creativity Archives

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

February 22, 2018

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Leaving an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years, I reflect on this transition and the gift of learning from my body of work over time.

Leaving a long-term job role

Today marks an auspicious day when I leave an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years. It’s not without sadness. And it’s been a strange conclusion in many ways. I’ve been on leave for some time caring for my mother who recently passed away after a long battle with terminal cancer. So not being in the workplace as I leave, the usual farewells have not been part of the process. It’s as if I have disappeared off into the sunset on another journey.

This is in part very true. I realised about two years ago that I no longer enjoyed my job or working in the organisation. The organisation had changed and so had I. It was time to get back to my long-harboured creative loves and pursuits that lingered in the margins of my days. The books and creative inspiration I craved and hung onto as I made a long commute to work by car and train became key. This liminal time became a passage of transition as I sowed the seeds of my leaving into the stitches and seams of my days. I realised my heart was no longer in it as I applied for jobs I didn’t really want.

In truth, this leaving had been a long time coming and at this stage, I had already started to move on and transition to another life. The one I really wanted to be living. You may know that feeling – your heart has left the building, or relationship or place. And you walk in the door each day feeling so empty dragging yourself through the day until it’s time to leave. So you make a plan to leave for good to create a new life.

The greatest gift

My time in the organisation – a large government department focused on adult vocational education, TAFE NSW – was not without great joy and opportunity. The greatest gift of this transition has been to reflect on my body of work over time to plan a vision for a new life.

It’s so easy when we feel the sadness of moving on to devalue the past, all that we are and all that the organisation and its people have given us. The opportunities, the connections, the people, the learning, the vision, the strategy, the excitement – it can all get snowed over in a narrative of loss. There’s a tendency to risk losing the good and the valuable continuing threads with all of these feelings.

Pain is a player in this scenario too as we may feel undervalued. In my situation, I’ve been made ‘redundant’, my job ‘deleted’ in a restructure I am no longer a part of. The language itself is a challenge to deal with, not exactly creating the best of feelings. We can tie our self-image to this boatload of emotions and feel ourselves being towed behind it, awash with anger. In this, we can risk losing focus on the valuable gift of the resources of such timing.

But the greatest gift hidden in all of these experiences is what Pamela Slim calls our ‘body of work’ – the thread that ties our story together. This is the story we have been crafting and creating from our desires, our dreams, the opportunities, the interactions, the people we worked with, the projects envisaged, the products created and the services delivered. Therein lies the seeds of so much wisdom.

Your body of work

It took a painful experience for me to realise all of this and to start to move on. A chance gut-wrenching workplace experience one day was the catalyst that made me realise I could no longer stay. I had to make changes. The next day I reached out to my friend, Victoria Smith, a life-coach and inspiration, someone who’s been down this road before me, to help me track a new path.

I’d reached a low point and I knew I could no longer navigate this time by myself. My coaching series with Victoria became the blueprint for a new life. A conversation about Pamela Slim’s ‘Body of Work’ in that coaching series was a pivotal piece that helped to tie my transition journey together.

The trick with a wise transition is to reflect on the driving force and heart of your work over time. What really drives you? Across all the job roles you have done, what are the recurring passions? What makes you come alive? Which themes occur in various ways again and again?

Pamela Slim says that her motivation in writing the book was to:

find a set of “new” skills for the world of work in the twenty-first century that would provide options, flexibility and freedom to workers across every mode, in every industry.

Her work enables us to do just that by identifying these core elements:

defining your roots
naming your ingredients
choosing your work mode
creating and innovating
surfing the fear
collaborating
knowing your definition of success
sharing your story

My body of work in transition

As I’ve moved through this time of transition, I have worked through all these areas. You will see these themes woven through my blog posts, as I’ve shared my story along the way. I have realised that the key threads that tie my story together are:

making a difference (always a motivator for me, sharing skills and knowledge to help others);
teaching, coaching, mentoring, blogging (different forms of empowering others and sharing knowledge, skills and experience);
creativity (innovating, leading it, fostering it, writing);
leadership and self-leadership (leading others means leading yourself first);
being a reflective practitioner and knowing myself (a constant search for self-understanding, professional development and reflecting on experiences in work and other life roles);
writing (the authentic heart of it all, being a writer, becoming a teacher of writing and weaving it as a strategic and professional superpower in my life);
introversion and intuition as key strengths and gifts as an INTJ, the captains of my personality ship I needed to learn to work with; and,
in all of this, being wholehearted in how we live and work, not bringing parts of ourselves to the door of any workplace or relationship.

