11 Easy Things You Can Do That Prove You Love Yourself

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Prove you love yourself. You know it’s time you did this. But how do you know you’re loving yourself, even now? How do you really know?

Think about it. If you were asked to list signs of having a cold, what would you list? Scratchy throat, stuffy nose, cough and tiredness? What if you were asked to list symptoms of being excited? Would any of these appear on your list – alertness, curiosity, rapid heartbeat, happiness and feeling alive?

Exploring Unconditional Love

Finally, what if you were asked to create a list of signs that prove you’re loved? If someone found your list, what would they find? Would they find words like warmth, kindness, appreciation, acceptance, realized value, welcomed, desired, cared for, connection, safety and trust?

What’s on that list reveals what think love is.

When is the last time you gifted yourself with what’s on your list? Ask yourself, when is the last time you made yourself feel loved. This is a time when you (you alone) treated yourself in a way that caused you to feel unquestionably loved.

Prove You Love Yourself as an Early Start

Confession. When I was younger, I thought self-love was selfish. Back then, I thought the Creator put me in the world to love everyone else except myself. Guess that’s why I sometimes felt like love was a risk, a risky chance that might or might not yield the results I was seeking.

Now it makes perfect sense to me. The entire time I was committed to loving everyone except myself (again thinking that loving yourself was a selfish and negative act to engage in), I was waiting for someone else to love me. Each time I believed that I had loved someone else, sacrificed for someone else, I expected to receive love.

When that didn’t happen (and looking back, it seems like it didn’t happen a lot), I felt disappointed. Love seemed like a trick to me. Or, as Amy Winehouse sang, it was as if “Love Is A Losing Game”. Fortunately, I didn’t give up on love.

People Who Help Your Prove You Love Yourself

Do you believe in love? Is love powerful, weak, necessary, real or unreal to you? Did you become familiar with love during your childhood? Hopefully, your parents, extended family and friends gave you love. It is my trust that the people circling you as you grew up demonstrated love for you. Even more, I trust that those people poured love into you, making it easy for you to realize that you have value.

Whether or not that happened, you have to work to love yourself. You have to prove you love yourself. And you have to prove it throughout the day.

Yet, life gets busy. Before you know it, you’re telling yourself that you don’t have time to rest. You start to believe that sacrificing your peace and joy for a relationship, a job, a belief is best. Even more, you might convince yourself that you just don’t have time to do what it takes to make yourself feel loved. That’s why breaking big impact actions into small steps helps.

11 Easy Self Love and Self Care Acts

Here are 11 easy things you can do to feel loved. They’re simple acts that can have a long, powerful and lasting impact. Add these to your daily routine and see if you don’t start to feel better, see if you don’t start to feel more loved.

  1. Listen to a song that causes you to feel hopeful, happy.
  2. Sit still for five minutes as soon as you awaken. Do the same five minutes before you drift into sleep at night. These are easy self-love and self-care actions. After a while you might decide to increase the time to 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night.
  3. Write yourself a love letter. This love letter doesn’t have to be long. The aim is to tell yourself, to demonstrate to yourself, how much you truly do love you.
  4. Breathe deeply for 60 seconds. As a tip, you could use a virtual timer to sit still, sit quiet and breathe for 60 seconds. Should this sound like too much time, start smaller. Start breathing deeply for 30 seconds and then work your way up to 60 seconds.
  5. Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself three things that you appreciate about yourself today, right now. Pay attention to how you feel as you do this. Notice if there’s an area where you find yourself struggling to believe something good about you. (Hint: You’re awesome!)
  6. Drink fresh water each day. Also, eat a healthy diet.
  7. Exercise daily – moving your body in healthy ways is an act of self-love.
  8. Get outdoors and enjoy a safe walk in nature. Stay outdoors for 45 minutes. This simple act can improve your mood, mental focus and physical well-being.
  9. Take one day a week to rest. Instead of working, do fun, relaxing things that you enjoy.
  10. Dance to a song that you love once a day. Not only is this fun, it’s great exercise.
  11. Open up to loving relationships. Say good-bye to people who constantly criticize, belittle and abuse you.

