Life + Writing Prompts Vol V

Along the way of working on the prompts, after a few installments, I decided to post the remainder of the prompts at one time. This post has a mismosh of life prompts and actions.  It's important.  Because I'm all about love and living your best life, these prompts are dedicated to both and some are dedicated to a little bit of imagination.  

What do I mean by Best Life? I mean reaching a place where you enjoy your life.  You're not reaching back in the past for lost moments.  You're not always anticipating the future.  You're content where you are while appreciating what's happened and are looking forward to the future.  Your best life can look different at different moments.  What I needed or wanted in my twenties changed in my thirties.  On the brink of my forties there's another shift beginning and I suspect it may change again.  There's no right way, there's no one answer and you have the ability to change your mind, change your course at any moment.  Always keep that in mind. If you want to change your life and you're reading this, you have the power to do so.

1.  What does it mean for you to live your best life? List the components of what you believe looks like the life you want to live.  Now, write down what you believe is holding you back.  Do you think you need more money? A partner? More education? A better wardrobe? Most times, our best lives hinge on the smaller things and making the most (and best) from what we have. 

2.  What do you think of your life right now?  Is it amazing? Are you satisfied? This isn't a trick question but a gauge. It's a barometer to better understand where you are in this moment.  It took me some time to be able to manage through my issues.  My twenties and most of my thirties were spent trying to hold on and figure life out. There were many dark nights of soul.  There were many moments of insecurity. However, I'm a firm believer in attitude, prayer, faith and a lot of hard work.  Somehow, I'm here today to write and talk about it.

3.  As the days pass, we have to understand there's something about getting to that moment where things begin to fall into place.  Let's talk about your long and short term goals.  What do they look like?   By short term we're talking five (5) years and by long term we're talking ten (10).  This isn't a new concept.  People talk about it all the time.  But here, I need you to describe what your life will look like in five and ten years.  

4.  What's your current living space look like?  Is it liveable?  Goal : unfuck your space.  Clean it.  When you're in a good place and the space is clean, you can think.  I've mentioned this before, but it's so important to have a place where you like to be.  Buy a new set of sheets from Marshalls, Target or wherever. Get yourself a good meal.  Sometimes we have to break things back down to the simple basics. 

5.  Who are the people who have been there for you and who've been a blessing to you?  I'd like you to send them a thank you card and a small gift.  The gift can be under $20 but send them something thoughtful - a journal, a candle. a bottle of wine / whisky / flask, a gift card to Starbucks or a small store.  But something small.  Please note: You're not allowed to send me anything.  You have to pick someone that's not me.  I have to say that because some of y'all will mail stuff - you know who you are....

6.  I was talking with a good friend of mine one day and he told me that every day, he does one thing he wants to do. Not something he has to do, but wants to do. Today, and for seven days after this I'd like you to do one thing you want to do each day.  It could be sitting at a bookstore and reading, taking a long walk or nap (both?), sitting down and organizing something or even doing something creative.  It can be whatever you want it to be, as long as it's something you've been wanting to do. 

7.  I don't believe we have to travel far or great to have the best experiences or to learn.  Have you visited the free museums in your area?  The parks?  Other spaces? A local farmer's market? A specialty grocer? There's something about heading to local attractions within your city or town.  Make a list places that are within an hour of your home (longer if you're rural) and plan out a few day trips. 

8.  Tell two (2) people you love them.  Give them a word of encouragement and thank them for being in your life.

9.  If you know of someone in need today, please offer a helping hand.  Even if it's the donation of your time.  It doesn't have to be money. Offer to babysit, run errands, cook a meal, clean up or just head over there to sit and talk.  People in need don't always ask for help. I'm sure if you look around and you typically don't have to look far, you'll find a close friend in need of a bit of love and assistance.

10.  Write five (5) writing prompts for yourself.  My gmail notes, Evernote, notebooks and other elusive places are filled with ideas.  If you're anything like me, there's something everywhere.  Inspiration everywhere. use what you have.

