Category Archives: Real Life Musings

Real life musings about life as a whole, including parts of life that impact singles and married couples, experience are here. These writings are also for people who are experiencing relationship changes. You’ll find articles that focus on ways to connect with family better. Other topics you’ll discover encourage children to develop a love for reading books and navigating a career are some of the blog articles written and shared here. Take your time reading through the articles. They are designed to equip you with insights, motivations, tips and inspiration that strengthen your inner being.

How Busy Entrepreneurs Are Finding Inner Peace

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By Books Writer Denise Turney

photo of women stretching together doing exercise for inner peace
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Despite challenges, busy entrepreneurs are finding inner peace. It takes creativity and flexibility, but it can be done. Creativity and flexibility are must because entrepreneurs juggle a seemingly endless list of to-dos.

Sales, improved return on investment (ROI), attracting the right human capital and increasing productivity are areas that small business entrepreneurs focus on day in and day out. When sales are up and ROI is good, these focus areas can send entrepreneurs, including owners of indie bookstores, into a wave of euphoria. It’s easy to feel at peace then. Yet, the world of operating a small business isn’t always smooth.

Stressors for Small Business Owners

There’s turnover, eroding team morale, economic headwinds and fierce product competition to deal with. During these times, small business owners’ stress levels can skyrocket. Even the most resilient entrepreneur can feel overwhelmed after living through just three weeks of employee resignations, a drop in sales and a pick-up in customer complaints.

That’s why smart entrepreneurs do more than seek paths from nagging stress to inner peace, they find stress reduction shortcuts. Although each person is different, following are some paths that entrepreneurs have taken to reduce stress:

  • Stay focused on long-term goals. As a bookseller, if I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Keep your sights on the long-term goals. Admittedly, the capacity to pull this off relies a lot on the next stress reduction step.
  • Believe that they can succeed. It’s not enough to keep your sights on long-term goals. You actually need to believe that you can be successful doing what you love. You really have to believe it.
  • Strong financial habits. This applies at the individual and business levels. To operate with inner peace, entrepreneurs know what to invest in and what to turn away from. Additionally, they pay employees, consultants and freelancers based on what their business can sustain long-term.

Keys to How Entrepreneurs Are Finding Inner Peace

Staying in balance and at peace is no small trick. Hence, the reason entrepreneurs committed to living in peace have a dozen or more tools in their kit, including:

  • Determination is a must. To keep stress down and to deal with stress in healthy ways, they are determined. Simply put, determination fuels entrepreneurs through a major mistake. As an example, if your sales team closed 35% more deals over the last two years than at any other time in your company’s history and you started celebrating too soon or celebrated for too long only to see large clients exit, it’s your determination to succeed that could surface new ideas. This very example has happened. And it’s understandable. After all, sales are why you’re a for-profit organization. You should celebrate. To keep your bottom line strong, you should also keep your eye on your existing customers and not just celebrate each new customer who walks through the door. Focusing too much on either and not enough on the other could cost you large chunks of business.
  • Persistence is a must-have in a successful entrepreneur’s toolkit. While they persist, busy entrepreneurs are sure to be flexible. The last thing they will do is persist with a tactic that’s never going to work. Yet, they don’t give up. Instead, they are willing to look at the situation differently. They’re also willing to ask others for insight. Getting input from the right people opens them up to new opportunities, new ideas and more success.

Organic Paths to Inner Peace

As beneficial as these stress reducers are, there are more ways that busy entrepreneurs are finding inner peace. These next steps are good for business; they also have a positive impact on business owners’ overall health. Try adding one to three of these steps into your day, even if you own an indie bookstore and face days crammed with meetings with bookstore buyers, authors, publishing companies, distributors, publicists and marketing reps.

  • Get outside, move and breathe. Entrepreneurs serious about finding inner peace, get outside regularly. Regardless of where their business is located, they find creative ways to get outside year-round. While outside, they might enjoy a 30-minute walk. Or they might dine outdoors with a friend, ride a bike or exercise at a nearby gym that has an outdoor workout area.
  • Feed their body nourishing food and beverages. This means they might have to go with fresh water with a slice of lemon for lunch and dinner meetings. Eating green, leafy vegetables and fresh fruits that agree with their body is a priority.

More Ways Busy Entrepreneurs Are Finding Inner Peace

  • Meditate. Yes. Entrepreneurs are finding inner peace through appreciation. They appreciate simply sitting down and being still. They might start off by sitting still for two minutes in the morning and another two minutes at night. If that seems too long, they might start with one minute in the morning and another minute of stillness at night and work their way up to five to ten minutes twice a day. Not only can meditating bring entrepreneurs more inner peace, but meditating can help surface new business growth ideas.
  • Invest in a good night of sleep. Going to bed at the same time and reducing blue light in their bedrooms are ways entrepreneurs improve sleep. So too is drinking organic cherry juice or eating cherries, as cherries have natural melatonin. Perhaps above all, entrepreneurs are finding inner peace by working through conflicts an hour or more before they head to bed, giving their mind time to unwind.

Trust The Process

As simple as it sounds, they also seek help. That’s right. Entrepreneurs are finding inner peace by asking business partners to take on certain responsibilities. This one might be tough at the start of their careers, especially if they’re accustomed to handling critical projects themselves. Over time, they learn that as their business continues to grow, they need to start delegating.

Even more, for these business owners, seeking help aligns with trust. Since no one can succeed in an island-business environment, they learn early that they have to trust others.

Using an indie bookstore as an example, bookstore owners trust the delivery drivers to get new books to their stores. And they trust utility workers to ensure that the lights are on at their stores. Another event that they trust is the flow of book buyers into their bookstores. When it comes to stress reduction and inner peace, trusting the process (after they’ve done their best) is paramount.

Resources:

entrepreneur.com/article/271055

What’s So Great About Growing Up in the 1980s

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By Inspirational Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

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The 1980s is a favorite decade for millions of people and for good reason. It was the decade of the fax machine, handheld video games, the Walkman, video players and VHS movies, calculator watches, office superstores and road races. For homeowners who’d previously spent years climbing a ladder and painting a four-story house beneath the heat and humidity of a harsh summer sun, the growing popularity of house siding was a most welcomed trend.