Whether you give love to someone else or to yourself, it is from within you that love flows. To feel empowered and confident enough to be who you really are, prove that you love yourself. Go beyond simply saying that you love yourself. Prove it.

How Books Can Shorten Hard Parts of Your Healing Process

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By African American Fiction Author Denise Turney

african american woman using a singing bowl while sitting for healing
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Your healing process is ongoing. It takes courage and work to heal. But that doesn’t mean that your healing process has to be hard. After all, too much struggle and you could become tempted to quit. Face it. There’s no getting around it. In this world, maintaining inner health requires more than thought. If you’re serious about getting and staying well, you’re going to have to take inspired action, including reading books you’re guided to.

Magical Thinking Is Not Part of Your Healing Process

It can’t be overstressed that you have to take smart actions to heal. Magical thinking is not going to save you. Instead, learning, growing and paying attention are healing keys. Reading empowering books can be a shortcut to healing.

Howbeit, reading a lot of books, including popular self-help books, may never be enough if you don’t take the right actions. For example, to gain the most from self-help books, commit to completing exercises and worksheets in those books.

Types of worksheets you might find in self-help books include questionnaires that are used to measure your self-esteem. Others include visualization exercises designed to help you identify your core beliefs. Examples of core beliefs are “life is good”, “life is hard”, “people are kind” and “I succeed when I give my best”.

Books Offering Healing

Surprisingly, some exercises in self-help books are easy to put into practice. Yet, that doesn’t mean that the work won’t dig deep. This happened to me years ago. After experiencing frustration and disappointment, I started reading self-help books. For years, that proved to be rewarding.

At the start of one of the books, the author shared that most people who buy self-help books not only don’t finish reading the books, they also don’t complete the exercises. I took that as a challenge. Before I knew it, I was committed to finishing each self-help book I bought.

More importantly, I was committed to completing each exercise and worksheet in the books. While working on one exercise, I broke down in tears. To this day, it surprises me how much of an impact that simple exercise had on me.

Your Healing Process Exercises in Self-Love

It was an exercise in self-love. Was I ever shocked to learn how hard it was to stand in front of a mirror and repeat “I love you” to myself. Had thought it would be a piece of cake. Actually, at first glance, I thought the sheer mention of the exercise was silly.

By the time I finished that book, I knew I had to work on loving myself, and I did. It was one of the strongest, most clear parts of my healing process.

Reading that book and doing the exercises proved to be an eye opener. Yet, that’s just one way how reading books can help you to heal. Safely looking into the inner workings of a successful person’s life can also prove beneficial.

Committed to Your Healing Process

For instance, if you’re committed to healing from addiction, procrastination, workaholism or a habit that keeps you from living your best life, reading an autobiography or biography about people who have faced the same challenge could keep you from feeling alone or isolated.

Keep reading about how those people overcame the challenge and you might reinforce your belief that you can overcome this challenge too. By way of these lessons, you may regain inner health. You may feel better about yourself and about life in general. The effects can be far reaching.

Although inner health and success (career success, rewarding relationships, etc.) may not appear connected, they are. Additionally, just as poor physical health can drain your energy, weak inner health can suck the life out of your mental stability, hopes and happiness.

Good Inner Health a Hallmark on Your Healing Process

Get into the habit of beating yourself up and you might not notice how your inner health is declining. In fact, make depreciating yourself a habit, and you might start to think that going through the day feeling “humdrum” is normal. If you want to increase your energy and live a joyful life, don’t let this be your path.

Stir up your courage. Ask to receive inner wisdom. Seek out guidance from the Creator. Trust the healing process. Furthermore, take inspired action. As again, it’s not enough to simply want a healing. Additionally, it’s not enough to just think about living with inner health. You have to take the right actions.

Self-Care Priorities

Even more, you might have to take the right actions over and over again. Keep your focus on the outcomes that you want to experience. Stay focused on your fitness goals, relaxation strategies, career successes and the health of your relationships.

Also, keep your self-love and self-care practices top of mind. Reading books, including self-help books and a powerful autobiography or biography can offer motivation. At the start of your healing journey, you might not feel as if you need motivation. But that can change and fast.

