creativity Archives

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

March 29, 2018

This guest post from Shalagh Hogan shows how gathering lessons of self-knowledge over time can lead to wholehearted Creative Soul Living.

This is the eighth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, with each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I am honoured to have Shalagh Hogan as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Shalagh for sharing her story and photographs. Shalagh and I connected on Instagram via our love of creativity. Her story shows how growth and self-knowledge accumulate over time. Embracing creativity wholeheartedly via parenting, blogging, community, writing and social media, Shalagh’s gathering lessons evolve into Creative Soul Living. Read on to find out more!

Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Despite my low self-esteem and anxieties, I have enthusiastically gathered my self-knowledge with hope for a better life. I accept as a given, my need to seek and grow a more whole version of my formerly fragmented self. Yet up to even a few years ago, the concept of Wholehearted Living, or what I call Creative Soul Living, was still just a conceptual inkling. Having never felt whole, the definition and the feeling of wholeness eluded me.

One lesson at a time is how my self-guided journey has unfolded. I am busy gathering my lessons which rise like cream to the top. From the more important lessons about creativity, community, connection, self-care, and self-trust, I have learned who I truly am, what makes me happiest, and who I want to proudly see myself being. Growth takes its time, yet I always feel like my biggest and best lessons are the ones that have just happened.

Valuing intuition and introversion

As a child, I was fragmented. I held too many pains involving too many people. My self-mirrors were broken, and the chaos was draining. I was a creative with no permission to be me. As a teen, much-needed hope collided with my insatiable appetite for knowledge when my mother’s pursuit of a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences showed me that knowledge was power, and we can use this power to choose our life’s outcome.

It was then, I also began my life-long journal writing practice, developing my inner voice (which I now know to be my intuition) and the voice of my blog. It was then too that my Myers-Briggs test results pegged me as an ENFP. Although this felt mostly right, last year I was relieved to discover and own that I am equal parts Introvert and Extrovert. Although, for many years I neglected my creative callings, the introverted time I now take to think, write, and create are my self-care practices.

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

My self-care became essential when I was 38 and pregnant with my son. My anxieties and the last of my self-destructive behaviours shook and woke me. It became clear, how I treated myself would be how my kids would treat themselves. Doing as I did and not as I said, my children would inherit my anxieties, my self-doubt, and my repressed creativity. I truly committed then to taking better care of and healing myself mentally and physically that my children might hopefully do the same. Eventually, I quit smoking, I began eating better, and I continued to seek therapy.

My biggest authentic self “aha”, on which the rest of my work truly depended, was given to me in a therapy session. The therapist offered that I had low self-esteem. At first, I raged against this mis-definition of me. If I wasn’t who I thought I was, who was I then? Yet, this information freed me like a bird from my heart cage. I wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, nor did I need to help fix anyone I knew. Instead, I needed to have compassion and love for my humanity. And again, I began gathering my lessons.

Writing and connecting to heal

Bad things can happen for good reason, it may just take a while to see why. When my son was one, an American economic slump forced me to close my lovely little gift and antiques store named Bally Eden and I returned home to mourn the loss of my dream shop. I was anxious and desperate not to be stuck at home with my fast-growing-soon-to-be-a-toddler boy without something “just for me”. Encouraged by an old whisper in my ear, I began to write personal essays and publish them online. It then took five more years to start my blog at Shalavee.com which has just turned six.

I purposed the blog to make me a better writer, create a living resume, and voice my lessons regularly. While I achieved these goals, it was the community and relationships I’ve developed here online during my writing journey which have been my truest gift. My new unseen friends and our connections and courtships via comments and kind letters elevated my ego and gave me an immensely better self-image; a self-reflection where there once was none. I began to see my beauty and not my broken. And, as my voice of pain and healing came through on my blog, my readers said, “Keep writing what you are writing. We feel this way too.” Authenticity and vulnerability were my win/win.

Healing through community creativity

These voices from my community have helped to shift my purpose to offering others my voice to speak through. Our self-reflections echo each other through our communications and we begin to see ourselves as both individuals and as a collective of women with one voice of self-love and acceptance. We are gathering our lessons together. Strangers have become mirrors I will treasure forever, and the internet helped make me visible and whole again.

Although I was terrified, in May of 2016, my community encouraged me to host my first Instagram Challenge called the Soul Selfie challenge. For one week, we explored our souls, our fears, and our truths together in a deeper way via the hashtag #Soul_Selfie. My esteem and courage to lead increased incredibly as I hosted another that Fall and two more in 2017.

Then a small gathering on the evening of the first women’s march in January of 2017, inspired me to start a mindful meet-up group of my own in real life. We meet monthly to discuss a soul topic, eat well, and drink prosecco. We witness, acknowledge, and validate one another and that is so very necessary to my process of seeing my wholehearted self. I have created what I needed which benefits me and others and heals us all.

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Two years ago, even with all the progress in my writing and my self-healing, I knew my anxieties were still running the show. I found a new kick-butt therapist, a new resolve, and heading into my 50’s saw me amp up my efforts of self-discovery and visibility. Reading was one huge resource I used to finally reach the summit of the value hill I’d struggled to climb my entire life. I discovered I could say and mean, “I can”.

I read four books last year with willful intention to change my life’s outlook and my understanding of myself. First, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert gifted me with such validity and permission for my creative process. I came to understand that I was an Uber-Creative and my inner child needed to be creatively indulged until she trusted me again. From this, I was inspired to create online projects and a creative community to support myself and others in being our creative selves.

I had barely put Big Magic down when I read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. From her brilliant work, I came to understand the necessity of community, vulnerability, and authenticity. Disconnection is our worst fear and we need to be authentic to belong to, trust, and reconnect with ourselves. And I now understand there’s a connection between creativity and vulnerability.

Then, on my therapist’s recommendation, I read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns which was the very first book that permitted me to understand and name my anxieties. I learned how to refute the lies called Cognitive Distortions that cause them. Eventually, this book helped me win the battle against my anxieties.

And lastly, on Terri’s suggestion, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. This book showed me that I may be even more capable of making a difference in the world if I allow myself the time and visibility to work on and publish my theories. My deeper thinking and writing will help me and the world, and this feels like a noble purpose.

Creativity conquers all

While reading and gathering my lessons, I became aware of an internal dissonance which my therapist suggested was my inner child throwing tantrums. It seems denying my creativity had my creative inner child furious at me for not allowing her to play. So I decided to just give her what she wanted.

