By Books Author Denise Turney

What if your life was meant to be a success story? How would you change the script? Would you do a re-edit and start over? Fortunately, and despite what you may think about yourself, there are keys in your hands that can open you up to more success. These keys make you an architect, a builder of your life.

Facing Dissociation to Move Forward Into Success

Whether you realize it now or not, you have a lot of influence in your life. You’re not a character in a play – speaking, believing, and doing what someone else has scripted you to speak, believe or do. Admittedly, it can feel like you’re not calling the shots if you feel like you’re failing or if you engage in dissociation, a defense mechanism.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve experiencing a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity. These conditions include escape from reality in ways that are not wanted and not healthy. This causes problems in managing everyday life.”¹

More About Dissociation

Dissociation could cause you to feel like your life is not your own. You might feel separated from yourself, uncertain of your identity or feel like you’re unable to deal with work or everyday life situations.

Causes of dissociation vary. Very Well Mind shares that, “Ongoing trauma, especially childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and/or neglect is a very significant risk factor for the development of dissociative disorders and is thought to be the root cause in at least 90% of people with these conditions.”²

If you’re struggling with mental health issues, including dissociation, please get help. There are licensed psychotherapist who can spot the symptoms and work with you to help you regain mental balance. Local mental health facilities, online support services, and your primary physician are places you can turn to get mental health support. Depending on where you live, you could also contact organizations like Mental Health America, Mental Illness in Veterans, SAMHSA or NAMI.

You Can Live a Beautiful Life

However, dissociation isn’t the only reason why you may feel like you don’t have the keys to change your life, to create a life that causes you to experience love, joy, and peace. If there’s something you have wanted to do or achieve and, despite how you’ve tried to fulfill the goal you haven’t been able to get what you want, you might feel as if you don’t have enough power to live the life you want.

Should this be the case, you probably manage daily responsibilities, including work, family, paying bills, and enjoying hobbies, well. The struggle may be related to how you perceive or see yourself.

For instance, you might feel happy if you get a good performance review at work, surpass your sales quota, lose weight, break a sports record, get a date with someone you admire, etc. On the other hand, if you gain weight when you are trying to reduce weight, throw an interception seconds before the end of a close game, get turned down for a date, don’t get a job, or lose a client, you might suddenly feel flat or defeated.

Let this continue and you could start to perceive yourself as a failure, as someone who’s unable to build the life you want. This is a time for faith. Regardless of what’s happening, you can exercise faith. You can believe that you were created to live a victorious life.

Believe in Yourself – Success Awaits

Start small. Instead of trying to lose 15 pounds, aim to lose two pounds in a month. Or instead of continuing to push for a current promotion, look to expand your current role in ways that get you increased exposure to leadership, a choice that could put you in line for a promotion within 16 to 18 months. As with other life experiences, small steps add up.

Accept that this is your life. Don’t try to get rid of it or push it away. After all, you can change, pivoting into real success, the type of success that leads to greater inner peace.

Instead of running from yourself, pray and talk with the Creator, seeking guidance. Read scriptures and other writings that illustrate how someone came out of disbelief and achieved a goal that had seemingly remained out of their grasp for years. Whatever you do, don’t stop believing. Don’t stop believing that good can and will come to you.

Build Success Strategies

Develop a strategy to engage in activities that you love. For example, if you want to write a movie script, create a calendar and outline when you will enroll in scriptwriting classes (if that’s the path you want to take). Then, note when you will start the script’s opening scene. Stick to the calendar you create. Seek out a team to hold you accountable if you start missing deadlines.

All the while, allow yourself to receive love, joy, and peace. You deserve it. You’re worth it. Definitely celebrate your successes, including what you perceive to be small successes.

Celebrate Success

Celebrating your achievements is a great motivator. It’s proof that you’re making progress, a sweet fuel that keeps you moving forward.

As you achieve small goals, your confidence may strengthen, allowing you to take on larger goals. Also, rather than running away from larger undertakings, you might seek them out. If you’re fortunate, other people will see your strength, gifts, talents, and passions and create spaces that allow you to work on projects that give your work greater exposure.

Keep going. Acknowledge what you’re doing, expressing appreciation to the Creator and accepting that you are using your life keys well. Journaling is another good step.

Life Keys Serve Life Success

It’s through journaling that you capture your life’s highlights, dreams, challenges, and triumphs. After you’ve been journaling for several years, you can re-read sections of your journals, clearly seeing how you moved through situations that you thought you’d never recover from.

If you set aside time to review your life mid-way through the year and again at the end of the year, you can see how you’ve used your life keys. Should you spot areas that you want to change, pivot, examine yourself, study ways to let go of what you need to release so you can step forward. At the end of it all, you may look back and see how your life really is a success story.

Resources

1. Dissociative disorders – Symptoms and causes – Mayo Clinic
2. PTSD Dissociation: The Links Between Trauma and Dissociation

By Book Author Denise Turney (online at chistell.com)

One person goes wherever you are – YOU. Regardless of your age, background, worldly experiences, financial situation, or educational background, there is and always will be only one person you can be certain will always be with you. To repeat the refrain, that person is YOU. This fact should birth a profound sense of responsibility and power within. Another effect it should have is the surfacing of an acute commitment to make your life a priority.

Self-Care and Childhood Troubles

Oddly, inspiration for this blog post came from a movie. The movie was based on the life of a successful financial trader, a man whose childhood was far too hard, his father seemingly incapable of giving love, his mother too afraid to confront her abusive husband, leaving the child alone to fend for himself.

For her part, the mother dealt with the crisis by pretending that nothing was amiss, as if the abuse was merely part of a fairytale. For this reason, my anger towards the mother ran as deep and as ragged as it did for the father.

Curiosity swelled up within me too. This happened because, on the surface, the leaders at the financial firm, including the financial trader who’d been abused as a child, looked clear, smooth, and clean, a type of perfect many strive for but never achieve.

Care Enough to See What’s Happening

Twenty years in, the financial trader’s troubled past caught up to him, started to reveal itself to others. If only he had learned to love himself. If only we all would love ourselves, not through someone else’s gaze, compliment, gifts, or approval – but from the love that’s always within.

