For those who settle…
Tag: purpose
Writer’s Quote Wednesday – Do What You Are Fitted For
My Writer’s Quote Wednesday pick for this week comes from Abraham Maslow in what I like to call: “Do What You Are Fitted For“:
I wasn’t going to post a Writer’s Quote this week as I have a meeting to attend in exactly two minutes from now (I better write fast!). I was, however, struck by Maslow’s words and I definitely had to share it. This is an interesting quote. I think we all have a unique skill that is given to us for the purpose of contributing to the world and until we learn what that ability is and how to live for that purpose; we will always feel incomplete in some way. A lot of people have succeeded a lot in their lives per the definition of man’s success and yet they are not content with the lives that they are living. I think it possible that each person has to eventually give up what they think is happiness and just do what he or she was fitted for. Some call this destiny, striving to master the ability to use the skillfulness in which we were specifically created for as our contribution to the world. Something to think about.
“Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization”
– Wikipedia
*********
And that’s it for my contribution to Writer’s Quote Wednesday, hosted by Colleen of Silver Threading.
The 2 Most Important Days In Your Life
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
Write Me a Picture
A blank faced lyric
how dull is the stare of a ball point pen
bleeding empty
This collection of words all myth in mouth
colorful descriptions
that cannot pierce the skin
or cut the bone and tendons of image
What lay beyond the composition of a word undefined
What triviality is a tasteless meal
What kind of food is this
What scarlet
What fine silk
What significance are thoughts under ball pointed pens
that have no pixel
And cannot paint
That cannot walk across the bottomless ocean of sing
Cannot sing this gut
What rebellious tongue
What confusing blood from bleeding pens
Something strange these destinations duplicate
Copied vision
No fire
No engines and bare fist
No fight beyond the pretty
No pretty beyond the picture
twisted mouths
no open minds
Do you mind?
writing me a picture
viewable beyond my eyes
write me something I can see
with my gut
and feel underneath my skin
no just sound good
no just feel euphoria
but write me a picture
beyond ball pointed pens
and pixels
What Kind of Writer Are You?
Freedom Writer
I like to write books that challenge people to think beyond what they know (think) exists; releasing people from the limited ways in which we tend to think and feel. So I strive to produce content that is thought provoking and cultivates the mind. My goal is to free the minds of all people through truth, using digital technology to create unique reading experiences. I do this because the mind is where the spiritual is, and it is my belief that if a people are not spiritually and mentally free in truth, then they are not free at all.
*********************
Your Turn!
I thought this would be a fun exercise for writer’s to outline their writing goals by asking themselves what kind of writer they are, and from there to list the reasons why they write. Who would like to play?
- In 1-2 words, give us a catchy phrase that best suites the kind of writer you are. Mine is “Freedom Writer”.
- In 100 words or less, explain why. It’s important to keep it short. This will help us to clearly define our goals.
- You can leave a comment to this post or write a post of your own like mine, your choice. If you do your own post, just ping-back so I see it. It’s no fun if we can’t support each other.
- ALL Bloggers Welcome! – If you are not a writer you can give your blogging goals. Same rules apply.
So….yall game or lame? Don’t leave me hanging, let’s have some fun 🙂 !
When Are You Done Succeeding?
I thought this was a great post by Shayla of Curiouser Editing:
As an entrepreneur, do you consider yourself successful? Or do you feel like you’re not quite there yet? Do you sometimes say, “I’ll be happy/successful when I get to this point”?
In the business world, we are engrained with the mentality that success is defined by numbers. We are told that it is something measurable. We are not successful until we get more followers, get more clients, get more engagement, get more subscribers, get more money, get a dream house, getgetgetgetget…
And it’s still not enough.
Because we keep going and we keep pushing ourselves to get better and be all of these things that our inner child would think were nuts.
So when is it enough? When do we get to say, “I did it. I’m successful”? When does that happen?
When are you done?
When you get 10,000 Facebook followers? When you make $8,000 a month? When you can hire your first employee? Second? Third? When you land an interview with a multimillionaire exec?
Speaking of interviews, I recently read one with a millionaire shop owner. She said, “We haven’t succeeded yet. We’re not at a point where we’ll all take a deep breath. I don’t know when we’ll ever stop.”
A millionaire said that.
To someone, that kind of dynamic attitude is contagious. It’s always been for me. But then when a friend asked me, “When are you done?” I began to rethink the definition of success.
Success means, “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.”
I believe it’s time to change the definition of success. I believe we are more than the numbers on our Facebook page. I believe we are more than the amount of subscribers who read our blogs. I believe we are more than something that can be measured on Google analytics.
Here’s a thought: We already are successful. We were successful the day we put ourselves out there and hustled for our dreams. We were successful ages ago, but for some reason, we thought it wasn’t enough.
We have already succeeded. No amount of fans, followers, likes, subscribers, clients, or dollar signs can ever change that.
Here’s my new definition of success:
The act of waking up each day and being in love with what you do and who you are as a person.
It took me longer than I want to admit to realize what success truly means. It is not a number. It is being happy with who we are and who we strive to be every day.
So are you successful?
Writer’s Quote Wednesday – If You Don’t Define Yourself
Yayy I’m back :). Time to get back into the swing of things. What better way to start than with Writer’s Quote Wednesday. This week, I take my inspiration from Audre Lorde. And since I just came back from a Stage Play, I thought it’d be fun to use the picture of me on the set in my costume right before going onstage lol.
“If you don’t define yourself for yourself, you’d be crunched into other people’s fantasies of you and eaten alive.” – Audre Lorde
When it comes to writing, and also to life, what sets one person apart from another are those individual qualities that are specific to that person. There is uniqueness about each of us and our style of writing that defines our work and defines also who we are as individuals. It is a kind of branding that does not have to be created, it already exists. We just have to discover it. There is a lot of good advice out there and a lot of good living examples to follow, but if you do not yet know who you are as a person and as a writer; if you do not yet know what sets you apart from the rest; if you have yet to define yourself, it is easy to get lost in all the opinions and philosophies and false images of who everyone perceives or desires you to be. Many invoke what others are expected to see. As a result, they lose sight of a definition of self. They cannot find the voice that is exclusive to them because they are trying to be a mirror reflective of someone or something else.
While I disagree with many of Audre’s views, I enjoy this quote because it is a constant reminder, for both my personal as well as my writing life, to be true to myself no matter what. I also chose this particular quote because my next book deals with mixed ancestry and it is noted that Audre Lorde’s mother could pass for white, while her father was darker than the family would have liked. Lorde is therefore among many African Americans to have experienced in some way the question of the colored line.
About the Author:
Lorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants from Barbados and Carriacou, Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, who settled in Harlem. Lorde’s mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for white, a source of pride for her family. Lorde’s father was darker than the Belmar family liked and only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron Lorde’s charm, ambition, and persistence. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind, and the youngest of three daughters, Audre Lorde grew up hearing her mother’s stories about the West Indies. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet, essayist, etc. and her poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes’ 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet’s Press. She died in 1992 at the age of 58.
****************************
That’s it for this week’s episode of Writer’s Quote Wednesday. Be sure to check out Silver Threading to join in on the fun. Just click on the pic below!
http://silverthreading.com/2015/05/06/writers-quote-wednesday-the-buddha/
The PBS Blog 