Take Advantage of the Temporary

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By Journal Writer and Novelist Denise Turney

temporary colorful bokeh lights
Photo by Andre Moura on Pexels.com

Love for happy times to last forever in this world? Wish that those sweet, loving moments in your romantic relationship would go on and on, without an end? Oh, if the good times lasted forever. If your favorite emotions and experiences stayed with you permanently while you journeyed through this world.

Most Of Your Journey

Yet, that’s not how it goes. Good times don’t last forever in this world, but neither do challenging times. That’s very good news. What do you think?

To make the most of your journey here, start taking advantage of the temporary. As a first step, approach situations with the mindset that, despite how much you like or don’t like an experience, it -won’t go unchanged. Accepting this could keep you from jumping from relationship to relationship, job to job, worship center to worship center and so on.

Admittedly, it took me years to learn that nothing last forever in this world. Here, everything changes. Look back over your life and you might see that, although you suspected this was the case, you didn’t really believe it.

In fact, you might have thought that there was a special person, great job, best town, etc. that you could connect with and enter a state of permanent bliss. Of course, you could keep looking. Over time, you might start to notice that you’re moving in circles, looking for a permanence here that doesn’t exist.

Options

Here are some ways that you could take advantage of the temporary. Whichever options you go with, keep an open mind. There may be nothing that helps you to stay in the flow better than an open mind.

  • Wake with a spirit and mindset of appreciation. A very simple way to pull this off is to raise your hands as soon as you wake and simply say, “Thank you!”
  • Consider the people who helped develop experiences that you enjoy. For example, before you head to an amusement park, concert, festival, etc., pause and think about the event organizers, promoters, ride builders, artists, etc. who helped bring the event from idea stage to reality. Let yourself appreciate how these people, whether they know each other or not, worked together to create an experience that you are about to absolutely love.
  • Be fully present when you are wherever you are. You will never be in that exact place in the same exact state/perception again. Even if the walls, ceiling, sky, grass and trees look the same, so much has changed since the last time that you were there.
  • Pause before you eat a meal. Instead of only speaking grace, actually see the farmers working the soil, planting seeds and tending to crop. And see truckers delivery produce and other food to stores. Visualize grocery store stockers and cashiers stocking shelves and checking you out of the grocery store line. All of this and more may have occurred before the meal you’re about to enjoy made it to your plate.
  • Give thought to doing the same as it regards other areas of your life. For instance, you could think about the engineers, technicians and factory workers who designed and built the automobile that you drive. Allow yourself to see the many different people who work hard to help you gain the experiences that you treasure and enjoy.

Appreciate Temporary Experiences

The above actions can help you to see more clearly how temporary experiences are. Additionally, the above actions could help you to live with much deeper appreciation. Keep at it, and you might start to marvel at what’s happening in your life.

Also, to take advantage of the temporary, coach yourself. Teach yourself that you won’t have forever in this world to take advantage of opportunities. This doesn’t mean that you go through every door you see. It’s smart to pause, pray and wait for Higher Guidance before you walk through an open door.

Once you receive an internal “green light”, take smart action. In other words, don’t stall and sit back and try to talk yourself out of what you want. Go for the right things! That open door you’re looking at right now might not stay open.

Life Without Regrets

This brings up an interesting point. Among the things that people say they regret when they are facing the end of their physical journey is the fact that they didn’t do what they really wanted to do while they were here. The end of the road is not the time to realize you didn’t live your own life.

It’s also not the time to finally accept that you spent your days sacrificing (doing what you thought others wanted or needed). If joy is your strength, you’re going to have to consider what causes you to experience joy. Then, you need to allow yourself to have these experiences.

Because joy and love go together, these will be experiences that are rooted in goodness. So, take advantage of good open doors, knowing that those opportunities might only be temporarily available to you. Athletes might get this lesson more frequently than others. Smart athletes know the importance of taking advantage of good opportunities as soon as they appear.

Look Up

On the flip side, taking advantage of the temporary means that you don’t get bogged down with focusing on challenges. You don’t let undesirable experiences shift your focus off of love. Another thing, you don’t live as if you expect a bad time or a challenge to last forever. As someone told me at a worship center years ago, “trouble don’t last always”.

Did I ever gain lots of encouragement from hearing her say that. It’s true; trouble doesn’t last forever. But neither do good times stay exactly the same forever here. You might be doing yourself a favor as you practice appreciation and steer clear of believing that trouble will last. Set yourself up for greater success by moving from opportunity to opportunity, refusing to bind yourself to a current or past “good experience”.

Strength for Your Journey: Moving Through Life Phases

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By Writer Denise Turney

a woman moving through life phases on a path between trees
Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.com

Pay attention and you may notice that you are moving through life phases. There is no way to avoid these phases. Shifts and phases are part of this world’s journey.

Read enough autobiographies, memoirs and biographies and you can spot how other people shift through phases. Even more, you might discover strategies to help you when you approach a phase that someone else found profoundly challenging (but got through) as you read autobiographies, memoirs and biographies.

Just What Are Life Phases?

When one phase ends, it is as though a part of you knows there is an approaching ending. The phase may or may not align to your biological age. It is worth paying attention to, because if you are struggling, it could be due to a phase ending.

However, with the right mindset and care for yourself, you can release the phase that is ending and move with grace into the approaching phase. Depending on the source, you might hear that there are four or five life stages. For example, Learning Mind1 lists the four life stages as:

  • Stage One – Basics (this is where you mimic what you see, hear and sense others doing)
  • Stage Two – Discovery (you are starting to learn who you are)
  • Stage Three – Priorities (during this stage, you start to set life priorities)
  • Stage Four – Finding Meaning (it is a time when you are preparing to pass along your legacy)

Taking a Closer Look at Life Phases

CNBC reports that there are five life stages.2 Like the Learning Mind stages, these stages align to your biological age. You might enjoy reading the stages in depth to see how they differ and if any stage resonates with you. It could lead to the beginning of a new self-discovery for you. Here are the stages that CNBC shares:

  • Stage One – Dreamer
  • Stage Two – Explorer
  • Stage Three – Builder
  • Stage Four – Mentor
  • Stage Five – Giver

In this case, the fourth and fifth stages bring to mind wealthy businessmen like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. These men spent decades amassing wealth only to give it away during their latter earthly years.