Bringing all this together in a new way into a new life and business is exciting but challenging work. It’s taken consistent work towards my vision sustained over time. And it is about hard work and not luck as Kerstin Pilz reminds us in this beautiful piece, ‘Why luck had nothing to do with my self-directed life.’

Making a path for my transition

So finding myself feeling half-hearted, experiencing a ‘loss of heart’ as Lynn Hanford-Day describes it, a kind of burnout, I shifted to a job-share arrangement 18 months ago to plan a new future. Coaching with Victoria helped me shape this new path and I knew the ingredients for the future, based on the key threads of my past and taking them forward.

I set my goals of:

becoming a Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coach (achieved July 2017)
becoming a certified Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type practitioner (achieved December 2016)
working with my Introverted Intuition preference as a key compass especially via tarot and oracle card tools (achieved via courses, personality work and ongoing practice in 2017)

Setting and achieving these goals has been the backbone of my transition journey, with key learning milestones stepping the way.

Core desired feelings as guides to transition

My core desired feelings are at the heart of everything I do. I want to feel and convey being:

creative, connected, flowing, intuitive, poetic.

Connection especially has been a theme now and finding new kinds of networks. Not being in a traditional workplace can mean a loss of connection. At a time of leaving the workplace, I’ve developed rich connections with a beautiful community of fellow life coaches. We support and inspire each other. I’ve also had the chance to develop deep connections with valued coaching clients who have honoured me through sharing their journey.

Via social media, especially Instagram, I have found the most amazing kindred creative souls. Through Quiet Writing, women have shared wholehearted stories of transition inspiring me and others as we reflect on and initiate change. The hallmarks are startlingly similar across the stories, though they play out in different ways. I am meeting more and more online friends in real life in the most incredible encounters where we share our stories. The personality type community is another tribe of people where I feel a strong connection and source of learning and growth. And I know I will reconnect in different ways over time with many special people from the workplace.

Creating your story

As we move through times of transition, we can create our story, as George Bernard Shaw reminds us. The special ingredients of our body of work, our drivers and passions, are the greatest gifts and teachers on the journey of change. Painful as it might be at times to feel redundant, rejected or no longer belonging to the team, it’s an opportunity to create ourselves anew.

This time can be an opportunity to interrogate what Steven Pressfield calls our ‘shadow careers’, where our lives are an imitation of the real thing we want. He suggests in ‘Turning Pro’:

If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.

That metaphor will point you toward you true calling.

So now I move full steam into a new career focused on being a writer and a personality and life coach supporting women to create their wholehearted story at times of transition. I know the ingredients of my body of work. Writing, creativity, making a difference, coaching, teaching, reflecting, sharing knowledge, leadership, self-leadership, introversion and intuition are the threads taking my story forward in support of others.

Distilling all of this brings me to the focus of this transition and new phase of life:

choosing to journey deeper into your wholehearted story

This is the theme of my journey and body of work. And it is what I offer to you through my writing, this blog, my coaching and personality type work and my intuitive tarot work. My deepest threads weaving together into a new story to inspire yours.

Thank you for your support on this journey. May you find your true calling, bringing together all the elements of your body of work forward into a new life. I look forward to sharing my newly formed self-sustaining creative life with you in all its guises in support of your own.

If you’d like to find out how to work with me, you can find out more here. I’d love to work with you!

