Monthly Archives: December 2022

Strength for Your Journey: Moving Through Life Phases

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By Writer Denise Turney

a woman moving through life phases on a path between trees
Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.com

Pay attention and you may notice that you are moving through life phases. There is no way to avoid these phases. Shifts and phases are part of this world’s journey.

Read enough autobiographies, memoirs and biographies and you can spot how other people shift through phases. Even more, you might discover strategies to help you when you approach a phase that someone else found profoundly challenging (but got through) as you read autobiographies, memoirs and biographies.

Just What Are Life Phases?

When one phase ends, it is as though a part of you knows there is an approaching ending. The phase may or may not align to your biological age. It is worth paying attention to, because if you are struggling, it could be due to a phase ending.

However, with the right mindset and care for yourself, you can release the phase that is ending and move with grace into the approaching phase. Depending on the source, you might hear that there are four or five life stages. For example, Learning Mind1 lists the four life stages as:

  • Stage One – Basics (this is where you mimic what you see, hear and sense others doing)
  • Stage Two – Discovery (you are starting to learn who you are)
  • Stage Three – Priorities (during this stage, you start to set life priorities)
  • Stage Four – Finding Meaning (it is a time when you are preparing to pass along your legacy)

Taking a Closer Look at Life Phases

CNBC reports that there are five life stages.2 Like the Learning Mind stages, these stages align to your biological age. You might enjoy reading the stages in depth to see how they differ and if any stage resonates with you. It could lead to the beginning of a new self-discovery for you. Here are the stages that CNBC shares:

  • Stage One – Dreamer
  • Stage Two – Explorer
  • Stage Three – Builder
  • Stage Four – Mentor
  • Stage Five – Giver

In this case, the fourth and fifth stages bring to mind wealthy businessmen like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. These men spent decades amassing wealth only to give it away during their latter earthly years.

Which Stage Are You In?

Depending on your life experiences, you might find yourself moving through life phases that extend beyond the above four or five stages. As an example, Institute for Life shares that there are twelve life stages.3 But again, these stages align to biological age which might not actually be what is happening (more on that later).

Here is a final look at another set of life stages. These are the twelve life stages outlined by Institute for Life:

  • Rebirth – Potential
  • Birth – Hope
  • Infancy – Vitality
  • Early Childhood – Playfulness
  • Middle Childhood – Imagination
  • Late Childhood – Ingenuity
  • Adolescence – Passion
  • Early Adulthood – Enterprise
  • Midlife – Contemplation
  • Mature Adulthood – Benevolence
  • Late Adulthood – Wisdom
  • Death and Dying – Life

Because culture has profound influence on you, moving through life phases with grace can align with culture. You will certainly learn about moving through life phases by watching your elders. From your parents to your grandparents, great aunts, great uncles and great-grandparents, you are learning.

Culture and Life Shifts

It does not matter what your biological age is. You never stop learning. And as you learn, you teach.

At its basic level, culture is a combination of social norms, beliefs, traditions, arts and expression forms shared by a group of people. Baraka is a film by Ron Fricke that offers up-close, snapshots of distinct cultures. Watching Baraka or a similar film can open your eyes, helping you to see that your culture exists among many distinct cultures.

The way you live and what you believe are not common across the globe. It can be humbling to accept this. Or you can allow it to enlighten you.

As you become enlightened, you will again spot how everyone, regardless of culture, is moving through life phases. Looking back, see if you can spot when you were shifting. How did you do?

Support Through Phases

Did you realize you were moving through life phases? Were you gentle with yourself? Following are actions that could help you when you find yourself in a shift.

  • Read about life stages
  • Explore autobiographies, biographies and memoirs (they hold clues)
  • Travel to experience diverse cultures
  • Accept that your perceptions are not global. Millions of people thrive but do not share your life perceptions.
  • Gift yourself with patience. You are entering new territory. Give yourself time to adjust.
  • Journal what you are feeling, perceiving and experiencing.
  • Dance
  • Include laughter in your daily diet
  • Pursue peace instead of the goal to always be “right”
  • Accept that you never lose anything that is real or true, regardless of the phase you are in
  • Spend time with people who are in the phase you are living in as well as time with people who are living in different life phases

Stay free of trying to fit your life inside someone else’s perceptions or beliefs. It really is your life.

