African elephants are the largest land mammals. They can grow to be 13 ft tall from toe to shoulder. Some species of elephants can weigh up to $13,000. Their trunk alone has 150,000 separate muscles, which gives them enough power to uproot full-grown trees. Why do we see these magnificent creatures held back by tiny ropes at the circus?
As an infant, these elephants have been conditioned to believe they cannot break their chains. When they were small, they were held back by a giant log chain that was too much for them to break. After a while, the poor creature stopped trying to break free. Although it is more than physically capable, it has been conditioned with this limited mindset.
If an elephant is spurred into a rage, it can break the chains that bind it and tear down the entire circus. I use this analogy for you, my readers. The human mind is infinitely capable, yet limited mindsets hold us back. Sometimes these mindsets aren’t even our own. They are limiting beliefs passed down for generations or by our society. What limited mindset is holding you back? Are you suffering from learned helplessness?
When I first started writing, I believed it took years to write a book, and now I realize I could write a book in 30 days. When I realized I could publish my next book in 30 days, I listened to one of my coaches talk about writing a book on a weekend. Then when I just started believing that that was possible, another coach of mine, Dr. Joe Vitale, wrote his 81st book by transcribing a 2-hour seminar.
The three keys to succeeding in this course are planning, redefining, in mindset. I believe mindset is the most important. I will leave you with a quote by the great Henry Ford.
“If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.”
Coming Soon!
Whispers of the Mind: How Thoughts Become Things
Humans have a hidden superpower. With it we can both create and destroy. In most people it is raw, unfiltered and troublesome. But, if we could train it and hone it to perfection, it is powerful enough to change the world.
There’s a wise old saying that says, “for as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” What does that mean, exactly? It means you become what you think about regularly. Your consistent thoughts become your actions, and your actions change the reality around you. I know this sounds like a bunch of hoodoos, but I promise you there’s science behind it.
What if we trained our minds to create instead of to destroy? We could change the world with one mind at a time.
What’s holding you back from achieving your heart’s desire? Sure, there might be logical reasons, but most of the time, it’s nothing more than a few limiting beliefs.
What are limiting beliefs?
Before May 6th, 1954, science said running a mile in under four minutes was impossible. The entire world believed it. It sounds very logical. Unfortunately, it was not true. Read that again. It was not true!
Roger Bannister was determined to break the barrier, and he did on May 6th. That day he finished at 3: 59. With one race, Bannister broke a limiting belief held by the entire world. Think about it. This belief was held by humanity for six thousand years of recorded history, and one man broke it with one amazing foot race.
So let me ask you a question. Think about all of the reasons you can’t achieve success. Write them down. Then I want you to study them carefully. Are they limits, or are they limiting beliefs?
If you think Roger Bannister was just some superhuman, let me tell you another tidbit of information. His record only lasted 46 days! Somebody else broke it six weeks later. Now more than 1400 men have broken the barrier.
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So was it really a limit, or was it a mindset? It was a limiting belief.
How many times have you told yourself? You can’t succeed because you went to the wrong school or didn’t have enough money. If you study the most successful people in the world, you will find that most of them didn’t go to the right school, have the right name, or have enough money.
You’ll find people with dyslexia that failed school. When you start studying successful people, you’ll find high school dropouts, college dropouts, poverty-stricken people, and people of all sizes, shapes, and colors. It doesn’t matter what your limiting belief is. It can be overcome.
I think about one example that hit me hard. When I first heard it. I was writing true crime stories back then and listened to an interview given by Sammy the bull. For those who don’t know, he was John Gotti’s underboss. In this interview, he blamed everything on the fact that he had dyslexia and didn’t do good in school. No one was there to guide him, so he just went off the rails. Now, this sounds legitimate. But then listen to this. Richard Branson has dyslexia too. He didn’t do well in school either. At the time of this writing, he is worth 3 billion dollars!
If that doesn’t surprise you enough, guess who else is on the list of famous dyslexics on Google.? Albert Einstein! Yes, you read that right. The man known for his IQ and genius had dyslexia.
