By Self-Help Author Denise Turney

When was the last time you promised that you weren’t going to worry? How many weeks or days passed before you broke that promise to yourself? Or did you start worrying after only a matter of minutes, if you lasted that long?

Worrying Health Risks

It’s understandable. You have great intentions. After all, who wants to worry? But why can’t you stop, especially considering the health risks associated with worrying. Among those risks, there’s:

• Mood disorders including depression and anxiety
• Headaches and joint pain
• Sleeplessness that could lead to insomnia
• Restlessness
• Chest pain
• Shortness of breath
• Panic attack
• Nightmares
• Chronic inflammation
• Stomach pain
• Nausea
• Unwanted weight gain or weight loss

Here’s How Worrying Hurts

On top of the above risks, when you invest in worrying, you put yourself at risk of developing unwanted habits. If you’re a habitual worrier, you might already be engaging in one or more of these habits. See how many sounds familiar or resonate with you:

• Automatic negative thoughts
• Inability to concentrate
• Poor relationships
• Overwhelming guilt
• Hopelessness
• Resenting those whose lives “appear” worry-free or “better” than you think your life is
• Struggle to relax and enjoy peace and mental still-ness

Each of these robs you of peace and of the certainty that you are loved. Yet, of them all, the habit of experiencing automatic negative thoughts could be the most devasting.

Bringing the Worry Habit to a Halt

Once you reach this point, your subconscious automatically worries. It’s as if your mind searches for something to feel afraid about. Should you prefer to stay by yourself, avoiding interactions with other people, this could be why.

Interacting with others puts you in position to disagree about other people’s opinions and perceptions. Even more, you might have outright disagreements with a colleague, relative, friend, neighbor, etc. These are a few of the outcomes everyone experiences when they socialize.

However, isolating is not the answer. Pay attention and you’ll see that isolating doesn’t stop you from investing in worry. In fact, if you’re a worrier, you likely spend hours each day worrying, even if you live and work alone.

Someone glances at you, eyebrows raised, and you immediately wonder: “Am I talking too loudly? Is there a stain on my clothes? Do they not like me?” Strangers and friends might produce these types of questions within you.

How Do You Talk to Yourself?

Let dreams and goals get sidetracked or even sidelined and, without searching for the cause of the disruption, you might think: “Am I too dumb to make this work? What if I never figure out how to make this work? Why does success keep escaping me? How come nothing I do turns out right?”

If it’s not that, when you look at your bank statement, a surge of fear might bolt through you even if your savings are rising. Step on the bathroom scale and you might do more than cringe when you see the numbers. You might start working to convince yourself that there’s something wrong with your body, your health or your personality.

All of this worrying and no one else is around. In this case, you could be isolating from others and still worry. It’s a mental habit and you’re the only one who can break it.

The way out is to make a crucial decision once and for all – no going back. Just decide if you’re going to worry or not.

It really is that simple.

Are You a Good Life Manager?

Perhaps it’s time to look at it differently. Instead of simply stressing yourself out. Step back and look at how you treat yourself as if it was someone else forcing you to think, feel and behave the way you do.

For example, bad bosses run people away from an organization more than nearly anything else. A bumper-to-bumper commute, long work hours and challenges take a back seat to a bad boss’ behavior when it comes to deciding if you’re going to stay at a job or leave.

Looking at bad boss traits, how many of these behaviors would you assign to a bad boss:

• Overbearing, rarely offering you the chance to look at a situation differently
• Poor communicator, often keeping secrets about important details
• Making assumptions without asking questions and digging deeper
• Expecting others to see things the way they do (as if everyone is using one brain)
• Pushing team members to overwhelm
• Getting angry when workers chit chat or take a break from work

Do you treat yourself in any of the above ways? Be honest. Do you push or worry yourself into states of overwhelm? How often do you make assumptions, even about yourself, especially negative assumptions?

The Love Shift

Consider shifting gears and treating yourself with respect and with love. Commit to investing in loving YOU. More ways to free yourself of worrying follow:

• Live free of creating catastrophes in your mind. Look back over your life and see if what you worried about didn’t resolve itself without turning into a catastrophe.
• Get up and walk into a different room
• Shift your gaze slowly from one object to another, landing on two to three different objects, until you feel fear decrease
• Walk outside in nature in a safe place at least 45 consecutive minutes a day
• Breath deeply when you feel yourself investing in worry
• Empower yourself with enough deep sleep at night
• Meditate – train your brain to enter states of peace – let yourself enjoy peace
• Perform yoga
• Listen to soothing music
• Accept that you cannot predict or control the future (even if you predict the future “sometimes”, you can’t control everything)
• Write down what you’re choosing to worry about. After you do this, write actions that you will take to deal with the situation. Then, let it go.
• Talk with a friend
• Seek professional help from an experienced, ethical and licensed psychotherapist

What Are You Going to Choose?

More importantly and regardless of the “reason” you’re choosing to worry (i.e., inflation, aging, school grades), decide that you are not going to worry. Just make the decision. Should you feel tempted to worry (engage in an old habit), set a time limit on how long you will worry.

For example, you could choose to worry about a family or work situation for 15 or 30 minutes. At the end of this time period, stop thinking about what has been concerning you.

Just don’t think about it anymore. Start today. Make the choice to live worry free a new, loving habit. Practice awareness to notice when you’re worrying. Catch yourself early and train yourself to stop and think loving thoughts. As previously mentioned, consider writing down what you’re worrying about and the actions you will take to resolve the situation.

This can’t be overstated. You cannot control everything. Not everything is going to turn out the way you want. If you allow conversations, other people’s opinions, thoughts and perceptions and situations to push you into worry, you could end up worrying nearly all the time.

Not investing in worrying is completely up to you. No one can make the decision for you. Choose to love yourself. Train yourself to live worry free. There’s a part of you that knows the way. Let that loving part guide you.