First, I indulged in thirty days of creating paper collage through an online creative community challenge. Having really enjoyed that, I created my own Instagram challenge called Our Creative May and this gave me another month straight to play. From this, our IG creative community established the hashtag #ourcreativeselves to continue posting our creations. I immediately did another challenge in June and July creating daily postcard art for the #ICAD project.

Four months straight of daily creating and continuous authenticity had proven that I did have enough time to create and I was trustworthy. My creative indulgence grounded me and greatly dissipated more of my anxieties. As I continue to replace the slave-driving parent who preaches art as impractical with the compassionate empowering present parent, I recreate a trust in myself proving my word is good. Self-trust is the truest most important result of our authentic creativity.

As my anxiety diminished, I began to understand this powerful lesson of how creativity and anxiety cannot coexist, and how indulging one represses the other. Love and presence conquer fear.

Creative Soul Living

This profound understanding of the inverse relationship between creativity and anxiety, and knowing many others need permission to create too, led me to develop and lead a Creativity Workshop this past November of 2017. I believe that our permission to live more creatively is necessary and integral to us being wholehearted individuals. I believe less consumerism and more Creativism will heal the world as we find creative solutions to its problems.

Creative Soul Living is the term I use to describe my process of Wholehearted Living. I intentionally seek and share my life lessons, prioritize my creativity in all areas of my life, develop my self-trust, value authenticity, commit to self-care, am mindful and present, stay connected with my people, and intuit my grandest Why for being here. And while my Why continues to firm up and my path widens, I know I have fought to reach my here and now, gathering my lessons one lesson at a time.

My future “I can” will include more creativity workshops, e-books, and eventually a book about crafting our own life plans based on our life lessons. My inward soul work has brought me the gift of knowing me and that feels like permission to hope. Hope is what I want to share with the world through my writing.

Photos and artwork by Shalagh Hogan used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns

Deep Work by Cal Newport

About Shalagh Hogan

Shalagh Hogan, said Shay-la, is a personal essayist, a blogger, a designer, an uber-creative, and mother to a five-year-old ginger girl and just turned teen boy. She resides in an ancient house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA, and is always amazed and amused by life’s abundance of lessons. Thrice-weekly she shares the lessons she gathers on her blog at Shalavee.com (Chez La Vie was taken) and currently, Creativity is her Why. Follow her as @shalaghhogan on Facebook and Instagram.

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey.

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coaching creativity transcending

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

March 22, 2018

Coaching goals can be many and varied with surprising connections. Learning the value of being a healthy creative has taught me about resilience and strength.

Coaching goals and connections

Working in a coaching series with coach buddy, Jeanette Buchanan, as part of my Beautiful You Coaching Academy program this time last year, I found myself setting a key goal around being healthy. My goal was to ‘feel stronger and sexier’. I was keen to tap into and learn from Jeanette’s love of exercise and passion for physical fitness.

At that time, I wasn’t moving a lot. I was just getting back into walking, knowing I needed to be exercising more and building my strength. Coaching became a search for the right type of exercise as a form of self-care and personal resilience.

I was going through some tough times in my transition journey. With plans in place to leave a long-term job role, my life changed completely as I supported my mother who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

I was as surprised as anyone that the coaching goals I focused on were about exercise and building strength. As a creative and writer, it’s easy to think only in terms of those aspects of life – creativity and getting ideas and words down. But to be our best creative selves, we need to be strong and healthy in body and in mind. Going through the journey of being a carer with my mother taught me so much about the value of self-care as we care for others.

Through my coaching experience, I realized the value of coaching goals about movement, strength and health as central to my well-being and life as a creative and supporter of others. When these areas of our lives are in a stronger place, we are more wholehearted and better prepared for managing whatever comes our way.

Swimming and exercise goals

In my work in my life coaching series with Jeanette, I opened up the door to exploring the exercise I loved as a child and young adult. Through free-writing, I revisited how much I loved swimming, also yoga, tai chi and dancing. But swimming shone through as something to get back to. I wrote:

Swimming is something I also enjoy though I haven’t done it for a while. I don’t like the chemicals and chlorine and pool side of it so this turns me off a bit. And I’ve never really seen the beach as a place to do laps as such. But that can change. I realise the benefits of swimming and it could be good for my back and body at this time.

Just opening up that door seemed to work wonders as it often does with coaching and listening to our inner wisdom.

One day just after I wrote this, exactly a year ago now, I was out walking along the beach in my village and bumped into a friend who had just been swimming in the bay. He told me about a group of local swimmers who swam Monday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings in the sea where I live. I didn’t know about this group and it sounded exciting. My friend took me to coffee with the swimming group that morning and introduced me, telling them all I was joining the group. And I embraced it all wholeheartedly.

Finding the best exercise for us

I’ve written here about 10 amazing life lessons from swimming in the sea and what it has taught me. Swimming is the perfect exercise for me. Writing about my relationship with different forms of exercise as part of coaching helped me get back to something I have always loved. But I’d become disconnected from it and had to rediscover this love.

Here’s a picture of me when I was little in my swimmers in what I now recognize as my natural environment – swimming in rivers and the sea.

I had forgotten how much I loved swimming as a child. Forgotten too that I even used to teach young kids to swim to share my love. I’ve also lived beside mountain rivers and relished the peace and calm from swimming there.

And here’s a picture of me as I donned my first ever wetsuit at the age of 55 and kept swimming through winter last year, rekindling this love and feeling stronger all the time.

Being in movement and keeping healthy through swimming has become a critical mainstay in being a healthy creative. Finding the right exercise that I love has been paramount. As Stephanie Stokes Oliver says in ‘Seven Soulful Secrets’:

The key to staying motivated is to find an activity that you enjoy doing.

This is so true in my experience. Swimming to me is no longer a chore or challenge. I’m really disappointed when, for some reason, I can’t go. I love it so much and the feeling when I dive in and start swimming among fish, breathing deeply in and out is the most calming and meditative of spaces. It helps me feel I can manage so much.

Celebrating exercise milestones

I celebrated 12 months of swimming in the sea with a ferry jump swim yesterday. This meant catching the local ferry out to the middle of the bay in our swimmers, flippers, swim mask and snorkel. All quite hilarious – then jumping off the ferry into the bay and swimming back. The weather and water were both wild and it was a tough one kilometre plus swim in a strong swell pushing against us.

