Monthly Archives: November 2021

Happy Thanksgiving Blessings to Love and Share

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By Novels and Books Author Denise Turney

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The best Happy Thanksgiving blessings to love and share work wonders year-round. After all, Thanksgiving is the perfect time to focus on your blessings, people and experiences that you are thankful for. Focus on what you’re thankful for and you could shift into a better mental state, at any time of year. Even more, you could alter your energy enough to attract more good into your life.

Focus on Thanksgiving

Zoning in on appreciation is a quick to-do. For example, you could write down 13 relationships, experiences and successes that you’ve had over the last 12 months. This is how my early morning unfolded. And I’m grateful for it. This morning, I paused and considered my family.

Gifts of openness, honesty, trust, care, presence, love and more are what I’m blessed to receive from my family. For you, it might be family that enriches your life too. Or, it could be the fact that you earn your entire income engaging in activities that you love. That is a situation that’s worth an expression of thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving Blessings

Here’s a quick start on other life experiences that you could hold appreciation for. However, you might be so busy that you don’t take the time to think about these blessings. Today, consider changing that habit. Instead of overlooking what you’re thankful for, invest two minutes into each day to zone in on what you can “thank” someone, the Creator, the universe or nature for. You might appreciate:

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  • Physical health that fuels you to travel, spend time with family and friends and do work that you love
  • Mental balance that makes it easy for you to feel loved, cared for, valued and loving
  • Housing that offers shelter, reliability and comfort
  • Fresh water to drink
  • Access to physical, psychological and emotional support (even if you don’t need the support now, it’s a blessing when support is easy for you to access should you need it in the future)
  • Ability to travel to destinations that excite you
  • Colleagues who appreciate and support you
  • Supportive customers and clients
  • Creativity
  • Pets who are excited to see and be around you
  • Rest and a good night of sleep
  • Skills and talents that have opened doors for you
  • Living in an area that gives you easy access to the theater, restaurants, libraries, bookstores, worship centers, nature or other things that you enjoy being part of

Benefits of Practicing Appreciation

This year on Thanksgiving Day, focus on your blessings in the morning. At the end of Thanksgiving Day, think about your blessings again. In less than eight hours, the list of experiences that you’re thankful for will have grown since morning. Whether you spend Thanksgiving Day alone or with family, friends or at a shelter, you may be able to enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

That alone is an experience to be thankful for. Consider getting into the habit of counting your blessings. Get into the habit of looking for more people to appreciate. Doing so could open you up to more loving relationships. An Emotion study found that, “thanking a new acquaintance makes them more likely to seek an ongoing relationship.”1

Studies have also shown that living with thanksgiving improves physical health. People who practice appreciation, have been shown to experience fewer body pains, according to Psychology Today.1 Start living with a spirit of thanksgiving every day and you could also sleep better.

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Improved mental and emotional health have also been linked to active appreciation. In fact, the more frequently you practice thanksgiving, the deeper the benefits may be for you.

There’s also a link between being appreciative and self-esteem. Psychology Today shares that, “Other studies have shown that gratitude reduces social comparisons. Rather than becoming resentful toward people who have more money or better jobs—a major factor in reduced self-esteem—grateful people are able to appreciate other people’s accomplishments.”

Happy Thanksgiving

Furthermore, looking for experiences and people to be thankful for could make you stronger psychologically. Not only could searching for things to appreciate improve your self-esteem, it could steer you away from depression and feelings of isolation.

Additionally, you might become mentally strong to the point where you navigate through an unexpected challenge without feeling like you’re falling apart. If you think back to instances when you counted losses and challenges instead of looking for experiences to be thankful for, you might discover that it was during those times when you felt at your lowest.

So, consider using this Thanksgiving Day as a launch pad into a lifetime of appreciation. To kick it off, I truly thank you for supporting my writings and my books. You are a part of my thanksgiving. When I think about how much I love to write and create stories, the chance to use this passion to connect with awesome book buyers and book readers is a huge-huge blessing. I am so grateful for you and your support. Happy Thanksgiving!

