Monthly Archives: October 2021

7 Reasons Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice

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By Books Entertainment Writer Denise Turney

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It doesn’t matter the time of year or what’s going on in the entertainment world, books are always a winning choice. Remember when you read a story that kept you on the edge of your seat? While you turned the pages, your hands might have shaken or maybe you smiled, swiped a tear or laughed. You may have felt a myriad of emotions, ranging from peace to joy to sorrow to hope. Talk about a deep emotional payoff. This is just one reason why books are a top entertainment choice.

Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice Because They Build on Entertainment’s Core

Admittedly, it’s easy to miss. Yet, that doesn’t change how books are a top entertainment choice because they are built upon entertainment’s core — storytelling. Your favorite movies, television shows, live stage plays and popular songs and video games, rely on storytelling. Dance might even rely on storytelling. On top of that, the best books are written with a rare sincerity, a sincerity fueled by passion and not money.

Still, there are more reasons why books are a top entertainment choice. Some of these benefits may be hidden. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not getting a lot of gain from reading books. Check out these seven reasons books are a top entertainment choice:

  • Education – Reading good books doesn’t just teach you about the book’s topic, it broadens your vocabulary. If you read books written in your primary language and a secondary language, you could learn a new language. Nonfiction books teach you about a broad range of topics, including the brain, health, wealth management, inner healing, governments, cultures, history, science and geography.
  • Stress Reducer – As an avid book reader, you know how reading good books lowers stress. It may take 20 minutes before your brain shifts away from worrying into relaxation. Yet, once that shift occurs, you can settle into a story and, before you know it, you’ve forgotten what you were worrying about. Your mind will have broken free.

Good Brought on from Reading Good Books

  • Empathy Booster – The best fictional books dig into the human condition. Great novel characters confront issues that humans have been facing for decades, sometimes centuries. Furthermore, it’s for this reason that works by writers like William Shakespeare, Frances E. W. Harper, Olaudah Equiano and Edgar Allen Poe remain relevant near centuries after those stories were written. Learn what motivates characters to do what they do, and you could become more empathetic in your day-to-day life.
  • Brain Exercise – Here’s a benefit gained from reading books that crosses both sides of your brain. Read a mix of scientific books and great fiction and you can exercise both the left and right sides of your brain. Choose to read different types of books, and you can do more to boost your cognitive abilities. You might especially notice this when you read books that require you to complete worksheets.
  • Improved Sleep – Lower stress can lead to improved sleep. Similar to watching a riveting movie, reading a good book could lull you into restful sleep. As a tip, don’t be surprised if you have dreams about scenes you read in a novel, especially events similar to what you may currently be dealing with.

Benefits That Guarantee Books Are a Top Entertainment Choice

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  • Better Communication – Watching characters deal with challenges can help you learn better ways to communicate with the people in your life. Even more, as you read more books, your expanding vocabulary and deeper empathy can strengthen your communication. Here’s another way that reading can lead to better communication.
  • Continual Growth – Whether you’re reading books to be inspired, to be entertained or to reduce stress, as you continue to read books, you continue to learn. Reading books help you continue to grow.

Furthermore, reading books offers a great escape from life routines. It’s a good way to take a recess from watching news programs. And who doesn’t want a break from watching one negative event after another?

Lower Your Mental Defenses

If you’re a fan of self-help books, you could work through emotional or mental blocks while reading. Another takeaway you might get from reading self-help books is the inspiration and techniques to start practicing self-awareness.

This single change could see your life grow sweeter. After all, if you’re not aware of how you could be arresting your development or holding yourself back, you might not know what to change to break free. This reveals another advantage gained from reading good books.

Reading good books helps you lower your mental defenses. Get caught up in a story and it could be days after you finish a novel before you see links between a novel character and yourself. It might take that long before you notice the main characters in popular books you love struggle with similar relationship, childhood, sexual or emotional issues that you do.

