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Life Design Cards

personality and story planning & productivity

Bring it all together via a strategy or system

July 2, 2018

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Peter Drucker

bring it together

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: bring it all together via a strategy or system

Theme for the week beginning 2 July

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #7 Bring it all together.

After last week’s message of clearing the way by finding your practical truth, we move into a time to look at the whole of what we are doing. We are encouraged to bring it all together in some way. How can we see things from a higher perspective? What’s the order, strategy or integrating principle of our work? And what systems are we using to keep track or plan our business, creativity or content?

These are all questions to ponder in this week as we look at how to bring it all together. I love in this image that there is bountiful harvest there to coalesce and nourish us. But it seems we need to stop and gather ourselves to work out how to bring it all together in the best way. What is in and what is out? Which way is best?

bring it all together

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #7 is:

Gather all the information you have right now. Look at systems that could be put in place to meet your needs.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 2 July

bring it all together

Tarot Narrative: 

Bring it all together and in order via a strategy or system. Some kind of organisation or boundary setting will help provide inner strength and calm to manage fear and risk. That way you can plan to move ahead with integrity and emotional courage now.

Cards: The Emperor and Strength from The Textured Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Bring it all together via a strategy or system

Last week we had the King and Queen of Coins emphasising practicality and resources and how we use them. This week continues this theme but lifts it to encourage us to have a look at our whole overall strategy.  How are we working to bring it all together, whatever we are doing?

As an INTJ personality type, I am a big fan of structure, logic, order, plans and knowing where I am going. These areas are highlighted this week. It’s also looking at the ecosystem of what we are doing, how things connect, the touchpoints. How does one part of our work or life related to another?

It was very exciting to see The Emperor arrive for my first engagement with Lisa McLoughlin’s beautiful deck, The Textured Tarot. This card embodies getting in order in some way. Having a vision, a strategy, working with integrity at a high level. It’s also about boundaries and scope – knowing what is in and what is out.

As Peter Drucker’s fabulous quote reminds us, we can waste a lot of time being efficient if what we are doing doesn’t even need to be done. This is the power of stepping back to look at the connecting principles and the overarching plan and strategy. We can beaver away with so much, but is it important or essential? How can we bring a little rational spirit and coherency to our work? What we choose to do is important here but how do we know which is the right thing? How do we know which colours to focus on? A strategy or system can help this choice and direction.

bring it all together

Bring it all together with quiet strength

The Strength card also backs in The Emperor. What a mighty pairing this is! It suggests that working with structure and order will bring a quiet strength and calm to our work. If we look at where the sources of our confusion and uncertainty come from, it’s often from having too much choice. We don’t know what to do first or which is the important thing.

If we have an overall plan, this can help us to be organised but also self-compassionate and gentle. Within these boundaries we can explore and develop inner strength. We are not so filled with self-doubt as we know our overall path.

The Come to the Edge card from Wisdom of the Oracle encourages us to take some risks and all our courage to lead us. But if we make a clear container to take risks and experiment, we are more likely to feel less fear as we step forward. This card featured two weeks ago also around time to check in to the calling of you heart. So in your plan, make space for leaps of faith and listening to your heart.

Strategy, order and planning does not have to be dry and lacking in colour or life. It can be a collage, a vision board, a journey about colour itself. There are many ways to being it all together and find the connecting principles.

bring it all together

How can you bring it all together?

So how can you bring it all together via a strategy of system?

We are half way through the year now so it’s a great time to take a step back and look at your overall strategy for your work, creativity or business.

I enjoyed this podcast earlier this week on The Creative Penn which focuses on exactly these aspects of creativity. It’s about ‘Strategy and Business Plans for Authors’ but the suggestions are applicable to any kind of creative endeavour. I found it very thought-provoking and inspiring.

Strategy And Business Plans For Authors With Johanna Rothman

I’ve also started working on the consistency of my Instagram and social media work via Sara Tasker’s The Instaretreat. This is all about integrating voice and style in our Instagram and social media work and I look forward to learning more about the threads that tie my work together.

Tips for bringing it all together

Here are some tips for bringing it all together this week. Take time to reflect and journal on any that catch your attention:

  • look at your colour palette: What’s the overall colour in your social media or website? What’s the colour palette and is it what you want? What’s the organising principle?
  • get some advice from experts:  It might help to seek advice on your brand essence, your integrating principles. Sometimes we are so close we can’t see it or articulate it and help can make all the difference.
  • look at your mission: As Johanna Rothman talks about in the podcast chat, knowing you mission and overall aim helps to know what to do and what not to do.
  • choose integrity:  A key connecting theme in these cards is also integrity. How does integrity connect your work?
  • look at what’s out of control: Where are you a little out of control, Seven of Cups? Where are you doing too much that is not connecting? How can you cut back? What can help you choose what to do wisely?
  • strategise for the next 6 months: It’s a good time to go back to your plan for the year and readjust it. What were you hoping to achieve? What’s the strategy for the next six months?
  • quiet strength: Where can you put your energies for quiet strength? What will make the difference to your progress in an underpinning way?

bringing it all together

Thoughts for this week

Bring it all together with structure, order, strategy and overall plans this week. Take some time to breathe, check in on what you’ve harvested so far and where to go next. Invest your energy in this for traction in moving ahead for the next six months.