Abide long enough in this world and you’ll see that, despite how hard we may try to prevent it, we’re deeply impacted by what we see, hear, feel, and experience when we’re children and teens. In this way, our parents are like gods.

Then, we grow up and may not be aware that we have every right to re-parent ourselves, that we are not required to suffer or to repeat messages our elders laid upon us that are so clearly wrong and unloving, messages our elders believed and shared even though they had evidence that those messages also had hurt them. Set yourself free of carrying old messaging around, inside your head or depositing the messages inside someone else.

Care Enough to Look After Yourself

This is where you hold court; this is when you have true power. Start right now to care enough to look after yourself.

Change your personal history. In doing so, you can change the lives of those you interact with. Signs you might need to provide yourself with more love and care include:

• Consistent belief that you need to do more to feel worthy
• Comparing yourself to others
• Avoiding discussing childhood or general painful events (i.e., abuse, bankruptcy, depression)
• Focusing on perceived failures
• Engaging in addictive thoughts or behaviors, including gambling, gossiping, overspending or turning to food, beverages, sleeping pills, prescription pills, and/or narcotics to feel “okay”
• Feeling disconnected from your true Self and other people
• Investing in obsessive behavior (as if doing something “enough” times or in a “perfect” way will make everything better or cause you to feel safe)

Of course, there are other signs that you need to care for yourself, that you need to look after yourself. But how do you care for yourself when no one has ever taught you how to do that?

Ways to Care for Yourself

Start small if you must. You might even get a pet, something as easy to care for as a fish or a turtle. Pay attention to how you care for the pet. Afford yourself this same love and affection. If you’re giving love and affection and care to the pet, you know you can give it to yourself. Choose to do so.

Here are more ways to care for yourself. Try to incorporate three or more of these actions into your day. If it’s easier, choose caring actions that only take a few minutes.

• Take 10 deep breaths in the morning
• Shower or enjoy a relaxing bath daily
• Visit a friend
• Invest in a healthy diet
• Exercise for 40 minutes five to six days a week
• Practice yoga (great relaxer)
• Meditate two to 15 minutes a day
• Slow down and relax an hour prior to going to bed
• Fuel yourself with 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep
• Get outdoors in safe areas, enjoying a walk, bike ride, swim, etc.
• Join a support group if you need additional help
• Partner with an ethical, experienced, licensed psychologist if needed
• Write a letter to your younger self, acknowledging how much you have come thru and done
• Forgive yourself
• Forgive others
• Take 10 deep breaths in the evening
• Engage in a hobby
• Create artwork
• Write in a journal
• Listen to soothing music that you love
• Be honest with yourself
• Manage stress by first acknowledging that you feel stress (when you feel stressed)

Your Caring Brilliance Shines

Also, accept that you did not create yourself. Nothing you or anyone else can do or say will change your brilliance. Nothing will change your inherent goodness. Restoration is possible because you did not create yourself.

If you’ve considered a host of possibilities about yourself, consider that love and light created you to mirror and to extend itself. As you care enough to look after yourself, you might discover the courage to journey inward.

During this inner journey, don’t be surprised if you encounter jealousy, frustration, rage, exhaustion, conflict, and confusion – fear offshoots. Don’t stop there. Keep going.

At your core there is only love.

Go find your true Self.

It may take a lifetime, but it’s worth it. You have the courage to take this journey. Seek support, including professional support, if necessary. Above all, start now to care enough to look after yourself.

Trust that what created you loves you, a truth that may not feel like it’s being reinforced, validated, or witnessed to in this world, but is nonetheless true. Even more, early truths that you are loved may likely start with you loving YOU.

By Freelancer and Books Author Denise Turney

Imagine this, you’re walking down the sidewalk, approaching a four-year old with her parents. While you walk, you hear the child ask question after question. “What are those blocks over there?” you overhear the child ask her parents.

“They’re steps,” the mother answers.

“Why do they go down?”

“So, people can get to the shops below the restaurant,” the father says.

“Shops downstairs. Why are they down there?”

Do You Ask Questions

Several feet beyond the family, you hear the child asking more questions. At first, you laugh. Then, you remember how curious you once were. And you wonder why you aren’t equally as curious now.

What you might not know is how advantageous it is to be curious. Topping the list of “curiosity benefits” is the openness to learn. You sure won’t be curious about life experiences, situations or people you think you already know everything about.

Continual learning is just one of the benefits associated with being curious. Discovering the cause of physical, emotional or mental unrest is another benefit. Become curious and, instead of assuming that you know why you’re coughing or why you’ve been feeling tired for hours a day, you’ll start exploring the cause.

Considering the above example, you might retrace your steps, looking for dietary or lifestyle changes that might have ignited the coughing or fatigue. Even more, without spending a dime, you might reverse those changes and monitor how you respond.

Save Time, Save Money

Just one instance of this could save you years of professional research, not to mention medical bills. Pay attention and you could spot patterns and cycles that you make for yourself. For example, if you’re curious enough, you might notice that you gain 10 to 15 pounds each winter, only to drop the extra weight during late spring and summer.

Decide not to gain weight and you’ll know to become more aware of what you eat and drink and how much you move your body during days when there’s less sunlight. As you can see, advantages associated with being curious can set off dominoes, going from one good thing to another.

What Being Curious Could Gain You

Like the little girl asking her parents about steps, once you become curious, your openness to understand strengthens. More advantages gained from being curious include:

• Happier more open mood
• Improved energy flow
• Increased ability to emphasize
• Mental breakthroughs
• Better relationships
• More effective communication skills
• Active versus a passive mind
• Flow of new, exciting ideas
• Ability to spot good opportunities

Harvard Business Publishing shares that, in response to a PwC survey, “Alan D. Wilson, then CEO of McCormick & Company, responded that those who “are always expanding their perspective and what they know – and have that natural curiosity – are the people that are going to be successful.’”¹

You Don’t Know Everything

If you’re looking for easy ways to become more curious, accept that you don’t consciously know everything about anything. As a start, how many lines are going vertically and horizontally across your hands? How many specks of dirt are on the earth within a quarter mile of where you live, speck by speck?

