self-leadership Archives

I’m a Creativity & Self-leadership Coach, a Writer & more

October 2, 2018

We round off our #quietwriting IG challenge journey by claiming who and what we are: I’m a Creativity + Self-leadership Coach and a Writer, skilled in Personality Type assessment. Read on to find out more about what this means – and what it might mean for you!

Use the #quietwriting hashtag across platforms as a way to create, connect and link us together on our ongoing journey to draft, process, create, make space for writing and other creativity and otherwise live a wholehearted creative life. Read on to discover more and connect with creative others about claiming who and what we are.

Claiming who and what we are

I’ve just received my beautiful new business cards developed with Stephey Baker of Marked by the Muse. You can see my Quiet Writing logo and essence phrase: ‘Journeying deep into wholehearted stories’ and my colour palette. I’ll be integrating my logo, colour palette and essence phrase into Quiet Writing and all its aspects over time. And I’ll share more with you on the process of developing this and what it means for my business and life soon.

In working on this, I had to work out what I stand for, what I am, in this new creative life I’ve carved out. I had to work out what to put on my business cards to communicate this. It’s taken many hours and days of learning and skill development. In fact, it’s taken years of creating and honing my body of work and then taking it forward in new ways. Sometimes we need to step forward and claim who and what we are, like on our business cards and via our websites.

Our ‘About me’ page, our logo, our essence phrase, stating who and what we are – these are some of the hardest pieces of work we can do as creative entrepreneurs.

So I’m a Creativity & Self-leadership Coach, a Writer and a Personality Type Practitioner skilled in Personality Type Assessment. Settling on this took a very long time. It involved many elements including:

becoming a life coach
being able to call myself a writer
skilling up and practising in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type assessment
working out how to blend personality type with life coaching
working out my coaching niche as creativity and self-leadership for women in transition
encouraging wholehearted self-leadership in myself and others.

Here are some additional thoughts on each of the puzzle pieces and how they might help you.

I’m a Creativity and Self-leadership Coach

Becoming a life coach was a critical piece in my transition journey – one of three key pillars. I chose to study with the Beautiful You Life Coaching Academy. As part of this journey, it was important to identify our niche and what makes us different from each other. I needed to work out who my ideal client is, what their needs are and how I can help them.

My main modus operandi personally and in my coaching is creativity. Creative is one of my five Core Desired Feelings. It’s what I choose to do each day across all of my life including coaching and writing. It was a core thread in my body of work over time too. I focused on creativity and innovation as a leader in the role I played in the government adult vocational education sector until recently.

Leadership is a key piece of my body of work too: being a leader and working on myself as a leader. I realised as I made this shift to being a coach that all of the leadership skills I developed over time apply equally to self-leadership. Leading yourself first is a critical foundation of leadership.

So taking my body of work in these areas forward, I am interested in helping women going through transition especially at mid-life with creativity and self-leadership. I love supporting women to connect with their creativity, get the creative works of their heart out in the world. And to have the self-leadership, self-understanding, confidence, skills and productivity tools to make it happen.

I’m a writer

So just why is calling ourselves a writer so hard? Of all the titles I’m claiming in this piece, ‘writer’ has the most mystique and baggage attached to it. I am not sure why we put the role of writer on a pedestal but probably because it’s something we aspire to.

This piece, The Subtle Art of Not Writing, helped me move through that blockage. Writing it made me think through a whole raft of things: resistance, getting out of our own way, making things manageable, shifting our contexts, small tweaks, tricking ourselves, recognising our body of work over time and self-belief.

Claiming the title of writer has been an important step in this transition process. Getting into the habit of writing more consistently via blog, morning pages, book draft, NaNoWriMo. going on a writing retreat in Vietnam and embracing writing as my authentic heart has been so empowering. I’ve seen my work out in the world in many ways now, here on Quiet Writing and via my featured writing elsewhere.

A combination of keeping in practice, honing my voice and crafting pieces for publication means claiming the role of writer is much easier than it has been in the past. Though truth be told, I’ve always been a writer. Embracing the writing life has made it feel a title I am more comfortable with claiming. Here I am writing at the beautiful An Villa embracing the writing life on retreat recently. This picture by Nigel Rowles and used with permission and thanks.