Which Stage Are You In?

Depending on your life experiences, you might find yourself moving through life phases that extend beyond the above four or five stages. As an example, Institute for Life shares that there are twelve life stages.3 But again, these stages align to biological age which might not actually be what is happening (more on that later).

Here is a final look at another set of life stages. These are the twelve life stages outlined by Institute for Life:

  • Rebirth – Potential
  • Birth – Hope
  • Infancy – Vitality
  • Early Childhood – Playfulness
  • Middle Childhood – Imagination
  • Late Childhood – Ingenuity
  • Adolescence – Passion
  • Early Adulthood – Enterprise
  • Midlife – Contemplation
  • Mature Adulthood – Benevolence
  • Late Adulthood – Wisdom
  • Death and Dying – Life

Because culture has profound influence on you, moving through life phases with grace can align with culture. You will certainly learn about moving through life phases by watching your elders. From your parents to your grandparents, great aunts, great uncles and great-grandparents, you are learning.

Culture and Life Shifts

It does not matter what your biological age is. You never stop learning. And as you learn, you teach.

At its basic level, culture is a combination of social norms, beliefs, traditions, arts and expression forms shared by a group of people. Baraka is a film by Ron Fricke that offers up-close, snapshots of distinct cultures. Watching Baraka or a similar film can open your eyes, helping you to see that your culture exists among many distinct cultures.

The way you live and what you believe are not common across the globe. It can be humbling to accept this. Or you can allow it to enlighten you.

As you become enlightened, you will again spot how everyone, regardless of culture, is moving through life phases. Looking back, see if you can spot when you were shifting. How did you do?

Support Through Phases

Did you realize you were moving through life phases? Were you gentle with yourself? Following are actions that could help you when you find yourself in a shift.

  • Read about life stages
  • Explore autobiographies, biographies and memoirs (they hold clues)
  • Travel to experience diverse cultures
  • Accept that your perceptions are not global. Millions of people thrive but do not share your life perceptions.
  • Gift yourself with patience. You are entering new territory. Give yourself time to adjust.
  • Journal what you are feeling, perceiving and experiencing.
  • Dance
  • Include laughter in your daily diet
  • Pursue peace instead of the goal to always be “right”
  • Accept that you never lose anything that is real or true, regardless of the phase you are in
  • Spend time with people who are in the phase you are living in as well as time with people who are living in different life phases

Stay free of trying to fit your life inside someone else’s perceptions or beliefs. It really is your life.

Timing of Life Phases

Moving through life phases might not happen according to your biological age. Should your childhood force you to step into adult roles early or realize that you are fully responsible for yourself at a time when others your age continue to believe that it is their parents’ function to be fully responsible for them, your age might have much less to do with the phase you are in.

If you have been practicing awareness through yoga, nature walks, meditation and stillness, you may spot a shift early. For instance, you might feel uncontented with a living or working situation that previously you accepted or appreciated.

Now, the situation causes you sorrow, confusion or regret. Back to John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. During one phase of their lives, it may have seemed right to pursue money as if it were life’s singular purpose. While in another phase, this pursuit did not appear as valuable, wise or rewarding.

Strength for the Journey

Allow yourself to review how you are moving through life phases. Consider what you have learned. Think about when you thought you knew more than you did. How did letting go of the belief that you knew more than you did change your perceptions, impact those around you?

Did you become more open minded, or did you become angry, upset that the world did not stay the way it was when you were younger? Let go.

Life is big. You cannot control it.

Continue to move forward. As an eternal being, keep awakening and evolving. Invest in grieving the loss of a phase as it ends. And allow yourself to welcome and celebrate the new phase that you are entering. You may receive strength for the journey as you realize that countless others have been where you are.

Resources:

  1. 4 Stages of Life: Where Are You on the Journey? – Learning Mind (learning-mind.com)
  2. There are 5 stages of life—here’s what to do at every age ‘to minimize regrets,’ says life coach (cnbc.com)
  3. The 12 Stages of Life | Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. (institute4learning.com)

Will Peering into the Future Improve Your Life Script or Scare You?

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By Mystery Suspense Books Writer Denise Turney

group of people standing looking at the life script
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

If you’re feeling stuck, it might be time to improve your life script. First, just what is a life script and why does it have so much impact? Here’s a general way to look at a life script.

Building Your Life Script

Have you ever felt like you were living between hard boundaries, making it feel impossible to experience great positive shifts, limiting yourself to the same routines? If so, you might be adhering to a script. Beautiful Truth shares that a life script or storytelling is part of how we navigate the world. “Storytelling occurs at our most basic experience of navigating the world. But most of the time, we aren’t even aware of ourselves doing it.”1

Furthermore, “And here is the most exciting part. In realising how prone we are to tell stories, and more importantly – to believe them – we are able to create new ones. And when we change the stories we tell ourselves, we can change the way we see the world and ourselves within it. “1

Generally, by the time you’re seven-years-old, your life script is set. In addition to being made at the unconscious level, this script can play out seemingly to your conscious unawareness. Should this happen, you could be attracted to people who struggle with anger, lack of confidence, workaholism or gambling. But not only would you be attracted to a specific “type” of person, you might not know why you’re attracted to those types of people.

Who’s Part of Your Life Script

Also, as with many unconscious scripts, your life story consists of habits, statements, beliefs, etc. that you saw those around you engaging in, particularly people who you were close to as a child. Without meaning to, you could create a life story that causes you to mirror a parent, uncle, coach, etc. All by itself, this proves that you do have impact.

Not only have other people helped to make your life script, but right now you’re saying, believing and doing things that are helping to make someone else’s “story”. For example, if you curse and bang furniture whenever your laptop is slow and you have to wait for a webpage to load while your manager is waiting for you to send her a file, your niece could learn to react that way when she’s feeling stress and waiting for something, after she becomes a woman.

