Hi everyone,

Today, I’d like to talk to you about the thoughts that have been going through your mind. You know, your inner most private thoughts. Don’t worry! You can keep your secrets. I just want to encourage you to think happy thoughts everyday. I often times hear the term ‘positive self-talk’ used to describe the process of streaming positive judgments of ourselves through our mind. I’d love to share with you some of my own personal lessons and useful tips I’ve learned along the way.

There was a time in my life when I did nothing, but go to college and party with my friends. It wasn’t anything that we consumed that gave us that free spirit everyday, that eagerness to spent each happy moment with each other. It might have been the fact that I had good friends or the period of time in my life where I had no real responsibilities or maybe I had a love for life and its endless possibilities. Whatever it might have been, I remember always feeling as light as a feather.

Sure enough, the party ended and I grew up. The feeling that I could live that way forever, unfortunately, ended too. Yet . . . I want it back. I do, I do. I want it back! The joy of the good old times. The happiness of it all! I want to feel it again! I want to feel like life is a party again. I want to feel it in my bones again, without drugs or alcohol, without a crutch.

I believe we have to install positive thoughts into our minds in order to become positive people. Not that superficial crap either, real positivity. The goodness of life. Some people would say that’s being strong. I can understand how they could say that, can you? It’s okay if you can’t. We all have different opinions. I used to think differently too. Yet, what I’ve learned is that being strong is the opposite of what I used to think it was. I used to think it meant never backing down from a fight. Sticking up for myself and getting the last word. However, as I grew older, I realized I was sadly mistaken. Strong is being the kind of person who doesn’t respond with negativity. The resilient one will persevere because they have learned or they’re learning how to deal with circumstances. They’re not judging other’s actions either. They’re taking the hand that was dealt to them and doing the best they can with it. I learned to preserve by living and dealing with my own problems better than I did as a foolish child.

Again, to be positive we have to think positive thoughts. Our thought process makes up our personality and attitude. Yet, I don’t think we were always taught how to have a good attitude, we were just supposed to have one. ‘Positive self-talk’ wasn’t emphasized enough. It’s the very basics of how to have a good attitude. Our self-talk determines how we embrace life.

It seems that people practice pretending everything is okay and under control when it’s not. We don’t always know how to take care of our mental health and there’s so much stigma around seeking or needing professional help. Yet, everyone could use a little help with depression, stress, anxiety, lonely, pain and hurt. Figuring out and interpreting the source of our negativity can be good too. Then we have a place to start and our problems are at least identified. Then we can take the necessary steps to fix our problems, so that our minds can be free.

Ever heard someone say, ‘don’t be so hard on yourself?’ They were talking about yourself-talk or self esteem, which can also be one in the same. Everyone has negative self-talk, even though they won’t admit it. We all have it and the smartest people have learned not to bask in it. I’d try to keep my mind positive, clean and free of harmful perceptions.
Have you ever considered the kind of molecular energy they’re releasing into the universe with their emotions or the emotions that you impel in others? Whatever fills our minds becomes our world, our reality. We breathe life into whatever we believe and whatever we send out is what we’ll receive back too. When we get rid of our negativity, then we can share our joy with people we love.

 

Ways to Clear Your Mind

Find a peaceful, happy, inspiring or meaningful noun (a person, place or thing/object/ideology) and stay close to it, stay inside it, engage with it and interact with or in it. I think this helps people get back to their purpose and realizing what is important to them instead of getting caught up in the stress, the hard work, unpleased or compromising dilemmas or situations.

Relax! Take a time out. Rest. Have a ritualistic moment of not worrying, not caring, not thinking about what everyone else seems to think is important or what is having too much power in your life beside you. Take a load off and realized that you deserve a break. Mediation, exercise or chanting into relaxation is necessary sometimes.

Engage in a good or humorous conversation with someone who has a good attitude (most of the time . . . they’re only human)

 

 

 

 

 

Exercise your mind and body to change your spirit from bad to good. Read what’s interesting to you and engage in what’s harmlessly entertaining to you. Work out your
body on a schedule. Practice something that produces good health measures for the body and mind.

Play, laugh and joke. Play around with people without cruel intentions. Play a game with others and strategize winning. Believe you are capable of winning.