You’ve walked around with your hands for years and probably don’t know how many lines are on your hands. Somehow that answer is right in front of you. Yet, you may not once have become curious enough to explore it.

How To Become Curious

Therefore, accept that you don’t know everything about anything. It’s a good way to welcome curiosity. Just like you did when you were a child, ask questions. Now that you’re an adult, you can ask questions without fearing that you’ll be rebuked for being too curious. Other ways to stay curious include:

• Appreciate what you see and experience
• Accept that things don’t have to repeat
• Explore when you start to feel bored
• Make learning fun, turn it into a game
• Visit museums
• Read diverse books written by authors from diverse backgrounds

The Centre for Educational Neuroscience shares that we learn the most between birth and three years.² Not a surprise when you consider those are the years when we are very curious.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to stop letting curiosity spark exploration, failures and ongoing learning. Who knows? A part of you might be very open to become curious like the girl mentioned at the start of this article.

Explore! Have Fun!

Even if people don’t answer your questions, you can explore and get answers from the environment. What you might not do is become bored, stuck or jaded. Instead of thinking that there’s nothing new to experience, you might stir an interest to travel, visit new countries and introduce yourself to different cultures.

Life might take on a brighter hue, all because you became curious in safe ways. As you ask questions, people might recognize that you don’t think you know it all. They also might enjoy engaging with you in conversation, potentially building a bridge to better relationships. This is what happens to the girl named Rosetta as she realizes there’s so much more for her to learn!

Other life skills that kids teach that build and strengthen relationships include teamwork, engagement through fun, conflict resolution and using play to build friendships. Tenacity is another life skill that kids teach. You can learn more about this with your kids in Rosetta The Talent Show Queen.

Yet, building life skills often starts with curiosity. It’s no secret that kids can ask the same question repeatedly until they feel they’ve received a sincere answer. Although they face challenges and disappointment, kids will keep going until they achieve a desired result. They teach other and adults countless and different way to approach life.

Resources:

1. The Importance Of Being Curious – Harvard Business Publishing
2. Most learning happens in the first 3 years | Centre for Educational Neuroscience

By Books Author Denise Turney

As sweet as dreams are, it takes more than a dream to be a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs must have vision, tenacity, hope, agility, flexibility, endurance, and heroic determination. They must truly believe in what they want to do. If there’s doubt, the doubt cannot be prolonged. In a nutshell, successful entrepreneurs must have more than a dream, a lot more.

How Entrepreneurs Succeed from Within

Here are 10 must haves if you’re eager to create a rewarding life as an entrepreneur. See how many you already possess. Identify which of these must haves you’d do well to work on obtaining.

Clarity – Who doesn’t want to succeed? Regardless of your childhood programming, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that you don’t set out to fail. Yet, as notable as the desire to succeed is, it’s not enough to see you across the finish line. You need clarity, a strikingly clear vision of what you want to achieve. All the better if the vision surfaces to your consciousness from deep within you. The clearer your vision — your goal — the more motivating the vision or goal can be. The less clear the goal, the easier it is to get sidetracked, confused, and frustrated. Write about your goal. Listen to music that aligns with what you want to achieve. Sit still and meditate if you must. Just move forward with clarity.

Hope – Can a dream exist absent hope? That may be impossible. But you can’t just have hope at the start of a dream. No. Hope must remain. It must be there during the most painful challenges and setbacks. There must be hope even when you’re thinking about throwing in the towel. Like a riverbed, despite how your business, products, or services go, there must be hope.

Want to Entrepreneurial Winnings? You’ve Got to Believe

If you don’t believe in yourself or think that you don’t deserve goodness, it’ll be hard to succeed. And even if you do succeed, that success might be short lived if you don’t have the following two elements.

Faith – Call it trust, if you must. Just don’t move forward without faith (or trust). Should you get off to a victorious start, pulling in record sales and profits, if you want longevity as a successful entrepreneur, you’ll need faith. Why? A wealth of analytics, combined with a team of skilled analysts, won’t eliminate dark spots. Numbers and data won’t save you from experiences when you don’t know what to do now or next. That’s when the only element that will keep you advancing is faith.

Commitment – Entrepreneurs do what they do because they love what they do. Loving what they do allows them to be committed to their goals. It’s what keeps them committed to enduring success. Commitment fuels entrepreneurs’ efforts to continue developing new, improved products and services. Fortunately, consumers can spot commitment. When they do pick up that a business owner is committed to what they’re doing – offering the public – consumers respect the people behind the business, the developers of products and services that they, consumers, enjoy and support.

Successful Entrepreneurs Build Smart Teams

Although relationships might seem like an external element, they aren’t. Healthy, rewarding relationships are built from the love, care, and thoughtfulness that’s within you. Soon you’ll see how important relationships and courage are to your success.

Relationships – What is life without relationships? To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to establish smart relationships. At the start of your career, you might attend three to four networking events a week, building smart relationships. Later in your career, you might peel back on attending networking events but not to the point where you attend less than a large networking event once a month. However, you don’t stop at building relationships. You invest time in nurturing existing relationships, and not just with customers, but with family and friends too.

Courage – Introverted or extroverted, successful entrepreneurs are bold. If they feel fear, they don’t let it stop them. Yes. Rather than stop, they stir up courage and press forward. Admittedly, it’s not always easy to access courage, especially if you’ve been overcome with worry for several weeks. For you, accessing courage might require prayer, meditation, walking in nature, blessings counting, listening to deep success tapes, journaling, and dare I say it – faith.

Supporting Successful Entrepreneurs

Although entrepreneurs might spend a lot of time alone, to achieve their goals, they build smart teams. They bounce ideas off team members, seeking insight, feedback, and advice. Another thing they do is to sharpen their imagination, the heart of creative endeavors. Check out the below on support and imagination.

