By Books Author Denise Turney

You’ve probably heard it too. Real “significant” success takes time, a long time. There are quotes lining walls, shared on social media, and framed in beautiful artwork – all vowing that success takes time. But does it?

Which Side of Time and Success Are You On?

Then, there’s an opposite belief, a thought on the other side of the fence, if you will. Within this belief, big success can happen just-like-that, in the spur of a moment . . . in a second. Today, rooted in the motivational-thought world, success, including first life wins, happens soon after you align your vibrations with the success you want.

Repeating positive affirmations, meditating on what you want, reading positive self-help books, and creating success focused vision boards are tools that are said to be effective regardless of which side of success and time you function on. Another element that applies regardless of your notions about how much or little success is tied to time is YOU.

Do you believe that YOU can achieve and/or receive the big success you want? It’s key.

Are you willing to consider it?

Success Keys You Hold

If it is you who must make the decisions and take the actions that take you from where you are right now to where you want to be, how could you decide and act if you don’t believe you could ever (ever possibly) get what you want? Therefore, when it comes to navigating big success, those precious first life wins, the first step rest with you and only you.

After you decide to not only win or succeed but that you CAN win, you will almost certainly require the support of one or more people. For example, if you want to write compelling stories that possess lasting depth, you need to deepen your life experiences, partner with editors, and read great works written by other writers.

Should you want to sell books that you write, and perhaps even sell enough books to afford a full income writing and selling books, you’ll need to gain commercial writing skills. You’ll need to learn how to turn your writing into a marketing tool, this in addition to using words to create those compelling stories – novels, if you will – that you love.

Learning About Success

So, study what you want to achieve success at. If your success requires you to be an innovator, explore the lives and choices of other innovators. Did their success efforts require funding? How and where did they gain funding?

Even if success, for you, rest in an area that has long been explored, maybe explored many times, see if you can approach the endeavor from a new angle. In other words, bring yourself to what you’re striving to achieve.

Navigating Life Success Actions

Here are more ways to start navigating success, including big first life wins. As you read through these actions, remember that you are key. YOU must believe that you can do what you want to do.

• See yourself doing what you want to gain success at. Not once, not twice – every day. This isn’t self-help mumbo jumbo. As you continue to see yourself doing what you want to gain success at, your brain will start to focus in this area. Once this occurs, your brain might offer suggestions, ideas, on ways to step into the success.
• Brainstorm for ideas on ways to find the time to actively pursue focused success. Write ideas down or type them on a spreadsheet, etc.
• Reach out to one of the first three to five people your mind suggests as someone to connect with as it relates to navigating your success. This means you don’t talk yourself out of picking up the telephone and calling an award-winning movie director, a highly respected scientist, a social or community leader, etc. Remember YOU believe in YOU.
• List actions that you are going to take to get from where you are right now to where you want to be. Actually, write each step down with specificity. Get clear about how you are going to make this journey.

Success Demands Smart Action

Take chances. One action after another — take action. However, don’t stop there. Don’t just take actions, measure the results of your efforts. Years later, you may appreciate listing the actions you will take, and the results of those efforts more than you can imagine.

These records can help guide your future successes. Because you’re recording your efforts, you won’t have to start from scratch the next time you set out for success – in a different arena or focus area.

Of all the tips for navigating success, including big first life wins, this one may sound strangest. As excited as you might feel to share what you want to achieve success in, consider keeping what you are trying to do to yourself.

Reach out to contacts who will play a role in your success, but don’t tell anyone the whole of what you are trying to do. Why? Despite what you think, you might not yet believe in your own inherent good enough to not yield to conflict, bullying, teasing or attempts to deny you access to success.

Celebrate Big Life Wins

You might give up if you’re not strong enough to withstand the onslaught of disbelief and negative feedback. Hence, the importance of seeing yourself doing what you want to gain success at every day.

Yet don’t stop there. Celebrate each forward step that you take. Avoid glossing over a forward step. Actually take note of what you are doing, what you are achieving. Acknowledge your success. . . . talk about being your own cheerleader.

In closing, be prepared to stay the course. After all, navigating success, especially big first life wins, may take lots of trial and error. So, be open to pivoting, shifting, and trying different approaches and strategies. Above all, keep going. There is no doubt that YOU can achieve the success that you want.

