Creating a Positive Mindset: Healthy Thinking, Happy Life Provides Tools and Guidance for Better Living

 

Healthy Thinking, Happy Life: Master Your Mindset and Get $#it Done!
Created by Denise E. Stegall (with 14 co-authors)
Kindle ASIN:  B0BV42LD6D
(Also available in print)
Living Healthy List, 2023
Ebook, 194 ppg.
Buy link

I really didn’t know what to expect before I started reading Healthy Thinking, Happy Life: Master Your Mindset and Get $#it Done! My first thought was, This is just another self-help book. But as I started reading this book, I realized I was wrong!

This book is NOT your typical self-help book! It’s a one-of-a-kind collection of stories and insights from some of today’s most successful movers and shakers who have taken life by the horns and went after their goals. The chapters in this book inspired me in so many ways and it provided so much insightful and helpful ideas that really motivated me to shed old ways to embrace the new.

I liked this quote a lot, in the chapter written by Kimberly Ann Price: “Becoming wholly you means hard days with no answers and sleepless nights of not understanding. It’s a constant tension that you will wrestle back and forth with throughout your whole existence. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes months, and sometimes no prescribed amount of time. As long as you exist, so will this tension, so will these gifts, and so will what you are here to give the world. And trust me, the world needs what you’ve got.” It is so true!! There may be a lot of work involved in becoming wholly ourselves, but it is so worth it to do the work. To put in the time and effort to allow the REAL you to surface. It may also require sacrifice, but the sacrifice is not entirely a bad thing if it requires shedding unhealthy habits or letting go of the things that keep us down. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to put in the work. They don’t want to put in the time or effort. They are too comfortable in their comfort zones and maybe even too scared to leave it. Yes, there is some fear in not knowing what you’re getting into when working on improving yourself and your life, but it’s easier to embrace that change than it is to live with regret or never knowing who you truly could be.

The chapter on limiting beliefs by Susanne Taylor King was very inspiring. I loved this quote: “YOU are the creator of your dream life, and only YOU can make the changes necessary to find joy.” Now, if I had read that quote 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. I thought I was a prisoner to my alcohol addiction, that I was too ugly to be accepted in society and that I didn’t have it in me to bring about the changes that I wanted. It took getting sober and completely rebuilding myself to realize that I was wrong! You CAN create the life you want! It may take a long time, but it IS doable. Limiting beliefs can, unfortunately, hold us back. That’s why it’s so important to tear them down and create newer, positive beliefs, such as that anything is possible and that there are no limits. The only limits we have are those that exist in our minds. As she writes, “Limiting beliefs are dangerous to you fulfilling your purpose because they stop you from taking action toward who you know you’re meant to be.”

I also really enjoyed reading the chapter written by Matthew Lucchetti. What an inspirational story! I am so glad he took the leap to share his story, but making a leap of faith is not new for this guy. He made a leap of faith when his health got so bad, he ended up looking Death in the eye. He had a choice: Either allow his poor eating and lifestyle habits to end his life, or fight to live by making some major changes. Once he made the decision to live, it’s like he was put on a journey with the universe guiding him along the way. I loved reading his story of transformation and how he inspired others to do the same.

This book offers a lot of takeaways after some of the chapters, but the biggest takeaway of all is this: Mindset is everything. Having a positive mindset can help us to realize that we are not a prisoner to our circumstances and we have the power to create the kind of change we want. This is echoed in the book’s conclusion, written by author Denise E. Stegall, where she writes, “While mastering your mindset, you realize that you have more choices in your life than you might have believed. Too often, we think that we are stuck in our circumstances, yet we have the power to choose to look at them from a different perspective.”

She also notes that mastering our mindset can take time and that it’s not always perfect. However, if you commit yourself to having and maintaining a positive mindset, it can work wonders for you and your life.

By having a healthy and positive mindset, you can do anything, be anything and change anything. Even if other people have given up on you, don’t ever give up on yourself! With insight and guidance from some of today’s thought leaders and life coaches, Healthy Thinking, Happy Life can help you get on track with your life and create the kind of change you want for better living.