Convenience Makes the 1980s Favorite Decade

My paternal grandparents took advantage of house siding. Gone were the days of my grandfather climbing up to the roof in the unrelenting heat of summer to chip old paint off the house, so that he could apply a smooth, fresh coat of paint to their house. It’s this that brings up a good point.

Much of what you love about the 1980s, especially if you grew up during the 1980s, may link to a welcomed convenience. With this in mind, it’s clear that each 10 years will likely produce a favorite decade, especially as advancing technologies afford us more convenience. But back to the 1980s, that sweet time. In addition to the previously mentioned gems, newly developed products and services that help to make the 1980s a favorite decade include:

  • Compact discs
  • DNA advancements
  • Disposable cameras
  • Personal computers
  • Answering machines
  • Enhancement of home security systems
  • Fitness clubs
  • Music videos

1980s Entertainment

Reality television, the godmother of much of today’s social media videos, took off during the 1980s. Back then, it was common to find yourself growing up watching shows like MTV’s The Real World. If nothing else, those early television shows served as proof that humans find each other remarkably interesting.

Reality television offered an air of authenticity that viewers may have found missing from soap operas. When it comes to sports, Sunday afternoon remained the biggest day of the week, especially as it regards professional football. The Pittsburgh Steelers “steel curtain” wasn’t as formidable as it had been during the 1970s, but it still felt good rooting for the team.

Finding your favorite movies was as easy as walking inside your local Blockbuster video store. During those “modern times”, it seemed as if Blockbuster would dominate the movie rental industry for decades. Considering that you had complete control over the types and numbers of movie videos that you rented, watching favorite movies could be as cheap as $5.

Remembering The 1980s Great Outdoors Pursuits

There were no streaming fees or cable television monthly rates to deal with. That could be why kids played outside, having fun engaging in a game of kickball, basketball, baseball or dodgeball with friends. You might have to rewind the clock in your mind, but if you go back, you might recall how children and adults filled parks during the 1980s.

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For some reason, people seemed to be more active, preferring the outdoors instead of staying inside the house occupying themselves with social media, computers, chat rooms and video games, as many people do today. Tossing frisbees (remember those?) at a nearby park was a popular weekend pastime.

It was rare, certainly not as often heard as it had been just a decade earlier, but you could still hear an ice cream truck ringing in the distance. Parents sent their kids to the truck to buy an ice cream cone or another treat for them, at the same time that they gave their children as little as a dollar for an ice cream treat that they, the children, could enjoy.

Loving Family Tradition Goes Back to the 1980s

Another tradition that was slipping away was the family tradition of sitting around the dining room table enjoying a homecooked dinner. The television was shut off. Parents and children discussed the events of the day. Talk about a wonderful time for family bonding.

Oh, and when school let it, school was out. Unless you had homework to do, once you walked off the school grounds, you often didn’t bother to gossip about classmates. There were no pictures passed around, and no one that you felt was more popular than you because he received more “thumbs up” than you did.

Due to the fact that there wasn’t ample cell phone usage during the 1980s, another thing that was left behind at the end of the day was work. Fortunately, it really was possible to get away during this favorite decade. Trouble and challenge seemed packed away during the evening.

The 1980s – A Sweet Time

Yet, that’s the way that days gone by often seem and feel. Still, the 1980s was a time of family, outdoors fun and less technological connections. In-person relationships were highly desirable, sought after and nurtured, not with text messages or instant messaging, but instead with face-to-face lunch meetings, nights at the movies and visits to live music events.

Pop music was in vogue. So too was the women’s singing group En Vogue, and what a group. Those women were classy, sharp and had beautiful, powerful voices. Still, the 1980s was more than music. There were sports, namely Carl Lewis, Evelyn Ashford and Edwin Moses, who dominated track and field, a carryover from the 1970s. The 1980s was also the decade when television in the United States stayed on past midnight.

For so many reasons, the 1980s was a favorite decade. For so many, perhaps you, it was a sweet time, not that it didn’t have its challenges. But, in the memory there are experiences that lend the 1980s a spirit of fondness.

How Women Friendships Cross Invisible Barriers

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By African American Novels Writer Denise Turney

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Women friendships demonstrate the power of love. As it is with love, the power of female friendship showcases patience, clear communication, flexibility, fun, care, empathy, sharing and deep understanding. If you’re like me, your early friendships started in childhood. Back then, it was fun, play and carefreeness that brought my friends and me together.

Impact of Early Friendships for Women

Shared interests worked like an anchor. The more fun that a girl and I had together, the stronger our friendship became. That’s how my early friendships started. For sure, that’s not how they remained.

In fact, it only took several months for those relationships that were filled with play and laughter to take on a competitiveness. Who had the latest toys? Whose doll was the coolest. After awhile, I started to wonder if a girl I’d previously considered to be my friend really was a friend. Fortunately, this only happened with one playmate.

Never will forget her. Did I ever look up to her. She seemed to have access to the best toys and technology. It was as if she lacked nothing, which is a wonderful way to journey through this world.

On the other hand, my family had a makeshift swing set in the backyard. As kids, we used an old inner tube that our dad tied to the swing set, to play on. Was it ever loads of fun. But it wasn’t new or up-to-date like my (is she really my friend?) playmate.

Adult Women Friendships Barriers

Topping it off was the fact that my playmate had perfect timing. Whenever I got a new toy, she’d stop by and ask to play with it. If I told her that she couldn’t play with the toy, she’d sulk, walk off and tell other kids not to play with me. Took me a minute to catch on to what was happening. Soon that habit created a barrier in our friendship. Before it was over, I no longer considered her a friend.

As unwanted as that experience was, it pales in comparison to barriers that adult friends may navigate. By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve heard people compare women based not only on their possessions (e.g. income, houses, cars, handbags) but also on their backgrounds. You might have even engaged in this behavior yourself.

Keep it up and you could create barriers around women based on their age, skin tone, where they were born and the languages that they speak. Although it might not look like it now, those barriers could keep you from meeting and connecting with awesome women. Those cultural barriers could prevent you from enjoying the most rewarding friendships. After all, how do you know what could become of relationships with women from different cultures you crossed paths with if you never embark on conversations with those women?

