Guest Post and Giveaway Seven Sundays to Sweet Inner Serenity

Guest Post

RAINBOWS ARE ROUND

By LeNae Goolsby

“When you change the way you look at things,

the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer

“It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

-                     Adept to Neo from The Matrix

These quotes sounded cool but meant very little to me.  Until one day, I happened across a picture of a rainbow that had been taken by someone who had a larger perspective than I did.

The rainbow was perfectly round. Until that moment it never occurred me that rainbows could be round.  All I had ever seen were arcs, or glimpses of colors peeking through the clouds. 

When I saw this picture, all of a sudden it made perfect sense that a rainbows are round, or at least can be round, and that it had been my limited perspective that kept me from seeing the whole picture.

Consider traffic jams.

We’re sitting in traffic, running late for wherever it is we are supposed to be, at whatever time it was we were supposed to be there.  All we care about in the jam is how utterly inconvenient and annoying it is to be stuck in between these cars, and contemplating the risk and reward of flying by everyone on the shoulder (I know you’ve thought about it).

Here is another perfect example of us getting caught up in our own limited perspective. I mean, we can’t see ahead to know what the reason for the delay is – is it construction, an accident, did someone have a heart attack at the wheel?

Or, are we stuck here because if we were going any faster we would have been the one t-boned by a random drug induced drive. We don’t know, we probably won’t ever know. And that’s okay.

The point here is to realize that often times when we react, when we make fraction-reaction decisions, we do so based upon the information we have in the moment.  Sometimes we do not always have all of the information. Sometimes our perspective is limited. In fact, much of the time we are operating out of a limited perspective.

Personal Case Study:

When my husband’s community oncology medical practice was in significant debt and I did not have the money to pay the bills on time, I would literally drive myself into a mascara running, anxiety ridden, panic attack induced ball of frenzy and stress – because somehow that was going to solve everything (not). 

Then one bill paying Tuesday, I sat down and mentally went through the worse case scenario of not being able to pay the lenders and the vendors what they were due, when they were due.  And then I kept asking myself, “Okay, what is wore than that? And worse than that?

My envisioning exercise ended up at having to file business bankruptcy and losing the office building as being the potentially worse thing I could think of. So, then what?

Well, we would lose the stuff and that would suck, but we still had the ability to work, to make an income and life would move forward…without a bunch of debt, actaully.

Once I was able to realize that life will go on after the worse case scenario, I was able to respond to what was effectively a temporary cash-flow crunch, pay who I could when I could and just keep moving forward in faith (faith – there’s that word again).

Once I was able to release my persistent worse case scenario what-ifs I was able to respond from the space of calm because I was able to shift my perspective.

It took about a year, but cash flow did increase, and now profits are high enough to not only pay the bills with ease, but we are now actually in a period of amazing growth and expansion – never even came close to having file bankruptcy, btw.

Okay, so now you know that chances are whatever is showing up in your reality is only showing up as a portion of whole, right? We have but glimpses of puzzle pieces at varying moments.

For the rest of the week, whenever something shows up that is stressful, annoying, makes your shoulders tense up and your blood pressure rise, bite your lip (a/k/a catch yourself BEFORE you go into fraction-reaction mode), take a deep breath in, hold to the count of a slow 4 and release to a count of a slow 4, and ask yourself the following questions:

•      “How does even this serve my highest good?”

•      What might be happening here that I am not seeing in this moment?

•      If I imagine myself taking a higher perspective of this issue, what is really going on here?

###

LeNae Goolsby is the author of Seven Sundays to Sweet Inner Serenity - How to cultivate the calm even in the midst of the crazy chaos, the co-author of the soon to be released, “Empowered Medicine – Harnessing the infinite laws of the universe for optimized health.”  She is also the Founder/Owner of www.LeNaeGoolsby.com, where she offers intuitive empowerment life coach and pragmatic oracle services, as well as the Practice Administrator/Director of New Business Development for Infinite Health Integrative Medicine Center in Louisiana.

LeNae received her certificate from the Duke University Integrative Medicine Center Leadership Development Program in February 2017, and her law degree from Tulane University Law School in 2010. And somewhere between Tulane and Duke she completed her universal laws-centric life coaching studies and honed her intuitive abilities.

About the Book

Title: Seven Sundays to Sweet Inner Serenity
Author: LeNae Goolsby
Genre: Nonfiction (Body, Mind & Spirit)
Seven Sundays to Sweet Inner Serenity provides an experiential journey where mental and emotional vibrations rise and conscious awareness expands. Personal power is reclaimed and peace restored with each chapter and each sweet serenity tip.