Five stars

 

 

Disclaimer: I downloaded this book onto my Kindle reading app. I was not paid or coerced in any way to review this book. My decision of whether or not to review a book for this blog is strictly personal and without any pressure from the book's author.

Twelve Years a Deafie: Sound is One Woman’s Experience of Losing, then Regaining, Her Hearing

 

Sound: A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found

By Bella Bathurst

Profile Books, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-77164-382-5

Buy link

 

 

Before I get into this review, let me note that I read this book on the Libby app. Page numbers on the app do not reflect page numbers in print editions so I did not include the digital page numbers for quotes.

 

Sound is a memoir written by a woman living in the UK who lost her hearing for 12 years. When someone loses their hearing, they pretty much think it’s a permanent loss. However, in Bella’s case, this did not happen. She did get her hearing back, after twelve years of severe hearing loss. I chose to read this book out of curiosity. I wanted to know her story, her experience being deaf, and just how she got her hearing back. In reading the whole book, I was not disappointed. However, there are some parts of the book which I felt the need to comment on, both as a person who is deaf and as a reader.

 

The book begins with an adventure story: She accompanied friends to go sailing. This particular incident takes place after she has lost her hearing and she is wearing hearing aids. As someone who has once A: Been on a boat and B: Used to wear hearing aids, I approached the reading of this particular chapter with a bit of concern. If you’re going to go sailing, chances are pretty good you may get hit by a random wave of water or water may splash over the side of the boat and right onto any person in its path. Hearing aids and water DO NOT go together, at all. If you get your hearing aid wet, it can cause damage. Still, I read this particular chapter with interest to see what happened. Naturally, disaster struck, but oh what a story it was!

 

Sadly, though, this experience was a grim reminder to the author of just how her hearing loss affected the status quo of her life. She was independent, carefree and ready to take on any challenge. She looked fear in the eye and winked back. But losing her hearing proved to derail all of her gust for life and adventure.

 

The book shares how she adapts to this unexpected turn of events in her life. One minute, she is a 28-year-old enjoying a ski trip with friends. The next, she experiences difficulty hearing. She then gets the sad news that she is going deaf.

 

Before total deafness sets in, she shares how she tried to enjoy as much of life as possible, though as her hearing loss set in, so, too, did her depression. She finds relief in studying the lives of other people who have gone deaf (notably Beethoven) as well as studying gradual hearing loss in general. Her research on Beethoven is intriguing. Now I want to read about him.

 

Apparently, the term for her condition is "pseudohypacusis.” I never knew there was a term for nonorganic hearing loss! It was good to learn this term and, at first, I thought this applied to my own situation. However, since I lost my hearing due to meningitis, mine is called “sensorineural deafness.” This kind of deafness is, I feel, important to include when talking about different ways a person can become deaf. Her research prompts her to discuss how people lost their hearing in an unnatural way – such as with work-related deafness (military, aviation, construction, rock music), but there is no mention of losing hearing from an illness, as in my case. This was very disappointing.

 

She seems to perceive a majority of Deaf individuals as leading lives of seclusion because of their deafness. In the past, this was true, because deaf people were NOT the majority, deafness was seen as a sign of mental deterioration or impairment, and we did not have many accommodations for the deaf then as we do now (interpreters, for example). Plus, not many people were sensitive to the communication needs of the deaf. Today, it is always a joy to come across people who know some sign language or who can, at the very minimum, use fingerspelling to spell out words. In the past, however, coming across such a person while out and about was rare.

 

Of the Deaf individuals she communicates with in this book, one of them shares with her his own experience in going to bars with his friends, who are also deaf. He shared how their use of sign language was seen as an act of aggression and many pub owners called police on them, thinking these guys were going to cause problems. I recall one story I read some time ago in which a Deaf man was communicating with another person in sign language and he was confronted by police because the police thought this guy was flashing gang signs.