Image of me by Lauren of Sol + Co

Thank you

With gratitude and love to my family and all my key influences, special friends, life coaches, teachers, coaching clients and fellow travellers on the journey this past year or so, especially my dear friend Victoria Smith.

Thanks to TAFE NSW and all my colleagues for our time together. It is a time I treasure and one from which the deepest friendships and connections have come. I’ve been blessed with inspiring leaders and mentors who have taught me so much about leadership and self-leadership.

Much love too to my beautiful mum, Shirley, who supported my journey transition generously and with the greatest enthusiasm even as her journey was coming to a close. This truly is the greatest of gifts for which I am forever grateful, her body of work being the deepest love of family.

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

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

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

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inspiration & influence planning & productivity

Blossoming on your own terms for long-term success

February 19, 2018

You are just getting started, so have patience with yourself and the process, and do not give up.

Aeracura, Blossoming

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

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A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…

This week: blossoming on your own terms + patience for long-term success

Theme for the week beginning 19 February

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Aeracura – Blossoming.

Anyone else feeling they want to burst out there with your work but knowing you need to be patient right now? This is a great week for realising those tensions and being patient, remembering where you are in your process. Advice from the Guidebook is:

In many ways, you are like a flower bud who is ripe and ready to open and grow. Don’t try to rush this process, as it’s part of your beautiful path.

This theme is key to Quiet Writing generally with a focus on process, not just product. The steps in getting there are just as important as the point of arrival. But it’s hard to remember this sometimes as we struggle to create all that is in our mind or vision. We need to be gentle with ourselves; keep focused, yes, but not overwhelm ourselves with action. Sometimes we need to integrate what we are learning, taking things in and working with them internally before the blossoming stage. To represent the energy of this phase, working with flowers in any way including with flower essences is highlighted for this time.

So the guidance this week is around moving forward but with gentleness and self-compassion, with an eye on the long-term creative blossoming process. And in this, understanding the true nature of any fears and working intuitively is a powerful help.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 19 February

Tarot Narrative: On your own terms

You’re standing strong, clear and analytical with plans you can work with. You are gathering yourself, researching the options and content. You’re poised on the threshold of a time of self-sufficiency when it all culminates into joy and satisfaction. Have patience with the tenderness of it all and look to see what is real and what is masquerading as fear. You are blossoming and on your own terms now.

Reading notes

Cards: Father (King) of Swords and Nine of Cups from The Wild Unknown Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

When we turn to face our fears, we discover that our fear is False Evidence Appearing Real – an illusion manufactured by our egos.

Debrena Jackson Gandy, All The Joy You Can Stand (p. 332)

This reading and narrative sends strong messages about being analytically clear and organised as we head towards blossoming and experiencing the fruit of our labours. The seeds of joy are real and we are so close to tasting them as they come to fruition. But we are encouraged to take time: to research, be patient, and to work with fear.

How we marshall our resources is key. This is a theme that popped up recently here (29 January reading) also with the King of Swords. This King is all about gathering, marshalling, making workable plans, putting emotion aside and getting on with it. He encourages us to put our knowledge into practice with swordy clarity and analytical skills. Conquering fear practically is also a way to move through these times.

Managing a sense of urgency

The Nine of Cups reminds us in this blossoming process that we are heading towards creative self-sufficiency. We are learning to be more self-sustaining, knowing when to listen to others and when to trust our own judgement. As Jessa Crispin reminds us in ‘The Creative Tarot’, this card is about “finding satisfaction all on your own.”

This rings so true for me as I head into the threshold of a new life. This week I will be finishing up in my work role of 30 plus years. I’ve been planning and working for this transition for the longest time. My goal is to establish a ‘self-sustaining creative life’. This means not working for someone else, working for myself, with creativity as the heart of what I do. Getting to this pivotal time, I feel a sense of urgency. I’ve been struggling with a feeling of pressure to get everything I have planned out into the world perfectly formed – and now!