Rewarding Women Friendships

You might be passing up on rewarding friendships and not even know it. If you’re one of those fortunate women who hasn’t allowed culture to create barriers between you and other women, you know the blessings inherent in honest, open friendships that are anchored in love.

Additionally, you know how much you’ve learned about your friend’s culture, native language, family traditions, cultural celebrations, festive foods and more. Another thing that you might gain as you develop friendships that cross cultures is never-before-known ways to connect with your parents, children or partner. Other things that you might learn are ways to reduce or eliminate stress, balance work and the pursuit of your passions as you continue to learn.

What Women Friendships Gift You With

What you might not know is just how great an investment you’re making, not only in your friends, but also in yourself. For starters, the power of female friendship gives you a sense of belonging. There’s no way to put a price on the knowledge that you belong. That’s what women friendships gift you with. Other blessings to be gained from getting to know a woman and developing a real friendship include:

  • Lower stress
  • Strengthen emotional intelligence
  • Improve emotional and psychological coping skills
  • Support to establish healthy mental and physical fitness
  • Springboard to bounce ideas off of, particularly ideas on how to improve close personal relationships
  • Comfort while letting go of toxic relationships

The power of women friendships may never be fully known. Women friends build strong bonds. They sit and simply listen to each other during periods of grief. Should a woman experience setbacks, broken romantic relationships or start to believe that her life isn’t worth much, her friend will step in and fill those gaps.

Missing Your Best Friend

If you’ve ever been a friend, you know how easy it is to go thru a gamut of emotions and experiences with a buddy; you also know how much you want to be there for your friend. No one has to twist your arm or beg you to call or visit your friend. Also, you don’t have to be coerced to come up with the best ideas for having fun.

What you might not know is how many friends you could have had. Even if you’re open, steer clear of cultural divisions. If not, you could keep yourself from what could become the best friendship of your life. During hard times, you could experience a period of hopelessness that you wouldn’t have had to endure had you developed more culturally rich women friendships.

Enrich Your Life With Good Friends

To enrich your life with the power of women friendships, consider seeing women as an allay instead of as a competitor. Do this at home, work and school. Gift yourself with the opportunity to develop friendships with women whose cultural background is different from yours. Doing so could open you up to new ways of experiencing life.

Additionally, there might be a multi-pronged advantage to this. Not only could you build powerful adult friendships. You might demonstrate the blessings of developing relationships that cross invisible barriers for your children and extended family. Pull this off and your extended family could start crossing cultural aisles and finding friends they’d never have met.

How To Support a Grieving Friend

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Books Author Denise Turney

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Surviving the loss of a loved one is powerfully emotional. It leaves you changed. Try as you may, you can’t fully bounce back the way you used to be. It helps to have a good friend, someone who knows you and will just be there for you, their grieving friend. But how do you learn to help a friend who’s grieving?

When You’re Experiencing a Similar Loss

It’s hard to experience grief alone. Yet, there are times, such as major pandemics and large-scale job layoffs, when you may grieve with large numbers of people.

During times when you’re experiencing a similar loss with large numbers of people, you may not feel the full impact of the loss right away. In fact, you might delay grief, postponing the inevitable. Do that and you could get stuck, not to mention feel alone when you have no choice except to look at the loss.

Go through this once, and you may never forget the importance of grieving instead of repressing. Furthermore, you might not forget the importance of grieving as soon as a loss occurs. Another thing that you won’t forget is how deep the pain associated with grief can dig. It might not make a lot of sense now, but this combination could prepare you to help a grieving friend in the future.

Struggling In Awkward Silence

Even if you don’t want to, you might struggle in awkward silence when you’re around your grieving friend. You might not know what to say. You might not know what to do. Fortunately, if you really want to help, there are ways you can make it easier for your grieving friend to heal.

One of the best things you can do is to simply sit with your grieving friend and listen. As tempting as it may be, avoid offering advice. Even more, it might be good to postpone giving words of encouragement. Just be there and listen.

This is because, as good as your intentions might be, nothing that you say may help to heal your friend’s pain right now. During highly emotional times, the best words could be received as uncaring, cold or dismissive. I experienced this after my son transitioned.

When People Don’t Want You To Change

Despite people’s intentions, much of what they said felt dismissive. On top of that, I knew that the people talking with me had not experienced the loss that I had, except for one friend who’d years earlier lost a son. Also, some things that some friends said came across as if they wanted me to act as if nothing had changed. They didn’t want to see me changed.

When this happens, you could be tempted to try to push or rush your friend through grieving. Another thing to remember is that each person grieves differently. Here’s another way that you could help a grieving friend.

Steer clear of telling your friend that she or he is “doing good” while dealing with the loss. Not only does this sound judgmental (as if you’re judging how close your friend is reacting to how you think she or he should react), it sends the message that there’s a certain way to grieve.

Journaling Helps

You may have heard someone who’s trying to encourage a grieving friend say, “you’re doing good” or “you’re strong” if the grieving friend doesn’t cry at all or doesn’t cry much. This could be a sign that the speaker doesn’t want to deal with changes grief can bring. It’s as if the person is saying, “You’re doing good at not making me deal with this loss much.”

Try to avoid this approach.

Instead, sit with your friend, even if you sit in silence. Another thing you can do is to gift your friend with a journal. Writing in a journal is a good way for your friend to express what’s she’s feeling and thinking. Journaling as a practice, is a good way to work through hard emotions and troubling experiences. Admittedly, it sounds simple. But it works.

You could also gift your friend with a daily devotional that includes personal writings from people who’ve felt the sting of loss. Some devotionals start with a quote or scripture, followed by the personal write-up.

Experiencing Difficult Losses

Because the devotional’s contributors have experienced difficult losses, your grieving friend might feel like he’s hearing from someone who knows and cares as he reads the book.

Gifting your friend with the freedom to weep is another way to support your friend. At some point, your friend might want to talk with you about the loss. The more they open up and talk, the more they might cry. They might also want to hear you speak their loved one’s name, showing that you want to remember and acknowledge that the person had been here.

If your friend’s loss is marital or job related, your friend might want to share uncomfortable emotions like anger, frustration and loss of hope.

You’re a Blessing

Ask your friend if it’s okay for you to visit. Should your friend start to isolate, consider stopping by her home or treating her to lunch.