Plan ahead. Plan something fun, meaningful, or a good-natured activity to celebrate life and all the good contributions that you’ve already accomplished, ones you take for granted everyday. Follow through with your plans and stay on it. Most importantly motivate people to join you in your decision to have a good time, no matter what. You have to be realistically happy and a little energetic or upbeat. Incorporate time to have fun in your life. Enjoy people you love and those you spend time working with in an environment. Plan on spending time with people and pushing for good vibes and positive energy. Look forward to these experiences, and don’t be discouraged if they don’t always happen, just keep pushing for fun times with people throughout your life. You have to be positive in order for them to want to be around you. Meeting new people can be starting new beginnings. Do and say good things to people to promote positivity. Hope for a positive experience and build your spirit enough to be able to endure a bad experience. Don’t reflect, instigate, or encourage the negative. Get away from all that. Leave it behind.

Keep it 100% with yourself!

Our positive self-talk should be honest and never an illusion of how we want things to be so we pretend that’s what it is. NO. We should also never have happiness at the expense of others. Positive self-talk is a personal strategy use to take care of our own mental health.

According to Psychology Today, it is important to strive for positive thought in negative or compromising circumstance in order to proceed forward. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201605/the-power-positive-self-talk

Health Benefits of Positive Self-Talk

Eustress (‘good stress’ that’s interpreted as being beneficial, productive or motivational)

Boast of Confidence & Self-Esteem

Personal Growth

Emotional Regulation

 

In order to think positive you must practice it every single day!

Try this . . . right now. Pick up a pen and jot this on a pad or make a strong mental note.

Write 10 affirmations

which are also truths . . .

1.) I love myself

2.) I’m worthy of being loved

3.) I’m able to circulate love (give it, receive it and keep it flowing)

4.) I’m an honest person

5.) I may be down, but I can pick myself up again

6.) I’m kind

7.) I’m capable of changing myself

8.) I’m capable of changing the world

9.) I have mind control and all else will follow

10.) I’m strong

You control your mind and your situation. Well . . . that’s all I have for now . . . until you read again, remember to love yourself and be good to yourself. Blog to you next time. This is Truly K. Bradley . . . signing out.

 

 

 

via Professional Title

What are your submission or rejection goals for 2018? Inspired by Lit Hub’s 100 rejections per year post, I got 93 rejections 2017 and aim to cross 100 this year. Since my Spring 2018 contest roundup, I’ve earned plenty of rejections and published the last season’s responses in a fun format I dubbed The Rejection…

via Fiction Writing Contests Worth Your Time (Summer 2018) — Writer Unboxed

Women have been taking care of this planet since the beginning of time. We are the very heart of our community and it is important that we support each other in every aspect of life. We have the power to inspire each other’s journey. Together we can teach each other how to live with purpose.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and one for helping others. -Maya Angelou

The Benefits of Us Helping Each Other:

Progress

Balance

Community

Inspiration

Support

Beautification

WOMEN MAKE THE WORLD A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO LIVE!

Whenever I think of beautification, it also reminds me of the Mexican Artist Frida Kahlo. Her braided hair gathered in flowers on top of her head.

Frida Kahlo (Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon) was born in 1907 in Coyoacan Mexico City, Mexico.  Frida experienced a horrible vehicle collision that caused her severe bodily harm. She was famous for creating meaningful self-portraits. Even as a women with physical challenges, Frida still managed to make a name for herself and display her unconventional beauty in her paintings.

 

 

“The difference between a broken community and a thriving one, is the presence of valued women.”-Michelle Obama

Before We Had Wings We Had To Learn To Walk Together

Elizabeth Cady Stanton born and raised in Seneca Falls, New York to an upper class family. Her social elite status gained her political and social influence as a wife of Henry Brewster Stanton and mother of seven children. She was supported by Quaker activist women and that support prompted political campaigning against economic, social and political gender inequality in America. Female abolitionist weren’t very well accepted, let alone female rights activists. However, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott stood up for women’s rights, hoping to get the same rights to vote as African American slave men by the 15th amendment after the civil war.

These radical ladies birthed the women suffrage movement that began on July 19th through the 20th of 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. Only 100 abolitionist (68 women and 32 men) met to discusses the issues with constituting women’s rights. At the convention, The Declaration of Sentiment was recited and declared by women with the support of their abolitionist husbands.

Although there were only white women in attendance, Fredrick Douglas did represent the African American slaves at that time. He was the only non-white in attendance. The women’s suffrage movement in America was mostly led by white women.

Susan B. Anthony was another influential woman campaigning for gender equality. She was a great activist with the ability to gather women together and march us forward. Anthony was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York.

Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul were great leaders in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) leading the world to the progressive era (1890-1920), era of reforms.  They were women who protested and picketed to have the same political, economic and social standing as men. The word suffrage illustrates the domestic violence, solitary confinement (imprisonment) and various forms of abuse and injustice that all kinds of women, even married upper class women experienced  in order to have better opportunities.

 

There were also many courageous women of all races, colors, and creeds before this period that reflected the strength of women.

Sojourner Truth was also an activist during the time of the 19th century. She was an African American female abolitionist, which meant that she was a double minority. She gave an insightful soliloquy expressing the intersectional challenges of being a black woman who was de-feminized due to racism and made to feel less than a woman.

 

AIN’T I A WOMAN?

by Sojourner Truth

Delivered 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

I love speech because I believe African American women, myself, are not considered in the category of aesthetics.  We were once consider animals or in other words what a ‘nigger’ meant at that time in the United States, ‘ugly’, ‘black’, ‘nasty’. We had to tell the world that we were beautiful! We were led to believe that we weren’t beautiful because of the color of our skin and we were less than human. Only white women were consider beautiful in social America for a long time. The world is changing and colorful women are still slowly breaking those stereotypes, even today. We are raising in status and moving toward a diverse ideology that all women of different colors, cultures and creeds are beautiful! As an African American woman, I’m especially proud of these black women for break the mold for us,  ‘sistahs’.

 

 

By the 20th century, women were granted the right to vote by the 19th amendment in 1920 in the United States.

In the bigger picture, it takes women to pave the way for others. It takes women to make the world whole and abundant. Even today in the 21st century women’s suffrage is rarely taught in the education system, although we’ve progressed past the cult of true womanhood, we still have a long road ahead of us.

 

 

 

Life always presents something. Nearly every day I’m confronted with something that can stress me out. It wasn’t long ago that I would let the stress pile up and get to me. Then I made some changes to remove all stress.

A lot of things are out of your control, but there is one thing that is always in your control. That is your response to whatever happens in life. One of the hardest things to do is to combat your thoughts. I’ve read that as much as 80% of our self-talk is negative. It’s take a conscious effort to invert your self-talk.

1. Train your mind to think positive only
–Literally stop thinking and breathe
–Block negative thoughts by picturing or reciting something positive like “It will all work out.” “I’m still breathing.” “Joy comes in the morning.” “I’ll be alright.” “One day I’ll have an amazing story to tell.”

2. Laugh
–Talk to a friend who makes you laugh
–Watch a comedian who makes you laugh
–Literally force yourself to laugh in the face of problems. The physical act of chuckling when something stressful happens can shift your perspective immediately.

3. Pray Without Ceasing
–Every breath, every thought, and every action should be a prayer of some sort. What I mean is, live right, do right, think right, act right. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck in negative thoughts or actions because it will block your blessings and bring more problems than you can handle.

4. Create a Self-Care Routine
–Choose a workout time even if you can only walk for 5 minutes, start there
–Choose a time to put your phone down and relax without the rays and toxic energy your phone brings
–Choose a meal plan that you stick to so you aren’t consistently poisoning your body. I’ve only had water and nutritional shakes for the last 5 days and it’s amazing how much more clarity and energy I have. What you consume can consume you.

5. Live More
–In your free time, plan something to do even if it’s a free walk in the park. Not every activity has to cost.
–Think of inexpensive ways to live life to the fullest and start saving today if you have to. Create a savings for living and as soon as you hit your goal, go! In July I plan to take a road trip with my family from Florida to Maine. Take time to live life more. You can afford it if you plan for it.

6. Watch Your Words
–Anything you speak yields fruit. If you reply to this email about all of your problems and struggles and how you never see the sunshine, you just cemented your reality. Your words become things. The Lord showed you that when He said, “let their be light.” Be careful and don’t claim sickness, loneliness, poverty, and misery.

7. Love More
–The world is conditioning us to hate ourselves and hate everyone around us. The media will drive a wedge between anyone they can because that discord and chaos boost profits in the economy. When you’re unhappy you spend more money in frivolous ways. If you hate your body, your race, the opposite race, or anything else, you will act out and it typically is in the form of consumption of something that benefits the economy, but not you.
–Spend more time with your loved onesnand even with strangers so you can get to know more people. Instead of hating someone or something, learn more about it and learn to how to process that new information and even if it results in dislike and distance, it won’t be as toxic to your body as hate is.

I hope those tips can help in someway. As I learn and grow, I just want to share what has helped me with the hopes that it can help you too.

Blessings,
Tony Gaskins Jr.