Tag: Confidence

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Don’t Lose Sight of Hope

April 13, 2020 jcladyluv

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 4:6-7

We just celebrated Resurrection Sunday (Easter) and my Pastor (via live stream of course) talked a lot about having Hope in Jesus and allowing that Hope to shape your thinking and your attitude and how you go about things. He talked about having confidence in the outcome of God’s will, whatever that outcome may be. As he was preaching this I actually realized that I had finally gained that sense of Hope and that inner peace that I’ve always wanted. It is interesting when you start to notice changes within yourself taking place (usually you are the last one to actually notice them) because even when you are working on yourself and your personal growth for that very purpose, it often feels like you’re the same person you always were.

I found it odd that when the current world crisis that we are in hit that I wasn’t as freaked out about it as a lot of people around me were. It’s what I would’ve been doing years ago. I would have been overly paranoid, overly worried, and my OCD would have went off the charts. But I’m not doing any of those things, at least not when it comes to this pandemic. I feel an overwhelming sense of peace and calm and I think that is attributed to this journey of spiritual growth that I have been on.

I knew at the beginning of that journey that I wanted to get to a place where my anxiety and depression didn’t have such an overwhelming hold on me and to where, even if I felt a little bit of worry over a particular situation (because I’m still human) and even when I’m staying cautious about certain crisis I can still feel gratitude and still trust that ultimately God is going to do everything that he said he would and that includes all of the promises that he made over my life. God said in Jeremiah 29:11 that his plans for me and my life are to prosper me and not to harm me and to give me hope and a future, and not just any future, but an abundant one. If I believe that and if I trust that then there is nothing to worry about or to panic over.

I never used to get it when people told me that even when all hell was breaking loose in their world they felt at peace and they were as happy as they could be because they knew God had them. I didn’t get it before but I get it now because that’s how I feel. Things still aren’t great for me right now, financially or career wise, but I have so much to be grateful for and the fact remains that I still have each day that HE wakes me up to get it right and to get things on track. I have confidence in the outcome, whatever that outcome may be because God’s will is always going to be done no matter what. So let’s not lose Hope in a time when it is very easy for us to lose sight of how much God loves us. Until next time… #BeHopeful #BeConfident #BeinFaith

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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The Creative Circle We Keep

February 1, 2019 jcladyluv

Creative circle post

I had a wonderful, much needed conversation last night with one of my fellow creative friends and it gave me the extra boost that I was in need of. When you’re a creative it’s not always easy to find other creative people that will get you and your (sometimes out there) ideas the way that you do. I don’t need a lot of people around me, it goes against my solitary, anti-social (more like socially anxious) nature, but what I do need every once in a while is someone to throw ideas around with, preferably someone who isn’t just going to tell me something is a good idea because they can feel the sheer excitement that I have for it. I need someone honest, who’s going to tell me if it’s any good or even if it’s just so out there that it might actually work because chances are that I would otherwise second-guess myself right out of it.

Last night I got some clarity on a few things I was thinking about and she even gave me some perspective on some ideas that I wasn’t even viewing as broadly as I should have been. She’s a really good person, who understands my neuroses (because we’ve known each other for over a decade) and how sometimes the overload of ideas can drive you up a wall because she’s a creative too and she takes risks every day within her writing career. Today, carrying the words of our conversation in my mind, I was definitely more focused and I was a little more confident in taking a few risks I had been holding back on before. I felt inspired and I felt ready to inspire others!

I think that all creative people, especially writers, should make sure they have someone in their life, in their circle that they can help give them some kind of clarity on the ideas they are thinking of. If you’re anything like me, you need someone to keep you from second guessing everything wondering if this or that is going to work because inevitably there’s always going to be someone that isn’t going to like what you do and you can’t let the thoughts of those few that won’t like it and won’t get it detract from the hundreds, or thousands, maybe even millions of people who you could help or motivate or encourage with what you desire to put out into the world. If you already have that circle in place, treasure it and nurture it because it is precious and it is not always easy to come by.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Clarity is Key

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018 jcladyluv

Clarity is Key

Let’s talk about clarity! Sometimes when you’re going after your goals things can get a little confusing and muddled. When you shoot for the moon and fall short it could start to make you doubt yourself and question your moves. However, when you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities start to match your determination you become more empowered.

