First Word

Selwa Berbawy Hamati Author | Speaker | Certified Life Coach   Q. What is Real Resilience about? A. This book is written to inspire and give practical tools to those who are ready to make a positive change in their lives. Many people have already headed in a new direction, and this pandemic has turned into their opportunity to reinvent themselves by changing their daily routines, priorities, and businesses or careers, and I share some of their stories. Someday when COVID-19 fades away, another virus or some other catastrophe can and will take place. I want people to learn how to be really resilient now to be prepared to handle whatever happens. Q. What does resilience mean to you? A. “Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” This is the dictionary definition of resilience. Of course, I agree with that definition. I also believe that there’s more to this capacity to recover quickly—part of recovering is coming back stronge...

Here comes the launch of Habits and Attitudes by Lance Casazza. It will go on sale January 21 st on Amazon. I LOVE THIS BOOK (did the all caps emphasize enough: I LOVE THIS BOOK?). Why did I fall in love with the book? It inspired me right when I needed it the most. You see I read 52 stories about people just like me and their journeys and realized: I am not alone! YES! I’ll be honest (and some of you know) 2016 was no cakewalk. The departure of my business partner in such messy way started my year off just wrong . The financial crumbling created from the situation and the behavior that led up to it. To make matters worse, it was a personal loss as well. Stuck and facing some ugly realities left behind, I was beginning to wonder what was going to happen. Then … I worked on Habits and Attitudes and here is what I learned: Many, many, many successful people have faced the very same challenges and overcome them. I was feeling like a failure. How could I hav...

I coach writers as part of the services we offer. During my coaching sessions I discuss titles for books. The title and cover are very important to your sales potential. Writers ask me, how to come up with a stellar title? The answer: Inspiration ! Where does inspiration come from? Creativity ! Can you force creativity? I don't know. Creativity exists in every profession, including science. It's the ability to look at something entirely different.  What came first, the creativity or the inspiration? I think in some ways they bubble up together. An inspired thought is often a creative thought. A creative thought is an inspired thought. The proverbial all-time chicken or the egg question.  For me when I come up with titles it's often the title creates the story. When I came up with the idea to do the California Girl Chronicles series, I thought of the title first. I thought that sounded like a great title. The next question I asked myself: what wou...

The dog pile of life sometimes get pretty high. This last week I kept watching one thing after the other pile. It's now to the point where my new motto is to just shrug. Sometimes when it all gets to be a little too much you have to just put your shoulders up and down, and then focus on the moment. I can't recall a time in my life where the pile got quite this high or the mud this deep. What's the answer when the tough times hit? Action! Take action! Keep going and try not to look backward or ahead too much. All we really have is the here and now. Truly -- that's it. We could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that's the end of the show. Even if your show got to look like the circus or the most elaborate play on Broadway, it could all just end. So no backward, no forward -- just today. And despite the pile and the deep mud, I'm going to make it a great day!

I saw the great Maya Angelou speaking once. Her words are inscribed in my soul. To be able to touch lives with such authentic wisdom, grace and knowledge is a beautiful talent, and she had that talent in spades. My greatest wish is to be so enlightened and insightful that one day I can provide such inspiration and truth to others. As writers we have an amazing talent to share with the world pieces of our souls -- small parts of ourselves that we can bring to the page. It is an honor and a privilege to be graced with the talents to inspire and motivate other people with words. Maya could use words through her stories to accomplish great emotional feats to change lives. Think about it. The talent and gift to transcend time and space with your words and thoughts to transform lives ... to make other people think ... to challenge people to go inward and consider something greater. It is a monumental responsibility that writers are given from the heavens, and so like Maya Angelous use i...

I am being tested, and I decided to take the challenge. Mindset and belief in one's self are important. Keep a positive mindset every day. Believe in your own ability to be responsible for your life. Be a beacon of positivity to attract everything you need for your highest good. I have several mantras I use when I meditate to help point my life in a positive direction. I make a lot of money easily and frequently and I am grateful for everything I have. I am attracting everything I need now, and I am grateful for my abundant life. The flow of life brings me everything I need to achieve success. Today I surrender to the Universe and trust it to bring me whatever will serve my highest good. And I wrote these for the blog to share with you. For everything that happens you can see a reaction as either positive or negative. I choose to see it all as positive. My life is opening to serving my highest good. Today I surrender and believe all that is amazing, wonderful and positive...

Have you ever thought about trust? Not just trust in another person, but also trust in yourself. Trusting that a situation will work out the way it is supposed to work. Do you realize that is about releasing the concept of "control" and realizing you are powerless over anything or anyone other than yourself. Trust means going with your gut and knowing that your gut (AKA your heart) will serve you. Your heart/gut has the answers and the "knowingness," and you have to let go and know it will be all right. I am clairvoyant and spiritual. So I have an even larger idea of what my life could look like -- it's one of my gifts. I have a relationship in my life in which I foresaw the future -- and at the time I didn't understand a few things about that vision. I didn't understand how it could be possible. Throughout that journey it continued to seem utterly impossible, too. And then there was an unexpected shift. And the impossible became quite possible, indee...

It's Friday morning. I have my coffee, and I've got my Mac and my thoughts for you. A friend of mine was talking and said, "I love it that when you say you're going to do it, you do it." This statement begged the question, "Are you a doer or a talker?" And this leads to my cute story of the day. I've known what I wanted to do almost my entire life. When I was in high school, I toted around a shoebox loaded with stories I wrote (OMG) in ink pen. A little side note: Remember those Bic ink pens with the clear-plastic on the outside so you could see the ink? They probably still sell them. When I wrote my stories, I wrote on unlined paper and I wrote in ink pen. About once every two weeks I had to toss my Bic pen because it was clean of ink. Friends marveled at the empty pen because they had never seen one before. The little tale should give you a good idea of how much writing was going on. Anyway, I had these "friends" (I use the term loosely...

"Sometimes you have to walk into the unknown to find out the known. Risk is scary and frightening, but to settle for something "OK" in lieu of something really, really special but also scary is to live life with limitations and never fully spread your wings! I like the idea, 'A moment of something really special is way better than a lifetime of nothing remarkable.'" I posted that on Facebook yesterday. I want to say something about risk (in this case personal risk). Most people avoid change and risk. I wrote my first book Second Bloom on personal reinvention. Risk is indeed scary. You don't know the outcome. You don't know if you're going to get hurt. Pain sucks! I think we can all agree on that fact. I got asked once, "Why do you run from the pain; what are you afraid of?" My response, "I won't be able to function if I felt it." And yet despite some real hardship here I am functioning -- more than functioning ... succe...