Resources:

1. The Side Effects of Worrying—and What to Do Instead (chopra.com)

By Middle School Book Author Denise Turney

It’s bad enough that kindergarteners and first graders lose about a month of reading comprehension skill during summer. Older kids, as early as the second grade, fall even further behind in reading. Despite how long your child’s summer break is, there could be impact.¹ A sure workaround is to keep kids reading books during summer.

But how do you pull this off?

Reading Books During Summer Benefits

Incorporate reading books during summer into your personal schedule. If this sounds like too much of an ask, settle on stories you love. That or you could read nonfiction books that strengthen your parenting, career or life knowledge and skills.

The more value you associate with reading, the better. For example, the simple act of reading offers a range of benefits², including:

• Enhanced mental focus
• Improved creativity
• Better empathy, which can make your relationships more rewarding
• Deepening knowledge (it’s hard to think of a course that doesn’t rely on a book or some form of written content)
• Strengthens brain network circuits
• Expands vocabulary

Book Reading Advantages

Read books, especially for enjoyment, and you can lower stress. As you continue reading, your children are bound to notice the positive impact that reading for pleasure has on you. That alone could cause them to link reading books to a beneficial activity.

However, your kids probably won’t see the real advantages of reading books during summer if you simply tell them how much they could gain from opening a book. Instead, your kids need to experience the advantages of reading firsthand.

So first you must get your kids to read books outside of school. To do this, make visiting a library or bookstore part of your weekend activities. Set the intention to make choosing books to read fun. Start early, before your kids begin going to school.

Creative Ways to Get Your Kids to Read Books

That shared, the below options can work regardless of your child’s age. Get the most out of these actions by partnering with your kids, working with them to bring each step from concept to practice:

• Consider visiting the library or bookstore after you finish weekend chores. That way, your kids and you may feel more carefree when you head out to pick out books to read.
• Let your kids fill out their own library card application.
• Sign up to attend bookstore reading sessions. Your local bookstore might bring children’s book authors in to read from their bestselling novels. Attend these visits with your kids and your children can walk away with an autographed copy of a popular children’s book.
• Attending author reading sessions also makes it possible for your kids to ask their favorite authors questions about an interesting book character, setting or plot.
• Let your children choose several books they want to read. After all, your children’s taste in books might be different from yours. What you think is a great story might actually bore your young readers.
• Join in the fun. In other words, instead of sending your kids to their room to read books during summer, read a book with your kids. Actually sit and take turns reading a book out loud with your kids.

Fun Places for Book Reading

Where your kids engage with books can make reading a lot of fun. Because books are lightweight, the options are plenty.

When it comes to picking fun places to read, let your imagination soar. For instance, you and your kids could read books:

• In a tent while you’re outdoors camping
• While sitting in a hammock
• On the back porch during a late, hazy summer afternoon
• Next to your kids’ toy box
• On the living room sofa on an early Friday morning on a day you’re on vacation from work
• As you’re swinging on a park swing set

On out-of-town vacations, you can enjoy reading books with your kids while sitting around a hotel pool. As a reminder, don’t hold back. Allow yourself to get creative when it comes to picking places to read books with your kids.

Identify Times to Read Summer Books

To keep kids reading books during summer, set aside a time when you’ll encourage your kids to read. To make it easy, you could ask your children to tell you the title of the fun book they want to read a few minutes before you encourage them to start reading.

If they don’t suggest a book they want to read, select a book on your own. When your children finish reading, ask them interesting questions about the book. This helps to make reading interactive.

Stay free from critiquing your child’s responses to your questions. Make reading books during summer stress free. Soon you’ll learn the types of books that your kids like most.

Another factor you might notice is how vibrant your child’s imagination is. Who knows? One of your kids might be a writer. Give them several more years and you could be reading books they wrote.

What Happens When Kids Love Reading Books

Should your children come to love reading books during summer and year-round, you probably won’t have to encourage them to read anymore. Other takeaways that could surface include:

• Kids knowing which parts of schoolbooks the teacher is likely to focus on during in-class work and on exams
• Ease understanding what you and other people communicate, whether you’re talking or writing
• Clarity when identifying nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, etc.
• Better understanding of sentence structure

Just one summer of book reading and your kids might find it easier to understand and complete their school assignments. This single benefit can increase your children’s confidence, particularly as it regards academics.

More than that, if you make it fun to keep kids reading during summer, you could instill a lifelong passion for book reading in your children. Long term effects could be passed down through generations. And it all starts with a single book.

Resources:

1. What We Know About Summer Learning Loss: An Update | Psychology Today
2. Benefits of Reading Books: For Your Physical and Mental Health (healthline.com)

By Books Author and Podcaster Denise Turney

These 5 clever book marketing techniques help readers discover your titles. You can benefit from the techniques whether you’re a self-published author, bookseller or a literary organization that uses profits from book sales to support those in need.

New Book Marketing Techniques

If you don’t think you need to continue implementing new book marketing techniques, consider these numbers. The first number surprised me:

• About 2 million books are published globally each year. Include self-published books and the number could be around 4 million books each year
• Estimated net revenue from book sales in the U.S. in 2022 was $28.1 billion¹
• Bookstores pulled in about $8.994 billion¹
• 65% of U.S. book buyers purchase books simply to enjoy reading the book¹
• Global trade book sales revenue is estimated to be $78.07 billion, a slight increase over the previous year²
• Print books make up the bulk of the $78.07 billion in revenue, topping $64.35 billion

Most Book Sales

Top genres⁴ that generate the most book sales revenue are:

• Romance³
• Mystery
• Fantasy
• Young Adult
• Children’s Fiction
• Self-Help, Religious, Inspirational
• Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

Write a book in a top selling genre and you could shorten the time it takes to get your book into the hands of 1,000 readers. And it’s this that leads to the first of the five book marketing techniques.

