mantras – Atomic Slingshot Press

Mantras: An Update. Part Two.

I use the term Mantras as I don’t know what else to use. To me, they are sayings of philosophies that help keep things in perspective. They help remind me when my motivation or philosophy is flagging.

The first one in this series is:

If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.

I believe that you need to dream big to succeed. Then if you don’t complete your goal, you will find that you had accomplished so much. I think the saying is that if you aim for the moon because if you miss, you will find yourself amongst the stars.

And that is what I am going to do. I am dreaming big. It scares me. I will pull my socks up and not let the years roll by and then wish to myself that I had done so.

The way to do that is to make yourself better one day at a time. Read a book, cause the next day you will be that much smarter. Work out, cause you will be stronger. For me, it is writing my stories. Cause one day, the story will be finished, published. It is a long process, but it all has to start at one point.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

This can be broken up into three parts. The first means that just because you find success in one task, doesn’t mean you can rest for the second task. Life is an endurance game after all, and it is keeping up the pressure from one day to the next; one task to the next that keeps success final.

The second. Failure is not fatal. When a person fails at something; the world has ended. This comes crashing down, the world burns.

Except that it hasn’t. Failing at one task, within reason, doesn’t end a career. It doesn’t mean that an author or creative should burn all of their work cause they messed up on one piece. There is the next piece; learn from the mistakes and move one.

The last part of the piece is to not let the outcomes of the past affect your presence. Yes, learn from it. But afterward, forget. Don’t let the embarrassment of the failure mean you don’t try again today. And, don’t let the one successful piece go to your ego. That will make you slake off on the current work and cause the second piece to fail.

Other than death, all defeats are psychological.

People fail, and this saying deals with that. When we fail, the most harm that happens is not physically. (Assuming death is not the consequence.) We are harmed psychologically by ourselves. We are our own worst critic and many times see the bad in every situation. We think people laugh at us, cause we want to be accepted. Failure and defeat mean a lack of acceptance from our peers.

This goes in hand with the previous sayings. Don’t give up because of one failure. Keep going and try again. The greatest harm is stopping and not giving up on your dream.

I have a few more to go over, but those will have to wait for next week. Until then, if you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up to my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Or buy me a coffee. Your help and support are much appreciated.

Mantras: An Update. Part One.

(Note: Due to a misclick, this wasn’t published on Sunday. Apologies.)

Since the start of starting this blog, I have written over a hundred blog posts. I believe that this will be the hundred and first post. And throughout my writings, I have mentioned that I have adopted some personal sayings that help me keep perspective and encouragement.

There is a couple of points to go over first. These work for me, and may not work for you. If anything that I have seems to work for you, please feel free to adopt it as your own. I am NOT the creature of any saying. I found them from other people.

Sometimes life is about risking everything for a dream no one can see but you.

I honestly don’t remember where I saw this one. I found it on a piece of paper that I had written down a while ago. But this makes sense to me.

Being a creative, I do things that many people in my own family don’t understand or even try to understand. And this is fine. I don’t want or need them to understand. Me attempting to make a living writing is not open to debate. I’m going to go after my dream.

I hear this all the time. A non-creative family member not supporting a creative cause they don’t understand it. They don’t understand it, cause they can’t see the dream. And as such, they don’t support the creative in their task. Some up to the point of hindering the creative. And by hindering, I don’t mean just pure ridicule, though that happens. Hindering by not allowing them the time to do the creative things, or even selling their computer on them.

(A writing friend told me that her spouse sold their laptop to make rent once.)

I have my dream, and I have laid out a path that should get me my dream. I don’t need anyone else to see my dream but for me.

If you don’t risk failure, then you don’t deserve success.

Failing at something is terrible for people. Right? Wrong. Failing at something means that you tried. And that is the crucial part. Many people think that if they don’t try, then they can’t fail. The truth in the matter is that by not trying, you have already failed.

Like signing up to a college class and not writing the exam. You still failed the class. In life, you are already signed up to the class. To succeed in life, one MUST try to succeed and in that sense, risk failure.

I have seen many people that get paralyzed, myself included, by the fear of failure. It is this dark lurking beast that stands over you while you are doing the thing that you love to do. In my case, it stands over me while I write my books.

But the truth in the matter is once you get over the fact that you fell on your face, you can get back up and ask the fundamental question. The question that many people don’t ask. What went wrong?

