I have friends who are writers, artists, teachers, musicians.  With rare exception, they all say “I can’t promote myself,  I can’t review my own work.” I’ve learned that’s a cop out since all it takes is a little serious consideration, and you can’t expect anyone to be more excited about your work than you are.  If you’re not excited enough about it to review yourself, you may want to work on that first.  I learned early on with Horizons Magazine that (1) it takes a lot of work to write a review and (2) I don’t have time to get good at it; and (3) printing a book review is giving free ad space, so I instead creating a monthly Suggested Reading and Listening column. Continue reading →

This morning was like many other mornings.  I woke up with an idea in mind that I wanted to write about, and by the time I got the computer turned on, other thoughts came to mind.  Then I took a quick look at email to make sure nothing was urgent; it was downhill from there.  By the time I quickly answered a couple of emails, my other thoughts had flown the coop.  It was just as well, since the main computer was acting up.  This would be the perfect week for computer whiz Chuck to take a look, so I sent him an email.  I came into the living room and, as the laptop booted, I pondered how often I allow my morning to begin like this.

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I wrote on Facebook this week: “A friend is complaining to me that she did someone a favor and they didn’t acknowledge it or thank her for it. I told her if she did it for acknowledgment or thanks, she might wanna check her agenda. Either do it happily as a gift, or don’t do it at all. That way it won’t eat you up inside.”  One friend commented” “Would you do the favor if you didn’t like them?  This is hard to do if they are mean and spiteful too”  I replied, “I’d do the favor especially if I didn’t like them.  It’s only hard to do if you keep reminding yourself of the mean and spiteful things they do. Where your focus goes is what you keep reacting to.”  Don’t expect to be repaid a favor by the one you did the favor for. If you really knew how it worked, you’d just do favors all over the place and not care who they went to or who they came from.  To paraphrase Mother Teresa, and Kent M. Keith People can be thankless and unappreciative, help them anyway.

Read online www.horizonsmagazine.com

The August edition of Horizons Magazine, Spiritual Solutions for Florida since 1992 – Applying the Law of Attraction is now online. It’s a good one.

Read Barbara Lee’s August 2010 horoscopes here.

Enjoy.