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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.

Repurpose Marketing Content to Attract Readers and Sell More Books

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Eager to save time as a book promoter? Repurpose the marketing content at your website. In addition to saving time, when you repurpose marketing content, you attract readers using at least two data forms. Learn how to turn blog articles and other content into videos, posters, postcards, interviews, quizzes and press releases to sell more books.

Mapping Out Your Online Book Marketing Plan to Sell More Books

Let’s look at what makes an online book marketing plan, particularly the process of scheduling marketing content development and distribution. During this review, keep your goal top of mind. Your aim is to sell more books.

The below schedule is a general scheduling example. As you focus on selling more books, you’ll add specific actions to your content schedule. Pay attention to how many of the below steps use content you’ve already created.

  • Monday – Rewrite five existing blog posts, adding SEO phrases into the posts. As a tip, type phrases related to your book’s focal areas into Google. Examples include science fiction games, romantic mystery for retirees and novels with the best travel destinations. See how many search results come up for the phrases. Scroll down the search results and check the “People also ask” section in Google. These could become new blog article titles or article headings for repurposed content.
  • Tuesday – Develop scripts for social media videos that cover a month of video production. Use re-written book descriptions to fill-out the video content. After you write the social media video scripts, write a description for each video. Plug two to three SEO phrases that surfaced during your Monday work.
  • Wednesday – Shoot a month of social media video content. You’ll be working with lighting, sound and background branding materials. For example, you might shoot videos in front of your company logo. Depending on how long the videos are, this could take four or more hours.

More Ways to Sell More Books

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  • Thursday – Start writing content for your next four weekly literary newsletters. Include a video in each newsletter. Also, add a feature interview in each newsletter. And incorporate coupons and product/service discounts into the literary newsletter. To make your newsletter robust, fill it with data, price discounts, part of a rewritten blog article, etc. that book lovers appreciate. Use crisp subject lines, the type of subject lines that stir emotion, to encourage newsletter opens and reads, a step that can help you sell more books.
  • Friday – Schedule social media marketing feeds. To save time, use an automated social media posts scheduler like Hootsuite, Vistaprint, Buffer, etc. While scheduling social media posts, add a mix of videos, quotes, information on upcoming events, feature interviews, newsletter releases, etc. To bring social media marketing posts alive, embed not-to-be-ignored pictures into the posts. Images and videos attract book lovers, helping you to sell more books.

That’s just a start. Keep reading to discover ways to maximize your online and offline marketing efforts without spending a lot of time.

How to Repurpose Existing Marketing Content

This is where repurposing your existing marketing content really comes into play. To sell more books without investing an hour or more a day into your marketing efforts:

  • Add quotes to images on your author website and distribute as flyers on social media. You’ve seen those posts on social media, the ones with flowers, a sunrise, a woman climbing a mountain, etc. that are topped with a motivational quote. This time, let the quote come from a blog post, press release or interview that already exist at your website.
  • Place existing book covers on drinking mugs and t-shirts and sell those at your author website. Another thing you could do to sell more books is to use this swag as giveaways.
  • Upload products designed with your book covers to Etsy, Pinterest, etc. to attract readers and sell more books. Make sure your author website URL is on each product.
  • Edit book marketing videos into short snippets. Upload the snippets to TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
  • Distribute existing marketing videos across a range of video platforms. For example, you could distribute your marketing videos to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook Live, iHeart Radio, Google, Apple, Spotify, etc.

Organic Ways to Repurpose Marketing Content and Sell More Books

  • Build marketing videos into mobile holiday catalogs, sharing the videos on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. As with other ways to repurpose material to sell more books, the most you’ll generally do is edit, cut and paste existing marketing material.
  • Use published blog articles to create free e-books. Add your author website URL to the bottom of each page of the e-book. Also, add a page that list all of your titles to the back of the e-book. You could sell more books by simply showcasing your titles to more readers.
  • Create bookmarks and branded calendars that include snippets from your published blog articles.
  • Develop speaking presentations and trade show brochures using material from your literary newsletters, press releases and book descriptions.