11.  Time waits for no man.  We're often waiting for someone to encourage us, do things with us, tell us that we're enough.  So here it is, I encourage you, you have the power to do it and you're enough.  List 10-20 things you're putting off because you've been waiting for someone else's approval or arrival.  Go get your shit done.

12.  When we talk about best life and such, sometimes it means there are things we need to let go.  What is it you need to let go?  

13.  Write about the best day you've had.  You can choose any day.  What made it good?  Was it the place?  The people? What were you doing?  I've read that when you have those amazing moments, you attempt to recreate them as often as possible.  This is why it's important to think about them. 

14.  Challenge: sit at dinner with your significant other or best friend or yourself and don't use your phone.  Don't even look at or touch your phone. 

15.  Say the word no. Maybe you have something coming up that you really aren't into, just don't want to do.  We have to learn how to politely decline offers, situations and things.  Just practice it today.  But say it. 

16.  Part of feeling and being empowered can begin with something small.  What makes you feel powerful?  What makes you feel beautiful?  Is it eating better? Working out?  Getting a massage?  A mani pedi?  Getting your hair done?  Do something for yourself that's small but is the basis of making you feel better.  I know for me, I love getting a mani pedi.  I also feel amazing after I've worked out.  It makes having the pizza feel that much better because I've worked to be able to have it.

17.  Say yes.  What have you been turning down that you've always wanted to do?  What have you been talking yourself out of?  Or have you been afraid to try new things?  Say yes.  Learning to say yes - happily - is just as important as learning to say no.  

18.  Go to the doctor.  So many of us avoid the doctor because we don't want them to tell us that we have to lose weight, we should stop eating the way we're eating, we need to work on making some changes.  Maybe you've had bad experiences with the doctor, but I'm a believer in making sure your health is in order.  You can't have the best life when you avoid and neglect your health.  It means getting tested, listening, being honest and being ready to make changes.  If you're not insured, sometimes there are places that offer low to no cost physicals.  In DC, Bread for the City does excellent work and care.  It's so important to take good care of ourselves.  The body you have is the only one you'll get in this lifetime.  It has to take you where you need to go.  Do right by it. 

19.  This is more a piece of advice than it is anything else.  Determine to be happy.  I actually am prone to episodes of melancholy.  I had to find things that would and could snatch me out of that space.  For me? It's sharing here, writing and taking photos.  I didn't realize when I bought the camera what it would do for me. It's been a friend and a companion and a way to see the world.  It's kept me moving.  It's kept me inspired. For some they don't quite understand it, but there has to be a determination to be happy.  This is barring any sort of true clinical depression or anything (that's a very different scenario and during those times we have to seek professional help).  Determine that you will have a good life.  Making that decision alone can change everything.

20.  This is also a piece of advice.  It's all up to you.  There's no one else on the hook for your life.  You are the captain of this ship.  You can complain, fuss, choose to not make choices (which is a choice) but at the end of it all, it will have been up to you.  There are many people who have risen from the ashes to go on to do great things with their lives, with what seemed like nothing.  It's the movement and the determination that will carry you. Be tenacious about your life. 

So that ends the series of prompts.  I do hope they've at least made you think, take a few moments to consider things in your life.  It's important for us to make the best of it, make the most of it and still enjoy the time we have on this earth while leaving a legacy.  I'm thankful to have reached this point in my life.  I feel more confident, more sure about the things I want to do and where I am.  I wish you all the possible good, joy and love you can stand. 

With Love, 

Rae

If you're just discovering the prompts, here are the previous installments:

Vol I

Vol II

Vol III

Vol IV

Life + Writing Prompts Vol IV

"I'm open to all God has for me" 

How open are you?  What if God told you to let go of what was in your hands in order to give you more?  What if God wanted to see how you'd manage the current problems before you could advance to other areas of your dreams?