But it was exhilarating. I felt so alive as I pushed my boundaries and could feel my resilience, strength, courage and calm from 12 months of swimming. I am so much stronger, fitter and hell, maybe even sexier? It’s certainly helped me to weather so much with courage and adaptability. It was great to celebrate this exercise and resilience milestone in a way that embodied what it taught me.

Being a healthy creative – what it has taught me

Being stronger in this way has taught me so much about the value of being a healthy creative. If we are going to write books, run entrepreneurial businesses and launch creative programs to support others, we need to be strong in body and mind.

Swimming in the sea has taught me to be in the moment. Each day I swim is different – the weather, the water, the fish and the currents. The beach is different each day and so am I, in terms of what is happening to me and how I am feeling. Through breathing and moving through whatever circumstances I face in the water, I have learnt the resilience of moving through each day with strength.

Over the past year, I’ve complemented swimming with walking, yoga, morning pages, journaling, coaching, intuitive work with tarot, blogging and writing longer length pieces such as my 36 Books free ebook. All these practices have helped me to be a healthy creative.

All of this has helped me to realise that being a healthy creative is about sustainability and fitness for the long haul. It’s no easy task to write a book, as I have found as I reached the 80,000-word mark in my ‘Wholehearted – self-leadership for women in transition’ book draft this week!

Being fitter and stronger, getting exercise, being in nature, breathing deeply and learning about managing different conditions have all been outcomes of swimming and exercise that have helped me reach my creativity and writing goals. They have been integral to helping me get those words down.

Coaching clients’ experiences

As I have worked with creative coaching clients, I have found that goals about exercise and being in movement often arise and support creativity goals. It’s been wonderful to support clients to find their own special kind of exercise and movement that supports their resilience and creativity.

It’s not always a straightforward journey as some of my clients have found. Perhaps it’s because, as writers and creatives, we are often introverts and book lovers. Our natural habitat often includes features like a desk, a computer, a notebook, a cafe (and coffee), artwork and plenty of books. We might relish the outdoors and nature. But it’s easy to get stuck, ironically by our own creativity, and not get out the door into any form of stretching ourselves through exercise.

Sylvia’s journey

I worked with the wonderfully creative and inspiring Sylvia Barnowski on her creativity goals and we found ourselves working on exercise. Sylvia sums it up this way:

After our initial meeting, I realized that it would be a good idea to use coaching to start working on something I would describe as a “lost cause”. I was struggling with this goal for the past few years and I actually started believing that I won’t be able to achieve much. So, I added a third goal – exercising. I knew if I could do even the smallest progress on this goal – it would be something really big for me. Adding this third goal felt like a big shift, raising the bar for myself and for Terri.

After weeks of defeat and trying various things, I finally found an exercise class that my body loved. It was challenging but it felt really good. That was a huge change, seeing myself going to the class every week and being excited about it.

You can read more about Sylvia’s journey of coaching with me here. I was so excited to support Sylvia through her own ‘learning to love exercise’ journey. Finding a way to move that felt right and supported other goals was pivotal. It was fabulous to see how this goal helped ignite and complement Sylvia’s personal and professional creative practice goals.

Sylvia Barnowski

The Healthy Writer

I recently read The Healthy Writer by Joanna Penn and Dr Euan Lawson and will post a full review here in the next few weeks. This book, co-written to reflect writing, personal and GP perspectives, traverses all aspects of writing and self-care including exercise, writing practices, back pain, RSI and mental health.

As my Goodreads review summarises:

Excellent read on writing and self-care by indie author and creative Joanna Penn and GP Dr Euan Lawson. I listened to it as an audiobook which was valuable and found it was like being prompted to review my writing practices and approaches by wise and gentle coaches. Plenty of practical advice on a range of health issues including back issues, RSI, mental health, fitness and practices for the creative long haul. Recommended reading/listening to sharpen your own health regime and writing practices to ensure you are fit for creativity and life generally for the long haul.

I look forward to a deeper dive on this book with you soon given the importance of these issues for our health and well-being as creatives.

How about you?

So here are some tips if you are thinking about your health as a creative and exploring some exercise, movement and wellbeing practices to support your writing and creative goals:

Write about the exercise you loved as a child and see what comes up.
Journal about what you are doing now to exercise and what would make your heart sing.
Reflect on the practices that support you as a creative and see where build movement in more.
Read ‘The Healthy Writer’ – available as an audiobook and a great read in this form.
Commit to doing some form of exercise in the next week, even if it is as simple as walking a few days a week for 20 minutes just to get moving. And build from there.
Find a class that attracts you – yoga, tai chi, exercise, pilates – and enjoy learning from others to get you going with your own practice.

And if you’d like to explore these areas as you choose to journey deeper into your wholehearted journey, I’d love to work with you. I’m currently open for free 30-45 minute consultations via Zoom or Skype to see where you might like to explore further in a coaching series with me. It can be a fabulous and life-changing step, so I encourage you to reach out if it’s calling you.

Here’s where I swim, enjoying the beautiful energy it brings to me. All best wishes to you as you explore possible coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative.

Photo by David Kennedy Photography

Feature image via pexels.com

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available in March + April for an April/May coaching start so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way.

You can download my free 94-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Creative practice in my tool-kit to make the most of this year’s energies

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

Your body of work – the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

creativity inspiration & influence

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

February 16, 2018

Joy is my word for the year for 2018. Here are 18 quotes about joy, spirit and soulful work sparking my year. I hope they inspire you too.

Choosing a word for the year is like deciding on a destination for how you want to feel but not knowing how it will play out. It’s like setting an intention for feeling the tone of the year with no plan for the details. Inviting the energy of a word into your life, you wait to see how it unfolds and manifests.

PASSION was my word for the year for 2017. It was such an inspiring way to get back to what I love as a guiding force in my life. I shared 17 quotes about passion about the driving energy of doing what you love. Last year was a challenging journey which took me back to the heart of what I love as the map and soul of its next steps.

I discovered passion was about feeling your authentic heart, in my case writing, and getting it into its rightful place in your life. It was about following my intuition more deeply and finding a vision that went beyond the everyday. Moreover, it was a guide for transition in a year of crossing over to a new place, sensing potential, seeing opportunity and knowing how to combine my skills in new ways. It was about learning to play bigger and weave all that has happened to me into a book, a new way of living, a new career, a creative life. In there also was an understanding of my uniqueness, the elements that combine as passions within me. As Meryl Streep reminds us:

What makes you different and weird, that’s your strength.