 

There are many passages in this book which really made me think. There were also many passages which I could relate to. Here is one of them: "If you're deaf, you're focused outwards, registering visually all the information which might otherwise come to you aurally – announcements, warnings, communication from those you're with. Those who can hear are accustomed to using their ears as eyes in the back of their heads, so if they're walking through an airport and a luggage cart comes beeping up behind them then they move out of the way without needing to turn around to verify the cart's existence. Hearing has given them a three-dimensional comprehending. But those who are deaf can only be aware of that cart because they've seen it. One sense must do the work of two." The Deaf hear with their eyes since we cannot hear with our ears. For those individuals who are not deaf and blind, myself among them, we rely on our eyes to help us be aware of our surroundings. I once spilled a bottle of pills on my way through a hallway. Despite the wooden floor I walked on, I did not know I spilled these pills until I looked down at an empty pill bottle and turned around to see a nice little trail of pills along the hallway. We can’t be aware of a car coming up behind us because we can’t hear or feel it, but if we see it, we know that a car is coming up behind us and we need to get out of the way.

 

In addition to using our eyes to help us “hear” things around us, we also rely on vibrations. If a heavy object drops on a wooden floor, we feel that something fell on the floor. Whenever I get home from an outing and I’m unlocking the front door, I know that the dog is barking at the door because I can feel the sound vibrations. I can feel that the washing machine is running just by placing my hand on it and that music is playing just from feeling the sound vibrations.

 

Her reflections on sounds and conversations she could easily hear pre-deafness made me think about my own experiences. I still remember things that were said by various people in my past before I lost my hearing at age 13. As a kid, I would listen to music as I fell asleep, and I still remember the song “I Can’t Stop Loving You” that Michael Jackson sang as I drifted off to sleep.

 

This book captures Bathurst’s experience of living with deafness for 12 years. She has a surgery called a stapedectomy that eventually helps her brain to just "right itself." As she writes, "Science had given me back my hearing." And the best part is that it's not "artificial hearing" like one gets via a hearing aid, but REAL hearing. The kind that is natural. It's amazing and wonderful that she got that sense of natural hearing back.

 

I really enjoyed reading this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about what it’s like to cope with being late-deafened and different takes on the experience of living with deafness.

When the Past Comes to Life: The Haunting of Henderson Close is a Spooky Ghost Story of Thrills and Chills

 

The Haunting of Henderson Close

By Catherine Cavendish

Paperback ISBN-10:1787581012 and

ISBN-13:   978-1787581012

Flame Tree Press, 2019

Ebook: 221 ppg.

Buy link 

 

 

After her divorce, Hannah moves to Edinburgh with hopes of starting over. So naturally, she is thrilled to get a job that complements her background in theater, at Henderson Close, where employees re-enact historical characters from a certain time period. But once the paranormal activity at Henderson Close becomes stronger than ever, Hannah becomes a budding paranormal investigator in order to get to the root of the problem. Things take an interesting turn after she learns she has a connection to the malevolent spirit haunting and terrorizing her and her coworkers, and Hannah must keep her wits about her as she struggles to stop the evil that is trying to kill her.

 

One thing I couldn’t get over as I read this story was how there are no coincidences. It’s almost like Hannah was meant to get that particular job and meant to meet those particular people at that particular time in her life. It’s funny how life is like that sometimes. And even though, on one level, some people hold a grudge against Hannah because everything got worse after she came along, it’s like it was meant to be.

 

The other issue is how an innocent haunting was allowed to continue for so long. While the business made money profiting off of its reputation for being haunted, one should keep in mind that keeping ghosts around since they’re not really hurting anyone isn’t entirely a good idea. The business owner is a skeptic and is determined not to have a paranormal reputation attached to her business, yet she turns a blind eye over the fact that the very reputation is what attracts most of her customers touring the historical location. The boss grills her employees anytime they claim to see or hear something, and even encourages them to tell a visitor who claims to see something that it was a “trick of the light” or that it must have been their imagination, but even they have experienced things. This works in Hannah’s favor, because two of them team up with her to try to help her solve the haunting.

 

I like how the story from the past that started it all is also told in this novel. And it’s told very well. The author clearly did her research to get the characters and setting right. The historical background is not until later in the story and it was not disruptive to my reading of the story.

 

The two stories blend together well and it made the novel as a whole all the more interesting to read.

 

Cavendish excels at establishing a scary mood in her horror stories, and she shows this well in this book. She also portrayed all of her characters very realistically as well as descriptively.