Here’s to a week of reviewing and getting our organising principles sorted.

Love to hear your thoughts!

What are you doing to put some strategy, structure and order in place? I’d love to hear! All best wishes for a week of getting clear on how your vision manifests in the world. And to sharing ideas and practices so we can all avoid time-wasting and inefficiency and get out work done.

May you find that taking a few moments to clear the way brings hope and focus. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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

You can work with me to help develop strategy and order in your creative life and work. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available 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. I’m taking a short break in July but consults are being booked now for August and an August/September coaching start!

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.

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:

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

6 inspiring podcasts for creatives and booklovers

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on doing what you love

personality and story planning & productivity

Clear the way by finding your practical truth as a touchstone

June 25, 2018

 Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.

Carl Jung

clear the way

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: clear the way by finding your practical truth as a touchstone

Theme for the week beginning 25 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #43 Tolerate the paradox and make a decision.

After last week’s message of taking time to align ourselves with the calling of our heart, this week continues this with a focus on finding clarity and truth in practical ways. This week it’s all about working through and integrating polarities, light and dark, and being practical and grounded in this.

Making decisions, getting clear, embodying paradox, integrating, and in all of this being practical about what works and what doesn’t is highlighted. Clear the way through working with light and dark and other polarities.

clear the way

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #43 is to tolerate and work with any paradox or polarities:

All wholes are composed of complementary halves (eg light and dark). Find your truth, despite the paradox and commit to a decision.

Being able to find clarity and clear the way ahead through working with paradox to find your truth is highlighted this week.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 25 June

clear the way

Tarot Narrative: 

You’ve been through a lot, light and shade. From this you may find your truth has become muddied, unclear. Work with the paradox now to clear the water of your vision and find its truth. Re-envision it in an embodied, practical and grounded way, a touchstone for the next phase.

Cards: King of Coins and Queen of Coins from the Spolia Tarot and #20 Imagine in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Clear the way by being practical

Last week we had the Queen of Cups and Three of Coins combining to suggest it’s time to check back in to the calling of your heart. This week we have the mighty King of Coins and Queen of Coins coming together to encourage us to focus on being practical. The suit of coins or pentacles is all about practicality, abundance, resources, money and skills. How we use them, grow them, master them.

The King of Coins is the final card in the sequence of the suit and is all about the mastery of practicality. He has an air of being removed from the action which is what we might need to do to get clarity. Can we delegate, prioritise or blend? What works and what doesn’t? Are we really investing our time wisely? These are all questions to check in with when the King of Coins arrives.

The Queen of Coins is more about what we love and so this card, via the Spolia Tarot focus is about the love of our work. It’s about how we embody practicality and abundance. She comes to remind us to be grounded as we work looking after our physical needs. This is about trusting your abilities and being practical as you apply your thoughts and dreams.

Remember the Three of Coins and the cathedral building from last week? Often the work we are engaged in as creatives, writers and entrepreneurs is big work. We’re building a business around our passions or we are writing the book of our heart. These are no light weight endeavours. As we build, it’s important to stop and clear the waters occasionally and check in on our progress and vision.

heart of your calling

Clear the way by working with opposites

The theme of polarities and opposites comes up strongly in this reading too especially as a way of seeing the truth. Light and dark is the obvious one and as Carl Jung reminds us through his work, our life is all about learning to work with and understand our shadow side.

This might be understanding our personality type and knowing our personality strengths and weaknesses. We naturally have gifts and preferred ways of working and we need to understand and strengthen these. Likewise knowing the ways of working we will run a mile from is valuable to help integrate our way of being. Because those traits and preferences are still there playing out.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Carl Jung

All kinds of polarities are helpful in getting to our truth. It might be the unconscious or shadow side and the more conscious ways we work. It might be movement and stillness and how we balance being quiet with moving in the world. Perhaps we have diverse passions and loves that seem opposite and we feel we need to decide between them. It could be the integration of these in some way that leads to our truth or unique path.

Dealing with a sense of lack

The Imagine card from Wisdom of the Oracle reminds us that a sense of lack might have entered our lives. It’s as if we are living through a filter of what we don’t have rather than what we do have. Circumstances might have encouraged this as tough times do. But we are encouraged to clear the way. Things might not be exactly as planned. But what do you have now? What have you achieved? Clear the way by stopping to smell the roses, seeing the positives, putting things into a grounded perspective.