Imagination – At the core of product and service development is creativity, and at the heart of creativity is imagination. Build imagination by opening your mind and allowing ideas to surface without judging or silencing them. Writing in a journal is another effective way to strengthen your imagination. Let your inner child have fun. That decision could fuel the creation of more products and services, developments that keep you in the consumer mind, developments that keep increasing your sales and profits.

Support – Akin to relationships, to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need support. You must have support. No one achieves lasting or enduring success alone. Accept emotional and psychological support from family and friends. Avoid digging so deep into your work that you end up pushing people away. Also, support others. After all, to have friends you must be a friend. That shared, support may also come from other business owners. These people know firsthand about challenges you face. They’re familiar with the ups and downs of starting and running your own business. Because of this, they can be among your greatest supporters.

Determination is an Entrepreneur’s Friend

Without determination, you could fold when life in this world gets hard. Yet, determination by itself is not sufficient. Want to build a successful career, read the following on the importance of valuing your health and living a determined life.

Health – Managing a business, including a solopreneur organization, takes energy. Gaining and maintaining good health requires you to make good food, beverage, sleep, and exercise decisions. Therefore, you need to set strong love-based boundaries to avoid slipping into workaholism. Love-based boundaries also keep you away from getting out of balance.

Determination – It’s going to take strong determination to have enduring success. You must be determined to win to get your dreams over the top and keep them above the bar. Blend the above elements and you may discover that you’re more determined than you think.

Regardless of where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, to experience continued success, you’ll need to get to know yourself better. Keep digging within. Love yourself and give yourself permission to awaken. Working with journals, prompts that support your inner explorations, and writings that prompt you toward deeper thought, may also prove helpful. Do the work, gain the above elements, and celebrate and enjoy your success!

By Fiction Books Writer Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

It’s been said that you might procrastinate, put off pursuing goals, because you fear making a mistake. In a way, that makes sense. Should you have met punishment, ridicule or judgment in the past after someone discovered that you’d made a mistake, it makes sense that you might want to avoid making a mistake.

Achieving Your Goals

What is more difficult to understand is why you’d avoid doing what you really want to do, especially considering that you could start making smart efforts in that passion field in private. For example, no one has to know that you’re painting, playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing, writing, fishing or woodcutting for the first time.

Yet, even with the chances to make mistakes in private, you might still delay achieving a greater good or even stepping into your destiny. Just as with procrastination, you might think about, daydream about and even talk to others about what you really want to do. The thing you won’t do is get around to actually doing what you most want to do.

This is in regard to love-based good works that you absolutely know is what you came to this world to do. Why do you keep putting it off?

Perhaps you believe that you’ll always have time to do what you want to do. So, you keep pushing getting started into the future. Or you might equate thinking about, fantasizing about and talking about doing this work with actually achieving your goal.

Takes More Than Imagination

Depending on the strength in your imagination, you might feel similar emotions while just daydreaming about doing the thing that you’d feel if you actually did it. What you won’t do is leave the effects of your good work, your creative arts, you social good, etc. for others to benefit from.

After all, dreams and fantasizes are private. Even if you talk about dreams with others, another person can’t experience your dreams the way you do. In other words, you really do have to do the work. And, if you don’t, you could leave a gap. Who knows? The world might be waiting for you to achieve what you came into this world to achieve.

Whether you’re willing to accept it now or not, time is running out. Even as an eternal being, you won’t be in your body forever. You simply don’t have forever to do what you came here to do. Time is running out.

Powerful Motivation

Instead of choosing to accept that fact with fear, be encouraged. Let the fact serve as powerful motivation. Start taking actions to do the good that you came here to do. Research, but don’t stop at researching. Talk to others who’ve done what you want to do or who have done similar things, but don’t stop at talking to those with experience.

Set a day and a time when you are going to take smart action. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Just do it!

Those early attempts might fall flat. When I look back over my early writings, I’m talking work I’ve never published – yikes! I still have a long way to go, but I am so much better – beyond words better than I was when I started. To this day, it moves me deeply when readers approach me and tell me how much a book I wrote touched them, helping some to make life changes. That wouldn’t have happened had I not gotten started and kept at it.

What about you? Are you doing what you truly want to do, what you know you came here to do? If not, why not?

Go For It

Look for ways to encourage yourself. Read stories about other people who failed and made mistakes and failed and kept trying until they hit the bullseye. They really are no different than you from the standpoint that they too are human.

Encouraging you to go for it! Time really is running out.

By Fiction & Non-Fiction Books Author Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

My love for reading books started when I was a kid. Back then, I easily read through stacks of books a week. Reading fueled my imagination, making it easier for me to envision myself in different environments and scenarios. It didn’t matter that my family wasn’t financially wealthy.

What an Imagination!

Strength in my imagination let me know that I wasn’t stuck. If I wanted, I could use my mind to make decisions that would change my life.

This might be one of the greatest benefits of investing in a lifetime of book reading. A lifetime of options, new ways of looking at life experiences, real-life success stories, thoroughly researched material that gives insight on important events, and first-person payoffs linking resilience and success are a few gains I got from years of book reading.

After I entered adulthood, I discovered that there are even more reasons why you might want to invest in a lifetime of book reading. For starters, it was surprising to learn that reading books supports brain health. About this, Healthline shares that, “Using MRS scans, researchers have confirmed that reading involves a complex network of circuits and signals in the brain. As your reading ability matures, those networks also get stronger and more sophisticated.”¹

Reading Books Offers Benefits

Who knew something as fun as reading could offer so many benefits?

If that’s not enough reason to invest in a lifetime of book reading, check out these additional benefits that are gained from reading books. The ability to empathize is a benefit that the world is in dire need of. People might be more understanding, patient, forgiving, and caring if they felt more deeply connected to others.

Reading and becoming emotionally connected to book characters can help open the pathway to achieving that. Characters in a good book can help you see how childhood programming, hidden motivations, fears, hopes, trust, and beliefs, including erroneous beliefs, lead someone to feel, talk, and behave the way that they do.

