Sunday, July 24, 2011

Time Out for a Commercial Message

I have just published Animals Have Feelings, Too: Bach Flower Remedies for Cats and Dogs. The book costs $1.99 and is available at amazon.comYou can also get it at Smashwords
where it can be downloaded in .mobi, .epub, .pdf, and other formats.

Topics include:

How the Bach Flower Remedies Can Help Animals and Humans: An explanation of how energy healing works.

Understanding Our Animal Companions: Animals, especially companion animals have emotions. Because they don't speak the same language as we do, they often communicate through their behavior. Learn to crack the code by observing your pet carefully.

My Cat/My Dog/Myself: Sometimes animals mirror our own emotional upsets. You'd be surprised what you can learn about yourself from them.

Abuse and Abandonment: These animals need special understanding and treatment.

Some Common Conditions and Remedies for Them: An annotated list.

My inspiration for writing this book was the large number of people who've written to me over the years with questions about how they could help their pets. Many of them requested consultations, and their feedback demonstrated how helpful the Bach Flower Remedies are.

I wanted to make this information more widely available; hence the book.

The big challenge for me was the high level of technical work needed to bring this creative project to life. Formatting for the various formats listed above is the kind of thing I usually try to flee, saying I want to be creative, not get bogged down in technical work. That was exactly the kind of attitude that made the technical work difficult.

Once I discovered that I was the main obstacle in my path and that the nature of the obstacle was my fear of failing, I worked at changing my attitude. I submitted the book after deciding that if I failed a few times, it was okay. I did need to submit it a few times, and once I was successful, I had the satisfaction (after a few more submissions) of knowing I'd learned what I needed to learn.

The next time I format a book, I'll be bolstered by my success with this one and by knowing that not getting it right the first time doesn't have to devastate me. This, in turn, will boost my willingness to launch further creative projects.

The moral: If one has the right attitude, it's all creative.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Prioritizing: Step 4 Where Are Your Choices Taking You?

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
– J. K. Rowling

Random choices are like randomly deciding to turn left or right. Your choices will get you lost if you don't know where you're going.

Unlike a physical journey, your journey of choices doesn't have to detail every step of the route. Being creative means allowing for the unexpected, whether this comes through inspiration, information from the outside world, offers of help from others, or any kind of surprise that may assist and guide you on your path.

However, you can't prioritize unless you know whether a choice leads you closer to your goal or takes you further away from it.

For example, I have the goal to have my novel, Big Dragons Don't Cry, and its sequels be widely read. That doesn't mean that everything I do in my life is related to that goal. Many of my activities are orientated to the normal maintenance of life. Others are geared towards income production. I choose some on the basis of relaxation and agreeable people.

However, it does mean that I make a lot of my choices based on whether an activity will contribute to the achievement of my goals.

I had recently joined a message board that discussed books of a certain genre. After a month or so, I realized that I had other outlets for book discussion, and this board wasn't helping me learn what I really needed to know: about marketing and promotion and other areas related to getting my book better known.

I left the group and joined an authors' group. In this group I can not only learn but have found many ways in which I can give support and encouragement, as well as making contributions that help others. Mutual assistance is an important part of my journey.

In that theme, since 1987 I have been writing articles about well-being and spiritual growth for two reasons: because I believe I have something to contribute in these areas and because free content has been a way to give back to people who supported my business enterprises.

Recently, when my time became a little more constricted, I needed to make prioritize and decided to stop writing for another publication. I didn't feel a strong connection to the audience, and I realized that continuing to write in that setting was doing nothing to further my goals.

It may help you to visualize a circle. See your goal at the center. Many roads can lead to it, but some can take you out of the circle itself. When you need to prioritize, ask yourself if the decision you make will bring you closer to the center or take you away from it.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Prioritizing: Step 3

Getting Specific

I recently saw a video that said you should always do the thing you hate most to do first. My first reaction was that this was the worst suggestion I ever heard. For me, it seemed to be a recipe for oversleeping in order to avoid doing THAT THING.

My second reaction was that maybe it was a good idea. If you're going to spend all day dreading that worst thing, you're not going to get a lot of pleasure from doing the things you ordinarily enjoy. That messes up the day.

At the same time, I don't want to do any worst thing if I haven't worked my way up to it. By that I mean:

I've gone through Step 2 (in the previous post). I figure out why it's the worst thing. I hate to make a dental appointment because they're going to hurt me, and it's going to be expensive. I'm going to feel victimized and angry.

Notice these are my expectations. Regarding the dental and financial pain, I can choose how I react to each. I've noticed that I've learned a lot about my attitudes towards by money whenever I experience pain about spending. So I can tell myself I'll be learning a lot from the experience. It's not the most lighthearted experience, but I look for what value I can get from it.

I have control about whether I feel victimized and angry. Here's where I go back to the subconscious mind. What benefit do I get from feeling victimized? If you ever had a sibling hit you and you ran to your mother to blow the whistle on the perpetrator, you might find some clues. Anger can protect us from the vulnerability that gets aroused by pain.

I conclude that doing the worst thing first is only a good idea if you've taken some of the charge out of it. Otherwise, it's like turning on your car engine in subfreezing weather and revving up to a high speed immediately. Bad things can happen. Don't let them happen to you.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Priorities, Part 2

In the last post (June 27), I wrote about how a sense of priorities can get distorted by what we learn about our parents' and other significant adults' expectations of us in that area.

Because so much of what we learn as children resides in our subconscious minds, it takes awareness to recognize that programs are running us that we absorbed without any selective sifting. Because of that, we may not recognize that we have two basic sets of responses to accomplishment: the desire to please and the desire to displease.

The desire to please is the desire for approval and reward. (Sometimes the approval is the reward, but sometimes we're looking for more substantial and material gratification.) Essentially, we don't know we did well unless we get the gold star, the gold ring, or some other form of outside approval.

The desire to displease is the desire for autonomy. We don't want our accomplishments to depend on the approval of others. We do everything we can to make sure we don't get that approval. However, that resistance is as much a reaction to outside forces as the submission of the approval seekers.

I think that most of us have both kinds of reactions in varying degrees. Some may be approval seekers most of the time, with occasional moments of rebellion. For others, rebellion dominates.

Neither mental condition leads to making sensible and creative choices about what we want to accomplish.

This is step two of prioritizing: Ask yourself why you want to or don't want to do whatever is on your agenda? For example, does the idea of paying your bills makes you want to gag (assuming you have the money to do so), or do you feel such anxiety that you pay all bills weeks ahead of time? The advance payment is fine, but the force that drives you to do it might be a problem. Are you either compelled or revolted by a grim parental voice telling you that responsible people pay their bills?

If you hesitate about the creative writing course you want to take, do you hear a parental voice saying that creativity will never pay the bills?

Listen for those voices. They have a lot to tell you.