For example, I would like to have done more than I have at this stage in my transition journey. I can measure myself against the high arbitrary benchmarks I’ve set. There have been a lot of challenges along the way and this can make it feel like a tough road. Looking through this lens, I can feel heavy, behind, wanting. And in this, less likely to feel motivated! If I shift into a more open and self-compassionate mindset of tolerating paradox and seeing how all of these experiences help me to be wise on this journey, I can be more grounded. Focusing on what I have achieved rather than what I haven’t is a big factor in being able to clear the way. Seeing how my personality, various skills and passions come together to help and support me is a source of strength..

clear the way

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: Mysterium Coniunctionis

In itself the unconscious is neutral, and its normal function is to compensate the conscious position. In it the opposites slumber side by side; they are wrenched apart only by the activity of the conscious mind, and the more one-sided and cramped the conscious standpoint is, the more painful or dangerous will be the unconscious reaction. 

Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis

Being one-sided is a risk and challenges our balance, as this quote from Carl Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, Volume 14 of his Collected Works reminds us. Examples might be over-thinking, second-guessing ourselves, working from our dominant personality preferences more exclusively, working from our head more than our heart or vice versa. We could be too yin or too yang in our approaches to the world. Working from the synthesis of opposites is a source of growth as this week’s energies encourage us to do. Polarities within and without offer opportunities to make connections and provide new vision and above all balance. We can make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

clear the way

How can you clear the way in practical terms?

So how can you clear the way in practical terms working with opposites rather then against them?

This week’s cards suggest that clarity is all about being practical, grounded and embodied. It’s about challenging one-sidedness and embracing opposites more as a source of strength and wisdom.

Here are some tips for clearing the way and embracing wholeness this week. Take time to reflect and journal on any that catch your attention:

  • notice any one-sidedness in your life: Notice where your heart or head is leading and where the other might help. See where you are spending too much time alone or too much time with others and see where balance can assist.
  • working from a sense of lack:  Have you been working for a sense of lack as a lens for your life? List the positives, reset the vision based on where you are now.
  • embody your truth: How can you embody your truth more? How can you live it, speak it, visualise it, be more visible with it?
  • be practical:  Take time to reflect on where you could be more practical to achieve what you want. What do your to-do lists look like – are they realistic or a source of feeling defeated each day? How are you using your time in line with your goals?
  • keep moving: How are you moving your body as well as thinking, writing and reading?
  • be still: Conversely, how are you weaving stillness into your days? Where are you quiet and reflective, making sense of what is happening or just stopping to breathe?
  • step back: be like the King of Coins and be a bit removed. See where you can ask for help, get a virtual assistant, delegate, prioritise, leave things till later. He’s a calm wise King because he a little away from the action so see how you can do this to be more practical.

clear the way

Thoughts for this week

Find your own truth this week. Work with polarities and clear the way as only you can working with your personal wisdom and passions. Check in to clear the way by being in touch with your personal vision, bringing opposites together and embracing wholeness.

Here’s to a week of working out how to clear the way in your own unique way.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear about what working to clear the way looks like for you! All best wishes for a week of resetting vision and priorities to be clearer and more positive in how we work, channelling that King and Queen of Coins into abundance.

May you find that taking a few moments to clear the way brings hope and focus. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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 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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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.

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:

Choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way

Weathering seasons of life with skills and balance

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creativity intuition

This is the time to check in to the calling of your heart

June 18, 2018

You become mature when you become the authority in your own life.

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

calling of your heart

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: this is the time to check in to the calling of your heart

Theme for the week beginning 18 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #36 Take a past, present, future walk.

After last week’s message of making the most of our new life opportunities and not wasting time, hopefully we have started to focus in a little more. This week’s message urges us to take time for a check in on alignment with the calling of your heart.

Sometimes as we venture on new paths, we can get side-tracked, trying to do all the things that come at us. In this we can lose our creative identity. The theme card for this week encourages us to take a walk in nature to check in to the past, present and future as a way of aligning ourselves.

calling of your heart

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #36 is to take a walk in nature and for the first ten minutes focus on the past. Then take ten minutes to focus on the present, then ten minutes to focus on the future. What powerful advice!

Notice what comes up for you. What metaphors do you see in your immediate environment as your thoughts percolate?

Checking in in this way helps to work out how aligned to are to the true calling of your heart. There is nothing like being in nature and the power of metaphor as a way to check in.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 18 June

calling of your heart

Tarot Narrative: 

It’s time for a check in against past, present and future. And how you really feel about it all. Let your feelings be the guide as you look at the master plan, the bigger picture of what you’re building. And if something feels really right or strong, take that step towards it, listening to the calling of your heart.

Cards: Queen of Cups and Three of Coins from the Spolia Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Check in to the calling of your heart

Last week we had the Six of Wands and Nine of Coins combining with a strong message to stop, have a quiet celebration but keep moving. The focus was on appreciating how far you have come and seeing what the next steps are. This week the Queen of Cups and Three of Coins come together to suggest it’s time to check back in to the calling of your heart.

It’s time to look at feeling as your guide and your emotional side as your key resource. Feelings can be very useful, and sometimes we can downplay them as we work more from our head. Perhaps we overplay them too at times. But this week is all about tapping into the heart of your authentic work and checking back in to see if you are on the right track.