Author Bio

LeNae Goolsby is the Founder/Owner of www.LeNaeGoolsby.com, the host of Empowered Living with LeNae which is syndicated on 50 global networks, as well as the Practice Administrator/Director of New Business Development for www.YourInfiniteHealth.com
In addition to running these successful ventures, LeNae is a wife, mother, artist, writer, oracle of the pragmatic persuasion, calm cultivator and energy healer.
LeNae received her certificate from the Duke University Integrative Medicine Center Leadership Development Program in February 2017, and her law degree from Tulane University Law School in 2010. And somewhere between Tulane and Duke she completed her universal law-centric coaching studies and honed her intuitive abilities.
LeNae is also an expert and writer for www.YourTango.com. She is the author of Seven Sundays to Sweet Inner Serenity, and is on the cusp of releasing “Empowered Medicine – Harnessing the Infinite Laws of the Universe for Optimized Health,” which she co-wrote with her husband. She is also working on her next book, Seven Sundays to Money Manifesting Mastery.

Links

Website: www.LeNaeGoolsby.com
Where to Purchase: https://books.pronoun.com/seven-sundays-to-sweet-inner-serenity/

Giveaway

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Guest Post

The Background of My Humble Book, Song of the Oceanides

J.G.  Źymbalist

I began to conceive Song of the Oceanides when I was just a little kid.  Every summer for about four or five summers straight, my family would spend the holiday in Castine, Maine right on Penobscot Bay.  Every June or July we rented out Robert Lowell’s house, and there I would look back on the previous school year and take stock of the latest round of insults I had weathered.  As I walked the halls of that house, I knew that someday I would have to do something about my growing sorrows—channel my childhood depression into something redemptive. 

     The house itself fascinated me and pretty much demanded to be the setting of a book.  As such, when I wrote Song of the Oceanides, I used the actual downstairs and upstairs floor plan as the model for the house where my young point-of-view character, Rory, lives.  Looking back, I think what enthralled me most about that big old New England house was the way the soft hazy summer light moved through the windows and all about the rooms and hallways.  Nothing triggers the imagination quite like the movement of light.

     Almost as important, living in a New England house like that for the summer gave me the opportunity to experience the ocean:  the majestic sight of the bay, the roar of the Atlantic, the aroma of the waters and breeze, the alluring call of the seagulls.  Everything combined to give me the sense that I stood in the presence of either God or some eternal force of destiny I could not understand.  The ocean also terrified me, and for the first time, I actually remember thinking about things like mortality.  I can recall discussing my fears with my totally-baffled mother.  At the time, I did not know what ocean myth would be best to bring all these concerns to life, but I knew I would find it someday.  (It ended up being the Oceanides of course; hence my title.)

About the Book

Title: Song of the Oceanides

Author: JG Zymbalist

Genre: YA/NA fantasy/steampunk

Song of the Oceanides is a quirky but poignant coming-of-age tale about children, Martians, freaky Martian hummingbird moths, and alluring sea nymphs.

The first thread relates the suspenseful tale of a Martian girl, Emmylou, stranded in Maine where she is relentlessly pursued by the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s Extraterrestrial-Enigma Service.  The second thread concerns her favorite Earthling comic-book artist, Giacomo Venable, and all his misadventures and failed romances.  The final thread deals with a tragic young lad, Rory Slocum, who, like Emmylou, loves Giacomo’s comic books and sees them as a refuge from the sea nymphs or Oceanides incessantly taunting and tormenting him.

As much as anything, the triple narrative serves to show how art may bring together disparate pariahs and misfits—and give them a fulcrum for friendship and sense of communal belonging in a cruel world

Author Bio

J.G. Źymbalist is the pseudonym of a very reclusive author who grew up in Ohio and West Germany.  He began writing Song of the Oceanides as a child when his family summered in Castine, Maine where they rented out Robert Lowell’s house.  There, inspired by his own experiences with school bullying and childhood depression, the budding author began to conceive the tale.

For several years, J.G. Źymbalist lived in the Old City of Jerusalem where he night clerked at a series of Palestinian youth hostels.  There he wrote the early draft of an as yet unpublished Middle-Eastern NA fantasy.  Returning from the Middle East, he completed an M.F.A. in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

The author returned to Song of the Oceanides while working for the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society, May-September, 2005.  He completed the full draft in Ellsworth, Maine later that year.

He has only recently decided to self-publish a few of his previous works.  Foreword Reviews has called his writing “innovative fiction with depth,” and Kirkus Indie has called his style “a lovely, highly descriptive prose that luxuriates in the details and curios of his setting.”

Links

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Guest Post Full Circle for Mick

 

Guest Post:

What inspired you to start a writing career?

When the Australian Immigration Department refused me an Australian passport on the technicality of “Your Australian Citizenship papers do not state if you were born as a male or female, so you cannot have a passport”. It did not unduly worry me. It just meant that my wife had to travel to Britain on her own. With the money saved by me not going with her, I was able to install more solar electricity generating panels and tile the floor in the kitchen area and refurbish both bathrooms in the house.

