PN – Chicken Soup for the Soul Series. Theme: Change your habits & attitudes / change your life

Change your habits & attitudes / change your life

The deadline for submissions is AUGUST 31, 2024.

Habits. Attitudes. Breaking bad habits and replacing them with good habits play an important role in self-care. Change your attitude and you can change your life. And self-care – including mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing – is vital to ensuring that your needs are met. It’s probably what we neglect the most.

We are looking for true stories about how you realized a certain habit or attitude was detrimental to you, what you did to change that, and the difference it made in your life.

Here are some ideas that might prompt you to recall a story you’d like to share:

– Your strategy for making new habits that are better for you
– Your strategy for breaking bad habits
– How you made a conscious decision to change
– How changing your habits and attitudes reduced your stress and improved your fitness, health, relationships, work, fun…
– How proper self-care improved your life
– What changes did you make to put yourself first on your “To-Do” list?
– Did you eliminate people from your life, or at least reduce your exposure to them, as part of your plan? And if you couldn’t, did you at least change how you reacted to them?
– Did you take back control of your life? Take back the power?
– Did stepping outside your comfort zone help you create new, better habits?
– How deviating from your routine helped you break a habit
– Did keeping a journal help?
– How you made a new, good habit and conquered an old, bad one
– Breaking familiar patterns and how that helped
– Baby steps to change – step by step
– Learning to say “no” – setting boundaries
– Learning to ask for help
– Did you work with someone to make the changes? An accountability partner? A family member or friend?
– Did you teach someone else how to break bad habits, make new ones, change their attitude, reclaim their power?
– Have you become more assertive or outspoken? Changed how someone treated you?

You have time! If this story callout has prompted you to make a positive change in your life – that one you’ve been thinking about – then go for it. Make the change and then write about it in a few months!

This book is slated for Summer or Fall 2025 and the deadline for submissions is August 31, 2024.

Recipe for a Winning Chicken Soup for the Soul Submission

A Chicken Soup for the Soul story is an inspirational, true story about ordinary people having extraordinary experiences. It is a story that opens the heart and rekindles the spirit. It is a simple piece that touches our readers and helps them discover basic principles they can use in their own lives. These stories are personal and often filled with emotion and drama. They are filled with vivid images created by using the five senses. In some stories, the readers feel that they are actually in the scene with the people.

Chicken Soup for the Soul stories are written in the first person and have a beginning, middle and an end. The stories often close with a punch, creating emotion, rather than simply talking about it. Chicken Soup for the Soul stories have heart, but also something extra—an element that makes us all feel more hopeful, more connected, more thankful, more passionate and better about life in general. A good story causes tears, laughter, goose bumps or any combination of these.

The most powerful stories are about people extending themselves, or performing an act of love, service or courage for another person.

Guidelines for a Chicken Soup for the Soul story

1. Tell an exciting, heartwarming or funny story about something that has happened to you or someone you know. Your story should be written in the first person and should be about yourself or someone close to you.
2. Tell your story in a way that will make the reader cry, laugh, get goose bumps or say “Wow!”
3. The story should start “in the action” and draw in the reader. Do not start your story with an introduction about what you are going to say, or end with a concluding paragraph about what you just said.
4. Don’t be afraid to speak from the heart. Many people tell personal stories for the first time in our books, and they find it to be a cathartic and productive experience. We do let you use a pen name for your story if you do not want to use your real name.
5. Don’t try fancy moves with tenses. Writing in the present tense about something that happened in the past rarely works.
6. Keep your story to 1200 words or less. Tighten, tighten, tighten!
7. Your story must be true. No fiction, no creative writing.

What a Chicken Soup for the Soul story IS NOT:

1. A sermon, an essay or eulogy.
2. An “as told to” story written by you for someone else. If you ghost-write a story for someone, we thank you for helping that person share his or her story. That person’s name will be listed as the author and he or she can acknowledge your help in the bio section.
3. A term paper, thesis, letter or journal entry.
4. About politics or controversial issues.
5. A biography or testimonial.
6. A journalistic article about a third party that reads like a newspaper article.

Guidelines for a Chicken Soup for the Soul poem

1. We love poems that tell a story. A Chicken Soup for the Soul poem does the same job as a story. The reader goes away having learned your story, just through poetry instead of prose.
2. We do not publish poems that do not tell a story.
3. We also do not publish poems that seem overly focused on rhyming and read more like greeting cards.