The Three of Coins reminds us that we are looking at building our work in the world on a large scale. What’s the big picture and the grand plan? Are you clear on where the pieces of what you do each day fit with the whole? Do the priorities that you work on each day align?  Are you feeling lost in some way?

Recently we’ve done some important work in stepping up to our goals; we’ve celebrated successes and reaching milestones. Now we are encouraged to spend time this week seeing how our work aligns to our long-term creativity and building the cathedral of our work. How it fits with the calling of your heart.

heart of your calling

How will you check back in with the calling of your heart?

I created this image above many years ago – a layered lino-cut called ‘Poetry as Art’. For me, creativity is all about the sacred creative. We might be sitting there at our desk in our quiet place writing but it connects to a wider landscape. The building of our work in the world and a higher spirituality and calling.

We are encouraged this week to check in to that calling of the heart and to see if we are on track. The Queen of Cups tells us it’s all about feeling and emotions as our guide. We may have found ourselves too much in our head lately or too cluttered with ideas. This week is about our authentic heart work as a touchstone to what to do and where to focus.

The Three of Coins reminds us that this in the context of our long-haul creativity and plans. And the Wisdom of the Oracle card, Come to the Edge also encourages us to listen to our heart and soul, not our head. We are invited to see where a leap of faith or intuitive step into our big vision might be calling us at this time. If we tune into our heart and authentic heart work, it will be easier to feel aligned with the possibilities.

calling of your heart

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: Reflections on the art of living

You become mature when you become the authority in your own life.

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

This quote from Joseph Campbell popped up for me for this week. I came across it via Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth and it’s from the Joseph Campbell book, Reflections on the Art of Living. These books and any others that you know will help you tune in to your heart’s calling is encouraged reading this week. This week is all about being the authority in your own life and getting clear of other influences. It’s great to be inspired by others but we need to swim in our own lane and weave those creative influences in our own way. It’s about knowing and honouring our influences but not being over-shadowed by them. Boundary setting of all kinds also might be important this week and White Hot Truth is an excellent resource for thoughts on setting boundaries.

white hot truth

How can you listen to the calling of your heart?

So how can you move into listening to the calling of your heart?

This week’s cards suggest we need to get back to our creative roots, our motivation, our why.

I’ve been feeling a little scattered lately. I’m making huge steps like becoming a Certified Beautiful You life coach – I’ll share more about this journey later this week. I’ve also been pulling together my Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Stories personality assessment, ecourse and coaching package. Both the product of a long-term investment in my skills and ways I can take my learning forward.

But I’m finding I’ve got a few too many ideas and also feeling the influence of others’ work. It’s great to have ideas and be influenced but in the end, we have to get back to what we are shaping through our work in the world. Whether it’s a creative project, creative business or a more wholehearted life, what it is the authentic heart of it?

I’m feeling I need to get back to the calling of my heart this week as I bring all this work forward. What is it all about? Where does my own creativity fit with all of this? What am I sharing and why? How is my writing going as the authentic heart of my business?

Tips for tuning into the heart of your calling

Here are some tips for checking in to the calling of your heart this week. Take time to reflect and journal on any that catch your attention:

  • take a past, present, future walk: The activity from our Life Designs theme card offers the opportunity of insight as we tune into our senses, outside in nature, getting out of our head and reflecting for 10 minutes on each of the past, present and future. What metaphors arise?
  • blog from the heart:  How can blogging become more heart-centred and a guide to your calling? Blogging is a fabulous way to shape your work, listening to your authentic heart, honing your voice.
  • scope your business overall: Play with the scope of your business overall from a feeling point of view. Create a visual collage about what your work is about and see what comes through.
  • see where the pieces fit:  Take time to reflect on where you are putting your energies. See if the pieces fit with the whole and where you can adjust for better alignment.
  • balance input and outputs – Make a list of inputs (books, courses, personal development, money out) and a list of outputs (creative products, services, certification, money in, project results). See if it is aligned with where you want to go. Check in to:  Are you focussing too much on inputs with few results? Is your creative well running dry? Do you keep doing courses or reading books when you need to create your own work in the world? How can you get this in better balance?
  • taking risks: What’s the heart risk that might help you take that big step towards your vision? What will help you move through fear and do your own bigger work in the world?

calling of your heart

Thoughts for this week

I recently received Jen Carrington’s latest Letter via email and she is singing the same song about how we work on our businesses and creative projects. Her words:

Because here’s the thing I’ve learned over and over again from my clients, creative friends, and my own business journey too: success – real, meaningful, change-your-own-life success – comes from diving deep and building and running your business on your own terms. From doing things your own way, from building your own intuition and vision as a business owner, and from knowing what noise will serve you and what noise isn’t worth your focus and energy too.

Here’s to a week of working out which noise serves you and which noise detracts you from your own cathedral like vision of your work.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear about what checking in to the calling of your heart means for you! All best wishes for a week of resetting direction and priorities by using our heart as our guide and knowing the true nature of our work in the world.

May you find that taking a few moments to check in with your heart’s work brings joy and focus. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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 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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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.