I’m a Personality Type Practitioner

A key piece in my transition pillars was becoming a Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Type Practitioner. This is because understanding my INTJ personality made all the difference in my life. I’ve learnt to understand and work my introversion, my intuition, my thinking and my judging skills. And to appreciate how the mix of these preferences is something to honour and value in my life. I’ve learnt to embrace my Introverted Intuition as a dominant preference and gift. I understand Extraverted Sensing is my least preferred way of operating. By working on the least preferred, I can get more balance and be more wholehearted.

I see knowing your personality type and preferences as a key part of self-leadership and self-understanding. So I skilled up over time in personality type assessment and integrate it with life coaching. My offerings and writing in this space focus on helping you truly know and understand your personality type. Through a deep process of personality type assessment, an ecourse and coaching debrief with me, you can achieve insights for to guide your wholehearted journey. We also look at aspects like coaching style, entrepreneurship, creativity, stress and resilience through the lens of personality type. It’s such a powerful tool.

Understanding your personality type

If you’d like to work more on understanding your personality type, I’ll be rolling out my offerings in the personality space in mid October. It’s not just about introvert and extrovert aspects though these are important. You learn about your preferences around sensing and intuition; thinking and feeling; and perceiving and judging as well.

The Personality Stories package includes:

personality type assessment online
an online course on personality preferences so you can understand your type
a coaching package to work on deep-diving into the wholehearted story of your personality.
a Quiet Writing personality type summary, and
email support for two weeks after.

Personality Stories coaching package

Here’s the detail of the coaching package. You receive:

Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (Majors PTI™) online assessment. This helps you to begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs 4-letter personality type.
Self-paced online course on personality type: Working through the self-paced Personality Stories ecourse. It takes about 3 hours (max) to complete this short online course. I hope you will find it fascinating learning about Carl Jung, his followers and their rich work on personality type.
Coaching debrief to work through your results: Once you complete the ecourse, we have a 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report, and the four letter code arrived at, in this session. The coaching debrief focuses on checking that your assessment result is your true or best-fit Type and discussing your results. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward and embed it in your life.
Quiet Writing summary: Once your true personality type is confirmed from the coaching session, you will receive a Quiet Writing summary of the key aspects of your personality type to take forward. This includes links to further reading, tarot connections and suggestions for managing stress and fostering creativity in your life.
Email contact for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is $350AU as a special ‘first release’ price. Just let me know via email at terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited October enrolment.

I’m grateful for connections via #quietwriting

So I welcome your comments here or on social media. I look forward to seeing #quietwriting images that share thoughts and open up dialogue on quiet in your life. Just share an image on Instagram using the tag #quietwriting. Here are the prompts we worked through for the challenge in September to give you an idea.

And the #quietwriting hashtag continues beyond the week of the challenge, so use it anytime to create and connect. You can learn more here about #quietwriting

Just a reminder of the key points:

Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect.
Hashtags are such a fabulous way to gather, finding our creative kindred souls and inspiration online.
On Instagram, you can now follow hashtags as well as individual profiles. So follow #quietwriting now and into the future to connect around creativity and your quiet work, writing and making art.
You can head on over to the #quietwriting hashtag on Instagram or Facebook or other social media anytime and see what’s popping up.
You could also post on your own profile on Facebook as well using the hashtag.
Often we write quietly, behind closed doors or in busy cafes, privately. Let’s shine a light behind the scenes and capture the process of writing and creativity in action, wherever we are.

Get on board with #quietwriting!

These are just some ideas and they will evolve as we all contribute. It doesn’t have to be all about writing – it can be any form of creativity. Nor do you need to be an introvert; we all need quiet writing time to get creative work done.

Ongoing, I’ll feature my favourite images from the tag here and on Instagram and Facebook so share your images for the chance to be featured!

So join the #quietwriting party and let us know what you are up to! Who knows what creative connections you might make to support you on your journey or inspire your next creation?

Welcome your comments and images to inspire and connect our creativity online as we progress our works in progress!

