The Effects of Effort

What if you considered life as a mystery to live, not a problem to solve?

Observations alter as awareness kicks in. New eyes, ears and touch bring attention to detail. Scents arouse interest.

Squint to find an elephant in tree bark beyond an angry crocodile. Discover a creature with a penguin-like body with antennas tuned to fun.

Move beyond the day's boundaries.

Let awareness assist to transform faults you notice into effects with just a bit of effort.

Play with the effects of effort.

Happy Day Recipe

Staying balanced involves leveling off from daily dips; up to down to up again. A smile activates a positive attitude, improves mood and helps us benefit from the day's challenges.

Smile and motivate your writing into action.

l.   Set a writing intention. Choose a subject daily and write regardless of a need for outcome.

2.  Exercise your body with a walk, run, weight training, or yoga.  Get that motor running for at least 30 minutes each day and power the endorphins. Imprint the energy.

3.  Choose your quality of the day: grace, courage, persistence, self-acceptance. Use it as a focus if you have a meditation practice.  Or, write about it to begin the day.

4.  Feel gratitude for all your gifts. Give thanks for waking up with a healthy body and mind clear enough to do this exercise. Last thing at night: Review all the good things that happened during the day. Build your gratitude muscle and train your mind to focus on the good. (Are you alive? Do you have clean water? Do you live in harmony with the land?)

5.  Avoid taking in negative news. Choose nutritious brain food by choosing what works in life.

6.  Drink lots of water and fresh juices during the day.

7.  Listen to uplifting music, sing and dance. Open the heart. Change your mood.

8.  Choose wisely what you read, listen to and the people with whom you associate. Avoid letting negative individuals populate your world. You cannot change them.  Move on.

9.   Learn to listen with both ears. Evaluate before disrespecting another person's opinion.

10.  Call a loved one or friend just to say hello or catch up.

Plan your Top Ten Happy Day Recipe. Write about what elevates your spirit

Write into Terror-itory

Writing into uninhabited territory of the mind provides insights, unleashes creativity, and enables problem solving. It may feel uncomfortable at first but anxiety dissolves as one word moves into another and sentences propel the forward progress of ideas.

Do you recall a time in your life where you had a choice of turning right or left?

Did the path you moved on stop at a place with too many choices in all directions?

Did you choose to say Yes or No?

Did you make the easy decision when a more challenging solution would have provided more growth?

How do you feel about your choice-making abilities?  When you scan your life choices,which decision points come to mind?

Make a list of five perplexities and write about what your life would reveal today if you had made another choice.

Do not judge or flavor the writing with right or wrong. Just detail the different scenario and the person you might view today.

Follow images that feel confusing or ambiguous. Expand upon troubling thoughts as you dwell in the "terror-itory." Permit distaste or disaster to percolate into new vistas.  They will reveal areas you need to write through to provide clarity for future decisions.

After your initial freewriting, set your ego aside. Choose one of your perplexities. Create a name and assume a persona with different eyes. Dig into this alternate psyche and see which road he or she might choose.

You may discover a character for a story.

Feel the freedom as your writing meanders beyond the terror-itory.