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:

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

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

Honor your lineage – Sage Cohen’s Fierce on the Page

Blossoming on your own terms for long-term success

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

transcending transition

New life, new wings, new opportunities – making the most of it

June 11, 2018

We are more than the sum of our wounds.

Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted

new life

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: new life, new wings, new opportunities + making the most of them

Theme for the week beginning 11 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #18 Produce no waste.

After last week’s message – Taking a leap of faith with structure + the gift of surprise  – this week is all about moving more fully into that new life. If you’ve been following along with my daily Tarot Narratives (now on IG stories @writingquietly), you may have  noticed the Five of Cups popping up a few times (3 times in the past 8 days!) accompanied by the Eight of Swords in one instance. All of that seemed to be about not getting lost in disappointment or grief, in what could have been or what has been lost.

This card, “Produce no waste”, helps us to reflect on where we might be losing energy, effort or time as a consequence of what we’ve been through. What habits has it led to? Have we become adept at putting things off instead of actually doing them? Are we wallowing in something rather than moving on?

new life

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #18 is:

Explore your use of time. Establish what needs to be maintained in your life. Scrutinize your perceived priorities. Look out for signs of procrastination. Is there anything else being wasted?

What can we waste: time, opportunities, connection, energy, resources, space… so many things.

Today’s narrative, led by this card, encourages us to see where we are moving to and how we are moving there.  We are looking ahead rather than behind to check we are making the most of the opportunities of this new life.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 11 June

new life

Tarot Narrative: 

You’ve come a long way through and out. Take some time to celebrate but reflect also on what you can do with this time, your resources, what you’ve built so far. The unfamiliar beckons as a way of taking yourself, your creativity and projects into a new life with new wings guiding you to a higher space.

Cards: Six of Wands and Nine of Coins (Pentacles) from the Spolia Tarot and #50 No Place Like Home in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Moving on and into new life ways

Last week we had the Emperor and Seven of Wands encouraging us to take some risks and a leap of faith in our creative projects. The Emperor especially prompted work with structure and an overall plan or in Jung/Myers-Briggs terms, some Extraverted Thinking – some frameworks and order.

I don’t know what your week was like this past week but I achieved some major goals. This included some that had been begging to be finished for a while. I just had to put a bit of structure in place and do the work and, voilà, long term goals were achieved.

I’m feeling pretty good about that but as this week’s narrative asks us, what does that moment of satisfaction and achievement bring with it? Is it time to sit back and do less? Time to celebrate and kick up our heels? The Six of Wands and Nine of Coins combine with a strong message this week to say: yes stop, have a quiet celebration but keep moving. Appreciate how far you have come but it’s also time to keep doing and seeing what the next steps are. 

six of wands

Where will you go with your new set of wings?

The Six of Wands from The Wild Unknown Tarot sums up the message of this card so well:

The obstacles have been relentless, but now is not the time to look back upon them. The more pressing question is: where will you go with your new set of wings?

Whatever you have been through recently, it’s time to look forward. It’s an opportunity to celebrate and recognise the wins, in case you missed noticing them. But then to see where they will take you.

The ‘No Place Like Home’ card from the Wisdom of the Oracle deck has turned up two days in a row in the same position – protection or reversed. This card in this position counsels us not to get too comfortable and not to sit on our laurels. (Note also the laurel imagery in the Spolia Nine of Coins card!) Especially if we have been through a tough time, it’s easy to develop the habit of putting things off. We are encouraged via the Wisdom of the Oracle for this card to do something different and find a new path:

Choose something unfamiliar and trust that there you will find a new normal that supports your spirit.

new life

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: New life and moving on from pain

It is true that we have to do a good deal of inner work before we have anything meaningful to offer the world; it is true too that we must recognise our wounds and incorporate them into the ground of our becoming. But we need also to stop licking them. We are more than the sum of our wounds.

Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted

The initial theme card about focusing on producing no waste suggested a focus on wasted time and other resources. It’s a fine balance between moving through pain to new life and getting lost on the way. It might be getting stuck in the habit of loss or disappointment. This means we can lose energy in negative ways rather than channelling it into the positive.

It could be getting carried away with celebrating our successes and missing the next opportunities. Perhaps it’s taking the safe way instead of the unfamiliar, the “exquisite risks” that last week’s message also suggested to us. We might choose heading home instead of the opportunity of a new adventure.

new life

How can you move into new life in a new way?

So how can you move into new life in a new way, making the most of new opportunities?

The Six of Wands and Nine of Coins are both positive cards: we are rising up, feeling a sense of victory. We are finally feeling self-sufficient, independent, achieving creatively. But what are the next steps? There’s a sense of needing to do something different and unfamiliar to ride this new wave with optimism.

I’ve made big leaps in the past week or so. I’ve finalised my Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Stories personality assessment, ecourse and coaching package. I am currently testing it with some fellow life coaches and a friend who is also a Myers-Briggs practitioner. Then I’ll be able to fine-tune it with feedback and release it more widely. After a long-term investment in my skills and this project, I’m ready to step into it. This week’s narrative is encouraging me to think a little differently with how I work now I’ve reached this point. Where am I going with these new wings? Am I wasting time and energy anywhere? Am I aligned? Am I making the most of what I’ve created?