Resources:

  1. 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude | Psychology Today

Let’s Talk About the Path to Healthy Mental Discipline

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By Writer and Freelancer Author Denise Turney

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Your happiness is linked to healthy mental discipline. Spend one day ruminating and you know how fast you can seemingly lose control of your thoughts. Before you know it, you’re doing more than thinking about a deadline, situation or project. You’re replaying a conversation or upcoming event over and over in your head. And getting back on track is not as easy as just thinking happy thoughts.

Healthy Mental Discipline – Keep Your Thoughts from Holding You Hostage

To keep your thoughts from holding you hostage, you need to discipline your mind. Start small. Choose a school assignment, work project or relationship situation that doesn’t trigger anxiety, fear, anger or distrust. Set a day and time that you will think about this school assignment, work project or relationship situation. As an example, you could set aside 15 minutes on Monday at 12 noon to think about how you’re going to apologize to your sister for dropping your kids off at her apartment last Saturday with no notice and not returning to pick your kids up for four hours.

Or, you could spend 15 minutes on a Friday morning mapping out how you will prepare for a 45 minute presentation that you’re slated to give in a month. To stay free of rumination, stick to the time limit that you set and definitely limit this time to no more than 30 minutes. Remember. You’re setting the date and the time when you’ll invest energy on the topic. As you become more experienced at living with a disciplined mind, you could invest the majority of your mental energy on what is occurring right now, rather than focusing on past or future events.

Also, as Forbes shares, to develop a disciplined mind, get rid of temptations. Ways to pull this off include turning off your computer at 5pm, 6pm or a set time each night. Once you shut down your computer, stop thinking about work. If you don’t explore the disciplined mind path, you could physically leave work but remain at work mentally all day and all night.

Stop Ruminating and Gain Healthy Mental Discipline

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You could even ruminate about work on weekends, holidays and vacations. There may be fewer easier ways to stumble into burnout. So, engage the disciplined mind and set healthy limits. Remove temptations in order to make it easier to make smart decisions.

Another way to discipline your mind is to start breaking up a few of your routines. Breaking routines is a great way to get your brain off autopilot. Dangers of your brain being on autopilot include slipping into bias, missing data that you could use to make good decisions and getting into accidents. Keeping your brain on autopilot could also cause you to slip into mental, dietary and lifestyle ruts.

Breaking Mental Patterns

Now, imagine that your brain’s autopilot behavior included looping thoughts, where you repeat anxious thoughts over and over, similar to playing a record again and again. When it comes to finding happiness, that’s a mental pattern to break. Here are ways to get your brain off autopilot:

  • Eat a different healthy food for breakfast.
  • Get out of bed an hour earlier than normal. To avoid cutting back on sleep, go to bed an hour earlier.
  • Shampoo and condition your hair at night instead of in the morning.
  • Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed for several nights.
  • Sing a song first thing in the morning, even before you eat breakfast or brush your teeth.
  • Breathe deeply five times before you engage in an angry or fear-based conversation.

Another way to get your brain off autopilot is to write in a journal about a situation that you’ve been ruminating about. Actually, write down the specifics of the situation. Write about how you felt before, during and after the situation. Psychology Today shares that you also benefit from writing about what you learned from the situation.

Focus On What’s Happening

The key is to focus on what is happening. Start taking in data and new information that you may have been excluding while your brain was on autopilot. Other small actions that you could take to discipline your mind are to do three loving things for yourself each day.

And forgive yourself for mistakes that you’ve made and have yet to forgive yourself for or let go of. After all, forgiveness is a key part of the disciplined mind. That includes asking forgiveness of other people who you mistreated in word or deed.

Forgive once and you may come to know how freeing that choice is. Forgiveness frees up your energy. It removes the energy and mental space needed to “hide”. As a tip, forgiveness is an action that you may have to practice repeatedly over the course of your life’s journey.

But, when you experience the benefits of releasing energy that you’ve been spending to “hide” a memory, you may become eager to forgive others and yourself. It really is freeing.

Practice Forgiveness to Gain Healthy Mental Discipline

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While you practice forgiveness and break routines to get your brain off autopilot, explore new hobbies and activities to engage in. Traveling, taking a free or low cost community college course or joining a professional discussion group are ways to explore new activities. This is important because your brain is going to seek out new mental investments.