Finding joy

So in turning the corner into 2018 after a challenging time, joy was beckoning me. Sometimes you can take a while to work through your word for the year; other times it arrives, more obviously and insistently. And then there are synchronicities also, like the card my daughter gave me for Christmas. It was a beautifully crafted message of JOY made from handpainted Egyptian papyrus. This sealed the deal perfectly.

As often happens with your word of the year, you have a sense of its meaning but a deeper dive yields surprises and connections. And there is serendipity and further synchronicity too.

This week via an inspiring webinar on Energy Matters in Coaching with Meg Mann I was introduced to the work of David R Hawkins. In particular, we were shown his map of the scale of consciousness as we progress through achieving greater levels of consciousness. And my eye zeroed in on JOY sitting right up near the top described by way of self-view as “complete” and emotion as “serenity”.

David R Hawkins says of the energy of this phase:

As we move up towards this level, inner joy, quiet, and inner knowingness begin to take place. Within this energy field, we connect with something that is rocklike and ever present.

So this year’s focus is no lightweight endeavour but one that has enormous potential to calm and ground me. I knew choosing joy this year was always going to be a challenging task and this scale just helped highlight this.

Being unapologetically joyful

As part of a Goddess Roadtrip Sydney workshop recently on ‘being seen’, we were asked by Jade McKenzie to stand up and say to the group what we were unapologetically going to be this year. Given my focus for the year, I chose “joyful”, but when I stood up to say the words “This year I will be unapologetically joyful…”, I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was so mired in grief after the very recent loss of my mother. Eventually, I did say the words with the support of a room of beautiful women who held space for me, quietly, as I got there. But in this moment, I realised the intensity and depth of exploration in this journey of learning about joy this year. In part, it’s about allowing the juxtaposition of grief and joy in my life, something that can seem an uncomfortable fit just now.

Quotes about joy

I love quotes. The distilled wisdom of others in the form of words we can hold, repeat, learn from and reflect on is a balm and portal for me.

I found the 17 quotes on PASSION last year were a place to start from, a way to begin to explore the terrain of what it meant. Frequently, I returned to those words as I did to the Pinterest page I created on PASSION. Both are great ways to unravel the multiple meanings and nuances of words as we seek to explore them in our lives.

So to commence my exploration of JOY in 2018, here are 18 quotes about JOY to begin to tease out its contours and character for this year’s journey. I hope you find some inspiration for your journey this year.

“We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy.” – Joseph Campbell

“If all you did was just look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyous, spectacular life.” – Abraham-Hicks

“Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

“The body heals with play, the mind heals with laughter and the spirit heals with joy.” – Proverb

“Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” – Mooji

“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” – Brene Brown

“Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.” – Anne Lamott

“Strive not to get more done, but to have less to do.” – Francine Jay

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” – Maya Angelou

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi

“Your joy is where you locate your white hot Truth – your pure-burning is-ness, from where you have the creative power to turn thought into matter.” – Danielle LaPorte

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” – Marianne Williamson

“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” – C. S. Lewis

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” – Annie Proulx

“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you decide to enjoy your life.” – Joyce Meyer

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

“JOY is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and self forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the street, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter: the sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was other than us.” – David Whyte

Do read the whole David Whyte’s beautiful meditation on JOY from which these words come. It is pure magic. They are such a balm for the soul. It seems like much of this work on joy is about spirit, inner stillness and soul, quiet writing perhaps. I welcome joy in as we venture forward together getting to know each other in a deeper way this year.

Share your thoughts

Which is your favourite quote from these ones? Or do you have another quote or thought on joy that inspires you? What does joy mean to you? Would love to hear – share your thoughts in the comments!

Keep in touch

Sign up + get your copy of my free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story: Reading as Creative Influence’

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Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type assessment.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

How I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention to make the most of this year

The unique voice of what we love

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

Image of me above by David Kennedy photography with thanks.

creativity inspiration & influence

Secret superpowers for creative inspiration and energy

February 7, 2018

The creative practices in my tool-kit I plan to use to manifest energy and intention to make the most of this year – part 3. This week – secret superpowers!

We all need a magic tool-kit of practical tools, workbooks, teachers, coaches, connections and community. This helps us make the most of our desires, plans and intentions.

First, we need to reflect on where we’ve been and what we’ve learnt. Then we need to plan and set intentions. And then we need to make them happen with practical action steps.

And the magic web that surrounds all of this is the company we keep, the books we read and the tools we choose to help manifest energy and intention in the best way possible.

So here’s part 3 of my tool-kit for how I plan to manifest energy and intention to make the most of this year. This focuses on the secret superpower in my creative practices toolkit. I hope it inspires you to better recognise or build your own creative resources for this year. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Secret superpowers

Some creative practices are more obvious than others. Others are like secret superpowers, so secret sometimes we don’t even realise or acknowledge their power. These practices can be so natural and woven into our daily life that we fail to realise their influence on us. Stepping back though, we can see that these practices have a subtle yet powerful impact especially when we engage with them over time. Others might be areas we are learning about so their effect can be felt as a ripple gently flowing into and through our lives.

So here is my list of secret superpowers for this year:

Reading, reading, reading
Swimming – and other exercise
This year’s planner of choice
Working with crystals

And here is a bit more about why they are such powerful practices in my life now and heading into this year.

Reading, reading, reading

Reading is such a secret superpower and an everyday activity for many of us that we can take for granted. So important to me as a source of creative influence, I chose to focus on this for the free ebook gift for signing up to Quiet Writing. In my ‘36 Books that Shaped my Story‘ ebook, I take a deep dive into the books that have helped to shape my life because reading does this for us in a myriad of ways.

Every book we read teaches us something and influences us. It might be the comfort reading of a novel and appreciating the gift of this at a tough time. Perhaps it’s a non-fiction book that has a huge impact and helps us reorient our thinking as Tara Mohr’s ‘Playing Big’ did for me recently. Each book we engage with is a gift to value and the challenge is to harness this most magical of secret superpowers so we can make the most of it.

