More Confidence ~ Sunday Quotes

“Low self-confidence isn’t a life sentence. Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered–just like any other skill. Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better.” 

says Barrie Davenport. I wonder if Barrie has ever had problems with confidence himself? It is not easy for everyone to just ‘do confidence.’

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But then Eleanor offers us her wisdom with a very grounding quote:

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” –Eleanor Roosevelt

Andre Dubus, American writer of short stories, novels, and essays, thinks personality quirks and introversion contributes to how confidence a person might be.

“Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.” ~ Andre Dubus

I know some shy people who would be horrified to think that they might be considered narcissist, but I do see what Andre means. In some cases, people who are shy are more internally focused than others. They may want to be accepted, included and to avoid social rejection, but falsely believe everything must be perfect in order to avoid a negative judgement. Accepting who they are can be incredibly empowering and inadvertantly increase self-confidence.

Having said all of that, if someone is content being shy and happy the way life is, that’s no problem at all.

Self-confidence can be crucial in professional sports as Arthur Ashe, Tennis pro points out:

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” –Arthur Ashe

The final comment comes from Eker, a motivational speaker. While somewhat inclusive it seeks to normalizes a lack of confidence alluding to attitude as being crucial. It offers some insight into combating and overcoming difficult emotions.

Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don’t let these feelings stop them.” –T. Harv Eker

Do any of these quotes speak to you?

Kafka’s story of Loss and Change in Berlin

It’s the Small Things

“At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, walked through the park in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully but Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.

The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying, “please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”

Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.

During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable. Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.

“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.

Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote:

“My travels have changed me.”

The little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home. A year later Kafka died.

Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

Embrace the change. It’s inevitable for growth.

Together we can shift pain into wonder and love, but it is up to us to consciously and intentionally create that connection.

A beautiful idea to help children deal with loss and change. A simple act that has so much meaning.

Letter, stories and books often are of help to children deal with strong emotions.

Quotes and Wisdom from the Past

“How much more anger and grief do than the things that cause them.”

“For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?

“The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Sayings and sageful words uttered in past centuries bear poignant relevance for modern communities across the world. Their timeless interpretation a general fit for a multitude of circumstances. Make of them what you will. Thanks to fermincazares for highlighting Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom.

What is the Secret to Perseverance?

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Some people drop out of a race, a test or an employment challenge at the first sign of failure, often labelling their goals as “impossible.”

Some don’t.

With failure an inevitable phenomena at some point in our lives, is the amount of emotional support we receive consequent to that failure, critical to developing perseverance?

I am interested in why and how people can be encouraged to persevere in life’s challenges.

Is the secret to perseverance having a solid supportive network of friends or family who love and believe in you? A group who are willing to offer encouragement and help when you need it?

When things do go wrong, or you sense that you have failed, it is precisely the time that such support is critical, according to Annette Simmons, who wrote ‘The Storyfactor.’

The relationships you develop in your lifetime can sustain you when your emotional reserves feel tapped out. The support you receive will reflect the support you give over the years. Emotional support operates on the principle of reciprocity. Emotional support given eventually translates to emotional support received. Building sustaining relationships is your best strategy to last the distance to move mountains. [p.155]

Kind of karmic advice, would you say?

[Perhaps it is something that ‘Are you okay?’ day already goes some way to examine].

For this year, 2024, my goal is to check if I am facing, or know of anyone facing goals that I or they might be struggling with? And if so, would I then consider:

• How willing might I be to act as an emotional support to that person?
• Has the phenomenon of emotionally supporting persons changed in recent times? Are people less likely to help others?

and finally, I ask:

• Do you have any other secrets to perseverance you would like to share with me?

Wisdoms and Words of Inspiration

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.
Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, for one day ~
Robert L. Stevenson

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Author Dale Carnegie commented on the high rate of hospital in-patients admitted for mental illness – almost half of all patients.

He noted:

…Too many people allow themselves to collapse under the crushing burdens of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows.

Dale Carnegie

Dale believed the cause of those crushing burdens to be the lack of awareness of living the ‘present moment.’ That is where we are living this very second you are reading this post.

It is but a small moment of time – an intersection between the millennia of the past and the future yet to be experienced.

Both Carnegie and Stevenson warn us we should accept life does not happen in the past so we cannot live there, nor can we live in the future. To attempt to do so causes anxiety and problems, which Dale believes causes issues physically and mentally.

He urges us to dispel worry about any blunders we made yesterday; to not spend those precious moments of time in a physical and mental hell by fretting about the future.