Throughout the day also take breaks. Treat your mind to rest intervals throughout the day. Should your mind work like mine, this may take a bit of practice. The key is to get started. The three loving acts that you engage in each day may prove to you that you’re loved and worth loving.

You’ve got it. Healthy mental discipline isn’t a one and done effort. Practice self-awareness to stay on course. However, for self-awareness to work you have to be honest. This means that you disallow yourself to engage in rationalization when it comes to getting to the core of why you made a mistake or mistreated someone, including yourself.

Path Of Healthy Mental Discipline

Instead of rationalizing, become aware of your emotions, thoughts and your behavior. Become aware of how you treat yourself and how you let other people treat you. In fact, you could come to see the way that you allow others to treat you as an extension of how you are indirectly treating yourself.

Even if it doesn’t appear to be, the way that you treat yourself and the way that you allow others to treat you is part of mental discipline. So, treat yourself to three things that you love each day, forgive, break a few routines and practice self-awareness to enjoy living on the path of healthy mental discipline.

Why It’s Important to Change Your Plans, But Keep Your Goals

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Name one thing that feels better than achieving goals that you set for yourself. Really. Don’t you feel good when you get what you want? Celebrate your accomplishments. Acknowledge what you’ve experienced. What you might not see now is that, at some point to sustain success, you may have to change your plans, but keep your goals.

It’s worth it, because you want to feel joy. Heck. The reason that you even want to get or experience anything is because you think that the experience will make you feel good. Yet, fulfilling your goals can take work – lots of work. I’m talking working 10 to 14 hours a day six days a week. Admittedly, it may not feel that way when you start. But keep going.

Set Big Goals

If you don’t abandon your goals (and, I hope you don’t), you’ll come to see that there are a lot of twists, turns, bumps and lessons to learn ahead. These twists, turns, bumps and failures can knock the wind out of you. This may happen if you lose sight of the goal. It can also happen for other reasons, two which are covered in this article.

Before covering why pursuing what you really want could become exhausting (and sharing ways to avoid getting side swiped with frustration and fatigue while you pursue your goals), let’s discuss ways to keep your goals on track. This switch could make the difference between progress and giving up.

Sharing personal details with you, when looking back over my writing career, it’s obvious that, to keep advancing, I’ve had to change my plans. And, I’m not talking about just changing my plans once. I’ve had to change my plans too many times to count.

Don’t Overlook This

To keep moving forward, another thing that I’ve had to do is to celebrate the fulfillment of small goals. What I didn’t do was change the goal. But, how can you keep the same goal when nothing that you’re doing yields results that bring you closer to that goal?

Even more, how can you stay encouraged while pursuing the same goal over a long stretch, maybe over years? For starters, set big goals. For instance, if the goal is to launch your own organic skin care product line, you could set big goals to identify, secure and open a manufacturing warehouse. Another big goal could be to land in-store agreements with the top 10 beauty stores.

Keep Goals On Track

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Follow this goal up with the goal to generate more than $100,000 a month in sales. To keep your goals on track, set small goals. Taking the beauty products example, small goals could be to:

  • Create your first skincare product
  • Identify a name for your new product, and trademark that name and product ingredients
  • Set up meetings with beauty product buyers at three different stores each week
  • Develop a product proposal (you’ll use the proposal to negotiate large store sales)
  • Reach out to 3 organizers of health and beauty events a day and schedule time to discuss sponsorships, keynote speaking and vending opportunities
  • Contact a commercial real estate agent and start getting prices, availability by square footage, etc. for floor space that you could use to manufacture your skincare products

Use A Goal Planner as you Change Your Plans, But Keep Your Goals

When you set big goals, you keep the carrot in front of the horse, so to speak. Big goals keep you motivated. They give you something to keep targeting. Small goals increase your belief. Each time that you achieve a small goal, acknowledge what you’ve done.

Sound like a lightweight deliverable? Please don’t receive it that way. Instead of dismissing or overlooking small goals that you fulfill, celebrate these successes. Looking for celebration ideas? How about traveling to the beach and staying at a bed and breakfast for the weekend. Or, you could order yourself a bouquet of flowers, treat yourself to a live stage play or enjoy a meal at your favorite restaurant.

