How do you find hope when you’re hopeless?
That single question has become my life’s work.
As a retired educator, I have dedicated myself both professionally and academically toward answering this question since it remains one of the few experiences in life that we all share; an experience that connects us far deeper than culture, education, religion, or social economic status. In my mind, this question is the single most important question of our century, and it remains the single most frontier in both understanding and applying the concept of self-actualization within the twenty-first century, a process first popularized by Professor Abraham Maslow in 1943.
The answer to this question comes in the novel CINDERELLA IN FOCUS, a novel that offers a new perspective to understand our favorite parts of the traditional Cinderella fairy tale by being our own kind of brave outside the confines of change, doubt, and despair. A novel where Cinderella doesn’t need a Prince Charming to save her or a fairy godmother to complete her because Cindy discovers how to use the ashes of her reality to create – hope, connection, and ultimately transformation. Yet, when you physically have nothing, where do you start?
You start with gratitude, meditation, and inner fortitude. How?
• What if our general definition of gratitude is wrong? What if we could relearn a new definition that helps us to use gratitude as life’s abundance-maker, a prism that helps to take what we have and turn it into more than enough – a rainbow of light that embraces our personal might.
• What if there could be a meditation created specifically for a scattered mind? The type of mind that one most commonly experiences when we’re overthinking and underliving, especially during stressful times. What if this type of a meditation is based around elements from our culture that inspires us, plus we can practice it anywhere – everywhere, and it doesn’t cost us a thing, except for the willpower to try and a few seconds of our time. The Circle of Abundance is that simple by using our positive memories to ground our current reality even within hopeless situations.
• What if we could have a road map to help to put a personality to our subconsciousness. Thus, befriending it instead of speaking about it in abstract terms. Once it’s befriended, we can consciously make it part of our daily practice of higher thinking, deeper living. The beauty of this map is that it allows us to develop our inner fortitude regardless of what is happening to the world around us. A key aspect of Cinderella’s survival.
When you look at the big picture, I firmly believe that life gifted us with the Cinderella fairy tale as a tool to help us to find hope when we’re feeling hopeless. I have used the limitless power of fiction combined with credibility of social science to create a storyline of depth, interest, and empowerment to a story that we have been intuitively attracted to for the last 500 years of modern-day history. CINDERELLA IN FOCUS is thus a tale about how to use one’s curiosity as a doorway to unearth your personal possibility by means of our unedited individuality. And that’s a key force when you have nothing, but the tenacity to try one more time…
Therefore, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate individual empowerment combined with a beloved fairy tale to help people to connect to their authenticity during all seasons of life, especially when we feel hopeless, and we could use encouragement the most. I can tell you from personal experience that my life has improved immeasurably from living the truths of Cindy’s Secret. A secret that has always been part of our lives regardless if we’re aware or unaware of its hidden gifts of transformation. It simply requires one to try…three letters with an endless assortment of options.
Cindy’s Secret…
Cinderlla In Focus
Contemporary Women
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
July 22, 2015
Paperback
257
CINDERELLA IN FOCUS:
How to find hope when we’re feeling hopeless? What if Cinderella’s mother left behind for her an instructional manual on how to use the brokenness of our life’s story to piece together something that is both beautiful and durable.
Additionally, what if this idea can withstand the test of time -- just like a crown of courage. Yet, it all starts with our brokenness, a hinge of hope. The answer…Cindy’s Secret.
For almost two decades, my college students kept requesting that I turn our favorite class, Introspective Communication, into a fairy tale; based on the ideas that I had shared in classes. They thought the class would be more impactful, and that is exactly what I did. “Some day you will be old enough to start to reading fairy tales again” -- C. S. Lewis.