Today's Challenge - Showing Love

 

Trying a new blog hop - Wednesday Weekly Challenge. The challenge changes each week so today's is "Ways to Show Someone You Love Them."

Go here to participate: Long and Short Reviews.

My response: Listening always works. If you love and care for someone, you'll likely listen to them when they need to vent, cry, or even share good news.

That may be the hardest one to just sit and listen to, because we (me?) are often tempted to "one-up" the news with something great that happened to us.

So looking for a way to express love? Listen. Or go one step further - take the initiative and ask about someone's week and then truly listen.

Comment below if you have other "go-to" ways to show someone you love them. Or leave a link to your own blog where you've posted your thoughts. Thanks! Have a good week! And when I call you next time... (grin)

New Post at Boom Travel & Wellness

My wife in her ultramarathon days.

FINDING YOUR WHY

Motivation. Whether we like the word or not, motivation is what causes us to get up out of our chairs and do something. We all need it, otherwise, we’ll never get going!

A lack of motivation, then, is what causes us to stay the same, not change, and sometimes not do anything at all. In fact, a severe lack of motivation can lead to depression; physical and mental lethargy.

Motivation comes in different forms. (For more click on the link.)

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FYI - My wife and I have started a new blog called Boom Travel & Wellness. The purpose is to share stories of travel, transformation, and wellness - all in the pursuit of a healthy, active lifestyle.

We'd love of your to subscribe that way you can keep up with our journey as we transition from Kansas to Puerto Rico ... and beyond! We'll be doing a lot of travelogues and sharing of ideas, inspiration, and tips to maintain a balanced, but adventurous, life.

Big Reveal - We're Moving to Puerto Rico!

It's official...we're cleared for takeoff! 

We’re excited to announce the launch of Boom Travel & Wellness – a place to talk travel, transformation, and wellness. Follow along as we make a life transition from Kansas to Puerto Rico ... and beyond!

I'll still be blogging daily here, but at our new site, my wife and I will be sharing about our adventures near and far – new and exciting destinations and discoveries. Places, people. Hidden gems and favorite locales.

Via various social media sites, we want to connect with anyone interested in travel and healthy life change, though our new blog, FB page, and IG account, etc., are especially for those wanting to maintain an active lifestyle during those wonderful ‘boom’ years just around the corner for so many of us.

We invite you to join us on the journey!

As we talked about entering this next chapter of our lives, we liked the idea of doing ‘a new thing’ – and to experience the transformation that occurs during the process.

The grape harvest represents the kind of change we’re after. That’s us in the photo. Picking grapes, participating in the process of turning this delicious fruit into wine.

All the while enjoying the complete adventure – the before, during, and after! Sharing what’s good and encouraging others to experience the good in life is part of our mission.

If you’re looking for a positive place to find inspiration and share your empowering tales of travel, transformation, and wellness, then check out our new blog.

One of the first things we’ll talk about is the event that sparked this whole enterprise…our decision to move from Kansas to Puerto Rico!

That’s right, over the next six to nine months (and then beyond as we branch out from our new home base in PR), we’ll relate the good, the bad, and the ugly of this transition. Should be fun! Should be exciting! And could be a little scary, too!

We’re pretty stoked. Life is full of opportunities. Are you looking for them? Maybe, as we share our story, we can help you find a new, fulfilling route for you to follow in the near future.

Check in for regular updates as to our progress. Along the way, you’ll be inspired, entertained, and encouraged. At least, that’s our goal. Thanks for joining us!

Creating a Bundle

Confession: I've never created a bundle of my novels and sold them as a set. Why? Because I don't have a set of novels to bundle together yet! Okay, that's the real confession.

But I like the concept. For example, my writer friend, Milo Fowler, has the complete series of his Captain Quasar books (at about 1000 pages) in a box set - 3 novels for only 99 cents! 

This particular series is humorous space opera. As the blurb says: "Perfect for fans of Galaxy Quest, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." He also writes serious SF and is a wonderful writer.

Anyway, you get the idea. Lots of authors package up their books that sell individually for, say, $2.99, and for a short time offer a bunch together for a bargain basement deal. (My niece who writes Christian romance does this all the time.) I need to try this.

So, a project that I plan to work on is to bundle together 4 story collections (since I don't have a series of novels yet). The 4 story collections are my "Last" series - Last Gasp, Last Laugh, Last Chance, and Last Cry.

Right now, they're all 99 cents each, or free to read with Kindle Unlimited. But I'm considering putting all the stories together in one volume and sell that for 99 cents for awhile. What do you think?

It's a start anyway. And will give me practice when I complete my magical cat stories and my Sword of Otrim stories and my Silo Saga and my... umm, yeah. So many projects, so little time.

Wish me luck. And tell me what bundles you've come across that you'd recommend!

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.)

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!

Find me on Facebook where I post nerdy memes and share about my writing projects.

Change Your Feelings, Change Your Attitude

It almost goes without saying, but when I'm grumpy I have a bad attitude. 

What this tells me is that my attitude - which can be fairly easily ascertained by my facial expression and body language - is simply an external representation of my internal feelings. 

 If I'm feeling down, my body sags. Doesn't yours? 

