Monthly Archives: February 2022

Why Is Flexibility to Change a Key to Success?

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Change is everywhere. It’s this world’s constant which begs a question. Is flexibility to change a key to success? After all, being flexible in business, at play and other life areas can keep you free of disillusion, hopelessness and nagging frustration. And this could help your energy stay balanced and flowing.

Flexibility to Change Associations

Yet, if you have heard that it’s important to learn how to pivot to experience sustained growth, why might you resist change? To start, you might associate change with loss.

For example, if your early experiences with change caused you to feel as if you’d lost what you value, you might choose not  to be flexible and resist change. This may have occurred with me after my mom transitioned when I was a kid. That certainly was my first early experience with a major change. Not only did it feel like a massive, painful loss, I soon learned that it was a change that I could not reverse.

Reasons You Fight Change

Other reasons why you might not want to get flexible and instead fight change include:

  • Change ushers in a certain amount of uncertainty. When change arrives, you really don’t know how an experience will fully impact you or turn out.
  • People, including family and friends, may perceive you differently. An example of this is when a job layoff occurs and people no longer respect you due to the fact that your work title has changed.
  • Past instances of change may have happened after your peers pressured you into doing something. Dislike the outcome of what you did and you could resist change and also think that it’s better not to form close relationships.
  • Failure and change could be linked in your thinking. A path of freedom from this could be to start to see failure as a learning experience. Because change in this world is always occurring, failure definitely isn’t permanent.
  • Sense of loss of power is another reason why you might resist change. This could happen whether your role in a family, at work, in the community or another environment changes as you age, your children get older, etc.

Change Is Constant

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As Heraclitus shared, “the only constant in life is change”. However, rather than accepting that as truth, look around. See if your experiences prove that change is always happening in this world. For a shortcut, you could start with your appearance. Even when you think nothing is changing about your appearance, one day you’ll look up and see just how much change has been occurring to your body second-by-second, day-by-day.

Furthermore, you might notice how often your judgments and opinions change. Let your judgments and opinions change and your mood could shift as well. In fact, depending on your age and how many new experiences you let enter your life, you might discover that it’s tough to hold onto a judgment, opinion or belief.

So, stay open to being flexible. Also, similar to how you stretch in the mornings to get flexible in your body, step into positive experiences that stretch you. Examples range from being flexible at work by taking on projects with elements that are “new” for you to making friends with caring people you’d rarely bothered to say “hello” to.

Mental Flexibility

Vacationing at a different location, building your own furniture, sewing your clothes for a year and serving as the coordinator for next year’s community book festival are other examples of stretching yourself. Each of these experiences offers an element of “newness”. They may require research, speaking with people who you had before chosen not to communicate with and accessing a set of resources you’d previously overlooked.

Regardless of how “stretch” experiences turnout, you’ll learn. And, you’ll grow if you chose to be flexible. Even more, your fears that are associated with change may diminish or go away. That may invite a bounty of good change into your life.

Mental flexibility clearly comes with rewards. It can be the path to breaking bad habits and patterns that once worked but no longer do. Therefore, look for areas in your life where you could insert change. Practice awareness to spot instances when you’ve invested way too much into a rigid, strict way of thinking, feeling or behaving.

Practice Awareness

By practicing awareness, you can catch yourself planning entire days, weeks and months in advance and then becoming angry when events don’t go the way that you think they should. Also, keep in mind that it could take effort and courage to get flexible. Fortunately, to be flexible does not mean that you‘ve changed. Being flexible doesn’t change your personality and core beliefs.

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Instead, when you adapt as you make a change, you’re simply adjusting your perception of change. You’re also building courage. This is not to say that being flexible in business or other areas will guarantee success. But it will prove that you can adjust to change. Additionally, it will show you that you’re stronger than any change you could experience.

Get flexible, celebrate change and who knows what good might come into your life. Should the rewards not seem to outweigh the risks, start small. You could do this by setting goals. Then, break the attainment of the goals into small, daily actions. Honor each action that you complete. Actually acknowledge the progress that you’re making..

Celebrate Successes

Another step that might prove beneficial is to track your progress on a spreadsheet. That way you can look back at your efforts and your results midway through the year and at the end of the year. Pay attention to the progress that you’re making, even if the forward change seems small to you.

By tracking your efforts and results, you can spot areas that need to be adjusted sooner. Keep going. It may not be long before you witness the good that you’re creating. Let that happen and you might seek out good change, instead of hiding from change. That’s when you could become the driver of the blessed life that you’ve been longing to live.

A Life Filled With Sweet Love Notes

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Romance is delightful, intoxicating. When enhanced with sweet love poems, romantic cards and sharing, it can mirror your worth back to you. This could be why, at the start of romance, this world can seem nearly perfect. You might believe that you and your lover can get through any challenge as long as you have each other. Admittedly, it’s during these early days that romance can be empowering.