So let me ask you again. Why can’t you achieve what you’re going after? Are those excuses valid? Maybe you need to learn a new skill or find a mentor, but you can overcome your perceived limits most of the time.
Recommended Reading:
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
What is possible in your life? Those with a fully expanded belief system would answer that virtually anything they want to do or become is possible.
Please check out my affiliate links in this article. Any purchase you make using my links will help support Synova Ink Publishing. With your support, I will continue producing high-quality free content for more people like you. Thank you in advance!
What is your first thought when someone mentions the word desire? Most of the time, it comes with a negative feeling. We usually think of something to do with lust and or greed. Even Webster’s Dictionary leans towards the negative when defining desire. I had to read through three definitions before finding one that felt more positive.
Desire: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
Those in religious circles have been told to be content so often that it has made us feel like desire is bad. In reality, it’s a tool for growth. Yes, it is good to be content in whatever stage of life, but contentment doesn’t mean the absence of all desire.
While everyone is trying to prove their contentment, society has slowly started shunning excellence and celebrating mediocrity. All of a sudden, no one tries to strive for perfection anymore. It’s easier to follow the masses into the abyss of mediocre living. We don’t push forward and excel in life because we fear being labeled greedy. We don’t want to offend our limited-mindset friends, so we don’t dream of bigger and better things.
What would happen if all humans gave up the desire for greatness? Would we have the lightbulb if every inventor had shouted their contentment with the candle? Would we have automobiles if everyone remained content with the horse and buggy?
Desire is an expression of the innermost being of humanity. It’s the onward impulse of an ever-growing man. Desire is what makes us grow to our fullest potential. Have you ever thought that maybe the desire you feel burning in your chest was placed there by Universal providence?
“You don’t achieve goals. You GROW into them.” – Bob Proctor
What if you were meant to achieve great things in your lifetime, but society has pressed you down into conformity?
Please check out my affiliate links in this article. Any purchase you make using my links will help support Synova Ink Publishing. With your support, I will continue producing high-quality free content for more people like you. Thank you in advance!
We waste our life by focusing on everything except for the present moment. Too many people focus on the past. There are two ways to focus on the past. One is rumination, and the other one is introspection.
Rumination: There are two definitions for this word. I find the second one interesting.
1. a negative way to dwell on the past
2. a cow chewing cud
Introspection:
1. a positive look at the events of the past
2. searching the past for lessons
How many times do we focus on past mistakes for too long? We are just like that cow chewing the cud over and over again. I just saw a meme that says we need to focus on the past to succeed. That’s all it said. I say absolutely not! Don’t focus on the past to the extent that you lose the present and the future. Sure, we can look at the past and learn lessons from it, but ruminating on it will destroy the present and the future.
On the other hand, some people dwell on the future so much that they forget the present. They focus on their goals, wishes, and dreams until they cause anxiety and stress. Some people worry about tomorrow so much that they ruin today. Then when tomorrow gets here, they find out it wasn’t so bad after all. So what good did it do to worry? You just destroyed two days for nothing. That’s two days of your life you will never get back.
What can you do now to get closer to your goals? What can you do now to get healthy? What can you do now to fix your relationships? What can you do now to help with your finances? What can you do now? Focus on now.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. You hear it everywhere during the holiday season, but not everyone agrees. It can be one of the most challenging times of the year if you’ve lost loved ones or suffered trauma.
Change Your Idea of the Perfect Holiday:
Many silently suffer through the end of the year, dreading every party, event, and gathering. Why? It all starts with the mental picture we have of Christmas. We are inundated with a picturesque story of what the holiday “should” be. We suffer when our picture doesn’t match what we think is perfection. Unfortunately, no one tells us that we can change the picture.
Will changing the mental picture bring back our loved ones? No. Will it change our financial status? No. It will change your outlook on life, though. It will change your biochemistry and make you feel better. It will make the holidays seem brighter and more friendly.