By Books Author Denise Turney

February is hard to beat when it comes to celebrating love. Red and pink heart and passion colors are popping up, filling the day. It’s an exciting time. Ask a florist, jeweler or restaurateur. Love is more than in the air! In fact, a National Retail Federation survey shares that people expect to spend $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day in 2025.¹

Celebrate Love’s Sweetness During and After Valentine’s Day

Even now, couples are seeking ways to express their deepest and most profound feelings for their partner or spouse. Admit it. Love is the one truth that you never get enough of. Fortunately, love comes in a delightful range of forms, from passion that makes your heart race to a remarkable inner strength to joyous freedom.

So sweet and delicious is romantic love that it may often be the first idea that pops into your mind when you hear or read the word “love”. But you don’t need to be in a romantic relationship to feel and celebrate love this Valentine’s Day and beyond. Although it may sound surprising, you don’t need to be part of a “couple” to set aside time to treasure love.

Reasons to Celebrate Love This Valentine’s Day

Do you doubt it? Feeling left out, alone, or abandoned because you’re not “coupled”? It’s not as bad as you think. As a matter of fact, it’s not bad at all. Check out these 7 reasons to celebrate love on Valentine’s Day and throughout the year:

1. Regardless of what has happened or is happening, you can love yourself. Miley Cyrus says it beautifully in her hit song “I Can Love Me Better Than You Can”.
2. Making friends stays open. Even if you can’t see it now, you have the chance to introduce yourself to someone, opening the door to a new, healthy friendship.
3. Although this may sound harsh, it’s true. Tomorrow is not promised, making celebrating love every day a real smart decision.
4. Celebrating love helps you to focus on the good in your life. This, in turn, may lift your mood and open you up to more peace and joy.
5. Love connects all living beings. Try it. Commit to loving (only loving) all living beings for a week. See if you feel different. Notice if animals and people react to you differently.
6. As you celebrate love this Valentine’s Day and beyond, you redefine what it means to be in love for yourself. After all, just as you can be in a loving, intimate relationship, you can also be in love with life itself. Other ways to be in love include being in love with the arts, music, dance or work that you do.
7. The Creator always loves you – always.

Love is Gentle so Be Gentle with Yourself

This Valentine’s Day and after the holiday passes, consider freeing yourself from the idea that life must be a “specific” way for you to give and receive love. In other words, your work environment or work situation doesn’t have to be a certain way for you to find at least one thing to appreciate about work. Feeling pressured, stressed, under-valued, acknowledged, promoted or esteemed can’t stop you from appreciating a characteristic related to work. That applies whether you have an employer or work for yourself.

Even more, your family doesn’t have to be perfect for you to love yourself and every person in your family. In this vein, you can love your neighbors and people in areas you travel to regardless of what’s happening in those areas or with those people. Bottom line, love is a choice you must make.

There are so many ways love expresses itself. I Corinthians 13:4-8 captures a few love traits. For starters, I Corinthians chapter 13, verse 4 shares that, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” Furthermore, “Love never fails.”

Ways to Celebrate Love on Valentine’s Day and Beyond

Now that you have reasons to celebrate love, here are ways to put that celebration into action. Please don’t skimp on this, as just knowing why it’s good to appreciate love is not enough. Love is a choice that requires action.

• Pamper yourself with a relaxing bubble bath
• Send a friend flowers (this includes yourself)
• Go to a concert with friends
• Take time away from work and visit a place you’ve long wanted to explore
• Enjoy dancing with someone or alone with your favorite music playing in the background
• Create homemade Valentine’s Day cards and send them to family and friends
• Facetime loved ones who currently live in another country
• Light candles and enjoy their sweet scent
• Read a beautiful love story captured within the pages of a romantic novel
• Paint a picture that expresses what love means to you at this stage in your life
• Have fun swimming at an indoor pool

This year, commit to looking for love in all the right places. Count your blessings every day and appreciate the goodness within and around you. Let trustworthy people in your life gift you with hugs, delicious meals, flowers and more this Valentine’s Day. Open to giving and receiving love more and more. As you do, watch your life open to greater goodness. You deserve it!