I’ve had to learn that, though this time feels urgent like I want to burst out into full flower, I need to move steadily and take my time. I need to realise much is in the process of blossoming already. Taking a moment to get perspective and see how far I have come helps with feeling more joyful about my progress. I am still integrating everything I am learning and it’s a process to enjoy, not one to rush through. I’m reflecting too on my body of work over my life so far and how I am taking it forward into this new time.

Fear management + blossoming

Fear can be part of this wanting to rush forward too. As both the ‘Come to the Edge’ card and the quote above from ‘All the Joy you can Stand’ remind us, Fear can be ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. Our job at these sensitive times of change is to work out what really is to be feared and what we have ourselves may have manufactured into fear. Facing our fears and identifying what is lowering our energy is important as we are working on blossoming into new times.

This week when you think about your plans, think of how any fear or impatience is manifesting. Sometimes it can be fear of being left behind, a kind of comparisonitis, as we see others write books, start businesses and come out of the blocks in places where we too want to shine. We can feel like we are never going to get our act together as we compare ourselves to others perhaps much further down the road than us. And in a way that will never be kind to ourselves.

Being creatively self-sufficient, knowing what you need to do in your own time and on your own terms, is powerful work this week. It might be rest, revisioning, stepping up, recasting, finishing a draft, starting a project, knowing what to do first. Perhaps it’s taking on board other’s feedback but knowing what to do with that feedback.

Sometimes fear can be a sign we are stepping up into a new phase as Tara Mohr reminds us in ‘Playing Big’. Tara explains that there are two kinds of fear concepts in biblical Hebrew: ‘pachad’, projected or illusory fear and ‘yirah’ – “the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to.” Both are useful concepts to work with as we come to the edge of our blossoming – and learn which fear to play down and which to embrace.

On your own terms

The Art of Life Tarot deck has a beautiful way of coalescing messages in art and quotes. For the Nine of Cups, we are reminded via Marcus Amnaeous Seneca that:

A happy life is one in accordance with its own nature.

That is a key theme this week weaving through all of the cards. If we are to truly blossom as ourselves, we need to follow our own path. Creative influence is a wonderful thing but we need to take it on board and coalesce it our own way, finding our own path on our own terms. This week provides energies for doing just that, working with wisdom on our fears and frustrations.

This can show up in so many ways for us: Where are we feeling impatient? What plan have we put in place to make the work happen? Is the plan actually workable? How do we know? What research is there to help us define our creative way in the world? How can we use it?

This is a great week for blossoming on our own terms in our own time.

Look to see where you might be undercutting your own process with fear or comparisonitis. It’s not a race; it’s bringing ourselves wholeheartedly into the world and that takes time, patience and discovering our own unique ways of working.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around blossoming on your own terms, patience and fear now.

How might you bring blossoming forth more gently?
Where might you support growth with planning and action?
Which fears are helpful and which ones are not?
Where is there a valid reason for fear and what can you do about it?
What will help you create workable plans?
Where can you value and enjoy the process more?
How can you be more self-compassionate?
Where can analytical clarity help you make decisions and move through any blocks?

All best wishes for this week of being patient with blossoming and long-term plans and getting there on our own terms. It’s powerful work and not always easy, but I look forward to a week of moving through some threshold days in my own life.

May Aeracura also guide you with blossoming, with patience, and on your own terms. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

Keep in touch & free ebook + Wholehearted Library

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

You might also enjoy:

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

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

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

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

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!

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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.

personality and story planning & productivity

How to align priorities with your directions and make a mark

February 12, 2018

Keep your unwavering thoughts, feelings, and actions focused on your target, and you will make your mark.

Diana, Focused Intention

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

___________________________________

A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…

This week: focused intention + restructuring to align priorities

Theme for the week beginning 12 February

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Diana – Focused Intention.

As the steely image in the card suggests, this is a great week to get clear about your targets and align your priorities with where you want to go. Advice from the Guidebook is:

Know what your priorities are and take action on them.