Tips for moving ahead with new life opportunities

Here are some questions and tips for moving ahead with optimism into new life opportunities. Take time to reflect and journal on any that catch your attention:

  • aligning your time: Where are you wasting time? Where have you developed habits from another time that aren’t serving you now?
  • do things differently: As the saying goes, if you always do what you’ve done, you’ll always get what you’ve got. So how can you do things differently and embrace the unfamiliar in your work? What course or book might help you break new ground? Or where can you move ahead without any courses or books, instead creating your own?
  • notice where you are stuck: Where are you doing things because you’ve always done them that way? Check in and see if it’s still serving you.
  • the “new normal”:  Which parts of your life feel like the “new normal” you want more of? In getting to this new phase, what helped you? Who helped you? How can you do more of that?
  • go outside your comfort zone and natural preferences – This was mentioned last week but the unfamiliar keeps popping up as a source of new opportunities now. Do the opposite of what you normally do and see what arises for you! Go to an event if you are introvert. Stay inside and explore your creative thoughts more if you tend to want to go out a lot.
  • let go: There is an element of letting go of the past and other attachments in all of this too. This post with some great quotes on letting go just popped up so sharing it with you.

new life

Thoughts for this week

Celebrate where you’ve got to – all that hard work and vision over time. But don’t lose the momentum and keep focused on the new. Reframing and resetting offer wonderful opportunities for rising even more strongly now.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to what this message of moving ahead with a new life, new wings and new opportunities sings to you! All best wishes for a week of celebrating how hard we’ve worked but also moving ahead into a new normal with an optimistic mind-set.

May you find that taking a few moments to celebrate and reflect brings new opportunities and new ways of working. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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 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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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.

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:

Finishing on a high note – closure, letting go and moving on

Movement, stillness and navigating challenging times

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

Butterfly feature image via pexels.com

creativity intuition

Taking a leap of faith with structure + the gift of surprise

June 4, 2018

We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

leap of faith

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: taking a leap of faith with structure + the gift of surprise

Theme for the week beginning 4 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #45 Take a leap of faith with your ideals

After last week’s message – choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way – this week is all about taking risks and a leap of faith. We’ve had a time of Introverted Intuiting and working on our work in the world in a more visionary introverted kind of way. Now it’s time to do something with all those thoughts and maybe all that behind the scenes work. It’s time for taking a leap of faith in many different ways and also seeing what can support and inspire us.

This message of taking a leap of faith has come to me twice in 24 hours: via the Life Design cards deck and also the Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. So I pass this message on to you here. Aine, the Celtic goddess and fairy queen, says: “Take a risk, and put your heart’s true desire into action!”

leap of faith

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #45 is:

Expand your awareness through the gathering of unfamiliar experiences.

Today’s narrative, led by the synchronicity of these theme cards, encourages us to take a leap of faith. Elements of structure and surprise are in there as we navigate the unfamiliar with some safe supports.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 4 June

leap of faith

Tarot Narrative: 

It’s time to take some risks especially on work you’ve been imagining and planning for a while. Put in some structure, order and plans to help control your fear and manage any risks. Also to achieve progress over time, step by step. This will build confidence and help fight any inner or outer challenges. Work out what’s important to you as a source of strength and guidance. And take a leap of faith now for surprise learning and inputs!

Cards: The Emperor and Seven of Rods (Wands) from the Morgan Greer Tarot and #45 Time to Go in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Taking a leap of faith with support

Last week we had the Nine of Swords and Judgment and it was all about watching our inner thoughts and trying to lighten them. This week we head into taking our creative thoughts and projects out in to the world in some way. Having potentially worked on our self-talk and self-love in a big way this past week and moved on and through, it’s time to take some risks and a leap of faith in our creative projects. This week begins with a yin energy focus as we intention comes in to being more. Taking risks to get our work out in the world is highlighted this week.

The tarot cards drawn along with the focus on a leap of faith provide guidance as to what will help us make that leap positively.

Firstly, the Emperor encourages us to work with structure and an overall plan. In Jung/Myers-Briggs terms, some Extraverted Thinking – some frameworks, logic and order will help us make a leap of faith with support.

In The Creative Tarot, for The Emperor, Jessa Crispin talks about C.S. Lewis and his approach to writing the Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis plotted out the whole series in advance which led to increased consistency of his work. An INTJ personality type, he was weaving together his Introverted Intuiting with his Extraverted Thinking.

If you are planning a leap of faith in getting your creative work out in the world, use structure and a plan to help you. This was you will know where you are going in some senses so that leap of faith in writing or creating something new and innovative is supported.

leap of faithThis image via pexels.com

A leap of faith and self-belief

Another key support in the process of taking a leap of faith is self-belief. As the Seven of Wands reminds, sometimes we need to fight for what we believe in. This might be fighting for time, space and attention to get our work done. It might be working through issues that arise or countering naysayers. Perhaps it is shoring up our sense of belief that our work is needed in the world. Sometimes “you have to fight yourself down too” as Jessa Crispin reminds us for this card in The Creative Tarot.