Change of Focus:
What you focus on, you feel. When we focus on the negative, we get more negative hormones, negative emotions, and negative behaviors. The same is true when we force ourselves to focus on the positive things. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. Ten minutes might be bad, but there are another 1,430 minutes left. Will you ruin the rest of the day by focusing on the ten bad moments? It sounds silly, but we do it all the time.
This holiday season, turn your focus to the positive and see what happens. Every time that annoying co-worker spews at the mouth turn your focus to something else. Every time that manipulative family member starts, turn your focus. It’s not easy, but it’s effective.
Transform your chaotic holiday season with this journal and 5 minutes a day!
Not everyone enjoys the holidays. After losing loved ones, it’s hard to continue with the festivities, but it’s vital to learn how to live again. After suffering through trauma, it’s hard to celebrate with a loud and rowdy crowd. Did you know a daily gratitude practice will change your life, both mind, and body?
Studies have proven that our brains literally cannot be fearful, anxious, or stressed and be grateful at the same time. Did you know that? The part of the brain that handles these emotions cannot do both simultaneously. It has to shut one off to open the other. Now you can be anxious and immediately grateful afterward, but you cannot be both at the same time!
What if you reprogrammed your brain to refocus on gratitude and shut off the anxiety during this season?
With a daily gratitude practice, you will do just that!
The word focus is thrown around a lot these days, but few pay attention. In reality, focusing is our superpower. Bruce Lee once said,
“The Successful warrior is an average man with a laser-like focus.”
When a human focuses completely on a goal, very little can stop him from achieving it. Unfortunately, there are so many distractions nowadays that it’s becoming increasingly harder to focus. To make matters worse, many of those distractions are negative. The more we focus on negative news, the more increases we see in depression and anxiety.
People don’t realize that we feel in our bodies what we have focused on with our minds. I’ve been answering questions on Quora lately, many of which have to do with this subject. People wonder why they are depressed, but everything they watch on TV and on social media is depressing.
Another trap we find ourselves in is the trap of focusing on the things we can’t control. While the world news is important, we can’t do anything about it, so why are we spending all of our time focusing on it and stressing about it? I know that might sound harsh, but really think about it. Can you do anything about the things you see on the TV nightly? No, not really. At least a few years ago, we had one segment of world news at night, but now with the internet, we are swamped with the world’s stress and drama.
Humans need to focus more on our inner circle of influence and things we can control. No, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about humanity’s troubles, but we shouldn’t focus on them so much that it causes us more stress. We are literally trying to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders and it’s not humanly possible!
One final trap we find ourselves dealing with is the trap of focusing on what we don’t want. When we focus on something, we give it more energy. Meaning if you are focusing on the worst-case scenario, then you will get the worst-case scenario. You see, we reap what we sow when it comes to our thoughts. I hate the old adage, “prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” When you do that, you are literally asking the Universe for the worst. We must learn to visualize the outcome we want and focus on that. Sure preparation is essential, but not to excess.
With all the chaos in the news, why add another negative email to your inbox? Let’s fill inboxes around the world with positive, hopeful, and inspirational content.
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Life Has A New Chapter for You, But You Have to Turn the Page
Life has been chaotic, but now it’s a new season and chapter in our lives. Sometimes we hesitate to turn the page even if the last chapter was stressful. Why do we do this?
Why is it so hard to let go of something we didn’t enjoy? My research has shown that burnout literally changes our brain’s structure. The amygdala enlarges the prefrontal cortex thins. The Prefrontal Cortex controls your memory and your decision-making skills. The amygdala controls your brain’s fear centers. When you’ve been in a state of chaos, stress, and burnout for a long time, the structure of your brain deteriorates. It’s hard for you to make decisions and to remember things. On the flip side, the amygdala enlarges and over-processes fear stimuli. Although our brain structure changes with prolonged stress, that is only one factor. Sometimes we can’t let go of the past because we feel justified in being angry about what happened. Other times we get stuck in the bottomless pit of what if. And sometimes, the unknown of starting a new chapter in our lives can be a little unsettling. Even though the past was uncomfortable, we still know how to handle it. The unknown can be intimidating. When we move into a new chapter, we must remember to leave the past in the past. Do not drag all of the pain and drama from the past into the next chapter. Sometimes we destroy our pleasant future with the pains of the past.
