I watched a Hallmark movie recently, with a very intrusive mother trying to fix up her grown business-oriented daughter, getting her into a relationship. The mother was being pressured by the father into retiring from her real estate business just for six months this year so they could go to Italy. But the mother had problems with the word "retirement," even on a part-time basis. The movie is Love by Chance and stars Beau Garrett as the harassed daughter. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYLXIS2-VY.
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Then the next day I watched a Hack Your Sleep video by Dr. Mark Hyman with Shawn Stevenson. Very interesting. If you have an hour, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LERJSdRdeB0. Shawn had been this promising young athlete who suffered a major injury early on. He had to reidentify himself.
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And thank goodness for that. His background as an athlete gave him a great insight into his later endeavors in researching medical advances and scientific data regarding sleep. It affects, ... well, everything. Our body is a miraculous system of systems.
Plus Shawn touched on how active and vocal our brains are. Not like the other organs of our body. And how the placebo effect works 30 percent of the time. How to "decide" is to "cut off other possibilities."
What I get from that is: Tell yourself what you need to hear to heal. To prosper. To be happy. Be your own cheerleader. Exhort, uplift and encourage yourself.
Watch what labels you affix to your self-identity.
To others' sense of self.
Like that old saying, Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, we must be careful not to label a person (us or anyone else) by one measuring stick. Like I'm an author, blogger and copy editor. However, I'm also this eternal student, sucking up myriad topics from various sources; a voracious reader; a lover of coffee, cats and antique cars; a movieholic; and a foodie. And that doesn't touch upon my hobbies.
Don't box yourself in. Don't discount your gifts, whether because of a lack of monetization or even the current lack of time to indulge in them.
Keep your options open.
Be kind to yourself.
Be kind to others.
In closing, I ran across this Bible verse recently, and I find it applicable here:
He hath showed thee, O Man, what is good, and what the Lord requireth of thee: surely to do justly, and to love mercy, and to humble thyself, to walk with thy God. Micah 6:8 (Geneva Bible)
In other words, be nice to yourself as well as to others.
Welcome
to My World, Readers and Authors, Where Every Day Is a Saturday
Denise Barker
Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
