Tag: making changes

Posted in better life, empowerment, finding balance, inspirational

10 Ways to Have More Joy in Your Life

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin
Photo from Pixabay

Happiness is a feeling of comfort and contentment. It’s a feeling of rightness and peace. It’s a beautiful thing. But joy… joy is a feeling of excitement and thrill. It’s a combined feeling of freedom, confidence, and absolute pleasure. There is no emotion (that I have yet to experience) bigger than joy. It’s happiness with a kick, and it’s freaking awesome.

I have been working hard to get to a place where happiness, peace, and joy are constant companions of mine. I’m still working on the constant part, but I would have to say these emotions are more with me than not. So for my benefit, and others, I am setting down here some of the key steps I have found to having more joy in my life.

1. Being More Grateful

The number one best way to bring any sort of positivity, happiness, peace, and joy into life is to be more grateful. That is how I started this journey towards more joy years ago, and my gratitude has only grown since. As it did, so did the best parts of my life. I have learned first hand that the more grateful I am, the more I will have to be grateful about. It really is that simple.

2. Being Aware of Your Mood

We cannot change our mood without first being aware of what our mood is in any given situation. So I have taken care to observe how I feel. I don’t judge myself for feeling upset or anger. I just notice what sets me off. What are my triggers, and how can I find ways to move past them or release them? I also pay attention to what makes me feel good. There’s a lot of power in just observing and being aware. A situation can’t change unless we are first aware of it.

3. Being Aware of What You Give Your Attention To

After becoming more aware of my mood, I then began to notice more specifics about what I was giving my attention to. I started to see distinct situations, people, and even thoughts that were dragging me down. It took time to identify everything, but the more attention I paid to my mood, the more aware I became of where my attention was going, and I started to cut back or completely cut out anything and everything that could be a potential joy stealer.

Continue reading “10 Ways to Have More Joy in Your Life” →
Posted in blog, inspiration, inspirational, writing

A Blog on Writing and Personal Empowerment

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

This blog has gone through many transformations, but I feel the most recent one has been the most significant. I have spent a lot of time redesigning, revamping, and reconsidering how I want this blog to go in recent months. It took a while for me to fit the pieces together, but I am finally starting to see a picture form.

Up until a few weeks ago this blog has been me just throwing things out there that have come to me in my journey of life. For a great while it was solely dedicated to writing and writing posts. Then August of last year, I started the Speak Your Truth series because I decided I had more to say other than just writing. I think all of my actions on this blog have been leading me up to this.

It’s a coming out party for me. As I have decided I want to say more and do more. I have sat on the sidelines long enough. I want to get out there and do something. You see, just because I had a blog didn’t mean I actually did anything significant with it. It was simply a place to post ideas. But I want to start going beyond that and start engaging people. I want to be a place of not just ideas, but a place of inspiration and collaboration.

What does that mean exactly? I still don’t have all the pieces. I’m moving forward one step at a time. I want to add more online classes to offer what knowledge I have to those seeking it. I want to begin a weekly newsletter to help connect and motivate people. I want to help promote other authors and their work. I want to help inspire people to rise higher and claim their personal power.

So with all that in mind, I have changed the message behind this blog to more clearly state what it is I’m doing here. This is a blog on writing, but also a blog supporting and inspiring personal empowerment.

Writing fiction isn’t enough for me. I want to do more, be more, and give back more. I am excited in this new journey, and I hope all of you will enjoy it as I offer these new ideas and encouragement. I will close with one of my favorite quotes of all times.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ––Mahatma Gandhi

Posted in inspiration, inspirational

Speak Your Truth: Choosing to Change

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

Here’s another video blog post. I have to admit doing videos helps with time. It’s much faster to do a video than writing and editing a blog post. lol… This particular topic only hit me yesterday, and it woke me up at 4 this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so that tells me this is something I need to post to get it out of my head. And maybe it will help to inspire change in others as well. Change is hard, but it’s worth the effort. That’s become a solid truth I live by every single day now. Hope you all enjoy!

Posted in inspiration, inspirational, motivation, writing

Speak Your Truth: Letting Go

Posted on by Cynthia D. Griffin

How do you say goodbye to a place you love? You know you can’t stay because leaving is the only way to make significant and positive change that is badly needed in every part of your life. How do you let go of all that you are leaving behind?

At the beginning of this year, my husband and I decided that our lives were not going in the direction we wanted. We were stuck. Stuck in our situation, and in our minds. We couldn’t move forward no matter what we tried. So after long soul-searching talks with one another, we decided our lives needed to go through a massive change if we ever wanted to have the kind of lives we really wanted. But we knew even then it would take massive work from both of us to make this a reality. We also had no idea how long it would take, which made for another daunting uncertainty.

One of the major changes we decided to make was to move, and not just a small move. An almost 1,000 mile move from one end of the country to the other. This also meant making a lot of other changes too. A lot of those changes had to happen inside of us. What was the point of making such a drastic relocation if all our problems followed us there?

Both my husband and I dedicated a lot of time to healing ourselves as well as our relationship. In fact, we became much stronger as a team after he relocated to Florida at the end of March. We had to communicate much more and rely on each other almost everyday to make sure everything didn’t fall apart.

It took major effort from both of us as we inched along to solve each problem that came our way… him getting and starting a new job, somewhere for him to stay while we looked for permanent housing for our family, deciding to buy or rent, then once we decided to buy we had to go through the whole house buying process, and then trying to get our son to be okay with letting go of the only home he ever knew to accept the new one.

Continue reading “Speak Your Truth: Letting Go” →