Fortunately, you can rewrite your life script. Psychology Today shares a story about a young girl who had been bullied while teachers seemed either not to notice or chose not to respond.2 The girl’s mother helped her to step into her power, even calling teachers and those involved herself, refusing to ignore what her daughter had shared with her. Those choices helped to change the girl’s script, also referred to as “story”.

Improve Your Life Story

In the Psychology Today article, it’s shared that, “We are the stories we tell—and we are compelled to create stories to understand ourselves.” Inner Self3 and Bestselfology4 offer suggestions on actions you could take to change your “story” or your life script. (See below link in our “Resources” section.)

Here are a few actions that you could take to improve your story:

  • Accept that your experiences are part of a “story”
  • Accept that you are more powerful than your “story”
  • Watch videos of people struggling, dealing with stress and low confidence who prove that you can improve your life script as you watch the people in the videos listen to a training, read specific books or watch shows that actually open them up to the point where they change their “story”
  • Listen to your inner dialogue. It’s there. Become aware of it and simply listen to what you say throughout the day and night.
  • Acknowledge that you can change your life script.
  • Meditate regularly to quiet your mind. Get in the habit of uncluttering your mind.
  • Pay attention to how you feel and see if your feelings are connected to a script.
  • Try something new every day. This is also a good way to get your brain off autopilot.
  • Give yourself options.

Support to Improve Your Life Script

To improve your life script, you might find it beneficial to work with a licensed, experienced therapist. An experienced, licensed therapist could access your subconscious mind and help you to rewrite your life story.

That’s good work. But what if you peered into your future and saw specifics around one or more events that were headed your way? In other words, what if you visualized an actual event before it occurred? Do you think you would be scared if you knew what was coming in your life?

Furthermore, do you think it’s possible to see the specifics as it regards sights, sounds and maybe even lighting and smells, about events that don’t actually show up in your life for 10 or more years?

Several times I have received details on an upcoming event that was 10 or more away. Based on research on life scripts, not certain if these experiences are related to a script or if a Higher Power preplanned the visionary experiences. Tammy Tilson’s daughter addresses these and other questions in a life changing way in the mystery book, Spiral.

Life Scripts in Spiral

She can’t ignore what she knows. What she knows is connected to other people’s life scripts that do not allow for good endings. Yet, if she doesn’t act, try to change the endings, she won’t be free and she knows it.

Her conscience will play and re-play a tape that could rob her of peace. She’s not willing to let that happen, and so she acts.

This all is worth asking, have the experiences you see already happened? Are you remembering a distant past, simply perceiving it as the present?

And, if so, do you have access to information that will allow you to make better decisions? That would be one way to effectively change your life, to really improve your life script.

Are You Willing to Improve Your Life Script

To know what is coming next and then to make decisions that cause the effect you truly want is a fortune. Should you choose this route, foreknowledge could prove beneficial. Yet, if your life is running, in part, off an internal script that you perceived and put into place when you were as young as seven-years-old, you might have forgotten what you put into place or why.

Is a first step toward improving your life script and opening up to more loving experiences a willingness to become aware of what you are thinking, becoming aware of what you have spent years focusing on? And is an early step toward changing your life a willingness to open up to change?

Resources:

  1. The Stories We Tell Ourselves — The Beautiful Truth
  2. Rewrite Your Script | Psychology Today
  3. How You Can Rewrite the Script of Your Life – InnerSelf.com
  4. What is your life script and are you happy with it? – BestselfologyBestselfology

How Reading Good Relationship Books Opens You to Love

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

man and woman sitting on the floor reading good relationship books
Couple Reading Good Relationship Books – Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Reading good books is a great way to escape the world’s rigors. You learn, grow, exercise your brain, enjoy virtual travel, are introduced to favorite characters and much more. If you read a lot of books, you can shortcut the time it takes to understand new material at work and school. One of the greatest rewards gained from reading books may have escaped you. When you read good relationship books, you can open to love more.

How so?

As you read fiction or nonfiction relationship books, your guard drops. It’s not like you’re reading a draft of your biography or autobiography. Fear of being criticized or judged is reduced, perhaps isn’t present at all while you read, allowing you to gain what is being shared more fully.

That’s a huge benefit.

Good Relationship Books Drop Your Guard to Love

After all, if you don’t retain what you read, it’s akin to looking at computer code you don’t understand. More ways that reading good relationship books opens you to love follow:

  • Novels not only help you drop or remove an internal mental guard, they show couples interacting and communicating with each other up close. Witnessing these couples engage can offer tips on what you could do to strengthen your relationships.
  • Of course, communication is key to healthy relationships. This is an area where nonfiction relationship books can yield a wealth of positive results. While reading nonfiction, you can learn communication techniques such as how to be an active listener and the importance of thinking before you speak. PsychAlive also shares that additional solid communication techniques include sticking to the facts when communicating with your partner, being honest and being sincere.1
  • Books make it easy to take in information together, keeping couples free of feeling as if one person in the relationship is offering most of the information or “telling the other person what to think, feel or do”.
  • You can learn about you and your partner’s attachment styles while reading good relationship books.
  • Even more, you can discover you and your partner’s communication style.
  • Opportunities to identify how couples express and receive appreciation is also unearthed through reading.

Relationship Books with Quality Research on Love

Fortunately, in today’s book market there are many relationship books that are built upon years of quality research. This is how you get access to volumes of survey responses and empirical science. In other words, you can quickly learn what works in healthy relationships.

To be healthy, relationships also require that each person in the bond love themselves and continue to evolve and awaken to love. Both fiction and nonfiction books dig into the importance of loving yourself. Should you be tempted to focus on your partner more than yourself, reading good relationship books could be a relationship saver, not only as a couple but for you, as an individual.

After all, you’re not just in a relationship with your partner. You’re forever in a relationship with yourself. Hopefully, the communion you have with yourself is loving, healthy and not dysfunctional. If that incredibly important union is dysfunctional, here’s to hoping that you are working to heal gaps or injuries in the union that you have with yourself.

Spotlight Relationship Love and Goodness

Today’s book market also has lots of titles, particularly fiction, that spotlight dysfunctional relationships. Bookstores and libraries, online and offline, shelve novels that focus on physically, psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships.

