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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.

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.

Quick Paths to Higher Spiritual Connections

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Higher spiritual connections are the gateway to clarity, guidance, peace and joy. Tap into your higher Self and you could gain instant guidance, and conviction, about a critical decision. You also might become aware of how your help comes from inside of the real you. The scripture where Jesus, the Christ, said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” comes to mind. This scripture is from Luke 17:21.

Finding Time for Higher Spiritual Connections

Clearly, that does not refer to the body. It’s a fact. There’s so much to be gained from finding your higher Self and getting spiritually connected. More peace, deeper sleep, increased energy, right perceptions, hope, safety and love are among the gains.

But if you’re like millions of people, finding the time to quiet your mind may seem like an impossible task. It’s understandable. After all, your time may be filled with the demands of a full-time job, commuting, housekeeping, parenting, nurturing friendships and marriage.

That alone is enough to stop someone who’s brave. In fact, it can feel like pressure just to think about finding your higher Self when you consider all of the other activities that you have to complete. Yet, a strong spiritual connection has no replacement.

Rewards of Strong Higher Spiritual Connections

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There’s nothing you can do to replace the connection. Furthermore, you won’t feel your best without a strong spiritual connection. To find time to quiet your mind so you can communicate with your higher Self, turn off the television and sit still for 15 minutes. Depending on your mind discipline, you could set a time when you will not worry or try to figure out future events.

Again, the latter calls for a level of mind discipline. If you’ve been practicing awareness and living honestly (with your inner self), this could help tremendously. These additional techniques can work even if you’re struggling to get stronger as it regards your mind discipline (more about that later).

Find one to three places in your home where you will sit with a clear mind for at least 15 minutes in the morning and another 15 minutes in the evening. You could also still as soon as you wake. Simply sit up in bed and quiet your mind. Should thoughts start to fill your mind, try turning head, focusing your attention on a spot on the wall, and see if the thoughts clear out. Yes. It’s that simple.

Reaching Your Higher Self

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If that doesn’t work, watch the thoughts and say, “I seem to be thinking about (fill in the blank).” For example, you might say (depending on what’s occupying your mind), “I seem to be thinking about the commute to work” or “I seem to be thinking about what I’m going to eat for breakfast.”

Watch the thoughts pass as if you were watching clouds float across the sky. As a tip, this action is helpful in working through fear based thoughts, including repetitive thoughts that generate fear.

Here are several other actions that you could take to start reaching your higher Self:

Pray for guidance. Yet, don’t just utter words. Actually, pray a sincere prayer. You should feel when you’re being sincere in your request.

Say out loud, “I leave this instant and the future in the hands of God.” Or, you could say, “I leave this instant and the future in the hands of the Creator.” This and other guidance is found in the book, A Course In Miracles.

More Ways to Connect with Your Higher Self

Read the scriptures. As a tip, ask for guidance from the Holy Spirit before you start reading scriptures. Not only have words from the original scriptures been changed (and more than once), as humans, we may not ever have fully understood the scriptures. So, stay open for guidance.

Journal about what you’re thinking or feeling, especially if you feel “out of sorts” or not like your normal self. I’ve experienced this for weeks, sometimes months, before a major life change.

Get outside and go for a walk. It could be as simple as walking around your neighborhood. Of course, walk in safe areas and during daylight. Nature offers such blessings! Simply being outside gives you a burst of natural vitamin D which helps with mood. Ideas may also surface while you’re walking outside.

Easy Path to Higher Spiritual Connections

Listen to relaxing deep meditation tapes. You can do this while you’re working on a project, writing on that next blockbuster novel, putting away groceries or doing the laundry.

Soak in a warm bubble bath before you go to bed. Just close your eyes, let your shoulders loosen and sink beneath the warm, soothing water and relax.

Write a letter to someone you fear. Let what’s causing you to hold onto the fear come up, then let it go. Keep in mind that you don’t have to mail the letter. The point is to clear your mind. However, if the fear is connected to a wrong you committed and you know that you should apologize to allow the other person to go free from the experience, follow your higher Self. Apologize if you know that you should apologize.

Techniques to Gain Higher Spiritual Connections

Each of these techniques can help you gain mind discipline. Simply make three techniques a part of your daily routine. Another action that you could perform is repeating, “I place this instant and the future in the hands of the Creator” every 30 minutes. See if you don’t start to let go.

Allowing your mind to calm requires discipline. Why? In this world, you’ll have to engage in techniques that help you to calm your mind and connect with your higher Self on a daily basis. In fact, you may have to engage in effective techniques several times a day.

The rewards are amazing. While you’re doing this, also practice self-awareness. This calls for honesty. For example, if you’re feeling fear or jealousy (a type of fear), admit that to yourself while also only loving yourself. Then, ask for guidance from your higher Self to let the fear go. If you keep joy, peace and love as your goals and you stay open to guidance from the Creator, you’ll be amazed at how your life in this physical experience turns out. I’m rooting for you!