Should you feel mentally or emotionally exhausted, a primary source of healing might come through books. Reading about someone else’s courage to overcome offers conviction. This happened to me when I was a kid, trying to make something good of my writing dreams.

More Ways Books Aid Your Healing Process

Learning of other people’s success commitments proved healing for me. Just knowing that someone had surmounted hard odds was energizing. For you, self-help books might provide techniques, strategies and insights that you can use to shift your beliefs away from loss. Other ways that books could help your healing process include:

  • Lower your defenses so you can receive healing
  • Build connection with people dealing with similar challenges
  • Offer clear pathways thru hurt to healing
  • Provide tools to take smart action
  • List treatments and healing organization resources

Ongoing Mental Healing

In turn, you might incorporate healthy, loving actions into your daily routines. There’s so much good that can be found in books. Despite what they look like, books are not just words on pages. After all, books are written by people who’ve faced their own challenges. Effective self help books are authored by people who have spent hours, maybe years, interviewing, surveying and studying children and adults.

Writers of these books have the skill to share medical and scientific results without being judgmental. It’s this approach that could draw you closer, make it easier for you to accept new healing actions. Keep going. Don’t ever give up on yourself. Long term emotional and mental healing could be closer than you think.

Be Courageous Enough To Step Into Your Destiny

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By Novel Writer Denise Turney

213 let's go design, motivational destiny graphic
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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!

Stop Waiting – It’s Time to Make Your Dreams Come True

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By Books Author Denise Turney

flowers beside a have a dream canister on wood table
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Have you ever had a dream? I’m talking about a dream that felt so real, it felt like the dream was a part of you? Even more, you might feel compelled, literally pushed, to go after the dream. It’s as if your very identity is linked with the dream. Visions of huge success may flood your thoughts. You could spend hours fantasizing about what your life will be like after your dreams come true.

Clear Dreams

Let that occur and nothing may be able to stop you from pursuing the dream. Howbeit, pursuing a dream and fulfilling a dream are different. In fact, you could get stuck thinking about your dream and never take the actions required to make your dreams come true. I don’t want you to get stuck in this loop. That’s why I’m sharing the following actions and strategies that you could use to fulfill your dreams.

You may feel hope, fulfillment, satisfaction, peace and happiness as you start to see results from each of these actions. That alone is worth making a good shift. It’s also important to mention that smart action is generally required to reach your dreams.

Nothing Magical or Mystical

Effects don’t appear out-of-nowhere. Absent a cause, there are no effects. The right actions or causes produce the right effects or results. Hoping, wishing and fantasizing about what you want are not effective strategies. As a matter of fact, you could spend years hoping, wishing, fantasizing and asking for an experience and never realize that experience if you don’t take the right actions.

After all of these years, I’m still reinforcing that in myself. As long as I’ve been taking actions to fulfill my goals, I still wrestle with the belief that my goals will just-come-true at some magical, mystical right time if I’m patient. Therefore, if you wrestle with this same belief, if you seriously want to make your dreams come true, take the right actions.

Right Actions

Commit to accepting the fact that you must take the right actions. Throughout the process, you may come to see that this is the most important step that you can take to achieve your dreams. Other choices and actions toward dream fulfillment include:

  • Get clear about what you want. This is important because there are countless distractions in this world. Clarity will help you to focus and persist.
  • Research what others did to achieve similar goals. To do this, you could reach out to people who’ve achieved dreams like yours. Build sincere relationships with these people. After you build these relationships, ask these achievers what they did to do what it is you are seeking to do. Although you might not get the same results these achievers did even if you do exactly what they did, if you follow a similar plan, you may definitely experience good results. So, stay open. Make changes as needed.
  • Identify the individuals who are most likely to back your dream. Make these people a part of your support team. Throughout the process, you’ll need to contact these people to receive encouragement, motivation and maybe even confirmation that you’re on the right path.