As you craft your creative projects and take a leap of faith, see how you can strengthen self-belief as a key ingredient. Like putting in some order and structure, strengthening our self-belief is another valuable support as take risks and leap into the unknown.

leap of faith

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: A leap of faith and the gift of surprise

Our capacity for surprise is often an unused blessing.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

A leap of faith can also bring with it surprises. Staying open to the unexpected means we can make the most of any leaps of faith and their gifts. But we need to keep our eyes open and we need to keep our heart open as we move.

Mark Nepo highlights ‘The Gift of Surprise’ in his book ‘The Exquisite Risk’. Taking a leap of faith also implies we are letting go a little to see what comes. Whilst we might put some structure around our leaping, like a safety net, still we can move from the known to the unknown.

It might be putting down the first words of that novel that has been in your heart for years once you finally create a tentative outline. This structure helps you have the self-belief to be able to get those first words down, knowing they will go somewhere. And in that, the surprise of what appears can arrive. The seeds of ideas have the chance to grow.

strategy

How can you leap ahead with structure and surprise?

So how can you actively leap ahead, honouring both structure and surprise?

For me, these Tarot Narrative readings are a way of doing that each week. I have the basic structure of a tarot reading, a blog post, the tarot narrative work I have developed over time. But I never know what the message is or what I will write about until I do the intuitive work.

I’m working on my Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Stories personality assessment and learning. I’ve had this plan in my head for over 18 months now. It’s new territory in many ways including for me as a new way of working. Recently, I’ve put my head down and created the container and structure. I’ve done the work and am now testing it with fellow creatives, coaches and Jung/Myers-Briggs professionals. The somewhat scary leap of faith in putting this work out into the world is next but the structure has helped me make that leap. Beginning to talk about it has brought some surprising linkages I hadn’t thought of and offers of help.

Tips for leaping ahead with structure and surprise

Some tips for leaping ahead with structure + surprise:

  • make a transition plan for where you want to be; that guide and safety net will help you move
  • create a plan for your creative project so you can make a start eg an outline, a timeline, a visual map
  • work with Instagram challenges that provide some structure but also some freedom. I am going to join in with Quiet Writing Wholehearted story author, Shalagh Hogan for her monthlong Creativity Challenge #OurCreativeJune this month. But any time on OG there are great challenges that provide structure while you provide the surprises!
  • go to an event you are interested in that breaks new ground for you – an Instameet, a conference – or message more directly an online creative whose work you feel a connection with.
  • go outside your comfort zone and natural preferences – if you usually do your social media lives outside, go inside and vice versa. See what arises for you! Go to an event if you are introvert. Stay inside and explore your creative thoughts more if you tend to want to go out a lot.

leap of faith

Thoughts for this week

Leaps of faith don’t have to be entirely without support. Use structure and order to help you. Shore up your self-belief so you feel strong inside and can counter any challenges. Value the element of surprise and new learning that comes from stepping outside your comfort zone.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to how this message of taking a leap of faith with support and surprise resonates with you this week.

All best wishes for a week of going outside your comfort zones and stretching your creative projects and business. In the end, that’s the value fo being creative – enjoying the process and seeing what comes up for you – and for others.

May you find that a leap of faith can be an exciting way to progress your creativity and life passions. It also can be an important way to help others in their work through our example and what we create.

As Steve Pressfield reminds us on what of my favourite quotes of all time from ‘ The War of Art’:

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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 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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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.

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:

Creative courage to move on in small steps

NaNoWriMo – 10 lessons on the value of writing each day

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

personality and story transcending

Choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way

May 28, 2018

Through meditation, observe your mind observing the world.

Lisa McLoughlin, Life Design Cards, #48 Stay bewitched by your own consciousness

choosing the best thoughts

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: choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way

Theme for the week beginning 28 May

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #48 Stay bewitched by your own consciousness

Exploring magic

After last week’s message to start work and ignite magic from your unique passions, it’s a time of going within again. We have had this card a couple of times before so it seems to be a favourite for Quiet Writing! No surprises really, given it’s all about meditating, going quietly within and playing creatively with our mind. It seems a very Introverted Intuiting kind of card to me. And that type of cognitive processing is about withdrawing from the world to find an insight or higher perspective, according to Dario Nardi in ‘Jung on Yoga’ (more on this below!)

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Through meditation, observe your mind observing the world. Play out creative inspirations with art, pure fantasy and dreams.

Today’s narrative, led by this theme card, encourages us to withdraw a little and choose best thoughts to make a lighter way.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 28 May

choose best thoughts

Tarot Narrative: 

It’s a time of change or perhaps you are just coming out of a tough time where much shifted. As you work through this time, be aware of your own consciousness and whether you are filling it with flowers and growth, or swords that might damage you. Wield what will help you to shed skins and move into a lighter time.