Many people get emotionally attached to what they are doing and when they find out that it wasn’t as good as they thought, then they give up. They put up the pen and do something else. They give up on that creative desire cause that desire was hard, or they slipped the first try.

You have got to risk the failure and fail to get anywhere. Cause it isn’t without failure that anyone gets any better.

The only easy day was yesterday.

This is actually a saying from the US Navy Seals. The meaning is that every day, you will need to work harder than the last. But when you work hard every day and see what you’re now capable of, then yesterday seems easy.

And that is important as a creative and a writer. I have got to keep going, keep working hard at it. Each book needs to be better than the last. Each character that I create more real, each setting more natural. Each book takes a shorter amount of time, is cleaner. Fewer edits needed than the one before.

I don’t know if I am doing it. I am incapable of judging my own work. I see all the flaws in the novels, but I also see the right parts. I have to keep going, keep learning, cause the last project eas easy. Wait until you see what I have planned for next.

My Diet: Some Downsides

As you may know, I have been doing a diet for nearly a month now. I have lost 17 lbs so far. At the moment, it feels great. I have lost waist sizes, and I have more energy. My appetite is down, and I no longer feel hungry all the time.

It hasn’t always been this way.

When I first started the diet, I was eating nearly 3000 calories a day. I would eat five helpings of spaghetti at dinner, and I never ate salad. I was approaching 290 lbs.

What I did to start was to control my food intake, cause no amount of exercise is going to help me lose any weight if I don’t control my eating.

The first thing that I did was to get an app for my cell phone called “My Fitness Pal.” It is a calorie counter program. I entered my information; my height, weight, and how many pounds I wanted to lose. It then told me how many calories I was allowed to eat if I wanted to make my goal weight.

Now, I am nearly 34, so I know myself. I know that if I don’t hit this hard, I will lose motivation. I’m still working on the discipline thing. So I put down that I wanted to lose 2 lbs per week.

It gave me 1800 calories per day. That’s it. Before I decided to change my habits, I could eat that at lunch.

The following two weeks were some of the hardest days of my life. I discovered that a plate of pasta, just the noodles, was 500 calories. And I would eat three to five helpings of it.

My Discoveries

I discovered that grains are not my friend, they cost too much in calories. I also found that I can fill myself up with salad, pickles, cucumbers, cheese, and such, which would only cost me 500 calories.

My appetite has shrunk; which is a good thing. I no longer feel hungry if I don’t gorge myself. I no longer pine after the tasty delicious…

I do have my bad moments. The times that I make a mistake and eat waffles, which I discovered are 250 calories each, which I ate 5. Then I spent the latter half of the day hungry cause I really wanted to make my calories.

Hangry and not knowing what to Eat

I always thought that ‘Being Hangry’ was just a joke. That it was not a real thing. I discovered that it is a real thing. I also found that I get hangry bad. Those Snickers commercials have a grain of truth wrapped in them.

Another issue is I never know what to eat anymore. My go-to meal was always spaghetti, and I make a mean spaghetti. However, I overeat it. I can’t help it, I’m still a glutton after all. So the big issue is eating food that I love as much as spaghetti, that I can enjoy as much and not worry about consuming too many calories.

Hope

There is hope, though. Find someone to do the diet with. To help fill out the daily food journal when you know it’s not going to be good and don’t want to deal with it. Find someone to encourage yourself to keep going, past the first few weeks. Past the Hangry stage.

Cause once past that stage, it gets easier. The appetite decreases, the energy goes up. Results start coming in.

I weighed in nearly a month ago at 286.5 lbs. Today I weight 269.5 lbs. I will take those results.

Future

Now, only changing my diet is not going to work in the long run. At some point, I will plateau and stop making gains. I have been making plans for more exercise. It is getting nice out, so more time walking around is in order. I have also pulled out my old rollerblades and plan on making a fool of myself on them. I am also going to be getting a bike at some point. Something that can fit in the limited storage space I have.

But that is all cardio, don’t you plan on gaining muscle? I have heard that a couple of times. And yes. I do. But, I plan to get down to a better weight first before I gain it back in the form of muscle. It is in the cards, however, not yet.

I will be in better shape by the end of the summer.

Cause, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Someone out there that inspired me but eludes my memory…

Perhaps I will do another blog post about my different mantras. It seems appropriate.

If you like what you are reading and wish to support me in my endeavours, please sign up to my newsletter, visit my Amazon Author Page and purchase one of my books. Or buy me a coffee. Your help and support are much appreciated.