More Right Actions

  • Discover which organizations and/or individuals are most likely to buy products and/or services that you create. Do this if your dream is to earn a comfortable income creating and selling products and/or services. As with other actions, take your time with this discovery. You could work with market research experts. Or you could A/B test marketing efforts. Get this right, and you could save yourself years of effort. After all, marketing and promoting to the wrong people won’t get you the sales that you’re looking for.
  • Ask for what you want. Once you discover who’s most likely to buy your products and/or services, introduce yourself to these people. Ways to introduce yourself to the right people include:
    • Attend festivals, conferences, trade shows and seminars these people attend. But don’t just attend similar events, approach influencers and ask them to do business with you. One way that you could get a Yes is to study an organization. Find out its struggle areas. Then, see how your products and/or services can help the organization reduce or eliminate these struggles. Share this solution with influencers at the organization when you introduce yourself.
    • Write and send direct mail to influencers.
    • Also, ask people you know who know these influencers to make an introduction for you.

Consistency Matters

More actions that you can take to make your dreams come true are to incorporate technologies into your efforts. As an example, to sell novels, I attend book festivals, introduce myself to book event organizers and network with publishers, editors and book marketers. Other actions I take include speaking at colleges and designing and mailing postcards and book flyers.

However, I don’t just take these actions once and then sit back and await the results. Instead, I take these and lots more actions consistently. And, it’s this that leads to additional steps that you could take to achieve your dreams.

  • Practice the right actions consistently. This is among the reasons why it’s important to get clear about what you really want. To achieve your dreams, you may have to take actions over and over again, for months, perhaps years.
  • Stay open and flexible. To make your dreams happen, you might have to change a technique. So, stay open. Definitely be flexible and adaptable. This world is constantly changing. You’re going to have to adapt to keep advancing in this world.

Make Your Dreams Come True

Read books, watch videos and listen to tapes that inspire you toward your goals. In other words, focus on what you want. Doing this could inspire new ideas and improved actions that you could take to reach your dreams.

Additionally, continue to learn. Don’t stop learning. The industry or field that your passion is in changes. As you continue to learn, you can stay abreast of the changes. Another rewarding choice is to take smart risks. When you respond to your inner dream giver, you start a journey that never ends while you’re in this world. If you want to make the journey sweet, incorporate loving relationships, hobbies and communications into your life.

Why? Having loving people to share your journey and dream fulfillment with is a sure key to happiness. Wishing you boundless success.

7 Easy Relaxation Techniques

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Daily relaxation techniques are becoming a must. Without effective relaxation techniques, finding inner peace may feel like, at best, a fleeting achievement. If you’re a news junkie, you know how opinions shared by influencers, people whose thoughts you value more than your own, can shift mood. Then, there’s military conflicts, economic upheavals, climate change and pandemics. You have to deal with all of this in addition to your personal relationships, raising a family, job demands and personal finances.

Ways To Relax While  Facing Challenging Life Changes

It wouldn’t be shocking if you’re feeling overwhelmed. All things considered, it also wouldn’t be a surprise if you were struggling to find effective ways to relax. Let this be your situation and we may have something in common. Thing is, years ago, I thought I had a solid handle on inner peace.

Then, the Great Recession hit and so much changed. For starters, the job that I’d been depending on for more than a decade (that’s a long time when you’re talking about the same job these days), was on shaky ground. Over the course of several months, that shaky ground would give way, causing that job to evaporate.

But, it wasn’t only about losing a job. In fact, that job shift created a myriad of changes, many which I hadn’t seen coming. There was health insurance, which I eventually paid for myself. On top of that, my car note, auto insurance, rent and grocery bills weren’t just going to float away.

The Watcher In Your Life

And, there was that challenge of finding a new way to fill my days. If you’ve experienced a change that has emptied your day of just two to three routines, you know how challenging it can be to replace routines.

It’s this has-to-be-done work that aligns with the first ways to relax, especially when you’re stuck in the habit of accepting stress into your life. To enter inner peace with this first of the seven relaxation techniques, stir up your courage and commit to practice self-awareness.

That’s right. You have to fill the role of “watcher” in your own life. In other words, you have to observe and be honest about what you see yourself thinking, feeling and doing. Finding inner peace requires you to take responsibility for your life.