It is a theme that also came up for me in daily angel card readings, including this beautiful card from Kyle Gray’s Angel Prayers deck:

So the guidance this week is around tackling any scattered and overwhelmed feelings with focus. We need to work out our intentions and the desired mark we want to make. Then we need to align priorities through actions to move towards this. “Unwavering” is a word that speaks strongly to me now as we work out how to move steadily towards our target.

It’s not about speed or time; it’s about persistence, focus and effort. I know my learning around last week’s message of Determine what’s going to help was realising what I need to do now. And surprise – it’s not everything! Determining what’s going to help includes identifying actions to do first to align priorities and this week’s guidance continues this theme.

This week’s focus is on making decisions, knowing our intentions and keeping focused. Strategic action is key. It’s about stepping away from indecision, lack of clarity and trying to attempt everything at once. In there also is a piece around taking our own road and making our own mark as we align our priorities.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

Tarot Narrative: Realigning priorities

Restructure your priorities to focus clearly on your target direction now. You might be wavering and indecisive. Watch that this is not a form of resistance or procrastination. Make decisions on the path that is right for you. And align your actions, straight as an arrow towards that mark. Keep persevering and aiming, shaking off distractions with refinement, choice and focus as allies.

Reading notes

Cards: Two of Swords and Five of Rods (Wands) from the Sakki Sakki Tarot and #10 Unfinished Symphony in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

No words can be said, no teaching can be taught that will relieve spiritual travellers from the necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their own lives toward the identification of their individual selves with God.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled (p. 332)

In our various ways of expressing ourselves in the world, our spiritual and creative growth is about something greater than ourselves. Whether you call it God or something else, in this week’s guidance there is also a key message of finding our own path. Making decisions can be about taking a road that is less travelled or picking our own way. Though hard, in this, we carve out a strategy and choose what we want to do, how we want to be, the work we do, what we create, how we live, what is important.

How we allocate our time and align our priorities is key.

Sometimes we find we are not making choices, wavering and unsure of what to do first. When we have this mindset, we often try and do everything and do it now. This results in overwhelm and can become a subtle form of procrastination and self-sabotage.

Another strategy is to focus the mind, ask for help from spiritual guides and supporters, open ourselves up and identify where we are heading. Even if we are not ready now to do all we aspire to, working towards that target will keep us on track, unwavering and focused.

An example for me has been getting my book draft written. It has been a goal for some years and I’ve had a few different options – fiction and non-fiction – in mind. Once I became clear on my target: to write my non-fiction book, “Wholehearted” first, it was much easier to be in action. I chose coaches to help me get there and I brainstormed, outlined and started drafting. Finding the right support, strategies and actually starting (yes!) made it easier to do NaNoWriMo in November last year. Now I have a nearly finished 72,000-word first draft.

Align priorities

As the Two of Swords reminds us, indecision can have its own form of anguish. There might be competing priorities and everything looks good and doable. Sometimes too we can see things as purely one way or another, blind to innovative options or a third way. Jessa Crispin reminds us about the power of two’s in ‘The Creative Tarot’:

A two card can show you how two different influences or demands can be brought together to form something completely new.

This week when you think about your target or plan, think about how you might bring two seemingly opposed options together. Restrategise, align priorities differently to get clear on your target and see how you can step through any blindness or procrastination.

Just making a key decision will help immensely this week. Think too about what’s been flummoxing you and whether you are making it more complicated than it needs to be.

The Sakki Sakki Five of Rods (Wands) card echoes this by showing a chaotic scene with lots of action. The Rider-Waite version of this card (below) is so good too. Anyone else’s mind, priority list or desk feeling a bit like this now, like a team with all the players moving in different directions? Any unfinished business weaving its shadow through everything so you can’t find a clear way?

Making your mark

Another beautiful version of the Five of Wands from the Art of Life Tarot deck reminds us via Euripides that:

The wisest men follow their own direction.

One of the challenges in making decisions and aligning priorities is to know your own path.

This can show up in so many ways for us: What is the essence of our brand? Where do we want to focus our creative energies? What do we stand for? Where do we want to be at the end of the year? What do we want to produce?