To keep content at your author website fresh, re-write 10 blog articles a month, starting with older blog posts. As with your other marketing efforts, be consistent. In addition to repurposing marketing content, create new videos and blog articles. It’s an effective way to attract new readers and build relationships with these readers which, in turn, helps to sell more books.

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Implementing Your Book Marketing Content Plan

Building out your online book marketing plan takes time. If you’re pressed for time, you could hire an experienced marketing writer to create content for you. And, of course, you can repurpose your existing content.

Stay on track with a marketing calendar. For instance, you could start with the daily schedule presented earlier in this blog post. Then, plug in article titles, SEO phrases, image quotes and video script topics. Also, add due dates, getting clear about when you’ll complete action items.

Keep going. And stay open. Be flexible. Take free online book marketing courses from people who actually sell hundreds of books a year. Over the course of a year, you’ll find areas in your marketing plan that you need to tweak. Take advantage of new technologies, saving time and making it easier for you to attract readers and sell more books.

How You Can Promote Books Without Spending Money

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Forget relying totally on paid book ads. Explore these ways to promote books without spending money.

First, let’s acknowledge what you have done. After all, book marketing is tireless work. It starts with writing a riveting novel or a hard hitting, informative non-fiction book. Kudos to you if you have knocked out this part of the book marketing process. Take time to celebrate. Then, roll up your sleeves and prepare to work, announcing your books to readers.

Taking the Book Publicist Route – This One Will Cost You

If you want to punt book marketing efforts to someone else, you could pay a marketing agency or publicist to do to that work for you. But taking that route will cost you. In fact, Writer’s Digest shares that the average book publicist rate is $100 an hour. Also, to get traction from a book publicist’s work, you may need to hire the publicist for three to four months prior to book publication and another three months post publication.

On average, you can expect to spend $5,000 to $10,000 for a book publicist. Take this path, and you’ll definitely want to vet a publicist or a marketing agency thoroughly. After all, you want to get your money’s worth from every book marketing effort that you invest in.

And, if you do pay for book marketing, check to see that the book publicist or marketing agency has deep experience marketing (and selling) books. For instance, check their references. Even more, check that they have influential media and book industry contacts. This helps them land you newspaper, magazine, radio and television interviews.

Free Ways to Promote Books Without Spending Money

Ensure they have gained 5,000 or more sales for other books that they’ve marketed. At the minimum, an effective marketer should have generated 1,000 book sales in a year. If not, they might not have the best skills. Before you sign a book marketing contract, speak with authors who have worked with the book publicist or book marketing agency you’re interested in inking a deal with. Do your homework.

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That’s a good first step if you choose to pay someone to promote your books. Just don’t miss out on free promotion tools. Are you ready? I’m going to share several ways to promote your books, marketing techniques that won’t cost you a cent.

Fortunately, you could knock out a few of the below steps over a few weekends. I didn’t add this one to the list because it’s not free. But you definitely want to have a sharp official author website. Media contacts will visit your website to learn more about you.

In fact, add your website URL to postcards, magnetic automobile stickers, your email signature and all printed material related to your books. Other steps include:

Marketing Tools to Promote Books Without Spending Money

  • Add a book blog to your official author website – You could use a CMS like WordPress to do this. However, if you do add a blog to your official author website, write and publish a new post to your blog weekly, if not more. Include SEO phrases in blog posts in a natural, easy-to-read way.
  • Schedule podcast interviews – Check directories like Interview Guest Directory (interviewguestsdirectory.com) to find podcast that interview authors for free. Schedule interviews with these podcasts. iTunes, Google Podcasts and Blog Talk Radio are other places that you can look for podcasts to interview on, letting listeners know that you have new books for sale.
  • Get on the radio – Similar to podcasts, reach out to radio stations that interview authors. As a tip, contact DJs who cover topics similar to the topic your book focuses on.
  • Use television – Share content from your nonfiction books with viewers at your local public broadcasting station. Also, reach out to local, regional and national television stations if your book has a holiday theme, relates to current events, etc.