Self-Awareness And How To Relax

So, the first of the relaxation techniques is to practice self-awareness. However, it won’t work unless you’re honest with yourself. To inspire honesty, you could track your progress. For example, if you want to drop 15 pounds, consider using a spreadsheet to track when and what you eat and drink each day.

Also, record and track exercises that you do and how long you exercise. Look at the spreadsheet each day. It won’t be long before you see the connection between your efforts (thinking about losing weight is not an exercise and won’t see you drop pounds) and your results.

The other seven relaxation techniques are also easy. A key is to really want to relax, to really want inner peace. Once in the morning, and again, at night – breathe deeply. Also, sit still and simply “be”. See if you can empty your mind of the day’s experiences, interpretations and judgments. Just be. At first, you might only do it for a few seconds. After a while, you might be able to simply sit and be still for several minutes. The goal is to connect with your core or with your Source.

Three Daily Choices

The third how to relax action is to incorporate at least three things that you enjoy into your day. Add these three things to each day. As a tip, choose actions that align with your core values. Additionally, choose actions that do no harm and involve peace.

For instance, you might listen to jazz each day. Or, you might sing songs, paint or write poems. If gardening causes you to feel at peace, working in a garden could be among your natural ways to relax.

The point is to actually incorporate these actions into your days. As fourth among the natural ways to relax, consider bringing potted plants inside your home. Potted plants do more than decorate your living space. Plants also help to remove toxins, inspire healthy mood and encourage you to care for yourself and other living things. After all, keeping plants thriving requires care.

More Relaxation Techniques

Looking for more ways to relax? Check out these relaxation techniques:

  • Connect with family and friends who open you up to peace. These people don’t have lots of conflict in their lives, as they are committed to walking the path of peace.
  • Get enough deep sleep each night. Tips to help you sleep good include taking a relaxing bubble bath an hour before bed, reading a novel or watching a light movie.
  • Finalize family and work projects as they come up. This doesn’t mean that you start and finish each responsibility on the same day that the responsibility rises. But, at least start working on the projects and set a date for when you’ll finish them. Avoid postponing responsibilities, as this choice could invite worry.

Finding Inner Peace And Happiness

Despite the constant conflicts and shifts in the world, it’s possible to find natural ways to relax. It’s possible to succeed at finding inner peace.

However, you’ll have to work at it. Experience inner peace once and you’ll see that it’s worth the commitment. Even more, it’s worth practicing self-awareness so that you can catch yourself early should you start to veer away from peace.

Another important thing is to seek natural ways to relax. Plants and creative arts like painting, playing music, singing, writing and dancing are great tools to turn to. So too are walking, jogging, swimming, bike riding and hiking.

New Discoveries

As you continue your life journey, you may discover new natural ways to relax. In fact, you might reach places where relaxation techniques that you used no longer prove as effective as they once did. Keep advancing. Believe in your innate good. Keep exploring. If you get stuck, consider reading books that share more natural relaxation techniques.

As odd as it might feel, also break up your routines when they start to feel stifling. What you may find consistently effective is simply sitting still and being. That will probably never lose its power. While you sit still, don’t try to imagine yourself differently. And don’t try to solve an imagined or actual problem. Simply be. Do this twice a day and see what happens.

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.

Feeling Anxious and Stressed Out? Check Out These Easy Ways to Relax

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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If you’re feeling anxious and stressed out, you’re not alone. Psychology Today shares that over the last few years, women and men have experienced higher levels of stress, a condition that can cause depression, which has also increased. There are multiple causes of anxiety and stress, including drug and alcohol withdrawal, work problems, relationship difficulties, bullying, money problems and a relentless schedule. Yet, there are easy ways to relax to reduce and eliminate stress and anxiety.

More importantly, relaxation techniques are worth exploring. Why? Stress is like an “always-in-motion” ball that’s hard to dodge. There always seems to be an event, responsibility, news story or experience that produces stress. The world’s changing landscape that’s filled with pandemic outbreaks, military conflicts, social inequities, job demands and everyday relationship challenges certainly doesn’t make it easy to sidestep stress.