The key is to acknowledge each of your successes. Another way to stay on track is to use a goal planner. For example, when I’m developing a new novel and marketing my existing books, I fill out a weekly goal sheet. My weekly goal sheet is a running goal tracker.

Consider Weekly Goal Sheet After You Change Your Plans, But Keep Your Goals

On my weekly goal sheet, I track when I write on my new novel. Better yet, I track the names of book bloggers, radio show hosts, literary newsletter owners, etc. who I contact each week. Using this type of goal planner keeps me honest. It keeps me from thinking that I’ve done more or less writing and book marketing than I actually have.

You’re going to need these intermediate successes. Why? Should you set big goals, it could be years before you achieve even one of those big goals. Wait years to acknowledge your progress and one unexpected setback could derail you.

So, celebrate forward steps.

Now, this next part you may not like. If you’re like me, you probably make plans. For instance, you might plan what you’re going to do over the weekend. Furthermore, you might plan your vacations, holiday events and how you will achieve your small goals and larger goals.

Change Your Plans, But Keep Your Goals

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Sounds simple until you consider how many times your plans have had to be changed. Weather, health challenges, finances, relationship changes and other demands can easily change your plans. Therefore, to keep progressing toward the fulfillment of your big goals, be flexible.

Here are ways that you could have to change your plans:

  • Adjust your budget to meet marketing or advertising goals
  • Review marketing and advertising analytics, eliminating, reducing or increasing spend levels in smart ways
  • Transition virtual prospecting events to in-person meetings or vice versa
  • Reduce work hours from 10 hours a day to 6 hours a day for three months to avoid burnout
  • Partner with a new social media marketing company if the current company that you work with isn’t helping you to generate more sales
  • Enhance podcast interviews with offline radio and television interviews
  • Replace giveaways with 50% off products
  • Develop new products to keep interest in your company high
  • Relocate your brick-and-mortar office to a new, more profitable location
  • Conduct sales calls on Tuesday and Thursday instead of Monday and Friday
  • Co-partner with another business to introduce your products to new customers
  • Get relevant certificates to increase trust in your offerings
  • Redesign your company logo and brand colors

A Word Of Encouragement

In closing, set big goals to stay motivated. Add small goals in between your larger goals. But, make sure that all of your small goals lead you closer and closer to your big goals. And, celebrate when you achieve those small goals.

More importantly, remain flexible. Life is fluid, constantly in motion. There’s no way that you can see every shift that you’ll have to deal with. For that reason, be willing to change your plans that are connected to achieving your goals. Just don’t change your goals. Keep aiming toward your small goals and your big goals, all while you adjust your plans as needed.

How to Change Your Mind So You Can Change Your Life

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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It sounds too simple. Change your mind and you will change your life. Just the words sound so simple, it’s hard to believe that thinking differently could actually create new experiences. Yet, if you consider how your mood shifts as your focus alters, you may start to see the connection between thoughts and experience. But how do you change your mind?

Change Your Mind – Linking Thoughts and Experiences

Admittedly, it’s not a straight line and it doesn’t happen absent awareness and honesty. Even more, changing your mind gets harder if you engage in habitual thinking or repetitive emotional states. For example, if you focus on work as soon as you wake in the morning, you might teach your brain to feel stressed or overwhelmed early in the day.

If you don’t practice awareness, the next step you take might see you aligning strong emotions to specific days of the week, times of the day, people or places. Should this happen, you could convince yourself that Mondays are challenging, that long vacations are bad and that your in-laws are mean people. That’s how easy it is to train your brain to link emotions and people, places, days and experiences.

Here’s more. The University of Minnesota shares that, “Thoughts are mental cognitions—our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. They include the perspectives we bring to any situation or experience that color our point of view (for better, worse, or neutral).” Furthermore, it’s shared that, “if you are aware of your thoughts and attitudes, you can choose to change them.”

Stop Habitual Thinking and Repetitive Emotional States

So, how do you stop habitual thinking and repetitive emotional states? For starters, stop being afraid of yourself. Stop letting your thoughts scare you. To do this, sit and honestly watch what you’re thinking.