Timing of Life Phases

Moving through life phases might not happen according to your biological age. Should your childhood force you to step into adult roles early or realize that you are fully responsible for yourself at a time when others your age continue to believe that it is their parents’ function to be fully responsible for them, your age might have much less to do with the phase you are in.

If you have been practicing awareness through yoga, nature walks, meditation and stillness, you may spot a shift early. For instance, you might feel uncontented with a living or working situation that previously you accepted or appreciated.

Now, the situation causes you sorrow, confusion or regret. Back to John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. During one phase of their lives, it may have seemed right to pursue money as if it were life’s singular purpose. While in another phase, this pursuit did not appear as valuable, wise or rewarding.

Strength for the Journey

Allow yourself to review how you are moving through life phases. Consider what you have learned. Think about when you thought you knew more than you did. How did letting go of the belief that you knew more than you did change your perceptions, impact those around you?

Did you become more open minded, or did you become angry, upset that the world did not stay the way it was when you were younger? Let go.

Life is big. You cannot control it.

Continue to move forward. As an eternal being, keep awakening and evolving. Invest in grieving the loss of a phase as it ends. And allow yourself to welcome and celebrate the new phase that you are entering. You may receive strength for the journey as you realize that countless others have been where you are.

Resources:

  1. 4 Stages of Life: Where Are You on the Journey? – Learning Mind (learning-mind.com)
  2. There are 5 stages of life—here’s what to do at every age ‘to minimize regrets,’ says life coach (cnbc.com)
  3. The 12 Stages of Life | Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. (institute4learning.com)

Will Peering into the Future Improve Your Life Script or Scare You?

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By Mystery Suspense Books Writer Denise Turney

group of people standing looking at the life script
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

If you’re feeling stuck, it might be time to improve your life script. First, just what is a life script and why does it have so much impact? Here’s a general way to look at a life script.

Building Your Life Script

Have you ever felt like you were living between hard boundaries, making it feel impossible to experience great positive shifts, limiting yourself to the same routines? If so, you might be adhering to a script. Beautiful Truth shares that a life script or storytelling is part of how we navigate the world. “Storytelling occurs at our most basic experience of navigating the world. But most of the time, we aren’t even aware of ourselves doing it.”1

Furthermore, “And here is the most exciting part. In realising how prone we are to tell stories, and more importantly – to believe them – we are able to create new ones. And when we change the stories we tell ourselves, we can change the way we see the world and ourselves within it. “1

Generally, by the time you’re seven-years-old, your life script is set. In addition to being made at the unconscious level, this script can play out seemingly to your conscious unawareness. Should this happen, you could be attracted to people who struggle with anger, lack of confidence, workaholism or gambling. But not only would you be attracted to a specific “type” of person, you might not know why you’re attracted to those types of people.

Who’s Part of Your Life Script

Also, as with many unconscious scripts, your life story consists of habits, statements, beliefs, etc. that you saw those around you engaging in, particularly people who you were close to as a child. Without meaning to, you could create a life story that causes you to mirror a parent, uncle, coach, etc. All by itself, this proves that you do have impact.

Not only have other people helped to make your life script, but right now you’re saying, believing and doing things that are helping to make someone else’s “story”. For example, if you curse and bang furniture whenever your laptop is slow and you have to wait for a webpage to load while your manager is waiting for you to send her a file, your niece could learn to react that way when she’s feeling stress and waiting for something, after she becomes a woman.

Fortunately, you can rewrite your life script. Psychology Today shares a story about a young girl who had been bullied while teachers seemed either not to notice or chose not to respond.2 The girl’s mother helped her to step into her power, even calling teachers and those involved herself, refusing to ignore what her daughter had shared with her. Those choices helped to change the girl’s script, also referred to as “story”.

