Change your thoughts, Change your life

Change your thoughts, Change your life is a phrase that is very popular in the self help community. The power of positive thinking, Law of Attraction, or anything else to improve your mindfulness states this. After spending the month of November being grateful and watching my thoughts, I have to agree. Changing your thoughts can change your life. 

Now I'm not saying that if you think about being a millionaire, it's going to happen...I'm still waiting. What I am saying is changing your thoughts to be more positive, more grateful will change your attitude. You will appreciate the little things in life more, you won't let the crap get to you. Changing your thoughts can improve your personal, professional and any part of your life you want. In the last month, my mood has improved, my motivation has improved, happiness, energy and even health. Don't get me wrong, I still have bad or down days, moments, whatever, but I do my best to change those feelings into something good. 

When you are happier, more positive, you also become ore productive, you have more confidence in yourself. You work harder, play harder and love harder. To me this is the real secret. You change your thoughts and you change your life, you want more, you realize you deserve more and you are willing to move forward in life to achieve this. 

Every morning when I wake up, before checking emails, Facebook, while I make make coffee I listen to morning motivation on YouTube. So far the one that spoke the most to me was Believe Nation -Oprah's top 10. 

Every night when I'm ready for bed, I listen to a guided meditation. This helps me relax, reflect on the good of the day and bring forth my dreams for tomorrow. 

I challenge all of you to try this, start with a week. Show gratitude everyday, be grateful for the air you breath, the water you drink, the food on your table, the people in your life. What ever you want to be grateful for, do it, say it, believe it. You will change your life. 

 

XOXO

Charlotte

Dreams

We all have some kind of dream for our lives, some big, some small but each one is important. I have dreams for myself, my career, my life, my kids, everything in my life I have an ideal dream for it. Some may say I live with my head in the clouds, but I say I live my life with goals. Lets face it, that's what dreams are, goals. I bet if we examine our dreams, we all have very similar dreams.

Family, there's many dream we have about family. Some dream of having a family, some dream about a loving or happy family and others dream about what they want for their family. I'm no different. When it comes to my family, I dream about happiness. I want each of my kids to have success and happiness, I want them to find love and enjoy life. I dream that my husband gets the recognition at work that he deserves, that he doesn't have to work so hard to provide the life we want for our family.

Health, I dream about health for myself and my family. As some of you might know, I have a autoimmune disease. This has made me make some major changes in my life. I take the good days when the come and the bad days when they come. I dream of having more good days than bad. I dream that my kids won't suffer the same disease as I do. Health is something we take for granted. We usually don't think about it until something is wrong. Health is something I've dream about all the time and from a young age. I dream of the day when people won't have to suffer anymore, when cancer will be cured. I dream that my children will never have to face any further health concerns.

Financial Stability, this I think is something everyone dreams about, and it's okay. We all dream of a day when we don't have to worry about bills. A day when we can take a vacation if we want. I dream of the day I beat the odds and win the lottery, I mean who wouldn't like that. Mostly I just dream of making a living with my writing. I dream of financial stability with writing, so I can pay it forward, I can afford to use paid blogger services, help others live their dreams. 

So as you can see dreams are really just goals, things we want to achieve in life. It's important to follow your dreams. Believe that you can achieve them. What are some of your dreams?

My biggest struggles as an Author

I like to think of my self as a positive person. I don't like to complain (much), I like to think the best of others and situations, and I love to help others. I believe that everything happens for a reason and that stress doesn't help anyone. Be positive, think positive, believe positive. Now with that said sometimes this is hard as hell. Life has ups and downs and sometimes things will be harder for us than others. I do believe we should learn from our troubled times. This is just life. Well it's the same being an author. We have ups and downs, times of empowerment and times of doubt. Today I want to share some of my biggest struggles as an author with you, I want you to know that no matter what you do or face, you are not alone. 

First and foremost as a author and a person I am not good at asking for help. I am a help and a people pleaser. I want to help others, but don't want to bother others when I need help. As an author this is detrimental to my career, we need help, we need a street team, a promo group, people to review, and share our work. Word of mouth is the best promotion. I am terrified to ask others to help me, and when I do and they say yes, I'm terrible at directing them. So I tend to do everything myself. Yet with that said, I hate promoting myself because I don't want to seem spammy. So I guess this leads to my next struggle Insecurity.

We as humans all have things we are insecure about. Now I'm going to be very vulnerable and honest here. I am insecure about almost everything. My weight, my hair, my age, my disability, my knowledge. Anyone that knows me personally, knows I am in a constant battle with myself and very judgmental of myself. This also takes part in being an author. I don't want to "bother" others, I don't know why a blogger would want to bother interviewing me or reviewing my book when there are so many amazing authors out there. So I very rarely reach out to them. I'm blown away every time someone reads my books and even more so when they take the time to review and especially like them. I write for me, I write what I like, not whats popular, not what will sell, but whatever story I have in my head. I am very proud of myself for putting my books out there for others because it faces my insecurities head on. 

Now this leads to marketing, I really struggle with marketing. As I said above, I don't want to seem spammy, I don't want to "bother" others and i'm scared to approach bloggers for help. Marketing is a huge part of being an author. It doesn't matter if you are traditionally published or independently published, we need to market ourselves and our books or else no one will even know we exist. I don't have a huge advertising budget, but I do run AMS and Facebook ads every now and then. I know I need to do more, but I just don't know how. So this is probably my biggest struggle as an author. Everyday I watch how to videos, I do research and try to learn more. After all learning is how we grow and improve ourselves. One day I will figure this all out.

Now for a few things that I have learned as an author, because I want to have a few happy thoughts in this post. Although I'm a self proclaimed people pleaser, I have learned you can't please everyone. As an author, you will get bad reviews, not everyone will like your work and you know what, that's okay! I appreciate even "bad" reviews because I can learn from them. I recently revised and re-released the Embrace series. After I got my rights back from my publisher, I went through every review. I learned that I was too formal in my writing and now I make special note of that when doing my rewrites. I have also learned that there are some really amazing people out there that will help and support us authors. I've learned that it's okay to be vulnerable like this post, because we can grow fro our vulnerabilities. 

My eldest daughter, is a very smart young woman and she is very good at lecturing me on life and trying to help me improve myself. I think she might have been the mom in our past life. She encourages me to take charge of my situation and put myself out there. I think that's what this post is really about, about putting myself out there. No matter what you do for a living, a hobby or are going through in life, know it's okay to put yourself out there too. We are not alone and we all have our own struggles. Thanks for reading and helping me to admit and accept mine.

My daughter Jorden, in NYC living her best life. 

XOXO
Charlotte