Writers and Worry: Avoiding Prolonged Visits to the Abyss

Writers worry. It's the yang side of the creative ying. Yet prolonged visits to the black hole of the abyss aren't constructive. Those visits rob from creativity and life. Here are some tips--the greatest of which is alluded to--write with purpose because you love it.



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vicki hinze, my kitchen table, the abyss, depression, worry, coping skills, writer author, novelist, creative writing, black hole, writers zone, writers' zone

Heart Weary: 5 Tips for Relief

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Tags: heart weary, weary, lost, struggling, coping skills, balance, self-destructive, constructive, problems, troubles, solutions, writers library, Vicki Hinze,

GLIMPSES OF LIGHT

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Life Inescapable

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Holiday: Staying Above the Madness

Holidays are supposed to be happy times of celebration. Times when friends and families gather and share the joys of the season.


So why then are holidays the most stressful times of the year? Why do suicide rates soar? So many suffer depression and others are absolutely miserable?


In part, the very thing that brings us together--holidays--also brings to bear the greatest stresses.


Here are a few of the substantial stressors that magnify during the holidays:


Additional tasks.


There are more obligations and social events to host and/or attend. Gifts to buy, special meals to shop for and prepare, trees, houses--inside and out--classrooms, offices, stores or other workplaces or additional places (church, lodge, club) to decorate, presents to wrap, cards to send and a multitude of other preparations to make. Social obligations/engagements require extra preparation time (program practices, dishes to make, clothes to wear selected or shopped for, haircuts and so on).


If others are “coming home for the holiday” to your home, as glad as you’ll be to see them, that’s more tasks on your To-Do List. If you’re going home, there are travel plans and packing, making sure the car is ready for the trip or tickets to purchase and schedules to coordinate, and much more.


Holidays--even when we are looking forward to them--break routines and place extra demands on our schedules. They require preparation that demands extra efforts from us. If your schedule is normally hectic, during the holidays it can become frantic.


What can you do? The extra work isn’t going to minimize just because you wish it would. That means you have to act to make the effort less stressful. Here are a couple tips:    READ MORE...

STRESS

WARNING: This is a no-edit zone...

In the last week, every email that I’ve gotten from those who read this blog has related to crisis and stress. Understandable, considering.

Stress either builds slowly over time or comes on like a gangbuster and body slams you. Either way, we know that stress kills. Many try to ignore what has them stressed. They deny, rationalize, ignore, suppress, or otherwise attempt to hide from the stress factors that are burdening them.

It doesn’t work. And the impairments that come with it impact you emotionally, spiritually and physically. There is no calm, peace, serenity and the physical body rebels against all those things. You see headaches, body aches even nausea and colon challenges. The entire body can be impacted and tossed into turmoil.

What does work?

Dealing with the stress.

How do you do that?

Get physical.
Exercise releases endorphins that counter the chemical imbalance stress brings on.

Get rested.
Weariness and exhaustion destroys our ability to make calm, rational decisions or to set our course of actions.

Get smart.
Whether your worries are personal, your private business, your professional business, the nation’s business--get informed. It’s impossible to make wise choices when you don’t know the details. When you understand the challenge, then you can focus on the solution.

Making that shift--from the challenge to the solution is paramount in lowering your stress level. Why? Because command of the matter gives you confidence that the decisions you make will be good ones, seated in wisdom.

These are stressful times and they’re going to get worse before they get better. Every generation has its challenges, and this one is no exception. That isn’t always a bad thing. It’s not pleasant, but challenges have value. If we elect not to ignore but to deal with these challenges, we often discover what we stand for, what we will not stand for. We discover our strengths, our character.

We discover ourselves . . .

Blessings,

Vicki

Vicki Hinze
www.vickihinze.com

Tags: Stress, Coping Skills, Economic Trials, Wisdom, Calm, Control, Serenity, Character, Strength

THIS NEW DAY: The Power of Clarity

Times are tough and from appearances they’re about to get tougher. But here’s the thing:

Times have always been tough. At no time in recorded history has life been a cake-walk for anyone anywhere. Everyone has challenges and they either rise to meet them or they don’t.

This is today’s position. Whether you’re talking about on the governmental front or the front centering on your personal life. We all have challenges.

And so it’s important to keep those challenges in perspective. To stay calm and clearheaded, because the absence of calm is anxiety and the absence of being clearheaded is being mired in confusion.

Anxious and confused isn’t the best frame of mind or state of being for making the decisions required of us to rise and meet our challenges.

So what can we do to minimize being anxious and maximize clarity? READ MORE

Tags: challenges, clarity, confusion, solutions, anxiety, calm, serenity, peace, coping skills, vicki hinze, writers' library, life skills