When we got in the car he hit Bluetooth and said, “Listen to this. Cody Johnson has a new album.”
Cody is a good ‘ol Texas boy, so you’ll need to have ears for country music, otherwise they may bleed. 🙂
When we decide to sign that piece of paper to make what we have legal, this song will play at our wedding.
The quality of our relationships begin in the mirror.
The community of WordPress is a special place.
We lift each other up, and love on one another with comments. Andy here recently nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger award. This is my way of saying thank you. To introduce him to you by sharing his work to my WordPress family.
I love what Andy says about the comparison game. “The only way to win… is not to play.” Thank you Andy for the nomination, and sharing your wisdom. xx
Is there a dream in your heart?
They say a dream will never leave you, unlike an ‘idea’ we soon forget. You will have ideas toward your dream. Stepping stones. Jot them down.
That dream that God placed in my heart…It’s still there. When I need encouragement toward my dream, I pull it up in my mind and see it instantly and clearly, although God showed it to me years ago.
It’s always the exact same, like watching a rerun.
I am my own worst enemy for my dream. I could quit it at any given time.
“If you’re not willing to begin at the beginning, you’ll never end up at the ending.”~Christine Caine
The end of August, I stepped off the beaten path and changed the name of this Blog, but a week ago, I changed it back. I didn’t think up the name Letitgocoach. It was the only name available on WordPress with the words, ‘let it go’. God knows what He’s doing, even when we don’t.
Someone in my life at the time laughed at that name. He thought it was absurd. Let them laugh.
They may look at you like you’re a nut, but to an Oak tree, you’re everything.
Now that you are daring to dream, there is something else you need to encompass.
BELIEVE.
Sounds simple right? It is, but you are going to go through tests. Pass those tests. Just get through them to the very best of your ability. Every test will make you stronger, better and quicker for the next one.
Dreamers can live in a lonely world.
Listen to motivational speakers. Read uplifting books, and Blogs. Look at people who have already achieved a similar dream, and learn from them.
Keep people in your life who love you, motivate you, encourage you, inspire you, enhance you, and make you happy.
I continually let people walk out of my life.
I would venture to guess no football team won the Super Bowl their first year of playing. It takes years of dedication. The same with Olympic Gold Medalists. They have that dream at a young age.
How long have you had your dream?
Maybe it’s not happening as quickly as you planned, but continue laying your hand to it. Use your gift, let go of those pesky expectations, and believe.
Success is when our preparation, and God’s timing meet on the journey.
Over the years, God has given me success. At some point in the journey I’d always ask, “What is keeping me from everything you have for me?”
Each time I felt like it was my impatience.
God is the light and we are the shadow.
Life is a journey. The destination is the dream.
Dare to Believe.
I went shopping yesterday and left my phone at home. It was intentional, just to check myself and make sure it didn’t bother me, and it didn’t.
I spent years addicted to my phone.
The day I deactivated my Facebook accounts was the day they congratulated me for spending six years with them. They sent a notification, and I was mortified. Six years, and what did I have to show for it?
Thank you for all of your kind comments on my Blog posts recently. They absolutely terrify me.
It takes time for me to respond, because I still overthink the response. I don’t have the WordPress app on my phone, so I don’t receive immediate notification. I let notifications run my life for years.
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing things with you that took a long time to admit. It may look like Blogging tips, but for me it was painful lessons.
It’s not even about me, it’s about the lessons, and being used by God to prevent someone else from going through the same heartache. It’s by God’s grace that I’m able to sit here and share. Palms sweaty and hands shaking along the keyboard.
I don’t realize all the activity on my Blog without the app. Two or three times a day, I open my laptop, logon to this site, and see that you have visited.
I read the Blogs in my Reader, and love on others. It’s natural to give love, and leave comments on what you write, but I stare at the screen in awe when that same love and kindness is returned.
Sometimes I don’t know what to say, so I just ‘like’ the comment, and come back later to respond. I don’t know how people do it that have 100’s of comments a day. I would be so overwhelmed.
I enjoy living a calm, quiet life, but to live that way, I turn off all notifications, and my phone is usually in another room of the house. I’m not quite ready to tell you exactly how bad it got with 6 social media accounts giving me a feeling of importance.
Wow. That slipped out.
I don’t run my Blog in the normal way, because if I did, it would begin to run me. Thank you for your love and kindness, and taking time to comment.