Whenever you find the clouds parting and the sun starting to shine through in the chaos of life, take a moment to let go of the past and step into the bright new future.
Please check out my affiliate links in this article. Any purchase you make using my links will help support Synova Ink Publishing. With your support, I will continue producing high-quality free content for more people like you. Thank you in advance!
There’s a wise old saying that says, “for as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” What does that mean, exactly? It means you become what you think about regularly. Your consistent thoughts become your actions, and your actions change the reality around you. I know this sounds like a bunch of hoodoos, but I promise you there’s science behind it.
If you study Neuroscience, you’ll find out that every time you have a thought, whether negative or positive, your brain will send out neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that will change your physical state. So, if you’re thinking negatively, your brain will send out stress hormones like cortisol. If you’re thinking about the positive things, your body will send out serotonin which gives you the feeling of bliss.
What difference does it make?
That’s the scary part. It makes a huge difference. When your body is overfilled with cortisol, it starts shutting down from the inside out. Cortisol has a specific purpose. It is supposed to go along with the fight-or-flight mechanism to help us in times of crisis.
When we fight off a bear, our body doesn’t care if it digests food, so it stops. It also doesn’t care about cleaning the toxins out of your system, so your kidneys and your liver will stop functioning as well!
Not only that, your cells stop their reproduction process. Every moment of our lives, our body regenerates itself from the inside out. Our cells die and reproduce constantly. This process is also shut down because your brain thinks it doesn’t matter if you’re dead. That’s true if you’re fighting a bear, but unfortunately, we stay in a constant state of stress in our modern society.
This constant state of upheaval will cause massive amounts of health issues. Think about it. What kind of toxins are in your system because you’ve stayed stressed out for years? What type of health problems could we avoid if we found a way to release the tension in our bodies?
A man named Norman Cousins was dying of a deadly disease. The doctors gave him no hope, but he had an idea. I don’t know where it came from or what inspired him to do this, but it saved his life. In 1964, he was diagnosed with a deadly connective tissue disease. When the doctors couldn’t do any more for him, and he knew the only thing he faced was a terribly painful death, he decided to take it into his own hands.
He had been studying biochemistry and how emotions can affect the body. When all medical hope was lost, he decided to take massive doses of vitamin C and combine that with something unique. He created something he called laugh therapy.
Now I know what you’re thinking. It sounds ridiculous, but if you were dying and only looking forward to a slow, painful demise, wouldn’t you try anything too? So he decided to have the nurses read him the comic strips out of the newspaper. Then he would watch comedy videos continuously. He spent as many hours as he could laughing as hard as he could. It was painful to laugh, but he continued the process, knowing that he was filling his body with good healing hormones every time he laughed. Norman Cousins walked out of the hospital, cured of his illness to the astonishment of his doctors. He wrote a few books and didn’t die until the ripe old age of 75. It had been a full 26 years after his brush with death.
Now I am not advocating that you forgo going to the doctors when you have illnesses or for depression and anxiety. I am encouraging you, however, to add a little bit of laughter and happiness into your daily routine. While you may have to deal with some health problems, a positive attitude will always help you through it better than a negative one will. So, today I ask you, what are you thinking about? (Yes, I know it’s a preposition at the end of the sentence, but it’s necessary—laugh grammar nazis of the world. The point of this article is you need to laugh more! ) Scientists have told us that we have 100,000 thoughts a day or more. They also say 75% of those are negative. I can’t imagine going to the doctor’s office and asking her to give me 75,000 shots of cortisol, can you? It sounds insane, but we are doing this to ourselves every day! No wonder everyone is sick. Now think about this, what if you purposely made yourself think of positive things as many times as possible during the day? I encourage you to find ways to increase the joyful moments in your day. Whether it’s putting a picture of your child on your computer or pictures of your dream vacation, maybe it’s watching comedy videos when you get home from work. Whatever it is, insert more joy into your life. This year, the theme for Synova Ink Publishing is “learning how to live again.” Let’s all learn how to enjoy the journey in 2023.