More Tools You Can Use Without Spending Money

Take advantage of author newsletter book ad swaps – Exchange book ads with other authors. For example, you could advertise an author’s book in your newsletter and, in exchange, have that author advertise your book in her or his newsletter. Also:

  • Share book designs on social media – Use free book design services at places like BookBrush (bookbrush.com) and Canva to create designs to share on social media. Post about your books on social media to build your audience of potential book buyers.
  • Work with book directories – Add your book literary directories. This directory has free and paid listings (https://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2014/07/author-directory-sites-the-complete-list)
  • Start a literary video channel – Launch your own author video channel on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Akin to operating a book blog, update your video channel weekly.
  • Launch a literary newsletter – Tools like Constant Contact, MailChimp, Emma and Benchmark make it easy to create and distribute literary newsletters. While these tools aren’t free, they do cut down on the time it takes to create and distribute newsletters. Yet, you can also create a literary newsletter using Word or PowerPoint and distribute manually to your email list for free, but this takes work and more time.
  • HARO (helpareporter.com) – Help a Reporter Out (HARO) list websites and media outlets that are looking for people to interview for articles, etc. Some HARO contacts include books in their catalogs.
  • Search paid book marketing sites – Some paid book marketing sites offer free marketing services. You might have to look for them. For example, BookDoggy (bookdoggy.com) will feature your book in their newsletter and on their website for free. All you have to do is include a BookDoggy ad in your literary newsletter that has 3,000+ subscribers.

Stay Encouraged

Whether you’re marketing books to land on the New York Times bestseller list, Essence top selling books or Amazon bestsellers, you’ll have to invest time. The same applies if you only want to sell a few thousand copies of your book.

The point is to keep introducing your books to new readers. That’s not all. To increase your book sales, you’ll need to keep your book in front of readers who are already familiar with your work. This is when blogging, starting a podcast and creating a literary newsletter can really pay off.

Another way to grow your book sales without spending money is to write new books. In fact, authors with 12 or more books in their catalog tend to sell more books than authors with less than 8 published books. Stay encouraged. Keep advancing. Keep writing!

Success Means Staying Motivated Through Failures

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Staying motivated through failures is a must if you want to experience ongoing success. You’ll need tools and techniques to stay motivated because the path to success is not a straight line. In fact, there are twists and turns so sharp, you might question why you ever believed you could achieve a certain goal.

Clarity as a Prerequisite to Staying Motivated Through Failures

On the other hand, if you’ve already started working your vision, exercised courage and are going after your destiny, you know that failure is part of the success road. However, knowing you’ll make mistakes and face challenges doesn’t make the journey easier. That’s why, to achieve ongoing success, you have to really want what you say you want.

By itself, this clarity makes staying motivated through failures possible. For you, clarity might come after you receive a vision, an inner short-clip-of-sorts, that details what you should do while you’re in this world.

Or you might be inspired to pursue arts, science, entertainment, sports, education, ministry or technology from watching a movie or reading a book. Either way, you’d clearly know, absolutely know, what you came here to do.

Starting Out on the Road to Success

Soon, you’re rolling up your sleeves, perhaps telling family and friends about your success dream. If you’re not careful, you might quit your day job, visions of you racking up sales at your “dream job” filling your imagination.

Sounds so good. Feels great. But, in this world, there are surprises, disappointments, lessons to be learned and setbacks, particularly as you pursue your destiny. For example, you might have a stellar business launch, perhaps attracting the attention of major media outlets, only to have sales arrive so fast that you struggle to fill orders on time.

This is what happened to some booksellers who got press during COVID lockdowns. Book orders came in so fast, it was tough for bookstores to fill the orders, especially considering that mail operated with limited staff due to the virus.

That’s when “success” pivots into setbacks (or failures) and lessons learned. You could circumvent these failures through research. For instance, in this case, as a bookseller you could research contracts with wholesalers who generally fill book orders within 24 hours. You could also research overnight shipping options, shortcutting the time it takes to get books from your store to customers. Even so, there be more unexpected events ahead.