Multi-faceted novel characters also give you a close-up view of how people can and do change, experience by experience. That alone could build communication and understanding bridges.

Book Reading Lifetime

Although the above reasons offer a wealth of pros, there’s more. Check out these below reasons why you might want to invest in a lifetime of book reading:

Stress reduction – Simply sitting down and reading a book could help your stress levels to lower.² It’s a reason why some adults read one or more chapters in a favorite book before they go to bed.

Improved critical thinking – This ties into how reading can strengthen understanding. The more you read and gather information, the sharper your thinking may become.

Healthy self-care – Because reading can help reduce stress, it’s a loving act of self-care. “Today” puts it this way, “when you read a book, your brain comes up with images to accompany what you’re reading about, engaging your creative mind while helping you relax at the same time.”³

Rest – While reading books, you can gain “real” rest. As your mind focuses on what is happening in a book, particularly a novel you love, your focus shifts from cares of the day to what’s happening to characters in the book.

Lively discussion – Join a book club and you can engage in lively discussions about the latest book that you read. And although this isn’t specific to book reading, when you join and participate in a book club, you may also build marvelous friendships.

Making Book Reading Investments

Fortunately, unlike watching television, streaming a show on your tablet, going to a concert or sports event, your brain can get more healthy exercise while you read a book. Even more, you don’t have to take college courses or study to make stellar grades in high school to learn while reading. If you enjoy reading historical fiction, there’s a lot you could learn before you reach the book’s last page.

But don’t just take my word. Try it. Start reading a novel that has a theme you like. Notice how you feel. If you read a nonfiction book, take note of what you learn.

Should you be like a lot of book lovers, you might start to feel better moments after entering a bookstore or library. No joke. You also might feel less alone. Who knows? After a few years of book reading, you might even become a storyteller, also known as a novel writer, yourself.

First, you must make this good investment. It’s an investment that could pay off for years and years.

Resources:

1. Benefits of Reading Books: For Your Physical and Mental Health (healthline.com)
2. Reading Books: Benefits for Mind and Body (webmd.com)
3. 10 Benefits Of Reading Books Backed By Science And Psychology (today.com)

By Books Author Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

Success is an experience that you should have. After all, you weren’t created to suffer. You were created to thrive, live in joy and peace and to succeed. Yet, if you’re not living a successful life, something is blocking you. The key is to discover what’s blocking your success. But how do you do that?

To begin, get clear about what you think success is. Why is this important?

What You’re Striving For

If you’re not clear about what you’re striving for, you may never know if you achieved your goal. Depending on your childhood programming, life experiences, and perceptions, you might think that success is having a lot of money. Or you might think that success is feeling powerful, with the ability to order people around, watching them adhere to your commands.

Owning luxury possessions, frequently traveling abroad, dating influencers, and earning graduate degrees are other ways that you might define success. Surprisingly, some of the world’s wealthiest achievers do not focus on money when they define success.

Define Your Personal Success

Mark Cuban is quoted in Business Insider as sharing that, “To me, the definition of success is waking up in the morning with a smile on your face, knowing it’s going to be a great day.” Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, shares that he measures “success by how many people love me.”¹

On the other hand, poet, author and actress Maya Angelou shared that, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”¹ Working hard, doing work you love, helping others, and following your inner guide or higher self are other ways that wealthy achievers define success.

Counter this with leading goals many people have. Among these winning goals there’s the goal to lose weight and to break free from procrastination as reported by Psychology Today.² Additionally, life is meaningful to many people if they have a happy, loving family.

So Many Success Definitions

Working a job you love, being materially stable, and having good mental and physical health are other ways that people find meaning in life according to Pew Research.³ The range of success definitions is broad.

On top of that, only you know what makes you feel successful. As simple as it may seem, it’s very important that you get clear about what success means to you. For instance, if you believe that success is having millions or billions of dollars and you gain this financial status only to feel unfulfilled, sad or depressed, you could feel traumatized and confused, even as you look at your hefty bank account.

This has happened to far too many people. Celebrities and business leaders aren’t the only people who pursued “success”, achieved “success goals” and found themselves feeling empty. Don’t let this happen to you.

Uncover What Success Means To You

Sit down, pull out a notebook, and describe the life you think will cause you to feel satisfied, happy, loved, and peaceful. Think about what causes you to feel fulfilled, truly fulfilled. Include that in your success definition. Also, write down what you believe must happen for you to think and feel that you are successful.

For example, do you believe that you must sell enough books to land on the New York Times bestseller list five or more times, launch a multi-billion-dollar business or lose 30 pounds to be a success? Or do you believe that you must earn a doctorate degree, land a political position, raise happy, responsible children or discover a medical cure to achieve success?

What You Must Do To Achieve Success

Take your time thinking about and writing down what you believe you must do to achieve success. As a reminder, include what causes you to feel fulfilled, truly fulfilled. Leave out the latter, and you may feel that your success is being blocked when it isn’t (even after you’ve achieved a lot).

Next, write down specific actions you could take to gain this experience, not once but over the long term. Aim to list more than 100 actions that you could take to achieve your success goals. Why?

Despite your best efforts, there will be setbacks. Not every action you take will yield good fruit. Building out a wealth of actions can keep you motivated, focused, and free of ongoing frustration. When one action doesn’t produce the result you want, you’ll have another action to implement.

Removing Success Blocks

To remove success blocks, you’ll also have to take an honest look at yourself. For starters, do you honestly believe that you deserve to be successful? If not, why not?

And how do you think success would change you or change your lifestyle? Do you think that success would alter your identity? How?

Even more, if you achieved success do you think that you would become like other successful people who lost their way? Search your mind deeply, thoroughly, for answers to these questions.  What you discover during the search might surprise you.

It might surprise you to discover that you’re afraid of success because you believe you’d fall into an addiction, become rude and obnoxious, get stalked or become unable to trust family or friends, experiences that have happened to others but that don’t have to happen to you. That’s right.

You Deserve Success

You do not have to relive or repeat anyone else’s life experiences. That includes your parents’ and other ancestors. There is no requirement to repeat their experiences unless you choose to do so. More importantly, you don’t have to live above or beneath the level you perceived your parents as having lived at.