As you observe your thoughts say, “I seem to be thinking about.” Clearly state the thoughts that are passing through your mind. For example, you could say, “I seem to be thinking about paying the rent. I seem to be thinking about mowing the lawn. I seem to be thinking about breaking up with my boyfriend.”

Let the thoughts pass, observing them as if they are no more than clouds floating across the sky. Notice if your emotional state isn’t starting to calm.

Do this for one to two weeks, investing two to three minutes in each sitting.

Then, observe your thoughts for up to three minutes. Afterward, repeat a positive statement about yourself and what you really want. An example could find you saying, “I am the Creator’s holy daughter. I am a limitless being, created to do great things. I am living in peace and joy, filled with love and managing a successful five-star restaurant.” These simple acts are effective ways to change your mind.

Reward Yourself When You Change Your Mind

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Rewards for changing your mind don’t generally just show up. In fact, it could take up to 30 days to shift, to start witnessing an external payoff. To notice the rewards, get clear about what you want.

In other words, discover your destiny. To do this, think about what consistently causes you to feel joy and peace. Also, write down activities that motivate you toward positive action. These activities come with their own built-in motivators.

Examples of these activities include singing, wood carving, painting, teaching, public speaking and conducting research. For me, it’s writing novels.

Your passions are linked to your destiny. To discover your destiny, you may have to spend 20 minutes a day meditating or quieting your mind. It’s so worth it.

Why Discovering Your Destiny Is Important

Why? Once you discover your destiny, the rewards of doing what it takes to change your mind become powerful motivators. More reasons to discover your destiny include:

  • Fulfilling your destiny brings you joy – Your destiny is not a burden. Joy, peace and love are hallmarks of destiny living.
  • Revisit your childhood – Remember what you loved to do when you were a kid. When you discover your destiny, you can let your inner child play, explore and thrive.
  • Removes confusion – Discovering your destiny gives your life an anchor, removing confusion about why you are here.
  • Direction – Although it could take years to fulfill your destiny, once you discover what your destiny is, it may be easier to know what to do next.
  • Purpose – Knowing what your destiny is gives your life a powerful feeling of purpose.

Change Your Mind to Interrupt Limiting Thoughts

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Another benefit of discovering your destiny has to do with limiting thoughts. Despite your best efforts, there may be times when you doubt yourself. There may be times when fulfilling your destiny seems too hard. This is when limiting thoughts could interrupt your progress.

Here are ways to interrupt limiting thoughts, catching them early. The sooner you become aware of limiting thoughts, the sooner you can change your mind with lasting success. Therefore, catch yourself early and start replacing limiting thoughts. Toward this effort, you could:

  • Listen to meditation tapes that affirm that you can receive and do what causes you to feel joy
  • Visualize yourself doing and having what you want, what is related to your destiny
  • Stay free of trying to figure out how you will fulfill your destiny step-by-step. Instead, focus on what you want and accept that you are worth receiving what causes you to enter into joy and peace.
  • Forgive if you are holding a past experience against yourself or someone else.
  • Get out of your head and into your life. Okay. This may sound like an oxymoron. Yet, it isn’t. To remove limiting thoughts and change your mind, don’t over think. In other words, don’t try to figure everything out. Good living calls for courage and trust, not constant planning.

Should you struggle to trust while you’re trying to change your mind to change your life, replay a time in your life when you exhibited courage. Replay a time in your life when you did trust and a situation turned out good. Give yourself proof that you can do it.

Your Life Matters

Additionally, take small actions toward what you want. For instance, you could apply to work for a research firm if doing research work is connected to your destiny. That’s a step of trust. Keep applying to firms until you land a gig. Then, keep applying to different jobs at the firm until you gain the research experience that you want.

Who knows?  You might end up starting your own research company and doing life changing work. The key is to keep trusting and to keep taking forward steps. Here’s another tip. Do yourself a huge favor and treat yourself and others with love and respect. Also reward yourself when you complete small actions that get you closer to fulfilling your destiny. Acknowledge the good that you’re doing.

However easy or hard each forward step is, keep going. Your life matters. You deserve to experience the life that you want. You should live the life that you came here to live. Most of all, you are so worth it.