Cards: Nine of Swords and Judgement from the Spolia Tarot and #12 A Change in the Wind from Wisdom of the Oracle. Loving the Spolia Tarot!

Watch the thoughts you are choosing

Last week we had the King of Wands and Ace of Coins and it was all about moving ahead on our creative projects. It was a very yang energy week and I achieved an enormous amount of things I have been trying to get to for ages. How did you go? Did you have that same experience of lots of forward action?

I noticed too though that the fear and doubt started to creep in. As we put ourselves out there with our creative projects, all kinds of thoughts can step in. This week we are encouraged to ground ourselves by choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way.

It’s amazing when we are reaching new goals and putting our ideas into action how the negative thoughts can come. The Spolia Nine of Swords captures this perfectly symbolising all those daggers of thought that can stop us from moving and fill us with fear. As Jessa Crispin reminds us for this card:

This is the card of waking up at 4am with your head spinning, letting you know all the ways you are letting yourself down….We can spin demons out of thin air.

Choosing the best thoughts and clearing your mind

So this time calls for a strategy of going within and choosing our best thoughts – flowers instead of swords – and clearing the mind. Whatever works for you to clear your mind – yoga, walking, swimming, running, knitting, colouring, drawing – will help to clear the air. That way you can begin to choose the best thoughts – the more creative ones – rather than the dark ones that make you doubt yourself.

The challenges of current or recent times are potential sources of growth. They can feel very tough but as the Judgement card suggests with its imagery of a snake shedding its skin, it’s all about transformation. And part of the transformation is choosing the best thoughts to take us forward instead of dwelling on any mistakes or shortcomings. It’s a whole lot lighter that way.

As I was swimming this morning, I was reflecting on how the act of swimming is a kind of yoga for me as I breathe in and out very deeply for about half an hour. In that process, as I float and move, I feel much lighter. And much like yoga, the thoughts come and go as I come back to focusing on my breath and movement. The practice of my body moving through salt water.

In this process, I go within and access my own consciousness and inspiration often comes intuitively. It’s easy in this way to choose the best thoughts rather than the “waking at 4am” style of thinking, full of fear and doubt.

sea swimming

This image via pexels.com

Book notes:

Withdraw from the world and focus your mind to receive an insight or realization. Check if synergy results. Try a realization to transform yourself and how you think.

Dario Nardi, Jung on Yoga – for Keen Foreseeing (Ni Introverted Intuiting)

Today’s theme is all about going within and finding ways of choosing the best thoughts. And this is a kind of Introverted Intuiting or keen forseeing. There are eight cognitive processes including four extraverted and four introverted in Jungian psychology. Introverted Intuiting is one of these processes. It’s highlighted this week for going within and finding those bewitching thoughts in our own consciousness.

Dario Nardi describes this Introverted Intuiting as ‘Transform with a Higher Perspective.’ This energy and cognitive process is valuable for us as we seek to change and shed old ways that are no longer helpful. Moving past the dark Nine of Swords thinking and into lighter ways of working, we can engage with our creativity.

‘Jung on Yoga’ is a fabulous resource on finding psychological balance through yoga and the chakras as well as through working with your cognitive processes and psychological type. It is particularly valuable on the Transcendent function and provides a contemporary perspective on conflict as a source of growth and how to work with this. As Dario Nardi states:

The tension of opposites is your fuel for growth.

choosing best thoughts

Tips for choosing the best thoughts

So how can you actively work on choosing the best thoughts? For me, it’s finding the self-leadership strategies that help me settle and work with my personality type. It might be different strategies for different times too. As Dario Nardi’s work on neuroscience, cognitive processes and self-leadership reminds us, it might be about stretching our cognitive options to suit the environment and demands up on us.

You might like to read up too on self-leadership and being the Captain of your Own Life via this great free ebook. My piece on ‘Anchors of self-leadership in seas of change‘ is there along with fellow Quiet Writing contributors Elizabeth Milligan and Lynn Hanford-Day. Just click on the image to read – it’s free! It’s all about finding ways of choosing the best thoughts and quieting the darker ones.

A huge thanks to all fellow contributors and heartfelt gratitude to Angelique Desiree who conceived the idea, pulled us all together and created this beautiful ebook every step of the way. Enjoy some fantastic reading on wholehearted self-leadership and being captain of your own life as this week invites us to do.

Captain of your own life

Thoughts for this week

Going within and choosing the best thoughts to help us chart our course is highlighted this week. Judging what is best can be relative, but certainly finding the self-leadership strategies that you know will settle you will help you move with grace and calm.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to how this message of staying with your own consciousness and its more introverted and intuitive practices resonates with you this week.

All best wishes for a week of going within to settle into choosing your best thoughts in creativity and life focus.

May you find that shedding the skin of darker thoughts is easier and that your path is lighter. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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 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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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.

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:

Weathering seasons of life with skill and balance

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers 

Creative healing in times of sorrow and challenge

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