Research Genres First

Research the genre you want to publish a book in. Do this before you write the book and you could save time, not to mention money. Factors to research include:

• Number of books published annually in the genre
• Average sales “per book” generated by the genre (You might have to research this by self-published books, author and books published by the top five publishers, as the numbers will vary by publisher and author.)
• Seasonal peaks – time of year when books in the genre experience the highest sales

Throughout the book marketing process, analytics are your friend. In addition to keeping your from slipping into magical thinking, analytics can point you in the direction that you should go.

First Two Book Marketing Techniques

Regarding the above analytics, the 1^st book marketing technique is to publish books one to two months before the genre’s peak buying season. One to two months will give you time to get book reviews, a definite influence on book sales.

The 2^nd book marketing technique piggybacks on the first. Prior to publishing your book, build a launch team. Offer these people a complimentary copy of your book. You can build a launch team by:

• Adding a sign-up form to your official author website
• Offer those who sign up to become a member of your launch team the first copies of your new book
• Send launch team members a non-editable PDF version of your book with copyright protections written on the document (make sure that you file the book with the copyright office before you share it in any form with anyone)

Building Launch Team

Keep in touch with launch team members by adding them to a distribution list. Send them birthday and holiday greetings. Also, send them beta reader copies of your future books, bookmarks, postcards and T-shirts.

When your new book is published (as well as future books), ask these team members to post their honest review of the book, adding valuable commentary to the review. In other words, encourage these readers to do more than just give the book a star rating.

However, don’t stop with seeking book reviews from your launch team. Book reviews are so important that they’ve earned the spot of being the 3^rd book marketing technique.

How to Get Those Book Reviews

Net Galley, discussion forums and social media book groups are places you can turn to in order to get book reviews. More ways to generate book reviews include:

• Gifting friends with a PDF copy of the book, asking them to share an honest review after they finish reading the book
• Requesting members of book clubs you’ve spoken at or are a member of to post an honest review
• Sharing the book with colleagues, again asking them to share an honest review

The 4^th book marketing technique needs to be put in place before your book is published. With this fourth technique, take advantage of print fonts. For example, if you’ve written a children’s book, consider using large fun fonts for your chapter titles.

Choosing Meta Data

Effective fonts can engage readers. After all, many readers enjoy a story from an emotional and visual perspective. The same applies to font size. Avoid using fonts that are too small or too big.

Complete the 5^th book marketing technique by adding the right meta data (keywords and key phrases) to your title. Google keyword planner, Publisher Rocket, Amazon ad keywords, etc. are tools you could use to find keywords and key phrases, also known as meta data, for your book.

While searching for meta data, consider your book’s genre. For instance, if you’ve written a mystery, choose one or more keywords or key phrases that have words like mystery, suspense or thriller in them.

Other factors to consider when selecting meta data to add to your book description follow:

• Time period your book is set in
• Story location
• Popular key character descriptions

Keep Target Audience in Mind

Also, consider the story’s target audience. Are your target readers college students majoring in liberal arts, biology, economics or creative arts?

Or is your target audience middle-aged women who have been married for 10 or more years, have two to three children, posses a college degree or high school diploma and are self-employed? Keep these readers top of mind while looking for the right meta data.

After all, it’s these readers you’re using keywords and key phrases to attract. Once you discover the right meta data, add it to websites you publish your book at. Include meta data in your book title and your book description.

To keep book sales coming in, commit to marketing and promoting your titles indefinitely. If you do, older titles you publish could sell for decades. Also, keep writing and publishing new books. There’s little like a new book to build interest in your backlist.

Resources:

1. U.S. Book Industry – statistics & facts | Statista
2. Global Book Sales Statistics – WordsRated
3. 23 Gripping Book Industry Statistics [2023]: Average Book Sales Over Time And By Genre – Zippia
4. 30 Book Genres (List of fiction and nonfiction categories to know) (authority.pub)

By Books Author Denise Turney

If you live in a modern society, you’ll likely experience a mental money attachment when you think about success. Taking the leap from where you are to the success you want might seem easy if you already have lots of disposable income. On the other hand, if money feels tight for you, there could be work ahead if you want to move from where you are to where you want to be.

Important Success Tools

But here’s the thing. Whether you already have what you believe you need to achieve success from a material perspective or not, to maintain or enlarge success, you’ll need similar (if not the same) tools. It doesn’t matter if you have material resources “at your fingertips now” or not. For instance, to achieve, maintain and grow success, you’ll need:

• Inner vision
• Passion or strong emotion
• Strong desire to achieve the goal (this cannot be overstated – you better really want what you say you want)
• Purpose
• Willingness to continue to learn
• Curiosity
• Commitment
• Determination

In addition to the above, you need a willingness to get started. Believe it or not, at some level, you do have access to what you need to achieve success. However, if you merely research, reflect, wish, pray and hope, you might end up only waiting for the success you say you want to magically show up in your life, seemingly out of nowhere.

If You Want Success, Avoid Self-Rejection

Choose this approach and you might end up feeling frustrated, abandoned — overlooked. Hence, one of the greatest acts that you could take is to go after the good that you want and to, time and again, prove to yourself that you are capable of achieving success, cared for, helped and enough.

Visualize success, actually see yourself experiencing what you believe will cause you to feel ever increasing joy, love and peace. Make this a daily practice. Do it until you are convinced that you’re going to get what you want because you feel a strong attraction to the experience.

Avoid self-rejection or telling yourself reasons why you won’t get what you want. Instead, strengthen your inner vision and desire by thinking of reasons why you “will” receive the success. Then, become curious and consider the “reason” or the “purpose” for why you want what you do.

Curiosity Matters When It Comes to Success

For example, what good could come from books that you write? As a start and depending on what you write, readers of your books could renew their commitment to a worthy project. Readers could also move from feeling dejected to feeling motivated and encouraged. Learning how to perform a task, improve their parenting skills, become a better communicator, repair an appliance, grow their own food, etc. are other rewards that readers could gain from reading books that you write.