7 Easy Ways to Open Love Pathways

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Love is so deep and vast, so all encompassing, it’s impossible to describe love. It’s in all that lives. Ask someone what love feels like and you might hear words like: freedom, power, warm, inviting, comforting, dependable, limitless, eternal and good. Everything alive is touched by love. Babies rest in love. When babies coo and smile, it’s as if they are within love’s embrace. Yet, you can get lost in this world’s maze and need to find ways to open love pathways.

What’s Blocking Love Pathways

As babies, trusting love seems natural. It’s easy to rest secure in open love pathways as infants. Then, we get older. We experience disappointments. Fear based emotions like jealousy, hopelessness, anger, disgust and sorrow start to jab at us, maybe filling our days. Before long, we start to perceive love as evasive, hard to find, reserved for a select few, weak, painful and undependable.

Yet, we still want love, and we always will. We know that we need love to thrive, to live, but we’re scared.

It’s this fear that can block us from not only seeing but also receiving love’s blessings. If you’ve been hiding from love and want to stop, check out these seven ways to open love flows:

  • Raise your hands, lift your head toward the ceiling and say, “Thank you!” when you wake in the morning. This single act can shift you into a healthy mood and set your day on a positive course. Furthermore, if you’ve been in the habit of feeling angry or frustrated as soon as your feet hit the floor, this could create a new pattern that you may appreciate for years.
  • Play music that you love at least once a day. For example, you could listen to smooth jazz while you go for a walk or bike ride. Or you could listen to relaxing music while you enjoy a soothing bubble bath at the end of the day. Another place to listen to relaxing music that you appreciate is in the car. You could turn on your favorite music while driving to and from the grocery store or while running errands. See if you don’t feel better.

Techniques to Open Love Pathways

  • And this brings up another technique. Get outside and move. If you don’t like to exercise, tell yourself that you’re taking a stress relieving walk. See the experience differently.
  • Eat a healthy diet that agrees with your system. Also, pay attention to how your body feels when you eat sugary foods or when you consume too much protein. After all, the aim is to love yourself.
  • Practice awareness. Actually, observe emotions and thoughts that you experience. Slow down and notice what those emotions and thoughts are linked to. Ways to move through upsetting emotions and thoughts include journaling, painting, talking with a friend, writing yourself a letter and getting out in nature and seeing what surfaces. Also, pay attention to what surfaces in your dream world.
  • Meditate. Simply sit still and focus on your breathing. As simple as it sounds, meditating is a good way to calm racing thoughts. And it’s a good way to reduce and eliminate stress.
  • Say “I love you” to yourself and one other person each day. While you’re doing this, make sure to visit or speak with a friend once a week. In today’s online age, it’s important to nurture in-person relationships.

Stay Open to Abundant Happiness and Love

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To keep love flows open, incorporate these techniques into your daily routines. After all, experiences in this world can jab at the brightest day. You may have experienced this numerous times. At the start of the day, you feel excited, hopeful, empowered and relaxed.

Then, a number of unwanted experiences occur (e.g. traffic jams, disagreements, late appointments, weather storms, coffee burns) and, before you know it, you’ve shifted from feeling excited, hopeful, empowered and relaxed to feeling emotionally fatigued, frustrated, unable to get the day that you want and tense. The shift can happen in seconds.

That’s why it’s beneficial to incorporate self-love techniques into each day. Doing so, helps to keep you balanced and positioned to continue recognizing and receiving love flows. Even more, it may have a positive impact on the people who you live and work with.

Say Yes to Love

Other ways to stay open to love are to read articles and books that encourage you to love. Listening to deep meditation tapes that focus on the power of love is another way to stay open. Spending time with people you know love you is a real gem. But that means you may have to exit from the lives of people who are abusive toward you.

And that means saying good-bye to people who abuse you emotionally, psychologically, financially or physically. After all, accepting abuse is another way to abuse yourself. It’s another way to block love. Admittedly, turning toward love and away from abuse, especially when abuse comes from people who have been a part of your life for years, may not be easy.

You Deserve to Thrive in Open Love Pathways

To ease that pressure, exchange your image for the abuser’s. In other words, instead of seeing the abuser cursing you, see yourself engaging in that behavior against yourself. Then, ask yourself if it’s a good way to show yourself that you’re loved.

Be honest. If the answer is ‘no’, it’s time for a healthy good-bye. And yes. You may miss those people whose lives you exit. But, as you continue to practice daily self-love techniques, you can realize more and more that you did the right thing. After all, the more you love yourself and others, the stronger you become.

The same applies to putting yourself in position to be loved. And it’s this that opening to love pathways is about. Put yourself in position to receive and give love. Then, watch how you feel, think and perceive life. See if you don’t open to more goodness, experiencing an inwardly rich life.