Gain from reading these books by focusing on what “not to do” in your relationships. Steer clear of believing that dysfunctional relationships are “normal”. Instead of reading books to convince yourself that every couple hits each other, curses one another or belittles each other, focus on what you want from a coupling.

Get clear about how you want to be treated. Then, read books that share effective techniques and strategies you can use to start treating yourself that way and how you can encourage your partner to treat you this way.

Reading to Gain Loving Interactions

Because experiences, including loving interactions, aren’t linear in this world it’s helpful to get introduced to couples who have overcome great odds. Nonfiction and fiction books have facts, stories and background information to help you pull this off.

You’ll probably spot the win early into the book. For instance, a character may have had a troubling childhood or a character might have gone through a challenging intimate relationship earlier in her life. In addition to giving you hope that you too can overcome childhood or past relationship challenges, reading these books could strengthen your belief that you can go on to enjoy being in a healthy, rewarding love connection.

Books Helping Readers Open to Love

Whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, a key is to commit to open up to love. In other words, make opening up to love more a primary goal. You could do this by:

  • Pick books that deal with forgiveness if you know you need to forgive to remove an internal block and open up to love
  • Join a book club to get diverse insights and perceptions
  • Complete worksheets in nonfiction relationship books. Talk about a way to learn, grow and awaken. Effective worksheets can help surface parts of yourself that greatly impact your relationship, parts of yourself that you had repressed or kept hidden out of your conscious awareness for years.

Celebrate successes that you have in your relationship with yourself and with others. Recognize that good relationships extend beyond marriage and dating. If you live alone, you’re in communication with neighbors, family, colleagues and friends.

Celebrate Relationships and Greater Love

Reading good relationship books that showcase personal and interpersonal connections can help you grow as an individual and as a relationship partner. At the end of each year, consider how much you have gained from the relationship books you read.

Continue the process of reading books that help you deepen your understanding, awareness and growth. This single decision saves you years of research and trial and error. Additionally, as you complete activities in nonfiction books that aim to remove internal blocks, you can open to love more each day.

Resources:

  1. Top 10 Effective Communication Techniques for Couples – PsychAlive

Power of Kids Seeing Themselves in Diverse Books

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

photo of girl sitting on sofa while using tablet to read diverse books
Girl reading diverse book – Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com

Diverse books tap into the power of kids. Social skills, open mindedness, genuine acceptance of others and natural happiness are a few strengths common to kids. These strengths and others, including active listening, knowledge that there’s a lot for them to learn and a heart for the arts and creativity, empower kids. Seeing book characters who look like them put these strengths into practice opens up new worlds for kids. Even more, books with diverse characters do so much more.

Growing Up Without Diverse Books

Fortunately, the numbers of diverse books for kids are increasing. Growing up there were fewer than a handful of children’s books with characters from other cultures. Back then, it was a challenge finding books for young readers that had strong female characters.

Although I absolutely loved to read, starting and finishing dozens of books a week, I longed for stories with characters who reminded me of myself, my family, friends and neighbors. Years passed before I came across such a book which was Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. To say I was shocked to discover the book, is a huge understatement.

Simply seeing Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a book my father gave me, a smile lighting across his face, changed everything for me. Who knows? It might be a reason why I became a novelist.

Kids Finding Diverse Books

That’s the power of kids coming across books that have major and minor characters who resemble them, their parents, siblings, neighbors and friends. More ways that kids are empowered when they read books that have characters and core experiences that mirror theirs include:

  • Supports healthy self-esteem
  • Shows kids what they can do
  • Encourages personal growth
  • Fuels creativity and a desire to continue to develop and advance
  • Impacts a child’s sense of belonging in a good way
  • Makes it easier for kids to connect with what they are reading
  • Enhances learning as kids develop deeper connections with these books’ characters
  • Sends a powerful message that kids from all backgrounds are valued and immeasurably important

A path to getting more diverse books into schools and stores goes through school and retail book buyers. Wholesalers and distributors, including digital distributors, work with independent authors, indie bookstores, libraries, hospitals, schools and major retailers to get books on their shelves.

As parents, educators and caretakers invest in diverse books, wholesalers and distributors work harder to get these powerful books into more retail, school and library outlets. This is when the power of kids can go into effect.

How to Tell Kids Are Benefitting from Diverse Stories

And it should. After all, who better to choose the books they want to read, stories that motivate and inspire them, than kids, the people who are going to sit down and read the books? Once kids feel connected to characters, they might want to read every book in a series.

But what if a child isn’t that talkative, choosing to read more than engage in verbal conversation? There are still ways to tell if a child is getting a lot of positive gain from a book. Among these signs there’s:

  • Parents and caregivers don’t have to encourage kids to read the books
  • Laughter is often heard while young readers are enjoying these stories
  • Kids talk about characters in the stories
  • Acting out fun scenes in middle-school books might become common
  • Should kids have their own cell phones, they can be overheard sharing events written in books with their friends over the phone
  • Children’s confidence rises, allowing them to tap into inner strength and lead projects they had previously shied away from

Connecting Power of Kids Thru Books

The gift of connection aids kids at home, at school and in larger society. Reading books at school that have no to few characters who look like you, speak like you or who are growing up the way you are can send kids the message that they aren’t important enough to be written about, even if only indirectly.

That certainly isn’t the way to acknowledge the power of kids. Admittedly, this is where authors come into play. Increasing sales of children’s and middle school books that have characters from a range of backgrounds encourages more authors to write these types of books.

Furthermore, fueling kids’ reading interest further comes through the chance to meet children’s book authors in person. For instance, schools can schedule author appearances, especially during cultural holidays. Educators can also ask authors to visit schools to close out discussions about a book.

In-Person Meetings with Children and Diverse Book Writers

Several schools are already doing this. These visits are positive for kids in so many ways, including:

  • Allows kids opportunity to get answers to their questions quickly and directly from the books’ authors
  • Shows kids that it’s possible for culturally diverse people to create engaging stories and earn a living doing so
  • Makes reading and writing fun
  • Shifts learning from the page to the classroom
  • Opens children up to different perspectives
  • Builds connectivity among students as they see similarities in their questions, opinions and perceptions

Also, seeing and talking with authors in person makes reading feel “real”. Even adults love to meet their favorite authors face-to-face at book club discussions. These personal interactions bring a spark to fiction.