Please check out my affiliate links in this article. Any purchase you make using my links will help support Synova Ink Publishing. With your support, I will continue producing high-quality free content for more people like you. Thank you in advance!
You’ve probably heard that you should be journaling, but who has time and what’s the big deal? If you want to be a professional writer and you don’t keep a journal, I highly suggest you start, and I will tell you why.
Tony Robbins has a saying that I absolutely love. He says, “success leaves clues.” If you study the most successful business people, writers, speakers, etc., 99% of them keep a journal. So if you want to be successful, it would make sense to do what successful people do, right? So why don’t we keep journals?
I think when we say journal, people get a mental image of the preteen girl and her little pink, glitter-covered diary. When I speak of journaling, I am not talking about the scribblings of a prepubescent girl. I’m talking about serious journaling for entrepreneurs and writers.
It’s a well-known fact that journaling can help you during times of crisis and trauma. It helps remind you of good times when things have turned bad. Mental health professionals recommend journaling to their patients and see massive results. It only takes 15 minutes a day to change your life. Still, for the most part, the majority of people don’t journal.
Today I want to tell you how journaling can help you become a better writer.
1. Helps Focus Your Thoughts:
Writing in a journal helps you focus your thoughts. A lot of times, people get overwhelmed at the thought of trying to write a book, and they can’t overcome it, and the book never gets written. If you take 15 minutes a day to write in a journal, you’ll find your ideas Will flow easier, and you won’t struggle with writer’s block as much.
2. Keep Track Of Ideas:
I also use my journal to keep track of the new ideas that pop into my head. If you have followed me for a while, you know that I have a tendency towards ADHD, and my mind goes a million places at a time. I will get great ideas while I’m in the middle of an important assignment for my business. I would follow these ideas down the rabbit hole and never follow through and finish the first project. I found that by journaling my ideas, I can keep them in a safe place but not get distracted by them. I will go back through my journals periodically and implement the ideas that I have stored there.
I also like to keep my gratitude journal entries in my notebook. Some people will separate their gratitude journals, their food journals, their idea, journals, etc. I placed them all in one. If it helps you to separate them all out, then I encourage you to do so. The idea is to store the information in a safe place.
I use hard-bound journals, and I found a company that has beautiful ones. They’re usually gold, foiled, and gorgeous. I know all of you guys out there may not like those, so you can find ones that are more “Butch,” I’m sure. I call mine my “golden book of ideas.” I keep it with me everywhere I go.
Journaling also helps writers flesh out their characters. It helps you build your backstory without boring the readers. Too many writers discover their characters along with the reader. Unfortunately, this leads to the bad habit of information dumping. I always tell people to start their books with excitement and chaos. Then you can sprinkle in the backstory later on. If you don’t know your character well enough, you will dump all of this information onto your reader. Journaling helps you flesh out all of those details so you can write a well-rounded character without boring the reader with unnecessary backstory.
4. Improves Communication Skills:
Studies show daily journaling improves your communication skills. As a writer, improving your communication skills should be a top priority. It also helps you work through emotions and be more mindful.
5. Reduces Anxiety:
Mental health professionals encourage their patients to use journaling to help reduce anxiety about upcoming events in their lives. When you write in a journal, it also decreases your anxiety about writing a book. I know that sounds strange because you’re still writing the book. People get overwhelmed at the thought of writing a book but think of it this way. What if you wrote for 15 minutes a day about the topic you would like to see in a book?
If you wrote for 15 minutes a day every day for a year, you would have a book written already! Sure, It would need to be formatted into book form and edited properly, but you have written a book. It literally takes the pressure off to simply write in your notebook versus the thought of writing a book.
Conclusion:
These are just a few of the reasons why you should be journaling as a writer. If those aren’t enough for you, Google it, and I guarantee you you’ll find enough reasons to start writing your own journal. I will give you a link to the company that I buy my journals from, I am an affiliate of Amazon, so I will receive a small commission. Commission. But I would not recommend them if I didn’t use them myself.