References:

1. NRF | NRF Survey: Valentine’s Day Spending Reaches Record $27.5 Billion

By Books Writer Denise Turney

Rubik’s Cube, BET and MTV videos, double ditching, the best movies and outdoor face-to-face fun are just a few things that make the 1980s such a good decade. Reality TV was just getting started back then, thanks to MTV’s first reality show “The Real World”. Looking back, life seemed so much simpler during the 1980s.

Powering Good Memories

But that’s the way life often feels while looking back. Simply put, challenges are mere memories when it comes to reviewing the past. There’s nothing for fear to attach to. You’ve overcome more than you expected. Life should feel great!

Yet, there really are 1980s events, inventions and happenings that set the decade apart, that help to make it so gorgeous. If you’re a sports fan, you may have loved watching Dayton, Ohio’s Edwin Moses win one 400-meter hurdle race after another. Talk about an athletic phenomenon. Edwin Moses would go on to win gold medals in the hurdles in the 1976 and the 1984 Olympics, winning more than 100 consecutive finals over a 10-year span.

Florence Griffith Joyner (Flo Jo), Magic Johnson, Jackie Joyner Kersee, Wayne Gretzky, Lindsay Vonn, Lawrence Taylor, Ingrid Kristiansen and Carl Lewis, to mention only a few athletic greats, were among the best sports icons from the 1980s. Chance to watch top-notch athletes compete was easy, especially considering that many home televisions still only had three channels.

Ready for Fun!

ABC Wide World of Sports caught so much of the action, which brings up another point. During the 1980s, fun was often and outdoors experience. There was no Internet to keep you indoors. Cell phones weren’t around then either.

Fortunately, if you wanted to connect with friends, you had to get outside, even if you only ventured outdoors to go to a friend’s house. Ice cream trucks still rang down neighborhood streets. Kids sang cool songs as they double ditched on the sidewalk. At the back of houses or down the street at the Boys Club or Girls Club, kids played basketball.

1980s Had The Best Movies

Soccer and throwing frisbees at the park were other fun activities. Then, there were blockbuster movies. Do you remember standing in line at the theater to pay for a ticket to see the latest hit film? See if any of these hit movies¹ ring a bell, pulling up fond memories:

• Raging Bull starring Robert DeNiro
• E.T., a Steven Spielberg hit
• Indiana Jones
• The Color Purple
• The Killing Fields
• Moonstruck starring Cher
• Do The Right Thing, a Spike Lee production
• The Elephant Man
• Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman
• The Terminator
• Die Hard starring Bruce Willis
• Scarface starring Al Pacino
• Terms of Endearment starring Shirley McClain and Debra Winger

That list could go on and on. It really is amazing how many incredible movies were produced and released during the 1980s.

Check Out These 1980s Inventions

As it is with the movies, greatness calls for creativity. Courage and smart risk taking are other must-haves when it comes to greatness. In that vein, among memorable 1980s inventions², there’s:

• Doppler radar – Welcome to the world of better weather forecasting
• Apple MacIntosh – And it begins; talk about a dynasty
• Disposable camera – A start toward the digital camera
• DNA Fingerprinting
• CD-ROM
• Human growth hormone
• Video games – The video game industry has never looked back!
• Artificial heart
• Chicken McNuggets – Who knew?
• Space shuttle
• Walkman
• Hepatitis-B vaccine
• Personal computer – They were big and clunky; gotta start somewhere

Were People Nicer – What Do You Think?

People seemed nicer in the 1980s too. Could be that you mirrored the respectful behavior you saw others emulating. There was no computer screen to hide mean thoughts and sayings behind. You said what you did right in someone’s face, which might have encouraged more civility.

Friends made time to hang out, even if they had to drive across town to meet up. Another thing, when the telephone rang at home, you answered. Before answering machines and cell phones became the norm, you could miss an important message if you just let the phone ring.

Here’s To The Great 1980s

Wonder if that encouraged stronger communication skills. However you look at it, the 1980s definitely was an amazing time, filled with ups and downs, fortunes and regrets. It was also a time you can’t forget. From the inventions to the sports to the entertainment to the friendships to the lessons learned to the fun – the 1980s was among the best decades.

Love Pour Over Me captures the glory of the 1980s. It’s also a page-turning romantic suspense. Raymond Clarke will remind you of some of the world’s top athletes, even as he struggles through hardships brought on from his childhood. Believe in soul mates? You may absolutely love witnessing Raymond’s and Brenda’s love relationship; it’s deeply moving. Treat yourself to a copy! Here’s to the great 1980s!

