Tag Archives: #OptimistWriter

Motivate Yourself by Turning Your Life into Fun Games

Self-Gamification, ,

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The above is the promotional video for my online course Motivate Yourself By Turning Your Life Into Fun Games, published on Udemy in 2018.

Self-motivational is a solitary task. No one can motivate yourself better than you. Others might offer you tools, but those tools will have no chance and no effect if you resist using or at least trying them out.

Creating this online course was an experiment in itself, which I am happy to have done. So far, I didn’t create other courses, but I am happy I have created that one. Without it, there wouldn’t be almost two hundred students on Udemy who enrolled and profited from it, and my book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games might not have existed or had been much different. I suspect it might have been of much poorer shape and substance.

To the most part, the book follows the script I created for the course and builds upon it. I had added more material when I published the book a year later, but the first draft and the core concept were created in this course. This is where I described and defined the Self-Gamification approach in its fullness for the first time. I am thrilled that the course continues attracting those who search for motivational courses on Udemy.

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The next step

I invite you to check out the course and make use of the following offer.

I have created a coupon to enroll in my online course Motivate Yourself By Turning Your Life Into Fun Games on Udemy for only $9.99 instead of the standard price of $154.99. You save over 90%. To take advantage of this coupon, make sure you redeem it before March 8, 2021, 10:43 PM PST. Click on the title of the course above or the image below to enroll with this special price:

Image by Alice Jago

Here are the coupon’s data for your convenience:

  • Code: E8F941CB6E995ACE4F15
  • Expires March 8, 2021, 10:43 PM PST

If you have questions, then please contact me either by e-mail or on social media. You can find the list of channels where you can find me on my contact page.

One Minute Read from the Turn Your No Into Yes

Business, Gameful Project Management, Self-Gamification, , , , , , , ,

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Here is the eleventh and last (for now) blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute. Next week, I will start sharing another series of videos featuring my books.

In this video, I read from my book Turn Your No Into Yes: 15 Yes-or-No Questions to Disentangle Your Project.

I am reading from the short chapters titled “9. A Checklist for Your Project” and “10. Free Space in Your Checklist.”

Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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Excerpt from the Turn Your No Into Yes

9. A Checklist for Your Project

Question 9:
Have you created a checklist for your project?

If not, do it. By now you will have gathered enough information to do so. And remember this checklist is a living document. Keep it close at hand and update it as soon as you think it time to do so. Don’t leave it for later. Follow your first impulse. The short updating of one point takes much less time than trying to get all the points together later. And it is always more accurate.

10. Free Space in Your Checklist

Question 10:
Have you left space to add more items or make changes?

If not, find the best format suitable for you and your customer and rewrite the checklist, allowing for the possibility of additions and changes.

And remember that along the way you might discover a new way of doing it. Don’t judge yourself for not having thought of it earlier. Just do it. Even returning to an earlier approach is a step forward, not backward.

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The next step

To take the next step in boosting your entangled projects (and we all have those once in a while), I invite you to read Turn Your No Into Yes. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Turn Your No Into Yes will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.

I wish you a beautiful, productive, fun, creative, and gameful day!

One Minute Read from the Take Control of Your Business

Business, Self-Gamification, , , , , ,

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Here is the tenth blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.

In this video, I read from my book Take Control of Your Business: Learn What Business Rules Are, Find Out That You Already Know and Use Them, Then Update Them Regularly to Maximize Your Business Success.

I am reading from the chapter titled “T – Terminating Your Product or Service, When and How to Do This.”

Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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Excerpt from the Take Control of Your Business

This business rules type is often forgotten or ignored. Not many want to think about terminating the existence of their product or service, hoping it will be there forever.
But it won’t. At least not in its very first shape or version. Besides, the updates might be so crucial that at some point you will have something entirely new and different than merely an upgraded product or service.

I can guarantee that sooner or later you will need to discard one (and most probably more) of your products or services or various parts of them.

What do you have to know then?

In this case, as before, the answer becomes clear as soon as you focus your attention on your customers’ interests.

When you do this, the following important question appears:

How will the termination of, or a significant change in, your product or service affect your customers?

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The next step

To take the next step in maximizing your business success, I invite you to read Take Control of Your Business. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Take Control of Your Business will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.

I wish you a beautiful, productive, fun, creative, and gameful day!

Happy Spring 2021

Self-Gamification, True Story, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
My little Martisori treasure chest (Image courtesy of the author)

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I am taking a little break from my series of blog posts and readings from my books today to honor a Moldovan tradition — Moldova is where I originally come from — and to wish you a happy Spring!