Improve Your Life Story

In the Psychology Today article, it’s shared that, “We are the stories we tell—and we are compelled to create stories to understand ourselves.” Inner Self3 and Bestselfology4 offer suggestions on actions you could take to change your “story” or your life script. (See below link in our “Resources” section.)

Here are a few actions that you could take to improve your story:

  • Accept that your experiences are part of a “story”
  • Accept that you are more powerful than your “story”
  • Watch videos of people struggling, dealing with stress and low confidence who prove that you can improve your life script as you watch the people in the videos listen to a training, read specific books or watch shows that actually open them up to the point where they change their “story”
  • Listen to your inner dialogue. It’s there. Become aware of it and simply listen to what you say throughout the day and night.
  • Acknowledge that you can change your life script.
  • Meditate regularly to quiet your mind. Get in the habit of uncluttering your mind.
  • Pay attention to how you feel and see if your feelings are connected to a script.
  • Try something new every day. This is also a good way to get your brain off autopilot.
  • Give yourself options.

Support to Improve Your Life Script

To improve your life script, you might find it beneficial to work with a licensed, experienced therapist. An experienced, licensed therapist could access your subconscious mind and help you to rewrite your life story.

That’s good work. But what if you peered into your future and saw specifics around one or more events that were headed your way? In other words, what if you visualized an actual event before it occurred? Do you think you would be scared if you knew what was coming in your life?

Furthermore, do you think it’s possible to see the specifics as it regards sights, sounds and maybe even lighting and smells, about events that don’t actually show up in your life for 10 or more years?

Several times I have received details on an upcoming event that was 10 or more away. Based on research on life scripts, not certain if these experiences are related to a script or if a Higher Power preplanned the visionary experiences. Tammy Tilson’s daughter addresses these and other questions in a life changing way in the mystery book, Spiral.

Life Scripts in Spiral

She can’t ignore what she knows. What she knows is connected to other people’s life scripts that do not allow for good endings. Yet, if she doesn’t act, try to change the endings, she won’t be free and she knows it.

Her conscience will play and re-play a tape that could rob her of peace. She’s not willing to let that happen, and so she acts.

This all is worth asking, have the experiences you see already happened? Are you remembering a distant past, simply perceiving it as the present?

And, if so, do you have access to information that will allow you to make better decisions? That would be one way to effectively change your life, to really improve your life script.

Are You Willing to Improve Your Life Script

To know what is coming next and then to make decisions that cause the effect you truly want is a fortune. Should you choose this route, foreknowledge could prove beneficial. Yet, if your life is running, in part, off an internal script that you perceived and put into place when you were as young as seven-years-old, you might have forgotten what you put into place or why.

Is a first step toward improving your life script and opening up to more loving experiences a willingness to become aware of what you are thinking, becoming aware of what you have spent years focusing on? And is an early step toward changing your life a willingness to open up to change?

Resources:

  1. The Stories We Tell Ourselves — The Beautiful Truth
  2. Rewrite Your Script | Psychology Today
  3. How You Can Rewrite the Script of Your Life – InnerSelf.com
  4. What is your life script and are you happy with it? – BestselfologyBestselfology

How Reading Good Relationship Books Opens You to Love

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

man and woman sitting on the floor reading good relationship books
Couple Reading Good Relationship Books – Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Reading good books is a great way to escape the world’s rigors. You learn, grow, exercise your brain, enjoy virtual travel, are introduced to favorite characters and much more. If you read a lot of books, you can shortcut the time it takes to understand new material at work and school. One of the greatest rewards gained from reading books may have escaped you. When you read good relationship books, you can open to love more.

How so?

As you read fiction or nonfiction relationship books, your guard drops. It’s not like you’re reading a draft of your biography or autobiography. Fear of being criticized or judged is reduced, perhaps isn’t present at all while you read, allowing you to gain what is being shared more fully.

That’s a huge benefit.