Real Links Between Your Life and Your Favorite Books

Let the characters transition from surviving to transforming to thriving and you might, even if it’s only subconsciously, start to believe that you too can and will make these rewarding transformations.

So, enjoy reading good books, fiction or non-fiction. Let your inner light guide you toward books that speak to what you’re dealing with now. You may get a lot more than an emotional lift from those books. You might put those books down and realize that you’ve gained a lot more than entertainment.

Find Jobs Aligned with Foundational Passions

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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When I was a little girl, my parents and grandparents encouraged me to discover my passions, to find out what I love to do. At the time, it was a strange idea. After all, I was busy riding my bike, jumping rope, playing games and having fun with my siblings and friends. Years would pass before I learned my parents were trying to help me find jobs aligned with my foundational passions.

Avoid The Push to Find any Job

Looking back, I wish that I had understood what they were guiding me toward. I also wish they had pushed me toward finding my career passion. Instead, after I became a teenager, they pivoted and started pushing me to just “find a job”.

The encouragement to steer me toward finding my career passion flew out the window. Money replaced that aim. In place of finding my career passion, I was told to get a hobby. Clearly, spending time doing an activity that put me in the power of joy was critical, just not as important as looking for a job that paid me in money.

I share this because of the impact my parents’ and grandparents’ shift from finding my career passion to simply looking for a job that paid money had on me. Also, I share this because I imagine that you may have had a similar experience.

Don’t Let Being Busy Mask Discontent

Before you know it, you’ve fallen into the trap of working just to pay bills. If your life is filled with activity, you might feel happy just to have a job. For example, if you are taking college courses, traveling to different cities on weekends with friends, dating, competing in amateur sports and working, you might not notice that your job is out of alignment with your foundational passions.

As you furnish your first home, the appreciation that you feel about being able to buy your own furniture, groceries and pay your rent or mortgage could hide your true feelings about the work that you’re doing. Fortunately, this won’t continue.

Eventually, the pace of life may slow. Despite your efforts, the appreciation that you once felt about being able to bring in enough money to afford the lifestyle that you want may decline. Working a job also won’t be a new experience.

Find Jobs Aligned with Foundational Passions

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This is when you might start spotting things about your career you don’t like. If you’re fortunate, nothing you do may shake the feeling of discontent. It may be time to get to know yourself better. And it may be time to look for and find jobs you will love.

But, how do you find jobs you will love when you’ve forgotten your foundational passions? You could take career profile tests. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, MAPP assessment, Keirsey Temperament Sorter and the Sokanu Career Test are career profile tests you could complete.

These career profile tests consider your personality when mapping a range of jobs you might enjoy. Yet, this doesn’t mean that you’ll actually love these jobs. In fact, no one knows what is in alignment with your foundational passions better than you.

What Are Jobs Aligned with Foundational Passions?

Foundational passions are your core passions. For example, you might love art. But your foundational passion might be connected to painting, or it could be connected to sculpting or photography. To find careers that align with your foundational passions, consider what you almost instantly feel peace, appreciation and joy from after you start doing it.

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For me, it’s novel writing. I’ve known this for years, even while I worked retail, education and corporate jobs. I thought any type of writing would put me in alignment with my passion. Freelance writing during the Great Recession showed me otherwise. It was then that I discovered that my foundational passion is writing novels.

After you consider what you feel peace, appreciation and joy doing, to discover your foundational passions, sit down and practice awareness. Notice how you feel while engaged in this activity versus how you feel when you’re doing other work.

Don’t Worry About Money

Don’t worry about how much money you could make working jobs you will love. Remember. That’s what tripped you up before. Next, look for projects where you currently work that either align with your foundational passions or move you in the direction of those passions.

As a tip, if you’ve been working jobs that move you away from your passions, you may benefit from inner work. Subconscious issues could be directing you toward unhappiness. For example, if you love to cook, but you keep applying for construction work, you might be keeping yourself from what causes you to feel peace, joy and appreciation.