What Are the Lifelong Rewards

Because reading books offers so many benefits, these interactions can carry lifelong rewards. Help with expanding vocabulary and understanding what has been read are two rewards. Additional rewards are:

  • Stronger empathy which helps kids relate to others
  • Improved writing skills
  • Ability to think through what they hear and read more fully
  • Exercises the brain
  • Inspires creativity
  • Opens kids up to the possibility of working in the arts
  • Enhances ability to communicate with different types of people, a skill that can help kids now and throughout their lives, especially if they step into leadership positions

Diverse Book Offer So Much Good

Whether you are a parent, caregiver, educator or youth worker, you can positively influence children’s lives, particularly middle school readers who might be at a crossroads as it regards deciding to continue or stop reading books for fun. You can power kids up, bringing diverse books that allow them to see people like them doing amazing things.

Look out for books to gift your kids with. Another step you could take is to read kids’ books yourself. See if they grab and hold your attention. If they do, they just might be a hit with your kids. Above all, encourage the kids in your life to appreciate good stories and to read regularly.

Books offer so much. There’s a wealth of information in good books. Make it easy for young readers to access this valuable information. And make it easy for young readers to have fun reading books that spotlight and celebrate characters like them.

Resources:

Importance of reading | Young Readers Foundation

Living Thanksgiving – Appreciate What’s in Front of You

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

living thanksgiving cup of aromatic cappuccino with thank you words on foam
Living Thanks Cup – Photo by wewe yang on Pexels.com

Living thanksgiving calls for appreciation. It’s an ongoing process that requires present awareness. When you were a kid, you may have practiced present awareness effortlessly. In fact, a sure blessing linked to a happy, loving childhood is the ability to live in the present.

When you feel safe, loved and wanted, you can become fully involved in what you’re experiencing right now. Gone is the temptation to daydream or to pretend that you are someplace else.

Living Thanksgiving in The Present

Even more, a blessed childhood can keep you from looking to the future. Experience a loving childhood and you might not fall into the habit of convincing yourself that good things are always in the future always “out there” somewhere. That by itself can bring more goodness into your life.

After all, as you enjoy living in the present, you can actually experience the happiness that is associated with appreciation. The more physically present the thing you appreciate is, the stronger the happiness you may feel.

Try it. See how you feel when you fantasize or imagine having an experience that you like, but the experience is always in the future. Then, give yourself an experience that you enjoy right now. Look around your environment and count 5 things that you appreciate about the experience that you’re having right now. Which way feels better?

How Daydreaming and Fantasizing Influence Thankfulness

Daydreaming about a future experience that’s always too far ahead of you to enjoy or entering a loving experience and appreciating it right now? Which feels better right now? Fortunately, you could learn to appreciate what’s happening right now even if yours was a troubled childhood.

Furthermore, as it regards a blessed childhood, this doesn’t mean that you never felt sad or angry as a kid. It means that you didn’t experience trauma, especially ongoing trauma when you were a child. Trauma that’s experienced during childhood could make you want to be someplace else. To read more about childhood trauma, check out this article.

Continuously daydreaming, fantasizing and telling yourself that situations are better than they actually are could be signs that you have unresolved trauma. The good news is that you can deal with trauma and get through it, even it doing so requires the help of a licensed and highly experienced professional who you trust.

Associated Benefits of Living Thanksgiving

Whether yours was a trauma-free or stressful childhood, it can take work to start living in the present. When you consider the blessings associated with living in the present, you might be encouraged to try.

woman surrounded by sunflowers
Photo by Andre Furtado on Pexels.com

Living thanksgiving offers rewards. To start, when you are fully present, you notice more. You actually see colors, people, events that you might otherwise miss. Other benefits include:

  • Strengthening your intuition – the more you become aware of what’s happening right now, the more clues you can pick up about what’s coming. You also might start to notice slight shifts in your inner guidance which could allow you to pick up when something feels right or wrong.
  • Enjoy conversations more deeply – being present can help you to hear what people are saying more fully and more clearly. This, in turn, could lead to a deep appreciation for what’s being shared.
  • Dining may become less of an addictive action – live in the present and you might stop and only eat while you’re dining. This could allow you to taste your food and beverages more thoroughly. Keep it up and you might stop eating and/or drinking to feed an emotion or to avoid an emotion or memory. (According to Psychology Today, trauma can cause your brain to replay the traumatic event.)
  • Improved relationships – Hearing and listening to people better can strengthen interpersonal relationships. You also might pick up when someone is disrespecting you and choose to love yourself and ask the person to hold you in respect as you do them.

Exploring More Thankfulness Advantages

There are more advantages connected to living thanksgiving. It could take a while, but you’d eventually see that everything in this world is temporary. That includes traumas that you’ve experienced, if you experienced trauma. The key is to let the trauma go. Again, you might need help from a licensed and experienced professional you trust.

The more you realize how temporary everything is in this world, the more you might pause and enter living thanksgiving as you observe what’s happening in your life and around you. If you’ve ever seen a loved one transition, you know the power of being thankful for what’s happening now.

Delay living thanksgiving and you could encounter regret. For instance, you might not appreciate a person, a pet or an experience until after the person or pet transitions or the experience has ended. Just think about it. How much joy and peace would you allow into your life if you appreciated what was right in front of you?

If you’re in a challenging situation, look for something to appreciate. But don’t stop there. Also, seek a way out of the situation. Definitely gain lessons from the experience. Don’t leave an experience with empty pockets. Always walk away with a lesson, at the minimum.

Surprising Answers

Throughout your journey, focus on appreciating what’s happening now. This means appreciating the people around you now, appreciating a job that you’re in right now and appreciating your dwelling now. To repeat, this doesn’t mean that you don’t seek a better job or dwelling. It means that you find something to be thankful about where you are right now.