Using that example, one purpose for writing for you could be to teach or to educate. Discovering the purpose that’s connected to your success is important. After you make this discovery, you could shift from wanting to achieve your goal to becoming committed to achieving your goal. See a lot of value in the purpose and you could become absolutely determined to achieve success.

This determination can fuel you forward when you feel like quitting. Combined with passion, strong determination can keep you open to change, making you more flexible. You might also have a growing willingness to continue to learn.

Willingness to continue to learn is a must, especially after you achieve success. After all, you’ll need to keep learning to build upon your success. It’s this continual growth that may well prove to be among your biggest and most rewarding successes. But first, you have to get started.

By Books Author Denise Turney

Before Amazon, self-publishing and eBooks took off, sending the popularity of indie books up-up-up, authors I knew wrote and published one to two books a year. Back then, you had to hustle (and I do mean hustle) to sell more indie books. Why was it such a challenge?

Here’s a True Story – You can Sell More Indie Books

Book reviewers, magazine writers, newspaper freelancers and bookstore buyers didn’t want to touch a self-published book. It didn’t matter how well written and edited the book was. An author I knew put her entire life savings into her first book, a story she paid to print herself.

As she told her 12-year-old daughter, she had no choice but to hustle and sell the book. There was nothing to fall back on financially. Not only did she post flyers around the city in good weather as well as in rain and snow, she repeatedly visited a local major bookseller, telling them about her book, asking them to carry her book.

At one point, a clerk at the bookstore asked her not to return. She didn’t listen (good for her). Tenacity, persistence and belief in her novel paid off. Did it ever! After several weeks, the book started to sell – really sell. That bookstore that told her not to come back ended up asking her what they needed to do to carry her novel.

Making the New York Times Bestseller List

That indie book landed on the New York Times bestseller list. And this leads to the first proven way to sell more indie books.

Develop a book selling strategy and stick to it. This doesn’t mean that you never change prospects or influencers to help you connect with book buyers. Instead, it means that you actually sit down and write out a marketing strategy. This is not the time for wishing, hoping and engaging in guesswork.

Research your book’s target audience, where these readers shop, seek entertainment, dine and explore. Examples of this include fashion stores, sporting events, local restaurants, nearby colleges and area museums. Use this information to determine the best places to put your indie books. After you gain the facility owner’s permission, hang flyers, leave bookmarks, free book excerpts and postcards in these places.

Also, research competitive prices for the type of book you wrote and will publish. Whether you publish your book through Barnes & Noble, Ingram Spark, Lulu, Amazon, etc., you can raise or lower the price of your book after you publish it. But it’s important that you study the market and set an effective initial price on your book to attract book buyers.

Find Out About Your Book’s Target Audience

Identifying the right target audience and setting the best price on your indie books can pay off hugely. More parts of your book selling strategy could include:

• Days of the week when you’ll write and distribute press releases. No worries if you’re not an experienced press release writer. Not only can you learn to write effective releases, you could hire someone to write your press releases at places like Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer.
• Specific book fairs and trade shows you’ll attend. Register to attend these events, budgeting for travel and registration fees as part of your book marketing budget.
• Select three to four social media platforms to share details about your book on. Details that you could share include images of your book cover, facts about your book’s characters, great book reviews your story has received, etc. Post about your book on these social media platforms one to two times a day. Diversify what you post, covering images, videos and purchase links.

Actions that you could add to your strategy can grow. The more you learn about the book industry, the more actions you’ll likely incorporate into your strategy.

Foundational Book Marketing Actions

Just remember to stick to the foundational actions that are part of your book marketing strategy. Furthermore, measure the results of your efforts. As an example, use a spreadsheet to track how many books you sell after you distribute a press release or post a video of your indie books on social media.

What you see on this spreadsheet can help you know which days and times are best to distribute press releases, post to social media, send literary newsletters, etc. For this reason, pay attention to the data that you collect.

Who knows? One day, you could use data to decide whether to start your own book marketing business, potentially increasing the income that you generate while working in the book business.

Data is a must while implementing the second way to sell more indie books. It’s a must because, absent the right data, you could spend more money than you might recoup. And what is the second way to sell more indie books?

About Advertising Your Indie Books for Sells

Advertise your indie books. However, don’t simply take out ads, invest in ads that reach your target audience. Another thing – before you take out ads, learn about the ad platform. Learn how the ads work. For instance, are the ads pay-per-click or are you paying for a certain number of impressions. If you pay for impressions, you’re paying to show your book cover to readers.

With pay-per-click ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Definitely run ads when your indie books are released. Consider starting with low-cost ads. Even if you take out Amazon ads, start slow. Some ads may take days to produce sells.

To avoid overspending, create a book marketing budget. Stick to this budget. Ad money can spend as quickly as money spent shopping for clothes. Be smart. Start slow, continue to learn about book ad platforms and how to get the most out of the platforms. Also, try new ad platforms, again moving ahead slowly and smartly. Additionally, don’t get emotionally or psychologically attached to ads. Stop ads that aren’t working. Reduce and increase ads as needed.

More Book Sales Efforts

Set a clear goal. This is important. Rather than hoping that you sell a lot of books, determine how many books you’re going to sell each week or each month. This is something that I learned after years of writing and selling books. Hopefully, this tip saves you decades of learning and loads of money.

When you set a clear goal, you take actions that move you closer to fulfilling that goal. The pursuit is no longer vague. You know exactly what you want. Because of this, you pay attention to what you’re doing that’s working. And it becomes easier to alter or stop doing what’s not working.

Depending on how your brain works, you might find it beneficial to write your goal down and leave it close to your computer. I leave my goal on the edge of my computer and on my refrigerator. Continue to hit your goal and you might be surprised to see how easily you start selling more books. There really is something to be said for having a clear goal and working to achieve this goal. A goal is a great and effective target.

