Greetings and Salutations!

I have just caught up on ALL editor email, so if you have a pending question for me, please send it along!

I just finished a week of reading Everyday Kindness by Stephanie Dowrick. Everyday Kindness is a fairly large (366 page) collection of essays she wrote about how critical daily kindness is for our own health and the health of those around us. She talks about how life is short and we should treasure each day we have. That so much of our personal health can tie into the stress hormones we deluge our body with. She provides a wealth of examples of ways being kind to others - and being kind to yourself! - can make every aspect of one's life better.

What's interesting is that just yesterday a real life example presented itself to illustrate that point! Isn't it funny how life does that? :). I was talking with a woman at my boyfriend Bob's gig. The woman has a friend who had been married for years. We'll call the friend Jane. Jane was constantly unkind to her husband. She would disrespect him in public, treat him poorly, and demonstrate regularly that she was unhappy with him. After a while, as one might guess, he left. Jane is now *furious*. How could he leave her! How could he be with someone else! Her unkindness has billowed to new heights, and she even tells her daughter that, should the daughter decide to like the ex's new girlfriend, that Jane will therefore hate the daughter.

With all we know about the effects of hate and stress on the human body, Jane is only "eating herself up" with these toxic emotions, and she is also bathing her children in them as well. She has gotten so used to negative emotions that she finds them to be normal. She automatically assumes that people around her live in that same negative-emotion world. When Jane goes to visit my friend, Jane's purpose is to discuss the negative emotions as much as she can.

Everyday Kindness is all about how harmful that can be - and it provides examples and steps to find one's way out of that. Yes, it's hard! If we see the world as being flat, we will be on the lookout for proof of it, and ignore any evidence to the contrary. Human brains tend to reinforce their chosen outlook. It makes the world "safer" and "more known". But as Ms. Dowrick points out, it's just not healthy. A brain which grows and evaluates and examines new potentials is the brain that overcomes Alzheimer's and depression and other issues.

I enjoyed reading the book immensely, as you can probably tell :).

We haven't had a chat yet this month, and I'm quite inspired by this book to do one on kindness! We all deserve kindness and joy in our lives. We all have the capacity to treat others with kindness! We can talk all about kindness this coming Wednesday, August 29th at 9pm. That will be the start - and then we'll set up some forum discussions to draw in everyone who couldn't make it! Mark your calendars, and think kind thoughts until then! :)


EBOOK MENTORS

We have opened up the ebook mentor opportunity to ALL graduated editors, not just ones who have published ebooks through our system. Many editors have published ebooks on Kindle and Apple and just haven't used our system, which is fine! So we would love to have any graduated editor help us with ebook mentoring. This is about cheer-leading, typo-spotting, and sharing kindness :).


SHARE YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS

Several editors have asked me which other editors here have published books, to get ideas and suggestions. I know many of our editors have had great success in this area! If you've published a book, please share its link in our book publishing forum. That way other editors can buy your books and get a sense of what types of books seem to work well. They can get a variety of publishing options and look at cover ideas. The more we help each other, the more we all reach our goals and thrive!

Have a great week :)

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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