Making reading a priority instead of it being pushed aside by social media in this age of distraction is a powerful choice. Learning to read more efficiently, creatively and actively can help immensely with our growth and creative productivity. Enjoying reading and working its pleasures and practicalities as one of our secret superpowers has the most amazing return on the investment of our time. And with audiobook and ebook options, reading has never been so accessible or available. Harness its energies to help craft your story! And stay tuned for some Quiet Writing deeper dive inspiration into your reading history and legacy soon.

Swimming – and other exercise

I’ve written about how swimming was such a big shift in feeling stronger and fitter last year in my post, 10 amazing life lessons from swimming in the sea. This was one of the most popular posts on Quiet Writing last year so clearly this connected with people. The amazing life lessons are about the fact that swimming and any form of exercise is about so much more than the exercise itself.

Whether it’s the camaraderie or the solo effort, the building of resilience, the pushing of barriers, the learning from persisting or the physical feeling you get from the activity, the sum of the parts results in a secret superpower that’s hard to define.

Swimming has helped me to improve my breathing as an asthma sufferer and strengthen my arms and cardio performance. It helped me with self-care and sorting out many things in the gentle rhythm of stroke after stroke. It’s been a huge but subtle factor in keeping in movement in a challenging year.

I have two tips regarding exercise as one of the best secret superpowers.

Firstly, find a form of exercise that you love that works for you. And in working this out, go back to what you loved as a child. I went back to swimming as a result of coaching and reflecting on how I loved swimming as a child but didn’t like chlorine pools and doing laps. Soon after, I bumped into a friend in town who told me about the local swimming group that swims in the ocean three times a week. And so I now swim a kilometre in the sea three times a week and I love it. Who would have thought? Not me. But now if I don’t go, I miss it terribly.

Secondly, find a form of exercise that suits your personality type. Stephanie Stokes Oliver in ‘Seven Soulful Secrets’ suggests as examples:

fitness classes, team sport and one-on-one games for social types
walking, running, cycling, skating, swimming, skiing and weight training as solitary pursuits
rock-climbing or training for a marathon if you like adventure or challenging yourself.

This is so true! Swimming is the perfect exercise for introverts; you can still swim with a group or have coffee afterwards for the social side. But it’s head down and in your own world when you are swimming and that’s perfect for me. Find the exercise secret superpowers for your personality type or personal needs and this will be great motivation.

This year’s planner of choice

I don’t know about you but the planner I choose to accompany me through the year is always a big decision. Whilst we might have our digital calendars, many of choose to have a planner to help us with the big picture planning and the day to day work in bringing it to fruition. This is where we are really working creatively and manifesting energies to make the most of the year.

Lately, I seem to be changing my planners depending on my focus for the year. This year I have chosen to work with Nicole Cody’s ‘The Year of M.E. Planner‘ with M.E. standing for ‘Manifesting Energies’. As Nicole says of her planner:

The Year of ME Planner allows you to create your own map – to a life that is intuitive, intentional and purposeful. ME stands for Manifesting Energies, but it also stands for you. This is about YOU mindfully creating a life more aligned with your dreams.

This planner integrates intuitive practices such as crystals and tarot and oracle into its pages as well as month to month running sheets to capture actions. It’s only early February, but I think working with this intuitive planner will be one of the key secret superpowers for my year.

Working with crystals

Working with crystals is a newer practice for me, something I’ve dabbled in but not worked on consistently. It turns out Nicole Cody is also a crystal farmer – so I signed up for her crystal pack aligned with ‘The Year of Me’. This means I have a set of beautifully prepared and aligned crystals for working with this year’s energies. Each month, there are two crystals aligned to the energies of the month so it’s an opportunity to learn about crystals in practice as well as to integrate them into the year’s planning and intention setting.

This month’s crystals, for example, are Banded Agate and Sunstone. ‘The Year of Me Planner’ explains that:

Banded Agate creates a sense of safety, peace and belonging. It also helps to anchor change. Sunstone helps us to sit in a place of abundance thinking so that we can see blessings and possibilities in our life.

Working with these crystals in an integrated way has a sense of working with secret superpowers that I am still learning. I’ve always loved the solidity of rocks and geology and so it’s fascinating to connect with this grounded and spiritual energy at a time of change this year.

So that’s part 3 of how I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention this year. I look forward to learning about what these secret superpowers have to teach me as part of my toolkit and plan to manifest energy in 2018. Along with coaching, writing, personality, tarot and many other practical resources, I feel ready for making the most of this year’s potential!

How about you?

I’d love to hear about your secret superpowers and supports for how you plan to manifest energy in 2018! Share your tips and plans in the comments or via social media.

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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You might also enjoy:

How I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention to make the most of this year

Creative practices in my toolkit to make this most of this year’s energies

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave (and helpful)

Intuition, writing and work – eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

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Creative practices in my toolkit to make the most of this year’s energies

January 26, 2018

The creative practices in my tool-kit I plan to use to manifest energy and intention to make the most of this year – part 2.

We all need a magic tool-kit of practical tools, workbooks, teachers, coaches, connections and community. This helps us make the most of our desires, plans and intentions.

First, we need to reflect on where we’ve been and what we’ve learnt. Then we need to plan and set intentions. And then we need to make them happen with practical action steps.

And the magic web that surrounds all of this is the company we keep, the books we read and the tools we choose to help manifest energy and intention in the best way possible.

So here’s part 2 of my tool-kit for how I plan to manifest energy and intention to make the most of this year. This focuses on the creative practices in my tool-kit. I hope it inspires you to better recognise or build your own creative resources for this year. You can read part 1 here.

Becoming a life coach

Becoming a life coach through the fabulous Beautiful You Coaching Academy was a big focus in 2017 as I moved through a major life transition. I’m shifting from a 30+ year career in the government sector to a more self-driven creative business focus. It’s been an exciting shift, moving little by little in a challenging couple of years. But I’m ready now to launch more fully into my life coaching business focused on creativity and career coaching. And I can’t wait.

Becoming a life coach builds on my body of work over many years as a teacher, adult educator, leader in vocational education, online learning specialist and strategic policy adviser. In all of these roles, I focused on making a difference, creativity, innovation, mentoring others, leadership and self-leadership. I bring all of this experience into my coaching work to help women create a more fully-rounded, whole-hearted story and life, just as I have done.

You can work with me in 2018 – just send me an email at terri@quietwriting.com and I’ll send you further information.

