Current (constant) status: Hungry, tired, but ready to write.
When I was in the second grade, I reported a boy named Adrian to the bully box. I grabbed a piece of paper, wrote down the problem, and then slipped it into the box while staring him in the eye.
What was the problem? He wasn’t actually bullying me. He was just really annoying. He kept singing the Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and my seven-year-old self was losing her mind.
Even at seven I’d heard the joke too many times: “Your name’s Itxy? Like the Itsy-Bitsy-Spider?”
“Yes,” I’d say through gritted teeth. “Just like that.”
Sadly, the X in my name throws…
Those half-finished stories, songs, and projects are more important than you think.
Six hundred words into my short story, I pushed my chair back and sighed. They didn’t work. All those words would go to the trash. Doubt took that as its cue to slip into my brain: “I can’t do this. I’m not creative enough.”
Usually, I let those thoughts simmer until I’m boiling with rage at myself and anything else I can blame. But this time I felt something different: done. Bored, even.
If you’re a creator of any kind, you’re familiar with this thought pattern. The pain of feeling like your creative juices have run dry.
At some point…
Actionable tips for people with too much on their plate.
You shouldn’t have to suffer from the weight of stress on your shoulders. No one should feel like they can’t enjoy their lives because their brain is unable to focus on anything — and yet, most do.
The Global Organization for Stress shares that:
- 33% of Americans feel extreme stress
- Stress is the biggest issue for high school students
- 450,000 British workers believe they’re ill because of stress
I’ve felt stress that makes me want to curl into bed, stress that’s made my heart beat fast and hard, stress caused by immense overwhelm. …
What to do when “think positive” doesn’t work.
Self-improvement is hard.
I know it doesn’t seem that way. There’s a step-by-step guide for probably every type of problem, such as improving your confidence or loving your appearance.
But we’re not machines, programmed to act certain ways by pressing specific buttons — and it seems most of us have forgotten it.
It’s so easy to preach online. Anyone can tweet, “If you want to reach your dreams, you need to work hard every day.” We all have access to platforms that give us a voice. …
If you want to be great at anything, you have to be bad first.
You have a dream. A goal. A passion you wish you could work on — wish being the keyword here.
How would you feel if you actually managed to start working on that goal today? How would you feel if you sat down and finally started writing, opened your YouTube channel, or recorded your first podcast episode?
It might sound impossible, but it doesn’t have to be.
The mistake that stops people from reaching their goals at all
We have this weird belief that it’s better to put off our goals and tackle them in the future because we’ll be readier, smarter, and wiser. …
You don’t need to find your purpose to change lives.
Sometimes we feel lost in this world because we haven’t found our purpose. We feel like we’re standing in the middle of a busy street, and everyone’s walking fast around us with places to get to. But all we do is stand there, getting bumped into, with no direction to head to.
But you weren’t put on Earth just to do one thing. You’ve been changing lives since the minute you were born. You have a lot more purposes than you probably realize — and these are just a few. …
How to flip the script you’ve probably been following for most of your life.
What the hell am I doing? This isn’t me. I stared at my phone — hands shaking as if my body were an earthquake. The name looking back at me terrified me. She’d been on my mind too much lately. Like, way too much.
I had to do something about it.
You’ll Never Change If You Don’t Have the Courage to Change
“Would you feel comfortable with talking to her about your feelings?” my friend asked me after I’d revealed my crush on a mutual friend.
My automatic response was no. Of course not. Only brave people tell others how they feel, and I’m not brave. I was afraid of the…
Here’s your answer.
Would you ever love someone who looked like you?
Someone with stretch marks on their thighs and a weird mole on the back of their neck? Someone with a crooked nose or very thin lips?
Sometimes I look in the mirror and stare at the blackheads on my nose, and I think, “Who could ever love someone with a strawberry for a nose?”
How would you look at a woman who lacked a thigh gap? Would you look away in disgust? Would pinch that skin and tell her to get rid of it? …
Why you shouldn’t blindly follow advice.
Thanks to YouTube, Medium, Twitter, and literally all of the Internet, we’re all free to give advice. That has its perks and its downsides. The perk is that we can learn how to love ourselves, how to change a tire, and how to cut off toxic people in our lives with a simple Google search.
The downside is that some of the tips people give are ludicrous, and all they accomplish is making others feel like absolute crap. These are some of those tips and why you shouldn’t follow them.
1. Always Be Productive
Do ten push-ups during commercials. Listen to an educational podcast…
Okay, fine. Some are inspirational.
There’s lots of articles with inspirational quotes out there in the Interwebs, but I wanted to write an article with quotes that just celebrated words. So, while, yes, there are inspirational quotes in this piece, there’s also more. And I didn’t pick anything that didn’t make my heart feel like it was going to beat out of my chest.
Here are fifteen quotes I think you’ll enjoy, whether you’re a writer or reader.
“So that’s your girl?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, still staring after her. “I don’t know if I’m hers, but she’s definitely mine.”
— Abigail Johnson, Every Other Weekend
…
Itxy Lopez
Not an expert. Not a guru. Just a self-help writer trying to be as honest as possible and hoping to make a few people feel less alone along the way.