When The Unexpected Happens – Staying Motivated Through Failures

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Besides being unprepared for significant uptick in sales, other failures you could encounter on the success road include:

  • Falling out-of-bounds with industry policies and regulations (being pulled in five or more directions could cause you to lose focus on a policy which could, over time, find you running afoul of regulations)
  • Hiring the wrong staff (do this and you could end up completing projects yourself because the people you hired don’t have the skills to do what you hired them to do)
  • Taking on more than you have the bandwidth to successfully pull off
  • Not generating enough sales to cover your overhead
  • Investing money in marketing and promotion efforts only to go into debt because your sales never match, let alone surpass, marketing and promotion investments
  • Sacrificing sleep to keep creating, marketing and distributing products and services

Staying Motivated Through Failures – How Much Should You Sacrifice for Success

Most of all, you might spend less time with family and friends just so you can pursue your dream. This is like wresting with an addiction. You keep telling yourself that you’ll spend time with your kids, partner or friends in a week, in a month, over the holidays.

You get the point.

Before you know it, your kids are grown and you haven’t spent much time with them (remember the song by Sandy and Harry Chapin – “The Cat’s In The Cradle”) . Another painful failure that you could encounter on the road to success is the delay of what you want happening.

Now, this is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to staying motivated through failures. It’s not easy to stay motivated when you’re working hard, making sizable investments and not getting what you want.

So, what do you do?

Staying Motivated Through Failures on the Road to Success

How can you motivate yourself when little seems to be going right? How can you keep your spirits lifted when, despite your efforts, you keep facing failures?

To start, remember that you’ll never achieve the success you want if you quit. Also, remember that success is never owned. In fact, although success is a choice, it’s not like a coat.

You can’t own and hang success in a closet. So, in addition to remembering that success is never owned, be open to change. After all, what got you success, including quantum success, a year or more ago, may not yield the same results today.

Most of all, remember why you got started. Recall your vision. Revisit your destiny, how and when it came to you. Let that vision, that motivation, lead you.

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Success Choices To Staying Motivated Through Failures

Be persistent; be consistent. On the success road, you must be tenacious. You also have to find ways to stay motivated. Here are actions you could take to keep going when the pull to quit gets strong:

  • Listen to deep meditation tapes to train your brain for success
  • Sharpen your vision so you’re clear on what you need to do to yield the results you want
  • Meditate on success quotes
  • Talk with people who achieved their dream, asking them to share failures they faced and what they did to stay motivated and move beyond those setbacks
  • Join professional groups with memberships that include people with passions similar to yours. Share successes and mistakes. Also, network with these people to learn about new technologies, marketing tools and industry trends that you can use to gain traction.

More Paths to Staying Motivated Through Failures to Achieve Success

  • Read books about success, including books about success principles
  • Write down dreams you have that reveal tips on how you can shortcut the road to success
  • Journal about your feelings, especially during times when you find staying motivated through failures difficult.
  • Create a detailed plan, mapping out actions you will take to get from where you are now to where you want to be
  • Hang pictures of what your life will look like when you fulfill your destiny around your home
  • Complete at least three actions a day that bring you closer to what you want. If you start to feel vulnerable, like giving up, remind yourself why you got started.

Instead of focusing on failures, review your daily actions, making changes as needed. Also, review monthly time and money investments, again making adjustments. Show your inner critic that you are taking smart actions. Prove to yourself that you are setting yourself up to experience ongoing success. After all, success is never owned. You have to keep reaching for it, achieving success, experience after experience. It’s a journey Mulukan, in the story Long Walk Up, is more than familiar with.

How Reading with Children Strengthens Families

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Reading with children strengthens families in ways other bonding activities don’t. Even more, reading, writing and math are subjects that children use throughout their lives, in one form or another. In fact, reading and writing play a major role in one-on-one and group communication. School, work, finances and personal relationships are affected by each of the three subjects. Yet, of the three, reading books is too often limited to the classroom.

Lasting Benefits From Reading Books

You have to use math skills to balance your personal budget, operate a business and ensure you don’t get ripped off while engaging in money exchanges. And, even if you don’t use long hand, you have to use a form of writing (or typing) to communicate via a memo, email, card or letter. It’s hard to stop using writing and math skills.