Being coached yourself

Becoming a life coach also means working on yourself and your own development in an ongoing way. I’ve experienced the value of coaching myself over the past two years as I’ve made this transition. I realised I could no longer stay where I was. It was no longer serving me and my creative heart was calling me. Life coaching helped me make the plan for a new creative path.

Learning the value of being coached and putting it into practice has been a key platform of my creative living toolkit in the past few years. It helps keep the focus on your authentic desires, front and centre.

So to help me in this year, I’ve joined up with Caroline Donahue’s group coaching program, the Coffee Shop Writers Group, to make sure my writing gets done as the authentic heart of Quiet Writing. I can talk about writing all day but unless I am doing it, it’s all pretty hollow! Working with fellow writers in the context of an online, international support team and with an inspiring writing coach as our lead is a perfect way to get my priority work done. Sometimes we need to carve out the time and prioritise support for ourselves in this way. And life coaching in some way shape or form is always a fabulous investment in yourself, with an excellent return on that investment in so many ways.

Writing, writing, writing

Did I mention writing? Linked to the above, writing is the heart of Quiet Writing – my creative practice. It’s how I start my days via Morning Pages, writing to settle into the day, reflect and make plans. Then there’s blogging here regularly, guest blogging including at WorkSearch and Life Reaction, as well as drafting books, with one well on the way at 70K words at this point. I am so looking forward to taking my writing into the editing and self-publishing phase this year.

Personality type work

A key part of Quiet Writing is understanding yourself and your personality type and how it works as a guide to wholehearted self-leadership. Understanding my Jung/Myers-Briggs INTJ personality was a critical step for me in my life. Working through this with a certified personality type practitioner and coach enabled me to proceed with fuller self-knowledge. I embraced my strengths instead of seeing them as weaknesses and learnt to work them. It also helped me understand where I can be more well-rounded by working on my less preferred cognitive functions.

Because all of this made such a difference for me, I’ve skilled up in the area of personality type to become a certified practitioner and share this insight with others.

This knowledge of personality type as part of my creative practices tool-kit weaves its way into everything I do. I will be offering personality type assessment in a standalone offering with one hour’s intensive 1:1 coaching, as well as the option to work through personality type as a lead into a 6 session coaching series for a deeper dive. As with coaching, personality work is an ongoing journey of understanding yourself. I look forward to sharing my knowledge in this exciting area in creative and new ways this year.

Energy healing, channelling and spirituality

Activating my energy, healing and spirituality was a priority last year and continues into this year – and let’s face it, why not forever! I’ve been working with Amber Adrian, storyteller, writer, channeller and energy healer for nearly two years now. It’s the quiet backbone of my life as I seek a deeper spirituality and engage with guides, the sacred creative and energy healing.

It’s hard to describe the power of this connection in supporting me and unleashing magic and creativity. As Amber says in recent communication about magic:

Magic simply flows in, once you’ve given spirit (god, the universe, your angels, your higher self) a doorway. A window. Even a crack. Give them a bit of room and they’re on it.

Open up a new highway for them and they’ll work astonishing miracles with you and your life and your dreams. Because they want you to have everything you desire – everything you want to do, be, create, have, and experience in your life here.

You just need to give magic room to step in.

So part of my creative practices tool-kit is making space for magic. Because as I said in my last post via Roald Dahl:

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Being in rhythm and working with lunar cycles

Another key part of my creative practices tool-kit is working with the cycles of the moon. Dr Ezzie Spencer’s fabulous Lunar Abundance website and book ‘An Abundant Life’ provided rich input last year. It helped me be more aware of the cycles of the moon as part of my creative practices. I also worked with Ezzie as part of her group coaching Book Whispering project in 2017 to better connect with rhythms and cycles for creativity. This helped me get my book draft well underway as a lead into NaNoWriMo where I eventually wrote 50K words in one month.

Working with lunar cycles and the yin and yang phases is now a central part of my creative practices helping me to set and realise powerful intentions. I connect it with tarot for a fabulous intuitive deep dive at key times like the New Moon and Full Moon.

Working with intuition via tarot and oracle

Working with tarot and oracle cards as an intuitive tool for tapping into wisdom and insight is one of Quiet Writing’s core creative practices. I learnt about these areas more, developed my daily practice and then shared it publicly from June to December last year on Instagram. This was an excellent support and intuitive learning process that people valued. I learnt so much from it including about visual elements of my creative practices and social media work, but it was very time-consuming. And if I am going to get my business up, life-coaching sessions happening regularly, and write my book and see it published, I needed to work out a more sustainable way to approach this.

So I am sharing weekly Tarot Narrative readings on Quiet Writing here and also via Instagram and Facebook. This creative practice helps me focus my intentions and work with manifesting energies. And as with my daily readings, it’s a way of sharing intuitive guidance with others including key books, quotes and thoughts to support your creative practices. This week’s reading is about exploring magic.

I’m planning to gather up all my Tarot Narrative readings from 2017 into an ebook for each month for reference for readers. Even though they are an intuitive reading at a point in time, the thoughts and references are timeless and given the work and hours spent, it makes sense to share in this form. They will be part of the soon to come Wholehearted Inspiration Library and free to Quiet Writing subscribers. So do sign up to Quiet Writing (pop your email in the box to the right or below) so you will know when the free library is live – as well as other opportunities. Plus you’ll get my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – so lots of inspiration for your creative practices tool-kit.

So that’s part 2 of my creative practices tool-kit and how I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention this year. Next week, I’ll tell you about three special superpowers I’ll be tapping into this year for extra focus and input.

I’d love to hear what’s in your creative practices tool-kit! Share your tips and plans in the comments or via social media.

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

How I plan to manifest energy, joy and intention to make the most of this year’s energies

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

The courage to show up

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave (and helpful)

Intuition, writing and work – eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

Images by me except for:

Feature image of me by the fabulous Lauren at Sol + Co

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How to step up into our power – Pisces Full Moon Tarot Reading

September 8, 2017

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Now, feel just how you would choose to have your life feel and infuse it with light and power.

Pat Liles, from The Power Path

The Pisces Full Moon invites to step up into our power. This tarot reading reflects on how we can maximise our self-leadership at this time.

Here are some thoughts on this Full Moon in Pisces from Mystic Mamma to set the scene for the energies available to us:

Assimilating into the now, we welcome a watery *FULL MOON* in Pisces. She reminds us to go within and listen to the deep pulsing of our hearts.