I think the difference between whether you remain in a state of failure or you become successful is in your clarity about your journey. Obviously no one knows what the end of the road is going to look like and you can’t control that. You do have control over making confident steps on the path to your destination. Hesitation in your movements can trip you up completely but always keep in mind that a trip is not a fall and if you get back up and keep it moving and remain clear then you will eventually get to where you are going.

Clarity is power. Becoming clear about what you want and what your purpose is can provide you with the knowledge of what strategies and steps need to be taken next to make progress in your goals. The thing is that if things are not going the way that you want them to at this point, you are going to need to make some changes in the way you’re doing things and you are going to need to get very clear about your goals and have even more clarity when it comes to your purpose. When you become clear about where your focus lies things will start falling into place exactly as they should be!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Staring in the Rearview Mirror Won’t Move You Forward

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 jcladyluv

Rearview Mirror 5

So let’s talk about living in the past! Most people would say that your past is what has inevitably shaped you into who you are. A lot of our defining moments have happened already, long ago, before we ever had a chance to realize that we were being shaped by them. So if you had an ideal childhood with virtually no turmoil whatsoever (which for most people is highly unlikely) then you had one hell of a smooth transition into adulthood and you are lucky. However, if you are like the vast majority of the world then you have had a bumpy road on this journey that we call life and your past is most certainly providing you with so much grit and tough skin.

The past is the past and should always remain there but sometimes it seems easier said than done to leave your past hurts behind too. I struggled with a lot of self-esteem and confidence issues that stemmed from my childhood and while I have made great strides to move past all of it there are still days that literally come out of nowhere, that remind me I’m not completely past it yet. Those are the days where feelings of self-doubt linger and grab hold of me and I start to replay the words my mother would say about me never becoming anything, about me not being smart enough, about me not being good enough replaying in my head. I start to feel the way I felt then and it takes me a minute to get out of that head space.

The past has affected me and had such a hold over my life for much longer than it ever should have and I do believe that it is a major reason why I have not been quite as successful as I should be at this point in my life. But I have resolved that I will no longer be crippled by the living in the past syndrome that had plagued me for so much of my adulthood. I have to consistently remind myself that the past is just that and that what I have built myself up to become is what my focus should be from this point on.

We all have a past that has impacted us but we don’t have to let it dictate how our future unfolds. We can use our past as a tool, a lesson, to learn from and to be motivated by. Our past doesn’t have to hold us back from the success that we are destined for. You couldn’t control your childhood, and your past mistakes have already been made and can’t be changed, but you don’t have to continue to allow your past to control your future. So leave the past where it belongs, in the rearview mirror, behind you!

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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Nurturing My Creativity By Remembering To Nurture Myself

January 29, 2015 jcladyluv

Since I have been working on getting my health back on track and started working out again I have started to feel the change, not just physically, but also emotionally. This emotional and mental change is allowing me to, in a sense, regain the energy and motivation that I was beginning to lose and that in turn is allowing me to, once again, feel more creative and inspired.

It’s amazing what taking care of yourself and your body can do for your creative endeavors. I’m not really good at knowing how to take good care of myself and I don’t normally put myself first, well definitely not before my daughter, so it’s hard for me to get used to. Having said that, I really want to maintain this nurturing of my craft and my creativity and I understand that in order to do that I need to continue to nurture myself.

I sometimes have a really hard time to remember to take care of myself. I will literally get to the end of a month in which I planned to do one special that I wanted to do just for me and me only and realize that I forgot to do that one thing for me. I want to break this habit, and not just because it’s good for my overall growth and progress, but just because I deserve it.

I have been progressively more creative lately and motivated and driven to become just as creative as I once was before getting off track and dealing with several back to back episodes of depression and I want it to stay this way. I don’t want to lose this gift that God has given me simply because I didn’t nurture it. I even made myself a vision board this year to help keep me focused and to have a steady reminder of what taking care of myself can enable me to do for my career. So don’t forget to take care of yourself because it allows you to be in a better position to take care of everything else.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

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The Past Is Always Close By, Just Don’t Live There

June 19, 2014 jcladyluv

It is true that you cannot live in the past and that you have to learn to put past regrets or hurts aside and move forward for your own sake if no one else’s. It is also true that there are some things that happen in one’s childhood that take its toll on an individual that they sometimes don’t recover from, or at least not quickly. What I can’t stand is when people try and tell you how long it is supposed to take you to get over those moments in the past that hurt you or those things you wish you had never done.