Inner work could help you see your worth. It could also help you see how working jobs that align with your foundational passions connects you with your highest self.

Finding Jobs Aligned with Foundational Passions

Other ways to find jobs that align with your foundational passions are to:

  • Write down your dreams (they might hold keys that reveal your foundational passions)
  • Get enough sleep
  • Do parts work
  • Meditate and envision what you love to do
  • Ask yourself what you really want to do before you go to bed
  • Start doing work assignments that align with your foundational passions
  • Research jobs in your passion field. Get skills needed to step into these jobs.
  • Offer to do work for family and friends in your passion field. You could do the work at a standard pay rate. 

One thing that might surprise you is that, despite the changes you’ll experience during your life’s journey, your foundational passions will likely remain unchanged. Even if years pass before you revisit your foundational passions, there may be a spark as soon as you revisit these passions.

Moving Career Aspirations Into Alignment

Because living in this world calls for money, love yourself as you move away from what stifles or arrest your inner spark to what aligns with your foundational passions. For example, you might take a free course that teaches up-to-date skills in your passion field.

And you could contact businesses and ask if you can contract with them to start working in your passion. Do this while you keep your current job. Use money that you earn from working in your passion to build a savings, so you can shorten the time it takes to work in your passion full-time.

Careers You Love Lead to Good Living

But again, if there are jobs that align with your passion where you currently work, consider applying for those jobs. Stop talking yourself out of doing what you love. You could be keeping yourself from joy.

Whichever path you take, start paying down debt. That way, you’ll have financial freedom to stretch into careers that align with your foundational passions. Removing money blocks and doing inner work to see your worth could be just what you need to swing open the door to careers you love.

On days when you need to be encouraged as you move toward your career passion, imagine working in this passion. And imagine earning your entire income engaging in what you love, what helps you to feel alive! Now, that’s good living.

Happiness Is Doing What It Takes To Live Your Best Life

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Finding happiness is more than fulfilling goals. If a wish you had has already come true, you know that happiness is about more than getting things. Stockpiling goods and pursuing promotions, and money, to the point that you’re on the edge of burn out, isn’t the path to happiness. Community, rewarding relationships, loving yourself, fulfilling your destiny and living your best life are keys to happiness.

Start Living Your Best Life Now

Rewarding relationships, community, fulfilling your destiny and loving yourself are keys because happiness is never owned. Instead, happiness is experienced. It’s birthed from your choices, the choices you make throughout the day.

Rewards associated with these keys to live your best life are so deep, they’ll keep you motivated and inspired as you navigate your journey. Among the rewards are abiding peace, restful sleep, improved energy, mental clarity, empowerment, destiny fulfillment and, of course, happiness.

What It Looks Like – Living Your Best Life

Destiny fulfillment is an integral reward. Step into your destiny and you’ll know, you will absolutely know, that you have begun to live your best life.

For instance, let’s say your destiny is to manage an organic farming business that distributes food to more than 50 million people around the globe. On top of that, as part of your destiny, you will teach 10,000 people how to maintain small organic farms. These could be individuals, famers who operate on a small, local scale or health-conscious restaurant owners.

At first glance, it looks daunting, maybe even like too much. This may be why you’re guided step-by-step as you move toward, then, into your destiny. Even more, it might be why the discovery of your destiny might come as a vague idea.

Get Started

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In other words, if you saw the finish from the start, you might cower and never get started. For this reason, instead of seeing yourself feeding as many as 50 million people, the next live your best life inner images might only reveal that you are to do farming.

The important thing is to get started, and trust that other details connected to your destiny will reveal themselves later. This is important because stepping into your destiny and starting to live your best life is ongoing.

To begin, discover your destiny. Be patient. This could take weeks, maybe even months. Quiet your mind so inner guidance can rise up in your thoughts.

Living Your Best Life While Riding Waves of Change

After you discover your destiny, pray for specific actions to take to begin fulfilling your destiny. For example, if your destiny is to operate an organic farm, you might begin by researching organic farming products.