Now it's not any secret that the answer to a bad attitude is a good laugh, a smile, and pleasant thoughts. Why? Because you can't genuinely laugh and smile without a corresponding good feeling. Our feelings have a direct impact on our outward demeanor. 

The challenge is controlling our feelings. Here's the principle: Change our feelings, change our attitude!

Good news is that we can control our feelings. We're not at the mercy of our emotional life. Emotions (the well from which our feelings arise) serve as a barometer of what's going on inside of us. 

And we can change what's going on inside. How? By monitoring our thoughts. Our thoughts affect our feelings which in turn shows up in our attitude.

I've found that the best way to monitor our thoughts is by listening to our self-talk. In other words, we need to think about our thinking. 

This might be a true difference between humankind and the animal kingdom. We have the ability to consider our thought process and not just react by instinct (which seems more emotional in nature, doesn't it?) 

Therefore, since we can control our thoughts, we have the ability to influence our feelings and thus change our attitude. That is good news indeed!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope this #MidweekMotivation was helpful. 

This post originally appeared on my blog Thought Renewal in 2007.

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.) 

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!

Power of Streaks - 30 Day Challenge

Image by QuinceCreative from Pixabay.

I didn't start out with a 30 Day Challenge in mind. I just knew I wanted to start blogging again. Every day.

And so this commitment to post a short blog entry has turned into a 32 day streak. Started Nov 6 and just passed the month-long target.

That's nothing, I know. But it's helped me get into a different mindset. I used to ask myself, "Do I want to write today?" And the answer was usually no, lol.

Now I ask myself, "What do I want to write about today?" I don't stress about it, but I usually fall asleep with an idea or two in mind and then wake up ready to tackle it. 

I think this will translate to when I start writing fiction more than just occasionally. If I plan to be a full time writer, then I better write, well, full time. Daily. Massive output. So this blog thing is priming my pump, as it were.

Plus I get to experiment with content.

If you've been dropping in every now and then, you'll have noted that these aren't long posts. Maybe 300 words at the minimum, 600 or so max. And the content varies. Heh. I have a lot of interests!

I don't expect readers to visit everyday. But I figure if you like my blog, maybe you'll pop by every few days or every week or so, see what's new and say hello.

Anyway, the power of maintaining a streak turns a task into something fun, building momentum as you see the days add up. My wife, for example, just passed 2 years of daily Spanish practice on DuoLingo. Crazy.

Oh, talk about crazy. In 2019, Seth Godin posted that he'd blogged daily for 11 years! It's almost 2022, so I assume he's kept that streak up! Here are three of his insights (taken from that post)...

• Streaks are their own reward.
• Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.
• Habits are much easier to maintain than commitments.

Plus, like many DuoLingo learners have discovered, maintaining a streak is like "gamifying" a task. Turning something that was a challenge at first into something fun and rewarding. 

Welp. That's it for today. See you tomorrow and then the day after that and hopefully the day after that! (Then you can call me the streak! wut?)

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.) 

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!

Midweek Motivation - Overcoming Excuses

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

I used to write "positivity" blog posts about 15 years ago, back in the self-help / leadership / positive thinking resurgance. 

I still have the blog called Thought Renewal, so thought I'd crib from there on occassion and share some success strategies.

Here's my last post from that blog (from 2012!). It's a little midweek motivation for ya. If you're into that kind of thing. Which I should probably get back into! 

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You've been there. So have I. A spark of interest in something creative. A new hobby, maybe. Or a project that you've finally decided to start. 

But then fear or intimidation or hesitancy sets in. "Oh, you should (fill in the blank)," someone says. You respond quickly with, "But I'm not (fill in the blank)."

Go on, you can admit it. You've said that phrase in protest to something or other in your past. 

• Someone recommends an excellent book. "But I'm not much of a reader." 
• A friend suggests you take Zumba together. "But I'm not that coordinated." 
• Back in middle school, your Language Arts teacher gave an assignment. "But I'm not a writer."

And so you let the "nottas" control your life. The truth is we are (and can do) almost anything we decide to be (or do). It's a matter of choice. 

Oh sure, there're some genetic limitations that limit an insignificant number of our choices in life. But those miniscule exceptions prove the rule - we can choose to do and be and create! 

In other words, we have the ability to choose, to a substantial degree, what our life looks like.

So here's my challenge: At least have the guts to say, "I choose not to read. I choose not to dance. Or I choose not to write." For at the point that we admit "we are choosing" we take ownership of our current state.

So, if you were not happy with your response to 2020 and 2021 (and all that happened "to us" these past few years), what that means is that you chose not to be happy with it. 

You didn't read that book, not because you aren't a reader but because you chose not to read it. You didn't exercise and get in shape, not because you aren't coordinated but because you chose not to. You didn't write that story, not because you aren't a writer but because you chose not to write it.

That's the tough talk! lol The good news is that you can do something different this next year. 2022 can be fantastic. Next month can be incredible. Next week, even! Or this next moment. 

You can choose to be happy with what you do, who you are, and the results you get. What's holding you back? Be someone different in the coming days. Do something different. Create something. Do it.

~*~

"Tip a buck, get a book."

(via PayPal.Me - an e-book from Tule Fog Press.) 

This blog is reader supported. Thank you for your support!