Stay in Awe to Create Sweet Love Notes

But how do you hold onto emotions that flood early romance after you’re two or more years into a relationship? How do you keep romantic relationships as pleasurable as sweet love notes, preventing the relationship from taking on staleness?

A good start is to practice being in awe of everything around you. As an example, you could pay attention to birds fluttering their wings outside your home or on the path that you walk.

Try to hear the sound of water bubbling as it fills your sink or tub. See if you can create a song, using the sound of your washing machine or dryer as background music. Simply let yourself be fascinated and in awe of what’s happening around you.

Establishing Good Habits That Support Sweet Love Notes

As you practice being in awe of your experiences, let that spirit of awe inspire you toward greater appreciation. The more you appreciate what happens to and around you, the more you may appreciate your romantic partner. Then, express your appreciation by surprising your partner with short love notes and romantic cards.

Keep it up. Let sharing sweet love notes with your partner become a habit. When this occurs, your brain may signal you to enter states of appreciation when your lover wakes, smiles, holds your hand or shares a funny joke.

As rewarding as this can be, there may be a more empowering act that you could take to keep your romantic relationship vibrant. And that is to commit to helping your partner to awaken. Make yourself a top priority when it comes to awakening too!

Timeless Sweet Love Notes – Inspire Inner Awakening

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For instance, your partner and you could encourage each other to meditate, notice life’s wonder, try new things, have more fun and laugh more.

Here are more actions that may inspire inner awakening. The first action deals with how you kick off your day. To begin, start your day with thanksgiving. You could raise your hands and simply say, “Thank you for the opportunity to step into new, surprising love-filled experiences.” Other actions include:

  • Sit still for 5 to 15 minutes in the morning and before you go to bed
  • Journal – Write in a daily journal. Also, write when you experience strong emotions like excitement, nervousness, fear or joy. Even more, you could journal about times when you feel love moving between you and your partner.
  • Choose a romantic partner who takes full responsibility for their self. Should this occur, your partner won’t hold you responsible for how they feel, think or behave. Talk about sweet love notes, no more being held responsible for another person.

More Ways to Inspire Inner Awakening as Sweet Love Notes

  • Pick a partner who practices self-love, is not violent verbally, physically, financially, emotionally or mentally. You want to hook up with someone who’s healthy and committed to walking in love, sharing their life with you as if they were giving you sweet love notes.
  • Take relaxing walks with your partner. It’s amazing what being outside does to your energy. It’s a good way to experience awe about what’s happening around you with your lover. That alone could make daily walks romantic gifts.
  • Attend a spiritual retreat with your partner. At night during the retreat, write and share short love poems.
  • Soak in a warm, relaxing bath that has a gently scented aromatherapy foam.
  • Live in the present – looking for things that fill you with awe is an easy way to do this
  • Read romance novels out loud with your partner.

Stay Open

Stay open. Accept that you don’t know everything about your partner. This can help you to receive everyday actions like washing the dishes, caring for the children, cleaning the sink or folding laundry as if you’d just received sweet love notes.

Regarding simple actions that feel like you received sweet love notes, there’s the energy booster, otherwise known was “decluttering”. Yes. Decluttering your living space supports openness. It’s about opening up and letting go.

Instead of buying more clothes, shoes, appliances or electronic gadgets, you could upgrade or exchange products. Considering that money is a leading cause of relationship breakups, de-cluttering comes with benefits. It can free your energy and your finances.

Living a Life Filled with Sweet Love Notes Is an Ongoing Practice

Even more, it may train your brain to spot habits that are cluttering your romantic relationship. As an example, you might notice that you search for a personality trait or habit (chin rubbing, frequent yawning at night, etc.) that your partner engages in that you let irritate you.

The next time this happens, try to find something about the habit that makes you smile or laugh. It might take several tries, but if you really want to, you could do it.

Above all, aim for spiritual awakening. Become more aware of your thoughts and how they are shaping your experiences and emotions. Catch yourself if you enter a spiral of criticizing your lover. The more awakened you are, the easier it is to share sweet love notes.

Awakening or becoming who you truly are, is all about love.

Family Is Everything: Reimagining Fathers and Sons

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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What happens between fathers and sons matters, endures. Family is everything because, to begin, family is the bedrock of your experiences. It might not appear this way when you’re a kid. In fact, the world may feel like it’s your oyster then. You may have confidence to pursue your biggest dreams. After all, you’re not alone. If you’re fortunate, your parents afford you financial, emotional and physical security.