It’s becoming less terrifying with every response, and you are giving me practice.
There is no joy in the numbers.
When did souls become numbered?
If you are writing and watching your stats after you hit publish, you’re hurting yourself. That has been my experience anyway. It’s pure mental torture.
My very own boyfriend doesn’t ‘like’ my posts.
I know this probably crushed your mental image of Mr. Smith. Everyone loves Smith, but you haven’t seen what we’ve been through the past three years! The man deserves a medal for staying and loving me.
He reads every post, and encourages my writing, but there is a stigma with the like button. Smith watched me agonize over the numbers until I finally learned. You are a soul, not a number.
It used to make me so nervous seeing the number of read’s, compared with very few ‘likes’. I was taking it personally, and have deleted post’s thinking it must have sucked! I wanted to delete my entire first year, but no. That is where I became rooted.
You have to be a member of WordPress to ‘like’ a post. Some people don’t want the hassle of signing up even though it’s free, it’s still one more thing to capture your info. They can read it with no membership, but that is all they can do.
They have to be logged in to ‘like’.
Again, another hassle for some. Smith is rarely logged in, and he just wants to read it. He goes straight to the Author with comments. 🙂
I spent years posting my Blog on Social Media. It got read, and the numbers were impressive, but the likes were few, and there were zero comments.
Then I realized my Facebook friends were not WordPress members. It was up to them if they wanted to join. I became happy that they read it. Period.
When starting my Blog, hashtags were the craze. The more tags the better. My first year of Blogging was barely seen. Each post had a ton of tags, and WordPress thinks your post is spam if there’s more than 15. I learned that after 4 years of Blogging!
There was a lot of magic in year four.
Don’t stop until you see the magic.
It takes time, so please give it time.
I woke up at 4:30 am, and already had a Chemex.
I knew nothing about Blogging when I began, but here are some things I learned with WordPress.
What should be the name of your Blog?
When I opened a Medium account in August, it automatically connected to my gmail account, so it used my real name. Use your real name if you can.
When starting this Blog, I used Letitgocoach, because I thought it would reflect that stage of my life. Six years of Social Media later, I’m known as Letitgocoach, so will probably use that pen name in writing a book. We will see if Google can let it go.
Don’t delete pictures from your media library.
This one still causes me to sigh. Whatever you delete in your media library, disappears from the Blog you used it in. I have a years worth of Blogs with this weird little broken link icon instead of a picture.
When inserting a photo, or meme, leave off any alignment. Click the + button on your toolbar, choose ‘media’, and then ‘add new’, to upload your photo. Once inserted, you can click on the photo to see options. This is where you choose, ‘no alignment’, and type in a caption, or photo credit.
Mr. Smith reads my Blog from his phone, and told me he could only see half of my Meme. That is because I used to ‘justify’ the photo to the center of the page. By choosing ‘no alignment’, it floats around nicely on every device. Here’s one for Smith.
Make your Blog easy to read.
I love reading, and following new Bloggers. While in my Reader, I click on the ‘Search’ option, and it pulls up a lot of newbies. There is no easy way to say this but, break up the page. It’s easier on the eyes, and more enjoyable if it’s not a 1,000 word paragraph.
Before clicking publish, I click ‘Preview’. This allows me to see what the post will look like on a Desktop, Tablet, or Phone to ensure it’s easy to read.
The Pingback. How to tag another Blogger, or insert a link in your post.
While reading a Blog post, and you see an underlined, or highlight word, it may contain a link. I will say ‘hello’ to my friend Kat. If you click on her name Kat, it will take you to her Blog.
You can place a link under any word in your post.
Highlight the word, and click the piece of chain link looking thing on your toolbar. In a new browser window, go find the Blogger’s site you want to tag. Copy their link, or any web address you want to use, and go back to your post. Paste the link in the URL window.
You should see your highlighted word in the box below. If not, you can type in your ‘link text.’ If you are referring to a previous post, you can choose it from the list. I click the box ‘”Open link in new window’, so it does. Click ‘add link’ and you’re done.
If you’ve been nominated for an award, and noticed all of the nominees highlighted, or underlined, this is how they did it. You will want to reciprocate.
This is some of what I’ve learned Inbarbsworld. If you want to learn everything there is to know about Blogging, I recommend Renard, in Renard’s World.