Stress Benefit

That might come with reward, because not all stress is deemed “bad”. For instance, if you’re paying attention (also known as practicing “awareness”), stress could signal that it’s time for change. This happened to me years ago when I was between jobs. Here’s the thing. I had a good job, a home, reliable vehicle and warm, loving relationships.

I kept telling myself that I should be happy. But, something was off, and I knew it. There was a nagging feeling of being “stuck”. Talk about an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, unwanted feeling. Nothing that I tried got rid of that feeling of being “stuck”. And, I tried a lot of ways to shake that feeling. I tried exercise, meditating, reading positive material, positive affirmations and prayer, to name a few.

This was around the time of the market crash that launched the Great Recession. At the time, my hopefulness centered around the possibility that I was getting ready to become a full-time freelance writer. Although that did happen, it didn’t occur the way that I thought it would. It certainly didn’t happen the way I wanted it to.

When It’s Hard To Trust

For me, during this “hanging in limbo” period, stress increased. Before long, I was struggling to get and stay asleep (and, I generally have no trouble sleeping). If I could only see what was coming. That’s what I kept searching for. Oh, how I wanted to know what was ahead. You have no idea what I would have given to have a crystal ball sitting on my living room table back then.

Wouldn’t mind that now. Howbeit, that’s not how life in this world works. Life here is about taking chances. It’s about trial and error. For sure, life in this world is about trust. That period of feeling stuck taught me lessons on dealing with stress. Hopefully, several of the lessons shared below will help you as you continue your journey.

  1. Breathe – You might be surprised at how much stress leaves your body as soon as you start inhaling and exhaling fully. Try it. See if you don’t feel better. Focus on your breathing and you could experience deeper relaxation.
  2. Explore Nature – If you read my blog regularly, you know how much I value nature. Getting outside for a walk not only reduces stress. When you go outside, you can shift your mental focus. That alone can serve as a stress reducer.

Techniques to Stop Feeling Anxious and Stressed Out

  • Pivot – Piggybacking on the above tip, if you feel stress, try shifting your thoughts to a pleasurable topic. For instance, instead of worrying about bills, you could think about your favorite song. Or you could think about the last time you had a blast playing a sport.
  • Take smart action – Returning to the bills example, consider creating a budget and sticking to it.
  • Create – Use your talents and skills to create. If you love to paint, sit down and start working with colors. Love sculpting? Start on your next sculpture. Let your inner critic rest. Aim to simply enjoy using your talents to create.
  • Eat Healthy – Choose food and beverages that fuel your body with good energy. Reach for green, leafy vegetables. Definitely, drink enough fresh water. Try a healthy diet for two to three weeks and see if you don’t feel and sleep better. Amazing how reducing sugar in your diet (speaking of just one dietary change) can allow you to enjoy deeper sleep.
  • Forgive – This one may sound odd. However, it isn’t. Forgiveness works wonders. In fact, I think that forgiveness is a miracle worker! Should you perceive that someone has injured you, hold that person in a vision of light. You might even write them a letter. The goal is to “let go” of the burden, and unforgiveness is a burden. Carry it too long, and it can get especially heavy. So, forgive to reduce stress.

More Techniques to Stop Feeling Anxious and Stressed Out

  • Enhance Relationships – In line with forgiveness, take the time to enhance your relationships. This includes your friendships, family relationships, work relationships and social relationships. Improved relationships can make you feel “safe”. As your relationships improve, the times when you might worry that someone doesn’t think well of you could diminish.
  • Practice Awareness – This was mentioned earlier. It is worth repeating. Pay attention to your thoughts, what you’re focusing on and what’s happening around you. Also, pay attention to emotions that you hold onto. As an example, you might notice that you’re holding onto the emotion of sadness or the emotion of anger a lot. See if you can link the emotion to a thought (or a string of thoughts). Or, you might find that the emotion is linked to an experience or your perception of a person. Make your goal to feel better, to release stress and to enter into a state of peace and joy.
  • Focus on Blessings – Think about the good experiences that you enjoy. You might even decide to set aside 5 to 10 minutes a day to focus on blessings.
  • Journal – Write in a journal. Although you may find it beneficial to write in a journal every day, depending on your schedule, it might work better for you to write in a journal once a week. Definitely write down dreams that you remember. Dreams can offer guidance from your subconscious. Writing thoughts and feelings down is also a good way to “work through” stressors.