Ongoing Support Between Fathers and Sons

All you have to do is go to school and maybe work a part-time job as a teen. Ongoing support you receive helps you to recover from disappointments. Doesn’t matter if you’re an only child and a son who’s expected to take the helm in less than 15 years. Like Raymond, before you’re out of your teen years, you may have bounced back from tremendous challenges. Come on. Face it. You’ve bounce back and, if you’re like Raymond, you’ve bounced back more than once.

And this could be why my dad told me that “children are resilient” when I was growing up. Back then, I felt angry when my father shared how resilient he thought kids were. Basically, I interpreted him saying that kids are resilient to mean that a child could wipe away any amount of harm, replacing it with fun and laughter, as if no harm had happened to them.

What My Dad Said Was Like Magic

What my dad said was like magic, except that it wasn’t true. In fact, what happens to you during childhood can stick around for a long time. Raymond knows this for sure. His story is part of a father and son novel that is leaving an imprint on readers. If your story is similar to Raymond’s, you may believe that family is everything but wish that it wasn’t.

In Raymond’s case, his father was all that he had. You see, his mother abandoned him when he was two years old. Years would pass before Raymond would become aware of the fact that his father struggled with alcoholism. By then, the damage had been done.

There was no resiliency at work here. But does lack of resilience mean that communication between fathers and sons has been permanently eroded? Additionally, would it even be worth it for these two men, one a generation ahead of the other, to try to resolve their issues and move forward? Would it even be possible to repair such a damaged relationship and advance?

Questions Worth Asking

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These are questions worth thought. Why? As this blog opened with, family is everything. Family is where you learn to perceive your worth, even if what your family teaches you is all wrong. Also, regardless of the pain that you experience at the hands or statements of your relatives, family is still home.

Family is the place you return to off and on. Even if you have hard emotions as it relates to the only “family” that you’ve known, it’s still your family. It’s still your home. For this reason, it’s worth it to do however much work it takes to clear away the debris and to heal inner wounds.

For some, this work may include truly transparent father to son discussions. Work like this can be slow. At times, the work may be grueling. During these “dear father dear son” talks, men may have to face past experiences that they’d rather run away from. A son may hold his father responsible for every failure, disappointment and feelings of being “stuck” that he’s experienced. Although it may not be voiced, a father might view the responsibility of caring for his son as too heavy a burden.

Father To Son Discussions

This is why it can be scary to be fully transparent and talk openly during a father to son discussion. Not everything that comes up will be beautiful. Yet, these conversations can be beneficial and rewarding. Hopefully, these conversations will dive into the expectations that these two men have of one another.

Expectations play a big role in family love and definitely in the father to son relationship. A study mentioned in Psychology Today points to how father to son expectations can prove too burdensome. The Psychology Today article shares that, “fathers’ rigid expectations can cause low self-esteem and relationship satisfaction in their adult sons.”

Staying in these hard places is not necessary. But, it takes consistent work. Fortunately, many sons and fathers exercise the courage to face this work, to do this good work. As Psych Alive states, “Most men will have a strong pull toward salvaging something of a relationship with “the old man.” We may still have a desire to address the damage,and try to have a more personal relationship with our fathers.”

Healing Wounded Relationships

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Psych Alive goes on to share that, “If we decide to tackle this wounded relationship in therapy, we will invariably encounter an array of painful childhood memories. We will experience waves of disappointment, rage, and grief at the loss of what we never had with our fathers. By bravely revealing and working through this boiling cauldron of emotion we may come to a meaningful resolution.”

If this is your first time looking at the father to son relationship, make no assumptions. Each father to son relationship is different. Howbeit, what may be common among the father son relationship is the list of needs that a son may have of his father.

Common Father to Son Needs

Below are common needs that sons may have of their fathers as shared by All Pro Dad:

  • Sons need to know that their fathers love their mothers (remembering that all fathers are also sons)
  • It’s important for sons to see their fathers rebound from failures (this may help free sons of the fear of failing – after all, failures are tremendous teachers)
  • Appreciation from a son for how his father is present when they are together may be unable to be fully measured or expressed
  • Forever love, regardless of what a son does or says
  • Affirmation that he is valued, worthy and good just as he is at his core
  • Leadership is another need that sons have of their fathers. Sons benefit from watching their fathers exhibit effective, loving leadership skills.

Father Son Places of Safety

Since we’re all connected, it’s important for each of us to do what it takes to be strong. The wounded father to son relationship has to heal and strengthen to where both fathers and sons know that they are empowered simply because they are alive. A good first step may be for fathers and sons to examine their expectations of themselves and of one another.

Substituting hard expectations with the expectation of being loved, accepted and supported is a good start. Simply feeling safe to share thoughts and ideas is also empowering. Fathers and sons — everyone — needs this safety.