This is your life. Your parents and ancestors, everyone, has been gifted with a life to create or develop as they desire. Talk about a gift! Give yourself permission to partner with the Creator to design a life that will open you up to love, light, peace, joy, and success. You deserve to live a good life. You really do.  

Resources:

1. How Rich, Successful, Powerful People Define Success – Business Insider
2. What Are the Most Popular Goals in the World? | Psychology Today
3. What Makes Life Meaningful? Views From 17 Advanced Economies | Pew Research Center

By Books Writer Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

What’s in your toolbox when it comes to easy ways to reduce and eliminate stress? Do you feel like a hostage to worry? Whether you realize it or not, there are ways to release stress. There are ways to enter peace despite how hectic the world appears.

What Causes Stress

Few of these actions require a dime. Admittedly, the more stress elimination tools you gain, the better. Apply one or more tools early and you could shift from living with mild to chronic worry everyday to experiencing a growing inner peace. But why does stress show up?

Stress shows up for a myriad of reasons. Even more, you could find yourself struggling with stress at any point in your life. Back to stress reasons or causes – Job demands, relationships, finances, political conflicts, parenting, and health concerns are just a few key players when it comes to stress causes. But they aren’t alone.

Dealing with a school or workplace bully, dread about seeing a relative you don’t like at an upcoming family reunion, and concern that a neighbor’s pet has it out for you are other reasons why you could feel stressed. If you’re working a full-time job, you’ve already faced and managed your way through stress (e.g., connecting with friends, engaging in a hobby).

Stress Reducers That Are Already Working for You

So, you already have at least one de-stressor in your toolbox. To add another de-stressor to your toolbox, revisit your childhood. Think back to a time when you found yourself worrying, really worrying. It might have been about an upcoming school exam, a kid who picked on you, or a book report you had to deliver in front of the entire class. (As a kid, speaking in front of a classroom used to scare the wits out of me.)

How long did you feel uncomfortable before you realized what was happening, that you were stressing yourself? What were the first thoughts, including solution ideas, that popped into your mind? Finally, what did you end up doing to reduce or eliminate the stress?

For example, did you talk with a friend or relative about what you were afraid of dealing with? Did you read and meditate on scripture and pray? Or did you write in a journal or speak with the person related to the stress and work out a positive solution?

Hopefully — and although it might look easy at first glance – you didn’t decide to carry the stress. If so, you could still be dealing with the stress, allowing it to show up in different ways.

Easy Wasy to Release Stress

On the other hand, if you found a positive way to release stress, write the action down. It’s a part of your mental wellbeing toolbox.

Here are more easy ways to release stress while living in this hectic world. Consider trying one or more of the ways the next time you start to feel tense:

• Diet – This one may come as a surprise. However, studies show that there may be a link between diet and mood. As shared in Very Well Mind, Kaleigh McMordie, a registered dietician, says that “There is evidence that diet affects mood, including depression and anxiety, as well as our body’s stress response.” Additionally, in a 2021 study, the study participants “who ate at least 470 grams of fruit and vegetables daily had 10% lower stress levels than those who consumed less than 230 grams.”³
• Self-Awareness – It’s hard, if it’s even possible, to beat self-awareness when it comes to spotting, stopping, and releasing stress. Get to know yourself. Tips to strengthen self-awareness include writing in a journal, walking in nature in safe areas, and being honest about what you are feeling and thinking. You don’t have to act on what you’re thinking or feeling, but it’s incredibly beneficial to be aware of (and honest) about what you’re thinking and feeling.
• Pray – Communicate with the Creator. Do this regularly, throughout the day, and your trust level (trust that you can deal with whatever comes your way) may rise.

More About Self-Awareness, Stress and Peace

As noted, self-awareness is key when it comes to spotting and releasing stress. After all, self-awareness can alert you to what causes you to become stressed. Reach this point and you could become aware of what to steer free of.

Check out these easy ways to release stress. See which ones you could easily incorporate in your life:

• Sleep – Create a routine of retiring to bed around the same time at night. Turn off electronics (e.g., cell phones, TVs) before you climb into bed. To sleep better, make sure the temperature in your home is comfortable.  Also, start to wind down an hour before bedtime.
• Exercise – Get outside in safe areas. Move your body. Taking a walk, going for a jog, riding a bike, or swimming are great forms of exercise. Exercising outside allows your body to soak up vitamin D. And light from the sun helps the body release endorphins, natural mood lifters and stress reducers.
• Positive Affirmations – Repeating positive affirmations and posting one or more positive affirmations in your home and at your workplace can keep your thoughts focused on hopeful, encouraging, and loving events and situations.
• Music – Listen to music you appreciate and enjoy, music that lifts your mood and generates peaceful feelings within you.
• Soak – Enjoy taking a relaxing and warm bubble bath.

Let Go of Stress, Welcome Peace

Even more ways to release stress follow. You might do one of these actions already which is very good:

• Meditate – Although you could sit on a mat and focus on your breathing, it’s not necessary. Another thing you don’t have to do to meditate is to empty your mind of all thoughts. If you’re new to meditating, simply sit and watch your thoughts pass as if you’re merely watching clouds float by. As you become aware of your thoughts, you could say, “I seem to be thinking about paying the mortgage.” or “I seem to be thinking about a project at work.”
• Talk with a Friend – Visit or call a friend or a close relative. Simply talk with them about what’s troubling you. Be willing to listen to your friend or relative when they share something that’s troubling them too.
• Yoga – Practice two to three yoga moves for 10 to 15 minutes. See if you don’t start to feel better.
• Sing – Make your own music by singing a song you made up or recently heard on the radio that you’re digging.
• Dance – Yes; dance!
• Read a Book – This one has worked for me more times than I can count. Getting caught up in an entertaining story that also relaxes you can do wonders for your mood, not to mention help you sleep better.

Don’t Go It Alone; Say Good-bye to Stress

Socializing with friends, relatives, colleagues, and neighbors is another good stress reducer and eliminator. If you’re shy like I was (I was painfully shy years ago), take small steps. But start getting out with people who truly love and care about you.