I’ve just worked through Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year 2018 workbook. This is an annual practice I have done since 2014. It’s helped me to know where I want to make my mark in 2018. Knowing this, I can align priorities and actions accordingly.

This is a great week for stepping back to align priorities with our path in life. Working out our mark, road, unique offering or brand and how we want to make a difference is key.

Looking to see where we can focus our unwavering attention and effort over time in line with our direction is highlighted.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around competing priorities, making decisions, aligning priorities, setting direction, making choices and being in action over time.

How might you identify what your mark or target is this year?
What actions will help you get there?
Which strategic choices are you holding off for whatever reason?
How can you review the choices to see if there is another way?
What will help you focus your attention on your goals?
Where are you feeling warring internal factions and how can you get them aligned?
How can you set a steady course over time and stop rushing now?

All best wishes for this week of realigning priorities and getting clear on our targets. I look forward to a week of gaining clarity on where I want to make a mark and how I can get there with these energies. May Diana also guide you with focused intention. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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You might also enjoy:

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

Self-leadership, feedback and marshalling resources for the best week

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

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

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

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’

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

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

Images by me except for:

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

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personality and story planning & productivity

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

February 5, 2018

Creating an essential intent is hard. It takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution.

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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A Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday to share intuitive guidance, wisdom and insights from aligned books – for the week and anytime…

This week: creating essential intent + determining what will help

Theme for the week beginning 5 February

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – 2. Determine what’s going to help.

As the image in the card suggests, this is a great week to focus on what will be the ladder and support to help you step up. It’s worthwhile, always and especially this week, to think about the essential intent or purpose of your work. And in this, to decide what’s the best support, tool, use of time or person to work with you to help further that intent.

I have a huge list of actions as I start this week and focus on my new business and way of living as a life coach and writer. It’s exciting but easily overwhelming. Stepping back to see my ‘essential intent’, as Greg McKeown calls it in ‘Essentialism’ is a really valuable step we often forget as we dive into the minutiae of it all.

It’s a good time this week to take that step back and get clear on the big picture of where you are going so you can take the action that will help most.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 5 February

Tarot Narrative: Discernment, seeing differently

You might be feeling overwhelmed at this time of transition with an enormous list of tasks and not knowing what to do first. See what will make the biggest difference and help to get you where you want to go. What will move you on the most? Who can help you see differently or lighten the load? How can it be easier? Small adjustments, reaching out, going back to what works for you, simplifying – will all help you move on and through now.

Reading notes: Cards: Ten of Rods (Wands) and Eight of Swords from the Sakki Sakki Tarot and #3 Between Worlds in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

An essential intent…is both inspirational and concrete, both meaningful and measurable. Done right, an essential intent is one decision that settles one thousand later decisions.

Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 126)

I had heard about the book ‘Essentialism’ by Greg McKeown from both a coach I worked with and a client I worked with as a life coach. Both amazing women who found this book inspiring, I was intrigued and so purchased it and there it sat, waiting for me. Until December last year, when I spent most of the month in a palliative care ward with my mother in her final days. I chose this book to listen to as an audiobook as I went back and forward from the hospital, day after day.

There’s nothing like being in a palliative care hospital heading into Christmas time to focus the mind and heart on what is essential in life. It was as if everything was stripped back to love and family and all the trappings of Christmas shopping and events all fell away. A time for reflecting on essential intent in life generally, Greg McKeown’s book was a piece of crystal clear thinking to help me as I navigated this time.

I recommend it however you listen to it for getting to clarity and focus – but it worked well as an audiobook first up. And I know there is much to be gleaned and applied from a further closer reading of the text with more active highlighting and noting.

Creating essential intent and making it harder

As the Ten of Rods (Wands) reminds us, we can get very busy carrying heavy loads. We can forget why we are choosing to do so much. Caught in the detail of action, we can neglect the need to step back and reflect on why we are doing all of these things. We can focus on small aspects, like the right wording, when we really need to work out is what the message is in the first place.