All we have is this precise moment before it slips through our fingers and is gone forever.

According to Dale, if we concentrate on living in the moment today, then better tomorrows will inevitably follow.

By all means, plan for tomorrow, he says, but do so without panic or regret.

Get the facts and push on from there.

Enjoy the good times for they never last.

Enjoy the bad times for they never last.

Thanks to Yvette from Priorhouse Blog for connecting me with the above wisdom.

Finding Time to Write and Starting NaNoWriMo

In many ways, writers live for story and we live through story. I can’t think of many jobs better than telling stories all the time. I like to think of writing as life distilled. Writers point out the moments and details of life we miss in our fast-paced society.

Writing can draw you deeper into the moment. It can help you understand people and why they do the things they do. If you want to write well, the writing itself will force you to experience your life more fully ~ Joe Bunting.

In the real world, it is stories, fictional and non-fictional, that connect us. We share friends snippets of our lives in the form of a story. Stories that motivate, amuse, anger, confront and console us, and make us smile, and possibly even help us to deal with emotions we may not know how to process.

Joining NaNoWriMo

Confession time- This month, most of my writing will contribute to NaNoWriMo, something I’ve not participated in before.

[NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month – run by a not-for-profit organization to promotes creative writing around the world].

I write professionally for work and I write for pleasure in a variety of forms. These kinds of writing pieces [Thanks Ineke for that tip] can be added to the daily word count. Which is substantial ~

50,000 words for the month of November.

Gasp!

If ever I were to write a book, writing 50,000 words in just four weeks would certainly get the project off to a flying start.

This is my motivation.

Simply talking about writing a book doesn’t cut the mustard. Talk is Talk and NaNoWriMo is about action. As editing comes later, one won’t get caught up with the finer details. Good.

The noble and neighbourly, but never ever nosy, NaNoWriMo emails have given me the following suggestions on how best to complete the writing goal, given my individual circumstances. These are the suggestions:

I. Complete two 40-minute writing sessions on weekdays = 800 words/day.

This is laughingly achievable.

Without editing, and for someone prone to rambling, 800 words is a spit in the ocean. But then, there is this:

II. Complete 6 hours of writing split between days off = 4,250 words

Potentially much more tricky! The jury’s still out on whether this is doable.

NanoWriMo’s Suggestions of getting up early to write sound fine in theory, but my mornings are way too busy.

I am up at 5, doing meditation, Yoga or Qigung, then several times a week there is walking for an hour or so and coffee, before I start work…. you get the picture. I could go all Ayurvedic and rise at 4am! Sunrise is currently around 4.45 am and the Magpies were hunting in my garden for worms at 4am this morning….hmmm.

But the NaNoWriMo team also had a good suggestion for diving right into the writing session: Leave a hook during your shorter writing sessions. Stop in the middle of a scene, or even a sentence, so that you can dive right into the thick of things when you begin again.

Questions for Bloggers

Have you ever deliberately half-finished a blog post so that you could pick it up again easily?

Did that help you dive back into writing again?

Have you ever completed NaNoWriMo?

If so, was it useful? Tips? Downsides? Upsides?

Writing Prompt – Writing a Novel

Daily Prompt: What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail?

Yep. Writing a novel is something that I would attempt if I was guaranteed not to fail.

Navigating either the publishing moghuls, the process or the self-publishing quagmire is challenging. It is easy to procrastinate.

Writing a novel is a huge undertaking of time and energy and I have little experience in the area, other than my blog, essays and various published articles.

And yet, my ideas bucket overflows.

It just doesn’t ever convert into hard copy. Instead, the ideas remain consigned to the crepuscular ether of potential possibilities that never achieve fruition.

It is mildly frustrating. A ‘gonna’ job. I am gonna do this and then gonna do that. You get what I mean?

I have so many ideas for fiction and non-fiction books. Helpful bloggers like Yvette from Priorhouse blog, even sent me a handy template to follow, to get me started.

And I did try. I have a book half finished with another blogger from a decade ago, and loads of ideas that are just in their infancy, but entirely possible and plausible.

Do they ever move past that point?

No, they do not.

Failure before they have even begun!

But y’know, there is always tomorrow.

What about you? Have you written a book or novel?

How long did it take?

What motivations did you need to keep you on track?

Proverbial Friday – Hate

Bringing back the old Proverbial Friday post – this quote is on hate and was prompted by the short story on the Discussion Group I posted.

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Hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding ~

Tennessee Williams