Offering to cook, walk a pet, babysit or do another chore could prove beneficial. As good as in-person visits are, so too are regular telephone conversations. By your actions, let your friend know that you are there for her and want to support her.

And continue to understand grief. As a start, you could familiarize yourself with the grieving process (remembering that not everyone goes through the stages the same). Steer clear of quoting scriptures and trying to push your grieving friend toward thinking or feeling a certain way. All in all, if you’re a sincere friend, your grieving friend will likely appreciate you just being there.

Be Courageous Enough To Step Into Your Destiny

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By Novel Writer Denise Turney

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Have you ever had a vision? In just an instant, have you seen yourself in a specific place, finalizing an achievement? Let that happen just once and you might believe in your destiny. On the other hand, even if you say that you don’t believe in destiny, such an event could change your life. Why?

Sparks of Inner Vision

Inner vision lets you see your life differently. Instead of seeing yourself as merely enduring whatever comes at you, you may start to see your life attached to a purpose. This happened to me when I was a kid. At the ripe age of 10 years, I had an experience that revealed to me that my destiny was to be a writer.

Now, this wasn’t something that I had asked or prayed for. Instead, it was revealed to me. It’s odd to me now how I linked this revelation to worldly success. In fact, I don’t think a year passed after I’d received the revelation before I started fantasizing and imagining myself selling millions of copies of my books. If I only knew what was up ahead, which brings us to the topic of this article.

Dreams and fantasies aside, it takes courage of conviction to walk into your destiny. But, that makes it sound like it’s a choice as to whether or not you step into your purpose. And my experience has been that it may not be all choice.

Research Your Calling

Oh. You could refuse to do what you know deep inside you should do. Yet, that choice won’t leave you happy. Even more, you might struggle for the rest of your physical experience to live in peace. So, by all means, walk into your destiny.

Before you begin, research your calling. Read specific examples of courage that are directly related to your destiny. After it was revealed to me that I was a writer, I started catching the bus to the downtown Knoxville bookstore. Once inside the bookstore, I searched for research books that focused on the art of novel writing.

Another action that I took was to buy magazines geared toward writers. Back in those days, I bought and read Writer’s Digest and The Writer. Later, I added Poets & Writers to my list of magazines to buy and read. Over the years, that branched out into exploring the pages of periodicals like Publisher’s Weekly and Literary Market Place.

Keep Learning

Those early days were spent learning, learning, learning. And, of course, writing.

Because this world is not magical, I highly encourage you to research the field that your destiny abides in. Not only will this help you to see what may be required of you to walk into your destiny, it could protect you from slipping into magical thinking.

While you’re researching the field that your destiny is in, be bold, be courageous. Find the courage to start taking smart action. For example, if your destiny is to open and manage a health clinic, consider enrolling in medical courses. Complete building licensing forms. Get familiar with tax laws that impact health clinics. You could even start conducting market research to discover best places to open the health clinic.

Facing Obstacles

That’s just the beginning. As you conduct research and start to walk into your destiny, keep learning. Also, network with people who are living examples of courage. These are people who have succeeded at doing what you’re trying to do. As a tip, if your confidence could use strengthening, consider keeping your destiny to yourself.

Wait until you become courageous to share your destiny with others. Why? Another person’s doubts could jab your confidence, causing you to stop. And this is just one experience that could hamper your efforts.

Slow success or seemingly no success is another potentially big roadblock. An example of this is when you’ve done lots of research on your destiny field. Following the research, you’ve taken courses and continue to learn. Added to that are the smart actions that you take to walk into your destiny. All this and more – and results could still fall short.

Overcoming Challenges

Back to the destiny of opening and managing a health clinic. As it regards smart preparation, you might have improved your credit. Then, you might have taken out a lease on a building, purchased medical equipment and started interviewing potential employees. Because you’re serious about stepping into your destiny, you may have purchased marketing tools to help get the word out about your new health clinic.

You’ve done so much. Yet, after your health clinic opens, you could experience financial challenges due to new regulations. That or you might find yourself faced with a staffing shortage. Or you could find yourself dealing with clients who try to pay you in “sad stories” instead of cash or insurance.

Courage of Conviction

Now is not the time to abandon your destiny. What this is a time for is courage of conviction. As a saying goes, remember why you started. Exercise your mental courage and inspire yourself to keep advancing. Ways to do this include:

  • Reading biographies and autobiographies of bold and courageous people who helped to reshape the world
  • Visiting a mentor and discussing your concerns
  • Seeking answers and insights from industry leaders
  • Asking for assistance from area influencers (these could be financiers, real estate experts, marketing specialists, etc.)
  • Building a team of like-minded people who offer each other strategy, financial, technical and organizational support

Also, see yourself as a success. Just don’t slip into magical thinking. In other words, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that things are going to improve or work out simply because you want them to. Stay flexible and adapt. Keep reminding yourself that nothing in this world goes unchanged. Just because your dream hasn’t been fully achieved yet, that doesn’t mean that you’ll never walk into your destiny.

Be Bold and Courageous

Find the courage to ask for what you want as you continue this journey. This is very important, as it’s really hard to get what you want if you don’t ask. Each day take a step forward. Call an influencer. Complete a required training. Try using new technology.

Engage in online and offline marketing. Keep growing your teams as needed. Incorporate sufficient quality rest and a healthy diet into your day. This can keep your energy up. Definitely keep taking smart risks, the types of risks that require you to be bold and courageous.

Remember that this is a long journey. It’s more a marathon than a sprint. Because your destiny may be linked to your passions, the rewards may easily be both internal and external. If you don’t quit, when you walk into your destiny, you may see how many other people were linked to your success. You just might change more people’s lives than you imagine. Keep going!

How Clear Are the Lines Between Virtual Worlds and Real Life?

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By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

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Are the lines between virtual worlds and real life starting to blur? For some that could be exactly what’s happening. Years ago, computer simulated environments were relatively unknown to the masses. Now there are virtual world games and popular virtual realities like The Sandbox, Second Life and Active Worlds.

Users take on personas, some strikingly different from their real-life personality in virtual worlds. In some cases, it goes so far that strangers, only familiar to each other’s virtual persona, start dating, going on to actually meet in person.