For instance, you could go to the movies, bowling, fishing, hiking, visiting museums or to arts events with family and friends. Joining a book club, traveling, spending time at the beach, and watching uplifting TV shows can also reduce stress.

Whatever you do to release stress as you navigate a hectic world, don’t accept that you have no choice but to hang onto stress. Why? Stress doesn’t generally go away on its own.

How Stress Loves Bad Company

In fact, and unfortunately, stress has not lowered during 2024. Some studies show that the numbers of people reporting that they are stressed has increased. The American Psychiatric Association shares that, “In 2024, 43% of adults say they feel more anxious than they did the previous year, up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022.”¹

Furthermore, Forbes shares that, “Compared to other countries, 2022 data from Gallup shows that Afghanistan currently has the highest reported stress level at 68%— the U.S. is not too far behind at 53%.”² Akin to other issues, stress doesn’t hang out alone.

Let stress build and hang around too long and you could develop headaches, achy joints, trouble sleeping, and high blood pressure. Ulcers, moodiness, problems focusing or concentrating, and inflammation are other issues linked to prolonged stress.

Shift Out of Stress into Peace

Hence, the importance of practicing stress reducers and eliminators. See if you can catch yourself early. As soon as you notice that you’re becoming tense, reach in your toolbox and put a positive stress reducer or stress eliminator into action. Avoid engaging in unhealthy habits like smoking, drinking caffeine and alcohol, and sleeping all day.

Should you still be wrestling with stress, even after implementing several stress elimination actions, consider speaking with a licensed, experienced, and ethical psychologist.⁴ You are too important to allow suffering to become “normal” for you. Take care of yourself. Love yourself. You may find it helpful to journal about your day, releasing stressors as you express yourself honestly in a journal.

Try Looking at the Stressor Differently

Look at what you are allowing yourself to enter into a stressful state differently. Try asking yourself questions about the situation. Sample questions include: Is the conversation going to go as negatively as I keep trying to convince myself that it will? Could I be happily surprised at the outcome? Have I always been right when I’ve worked hard to predict how a future event would go?

When has a future event not gone “exactly” as I had tried to convince and worry myself that it would go? Am I partly trying to force myself into a stressful state because I am afraid of being wrong? Then, encourage yourself that it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to think a conversation, relationship, work project, arts production or situation is going to go one way and then be surprised when it turns out differently.

Personally, there have been countless times when I thought a situation was going to blow up and it didn’t. And there have been times when I thought someone hated me only to discover that they care about me. So, try to look at the stressor differently. That alone might open you up to peace.

Here’s to you and how amazing you truly are.

Resources:

1. Psychiatry.org – American Adults Express Increasing Anxiousness in Annual Poll; Stress and Sleep are Key Factors Imp
2. Stress Statistics And Facts In 2024 – Forbes Health
3. What You Eat Can Directly Impact Stress and Anxiety, Research Shows (verywellmind.com)
4. Stress relievers: Tips to tame stress – Mayo Clinic

By Self-Help Books Author Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

Journaling can yield deeper personal understanding, peace, reduced anxiety, and improved mental clarity. The benefits appear so simply that, if you’re not paying attention, you could miss how much you’ve gained from journal writing. This may be what happened to me.

Journaling in a Diary

When I was a kid, I started writing in a diary. Back then, it seemed as if diary writing went hand-in-hand with being a young girl. My paternal grandmother might have been the first person to give me a diary. Straightaway I started writing about crushes I had, TV shows, and fun I’d had playing outside with my siblings and friends.

Later, I wrote about track races I trained for and competed in.  Looking back, I wish that I had continued writing in a diary and, even more, that I’d had kept the writings. If I had, I would have insight into my childhood that is more accurate than memory.

Fortunately, a colleague would give me a set of journals for Christmas years later. That’s when I started journaling with intent and commitment. Because I’d been given the journals as a gift, I told myself that I had to write in them.

Benefits Gained from Journaling

More than 20 years later, I’ve filled in well over 25 blank journals. Dreams, challenges, life changes, vacation experiences, and relationships have been written about in my journals. More than filling out blank journals, I’ve gained far reaching benefits. Among these benefits, there’s:

• Insight into what’s coming (this has often come through writing down dreams)
• Ability to express uncomfortable emotions (e.g., fear, jealousy, anger) without blowing up on anyone
• Opportunity to record personal history (this single act can help me to spot harmful habits, behavioral or thought-based, and start to work to release the habits)
• Strengthen my writing skills
• Improve self-confidence which, in turn, improves communication skills and personal relationships

You could tap into these and other benefits too. According to Healthline, journaling helps you to understand your needs. Other benefits include lowering stress and improving the perception you hold of yourself.¹

Journaling and Depression

Psychology Today shares that regularly writing could help to keep depression at bay.² If you’re seeking to stabilize emotions, writing in a journal might pay off. As you continue to write openly and in freestyle fashion, your creative juices might also start to flow.

Once this happens, ideas about a new novel, photography project, crafts assignment, or communication strategy may surface. Here are more advantages that you could gain after you start writing in a journal regularly:

• Improve your memory – Psychology Today shares, “Keeping a diary can help improve your memory, as you can reflect on past experiences and remember details that may have been forgotten. Writing stories down can facilitate memory and serve as a reminder of the meaningful things that happen in your life.”²
• Manage mental health – Writing challenges and concerns down is an effective way to release worries. Once you get what’s been worrying you into your journal, you no longer need to keep the experience “secret”. This doesn’t mean that you tell anyone else what you’ve experienced or what you’ve been thinking. It means that you’ve freed yourself from suppressing the experience in your own mind.
• Increased energy – The former benefit raises another plus. After you free yourself from the effort of suppressing, you can access the energy that you’d been using to keep the worry “hidden” and use that energy to do love-based work.

Linking Hints About the Future to Journal Writing

Since thinking and action require energy, writing in a journal to give yourself access to increased energy is a far-reaching benefit. In turn, access to increased energy could give you a motivational boost.

