Month: September 2021

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Side note: I have a new Author Newsletter that I would love it if you signed up for http://www.tinyletter.com/Author_JCCarpenter

Another Side Note: If any of you would like to buy me a coffee and donate to my creative endeavors then please feel free to https://ko-fi.com/authorjccarpenter

You Have to Protect Your Space

September 20, 2021 jcladyluv

I am extremely careful about who I let into my space these days. I have gone from being a person with a wide circle of friends and associates to a person who just has a few select friends that I interact with, and they are people who understand that my space is precious to me and that the energy in my space can’t be negative. But then there are family members that can’t exactly be ignored or discarded because, well, they’re family.

It’s not easy to ignore negative criticism or when people talk down to you about your dreams or the things that you are working towards. It’s particularly hard when it comes from unexpected places like your family. This past weekend a family member made sure that they sent me a text message first thing in the morning to convey how sad they were that it didn’t seem like people were buying my book and that it didn’t look like I was getting any support from even my fellow authors on my Ko-fi page. They proceeded to tell me ways that I could bring more attention to my book and my site in general.

Mind you this person is not experienced in marketing (for the record nether am I), they have no idea what I have sold or haven’t sold book wise, and this person also refused to promote my book at all in the lead up to its release. Now I am okay with their lack of support even though they are family and to be fair they have contributed to my Ko-fi page (which is how they know I’m not getting enough support—at least in their eyes) but that doesn’t give them the right to try to poison my day. This person is the kind of person that somehow sees negative comments and unsolicited negative advice as them being helpful. They see negativity as a tool to toughen someone up and light the proverbial fire under them.

Now I have come a long way in learning how to ignore the negative self-talk that I have in my own mind and to put a positive spin on nearly everything because honestly it doesn’t help me to see the negative points about what I’m working towards. I know that there are some people that it works for but I am not one of those people. As a person who has suffered with many bouts of deep depression and still struggles not to let myself get to that place again, I don’t need someone pointing out every negative thing they can think of. Trust me, I have probably already said it to myself anyway.

Now this person also clearly has not researched the statistical data behind the fact the most authors do not sell a ton of books with their first book, maybe not even their second or third (hell Dan Brown said no one even paid attention to him until his fourth book) and I knew that going in and have had that fact in my mind. I don’t write or publish books to try and get rich (not that I would mind it lol). I write and publish because I love it, always have since I was ten years old (really six) and because I have things to say that I feel are important enough that someone else might actually want to read it and might even get something out of it.

This family member seems to always, when I’m at my most peaceful state, want to drop their words of negativity in my lap and just thinks I’m supposed to thank them for it. They don’t respect my space and they don’t seem to understand or care that the negative comments are not just hurtful and destructive, but they’re just unnecessary. I’m not going to deny that I got in my feelings about this message that morning for about an hour or two but then I let it go. I proceeded to ignore any further messages and didn’t respond to the one’s that were sent and I went back to protecting my space.

We all have different ideas of what our happy place is. That place of peace where even if the world starts to crumble (or feels like it anyway) you still are armed with the knowledge and self-assurance that everything will be okay. It’s that space where I know that God would never give me more than I can handle and if I’m not strong enough he will be there to provide me with the strength that I need. We have to protect our spaces and keep those who wish to destroy it out, and not to be mean or nasty, but to keep ourselves sane and okay. I hope that you are protecting your space and I wish you well in doing so.

Until next time… #BeProtective #BeMindful #BeMotivated

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPU35EkFSbuxgekCp4LfI5g

Side note: I have a new Author Newsletter that I would love it if you signed up for http://www.tinyletter.com/Author_JCCarpenter

Another Side Note: If any of you would like to buy me a coffee and donate to my creative endeavors then please feel free to https://ko-fi.com/authorjccarpenter

Do I Really Need to Say Yes More?

September 13, 2021 jcladyluv

I read Shonda Rhimes book, Year of Yes, a couple of years ago and I vowed after reading it to start saying yes to things more often. Essentially I promised myself that I would be more open to change. After all, isn’t saying yes more geared towards the things that are out of your comfort zone and that you normally wouldn’t do? I will admit that there are some things that I have done since reading that books that I ordinarily wouldn’t have done, one of them being starting my YouTube channel. There’s a few more things that I have done that required me to step out of my bubble of comfort but I would assess that there have been far more times that saying no was the better move for me.

