Inspirational and Self Help Blog with a Save the World Complex...
“Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
More Quotes About Ability
I was recently sent a great writing journal (365 Things to Write About!
A writer, whether he/she is a blogger, novelist, short story writer, poet, freelance writer, children’s author, greeting card writer, screenplay writer, or song writer, is only as good as their imagination. That’s where a great writing journal can come into play. The journal serves as a prompt for the writer to broaden and express their creativity on each page.
Unleash your vivid imagination across the pages of this eclectic, creative writing journal! How do you envision Shangri-La? A couch potato? The color red? Explore a multitude of writing styles (analytical, prose, poetry, songs, screenplays, etc.) to describe everyday objects and places, exotic locales, abstract concepts, imaginary creatures, and more.
365 Things to Write About is the perfect writing tool for people of all ages and skills, who seek a fun and inspiring way to explore their creative minds!
Here’s the premise: There are 365 words or phrases throughout the journal. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music), is to write a short story, journal entry, or even a poem using that word or phrase. The choices for the words and phrases are quite creative themselves! Here’s an extra challenge I’ve been doing: When you’ve completed two adjacent pages, come up with a short story, poem, or entry using BOTH of the words. My favorite one involved the two words MEADOW and MEDUSA. It became the stuff horror stories are made of.
If, like me, you are a web publisher or blogger, you’ve probably ran face first into the dilemma of not knowing what to write about. My advice for this dilemma has always been summed up in one word: Write! The MORE you write, the more freely the words and ideas flow. Because I write so much every day, I am able, literally, to sit down at any given time and crank out several hundred words on any given topic. I write… therefore I write. Writing journals are excellent resources for training your creative mind and flexing your writing muscles.
The 365 Things to Write About!
Putting together a collection of your best work and submitting it to a self publishing service would be a great start to any writer’s career. Compile your work and share it other readers around the globe.
Prevention Magazine’s excellent website has a very interesting (and potentially life-saving) feature called 20 Ways to Prevent Cancer Certain cancer-fighting foods and other healthy habits can dramatically lower your cancer risk. By now, we’re all pretty aware of the basics:
The list compiled by Prevention’s editors, however, points out A LOT more things we can do to keep this monster at bay. Many of the tips will leave you with your jaw hanging open, simply because they’re things we’re guilty of almost daily. However, armed with the information today, we can change our ways and make our tomorrows much healthier.
To learn 16 more blockades that you can place between yourself and cancer, be sure to read the entire article: 20 Ways to Prevent Cancer Certain cancer-fighting foods and other healthy habits can dramatically lower your cancer risk.
There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The past is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. That very thought ran through my head a few days ago when, for whatever reasons, I started thinking about a terrible car accident my oldest daughter and I were in. The brain’s a peculiar thing, isn’t it? There I was, picking tomatoes in our garden and my mind started playing 20 questions: “Why did you take that particular route? Why didn’t you take the main road? What was so important that you even had to go to the store anyway?!?”
I turned the tables on these thoughts and ended the conversation by saying, “Thank God we both lived through it and, what’s more, I know it made us both stronger.” Plucking a positive out of wreckage (literally, in this case) puts negative thoughts on mute. Just where they should be.
Even those of us who so firmly live by the phrase, “Live in the Moment” that it could be tattooed across our forehead have moments when our thoughts slide into the past. We’ll long for days that have passed or, as in the example above, wish desperately that we could get a “do over” where we could change events.
Spending time in the past can actually prove to be the root of many problems, but because it’s such a deep, hidden root we don’t always see it.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with having wonderful memories and, certainly, revisiting happy times is a beautiful trip. The point is this, you don’t want to spend so much time THERE that you fail to fully experience HERE.
I once had an experience that sort of sums up what I’m trying to say. If you read much of my writing (if you do, I love you!), you know that I’m a nature and animal lover to the core. I’m one of those people who gets completely lost watching birds at her bird feeders or seems to check out of reality while staring at a magnificent tree. One day this past summer, my husband and I were driving in a region of Kentucky called “Land Between the Lakes.” This gorgeous area is filled with wildlife, birds, butterflies, trees, sailboats, lakes… it’s just gorgeous and it’s a place we visit regularly.
As always, I had my camera with me and was snapping pictures for my own enjoyment as well as for my Kentucky blog. As we turned down a scenic road that ran right by one of the lakes, for some reason (I’ll never know why, exactly), instead of keeping my camera ready and looking out my window as usual, I started looking down at the pictures I’d recently taken. My husband came to a slow stop and, when I looked up , there was a gorgeous doe right by my window.
Would have been the photographic moment of a lifetime.
She was so close I could have practically kissed her nose. But where was I? In the past. I was looking at what had already happened rather than fully taking in what was LITERALLY right in front of me.
Whenever I find myself being pulled back into the past, I remember that gorgeous doe and the lesson she taught me. Look in wide-eyed wonder at the world around you. Take it all in and appreciate where you are.
“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.” – Betty Smith
“You are the same today that you are going to be five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read.” – Charles “Tremedous” Jones
The quote above? You might want to write that one down. What’s more you might want to drill it into the heads of your children. When I first read it, I nearly threw my wrist out of whack – that’s how fast I dove for my pen.
Think of you five years from now. Think of you in just one year. If you want this person to be even stronger, wiser, and more successful than they are today, you’ll want to strongly consider the company you keep and the books you read. They each have the potential to SHOVE you back, HOLD you in place, or PUSH you ahead. You know me, I’m the queen of all book worms – so, it’ll come as no surprise to you to know that I want to talk primarily about the books we read. Why? Well, read the quote again.
The books you read directly affect the growth that will (or will not) take place between the you TODAY and you TOMORROW.
This truth is the reason I do so many book reviews on the self help blog. A great book has the power to change your life. It has the power to take you by the hand and cause you to demand more from yourself as well as life.
As much as I love books, however, I don’t even review books I don’t like – let alone recommend them. I once had a publisher who would send me books to review on this blog. She’d mail them to me almost weekly. Then, she noticed that I was only recommending about 1 out of every 10. She asked what it’d take to make me recommend 10 out of 10. I told her, “Better books.”
Never heard from her again.
Good books are more than just entertainment, they’re an education. You can think of them as a course in Self Growth and Development: A Better Life for Me 101!
This week, vow to start reading more great books. Great books, of course, include great magazines, like SUCCESS Magazine. It’s an outstanding magazine and each and every issue is off the charts. SUCCESS Magazine, while the best business-minded magazine on the market, has more on its mind than just business. The editor, the magazine, and every contributor knows that true success is measured throughout one’s life, not just at the office.
It’s one of the few non-cooking magazines where I save every issue. If you aren’t familiar with SUCCESS Magazine, grab this month’s issue (Harry Connick, Jr. is on the cover) and prepare to be blown away.
What you read touches tomorrow and the day after and the day after and…. Choose with care.