You Can Sell More Indie Books

We’re going above three ways to sell more indie books, but here goes. To sell more indie books, carry your books with you. Keep a copy in your purse, bookbag, vehicle, etc. Regarding keeping books in a vehicle, here’s a valuable tip. Store your books in a waterproof container. Do this whether you keep your books in the trunk of your vehicle, your garage, basement or in a closet.

These are a few ways to sell more indie books. Actions you could take to increase your book sales are varied and long. One of the best ways to sell more books is to keep improving as an author. Strengthen your writing, get your books professionally edited, have an attention-grabbing book cover created and write an effective book description. Keep at it. As you do, you’ll discover more ways to market and sell books.

By Fiction and Nonfiction Books Writer Denise Turney

Understand the advantages inherent in taking care of yourself, really taking care of yourself, and you could tap into natural motivation to practice self-care. But first you need to hurdle the belief that to take care of yourself is to be selfish.

This starts with understanding that self-care is more than going to the gym and exercising, working a rewarding job and making relationship choices that promote good mental health. Also, rather than being a one-time activity, self care is ongoing. In fact, at its core self love is a daily practice. Fortunately, much of what comprises daily this care can be done in a matter of minutes.

Quick Self Care Actions

These quick smart actions span across your physical health, mental health, finances, work, friendships, where you live and your spiritual health. Even if you’ve never made loving yourself a priority, here are actions that you could take to start proving to yourself that you’re valuable and worth endless love:

• Train your brain to enter deep, restful sleep as soon as you climb into bed. You can do this by going to bed around the same time each night. Turning the television and other technological devices off can reduce light streaming into your sleeping space, encouraging rest and sleep.
• Drink plenty of fresh water. If you’re accustomed to drinking sugary beverages, it could take a few weeks to get into the habit of drinking fresh water. Yet, as with walking a mile, if you take a step and keep going, you can develop that healthy self care habit.
• Dine on healthy food. If your diet is like mine once was, you might want to start with drinking fresh water. Do that for a few weeks and then start incorporating a diet of healthy food into your life. For instance, start eating a handful of fresh, raw vegetables in the morning (if your body digest and metabolizes vegetables well). Or you could get a juicer and make and drink a fruit juice for lunch.
• Invest time in relaxation. This could come through a walk through a safe outdoor area. It could also come through sitting on the front or back porch, etc. As simple as this may seem, it’s very important. Here’s a way to test to see if you’re relaxing enough each day. Continue with your normal routine for a month. Then, take just one day and do nothing. Don’t work on your side gig, babysit for a friend, work on an at-home project – nothing. Just relax. Monitor how soon you start to feel different – better. Stay motivated to this practice and you could feel this way regularly.

Motivated to Love Yourself

This is just a short list of self care actions that you could add to your lifestyle. However, as short as the list is and as simple as these actions can be, they won’t produce benefit if you aren’t motivated to love yourself.

A good way to get motivated to demonstrate that you love yourself and to practice self care is to pay attention to how you feel when you take just one act of self love. For example, in addition to the above actions, you could connect with a good friend once a week, giving yourself opportunity to have someone mirror love back to you.

You could also read inspirational quotes in the morning and at night. Surrounding yourself with people who are committed to walking in love is another effective step. People who are committed to love aren’t kind and caring sometimes. They are continuously loving.

It’s been shared before. Howbeit, do you catch yourself doing this? Do you catch yourself treating yourself the way you treat someone you love? Do you catch yourself loving you? How often? This is key, because if you don’t practice self care, you could push yourself too hard and experience burnout, anxiety, depression or even a physical illness.

Good Change to Continue Loving Yourself

Once you start practicing self care and make it part of your daily activities, don’t be surprised if others notice a good change in you. For instance, you might come across as more relaxed, open, satisfied, confident and happy.

Keep at it. In other words, consider adding more self love actions to your day. There’s meditation, yoga, deep breathing, nature hikes, listening to soothing music, playing (actually playing – like you did when you were a kid), dancing, etc.

Stop Looking Outside for Love

See if you don’t start to stop looking outside yourself for someone else to care for you, for someone else to love you. Take care of yourself. Show yourself that you’re valuable and that you have a worth that no words can express.

If you’re interested in tracking your progress, consider adding a beautifully designed writing journal to your bag of resources. Write in your journal every day, at least once a week, to get the most out of journaling. Not only will you be able to look back at your progress, you’ll have a tool to return to in order to spot mental habits, including mental blocks that might be holding you back from what you really want.

By Books Writer Denise Turney

Aim for love that goes deep with friends, family, and yourself. This single goal can enrich your relationships and improve your overall well-being. Why?

When you aim for love that goes deep, you intentionally engage in conversations and behavior that have impact below the surface. Merely calling someone on a holiday won’t be your goal unless you haven’t spoken with the person in years. Regardless of what you’ve done in the past, you’ll keep looking for ways to show the people in your life that they are priceless.

How Deeply You Love and Care

You’ll also continue to seek ways to demonstrate to them how deeply you love and care for them. Examples of this include:

• Calling a friend and asking them what day and time is good to enjoy a meal together. While dining, discuss a disagreement that you and the friend recently had, something that has created a wedge in your relationship.
• Inviting a relative to a local, regional, or national event that you were offered free entrance tickets to. Spend the day with the relative and appreciate their presence.
• Walking to a meeting with a colleague and discussing a fun event the colleague attended over the weekend.

Although these actions sound simple, they pack a punch when it comes to showing someone how much they mean to you. When you consider how many of us struggle with self-esteem, confidence and inner love issues, seemingly small words and actions can help release people from the fear that they aren’t enough.