Instead of letters or email, now there are images, sounds and facial expressions to power fantasy. It’s a combination that can make what happens in a virtual world seem and feel real. Even more, should you not visit virtual worlds, does that mean you’re completely free of blurring the lines between virtual worlds and real life?

Will You Stay Free of Blurring the Lines Between Virtual Worlds and Real Life?

And if you’re free now, will you stay that way?

After all, interest in the online world is growing. In fact, nearly four billion people have visited a social media platform, with the average time spent on social media at 95 minutes each day, according to Sprout Social. The numbers are staggering, especially considering how so many swore they wouldn’t spend a lot of time online or make online purchases.

Added to social media, go online and you have immediate access to chat rooms, discussion forums, podcasts, videos, avatars, virtual concerts, email, virtual relationships – the list goes on. It’s as if, as humans, we’ve moved our lives online. Life as we know it seems to have permanently changed. Have we reached a point where online environments now feel like an extension of the real world?

Why Researchers Are Paying Attention

And what’s the cost of blurring the lines, if any?

For starters, you don’t have access to as much natural light while you’re indoors plugged into technology, perhaps on social media or a virtual world, as you do when you’re outside walking, jogging or bike riding. Researchers are paying attention. During a drive home while I was listening to the radio, I heard about “nature deprivation”, a term I hadn’t heard before.

A University of Minnesota article refers to nature deprivation as, “a lack of time in the natural world”. SCAN of Northern Virginia has this to say about nature deprivation, “nature deprivation happens when children (and adults, too!) aren’t spending enough time outside and face negative physical, mental and behavioral health consequences because of it.”

If you were born in the 1990s or earlier, you might find this statistic shocking. Today, children spend less than 10 minutes a day outside. That’s one statistic. Another statistic shares that children spend about 30 minutes a week outside.

About Virtual World and Real Life Relationships

Lack of in-person relationship building and nurturing, outdoor playing, physical fitness and being in natural sunlight can come at a high cost. Millions of people experienced this firsthand during the COVID-19 lockdowns. One would think that being indoors during COVDI19 lockdowns would propel children and adults to start spending more time in natural outdoor environments.

Yet, that may not be the case. In fact, some people may have found more ways to try to feel deep human connections, as well as connections with nature, without having to go outdoors. Growing indoor plants, subscribing to grocery home delivery services, ordering food for front door delivery and starting friendships and romantic relationships 100% online are a few ways that people are bringing more of their life online.

Admittedly, home deliveries help you to avoid crowds, long checkout lines and driving in traffic. Those are benefits, for sure. Howbeit, if you opt for more and more online living, you could miss out on the opportunity to develop and nurture human relationships in-person, one-on-one. You could also put yourself at risk of developing depression.

Aim for Less Technology

Studies have shown that spending too much time accessing technology online or in front of a television or computer screen could lower your empathy. These habits could also make you more self-focused, causing you to think that what you do or say has little impact on others.

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Furthermore, when you try to make the virtual world “real”, you might feel a sense of isolation; you might feel disconnected from other people. Here’s what came from a study shared at the University of Minnesota, “When participants viewed nature scenes, the parts of the brain associated with empathy and love lit up, but when they viewed urban scenes, the parts of the brain associated with fear and anxiety were activated. It appears as though nature inspires feelings that connect us to each other and our environment.”

This could be why it feels soothing to walk through nature in safe areas. It could also be why people who love to garden or sit on the porch enjoy being outside so much. Being in nature, in the real world, is a mental health boost.

Support Your Mental Health

Regarding mental health, whether or not you spend a lot of time online, you could feel an improvement in your mood after you’ve been outside for just 40 minutes. On the other hand, start staying indoors, spending hours on social media and in virtual worlds, and you might feel stressed, anxious and less connected to others in as little as two weeks.

So, get outside and explore your environment in safe ways. Spend time talking and laughing with friends – in person. Go to a live stage play instead of streaming a movie at home. Encourage your kids to get outside and play, being active and getting in plenty of physical activity. See if you don’t feel better.

How to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Major life changes can happen absent warning, creating a painful internal struggle. Because of this, it’s advantageous to learn how to manage stress and avoid burnout. It’s also important to stay open, flexible and willing to try techniques that work for you.

A sense of hope, peace and happiness are byproducts of effective stress management. Even more, effective stress management could help you to achieve and maintain hormonal balance. Why? When you’re stressed, your body can get flooded with hormones. To bring the point across, it may help to think of stress in visual terms.

What’s Stress

Toward that end, Loud Cloud Health shares that stress is referred to as “any situation that causes a biological reaction”. Imagine seeing stress as a “situation”. That alone may help you to see just how many events in your day could be causing stress. To start, there’s the morning and evening commute, school assignments, work projects, health challenges, bills to pay, relationship strains, family obligations and tight schedules.

That’s a lot to juggle.

Left unchecked, stress impacts every bodily system. For example, stress can weaken the immune system. It can also produce increased cortisol which, in turn, can cause inflammation. If you’ve ever dealt with achy joints, you know what it feels like to deal with inflammation.

Inflammation can also cause dental and back pain. Live with stress too long without adequate relief intervals, and digestive and cardiovascular systems could suffer. In a nutshell, “Our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, but when that stress becomes long-term or chronic, it can have serious effects on your body,” according to the American Psychological Association.

Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Additional symptoms caused by burnout and stress include shortness of breath, forgetfulness (grief can affect memory too – I could write a book about that), nausea, dizziness, constipation and headaches. But, you don’t need to be convinced that prolonged or chronic stress isn’t good for the human body. You already know this. The trick is how to effectively manage stress.

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Another reward is to find effective ways to live a full, rewarding life without running into burnout. Admittedly, pulling that off isn’t always a walk in the park. Today’s work world can easily push you into a 50+ hour workweek. Before you know it, deep sleep has become an odd and rare treat. Worse, a crammed lifestyle can let stress sneak up on you.

Symptoms That Show You Need to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Talking about stress being sneaky, here are a few signs that you could be headed for stress or burnout:

  • You’ve become cynical. Spotting mistakes and wrongdoings at work could become second-nature should you reach the cynical stage. This is when complaining becomes “what you do”.
  • Just the thought of going to work feels like a burden.
  • Focusing and concentrating is like running a marathon. Concentrating and focusing is just hard to do once you enter burnout.
  • There’s no reward associated with your job that seems to be “enough”.
  • Turning to external substances like alcohol or food has become an easy “escape”.
  • Family and friends comment that you have become short, argumentative, judgmental or hard to be around.
  • And sleep – what’s that? Getting a good night of sleep is something that you may not have done in weeks.

