Pause & Refresh by @JoanReeves #SmartGirlsReadRomance

Gee, my post must have been written in invisible ink today. It's not here.

I did a little sleuthing and found I had the content in a draft on another blogspot blog. Dumb? Intensely.

I've done that before, but I've usually caught the mistake beforehand. Oh, well. Here's what I was going to say.

Pause and Refresh

Wouldn't you like a Refresh button on your life? You know, like the little icon you hit to refresh a web page to update and show new information or to reflect changes you made.

When we feel stuck or stagnant, we could hit the Refresh button and surge forward. When your energy is low, just hit Refresh.

Unfortunately, we don't have that. So we have to work at refreshing. As you see by my lapse in getting this post live, I definitely need to pause and refresh.

7 Strategies to Refresh Yourself

1. Use the Just Do It principle. Regardless of your mood, take action -- one small step in the direction of where you want to go.

You can't wait to be in a good mood in order to write a book, paint the living room, or clean out the garage. Chances are you have a job in the outside world. You go to that job whether you're happy or sad. Often you go whether you're healthy or sick.

Goal achievement must command the same dedication. If your garden needs weeding, then take an action to achieve that no matter how small the action. Do it even if you're depressed. If you want to write a book, then write every day even if it's only 100 words. Set a quota and meet it even if you're sick, depressed, homesick, or ecstatically happy.

2. Grow an attitude of belief in yourself.

If you find yourself constantly thinking negative, defeating thoughts then do some inner exploration to figure out why you like to beat yourself up. Lack of confidence in one's own abilities is a killer. Face your fears in order to get beyond them. Write out a script that changes your self-talk from sabotaging to empowering.

3. Hang around with people who are charged up. Charged up with creativity, excitement, and optimism for life itself, their attitude will rub off on you even though what they're excited about may not be what excites you. Let their general exuberance for life rub off on you.

4. Stay away from people who are black holes of negativity. These people are only too happy and quick to tell you why you can't get what you want. These black holes of the universe will suck the life, ambition, and motivation right out of you.

5. Be very specific about what you want. You can have anything you want, but you can't have everything so figure out what it is you really want. Is it to be a mystery novelist, a crime writer, a botanist, a dancer, or what? You have to know what you want in order to go after it.

6. Make a list of strategies to help you through the challenging times. Write down what you're going to do when you're sick and need to work toward your goal. What will you do when you're depressed and need to take action to achieve your goal? What will you do when you're overworked and underpaid, and you can't seem to get to first base to achieve your goal?

7. Adopt the U.S. Marine Corps motto: "Improvise, overcome, adapt." With every obstacle that crops up or every setback, resolve to use the situation to your best benefit. Figure out how you can improvise, overcome, adapt.

Refresh using these strategies or some of your own. If you've got a good strategy for boosting your motivation or creativity, leave a comment and tell us about it. I'm certainly open to some new strategies to cope with all the demands!

Joan Reeves lives her well-earned Happily Ever After with her Hero, her husband, in a book-cluttered home in Texas.

Visit her Amazon Author Page for a list of her books.

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