I’ve talked about my childhood many times here and in a way it’s often times therapeutic for me to get some things out that I don’t feel like I can talk to anyone about, reason being that there are some with the stance of get over it already. Let me just say that my level of confidence in myself, or lack thereof, is a result of having a mother who not only physically and verbally abused me, but emotionally abused me too. When your mother tells you that you are never going to be anything at some point you actually start to believe it.

When you are a child is hard to dismiss anyone’s criticism of you but when it is the criticism of one or both of your parents then it is damn near impossible to dismiss it. As a child you look to your parents for confirmation, for guidance, and for reassurance. You need them to tell you that you are important, not to just them but to this world that you are in and that if you want to change the world then you have that power to do so. You need them to build your self-esteem up so that you can go out and conquer whatever it is in this world that you want to. When you are not given that it does something to you.

It’s one thing if you can get that guidance from other strong figures in your family but when it just isn’t there it does some damage to what should be your self-esteem. I personally had to build my own self-esteem up and honestly I’m still not completely where I should be yet in my level of self-esteem and confidence. But when people say to me you have to let what your mother did, or rather didn’t do for you go it infuriates me. It’s not that I don’t get that, it’s the fact that they don’t realize that it’s not going to happen with the snap of my fingers.

My childhood pain, the lack of love from my childhood, it’s still there right on my shoulder to smack me in the back of my head every time I start to actually move past it. It’s in that doubt that I feel whenever there’s something that I know I should go for but convince myself that I’m not good enough to go for it. People don’t realize that I didn’t really start to love myself until I was already an adult, with a child of my own, and that I had to build that up by myself.

Yes the past is something that you should not live in and you should most certainly forgive those in your past who have hurt you and done damage that was almost unable to be repaired. However, we all know that your past is a part of you, whether good or bad, it is what molds you and shapes you into being the person you are now, so our past is never truly behind us. It is there to remind us of where we came from, how much we have come through to get where we are now, and more importantly, particularly if it is a painful past, it is there to show us how strong we actually are. We are not who we were in the past, but we most certainly wouldn’t be who we are now without that same past.

Jimmetta Carpenter

My Write 2 Be is…

CEO/Writer/Editor

Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine

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Riding Around On a Near Empty Tank

August 10, 2012 jcladyluv

I was reading an article on the Freelance Writer’s Den website that is supposed to help struggling freelance writers figure out how to better market themselves and their business. There are a total of 21 marketing tips and I have decided to take one at a time and kind of marinate on them and really take them in and process them. The first one is of course that you have to believe in your product, in this case, me.

It commented on the obvious fears that freelance writers, or writers in general, experience as they try to build their business and get them off the ground good, especially the one’s that are struggling to even get the wheels of the plane up. It gave a couple of suggestions about how to fill up your positive-feelings tank and I thought that was a good and interesting way to look at it.

If my confidence this week were a gas tank I would be really close to empty right now and I have to work on filling that tank up and keeping it damn near full all the time (if not always full). The list that the article gave on how to re-build your confidence and positive feelings about yourself included many things but the things that stuck out to me were to avoid negative and toxic people and surround yourself with people who think you are great, flipping through your portfolio of work to remind yourself how good you are, and to list your strengths as a writer.

Now I am working on making sure I surround myself with positive energy and people that exude that, and I have occasionally flipped through my portfolio of work and was astonished at some of the things that I have produced, but one thing that I have never done is make a list of my strengths as a writer and as a person. Perhaps I will try that this weekend and perhaps that will help to fill my positive-feelings tank (or as I like to refer to it as my confidence tank) up to its highest capacity.

It’s not that I don’t believe that I am a good writer (most of the time) and that I was meant to communicate with my words. It’s that I worry way too much about whether everyone else will agree and my confidence as far as other people finding my writing great is wavering, a lot. I still haven’t worked through all of my fears but I know that I’m going to get there.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”