Aim for Love That Goes Deep

Therefore, when you aim for love that goes deep, you help people to gain freedom from fear. And you help others to get comfortable with being loved. Considering that we flee what we fear, this love-based work that you do could help those in your life to stop running from love.

It’s good work with far reach.

More reasons why you should aim for love that goes deep include avoiding being perceived as someone who pursues “surface” relationships and only doing the minimal to keep relationships going. That’s not all. Other reasons to aim for love that goes deep are:

• Pursuing deep love may be the best way to “really” get to know a person.
• The closer you get to others, the more open to love you may become.
• Efforts that you make to enrich your relationships can instill trust.

Even more, you’ll be teaching others how to improve their relationships. This happened for me at a corporate office. A colleague, a talented sales professional, was skilled at relationship building. Patience was one of her hallmarks.

See How Love Works

When we went to a team lunch, she suggested that I sit next to her. As we prepared to travel back to the office, she asked me to ride with her. Not once did she gossip or attack another person in any way.

Instead of simply offering a good morning and good evening greeting, she looked for ways to deepen our relationship. Her only motive was to aim for love that goes deep. It has been impactful.

For you, it might have been a parent or a grandparent who aimed for love that goes deep. Or maybe it was a childhood friend. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that you remember this person with clarity. Should you count the people who have had the deepest impact on your life, this person would be in that number.

Include Yourself

Aim for love that goes deep to have lasting impact on others. Also, the love you give to others circles back. That love comes back to you in ways that might surprise you. For starters, not only will you feel good about yourself, respect that you hold for yourself might soar. Hence, don’t exclude yourself when it comes to aiming for love that goes deep. To include yourself in the circle of love:

• Ensure you get enough quality sleep each night.
• Treat yourself to entertainment, organic meals, and outdoor activities that you enjoy.
• Spend time alone, appreciating your own company one or more times a week.
• Exercise regularly, keeping your physical fitness at optimum levels.
• Hang out with friends regularly, definitely one or more times a month. Times when you can’t hang out with friends, do a video call with your friends.
• Venture to new places, having loads of fun whether you’re on a weeklong vacation or doing something different over the weekend.
• Practice patience with yourself. Just like everyone else, you’re learning. Because you’re learning, you’ll make mistakes. Forgive yourself and be patient as you continue to learn and awaken.

Pay Attention to What Love Yields

Whether you’re demonstrating love to yourself or someone else, pay attention. Pay attention to what you choose to do to demonstrate your love for yourself or another person. In time, you’ll notice what works. For instance, a relative you’ve been at odds with might tell you how much your weekly telephone call means to him. The aim has additional implications, such as:

• Increases the likelihood that people whose lives you have touched will spot other people who are committed to love
• Demonstrates to you that you are loving
• Shows you the influence that you have when you operate with integrity and with the aim to love, not to get something but simply to love
• Helps you to notice when someone is being honest, transparent and trying to love you with good intentions
• Lets your whole-self realize how much you care about you. This alone could make it easier for you to trust yourself as you take new, smart risks, trying new things.

Watch Hearts Open

Another benefit of paying attention is how your heart opens. Let one person tell you how much your patience, persistence and love blessed their life and any doubt you have about the power of love might evaporate.

This is important because part of the journey here is to remember love, to remember what you truly are. Remember, should you choose to aim for love that goes deep, make sure that you include yourself in your efforts to demonstrate love.

After all, love isn’t complete without you.

By Books Author Denise Turney

If you’re thinking about throwing in the towel, read these 5 good reasons why you shouldn’t give up on yourself. Even if the first reason doesn’t strengthen your faith, keep going. Let one reason stir deep emotion and it might not be long before hope returns.

Keep Going – There’s Light Inside

You’ve heard it before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. After all, repetition doesn’t make something a fact. And this bears repeating. There is one you, only one.

Despite what you might perceive about yourself, there’s a light inside you. It’s there even if you don’t acknowledge it. The world needs that light. So do you.

Don’t Give Up – Without You There’s Lack

These next 5 reasons why you shouldn’t give up on yourself take more than an initial read. This isn’t to say that you should read the reasons two or more times. No. Instead, you should recall these reasons when you encounter challenges, a long string of stumbles, the type of setbacks that make you want to quit.

1. To begin, you’re an eternal being. Therefore, giving up on yourself could come with long effects. Even more, deep within, you really do believe in yourself. There is a part of you that will never give up on you. That part knows you fully, in a way your conscious mind never has. So, even if you’re tired, frustrated or feel hopeless, there is a part of you that always believes in what you really are.
2. Forgetting doesn’t erase the fact that you came into this world for a reason. Just because you forgot why you came here, doesn’t mean that you didn’t once know. Don’t give up so you can remember.
3. Change is part of this world. Another constant in this world is routine. Think about it. Have you ever felt like your days were repeating, starting to look just alike? In a way, it’s like a trick. Morning after morning, you get up, wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair and set out. Whether you venture to work, school, a community center, volunteer organization or elsewhere, chances are that you’ve been to this place before. Who knows? You might even take the same route to and from work or school day after day. Repetition. Routine. Seems like everything will always be the same. When things are down, routine and repetition can hurt – bad. Yet don’t give up on yourself. Seemingly out of nowhere and without notice, everything could change – for the better, in ways you might not imagine.

Memories Hold Reasons Not to Quit

Remembering why you came here may take time. It also might require you to practice awareness and get still at least once a day. Entering stillness could be as easy as sitting on the edge of your bed for 10 minutes after you wake. Nature walks might also shift you into stillness. Once you enter stillness, important truths can surface. Look for them. See what good comes to you.

• Someone is watching you. Although a lot of attention is planted on celebrities, someone is paying attention to you. That’s right. We’re all teachers and students. Look back over your life and you’ll see how much you have learned from others. In a similar way, others have learned from you. People who will learn from you need you to show up.
• Having a crystal ball wouldn’t show you everything that’s coming. Quit and you might miss out on a chain of miracles. From where you are now, you can’t see how much your mind might open to good experiences that, until this point, you’ve blocked yourself from receiving. Hence, never give up on yourself. Your best experiences might be ahead.