 

My one dislike of this story was when a team of paranormal investigators use an Ouija board for their seance. And while drunk, no less! These are both signs of the amateur and it’s definitely not professional. Any paranormal investigator worth their salt will tell you that you should NEVER show up at an investigation with intoxicants in your body. This can impair judgment and weaken a person against the more malevolent spirits who would take advantage of that weakness.

 

Aside from that, though, I really enjoyed reading this story! It was a great ghost story! Hard to put down and it definitely gave me chills.

 

Five stars.

 

FULL DISCLOSURE: I downloaded this book onto my Kindle reading app. I was not paid or coerced in any way to review this book. My decision of whether or not to review a book for this blog is strictly personal and without any pressure from the book's author.

A Tale of Love, Adventure and Discovery: Hidden Magic has Many Hidden Surprises. Magic and Thrills for Readers of Fantasy Novels

 

Hidden Magic, The Eldritch of Hallows, Book One

by Elana McDougall

Independently Published, 2020

ISBN-13: 979-8645296032

761 ppg.

Buy link

 

 

 

I don’t normally read erotic fantasy, and normally, when I come across the first such scene in a book, I stop reading. One exception I made was when a friend gave a book to me; I skipped over the naughty scenes.

 

Another exception is when the story, not the graphic sex, is what pulls me into a book. That’s exactly what happened when I started reading Hidden Magic by Elana McDougall. I was hooked on the first page. When the naughty scenes came up, I skipped over them, and kept reading!

 

What was it exactly that had me hooked on this story? Oh, so many things!

 

Book One in The Eldritch of Hallows series, Hidden Magic is a fantasy story teeming with suspense, excitement, laughter, magic, love and friendship. The main character, Sasha Petrova, was on the run. Who was she running from? Why was she trying to stay hidden? She was running from some guy named Edward — but why? I later found out and this was a huge part of the story. In fact, it brings an issue into focus and I appreciated how the author used this as an important aspect of the story.

 

The character Edward is the villain in the story, and he is written so well. When he was talking about how he wanted to “discipline” Sasha, I laughed and wondered if this was the first time he had a red-headed fiancée.

 

It should be noted that the town Sasha ends up in, Hallows, is not your ordinary out-of-the-way village. It’s actually populated by supernatural beings: Mages, trolls, and shapeshifters. In fact, it’s more of a sanctuary for the outcasts who have magical abilities. This is one of the things I loved about the story! A whole town where it’s normal to use magic and to have special powers. If only our real world society was this way!

 

Another thing I liked about this story is that the characters are portrayed so realistically. The characters really come to life in this story. I liked the character, Sebastian, and I was thrilled to learn that we get to learn more about Sebastian in Book Two! (And of course, I quickly grabbed a copy of it!)

 

What I liked best of all is how some people in Hallows -- Aunt Amelia, Gwen and even Jake -- accepted Sasha into Hallows like she was one of their own. I adored Aunt Amelia, who is a blind fae, and her support animal, Honey. The scene where Honey is super-concerned about Aunt Amelia after she experiences a fall was just so heartwarming. But, yes, Sasha is definitely accepted by MOST of the people in Hallows, and this helps her to establish a bond with them. Even during a time she is afraid and thinks about running again, her heart breaks over the idea of leaving her new friends behind. They are friends who are like family to her, and for Sasha, who was orphaned at a young age and raised in foster homes, this family bond is at one point important to her but at another point, questionable, having gone from one foster home to another. This, too, is a major issue in the story, and the family bond thing becomes a major part of what happens at the end of the story.

 

The climax of the story was amazing and it was written so very well! I was on the edge of my seat and even though I kept being interrupted while I read it, I kept going back to finish reading it. Wow! What a scene!!

 

The ending of the story was great, too. It brought happy tears to my eyes.

 

The whole story just came full circle. There were no unanswered questions and everything was covered in great detail. It was a very satisfying read — even without the sex.

 

Hidden Magic would appeal to fans of magical realism. It’s also a novel I would recommend to anyone who likes to read stories of mages and shapeshifters. It was an amazing story that I really enjoyed reading.

 

Five stars