Options to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Below are a few ways that you could start managing stress and avoiding burnout. If you already use stress help techniques, see if any of the below actions resonate.

Combining one or more of the following self-care stress relief techniques to your existing routine could help even more. Fortunately, this may apply whether you’re dealing with stress at home, while visiting family or at work.

  • Practice Awareness – Notice how you are feeling. Even more, notice when you are experiencing early stress symptoms. As tempting as it may seem, stay free of turning away from what you’re really feeling. After all, if you get into the habit of turning away from what you’re feeling, you might start to believe that you’re merely irritated when you’re outraged. Or you might think that you’re just a little tired when you’re frustrated or entering early depression. Let this happen and you might not spot stress symptoms early enough to curb them before they get stronger.
  • Change Routines – Alter plans and change routines once you become aware that these routines and plans cause you to feel stressed. As an example, instead of saying “yes” each time a relative, colleague or friend ask you to babysit, work on a community project or help with an event at the worship center that you may attend, set healthy boundaries. If you’re like me, it may take several tries before you start to become comfortable with setting healthy boundaries and telling people that you’re not going to fulfill their request.

More Burnout and Stress Support Options

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  • Deepen Loving Relationships – Depending on how you deal with stress, this one could be challenging. A trick about stress is that, as you start to use stress reduction tools, you might want to flee. In fact, instead of turning to family and friends for stress support, you might want to hide. You might want to be alone, day after day. However, rather than giving into this desire, let trustworthy relatives and friends be there for you, the same as you’re there for them. Meet with family and friends in-person. Call loved ones and enjoy talking. Do so with people who you know are trustworthy, people who you genuinely trust. And, if you feel like there’s no one to talk with, take small steps. Start building new friendships. Of course, if you need more stress support, consider speaking with a professional, someone who has years of experience helping people move through stress and burnout.
  • Care for Your Body – Take good care of your body by eating and drinking healthy foods and beverages. Getting sufficient sleep is another way to take good care of your body.
  • Explore Nature – Try this stress and anger relief action and see if you don’t feel better. You might love walking, jogging, hiking or bike riding in nature. Do so in a safe environment.
  • Express Yourself – Back to stress support option #1. Consider journaling, painting, singing, dancing or adult coloring to express yourself. Let emotions that you’re feeling and thoughts that you’re thinking flow out while you express yourself.

Stress Around The World

Here’s something that you may find comforting. When it comes to stress and burnout, you definitely are not alone. Loud Cloud Health shares that 60% of adult Americans state that they deal with constant daily stress. Regarding work, 15% of American workers would like to resign from their job due to stress.

Furthermore, a 2018 study, found that 74% of people living in the United Kingdom felt so stressed that they felt overwhelmed or incapable of coping with the stress. More than half of these people shared that stress caused them to feel depressed. Higher numbers of people shared that stress caused them to feel anxious.

Take Action

It’s not better in other parts of the world. IT News Africa shares that, “The South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) reported that 1 in 4 South Africans struggle with depression.” Workplace politics, poor job satisfaction and challenging work environments are among the job stressors. Clearly. these issues are not going to go away on their own.

Both burnout and stress management and elimination require honesty. That’s where self-awareness comes in. Avoiding and healing from burnout and/or stress also requires the right actions. You deserve to be happy. Burnout and chronic stress shouldn’t be part of your routine. Please try different stress support techniques and incorporate ones that work for you into your day. The rewards could be lasting.

Everyday Blessings of Slowing Down Your Life

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Slowing down your life offers long-term gains. These blessings show up even if you slowdown from living a life of fun and excitement. For starters, your body gets a chance to get enough rest. Let your body rest enough and you could experience mental clarity, improved mood and peace, just to name a few.

Embracing a simpler life also leads to better relationships, better health, reduced stress, deeper sleep and a sense of fulfillment. However, there’s a belief that hustling or “doing more” yields the aforementioned benefits. You might have entered the “hustle culture” in your teens, pushed by the belief that more action equals greater good.

Before you know it, you feel like you’re always sprinting on a treadmill. Instead of slowing down your life, you add more to it, actions like new religious ceremonies, spiritual retreats, volunteer charity events, traveling abroad, etc. The aim is commendable. It’s just that a frenetic lifestyle rarely, if ever, leads you into peace and lasting fulfillment.

Shifting Into Slowing Down Your Life

Which is why you might be exploring a slower lifestyle. If simpler living appeals to you, it could be that you realize chasing possessions and living at a fast pace won’t yield the lasting satisfaction that you’re seeking. Fortunately, it’s easy to start the shift toward a simpler, more fulfilling life.

For instance, you could declutter your home. Toss out items you haven’t used in a year or longer. Empty space can open your energy so that you recognize new opportunities.

Living A Less Cramped Life

Here are more ways to ease into living a slow life:

  • Raising your windows and opening doors (Do all things in peace and safety.)
  • Starting the day with a thankful prayer or by simply raising your hands in appreciation
  • Walking in nature in safe places three to four or more times a week
  • Hiking, running on the beach and horseback riding one or more times a year
  • Listening to family and friends when they communicate with you (This means, that your cell phone and other distractors are not in sight.)
  • Treating yourself to a relaxing bath at least once a week

Additionally, you can invest 30 minutes of relaxation time in the end of your day. It’s as simple as sitting on the porch or front stoop listening to your favorite, relaxing music. Or you could simply sit and watch the neighborhood happenings.

Preparations for Slowing Down Your Life

These are just a few ways to start to shift out of a frantic, high-gear lifestyle into simpler living. Of course, if you live with someone, you may want to talk the lifestyle change over with them. And, who knows? You might be surprised to discover that they have wanted to live slower for a while.

A couple I interviewed on Off The Shelf Books had success with this approach. After they discovered that they both wanted to explore living a slow life, they spoke with their families, letting them in on their plans. Then, they sold their beautiful house in the suburbs.

In place of the large house, they bought an RV. Entrepreneurs at heart, it didn’t take them long to get their remote businesses going. This was years before COVID19. Now, not only do they operate their own successful businesses, they live debt free.