Live Free and Open to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Freedom and love must be semi-twins, because freedom feels good like love. Live free and with an open mind and you could avoid getting stuck in ruts. It sounds easy, but few pull it off. School schedules, work routines, family patterns and internal cycles drag you down after a while, sneak up on you slow and easy. Yet, to thrive you have to discover ways to avoid getting stuck in ruts.

Getting Out of Ruts

It’s odd how the goals you set to graduate with a degree, land a job, buy a home and start a family are the very goals that slowly pull you into routines that work their way into ruts. Although you might not admit it, you’ve created obligations that are forcing you to stick to routines. There’s the mortgage, credit card bills, artistic contracts and student loans. Today, it’s hard to believe that each of these responsibilities came offering greater freedom, not hard routines.

You thought taking on thousands of dollars in student loan debt would open doors to high paying jobs, respect and satisfaction. But that’s not what happened. One debt led to another idea for how to pay that debt off, got you into more debt. Now, is the time to break free.

There’s only one way out — freedom. To get free of ruts, you could:

  • Insert small changes into your day (e.g. get up 20 minutes earlier, shower in the morning instead of at night, grow your own tomatoes)
  • Pay double the minimum due on credit cards (while not making any other credit card purchases)
  • Listen to a different music genre
  • Rent out the basement in your house to pay your mortgage off 10 years early
  • Start writing on that new movie script

Explore Your Passion for Freedom to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

Despite your passion for freedom, don’t be surprised if a part of you balks at the idea. After all, as much as you hate getting stuck in ruts, there’s something about routine that feels comfortable, safe. This is why it’s best to avoid getting stuck in ruts from the start.

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Check out these ways that you may find easy as it regards personal freedom. However, you should know that you’re going to have to practice self-awareness for these actions to work:

  • Write in a journal to become aware of repetitive thoughts and patterns that you’re drifting into.
  • Pay attention to your dreams, exploring symbols and situations that keep popping up in your dreams.
  • Enter outdoor adventure challenges that take you out of your routines for one to two months. There are nature challenges that come with expert protections (e.g. medical crews, experienced survivalist teams) that are life changing.
  • Pray for guidance from your higher Self. Follow the inner guidance that you receive.

More Ways to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

  • Talk with people who have taken smart risks in areas that you want to explore.
  • Celebrate a time when you took a smart risk and failed. Acknowledge your courage, actions and what you learned from the experience. Remember that every experience teaches. So, there really is no failure, especially when you take what you learned and grow.
  • Return to a hobby (e.g. woodcutting, painting, dancing) that you love, but abandoned because you got so caught up in routines that you convinced yourself that you didn’t have time to enjoy engaging in the hobby.
  • Pay off debts to empower yourself with a debt free lifestyle. To do this, look at your bank statements for the last six months. See what you can carve out. Avoid making new debts, and watch your savings grow.
  • Take nature walks. It’s amazing what being out in nature does to routines and the drive to live free.

Say Goodbye To Safety Illusions

Routines may feel safe. Yet, a part of you wants freedom, not routines and ruts. With routines, you know what’s coming a lot of the time. If today mimics yesterday and you know that you made it through yesterday, routines can lend the confidence that you’ll get through today. You’ll get through another day. Before you know it, each day is starting to look and feel the same.

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That’s when boredom starts to set in. It’s because you abandoned your live free and stay free commitment. And, somewhere along the way, you knew exactly what you were doing, what you were setting yourself up for.

Regardless of how many people this has happened to, you don’t have to stay on this path. It starts with daily choices. For instance, you might cook eggs differently for breakfast. Or you might drive a different route to your friend’s house. Wearing a different pair of shoes or styling your hair differently are other ways to avoid slipping into ruts.

Practice Awareness to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

More importantly, when you feel bored, uninspired or flat, check your routines. See if your day consist of routines and patterns that you’ve been engaging in for a year or longer. Without being aware, you could be wearing the same clothes on the same days of the week, styling your hair the same day after day for two years or longer and eating at the same diner for lunch for five years.

Add a job that you don’t love to this list of routines and it’s no wonder that you feel like you’re in a rut. Your day is filled with routines you no longer want to engage in. Practice awareness and catch yourself early, before you’re deep in ruts.

Live Free

But you can’t just practice awareness, you have to be honest with yourself. Admit when you don’t feel like you’re living in freedom and do something about it. Stir your courage, and shift. Try new things on a daily basis. Just do something new, something different each day.

Admittedly, it’s a risk. You won’t be able to predict outcomes. But isn’t that the fun part of what it means to live free? Not knowing how all choices will unwind can be liberating. And, when you think about it, financial debt, ridged routines and destructive relationships has never gotten you what you really want.

All the money, all the routines and all the work in the world has never gotten you freedom. So, consider taking smart risks. Make daily choices that support  debt free living. Start early, so that it becomes a lifestyle. Then, freedom, joy and what you love may start to lead you, offering you the types of emotional, financial and mental debt free lifestyle choices that you’ve been seeking.