Can we hear our unique beat? Can we find our way back to our place of self-recognition, our exhale into ourselves, into our fullness, into the moment as it is? Exactly as it is?

This Full Moon has powerful energies for shifting into our creative heart. It provides opportunities to break old habits and ways of thinking. It’s time to get back to what is important, sacred and wholehearted for each of us now.

Special Pisces Full Moon connections

I felt a special connection with this Full Moon. Being in the Sun sign of Virgo and on my birthday, it flagged particular personal significance. It also connects with the focus of Quiet Writing about being wholehearted and, in this, being of service.

Cathy Pagano highlights the Virgo aspects of this Full Moon period:

At this first Full Moon after the Leo Eclipse…we’re going to dive deep in the Collective Unconscious (Pisces Moon) to see those aspects of life which we’ve neglected and abandoned in favor of our patriarchal need to ‘get ahead’.

As we deal with our shadows, we can figure out how we can be of service (Virgo Sun) to our world.

But before we can be of service, we have to integrate our own body, soul and spirit.

That’s Virgo’s purpose: to integrate all of who we are so we can offer our talents and gifts to the world…

I felt shivers as I read this.

These words sum up my purpose here at Quiet Writing; that is it: “to integrate all of who we are so we can offer our talents and gifts to the world.”

My focus here is on wholehearted self-leadership and these energies give us a special time to reflect on and step into our personal power. This includes an emphasis on how we can be of service to others in our work in the world.

This dramatic, transformational energy has been accumulating for a while now. But now we can step it up, with the combination of watery, creative Pisces and practical, efficient Virgo. It’s a perfect time to hone the passions of our true heart. A key part of this is leaving behind what no longer serves us, especially any negative habits of how we think about ourselves.

Pisces Full Moon tarot reading tools:

For my reading for the Pisces Full Moon, I worked with:

This Full Moon in Pisces tarot spread by Sam Roberts aka @escapingstars on Instagram:

Deck wise, I worked with the Sakki Sakki Tarot deck by Monicka Clio Sakki, my favourite tarot deck especially for questions around creativity.

Tarot reading:

So here’s the reading:

I smiled as the TWO OF SWORDS arrived first up around “What’s bubbling to the surface from the shadowy depths?” It also popped up for my New Moon in Leo/Solar Eclipse reading two weeks ago around what’s blocking me from growing. This card for me is all about thought and feeling, how they come together and feed each other. So I sensed that this reading is all about being at a crossroads and an opportunity to move through.

THE WORLD turning up around how I can better connect emotionally with the world was a lovely synergy. Expansion and how being wholehearted relates to service jumps out as key themes.

There are three Swords cards in all so a big focus on cut-through and words as thoughts, tools, and weapons. And I love that both the first and last cards feature blindfolds, being trapped in some way, possibly of our own doing. This suggests it’s time to break free and the KNIGHT OF SWORDS hints at this energy of riding, moving and being less risk-averse.

The FIVE OF COINS (PENTACLES) and SIX OF RODS (WANDS) are also cards I connect with strongly. They are indicators around how we choose to see the world and what we do with all our experiences, including the challenging ones.

As always, a fabulous tarot narrative with these initial clues – so let’s dive into the fuller reading.

Tarot reading – card by card:

So here are some deeper thoughts, card by card, in relation to the questions. I worked intuitively with the Sakki Sakki tarot guidebook Playing with Symbols and Jessa Crispin’s fabulous book The Creative Tarot. Then connected back with the key energies highlighted for this Full Moon via the Mystic Mamma post and aligned connections.

1 What is bubbling to the surface from the shadowy depths? TWO OF SWORDS

The key message for me with this card in this spot is about the ability to choose between options. This is especially about what we choose to think and feel. When it came up for the New Moon, my thoughts were about “how being guarded comes at a cost” (Sakki Sakki Guidebook p139). This theme continues for this reading.

It could be taking the blindfold off to be able to see more clearly. Or it could be choosing to keep it on to zone out from what’s distracting us, just as we might wear noise-cancelling headphones to concentrate. But having the strength to choose and stop second guessing all the time is important now. How much energy do we chew up about what we can’t change? What effort goes into worrying about what we are unable to influence?

So what’s bubbling up as a force is being more certain and less trapped in our thinking patterns. It signals being more in tune with our feelings.

2 How can I protect myself while still letting down my walls in order to FULLY feel? FIVE OF COINS (PENTACLES)

The FIVE OF COINS exactly captures that feeling of being unprotected. As Jessa Crispin puts it in The Creative Tarot:

You’ve been cast out. Excommunicated. That’s how this card feels, like you’re some kind of leper, and the people around you can’t wait to stick you on an island somewhere and forget about you. You feel lost and unprotected. (p161)

My sense of this card is around choosing to see the positives in any given situation. As the Sakki Sakki guidebook puts it: “Start seeing the full half of the glass, what you do have; and never underestimate your caring relationships and friendships.” (p158)

It is so easy when we have been cut adrift to feel the whole world is a loveless and lonely place. You might be making your own way, especially creatively, and independence has its virtues. But access the help of friends and supporters as you make your way. New connections and those special friends who’ve been there for you over time are of immense value now. They are ways to protect yourself at this time of vulnerability and forging new roads.

3 What plans do I need to take risks on in order to release any blockages in my way? KNIGHT of SWORDS

The Knight of Swords arrives, brandishing his sword in a somewhat swashbuckling way, to remind me to just get on with it. He reminds me to be less risk-averse in my vulnerability and creativity. I need to follow through with my planned thoughts and actions.

Especially, I need to not fear being innovative and making new connections.

If you’re making a new way in a new world, what ideas are you coalescing? How are you bringing together those unique combinations only you can create? In what ways are you expressing your unique life blend, your onlyness?

Jessa Crispin reminds us:

Swords are words and thoughts, and the Knight of Swords knows how to use his words as weapons…It’s about using your ability to put thoughts and words into action, to sway others, and to encourge dissent. (p241)

It’s a good reminder to review how we are using our words in the context of being of service to others. How are we encouraging, offering support, also being that special friend to others? Where can we use our influence in the world for good and for positive outcomes, to make a difference?

4 What can I incorporate into my life in order to better connect emotionally with the world around me? The WORLD

I like that THE WORLD came up for this one – a beautifully expansive perspective! In this context, this card speaks of having a sense of completion and mastery. It’s time to realise those lessons learned and take them forward. Gathering all the pieces, steps and parts together, it’s a moment to step up and contribute.