So, my wife set off for Britain, and while she was there, I received a letter from Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), that they would now cancel my Australian Citizenship papers on the grounds that I had “Falsified a Legal Document” in that I had lied about my age when I joined the Australian Army in 1967.

This set off a period of despair, which was followed by a long period of extreme anger. Looking at my situation, it became apparent to me that many negative thoughts were present because of the whole fiasco with DIAC and I began to think that I had better do something about the situation because it was not legal to hold an Australian Driver’s Licence unless I also had either “Approved Residency Status or else Australian Citizenship” In my case, I now had neither of these. That night I obtained a case of Cooper’s Stout and proceeded to consume it.

My next act was to employ Engineering Problem Solving Techniques, by firstly Defining the problem, next listing all factors pertaining to the problem and then listing possible solutions. The list was then put into the desk drawer overnight. During the night, more solutions presented themselves. These resulted in my posting the entire problem onto the Veteran’s Net which resulted in suggestions of how to deal with the problem and an offer of help from a Defence writer of a major newspaper and that marked the beginning of the end for DIAC. It was during this time that I began approaching the whole mess as a military operation which had to be won. This meant that all correspondence had a distribution list at the bottom of all correspondence and that all people listed on this did in fact receive a copy of the communication. As well, everything was sent by registered mail, meaning that the recipients had to sign for the mail. All mail was followed up by email.

At a later date, after my wife had returned from Britain and things were finally resolved, we held a function at my home and quests were astounded by the story. They found it difficult to believe that an Australian Citizen could be stripped of his citizenship for the “Great Crime of Serving the Country During the Time of War” One of these guests said, “Mick, if I had not seen the documents from DIAC, I would not have believed this. It is almost totally unbelievable and I think you should put this story into a fictional novel and pull no punches when you write it. I think that this story has the potential to be a best seller.” As this person was an ex-newspaper man, I have done as he suggested, one thing about all of this has been the calming influence of writing about the then problem. All has been resolved and I am now again an Australian citizen complete with Australian passport and what happened is just a memory.

About the Book

Title: Full Circle for Mick

Author: Michael Kramer

Genre: Historical Fiction

                In 2013, Carolyn and Michael Georg Kaspar Friedrich Lampman applied for passports at the Albury Post Office and while hers went through immediately, (she is Australian born), his application resulted in a phone call being made to Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) and that department refusing him a passport on the grounds that his Australian Naturalisation Certificate “Did not say if his gender was male or female.” It did however; state that “Michael Georg Kaspar Friedrich Lampman presented himself before me at the Millicent Council Chambers on …. To swear allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors. This makes one wonder if the clerks at DIAC are conversant enough in the English language to know that “Himself” can only mean a male.

                Michael’s reason for wanting his passport was to return to Vietnam and to fulfil his promise to a Buddhist Monk to return as a qualified engineer to help to rebuild the country that he had helped to destroy as a young Australian soldier in the Vietnam War during 1968 and 1969.

                At a later date, DIAC cancelled his citizenship and papers, (he was a naturalised Australian Citizen, originating from Germany) even threatening to send him to jail for two years, for “Falsifying an Official Document,” resulting in him then using “Engineering Problem Solving Techniques” to rectify the situation as he was now also driving illegally on the grounds that in NSW it is not legal for someone to hold a driver’s licence unless that person has either “Approved Residency Status” or Australian Citizenship.

                This is the story of a man’s battle and final victory against rampant bureaucracy, racism and PTSD. It deals with the first symptoms of PTSD, its diagnosis and its treatment and self-help strategies.

Author Bio

In 1967, he volunteered for service with the Australian Army in the Vietnam War, and was told that seeing how he was only twenty years old, he would need the signatures of his parents in order to join the army. Yet, the Australian Government was calling up males aged twenty years for service in the war if they wanted to serve or not. This prompted him to simply alter the date of birth on his Australian Naturalisation Certificate from 01/03/1947 to 01/03/1946 and he was in the army and this action was something that would become a problem forty five years later.

He went on to serve in Vietnam with the First Battalion of Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) and continued to serve until he received a medical discharge some ten years later. As a treatment strategy for diagnosed PTSD, he was instructed to undertake tertiary studies which resulted in his better management of PTSD and his becoming a much better person as a result.  In time, he was to undertake studies and now holds the Advanced Diploma of Mechanical Engineering, and the Associate Degree of Civil Engineering. He operates his own architectural and engineering drafting service, providing a high level of competent drafting work.

In 2010, he applied for an Australian passport which was refused by Immigration on the grounds that his Naturalisation Certificate did not list his gender. At a later date, the Australian Department of Immigration cancelled his Australian Citizenship papers, which have since been re-issued to him as well as an Australian passport. At a function held at his home, it was suggested that he put the experiences into a novel and this is the result.

Links

Author Website: http://mickkramer.com/

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/573456

Bookpal: https://my.bookpal.com.au/Bookstore/b/10840-Full-Circle-for-Mick

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

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