You might research organic kale, tomatoes, guava leaves, papaya, etc. Next, you might invest your savings for 20 acres of land, a tractor and a barn, only to discover that you don’t have money for seeders, irrigation machines or harvesting equipment.

If you’re not mindful, fear could set in. This is a time for trust. And it won’t be the last time you’ll have to trust your Higher Self to fulfill your destiny.

Heed Inner Promptings

Despite your best efforts, you’re going to make mistakes. You might overspend in one area, causing yourself to come up short in another. Or you might run into roadblocks. Several years of this, and you might wonder if you got it right when you thought it was your destiny to enter farming.

This is a time to seek inner guidance. Meditate. Write down your dreams. Pray. Stay open. Act on inner guidance, and don’t stop.

Because if you step away from your destiny, you could feel discontentment, frustration or depression. To numb these feelings, you might be tempted to engage in addictions, oversleep or wrestle with insomnia. Yet, try as you may, your destiny keeps calling. If you’re already experiencing this, you know what I’m talking about.

Positive Affirmations to Live Your Best Life

To stay motivated, read inspirational books. Another technique is to listen to deep meditation tapes that repeat positive affirmations that are focused on success.

Pay attention to how you feel after you listen to the tapes for a week. See if ideas related to your destiny surface. Notice if you receive specific action steps to take.

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As you keep doing what it takes to live your best life, surround yourself with positive people. Also read biographies and autobiographies of people who had hard starts and who went on to fulfill their destiny.

Finding Happiness

Writing down the steps you will take to fulfill actions toward your destiny helps. But don’t just write down and complete the steps, celebrate your smaller successes. These celebrations can reinforce your aim, serving as powerful motivators.

This bears repeating. Success is never owned. Despite your best efforts, you may experience setbacks. The key is to keep going.

A destiny designed by the Creator will lead you into inner peace, joy and happiness. Yet, it’s not magical. It’s ongoing. You may reap countless challenges and rewards along the way.

This is when writing in a journal could pay off. During hard times, return to this journal. Revisit your successes. Encourage, inspire and motivate yourself.  After all, happiness is doing what it takes to live your best life now. Don’t put it off. You came into this world to fulfill your destiny so that you can be happy.

5 Reasons to Stop Hanging on and Leave Bad Relationships

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By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

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Do you think it’s time to stop being so tolerant? After all, you’ve suffered enough. You’ve suffered at work and at home. It’s time to love yourself. Stop hanging on, waiting for things to improve, and just leave bad relationships.

Surviving a bad relationship may make you look like a heroine. If you grew up watching your parents fight or tolerate one another, merely surviving a lukewarm existence, you might find saving someone attractive. However, there are significant downsides to staying in bad relationships. It doesn’t matter if those relationships are romantic, work related or between unreliable “friends”.

Reasons You May Stay In Bad Relationships

Psychological abuse is one of the harmful downsides of staying in bad relationships. The pain of psychological abuse is so intense, you’re probably ready to do anything to avoid it, including agree with an abuser about how unworthy you are. Depending on the depth of pain that you’ve endured, you might even swear that, after you get free, you’ll never let anyone get close to you again.

On the other hand, if you felt like you were in love, it may be harder to walk away. In fact, Psychology Today shares that you could gain satisfaction from simply being in a relationship (doesn’t matter how good or bad the relationship is). More specifically, Psychology Today shares that “some individuals, especially those with low self-esteem or those who perceive themselves to be less attractive, have low “comparison levels.”

Comparison levels are your inner standards of what you consider to be a good, average or bad relationship. If you have low self-esteem, you might expect a relationship to have lots of hardships and few benefits. Again, this could be due to parental modeling.

Bad Relationships Aren’t Satisfying

This may not be encouraging, but it’s worth paying attention to. Regarding your willingness to endure bad relationships, another factor to consider is how you were treated as a child. “Women who experienced abuse as children report more satisfaction with lower-quality relationships,” according to Psychology Today.

