expressions kids make can be hilarious. Can’t count the times I outright laughed at something my son said or did when he was a kid. There are also times when I covered my mouth and turned my back so my son wouldn’t see me about to burst out laughing at something he’d said or did that I didn’t want him to say or do.

So, be careful when laughing at kids and adults. Ensure you’re encouraging good behavior. Also, avoid using laughter to avoid facing tough life situations. All shared, if you’re like me, you probably toss aside way too many chances to enjoy a good laugh.

So Many Reasons To Laugh

Looking for more reasons to laugh? Recall funny things you did when you were a kid. More paths to laughter include:

• Watching a comedy, a movie that cracks you up!
• Reading a funny book
• Dancing to a lighthearted song
• Getting creative and drawing a funny picture
• Attending a comedy show
• Listening to good-hearted jokes

Did you ever crack yourself up, sending yourself into bouts of laughter, the kind of laughing that shakes her whole body? When’s the last time you had a good laugh like that?

Pets and neighborhood animals, including birds, squirrels, and ducks, do funny things too. I’ve laughed watching two small birds try to pester a larger bird until the larger bird flew off a tree limb, electrical wire or housetop. Instant by instant, a myriad of activities, sights and sounds occur that give reason to laugh.

Great Opportunities For Fun

Start taking advantage of those opportunities! Why?

Check out these benefits associated with laughter. How many of these benefits did you already know about? Which ones are new for you?

• Laughing gives the immune system a boost, making it stronger.
• Shifts your focus upwards. After a hearty laugh, did your thoughts shift from paying bills, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, cooking a large meal, completing a work project, etc. – something that you didn’t want to deal with — to a lighter topic? It might seem odd, but laughing has a way of shifting focus upwards, into better places.
• A good laugh boosts your mood. Ever felt like “blah” then started laughing? Even if you didn’t go from feeling deep in the dumps to soaring emotionally, bet you felt better after a good laugh.
• Laughter lowers anxiety. This links to how laughter helps shift focus and works as a mood booster. It may take consistent effort (but light effort). Try it! Next time you catch yourself worrying, start laughing. While laughing, read a funny or positive saying. Do this throughout the day when you catch yourself worrying. See if you can turn “making lightness of life” into a habit.
• Stress reduction comes through laughing. If you’re already in a stressful state, search for lighthearted thoughts, the types of thoughts that cause you to smile and laugh.
• Oxygen in your body loves being treated to laughter. According to Cleveland Clinic, laughing can “bring in heaps of extra oxygen, which decreases your heart rate and stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system.”¹

How Your Body Loves Laughter

More oxygen in the body, especially while you’re laughing, is good for your heart. In addition to increasing blood flow, “laughter can decrease stress hormones, reduce artery inflammation and increase HDL, the “good” cholesterol.”¹

Social connections might expand and strengthen as you laugh more as well. Similar to yawning, laughing is contagious. Once you start laughing, don’t be surprised if other people don’t at least start smiling. Keep laughing and it would be a shock if a few people didn’t start chuckling or laughing too.

When you laugh hard, it attracts attention. Deep down, maybe we want to laugh more. That could explain why we turn and search for who’s laughing and the cause of their laughter. It’s no secret that we love being around people who make us laugh.

Just as you have trained your mind to search for things to criticize, compete over, feel jealous about and worry about, consider training your mind to find healthy, love-based experiences, sights, and sounds, to laugh about. You did it when you were a kid. Certainly, you can do it again and benefit from laughter just as much!

Here’s to a day filled with laughter, appreciation, joy, and peace!

Resources:

4 Health Benefits of Laughing (clevelandclinic.org)

By African American Books Author Denise Turney

Yesterday has a tricky way of filling up the only time that truly matters – this instant. Without realizing it, you will be convinced that what’s happening in front of you is fresh and new. Yet, if you consider the experiences you’re having, you may see that, as nuanced as these experiences seem, they have happened before.

Could Comfort Be Holding You Back?

Depending on your age, the experiences might have occurred so many times that you feel bored. And you might have ceased to notice the marvel of life, expecting the familiar to show up again. On the one hand, it brings you comfort to live with the certainty that you know what’s coming next.