Living thanksgiving or appreciating what’s right in front of you can keep you free of a nagging sense that something is always wrong. It can keep you energized and hopeful. Just remember to be honest about what you’re thankful about. For instance, if you don’t like loud music, don’t say that you do. However, if you’re in an area where music is being played loudly, you might be able to appreciate the lyrics.

You might even discover an answer to a question you’ve been mulling in the lyrics. When you practice living thanksgiving, another takeaway is that you could become more aware. It’s no secret that appreciation and awareness are linked. After all, you actually have to practice awareness to spot things to appreciate.

Resources:

  1. 21 Common Reactions to Trauma | Psychology Today

Importance of Imagination in Child Development

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

mother reading a book to her son at night for imagination in child development
Reading Books to Strengthen Imagination in Child Development – Photo by Mizuno K on Pexels.com

Imagination in child development plays a vital role, influencing a range of outcomes. Even as an adult, you can spot the role ingenuity plays in your life. Coming up with a new way to double your income, design home decorations with dried flowers or implementing a way to build confidence in your children. Each of these developments requires ingenuity.

So Much to Gain – Imagination in Child Development

Take away imagination and with it go creativity, inspiration, innovation and progress. It’s so important that Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere.”

Scholars and scientists have studied imagination in child development for years, some leaders thinking that imagination or creativity are naturally given. In fact, Yale Insights shares that, “The idea of humans as uniquely creative animals goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.” Others, like Aristotle, were under the impression that imagination or creativity was a gift from the gods.1

Defining Imagination in Children

But just what is imagination?

Merriam-Webster dictionary says that it is, “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality,” From a creative stance, it is defined as the “ability to confront and deal with a problem.”

Above all, the ability to “confront and deal with a problem” is crucial. If children don’t know how to face and deal with challenges in healthy ways, they could experience inner turmoil. For example, they could feel hopeless and a lack of confidence.

How Imagination in Child Development Proves Critical

Without the ability to confront and deal with problems, children could also give up or resort to fighting to try to resolve a conflict. Here are more ways that imagination in child development proves critical:

  • Language development relies on imagination. Also, the more languages children speak, the stronger their creative thinking may be.2
  • Play is a primary way that children develop friendships and learn to make sense of the world. Critical thinking, social development and physical abilities are discovered and developed during play. Additionally, play helps regulate emotions and mental health. If you’ve ever seen a child become happier, more engaged and more energized after healthy playing, you saw firsthand the impact of play on a child’s development.
  • Creative writing, especially fictional writing, needs strong imagination. Develop Good Habits says that “Creative writing strengthens language arts skills and improves children’s grades in all areas of coursework.It helps them understand and develop good grammar habits, sentence structure, vocabulary, and dialogue.”3
  • Emotional functioning is at work when a child relates to others. Active listening, the ability to actually hear and respect what another person is saying and skills to manage their own feelings are parts of emotional functioning.
  • Artistic expression can surface during play or while reading, an activity that encourages the use of imagination.

At first glance, imagination in child development might appear less important than logical and practical skills. However, logical skills like math, biology and geography don’t touch on as many life components as imagination does.

Ways to Strengthen Child’s Imagination

Yet, simply knowing how important imagination is in child development is not enough. You have to find effective ways to encourage children to exercise their imagination or creativity. Here are several actions you could take to encourage your children to strengthen their imagination:

  • Invest time to actually play with your children. Don’t stop when your children start school. Continue to play with your children as they age. Doing so can strengthen your and your children’s imaginations.
  • Bring in art. Let your children have fun creating pictures and splash drawings, getting their hands colorful in washable paint.
  • Ask your children questions, aiming to get them into problem solving mode. Help them learn to use critical thinking and emotional functioning as they ponder your questions and potential answers.
  • In healthy loving ways, motivate your children to “try again” when they encounter failure. For instance, you could ask your children to list or talk about ways that they could approach a challenge or overcome a failure. Make it fun.
  • Encourage independence and free thinking. This means that you don’t demand that your children see life the way that you do. Who knows? Your children might come up with a way to solve a decades-long problem when they grow up.
  • Travel, allowing your children to explore different cultures, physical landscapes and environments.
  • Dance with your children, celebrating their unique moves and rhythm.
  • Allow your children to help you complete daily tasks like cooking. In fact, if you add toys and your children’s favorite songs to a meal preparation, your children might not only love to cook, they might appreciate finding creative ways to decorate food.

Let Your Child’s Creativity Bloom

Perhaps more importantly, let your children see you using your imagination. You can do this by reading books to your children. And you can let your children see you reading books by yourself that you love. Benefits of reading extend beyond imagination.

Reading aids in learning. The more your children read, the quicker they can pick up details. When you consider the wealth of information inside books, reading is a shortcut to a broader and deeper education, the type of learning that last a lifetime.

Pay attention to what blooms from your child’s imagination. You could be the parent or guardian of a gifted artist. That, or your child could be a medical, scientific or technological innovator.

So, curl up with your children and a good book. Make it a regular, special event. If you make reading books fun, your children might start asking you to read to them. It could become a fun, bonding experience that exercises your children’s imagination and yours.

Resources:

  1. What Is Creativity? | Yale Insights
  2. Bilingual Kids Better at Creative Thinking (medicaldaily.com)
  3. 9 Benefits of Creative Writing to Help Your Children (developgoodhabits.com)

How to Prevent Human Trafficking Today

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

man s hand in shallow focus and grayscale photography plea to prevent human trafficking
Photo by lalesh aldarwish on Pexels.com

You can do more to help prevent human trafficking. Human trafficking is not a third world country problem. It’s also not limited to poor neighborhoods in developed countries. In fact, it could be happening right next door to where you live or a block over from where you live. And this raises a major way to prevent human trafficking.

Modern Slavery Can Happen Anywhere

Recognize that modern slavery can happen anywhere, in every type of neighborhood. Accepting this could help you to spot different forms of trafficking as well as signs that the crime is taking place near you.

As CNN shares, “Slavery can turn up in many forms, and closer to home than you might think.”1 Suburban homes, warehouses, major highways, airports, anywhere people are, there could be modern day slavery.