I have struggled in the past to find that balance between throwing caution to the wind and saying yes to things and knowing when to draw the line and just say no for myself. It would seem that at the moment when I finally learned how to say no to the things that I don’t want to do for my own sanity and self-care, that I lost some of that ability to say yes. I do believe that the Pandemic of the last year and a half also gave me further permission to be more of a no person than that yes person that I was working on becoming.

Honestly, I’m not sure that I want to be that ‘say yes to everything’ person because I don’t know that I would be a very happy person if I did that. I spent most of my childhood, my twenties, and a sizable chunk of my thirties saying yes to things that I just didn’t want to do at all, but not for the aspect of change, rather to please other people. I don’t know if it’s different when you’re saying yes for change and saying yes to people please but either way I don’t know that I can be that person. Sometimes no really is the right answer.

Now this is not anything against the people who say yes to every single thing and who love doing so. I think that it’s great to discover what works for you and if you are someone who says no to EVERYTHING then you should definitely read Shonda Rhimes book and incorporate yes more into your vocabulary. It’s good to explore and step out of the bubble of comfort sometimes. For me, I just cannot say yes to everything because then I get in this place where I start feeling like I’m doing things more for someone else and not for myself. I don’t want to go back to that place where I’m pleasing everyone else by saying yes to what they think I should do to the detriment of my own mental health and my own joy. I will not give up this peace that I have found and if that means I say no more than yes, so be it.

Until next time… #BeTruetoYourself #BeStrong #BeAuthentic

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPU35EkFSbuxgekCp4LfI5g

Side note: I have a new Author Newsletter that I would love it if you signed up for http://www.tinyletter.com/Author_JCCarpenter

Another Side Note: If any of you would like to buy me a coffee and donate to my creative endeavors then please feel free to https://ko-fi.com/authorjccarpenter

What You Tell Yourself You Will Believe

September 6, 2021 jcladyluv

It sounds so cliché to tell people to look on the bright side of things when things aren’t going the way that they expected them to go. I used to be one of those people who, a long time ago, would grimace at someone telling me to think of all of the good things I have to look forward to. I would look at them with the thought in my mind of ‘do you not see my world crumbling around me right now’ and just wave off their words, completely dismissing the positive vibes they were trying to send my way. I didn’t want positive vibes I wanted an answer as to why everything was crap. This was around the time when I was almost homeless, my best friend and I had had a falling out and I felt like I had no one who understood my pain.

But then I started working on some inner healing that was so long overdo. I started working on my spiritual journey and got back into going to church. I got back into not just saying that I believe God would never give me more than I can handle, but actually knowing down in my soul that those words were true. I started really listening to the things that God was telling me, the direction he wants me to go in, and I started really trusting that regardless of whatever happens, good or bad, God has got me and He will never leave me. I started learning how to love and trust myself and my own instincts (which were really whispers from God of what I already knew I should be doing and just didn’t trust it enough) again.

Then I became one of those people that I once used to grimace at. I started being able to find the positive aspects of everything. Even the most horrible things that happened I would strive to find the one positive aspect in it. There really is power in positive thinking. What’s even more amazing is that there is peace in thinking positive as well. Now I just feel so much peace inside and it doesn’t mean that everything is going well, it just means that I trust that it will all work out somehow in the way that it’s supposed to. I’m not saying I don’t still have some days where that depression starts to try and sneak in and rest within my spirit but I think I do a far better job now of keeping it at bay.

I saw a woman on the news this morning that was talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and talking about how she has pretty much lost everything. The roof in her family’s home had holes in three places, there was mold now in her home so she had no choice but to throw everything that had been soaked through out, and they still have no power so no AC in a hundred plus degree heat. And she was smiling. She said that what she was concerned about now was feeding the neighbors around her. She said she may not be able to provide anyone with heat but she can make sure that they are fed. What a remarkable outlook on such a tragic situation. Her thing was, at least she was still here and she had to look at the positive things because what other choice was there.

Could we dwell on everything that goes wrong and focus on all of the bad crap that happens to us or others around us? Sure we could. But does that actually help change any of those things? Does it make you feel any better? So why not choose the positive things that are still present around you to focus on? Even if you can only find one positive thing in that crappy moment that you are in, rather than zero in on what is wrong, chose that one good thing instead. I promise you that you will feel better if you just keep your mind leaning towards the positive. As long as you are still here, things can always turn around.

Until next time… #BePositive #BeMindful #BeBlessed

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310