Then, on the other hand, a part of you is begging for change. If you would only trust enough to say good-bye to yesterday!

Even if it takes years and several more experiences to realize it, holding onto the past is keeping you bound. Holding onto the past causes you to relive old experiences. To move forward, you must let go. But first, you need a reason to release familiarity. Noticing the costs (or symptoms) of living in the past is a key reason.

What Holding in Yesterday is Costing You

See which of these “living in the past” symptoms you’re dealing with:

• You haven’t heard birds singing in months.
• Ten years have passed since you made a friend.
• While traveling, you always take the same route.
• If you were hurt in your last relationship, you’ve committed to never date or enter a relationship again – and you’ve kept that commitment for two or more years.
• Regardless of what do, you expect life to stay the same.
• Eating and/or drinking an unhealthy diet seems impossible to shake, in part, because you think that your health will be the way it always has been, regardless of what you put into your body.
• Whenever someone close to you tells you about a significant change (i.e., moving to a different country or state, taking on a new job, buying or selling property) they are going to make, you do your best to talk them out of accepting the change.

How Do  You Know You’re Not Stuck?

Whichever way you turn, you face proof that you believe that this present instant will be no different than the past. Your perceptions are stuck and, whether you see it now or not, this familiarity is causing you pain.

There’s only one way to get unstuck, setting yourself free of internal bondage. That’s right! You have to say good-bye to yesterday, releasing the past. This means that you let go of experiences that made you feel excited, hopeful, and happy as well as experiences that made you feel sad, hopeless, and angry.

After all, it’s letting go that opens you up to more joy, more peace – more goodness!

Open Up to the Sweetest Change

Sounds simple, but you know it’s not. Habits can hold a tight grip, making it challenging to free yourself. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t shift your thoughts and break free. In fact, here are actions you could take to enter freedom:

• Try one new activity today – Yes! Today!
• Brush your teeth in the kitchen sink.
• Exercise at a different time of day.
• Call a friend you haven’t spoken with in a year or longer.
• Learn how to play an instrument you haven’t played before.
• Strike up a conversation with a trustworthy colleague or neighbor you don’t normally chat with.
• Take a bath instead of a shower for a week or vice versa.
• Cook food from a different culture for a week.
• Take an online course and learn to speak another language.

Letting go of the past doesn’t happen at once. It’s a good-bye that occurs step-by-step. Similar to how it took you months, more likely years, to develop your current life patterns and routines, it might take weeks or months to completely relinquish the past and enter new, exciting and more rewarding ways of living.

Simple Actions Make a Huge Difference

Commit to completing three or more of the above actions within 24 hours. Add to the list of activities, taking on a new activity a day. This helps you to prove to yourself that change won’t hurt. To reinforce your trust in change, particularly that you are safe as you undergo life shifts, consider:

• Writing in a journal, focusing on repetitive thoughts and emotions that you’re feeling
• Drawing pictures that depict how you feel each time you engage in a new, rewarding activity
• Singing about the specific changes you engage in
• Reading stories about people whose life changed significantly (for the better) after they made a number of life changes

Trusting yourself is key to releasing the past. The more you open up and honestly record thoughts and emotions that surface as you move further away from familiarity, the more you may trust the process. Fortunately, you hold the keys during this “change” process.

Practice Awareness

Should you feel overwhelmed, reduce the number of changes from two or three a day to one a day. If you still feel overwhelmed, reduce the number of changes to two a month. Avoid aiming to feel the way you’ve always felt. The goal is to avoid being overwhelmed, not to always feel comfortable.

Continue the process. Soon change may generate fewer sharp emotions. In other words, you might go through change while hardly noticing that you’re evolving.

Also, if you practice awareness, you’ll start to feel when change starts to occur early in the process. It’s this awareness that can help you avoid shock. Practicing awareness allows you to start accepting shifts you undergo before the shifts manifest in big ways.

Let this happen three to four times and not only will you start to trust that you will be safe going through change, entering newness, and living in the present, you will start to trust that your true Self knows what is coming. Soon you may see early change as the way that your true Self prepares you to say good-bye to yesterday so that you can enter increasing fullness, instant-by-instant.