According to the World Economic Forum, 1 in 4 human labor trafficking victims is a child.2 Forms of trafficking include:

  • Labor (agriculture, manufacturing, retail, construction work, mining, etc.)
  • Forced marriage
  • Military combat
  • Selling counterfeit products
  • Drug smuggling
  • Forced organ donations
  • Prostitution

Listen to Real Life Stories

The number of people impacted by human trafficking is shocking. More than 140 million children have been a victim of this crime, with as many at 48% of child victims forced into labor being between 5 to 11 years old.

When victims speak out about their traumatic experiences with modern slavery, it sheds light on what’s happening right where we all live. Their story sharing exposes a hidden ugly fact about life in the world today.

Removing the cover is one of the best ways to face and deal with what is happening, is a start to doing what it takes to prevent human trafficking. If you want to help prevent human trafficking, consider listening to real life stories of victims.

How to Prevent Human Trafficking

You could also volunteer with an organization that supports people who have escaped modern day slavery. Becoming aware of signs of trafficking is another forward step. However, as you familiarize yourself with some of the signs, stay aware that trafficking could be occurring with a mile or less of where you live.

There is no certain type of person who is a victim, just as there is no certain type of person who commits this horrific crime. Therefore, should you spot a sign, do something. For example, you could call the National Human Trafficking Hotline (888-373-7888). Or you could call 911 (or your country’s emergency response number), Interpol, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (800-843-5678).

Look for These Signs

Although this list is not all inclusive, it reveals some indicators of forced work, be that work physical or sexual labor. Signs that modern day slavery is occurring include:

  • Withdrawal from family and friends
  • Missing school frequently or no longer attending school at all
  • Abrupt or significant change in behavior
  • Spike in fearfulness in a person
  • Not seeing someone for days, weeks or longer who you normally saw regularly
  • One or more people constantly with the person, as if ensuring that the person does not get free
  • Discomfort while speaking, as if they are repeating what someone is telling them to say
  • Dresses differently
  • Malnourished
  • Unexplainable change in living situation (i.e., lives in a filthy environment or a luxury environment)
  • Bruises and other injuries

More Specific Ways to Prevent Human Trafficking

Here are ways you could help prevent human trafficking or stop it from continuing. Raising awareness at your place of worship, school, on social media, etc. is one prevention step. Other steps include:

  • Watch your child’s online activity, as perpetrators solicit potential victims online.
  • Encourage companies to ensure they work to prevent human trafficking, not get involved in it by having products and/or services created by people forced into slave labor.
  • Call for help for someone you suspect of being trafficked. Do it in a safe way.
  • Shop responsibly, buying products or services, from organizations that deal in fair trade or work to stop forced labor.3
  • Mentor youth thru reliable, ethical organizations.
  • Spend quality time with the young people in your life. Perpetrators often target the emotionally vulnerable.
  • Write your government officials, letting them know that doing what it takes to prevent human trafficking is a priority to you.

Thank You

Should you meet a victim or a survivor, be an advocate. Above all, do something. For instance, you might cross paths with one or more victims while at lunch, shopping or while on vacation.

Sure. Getting involved, will change your life, even if only briefly. But your involvement could save someone’s life. It could be as simple as making a telephone call to 911, the FBI or the National Human Trafficking Hotline (888-373-7888). What you do could help someone heal from this awful adult and childhood trauma.

Clarissa Maxwell, in Escaping Toward Freedom, has to make this choice while she’s on vacation. The choice she makes cost her, but it’s worth it. Lives are changed, however hard the road. Hopefully, what happens in Escaping Toward Freedom sheds more light on the global trauma, encouraging people to take smart actions.

Thank you for what you do to prevent human trafficking.

Resources:

  1. A former child slave speaks: How to stop modern slavery | CNN
  2. How to stop modern slavery | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
  3. Home – Fair Trade Certified

Danger of Keeping Small Town Secrets Across Generations

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

empty concrete alleyway in small town
Passageway in Small Town – Photo by Simon Blyberg on Pexels.com

Small town secrets grow like uncontrollable weeds. Their sting is as painful as gossip, yet worse. Unlike gossip, these secrets have a deep, dangerous root. Sexual crimes committed by a star athlete, the whereabouts of a missing person and the deception that a woman is a child’s aunt when she’s actually the child’s mother – those are but a few misplaced confidences with lasting impact.

Small Towns with Old Histories

Other real life skeletons people living in small towns, especially towns with old histories, work hard to keep hidden have affected hundreds of children and adults. Danger associated with these mysteries is what drives people to keep them hidden. If you grew up in a small town that’s known for keeping events in the dark, a few of these mysteries might sound familiar:

  • College hazing that went too far, causing the death of a student, but no one going to trial because the death was ruled an accident and the crime was never properly investigated
  • Neighbor installing hidden camera in a home then using taped information to blackmail the homeowner for acts as simple as showering, relieving themselves and making out with a town schoolteacher
  • Corruption that stems back two or more generations, putting dishonest law enforcement and other government officials in place to keep the corruption going
  • Drugs taking over an entire town, destroying families and businesses while community leaders do nothing to stop the drug infiltration because they’re receiving kickbacks from dealers
  • A handful of business owners meeting and deciding which new businesses will open in the town, cooking up reasons to disallow the strongest competitors from setting up shop
  • Two married people have a lengthy affair, creating a child from the relationship, only to lie to the child about his real parents, not once telling their son their biological connection to him. People who know about the affair and who the child’s real parents are, never tell the child, not even after the child reaches adulthood.

Shocking Small Town Secrets

It’s these types of secrets that get the wrong men and women arrested, that leave children with more questions than answers and that prevent real growth from happening to the town. Believe it or not, some small town secrets are more outlandish and traumatic than those unearthed in large cities.

The real shocker is that small towns with big secrets can look “perfect” from the outside. Everybody knows everybody. Instead of passing one another on the sidewalk without speaking while out shopping, townsfolk stop, wave and chat with each other awhile.