Good Relationship Books Drop Your Guard to Love

After all, if you don’t retain what you read, it’s akin to looking at computer code you don’t understand. More ways that reading good relationship books opens you to love follow:

  • Novels not only help you drop or remove an internal mental guard, they show couples interacting and communicating with each other up close. Witnessing these couples engage can offer tips on what you could do to strengthen your relationships.
  • Of course, communication is key to healthy relationships. This is an area where nonfiction relationship books can yield a wealth of positive results. While reading nonfiction, you can learn communication techniques such as how to be an active listener and the importance of thinking before you speak. PsychAlive also shares that additional solid communication techniques include sticking to the facts when communicating with your partner, being honest and being sincere.1
  • Books make it easy to take in information together, keeping couples free of feeling as if one person in the relationship is offering most of the information or “telling the other person what to think, feel or do”.
  • You can learn about you and your partner’s attachment styles while reading good relationship books.
  • Even more, you can discover you and your partner’s communication style.
  • Opportunities to identify how couples express and receive appreciation is also unearthed through reading.

Relationship Books with Quality Research on Love

Fortunately, in today’s book market there are many relationship books that are built upon years of quality research. This is how you get access to volumes of survey responses and empirical science. In other words, you can quickly learn what works in healthy relationships.

To be healthy, relationships also require that each person in the bond love themselves and continue to evolve and awaken to love. Both fiction and nonfiction books dig into the importance of loving yourself. Should you be tempted to focus on your partner more than yourself, reading good relationship books could be a relationship saver, not only as a couple but for you, as an individual.

After all, you’re not just in a relationship with your partner. You’re forever in a relationship with yourself. Hopefully, the communion you have with yourself is loving, healthy and not dysfunctional. If that incredibly important union is dysfunctional, here’s to hoping that you are working to heal gaps or injuries in the union that you have with yourself.

Spotlight Relationship Love and Goodness

Today’s book market also has lots of titles, particularly fiction, that spotlight dysfunctional relationships. Bookstores and libraries, online and offline, shelve novels that focus on physically, psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships.

Gain from reading these books by focusing on what “not to do” in your relationships. Steer clear of believing that dysfunctional relationships are “normal”. Instead of reading books to convince yourself that every couple hits each other, curses one another or belittles each other, focus on what you want from a coupling.

Get clear about how you want to be treated. Then, read books that share effective techniques and strategies you can use to start treating yourself that way and how you can encourage your partner to treat you this way.

Reading to Gain Loving Interactions

Because experiences, including loving interactions, aren’t linear in this world it’s helpful to get introduced to couples who have overcome great odds. Nonfiction and fiction books have facts, stories and background information to help you pull this off.

You’ll probably spot the win early into the book. For instance, a character may have had a troubling childhood or a character might have gone through a challenging intimate relationship earlier in her life. In addition to giving you hope that you too can overcome childhood or past relationship challenges, reading these books could strengthen your belief that you can go on to enjoy being in a healthy, rewarding love connection.

Books Helping Readers Open to Love

Whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, a key is to commit to open up to love. In other words, make opening up to love more a primary goal. You could do this by:

  • Pick books that deal with forgiveness if you know you need to forgive to remove an internal block and open up to love
  • Join a book club to get diverse insights and perceptions
  • Complete worksheets in nonfiction relationship books. Talk about a way to learn, grow and awaken. Effective worksheets can help surface parts of yourself that greatly impact your relationship, parts of yourself that you had repressed or kept hidden out of your conscious awareness for years.

Celebrate successes that you have in your relationship with yourself and with others. Recognize that good relationships extend beyond marriage and dating. If you live alone, you’re in communication with neighbors, family, colleagues and friends.

Celebrate Relationships and Greater Love

Reading good relationship books that showcase personal and interpersonal connections can help you grow as an individual and as a relationship partner. At the end of each year, consider how much you have gained from the relationship books you read.

Continue the process of reading books that help you deepen your understanding, awareness and growth. This single decision saves you years of research and trial and error. Additionally, as you complete activities in nonfiction books that aim to remove internal blocks, you can open to love more each day.

Resources:

  1. Top 10 Effective Communication Techniques for Couples – PsychAlive