Debt Free – Link Between Money and Slowing Down Your Life

Besides the chance to live debt free, living a slow life offers the opportunity to enjoy deeper relationships with family and friends. Also, living a slow life reduces the feeling of needing to text or talk on your cell phone nonstop.

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Furthermore, it eliminates the need to log onto social media to measure how valuable others perceive you to be. Reduce cell phone and social media time and you could find it easy to actively listen to your loved ones. Signs of a slow life vary by person, but could find you:

  • Selling a big house and downsizing to a smaller house
  • Releasing clutter from your home and workspace
  • Reducing and eliminating debt
  • Spending more time outdoors
  • Turning to nature instead of substances to feel good and have fun
  • Watching less TV, news and opinion pieces

Better Mental Health

Check out these other blessings that you could experience after you start living a slow life. The good news is that living a simpler life doesn’t require money. All you generally have to do is to simply start to live slower. Here are additional blessings:

  • Better mental health (Less debt equals less stress.)
  • Reduced risky behaviors (When you stop trying to keep up with the Joneses, you might stop feeling like you have to engage in risky behaviors like over drinking, over eating and shopping beyond your income.)
  • More brain power (Not only does living a slow life boost brain power, live slower and you could find that you’re focusing better. This, in turn, could improve your decision making.)
  • Availability to increased energy (It’s no secret that clutter has an effect on energy. The less cluttered your home and automobile are, the more energetic you may feel.)

If you’re up for embracing a simpler life, you might opt to work jobs that align with your core principles. In other words, instead of working jobs that pay lots of money, you might start choosing jobs that make you feel you’re living in your destiny. These jobs might be structured to allow you to live the life you appreciate most.

About Those Surprises

Thanks to a growing remote workforce, jobs that offer flexibility are increasing. And, if you’re like the couple I interviewed on Off The Shelf Books, you might use technology to start and manage your own remote company. Enjoy these blessings while remembering that life in this world offers surprises.

Regardless of the lifestyle that you choose, experiences may come that cause you to feel fear-based emotions like frustration, disappointment, anger, sorrow and hopelessness. Practice daily self-love and you could find it easier to navigate through these experiences.

Benefits, lifestyle shifts and surprises surfacing, consider trying a slow living lifestyle. As previously mentioned, there are ways that you can ease into this new, rewarding lifestyle. Give yourself a month. After you’re living a simpler life, see if haven’t become more physically active.

Also, see if you haven’t become more patient, a better listener and a better communicator. You also might discover that your appreciation for life expands. As a tip, stay open to new changes. Live with courage and appreciation. It’s up to you to make your life rich, exciting, balanced and filled with the most amazing blessings.

How Goal Setting Can Make a Difference in Your Success

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Desire for success and goal setting are like twins. When the former is paired with vision and powerful emotion, it can serve as an effective motivator. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the path will always feel easy. In fact, if you focus solely on what you want without developing and sticking to a goal setting plan, you might not ever realize your dreams.

Success Roadblocks – About Distractions

There are many reasons why this might happen. To begin, you could encounter distractions. I was thinking about this earlier today while I was walking outdoors. Less than 10 minutes into the relaxing walk, a northern mockingbird started making scratchy chat calls. Since I’d heard these aggressive, territorial birds screeching and making warning calls before, I didn’t think that the chat calls were meant for me.

So, I kept walking. Next thing I knew, the mockingbird swooped toward me. Then, it gave another round of chat calls and started to aim toward me again. This time, I turned with a bag I’d been carrying and prepared to fight back. As I watched the mockingbird glance toward a tree, I knew that it was protecting its young. It didn’t matter than I’d been walking more than 10 yards away from the tree. The bird had perceived me as a threat.

The First 90 Days

Between working to calm the bird and stay out of its path, it dawned on me that I also had to steer clear of oncoming traffic. That’s when I realized how easy it is to get distracted. One small experience, one seemingly tiny event, and you could be focused on something that has absolutely nothing to do with what you really want. It happens quickly. Even more, it happens so easily that it appears to occur absent thought. [When’s the last time you were distracted? What was going on?]

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And that’s just one real life example of how easy it is to get distracted. Decide to pursue your success goals, and you may encounter interference from old internal patterns. As a matter of fact, this may be why the first 90 days of a new initiative can stir up feelings of doubt, fear and overwhelm.

During the first 90 days, your brain has to shift out of old routines, making room for the newness that you want to introduce into your life. An example of this might see you arriving late for crucial 9am meetings simply because your brain is in the habit of starting your day at 11am. You might even convince yourself that you’re not a morning person. What’s really happening is that your routines are interfering with your big dreams.

Becoming Fluid with Goal Setting Success

This is a reason to stay flexible with goal setting success. To achieve a big shift, you’re going to have to be adaptable. This means that you’re flexible in your thinking, your perceptions and your actions.

To help yourself become flexible, start observing your routines. For instance, at this time in your life, do you stay up until early morning, retire to bed and then absolutely refuse to wake and get out of bed until 11am or later the following day?

Also, do you come up with reasons to avoid face-to-face communications? Have you started to feel more comfortable limiting communications to emails and texts messages? If so, this could signal that you have a pattern of keeping people at a distance. Areas that this pattern could turn into a success barrier for include sales, training, leadership and the arts.

Routines and Pattern Distractions

Pay attention to your routines. Left alone, they could become ongoing distractions. They could become like a bird that won’t stop swooping in on you. Before you know it, you could start to focus on steering clear of the bird to the point that you lose sight of your real success goals.

That’s when life may feel like it’s happening to you instead of like you are creating your life experiences. Therefore, practice awareness. Identify patterns, including thought patterns. Watch these repetitive choices. Don’t let them become distractions.

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To change patterns, get up at different times. Take a shower instead of a bath a few days a week or vice versa. Exercise in the morning instead of at night. Move furniture, food items, hygiene products each day. Little changes like these can help get your brain off autopilot, the process that routines hide in.

Goal Setting Using Small Goals

Other ways to stay flexible while you pursue goal setting success, are to break goal planning into small goals. Here’s an example. Let’s say that your desire is to earn six figures a year selling novels that you write.