If you didn’t know better, the entire town would look and feel like one big, happy family. Stay in the place long enough and you start to notice relationships and events that are off, that just don’t feel right. You spot a prominent business owner entering a hotel at the edge of town with a minister’s wife only to tell his own wife that he and the minister’s wife are mapping out the details of the summer’s vacation Bible school.

Everyone Knows What You Keep Lying About

Everyone in town knows the businessman rarely goes to church, but no one questions the lie. The chance to live in a place where wrong, particularly seemingly unforgiveable wrongs, don’t occur seems like sufficient motivation to lie, deny the facts and support tragic secrets.

At their worse, small town secrets can conceal a murder. Destroyed evidence, bribes paid to a coroner and a judge and threats made to those seeking the truth, can do more than hide facts. Acts like these can ensure that the wrong man goes to prison.

But why do people tell lies or keep secrets, especially dangerous hidden facts? Desire to mask their own indiscretions is a primary reason. Fear of retaliation from powerful people is another.

Together these two can create a web that’s hard to get untangled from. Greasy Plank in Memphis, Tennessee is a town of secrets, dark mysteries. Religion won’t save Greasy Plank residents.

Break Free

If you grew up keeping secrets, it might be time to break free. Doing so can release positive energy, allowing you to start and finish work you’ve wanted to do for years, but never seemed to find the strength to get to.

Here are more rewards associated with letting small town secrets go, float away like rocks moving down river:

  • Restored relationships with people wrongly suspected of crimes
  • Freedom from unforgiveness
  • Independence from resentment and suspicion
  • Healing from trauma
  • Innocent children and adults regaining their honor

And most of all, wrongs finally made right. Oh, and another advantage. You can sleep at night, your mind lighter from no longer having to carry heavy secrets. Tammy Tilson in Spiral fights for these rewards, for herself and her family, but she has a lot to lose if she tells what she knows.

Her choice to keep small town secrets has a very high price. Yet, that’s the way it goes when you try to hide the truth. Should you be keeping secrets, especially from yourself, consider the weight you’re carrying. See if you can find a way into the light of the truth. You might be able to do it in a way that frees up more people than you know without causing more trauma, more harm.

Resources:

  1. Small Town Secrets – NBC Boston

Achieving Real Success While Living Through Change

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By Books Author and Freelance Writer Denise Turney

man upset about change pushing carton boxes with negative words to avoid real success
Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Real success is birthed in adaptability. Unfortunate events, ranging from scams, sickness, relationship problems and job stress, can stop your progress if you let them. To stay sharp, you have to adapt. This applies to good change too. After all, it’s not just undesirable experiences that create emotional and behavioral challenges.

This is due, in part, to how your brain works. Your brain is a complex organ that works hard to protect you. At first glance, that may sound like a win-win. Yet, it comes with results that could produce mental blocks and resistance to change.

Thrive – Getting Beyond Survival

Forbes puts it this way, “The key aim of the brain is survival.” Furthermore, “unpredictability and uncontrollability, in particular, create a malicious combination with which our brain finds it extremely difficult to deal. This in return further elevates stress levels and produces undesirable emotions that we would rather avoid.”1

Should this happen, you might feel a range of emotions. Even more, your perceptions about the world, people and relationships could shift, maybe improve or become disruptive. If you struggle during change, your heartbeat might hasten. Or your appetite might shift significantly. Other changes you could experience include temporary memory fog (where you find it difficult to remember people’s names, etc.), a harder time focusing, lack of engagement or connectivity.

Although these experiences may be related to challenges in adjusting to undesirable change, they could also occur if you undergo change after you receive something that you’ve long wanted. Today’s world offers countless opportunities to improve your adaptability skills, positioning yourself to smoothly leap change hurdles and enjoy real success.

Signs You Resist Change

Resisting change can feel magical, like a trick. You convince yourself that you can stop change. And if you can’t stop change, you tell yourself that you can limit the impact that change has on you. The problem is you’re living in a world of constant change.

Keep resistance to change up and you might exhaust yourself. Even more, you’ll stop yourself from experiencing sustained real success. More pronounced signs that you resist change include:

  • You stop showing up for projects, relationship conversations, financial talks, etc. that require change
  • Negativity becomes your trademark
  • Nostalgia is a dominant emotion you experience
  • When you consider “good times,” you’re thinking about the past
  • Gossiping about leaders championing change becomes normal for you
  • “This is the way we’ve always done things” is a familiar phrase you speak

If the this was a world where very little changed second-by-second, your resistance may yield a reward. But because the world is always changing, constantly, this type of resistance doesn’t pay off in good ways.

Tips to Achieve Real Success with Change

Here are specific ways to achieve real success while living with change. If you resist change, consider adding two or more of these actions into your day.

  • Learn something new every day. Practicing awareness is a quick learning path. Simply pay attention to what’s happening inside of you and around you.
  • Break a habit once a quarter. Train your brain to expect and smoothly adjust to change.
  • Monitor your results. For example, if you’re improving your budget and dealing with rising rent, you could identify two to three expenses that you could reduce or eliminate to counter the increase, so you’re overall monthly expenses remain flat or potentially lower. Track how you’re staying free of spending money in these two three areas.
  • Stay curious. You were curious as a kid; revisit the practice.
  • Create new solutions to deal with change. This could help you break habits that produce unwanted results.
  • Be honest. Accept what you see and keep adjusting until you’re living the life you want.
  • Meditate and move outdoors. These two steps can calm your brain.
  • Read good books and get sufficient quality sleep each night.

You Can Do It!

Anywhere you go, there’s change. Even if you stick to a routine religiously, you will encounter change. There are job changes that range from workload to types of work you do. Rising rents might motivate you to move. Then, there are relationship changes from breakups to makeups to new relationships.

The list goes on. On top of that, some changes are temporary, allowing you to bounce back to a former state. Other changes, like a loved one transitioning, are permanent. As you go through change, it may help to remember that none of us is in control of the universe.

Additionally, it might be helpful to remember that you are always loved and cared for. This is one of the harder truths to remember when you’re moving through great change. The good news is that, as previously shared, you can achieve real success while navigating change. Here’s to your success!

Resources
1. How To Optimize The Brain’s Response To Change (forbes.com)