Even if you don’t become keenly aware of the benefits gained from journaling, as you continue writing in a journal, you can consciously or unconsciously spot positive shifts in yourself. On the other hand, if you’re in the habit of practicing self-awareness, there’s a strong likelihood that you will link certain benefits with journaling.

Should you receive prophetic dreams, visions or strong intuitive guidance, writing these experiences in your journal could provide clues to what’s coming next. For instance, you might notice that one or more dream symbols (e.g., a specific animal, plant, word) appear in your dreams weeks before a job change, residential move, or relationship shift.

What About Trauma and Journaling?

There may be no way to fully tell you how advantageous journaling is. Not only might you gain clues to coming events, as you look back over prior journal entries, you may come to understand yourself more fully.

Psych Central also shares that journaling could help you move through trauma. More specifically, Psych Central reports that, “a 2015 research paper explains that consistent expressive writing may help reduce PTSD symptoms. It also suggests that writing at length about a traumatic or stressful event can help manage PTSD symptoms.”³

However, if you do use journaling to work process through trauma, consider reaching out to an experienced, licensed, and ethical therapist, especially if the journal writing proves to be triggering. After all, the point of journaling is to heal and become more fully aware of the “real” you.

Types of Writing Journals

Although we’ve shared numerous journaling benefits, you might discover more advantages linked to journaling. If you’re wondering how to get started with journaling, the process is simple. All you need to do is get a blank journal. You might use a digital journal. Should you choose a digital journal, remember that you could lose what you’ve written if the electronic device you journal with breaks permanently.

Yet, in today’s electronic world, a digital journal could prove to be a great fit for you. Retailers, bookstores, and crafters design and sell blank paper journals. These blank-page journals are designed with brilliant, clever, and beautiful covers.

Consider choosing a journal with a cover that inspires, encourages, and motivates you to keep writing in the journal and that also inspires you to continue to practice self-awareness, share love, and awaken. Next, determine how often you’re going to write in your journal.

Getting Started with Journaling

For example, are you going to journal daily or weekly? Or are you going to write in your journal after you have a dream or while you’re working through a difficult shift?

As a tip, the more you write in your journal, the more you may capture what you’ve been thinking, feeling, and experiencing. Again, it’s a combination of these three that can help you come to know your authentic self more fully.

Try it! See if you spot positive inner growth after you’ve been journaling for several weeks or for several months. Also, if you do write your dreams in a journal, don’t be surprised if you start remembering your dreams (and in greater detail) more frequently. It’s a great way to know what your subconscious mind is focusing on! It’s a great way to begin to heal.

Resources:

1. 15 Benefits of Journaling and Tips for Getting Started (healthline.com)
2. 10 Good Reasons to Keep a Journal | Psychology Today
3. The Mental Health Benefits of Journaling | Psych Central

By Motivational Speaker and Books Writer Denise Turney (www.chistell.com)

Image by 성원 조 from Pixabay

Each day offers you the opportunity to receive a miracle. Don’t think so? You might be overlooking the good that’s nearby. Here’s an example in the form of a question. When’s the last time that you saw your nose?

In Your Face

Now, this is not to demonstrate that being aware of your nose is a miracle. Instead, it’s to show that there are fortunate happenings right in front of you that you don’t notice or pay attention to. Furthermore, not only might you overlook miracles, you could take a blessing for granted.

Check out these everyday miracles that you might be overlooking. If you don’t overlook these fortunate experiences, you might diminish their worth, seeing them as ordinary or expected events.

• The right name popping into your mind seconds after you try to recall the name of a friend, neighbor or relative you haven’t seen or spoken to in years
• A friend calling or visiting you within seconds of you deciding to give up and their telephone call or visit serving as the event that led you down a fulfilling life path
• Agreeing to take a later flight to accommodate an overbooking and receiving a free airline ticket that you have up to a year to use.
• Speedy recovery following an accident or injury
• Clear signs that you will benefit from resting and enjoying life instead of pushing yourself to complete another work project
• Dreams that offer guidance on what you should do now to advance on your life’s journey
• Genuine smiles and care that you receive from friends, family, colleagues and strangers
• Your favorite song suddenly playing on the radio just when a pang of hopelessness came over you

Sharpen Up

Clearly, just because you don’t notice them, that doesn’t mean that miracles aren’t popping up around you. Therefore, as a first step to open to more success and greater good, sharpen your awareness. Here’s a way to do that within seconds.

• Count three events, sounds or scents at your living space each morning
• Walk through your living space and count each light source, including windows
• Pay attention to how often plants or pets thrive while they are with you and vice versa
• Become aware of how many different foods and beverages your body digest absent discomfort every day

Another way to sharpen your awareness is to listen to the sound of a speaker’s voice, picking up the slightest inflection. It also helps to actually listen to people while they speak with you. Even if someone tends to repeat a phrase, when you actively listen to that person, you might hear what they are saying for the first time.

Check Your Miracle Beliefs

In addition to sharpening your awareness, to open to more success and greater good, check your beliefs. For instance, these beliefs could make the path to opening to success challenging. If you believe that you must work hard or long hours to receive success, this could lay out a hard road (something that isn’t necessary).

Also, if you believe that you have to do everything yourself, it could take longer to achieve success. Had you believed that you could trust others, you might have built a reliable, experienced team and cut the time that it took to open to more success in half.

Regarding beliefs, be willing to approach success plans in small actions. This could keep you free of stress and burnout. To avoid stress and burnout, take regular breaks. Actually plug an hour of relaxation into your day.

Daily Motivation Tips

It might not look like it, but adequate rest and relaxation are key success components. So too is motivation. For you, motivation might come in the form of a song, poem, book, discussions with a friend, camping, swimming or nature walk.

Read motivational quotes when you start feeling like success will always be out of reach. And count those seemingly small miracles. After all, like your nose, success can go unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean that good isn’t right in front of you, which brings up a final point. Recognize your forward steps, celebrating the completion of each activity that opens you to more success, greater good.