This post was difficult to write because it's not exactly in the form of formal prompts.  It's more so an ode to getting through our problems, loss and the awful moments we don't anticipate, the circumstances and perceived obstacles to bless us, teach us something about ourselves and move us further into who we're truly meant to be.  

What happens when we get off track? What happens when your path isn't clear? How do we turn life's detours and setbacks into something that can work for us? How can we take problems and come out of them stronger and better?

Talking with my father years ago, he mentioned adversity would make me stronger. I didn't want to hear that as a 23 year old woman struggling in school, money and trying to figure out how to eat.  I was livid. Turns out he was right. 

Who I am today has a lot to do with my upbringing and what I've thankfully and blessedly survived. 

So, first thing I have to impart is you need to live to tell the tale. That's the most important thing. If it doesn't kill you, you can get through it. Much of it is up to our attitudes, how we choose to look at things, who we choose to surround us in our lives.  It also means, you have to use your discernment to determine when and if someone should be in your life.  I've spent a lot of precious time holding on to things and situations that didn't want to be held.  Sometimes the difficulty was a way of getting me to let go.  Sometimes things get difficult in order for you to let them go.  Why is it we think things have to be difficult in order to be good?  Let me be clear, in any endeavor worth pursuing, there's going to be difficulty and hardship.  There will be things we have to get past and get over.  However, the entire time spent on an endeavor, a job, a relationship, a goal, should not be on managing problems.  There should be some enjoyment.  Drama is no one's ultimate destination.

All of this is critical. 

I was talking with Shefon who is such a bright light. I love her. And she briefly mentioned the notion of writing the key components to turning your bad into good and making lemonade when all you have is stacks of lemons.  I've talked about taking the death grip off of hope before and then as I was thinking about this next set of prompts about turning what we consider the bad into good, I was thinking about how maybe sometimes God uses those situations in order to help you along with your decision making.

Maybe you're having a hard time because it's a test.  Maybe you're having a hard time because there's something that needs to be developed in you.  Maybe you're having a hard time because it's not the time to work on that project or have that relationship.  Maybe you're having a hard time because it's time to let it go.  Discomfort signals something needs to be fixed or an action needs to be taken. There's an art to handling tragedy or the things we deem as "bad" and turning it into something good and prosperous.  In fact, I'd like to think it's part of that book of talents.  Can you take this wreck and do something with it?

1.  How do you handle loss, difficult moments and disappointment?  Do you shut down and play dead?  Do you go off?  Do you spend money, over eat, drink, etc?  I recently realized how I'm dealing with crisis differently than I used to.  It took a series of crises to get me to a different point.  A set of evolutionary tales to make me ask whether or not I valued myself and how I'd choose to make decisions going forward.  How do you respond when something negative happens?  Write down the different ways you've responded in an emergency or in a crisis (your own situation, that of a loved one).  Have you evolved over time? Writing out and taking time to consider how you respond can help you understand yourself.

2.  Learning how to manage our immediate response to something can change our lives.  There's a time to respond immediately (life saving, quick thinking in business) and there are times when we need to take a moment before we take action.  Action item: if someone says or does something this week that upsets you, take a moment before you respond.  Remember, once something is said, it can't be taken back.

3.  Think of something that's recently happened in your life.  What can you make of it?  Is there anything good that comes from it?  Is there anything you can glean from it? For me, I came to the conclusion that certain people were put in my life to show me love, others were put in my life to make strong.  Situations are often more about us that others.  

4. Managing regret. I've written about this a few times. Regrets can come back and replay themselves over and over again.  We get hung up on a certain moment, we get stuck there - replaying if we could've changed it. If we could've done better.  I've done it way too many times.  List two (2) major regrets.  These would be journal entries.  Then write about how the moment changed your life.  Have you been able to help others because of that moment?  Are you possibly better off and more mature because of it?  I tend to be the one who's happy she has a glass.  Not that it's full or half full, but that there's a glass.  My moments of regret - some of them very large - have changed the way I manage the relationships in my life, regrets have changed my heart.  I have to say, the regrets opened me up to being more of myself.

Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

~Steven Pressfield

5. Clearing space. There are times when we can't always pull our thoughts together.  Mind is cluttered.  Most often it might begin with something else being cluttered.  Action: CLEAN. Undo that mess that's sitting somewhere in your house, your car or office.  Sort through your mail.  Make necessary calls.  Whatever is pending.  Sometimes, we cause problems by thinking things will magically improve or get better when it requires work, faith and humility on our part.  Things don't get better unless we work for them to get better.  We have to face the things we most don't want to face sometimes.

The day you decide to wake up your life will be waiting for you. There'll be work to do, problems to solve, but there will also be blessings to be had, moments to savor. It's yours. But in order to live our life to its fullest potential, much of it is solving problems.  Time won't wait for you.  Life continues on.  Are you waiting for things to get better before you starting living?  Are you waiting to accomplish something before you allow yourself to experience something else fully?  That one part of a good life hinges on another?  That maybe you think life can't be good when you're broke, sick or heartbroken?  It can be good - but we have to weather the moments. 

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

— Joan Didion

There will be a set of eight volumes of the writing and journaling prompts.  To catch up on the previous editions of the writing prompts, see the links below:

Life & Writing Prompts Vol I

Life & Writing Prompts Vol II

Life & Writing Prompts Vol III

Life + Writing Prompts Vol III

This is the third in a series of eight.  If you'd like to catch up on the previous writing prompts, here they are:

Life + Writing Prompts Vol I

Life + Writing Prompts Vol II 

We all need creativity in our lives. We need the ability to produce, give back and add value.  I'm certain this is a tenet of being human and feeling useful.  Now, how we use it is a different story. I'm sure there are things we all have to do and sometimes we don't do them.  We feign that we're too tired, not enough time, not enough money, not enough people around us to encourage us.  We blame work and other family responsibilities.  In other words, there's always something else that we can put in as a reason we're not doing things that fulfill us.  We can live a lifetime of adding in excuses and the whys of why we're not living, why we're not doing things we love.  

What I've come to know over these last four years of blogging and this last 18 months of picking up a camera is that we absolutely need to make the time to do these things. To meet the creative muse or the Spirit that feeds us, makes the world a bit brighter because we're in it.  Sometimes, we don't know what we're supposed to be doing.  Usually it's hidden in the things we do for free.  I know people say that all the time, but it's the moments that we feel most alive. It doesn't have to be what everyone tells you you're good at.  It might be something that no one knows you enjoy.  The secret is carving out more time to do it.  

LIFE + WRITING PROMPTS VOL. III

1.  Since many of you are writers and creatives, check out this 1998 interview of Toni Morrison by the Paris Review. You'll note she talks about creative rituals, her favorite pencils. Pay attention to yourself over the next few days. What are your creative rituals? You likely have them and never noticed them. I mentioned in the other posts about writing or creating when you're closest to your creativity. For me, it can be any time. But I do best in the mornings. The challenge has been getting up in the morning. Another funny thing has been that when I go out to shoot photos, I tend to head to the same spots over and over again.  I also have to stop at Chik-Fil-A for a spicy chicken sandwich, waffle fries and a lemonade.  It's become a habit.  Sometimes, I may clean the entire house.  Sometimes, I might procrastinate writing things down for months.  All of us have rituals.  It may not always be that way, but every time I head a certain direction, I'm going to stop at Chik-Fil-A.  Take a moment to think of the things that you do before you create.  Think of the things you have to have in place, how you do what you do and what your rituals are.     Note: as you come closer to your purpose and discover your passion, you realize you're willing to do things you normally would not do. Rise early, stay up late. 

2. Do you have what you need to make the most of your creativity at this time? If you're painting do you need art supplies? Is your space cleared and ready? Do you need to rearrange things?  Is it time that you need to carve out?  Are you thinking about doing what you love more than you actually do it?  Is there something small you can do that puts you more in the mood to create?