Instead of trying to sell 25,000 copies of your first published novel within its first month of release, break the aim into little goals. Toward this end, you could create a schedule to write and publish a new novel every three months. Bake in time for a professional, experienced editor to review your manuscripts and offer quality feedback.

Small Goals at Work

Small goals to achieve your desire of earning six figures a year selling novels could include:

  • Designing and copying colorful book marketing flyers
  • Distributing a certain number of flyers a week, locally and nationally
  • Scheduling radio and podcasts interviews
  • Completing and submitting author vendor applications to attend cultural, book and arts festivals that attract thousands of attendees
  • Preparing content to push out via automated social media platforms
  • Developing and mailing postcards that spotlight your books
  • Building and promoting your author website
  • Setting up relationships with book distributors, bookstore buyers and wholesalers

This list could expand considerably. There’s that much that you could do to promote and market your books, if that’s what you want to do. Monitor your results. Pay attention to which actions get you closer to your goal of earning six-figures a year selling novels that you write.

Achieving Success After Success

But, here’s the thing. It’s important to stay flexible, to remain fluid. Why? Like that bird that seemingly swooped in out of nowhere, you may not be aware of every thing that’s coming. Furthermore, to continue achieving success after success, you will have to adjust small goals.

Who knows? Along the way, you might even have to discard goals that you’d been pursuing for years. So, stay open to change. Learn to pivot.

To stay encouraged, read motivational success quotes in the morning and at night before you retire to bed. Additionally, you might find it helpful to put on earphones and listen to recordings of positive affirmations for success. Twice a year, pause and acknowledge your achievements. But don’t stop. After all, success is not final.

Keep going. Stay flexible. Watch patterns and routines that could transform into distractions. Should you get distracted, refocus on your deepest desires, your largest goals. Break those goals down into small goals, if you start to think that your goals are too big for you, and again – keep going.

Why Is Flexibility to Change a Key to Success?

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Change is everywhere. It’s this world’s constant which begs a question. Is flexibility to change a key to success? After all, being flexible in business, at play and other life areas can keep you free of disillusion, hopelessness and nagging frustration. And this could help your energy stay balanced and flowing.

Flexibility to Change Associations

Yet, if you have heard that it’s important to learn how to pivot to experience sustained growth, why might you resist change? To start, you might associate change with loss.

For example, if your early experiences with change caused you to feel as if you’d lost what you value, you might choose not  to be flexible and resist change. This may have occurred with me after my mom transitioned when I was a kid. That certainly was my first early experience with a major change. Not only did it feel like a massive, painful loss, I soon learned that it was a change that I could not reverse.

Reasons You Fight Change

Other reasons why you might not want to get flexible and instead fight change include:

  • Change ushers in a certain amount of uncertainty. When change arrives, you really don’t know how an experience will fully impact you or turn out.
  • People, including family and friends, may perceive you differently. An example of this is when a job layoff occurs and people no longer respect you due to the fact that your work title has changed.
  • Past instances of change may have happened after your peers pressured you into doing something. Dislike the outcome of what you did and you could resist change and also think that it’s better not to form close relationships.
  • Failure and change could be linked in your thinking. A path of freedom from this could be to start to see failure as a learning experience. Because change in this world is always occurring, failure definitely isn’t permanent.
  • Sense of loss of power is another reason why you might resist change. This could happen whether your role in a family, at work, in the community or another environment changes as you age, your children get older, etc.

Change Is Constant

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As Heraclitus shared, “the only constant in life is change”. However, rather than accepting that as truth, look around. See if your experiences prove that change is always happening in this world. For a shortcut, you could start with your appearance. Even when you think nothing is changing about your appearance, one day you’ll look up and see just how much change has been occurring to your body second-by-second, day-by-day.

Furthermore, you might notice how often your judgments and opinions change. Let your judgments and opinions change and your mood could shift as well. In fact, depending on your age and how many new experiences you let enter your life, you might discover that it’s tough to hold onto a judgment, opinion or belief.

So, stay open to being flexible. Also, similar to how you stretch in the mornings to get flexible in your body, step into positive experiences that stretch you. Examples range from being flexible at work by taking on projects with elements that are “new” for you to making friends with caring people you’d rarely bothered to say “hello” to.

Mental Flexibility

Vacationing at a different location, building your own furniture, sewing your clothes for a year and serving as the coordinator for next year’s community book festival are other examples of stretching yourself. Each of these experiences offers an element of “newness”. They may require research, speaking with people who you had before chosen not to communicate with and accessing a set of resources you’d previously overlooked.

Regardless of how “stretch” experiences turnout, you’ll learn. And, you’ll grow if you chose to be flexible. Even more, your fears that are associated with change may diminish or go away. That may invite a bounty of good change into your life.

Mental flexibility clearly comes with rewards. It can be the path to breaking bad habits and patterns that once worked but no longer do. Therefore, look for areas in your life where you could insert change. Practice awareness to spot instances when you’ve invested way too much into a rigid, strict way of thinking, feeling or behaving.

Practice Awareness

By practicing awareness, you can catch yourself planning entire days, weeks and months in advance and then becoming angry when events don’t go the way that you think they should. Also, keep in mind that it could take effort and courage to get flexible. Fortunately, to be flexible does not mean that you‘ve changed. Being flexible doesn’t change your personality and core beliefs.

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Instead, when you adapt as you make a change, you’re simply adjusting your perception of change. You’re also building courage. This is not to say that being flexible in business or other areas will guarantee success. But it will prove that you can adjust to change. Additionally, it will show you that you’re stronger than any change you could experience.

Get flexible, celebrate change and who knows what good might come into your life. Should the rewards not seem to outweigh the risks, start small. You could do this by setting goals. Then, break the attainment of the goals into small, daily actions. Honor each action that you complete. Actually acknowledge the progress that you’re making..

Celebrate Successes

Another step that might prove beneficial is to track your progress on a spreadsheet. That way you can look back at your efforts and your results midway through the year and at the end of the year. Pay attention to the progress that you’re making, even if the forward change seems small to you.

By tracking your efforts and results, you can spot areas that need to be adjusted sooner. Keep going. It may not be long before you witness the good that you’re creating. Let that happen and you might seek out good change, instead of hiding from change. That’s when you could become the driver of the blessed life that you’ve been longing to live.