Trust The Process

Anxiety and stress don’t just feel bad; they can be blinding. In other words, anxiety and stress can blind you from the good that’s happening in your life. And, as you continue to focus on stressors, you could see the stressors grow.

This is what happened to me when I was in that “stuck” period. What did I do? I practiced the above stress relieving exercises. In addition, I trusted the process enough to eventually get “unstuck” and keep moving forward.

And again – trust may be one of the biggest keys to dealing with stress. After all, we can’t always see what’s coming. But we can trust that our Source loves us and is part of the guidance that we receive. That shared, trust can also help you to follow the right guidance which, alone, can reduce stress now and in the long run.

Resources:

Psychology Today – Depression and Anxiety Are on the Rise Globally | Psychology Today

13 Easy Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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You’re going to have to free yourself of magical thinking if you want to start selling more copies of your books. Why? Wishing that you’d sell more books won’t get you book sales. It’s not enough just to want to sell your books. You have to take smart actions. This might help. Think of selling books as another artform, of sorts, a measurable artform.

Furthermore, selling books is a mix of online and offline marketing and promotion. That is, unless you plan to only focus on selling books through a single retailer like Kobo, Apple Books or Amazon. If you want to go wide, you’ll want to list your books with a wide range of online and offline bookstores and retailers.

Work with Book Distributors to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

Another action that you’ll want to take is to list your books with a broad range of book distributors. Ingram, Baker and Taylor, Bella Distribution, Heritage Group Distribution, CBL Distribution, Casemate and Publishers Group West are among dozens of book distributors. If you’re new to the book world, distributors get your books to online and offline bookstores and other retailers.

Because of the role that they fill, book distributors are as close to a must as you may get if you want to go wide and start selling more copies of your books. Therefore, entering into a contract with legitimate book distributors is an early step in the book sales process. Want to keep yourself honest? Create a spreadsheet and track which book distributors you contact, including the date and form of outreach (email, telephone, snail mail, etc.) that you use to introduce your books to distributors. Follow-up with distributors you haven’t heard from.

Before you reach out to book distributors, create a marketing strategy. For example, your marketing strategy might highlight social media marketing efforts, including the number of social media followers your literary accounts have. Other items you could include are scheduled book signings, public speaking events, scheduled book club discussions and the numbers of books you’ve already sold.

Although these aren’t part of the 13 easy ways to be start selling more copies of your books, they are keys to early and ongoing book success. For starters, write a great story. If you’re writing nonfiction, do sufficient research and lay discoveries out in an easy-to-understand way.

Due Your Due Diligence

After all, it’s what’s inside the front and back flaps of your book that readers most want. So, nail the book writing part. To ensure that you pull this off, make sure that an experienced and talented book editor reads your manuscript before you publish it. Another tip is to run a spell and grammar check on your manuscript, even before you send it off to a skilled book editor. Working with an editor who is familiar with the type of book you wrote (mystery/suspense, romance, science fiction, etc.) can yields great results.

Next, create an engaging synopsis, book title and book cover. Don’t skimp on these actions. They will play a direct role in your book marketing efforts and your book sales. Here’s another tip that I want to share with you.

Years of book marketing has taught me the importance of researching book editors, book publicity specialists and book marketing services before a deal is inked. The last experience that you want to have is discovering that you just paid two or three times more than you needed to for editing, cover design or book marketing services. You also don’t want to ink a deal with a specialist who does shoddy work.

Hence, do your due diligence. You’ll thank yourself later.

Easy Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

And, now for those 13 easy ways to start selling more copies of your books. Steps shared in this article deal with promoting a book that you want to market and sell online and offline.