Don’t Give Up on Yourself So You Can Win

Don’t give up on yourself. If you do, no one will be more disappointed than you. Somewhere within, you know that you can accomplish what you came here to achieve. Winning is what you were created to do.

As you continue your journey, speak lovingly to yourself. Read motivating books to encourage yourself. Motivation and encouragement work like fuel; they’re good energy to keep you moving forward.

Spending time with friends who are positive, people who take smart actions to achieve their dreams, is another way to encourage yourself. Listening to uplifting music, dancing, singing and reading inspirational poetry are other ways to stay motivated.

However, nothing might top telling yourself that you are going to win. Find a way every day to assure yourself that you are going to win.

You’ve Come Too Far to Quit

Should you still feel like throwing in the towel, take 10 minutes to recall previous challenges you’ve overcome. Rather than to merely think about challenges you’ve surmounted, sit and write down specific obstacles you’ve faced and overcome.

Then, slowly read what you wrote. Make it crystal clear to yourself that you have what it takes to meet a setback and advance beyond the setback. Really look at what you wrote. Allow the words to sink in.

Next, revisit your childhood. Look at how far you have come since you were a kid. Did you think you would ever live in your own home, if you have your own place now?

So Much Good Is Ahead

Do you own a business? Are your children a constant blessing, surprising you with their talents, gifts and creativity and courage?

Is living the single life right up your alley? Does living alone find you happy and at peace? Are your relationships with your family and friends strong, after all the years that have passed?

This isn’t the time to gloss over how far you have come. On the other hand, this is the time to muscle up your courage by showing yourself just how much you can do.

Get into the habit of practicing awareness, enter stillness each day and encouraging and motivating yourself and you could keep moving forward. Taking smart action, guidance you receive from prayer and the Creator, is another powerful motivator.

Never give up on yourself. Keep going. So much good is ahead.

By Fiction and Nonfiction Books Writer Denise Turney

Peace is the sweetest experience. It’s freedom from irritation. It is a state lacking fear. When you’re living in peace, if someone asks you what you’re eager to change, your mind might go blank, as if searching for a past instance of discontent.

Sweetness of Peace

Although it seems impossible, you could live in peace forever. Once you enter a state of peace, disappointments and challenges aren’t at the front of your thoughts. Talk about a sweet experience.

But how can you remain in peace once your mind allows you to get there? Work and home are good places to start. However, it takes more than wishing, hoping and ruminating about peace. Instead of engaging in these habits, make living in peace your aim.

Shift morning routines. Instead of rushing into the bathroom when you wake, raise your hands, smile and say “thank you” or another favorite phrase. Less than five seconds is all it takes. Another way to shift in the morning is to stretch. Speaking a positive affirmation while doing two to three minutes of rigorous cardio changes physiology, moving you away from worry.

About Peaceful Relationships

You’ll also benefit from incorporating shifts into work routines, especially if you work outside your home. Goal is to do what steers you away from fear and into peace. For example, instead of lunching with people who gossip, you might decide to eat healthy food at midday and enjoy a walk afterward.

That or you might enjoy lunch with friends who don’t gossip or attack others verbally. This is important because what you see people do to others, you might fear that they can (or do) do to you when you’re not physically with them.

With peace as your goal, you may become more aware of what jabs at your inner peace.

Easy Peaceful Paths

During a relationship break for me, I had to learn to forgive so that I could “let go” of past perceived wrongs and move into peace. This was no quick fix. It took me years to pull this off. Yet, my aim remained unchanged. Had I not chosen forgiveness, my home life would not have been peaceful.

Quicker peaceful paths center around finances. Little causes fear and worry like money problems. Just as I did with the broken relationship, peace must be your overall goal. For example, you could:

• Pay down high interest loans
• Bring credit card debt to zero
• Curb spending
• Build and stick to a budget

Even more, consider reducing the time people attracted to chaos spend in your home. Relatives and friends who love drama, including fights, can drive you into unease. As you get accustomed to living in peace at home, you and your family could start to protect that peace.

Getting to Peace at Work

Engaging in relaxing activities at home is another way to dwell in peace. Soaking in a warm bubble bath, reading a good book, doing yoga, meditating, working in your garden and sleeping deeply at night are more ways to relax at home.

Extending peace at home to work takes commitment. Why? At work, there might be hundreds or thousands of colleagues you cross paths with, each having different energy.

How to work in peace with so many people? Commit to your goal to live in peace. Recall advantages peace has brought you. Among those advantages might be lower blood pressure, better sleep, healthier weight, improved energy and better mental balance.

Also, pay attention to how you feel about work in general as well as the work that you’re currently doing. Notice if colleagues are showing signs of burnout and stress. If so, you could be working in a toxic environment. Steer clear of thinking that this is all in your head if other people are being affected.

Toxic Work Environment Challenges to Peace

In fact, if you’ve worked 10 years, you might have worked in a toxic environment at least once. That toxicity could come through the words or actions of a poor manager, a bullying colleague, lack of clarity from senior management, long work hours and stressful project demands.

Acknowledge what is happening. Don’t sugarcoat it or think that it will magically go away. Recall your goal to live in peace. Consider whether the path to peace at work might come through speaking with a colleague, human resources or a manager about workplace challenges.

Pray for guidance. Be open to stepping into a different role at work or even exiting the organization and working elsewhere. Depending on what is going on in your life, you might leave the organization and take time to be still for several weeks without working anywhere. Of course, ensure that your finances allow for this option.

You could also accept that, regardless of where you work, there may be times when you feel stressed on the job. But this stress shouldn’t go on endlessly. Additionally, there might always be one or more people who you don’t feel completely in sync with at work. Hence, don’t run from challenges.