Other reasons why you might put up with the illusion of love have to do with how you perceive your partner. For example, if you place a high value on your partner’s sense of humor and how your partner makes you laugh, you might downplay how your partner ridicules you at social gatherings.

Or, maybe your partner satisfies you in bed. To keep this part of the relationship, you could overlook or downplay how your partner keeps placing you in financial debt. And, this raises another point. If you think that you can’t find a better relationship, you might stay.

See How Your Treating Yourself Thru Bad Relationships

Memories of loving encounters shared between you and your partner could just be one part of this. You might actually think that no one else will want you. Another thing that you might do is convince yourself that your partner treats you poorly because he is passionate. Or you might tell yourself that your partner treats you poorly because she cares so much about you.

Even more, you might convince yourself that your partner needs you. That way, you’d see yourself as doing a good deed when you don’t leave bad relationships. It’s certainly not a recipe for happiness. But, depending on what you perceive about yourself, it could offer the illusion of satisfaction.

So, how do you stir the inner strength to leave bad relationships? To begin, as with any awakening, be honest with yourself. Actually, see what you are doing to yourself thru bad relationships.

See What You’re Doing To Yourself

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For instance, see what is happening to you. Don’t turn away, and don’t rationalize. Face it. If you’re being physically pushed, slapped or punched, see that happening to you. Start to wonder why you allow it to happen. Also, start to wonder why you put yourself in a relationship where you are getting hit or shoved.

Even more, if you’re working long hours only to have your partner keep you in debt, see it as if you are keeping yourself in debt. After all, you chose to stay in a relationship where you’re being hurt this way.

This goes back to how you perceive yourself. It’s at the heart of your self-esteem. And this is related to the more important reason to leave bad relationships. In other words, love illusions don’t weaken the impact of verbal, psychological, financial or sexual abuse.

Reasons To Get Out Of Bad Relationships

Here are five clear reasons to leave bad relationships. See if you can come up with more healthy reasons to get out of bad relationships and start practicing self-love.

  • Hence, the first reason to leave bad relationships is to give yourself the space to begin to love yourself. Allow yourself the freedom from pain to start to see yourself differently, honestly. Tips to do this include writing down 20 things that you appreciate about yourself. If you can’t come up with 20 right now, start with five. Another way to do this is to accept compliments that people give you. Think about the good that others see in you.
  • Ability to grow is another reason to leave bad relationships. In addition to learning to love yourself, when you leave bad relationships, you can start to grow in many areas. For instance, you might take actions to become physically healthy. And you might take a free online course, learn another language, start meditating or start a business in your passion field.

More Reasons To Get Out Of Bad Relationships

  • Improved overall health is another reason to leave bad relationships. The art of letting go of someone you love who’s unhealed, could cause your blood pressure to enter a healthy range. You also might stop having headaches, back pain and other stress related illnesses.
  • Making room for a loving relationship is another reason to say farewell to bad relationships. In fact, the only way to fully enter a loving relationship is to engage in the art of letting go of someone you love but who is too unhealed to love you in return. Keep in mind that staying in love illusion relationships or surviving a bad relationship is just another way to prove to yourself that you aren’t worth much (which is simply not the case).
  • You’d rather experience a truly loving relationship that allows your partner and you to grow than to stay in a fantasy that’s clearly not healthy. In other words, leave bad relationships because you want the real thing.

Practice Daily Self-Love Techniques

Tips to start healing from a bad relationship involve facing the facts and taking responsibility. Accept that your getting to peace and joy is up to you. And, it’s not magic. You have to do the inner work to get there.

This work could take the rest of your physical experience. But it’s so worth it. In fact, as you continue to practice daily self-love techniques like meditating, journaling, listening to soothing music and surrounding yourself with loving people, you may reach a point where you wouldn’t even consider entering an abusive relationship. Furthermore, you might become a teacher, sharing words of wisdom about love and relationships with others.