The Eight of Swords suggests that we might be self-imposing limitations or blinding ourselves in some way. We might reflect on how we have it made it harder than it could be. Or which old limiting beliefs we’ve picked up along the way that we might be still carrying around with us as extra baggage.

The ‘Between Worlds’ card in protection position backs this up by reminding us to be aware of expectations including of ourselves. I am focusing on “done is better than perfect” at the minute as a way of breaking through and being in action. It doesn’t all have to be perfect; progress is better. There’s an Instagram challenge on this for the month of February that I am doing and finding is a great focus at this time.

Creating essential intent and strategic choices

Greg McKeown reminds us in ‘Essentialism’ that:

One strategic choice eliminates a universe of other options and maps a course for the next five, ten, or even twenty years of your life. Once the big decision is made, all subsequent decisions come into better focus.

As an example, on my big list of actions this week is work on the Quiet Writing brand essence in partnership with Stephey Baker at Marked by the Muse. We are working together on clearly defining my brand essence through the words and images that sum up Quiet Writing’s heart.

Having checked through my list this morning, I exercised essential intent by making this the #1 activity for today and this week (after sharing this reading and post!) Everything else flows from that. Once I can get my brand essence right and really crystal clear, in words and visually via my logo and other imagery, I know that the other pieces and tasks can easily align. Even if they feel more insistent or urgent right now.

Creating essential intent and what will help

Another theme that popped up for this week, alongside strategic choice, is determining what is actually going to help. It’s a valuable time to think about where we have taken on too much, where things can wait, who can help and where we can delegate or get support in line with our essential intent.

If, for example, one of our goals is to set up a website or blog or refresh the current one, who can we ask to help us and how can we get support? Is life coaching an option to help us focus and be in action, set goals and frameworks to have the job done? Or is it finding a professional we can work with and brief and to whom we can hand over the majority of this task? Or is it working in strategic partnership where we can share the work based on our mutual skills and strengths?

Whatever it is in our life, this is a great week for stepping back to recognise our strategy and essential intent and then seeing how we can carry it through into action.

Looking to see where we can lighten our load in line with our essential intent is also highlighted.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around creating essential intent, making strategic choices, working out what will help and then asking for that help.

How might you practice creating essential intent?
What is going to help you achieve that?
Which strategic choices can you make that will help the other parts come into focus?
Who could you ask to help you?
What shape might that support take?
What will lighten your load and reduce overwhelm?
Where are you carrying extra baggage such as self-limiting beliefs weighing you down?

All best wishes for this week of creating essential intent and getting clear on your purpose as well as lightening your load. Hooray for that possibility! I look forward to a week of easing creative overwhelm with these energies. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

? of me above by Lauren, Sol + Co

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:

Self-leadership, feedback and marshalling resources for the best week

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

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

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

The Empress: vision, creativity and patience

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creativity

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Leaving a long-term job role

The greatest gift

Your body of work

My body of work in transition

Making a path for my transition

Core desired feelings as guides to transition

Creating your story

Thank you

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide + Wholehearted Library access

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You are just getting started, so have patience with yourself and the process, and do not give up.

Aeracura, Blossoming

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Theme for the week beginning 19 February

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 19 February

Book notes:

Managing a sense of urgency

Fear management + blossoming

On your own terms

Love to hear your thoughts!

Keep in touch & free ebook + Wholehearted Library

You can download the Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches + Writers as well as my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story.

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Finding joy

Being unapologetically joyful

Quotes about joy

Share your thoughts

Keep in touch

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Keep your unwavering thoughts, feelings, and actions focused on your target, and you will make your mark.

Diana, Focused Intention

___________________________________

Theme for the week beginning 12 February

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

Book notes:

Align priorities

Making your mark

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

Share this:

Like this:

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’

Share this:

Like this:

Creating an essential intent is hard. It takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution.

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Theme for the week beginning 5 February

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 5 February

Book notes:

Creating essential intent and making it harder

Creating essential intent and strategic choices

Creating essential intent and what will help

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

Share this:

Like this:

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