We can stay focused, FIVE OF COINS style, on what we lack, what we’re missing, how we’ve been shut out. Or we can take a look at how far we’ve come in this past year and realise the hard won victories and efforts. And we can celebrate them and see how we can take them forward to help others now.

So the way to better connect emotionally is through a heightened sense of contribution – yours and mine. What can we do with all this learning, this mastery, this completion? How can we apply it to benefit others?

5 What wisdom and guidance is emerging from my old wounds? SIX OF RODS (WANDS)

The SIX OF RODS (WANDS) speaks of rising up especially against obstacles. Your new life is taking shape. All that learning from events and people that wounded or disappointed you is being transformed into wisdom. All that rich experience is being absorbed into the fabric of you, especially the grief-stricken and painful times.

As Jessa Crispin focuses our attention:

That’s the goal here: to use failures, near-misses, and lessons learned in battle, and focus on breaking through to something larger and bolder. (p172)

My favourite words about this card are from The Wild Unknown:

Where will you go with your new set of wings?

6 In what ways will awareness of my Self manifest during this Full Moon? EIGHT of SWORDS

Ouch – the EIGHT of SWORDS! All of these swords at the end of the number sequence (8, 9, 10!) don’t always feel so great to receive. But there’s a powerful message here.

The image of the EIGHT of SWORDS shows a woman blindfolded (like the TWO OF SWORDS). She seems to be in a trap of her own making. It’s all in the mind it seems. This card here speaks to me of realising how my thoughts stop me from moving forward. What stories am I telling myself? How are feeling and thought interacting and where I am trapped in old habits of thinking?

The Sakki Sakki guidebook tells us directly:

The Eight of Swords is calling you to break out of restricting habits and thoughts, and to initiate your own well-being and advancement by heightening your awareness of your abilities and options. (p145)

So I need to stop waiting to be rescued and for someone to tell me what to do. In line with the TWO of SWORDS up front, I need to make decisions, be clear and cease the second-guessing. Be informed about options and act on them.

Moreover, it’s a message to save yourself and be self-sufficient, noting the support of others as per the FIVE OF COINS. Trust your judgement, listen within and pay attention to what you are telling yourself. Are you being kind and self-compassionate now as you make huge changes? Are you celebrating being more wholehearted?

Combine that KNIGHT OF SWORDS and SIX of SWORDS energy too. Find ways to create yourself anew and to be in service to others based on your learning.

Ways to step into our personal power

So are your thoughts also around how to step into our personal power, with a balance between self and service?

Here are some practical questions prompted by the Pisces Full Moon and reflections on my reading. They build on the recent Capricorn Full Moon reading around stepping up into our power, shedding what doesn’t help us. They also focus on how we can take our learning forward to support others.

Journal, reflect or brainstorm around these questions to help maximise your personal self-leadership at this time:

Where do you need to take the blindfolds off?
Alternatively, where is it helpful to turn a blind eye?
Where does being indecisive cause you grief and hold you back?
What is the reason for this indecision?
Where can you focus on seeing the glass half-full right now?
How are you honouring and calling on the special supporters in your life?
Where have you developed mastery and how can you share that?
What wounds or disappointments have you moved on from?
How can you celebrate and share the wisdom from this learning?
Where are your thoughts keeping you trapped? How can you change them?
What habits of thought need to be shaken now?
What are the underlying feelings keeping you stuck?
How can you acknowledge the feelings and move through?
Where are you waiting to be rescued or saved? Why?
Who is going to rescue you?
What can you do to be more self-sufficient at this time?

Special resources for this time:

Two special resources are waving their hands at this time.

Firstly, Brooke Castillo’s Self Coaching 101, which I featured in Tarot Narratives on Instagram recently, is stepping forward. This book is a great self-help guide to how our thoughts and feelings interact and cause us difficulty. It’s especially good for breaking old thinking/feeling cycles.

Secondly, I listened to the podcast, How to Stop Playing Small, on Hashtag Authentic yesterday. It’s Sara Tasker chatting with author and coach, Tara Mohr, of Playing Big fame. Here’s a key quote from the show notes:

A lot of us have some sort of sinking, subtle awareness that we’re playing small – even if we don’t know exactly what we mean by that. We have this feeling – I’m hiding, I’m holding back, I’m not using my gifts, I’m not really trusting my ideas.

It was such an awesome chat about how we second-guess and doubt ourselves, especially with language. As I wrote here today, I was much more aware of how I used words like, “I think…” “I guess…” and “It’s probably…”, undercutting my message. I then stopped myself and found another way. It was scary how many times this happened. Time to step up and stop that!

I’ve heard a lot about Tara’s book and I must read it. It’s clearly a book for now and for taking those blindfolds off and being more self-trusting.

Wisdom from the Six of Wands

And here is some final wisdom from The Six of Wands via the Art of Life Tarot because it made me laugh and focus on what we need right now!

Enthusiasm, seeing the glass half-full, being supported by our special new and old friends, playing our cards strongly in the world and trusting our visions. It sounds such a positive way forward and all this Full Moon energy is helping to make these big steps.

May you enjoy the unfolding of this time and may your wholehearted self-leadership help you be of service to others!

Fish feature image from pexels.com and used with permission and thanks.

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Creativity conquers all

Creative Soul Living

Key book companions along the way

About Shalagh Hogan

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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Coaching goals and connections

Swimming and exercise goals

Finding the best exercise for us

Celebrating exercise milestones

Being a healthy creative – what it has taught me

Coaching clients’ experiences

Sylvia’s journey

The Healthy Writer

How about you?

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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Finding joy

Being unapologetically joyful

Quotes about joy

Share your thoughts

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Secret superpowers

Reading, reading, reading

Swimming – and other exercise

This year’s planner of choice

Working with crystals

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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Becoming a life coach

Being coached yourself

Writing, writing, writing

Personality type work

Energy healing, channelling and spirituality

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Being in rhythm and working with lunar cycles

Working with intuition via tarot and oracle

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

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Now, feel just how you would choose to have your life feel and infuse it with light and power.

Pat Liles, from The Power Path

Special Pisces Full Moon connections

Pisces Full Moon tarot reading tools:

Tarot reading:

Tarot reading – card by card:

Ways to step into our personal power

Special resources for this time:

Wisdom from the Six of Wands

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