  1. Create a website that you’re committed to updating at least weekly – Years ago, you could have simply designed an author website to sell books on and walked away, letting the website pull in book buyers. Those days may be over. To keep your author website relevant, update it no less than once a week. Ways that you could do this are to add a daily writing tip or fact about a character from one of your novels to the author website. Or, you could add a quote from one of your characters to your author website. Just commit to updating a data point at your website once a week or more. And, add strong meta data like targeted keywords to your website.
  2. Start a book blog – At this blog, you could write about book conferences, book festivals and book signings that you’ve recently attended or that you’re planning to attend. You could also share insights that are related to your latest book. Another step that you could take is to post feature interviews with other writers at your blog. As with your author website, the point is to keep the blog updated. In fact, you could link your blog to your author website and keep both updated with this one easy step. That’s what I do at chistell.com. This single, easy step pulls in thousands of potential book buyers a week at chistell.com.

Additional Ways to Start Selling More Copies of Your Books

  1. Send postcards and direct mail to bookstore buyers – Even further, build relationships with bookstore buyers. These relationships can make it easier for you to get your new books into bookstores months from now. To keep these relationships healthy, consider sending book buyers (including library book buyers) holiday greetings.
  2. Reach out to military exchanges through organizations like RangeMe to see if you can sell your books at military stores.
  3. Teach a course at a local college. Ask if you can sell and sign your books at the end of the course.
  4. Schedule and conduct podcast and radio interviews – Yet don’t just conduct interviews. Make sure that you interview on podcasts and radio stations that pull in your book’s target audience.
  5. Design a literary newsletter – Building a newsletter can help you to develop your own mailing list. Consider adding a free newsletter subscription form to your author website. Items to include in your literary newsletter are diverse, ranging from feature author interviews to book reviews to upcoming book events to discounts to holiday messages. Sign up for The Book Lover’s Haven to get a feel for more of what you could do with a literary newsletter.
  6. Attend book events – It’s true. You could sell thousands of copies of your books online, without leaving home. However, it’s also true that getting outside and attending book events is a great way to introduce your books to new readers. In fact, you could sell dozens of books at book conferences, book fairs and festivals.

Even More Ways to Gain Book Sales

  1. Use Sign-Up Sheets – When you attend book events, bring sign-up sheets with you. Let people know what you’re using the sheets for. As an example, you could use a sign-up sheet to grow your literary newsletter subscriber list. You could also use a sign-up sheet to email in-person event attendees information about your books, including how to order copies of your e-books.
  2. Feature your books on book promotion websites. Again, do your due diligence before you pay for services at book promotion websites.
  3. Do newsletter cross-promotions with other authors whose books are in the same genre as your books.
  4. Newsletter book market services – Pay for newsletter book marketing services. Make sure that you work with newsletters that have a high open-rate. It may not do you much good to pay for an ad in a newsletter that boast 10,000 subscribers but only has a 3% open rate. Also, work with services that have tapped into your book’s target audience.
  5. Zone in on Social Media – Just 10 to 15 minutes a day on social media can increase your book sales. Test different social media sites to discover which sites generate the best return for your books. Also, pay attention to what days of the week and times of the day are best to post book marketing material. Examples of this material are book covers, book reviews and book quotes.

Amazon Ads and Selling Books

Other actions that you could take to start selling books are to add your book cover, book title and author website URL to your email signature line. Definitely ask family and friends to tell people they know about your books. Reaching out to school book buyers is another way that you could generate book sales.

If you’re promoting a book that sells on Amazon, consider taking out Amazon ads, namely sponsored product ads. You could also build an Amazon store to introduce your entire line of books to readers. But don’t just start Amazon ads. Budget for the ads. Study relevant keywords. Be patient during this process, as this isn’t a quick process. Take your time and find dozens of relevant keywords. You also might find success with relevant Amazon ad categories.

Stay Motivated

It could take one to three weeks to start seeing results from your ads. So, keep your daily spend low or no more than $5 a day when you start working with ads. Download and review monthly reports until you start to notice which keywords, categories and similar products are working to bring in book sales.

Above all, don’t be dreamy about this. In fact, don’t be dreamy about any part of the book marketing process. It’s work. There’s nothing magical about it. Before long, you’ll witness the link between your efforts and the results that you’re seeing. Should a step not yield good results, consider altering a part of the action or replacing the action (in-store book signings, discussion board link shares, etc.) with another action.

Keep at it. There are readers waiting to read great books!

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.