Open Yourself Up to Better Peace Options

Instead, spot stressful patterns at work (i.e., aggressive emails, put downs cloaked as jokes), seek guidance and keep peace as your aim. Definitely, steer clear of convincing yourself that if you leave a toxic workplace, you can never work again. Because that is not true.

If you convince yourself that you must stay in a toxic work environment, you might feel bound – stuck. That by itself could produce stress. It could find you feeling trapped, which could, in turn, could cause you to become toxic, at work and at home.

To avoid believing the lie that you’re out of work choices, research work from home jobs, remote jobs and employers in industries you want to work in. Look though online job sites like Indeed, Career Builder and Journalism Jobs and set up job alerts.

Moving Into Peace

Show yourself that you have options. You have options at work, and you have options at home. Consider interviewing one to two times a year. Do this even if you love your current job.

This could keep you from being deceived that you could never gain a better job. Do the same with relationships. Stay in touch with loving family and friends. Stay away from isolating yourself. Create environments that prove, that show you, that you have choices and that you can change and move from chaos into peace.

By Books Writer Denise Turney

Writing journals are the types of recording resources that help you stay on track. Even more, when you write in journals you can shift an idea from your imagination, allowing the idea to showcase itself out in the world. A journal is one of the friendliest truth finders.

Beyond Beautifully Designed Blank Journals

And you get to fill in the blank pages at your own pace. But, to gain continual rewards from writing in a journal, you need to commit to the work. If not, you might end up with a bookcase of beautifully designed blank journals that are free of your personal writings, clear of your inner work.

Do that and the hidden dreams, triggers, roadblocks and long-term goals buried deep inside of you might stay just that way – hidden. For example, if you want to open a vegan bakery, a location filled with plants and contemporary abstract paintings, you’re going to have to do more than concept the bakery.

Shift Beyond Imagination with Journals

As good as it feels, it’s not enough to concept and think about opening a bakery. You have to start shifting internally so that you take smart actions. In this instance, you could write your concept in a journal. Then, add detail and clarity to the concept. Other steps needed to shift the goal of operating a vegan bakery beyond imagination include:

• Detail it out – Sticking with the vegan bakery idea, add detail-detail-detail to the concept in your journal. What color do you want the bakery’s interior to have? Do you want a one-level or a two-level bakery? Would turning a tiny house or a traditional house into a bakery work? Will the bakery have a unique exterior design, the type of design that stands out? What days and hours will the bakery be open to the public? Could your bakery also serve as your living space, reducing your overall real estate cost?
• Local regulations – Discover if there are licenses needed to operate a bakery. Also, learn if there are certain types of ingredients you’re not permitted to use in your baked goods.
• Finances – Identify how much money you can afford to invest in your vegan bakery right now. After all, you can always invest more money in the business, as needed, after you start turning a profit.
• Headcount – At the start, determine if you’re going to be a solopreneur or if you’re going to hire staff. If you can’t afford to take on full-timers, you could hire two to three part-time workers to get the bakery up and running.

Answer Journaling Questions

Write answers to these questions in your journal. Consider using this journal to only write about a single goal. When you visit local small businesses, meeting with entrepreneurs to learn about what you need to meet local laws, write about those experiences in your journal.

Instead of simply writing what you did, expand upon the experience. This would see you writing about how you felt before you met with local regulators or local entrepreneurs and how you felt during and after the meetings.

Should you encounter inner roadblocks that show up as procrastination, anxiety or constant delays, set aside time to write about what you’re experiencing. If a parent, grandparent or another relative owned a business, write about your feelings around their business and your relationship with this relative.

Why is this important?

Making The Connection While You Write

You might expect to experience the same results from your business that this relative experienced with their business. On top of this, the expectation could be hidden in your subconscious. Leave this expectation unhidden and you might struggle to understand why you’re procrastinating or avoiding taking a necessary step in your business, all starting with the third year that you’ve owned the bakery.

Your journal writing could uncover the fact that your relative’s business suffered losses during the third year, forcing your relative to close the business. Let’s say you admired this relative, thinking that they were incredibly smart, courageous, insightful and kind. They weren’t the type of person you thought would ever lose at anything.

Yet, they had to close their business. Deep down, you might be expecting the same to happen with you, because you don’t see yourself as capable of exceeding what this relative you admire accomplished. At a subconscious level, fear could be leading you.

Make Journal Writing a Good Habit

By making journal writing about your goal a daily or weekly habit, you could spot this and other internal shifts early. Once you spot a shift, list smart actions that you’re going to take to pivot around setbacks, negative expectations and fear.

For instance, you might list three to six negative expectations that you have. Just don’t stop there. After you list the negative expectations, list how you are going to deal with those events should they actually occur. This helps to build confidence, showing you that you can effectively respond to a setback.

So Many Usages for Writing Journals

Other ways to use writing journals to shift beyond imagination are to:

• Put on a journalist’s hat and write about previous successes you have had. The more you write about prior successes that are related to what you want to do next, the better. Prove to yourself that you can achieve what you want. After all, look how many times you’ve already gotten the ball over the wall.
• Add pictures of you dreaming about what you want (the incubator stage) to you applying for licenses, paying startup fees and reviewing properties to operate your business from. Include them in your journal.
• Schedule events to celebrate each third step that you take to bring your vision forward, shifting it from imagination to where others can see it benefitting people in the world. Take pictures of these celebrations, however small or large they are. Make sure you add several of these pictures to your journal.

As you can see, there are a myriad of ways to pump up writing journals. Adding pictures, drawings, poems, song lyrics, flowers, etc. to your journal, you enliven these written personal recordings that much more. Who knows? Looking forward to adding to the journal might encourage you to continue doing what it takes to shift great ideas beyond your inner world, bringing them from imagination to real life in the world.