But finding interesting books to read may be perceived as a “chore” or an activity that’s limited to school. This can happen despite the fact that reading books is a key to lifelong learning. And here’s another benefit of reading, especially parents and caretakers reading with children. Reading books with children can help strengthen families.

Think about the people who you felt a deep connection with as a child. Did any of those people read 2nd grade books or 3rd grade books to you when you were a child? If they did and they enjoyed reading to you, enthusiasm filling their voices, it wouldn’t be shocking to learn that it’s those people who you remember fondly when you look back on your childhood.

Fun Times Reading Books

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I can still see and hear my aunt reading books to my siblings and me. She put so much inflection in her voice, glancing up at us, her eyes expanding with excitement, as she read important parts of a children’s book. Soon, I was strengthening my passion for reading books. To this day, I know that my love of discovering good books to read is rooted in the way that my aunt read to me when I was a kid.

Years later, I passed that same habit of finding great books to read and sharing them with my son. We had so much fun reading stories like the Bernstein Bears series, classic 2nd grade books and standalone novels. Just thinking about those times brings a smile to my face.

Before long, my son was reading books to me. We were growing together. And, perhaps more importantly, we were strengthening our bond.

Reading with Children Strengthens Families – It’s A Great Investment

In fact, the bond between children and parents may strengthen because reading books, even short 2nd grade books and 3rd grade books, takes time. Even more, reading books is a time investment that demonstrates how much someone means to you.

Think about it. Would you sit down and read a book to or with someone you didn’t want to be around?

Furthermore, it takes time to find good books to read. Bring home a new good book to read to or with your child each week and, after awhile, your child may realize that you’re investing time in her or him. Top that off by choosing great, entertaining stories and your child could start looking forward to the times when you sit down together and explore good stories.

How to Encourage Kids to Read Books

If you’re struggling to find ways to get your child to want to read as a start, consider the following actions. Keep trying different techniques. It might surprise you how fast your child goes from having an unwillingness to read to having a passion for reading books.

  • Start reading books to your child early, definitely before your child starts school.
  • Choose fun 2nd grade books (earlier grades if you start reading to your kids before they start school).
  • Read with enthusiasm. Make reading books fun.
  • Ask your child what she thinks about the book’s characters. Also, ask your child what she thinks the story is about and what her favorite parts of the story are.
  • Select a day and time to read books to your child. After all, he’ll come to expect you to invest time to read entertaining stories to him.
  • Make seasoned popcorn before reading books to your child. Snack on the popcorn before or after you finish reading.
  • The following day, ask your child how he enjoyed the book that you recently read.
  • Also, ask your son for suggestions on interesting books to read.

More Way to Encourage Kids to Read Good Books

Another way to encourage your child to read books is to find great books to read when your child’s cousins or friends visit. Even more, take your child to the library and bookstore. To show your child how much you appreciate good books, pick out a few good books for yourself while you’re at the library and bookstore.

If you really want to have fun, wear a hat similar to a hat worn by a book character. That, or you could pull on a cool t-shirt that’s similar to a t-shirt worn by a major character in a popular children’s book. And, let your child dress up. Then, enjoy reading great books together.

Although reading with your children can strengthen your family bond, there are more benefits of reading books. For example, reading is a good way to get some brain exercise. Reading can also help you to relax. Try it.

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Keep Reading Great Books

Read a relaxing book an hour before you head to bed and see if you don’t sleep better. Now, this has to be a relaxing book, not a book that’s going to scare you or keep you up guessing what’s coming next in the story.

Another thing. The more books you read, the easier you may comprehend articles, research material and written policies and procedures. Improved comprehension could shorten the time it takes for you to grasp new skills.

For your child, improved comprehension could shorten the time it takes her to study for exams. Your son or daughter might even start to recognize which parts of a class textbook is most important, helping them to know which sections of a book to focus on.

But the lasting benefits of reading with your child have to do with your child and your relationship. It’s a fun and entertaining investment that says, “I love you.”