Monthly Archives: January 2021

How to Gain Victory While Passing Through Life Storms

Posted on by

By Books Writer Denise Turney

person standing using red umbrella in rain like life storms
Photo by Aline Nadai on Pexels.com

Gaining victory while passing through life storms can feel so difficult until just the thought of taking a forward step could generate feelings of frustration, fatigue, hopelessness and exhaustion. While passing through life storms, a success mindset may not always produce a reward. In fact, the harder you push for success, the more roadblocks you might face.

Inner Storms

Because storms in your life are times of great change, you may experience stress, anxiety and other emotional and psychological issues. For example, if you feel like “the storm is raging in my life,” you might experience depression, struggle to get and stay asleep, gain or lose weight and have trouble focusing.

The New Zealand Health Promotion Agency shares that you may feel like your brain won’t stop, won’t rest. Also, you might feel numb, low on energy or restless. Other signs that you’re facing the storms of life include:

  • Becoming easily agitated
  • Wanting to be alone instead of with other people
  • Nervousness
  • Sadness
  • Troubling dreams
  • Feeling disconnected
  • Thinking that life has no meaning

Outer Life Storms

These are inner signs that storms in your life may be becoming overwhelming. Outer signs that facing the storms of life may be too much include:

  • Trouble making decisions
  • Staying up late at night
  • Bodily pains that seemingly have no cause
  • Starting fights
  • Not talking with other people
  • No longer participating in enjoyable events

So, how do you gain victory as you pass through life storms? On the road to success, be honest about what you are experiencing, including how you are feeling. Talk with a trustworthy friend. Definitely stay connected to family and friends.

This latter point cannot be stressed enough. When you’re in a storm, it is so important to stay connected to others. The deeper you go into a storm, the more tempted you might be to isolate. If you make visiting, playing, dining and traveling with people you trust a part of your daily or weekly routine, it might be easier to steer clear of isolation should a storm show up.

Ways to Pass Through Life Storms

Also, rest when you feel overwhelmed. For instance, you could take a break from watching the news, step away from social media and steer clear of discussing heavy topics with friends. Of course, seek professional help if you continue to feel overwhelmed as you deal with storms in your life.

Here are other ways to keep advancing. As tough as it may be, remember that perseverance is the key to success. Assistance to persevere may come to you as you read or listen to other people’s success stories.

Encourage yourself by reading about the habits of successful people who have come through severe life storms. Reading success stories of people who have overcome near impossible odds can prove tremendously empowering. So too could reading spiritual books that value all life, books that focus on love rather than judgment and shame.

Achieving Victory

And again – don’t overdo work. Victory while passing through life storms requires patience. You need to be patient with yourself. But you also need to keep going however slowly. If you’re in the habit of practicing awareness due to meditation, practiced honesty or daily body and emotion scans, you should notice when you feel more energized, when you’re starting to heal. Depending on the storm that you’re going through, it could take months to start to feel energized and as if your life has a remarkable and glorious unfolding ahead.

Once you catch your wind, this may be the time to push forward, recognizing the power of success. Eventually, you’ll pass through storms in your life. Yet, in this world, new storms, new challenges, will crop up. So, celebrate success each time you experience it. Each victory can serve as evidence, as a real-life witness, that you have what it takes to achieve victory even as you’re facing the storms of life. So, keep advancing, one victory at a time.

Let Love Relationships Change the World

Posted on by

By Books Author Denise Turney

hands forming heart love for the world
Photo by ATC Comm Photo on Pexels.com

Love relationships change everything in the world because, thankfully, all that is true is connected in love. That’s possible because you’re nonphysical. Once you see the connectedness in all that is real or true, you may perceive how your thoughts, beliefs and actions impact all that is. In that alone, you can receive an experience that the ego continuously searches for but never finds – evidence of your unlimited power, evidence that you are love.

Power of Love to Change Your Life

You have the power to change your life and impact the people around you. Even more, your love relationships may yield greater results than you imagine. Also, these love relationships include romantic relationships, colleague relationships, family relationships and friendships. They also include people you try to avoid or deem unworthy of your kindness, love and care.

However, it’s easy to only consider romantic relationships when you think about love relationships that you nurture and invest in. Here’s the thing. If you’re following a decades-old romantic relationship path, you might be searching for someone you deem to be “special”.

That means that you don’t think about getting closer with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and anyone else in communication, social engagements, challenging discussions and fun in ways that forces you to reexamine old beliefs you may have held onto for far too long. You’re just on a hunt for this “special” person. In fact, you might have already created this “special” person in your imagination, going so far as to give this person a height, weight, smile, personality, job and financial makeup.

Exciting New Love Relationships

Good news is that you could meet someone who seemingly fits the bill of the “idol” that you created. Even better, the start of this “love” relationship could charge you with feelings of excitement, aliveness, fun, safety, peace and acceptance. Right off the dribble, you might even decide that this “special” person is worth sacrificing for.

Signs that you’ve made this judgment (or decision) include:

  • Sacrificing or reducing the time you spend with family and friends
  • Participating in sex acts you don’t enjoy in effort to make this “special” person happy
  • Visiting places (e.g. golf course, spa, mall, worship centers) that you have no interest in or don’t believe in – again, all for the person you judged or decided is “special”
  • Investing money in the “special” person (again, this is someone who you decided is “special”)
  • Preaching to yourself that what the “special” person wants is more important than what you want

Also, you might think that God will be especially pleased with you if you sacrifice for the “special” person. Clearly, you would have set yourself up for an impossible task. Why? Admittedly, it may take time in the relationship or several experiences you have with this person. But eventually you’re going to see that not only is this person not “special” – if you’re fortunate, you’ll also see that there are no “special” people anywhere.