3.  Recommendations for creative reading:

Steven Pressfield's  The War of Art , Do The Work       

Maxine Clair's Imagine This: Creating the Work You Love

Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World

Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird

Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch Author, Publisher, Entrepeneur (APE): How to Publish a Book

I've posted the Kindle links for the books above.  However, all of them are available in hard copy.  I've read these.  If you can get these and read them over the next year, I'd recommend it.  I've been reading them off and on for a couple of years.  Some I return to as well.  I'm currently working my way through Lewis Hyde's The Gift and it's really been a blessing. It's enhancing the way I look at what I give out, what I create and how I choose to present it.  I'd like to think these prompts may have come out of reading parts of the book.  I've been blown away by the ideas presented in these books.  I try my best never to suggest anything that hasn't helped me in some way. Each has helped me along in terms of art, writing, business or just getting down to business and getting the work done.  Disclaimer: The links provided are my Amazon affililiate store links. 

4.  Action item: Creativity can require motion but I believe much of it happens when we can be still and connect.  It allows us the space to think, listen and be present.  I believe the best ideas also happen in the midst of activities we don't have to think about - washing dishes, showering, driving and other daily moments. This action item is about NOT being in motion. Our lives are too busy, perpetual motion. The art of being still and being present is key. Can you find a space to do that? The park, near the river, the ocean or wherever you like to get to. Be safe.  But get to a place where you can have a moment and think. If you're planning ahead, pack yourself a little lunch or go and pick up a sandwich and head to the spot. Take a book and something to write in and with.  If it's possible to not look at your phone for this hour, please try it.  You'll be glad you did.  

5.  Action item: We can create anything we want. We must watch what we speak into existence. What we choose to ask for. What our subconscious moves say about the future we create. While thinking about this last prompt, one of action, I realized I needed to also hone it myself. When you read this, the clock begins and for seven (7) calendar days there's no negative speaking. [my clock begins the moment I publish it] No counter talk. Not for yourself or others. These seven days should be about encouragement, speaking life, speaking things into existence. If you need to be quiet rather than speak or complain or put bad words into a situation then just do that. Shut up.  Also, we might have to tell some of our family members and loved ones that we're on a 7-day hiatus from talking badly about other people or ourselves.  Let's give that a rest.  We can do that.  We can be gentle with the way we speak and think about ourselves and others.  We can work towards it.  Sometimes, we need to learn to keep our mouths closed until our thoughts can align with what we want the most.  During this time we need to watch our thoughts. Think the highest thoughts of and for people,of yourself. Sometimes we get into a rut. If you like, write some of the situations down that you're working through and then figure out a way to speak positively over them. 

Note: sometimes, situations and events are what they are. We can't change them. But speaking over them changes us and gives us new perspective. I'm not asking you to be unrealistic. However sometimes we need to get a handle on how we deal with things. We need a way to see them differently if we can't completely quit. 

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead and an outstanding Monday....be sure to sign up for updates.   I hope what I've been posting is helping you.  It's been blessing me.  I sincerely believe we're all better when we help one another and when we can access our gifts and creativity.  It puts us in a space to be effective and to live a good life.  I can say it's helped me meet some of the people I love the most.  It helps me deal with the rest of the world.  Being able to photograph people, places and things, being able to write down and capture what others are feeling.  Sometimes creativity also helps us to not feel alone.  When you have nothing else, no one else, when everything has gone to shit you usually have God, yourself and your work.  It's a needed  life preserver. Those things will keep us afloat when all else tends to go wrong.  I've been thankful for the ability to create over the last few years when my years were awful.  It kept me grounded.  It kept my heart open and allowed me to find and create a home in this world.  

In other news, I've also seriously been considering creating a newsletter before the end of the year.  I have no idea what the theme is or what it'll be about but if you'd like to keep up with the creative journey and get a bit of love in your inbox then just sign up here.

Love, 

Rae

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