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Mărțișor — A beautiful Moldova tradition

We celebrate this day by giving little signs of love and friendship to members of our families, friends, teachers, and colleagues. These small tokens are called Mărțișori (singular: Mărțișor). In the picture above, you can see my current collection. Some of them I got from my family and especially my sister — she once brought a whole bag of them for me to share and keep. The other I made myself over the years and kept one from each year’s collection as a token to remember and maybe to reproduce at another time.

Here is how Wikipedia defines Mărțișor:

“Mărțișor (mərt͡siˈʃor) is a celebration at the beginning of spring, on March the 1st in Romania, Moldova, and all territories inhabited by Romanians.”

I featured this tradition in my first book, a novel based on a true story of my late father, Mihail Ichizli, The Truth About Family:

” I remembered well how we would all sit together braiding red and white threads into strings, and making little men and women or flowers from the same wool to bind to the ends of the strings. We would give these special talismans, or little Marches, to each other and the teachers on the first of March. Our teachers would have a host of Mărţişori decorating their jackets and sweaters for the whole month.”

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This year’s Mărțișor project

In the past years, I created various designs for the Mărțișori I gave as little gifts to my family. This year, I tried something different and turned it into a little art project. I took a coloring block of postcards and colored only some of the fields with red color, leaving all other white. Then I added one or two Mărțișori on each card.

Here is the result:

This year’s Martisor project/art (Image courtesy of the author)

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Capture your family traditions in a story

We all have these beautiful traditions from where we come from. If you ever considered writing a memoir or a fictional story based on your family’s or your own story, then I invite you to feature those traditions inside. They will add color to your creations and bring light to the whole story.

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If you need help

Sometimes it can be daunting to start a project featuring your family’s or your story. A memoir can appear daunting to write. I feared writing one for many years, although the wish was significant.

A novel based on a true story might get you going. It did help me. The Truth About Family was a blessing to write; it healed many wounds and brought my mother and me even closer together.

Whatever style you choose, here are a couple of resources that can help you:

 

If you would like to work with me to help make your memoir or novel describing a personal to you story a reality, you can reach out to discuss how we can collaborate through one of the channels listed on my contact page.

If you are interested in checking out my experience with writing memoirs and novels based on a true story, then take a look at these:

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Happy Spring

All there is to say now is to wish you Happy Spring 2021! We all need the hope the Spring seems to bring with it in these insecure times.

Here’s the little Mărțișor picture I created for my mother this year. And here it is for you!

Happy Spring and Happy Mărțișor!

Martisor, the symbol of the Spring (Image courtesy of the author)

One Minute Read from the Cheerleading for Writers

Cheerleading for writers, Self-Gamification, , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Here is the ninth blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.

In this video, I read from my book Cheerleading for Writers: Discover How Truly Talented You Are.

I am reading from the chapter with the title “S – Show Me What You’ve Got (or How a Writer Can Serve Others Without Putting Too Much Pressure on Herself).”

Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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Excerpt from the Cheerleading for Writers

As with almost any book on writing and its various facets, this one will also address the aspects of showing and telling. But it will approach show and tell from another angle.
During the first three years of my writing career and especially recently, I have come to realize that I joined an exotic species of the working population.

We, writers, want to write books that we would want to read. On the other hand, we also want others to love them.

Or we write motivational guide books to pull ourselves out of initially hopeless situations. At the same time, hoping these books will pull other people out of their miseries too.

What is interesting, though, is that whether others read our works or not, people survive without them. No one seems to need what we do for their daily and most urgent needs.

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A big surprise

Two days ago, I got a big surprise in my inbox. An author I follow has featured Cheerleading for Writers on his blog. This author is the New York Times bestselling author, John David Mann. He is co-author of many fantastic books, including the Go-Giver series with Bob Burg. Here is what he has written about this little book in his blog post titled “NINE RESOURCES TO ROCK YOUR WRITING” about resources he strongly recommends for writers, which include such legendary books as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird:

“Cheerleading for Writers: Discover How Truly Talented You Are, by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels. This little book doesn’t lecture you; it holds your hand, brews you a cup of fresh hot tea, whispers in your ear, and reminds you of all the good things you should know about yourself. It also offers dozens of nuggets of writerly wisdom along the way, in twenty-six bite-sized pieces, A through Z.”

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The next step

We all need a little cheering up and holding our hands from time to time. I am super happy that this little book can provide such comfort to writers. So I invite you to read Cheerleading for Writers and discover what it can do for you. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:

 

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Cheerleading for Writers will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.

I wish you a beautiful, cheerful, and also gameful day!