Don’t Give Up On Healthy Love Relationships

Don’t give up. Despite the temptation, don’t toss in the towel on the relationship if it’s healthy. This means, there’s no physical, verbal, financial or emotional violence in the relationship. A key reason not to give up on the relationship is the fact that, if you do quit on the relationship, you will likely merely start searching for another “special” person.

But remember that there are no “special” people. So, if you sever the relationship, the best you could do is find another illusion of a “special” person. And it may be at the point of discontent (when you realize that the person isn’t “special”) that your love relationship could truly change for the better!

This is when the love relationship could really deepen, helping both your partner and you to awaken more and more to real love, truth, peace and joy. Furthermore, it’s at these levels in a love relationship where your relationship could start to change the world. And again, this can be done with relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, spouses or anyone. You just have to decide to only love.

True Love Changes World

Keep in mind all that is true is connected. Can you see how entering into real love, a love that transcends the body, could have a profound impact? For starters, you’d not only be teaching and learning patience. You’d be teaching and learning the value of patience (not tolerance – patience). Because you have to be patient with yourself to stick with and learn these new love lessons. And, you certainly have to be patient with yourself long enough to see real love work.

Choose and practice only love and you’d be teaching and learning trust, honesty, freedom and the fact that what you really are (far more than a body) can never be hurt. And, you’d be teaching and learning that joining in love, even as it regards communication, with another offers rewards that keeping separate from others never will.

You might not notice it at first. But you’d also come to see that you’re lovable as others return love to you. After all, if you’re being loved, you have to be lovable. Another benefit is that you’d see that you can and do love. Watch what happens then. Love relationships, including the love relationship that you have with yourself, really do change the world. But first you have to commit to love.

When It Doesn’t Feel like Love Is Enough

Posted on by

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

frozen wave against sunlight in love is enough shape
Photo by Hernan Pauccara on Pexels.com

Love holds all that lives together. In fact, it is so vast that it’s impossible to describe. Talking and singing about it doesn’t bring it more fully into your awareness. It has to be shared, experienced. When you realize that love is enough, you’re encouraged, inspired and invigorated. You also tap into the vision and courage to live the life you came here to enjoy.

When Questions Keep Surfacing

But is love always enough?

It sure doesn’t feel like it’s enough when you’ve endured a traumatic childhood. If you spent the first 12 years of your life being told that you aren’t enough, that you’re less than others and that you don’t belong, as sweet as they may sound to you as an adult, all the sweet messages, quotes and songs about love won’t be enough.

Why? You’ve probably come to believe that you aren’t worthy of love. In fact, you might even be afraid of love. This is the crossroads that Raymond Clarke finds himself facing in the book, Love Pour Over Me. His mother abandoned him when he was only two years old. On top of that, his father has untreated alcoholism. And his father is mean – real mean to young Raymond.

Yet, the only person who can demonstrate love to Raymond is his father. Although Raymond’s story is a fictional account of childhood trauma and its far-reaching effects, the story, unfortunately, mirrors the real-life experiences of millions of children, teens and adults around the world. It might even mirror your own life.

Signs You’re Struggling to Believe Love Is Enough

But how do you know you’re running from the very thing you swear you want? Pay attention to how you feel when people talk about their relationships. Do you think people are lying or exaggerating when they say they are happy and thankful for the healthy relationship they are in?

Here are more signs that you might not believe the source of life is enough:

  • Close relationships scare you
  • You pull away from people when you start to feel emotionally close to them
  • Excuses for why you can’t attend social gatherings are generally how you respond to requests to have fun and be vulnerable
  • Keeping in touch with friends isn’t in the top three on your priority list
  • Living alone, not just at home, but in life feel safer than letting other people in

Love And Friendship

It’s this type of childhood trauma that can leave you accepting mistreatment from people who show you an ounce of kindness, even from men and women who ultimately intend to cause you more harm. Let this vicious cycle start turning and you may spend the rest of your time in this world convinced that love simply is not enough.

Fortunately, there is a path out of this vicious cycle. It starts with telling yourself that you are loved, worthy to receive love and created as an extension of love. You may have to do this for months, perhaps years, before you start to believe it, especially if you’ve spent years hearing and believing the opposite.

And, you have to demonstrate to yourself that you’re worthy of love. Do this while you choose people to allow into your life. For starters and in safety, bid farewell to people who traumatize or abuse you. Do it safely. But start making decisions that find you surrounded by people who truly care about you.

Love Is Enough

Yes. It would have been good if your parents and elders had demonstrated for you that love is enough. But, if they didn’t, you’re going to have to do this for yourself. Also, pray for loving people to come into your life. Ask for guidance to know who these people are. This starts to happen for Raymond at college.

As more loving people enter your life, you’ll start to change. You’ll start to blossom. And you’ll know genuine love messages when you hear them.

Perhaps most of all, you’ll start allowing yourself to receive and give true love. It can take hard inner work to get there. You might even have to go into psychotherapy, meditate, read books on love and more. But, along the way, you should come to know that love is enough. Love really is enough.