Resources:

1. IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/list/ls005747458/
2. Techspirited – https://techspirited.com/inventions-of-1980s#:~:text=%20Some%20famous%2080s%20inventions%3A%20%201%20MS-DOS,12%20The%20Columbia%20space%20shuttle%20%281981%29%20More%20

Buy Love Pour Over Me – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Z2GXM2D

By Freelance Writer Denise Turney

Books inject everyday life with unmistakable energy, infusing daily experiences with hope. Fiction or nonfiction, books inspire, motivate, teach, entertain, and empower. It’s because manuscripts are more than paper and ink. They are stories, not just words on paper. And stories are the root of books – no story, it’s as if something too big is missing. Our stories are captured within pages, which is why books take you home.

Books Universal Human Conditions

Think about it. The Street, Native Son, The Round House, The Joy Luck Club, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, The Fire Keeper’s Daughter, To Kill A Mockingbird, My Soul To Keep, Macbeth, and War and Peace are just a few books that tell stories of the human condition. So brilliantly have authors captured common and uncommon human experiences that there are books, written decades ago, that continue to be celebrated.

Furthermore, it’s been shared that novelists tell the world what many people are thinking but are afraid to reveal. Admittedly, it does take courage to not only put your innermost thoughts and ideas on paper. Even more, it takes courage to share what you penned with the public, be that public a community of one other person.

It may be why Margaret Atwood said, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Could it be that the power and courage required to write honestly, to tell a story authentically, is transferred, even if only in small bits, from the author to the reader?

Creating Books as a Courageous Act

Paulo Coelho had this to say about creating story (books), “Tears are words that need to be written.” If you’re a journal writer, you may well understand this. Emotion, particularly hard-charged emotion, may likely be what drives you to sit down, pick up your journal, and write, sharing not only personal experiences but also your perspective on the experiences, with yourself and whoever may read your journal now or in the future.

In this case, your journal will become your book, your story. You know the power of your journal, because your essence is within the pages that you wrote upon.

Depending on what an author has experienced, how the author sees the world, books lean in different directions. Perhaps an author who feels that much of their inner world is hidden, even to them, might lean toward creating mysteries and suspense. Who knows?

Books Revealing Focus Links

Are authors of romance novels more occupied with romantic love? Could science fiction writers look more toward the future and what-could-be? And when readers pull toward a specific genre does that mean that the stories told from that perspective best echo what those readers are experiencing, perceiving or believe?

Carl Sagan quite well said, “A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time–proof that humans can work magic.”¹

Look over your shoulder at the experiences you’ve had and at the books you’re drawn to. Do you find a link?

Or perhaps it’s the way the human condition is explored, questioned or explained within the pages of a book that appeals most to you. Oddly, I’ve seen my own and other people’s book preferences shift with major life changes, including big shifts in how the person perceives the world.

Book Authors and the World

Makes me think that there must be a connection between reader, writer, and books. Causes me to believe that books take you home.

Then, there are books that reveal universal human hope, desire, excitement, or belief. J.R.R. Tolkien, author The Two Towers, captures some of this when he writes, “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” 

Regarding love, a thread that runs through all of life, Toni Morrison writes in her novel, Beloved, “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”²

Who hasn’t wanted love to be real, what they always thought love to be? Surely, no one has wanted a “thin” or fraudulent love.

These are just a few universal topics that speak to the human condition, each captured or explored within the pages of books. This could be why reading books has been said to increase empathy in the reader.

Books Take Us Home

Which books mean more to you? Should you have favorite novel writers, what genres do these authors typically create stories in? And how do the books that they write take you home?

Even if you don’t notice it, the gains found in books might help you to understand life in this world better, might also protect you from feeling as if you’re moving through the world alone. It may be impossible to know just how much gain there is within the pages of a well-written and engaging book.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to know how much you get from books you love reading to continue reaping benefits from these and other books. Beyond time and attention, little else is required to settle into a powerfully written story, to let books take you home.

1. 50 Inspiring Quotes About Writing From the World’s Greatest Authors
2. Best Book Quotes: 110 of the Most Famous

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)