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

You can work with me to help reset your creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. 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 to help you create with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for an October 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:

Personality, story and introverted intuition

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

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

#quietwriting – growing creative community and connection

Practices and tools to support creative productivity, writing and mindset

Creative and connected – on the special value of self-leadership

The Journey to Write Here: My Wholehearted Story

Puzzle image via pexels.com

creativity writing

Work in progress – being one and creating one

September 28, 2018

As part of the #quietwriting hashtag and Instagram Challenge, we shift now to looking at work in progress – being one and creating one.

Use the #quietwriting hashtag across platforms – for the challenge and beyond – as a way to create, connect and link us together on our ongoing journey to draft, process, create, make space for writing and other creativity and otherwise live a wholehearted creative life. Read on to discover more and connect with creative others about being a work in progress.

Being a work in progress

Work in progress is a key theme for me on many levels. Firstly, I am a work in progress. I’ve shifted over the past two years from a career as a leader, formerly teacher, in the government adult vocational education sector to being a life coach and writer.

These two years have been a time of immense personal growth and a deep journey into self-leadership at a time of transition. I’ve had to pretty well rewrite my whole identity: what defines me, how I spend my days, how I earn income, the work I do.

I listen to many podcasts and I often hear women talk of feeling old in their early 30’s in this age of creative entrepreneurship. They often seem to compare themselves with younger women and their journey; something I know is easy to do. I’ve found myself thinking, “I wish I’d started this journey 20 years earlier instead of at age 55”.

But the truth is you couldn’t have done this work in this way 20 years ago. The technology just wasn’t available in the way that it is now. Work as I do it now as an online life coach and personality type practitioner was not possible in this form. Further, all the lessons I’ve learnt over time and my body of work brings me to where I am now, with my unique learning, passions, skills and experience. There’s simply no benefit in focusing on age or lost opportunities, only on the future.

So I accept myself as a work in progress now, a creative entrepreneur, a solopreneur, moving through a major life transition, learning and sharing the self-leadership skills I have gathered over this time.

Wholehearted – my work in progress

As I have moved through this time, my focus has been on the twin goals of writing and life coaching. Underpinning these two main goals are the skills of becoming a personality type practitioner and a tarot reader. These are the pieces that have held my self-leadership journey together over the past two years. Each day, I’ve worked on one or the other, or all of them, in a kind of mosaic, piecing myself together through this time.

As I’ve moved through this time, I’ve documented the journey and my reflections. In November 2017, I focused via NaNoWriMo on getting a significant chunk of work done (50,000 words in one month) on my book draft. I recently finished the first draft. It is around 84,000 words about my journey, part-memoir and part self-leadership experiences, to share with others in transition to guide their journey.

Having just finished the first draft, I printed it off to be able to see it and review it. I read Joanna Penn’s How to Write Non-fiction for support as I move through this ‘work in progress’ process. A recent writing and yoga retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam with Kerstin Pilz helped me connect with my writing voice and story again. The manuscript is still resting in a process that seems necessary before I move back to edit it.

Being a work in progress

The process of reviewing my progress on my two year transition journey and also working on my manuscript have all helped me feel like a work in progress. All that work expended into this draft and version of me and my emerging book. My body of work there in the pages and days of my life and the process of editing and reviewing to finetune words, decisions, pathways, in process as always.

How about you?

Are you feeling like a work in progress right now?
Have you been through major life transitions and how have you felt about that?
What works in progress are you in the middle of creating?
What have they taught you about your skills, knowledge and experience?
If you’d like to be more in progress, what would you like to be creating?
What shape does it look like?
What difference would it make in your life to create this work?
How does creative work interact with you and your own feeling of being in process?

Love to hear your thoughts and see any images via Instagram – just use the hashtag #quietwriting for the challenge or anytime so we can connect with you. Or share your thoughts in the comments here or on Facebook.

Quiet connections via #quietwriting

So I welcome your comments here or on social media. I look forward to seeing #quietwriting images that share thoughts and open up dialogue on quiet in your life. Just share an image on Instagram using the tag #quietwriting and follow the prompts each day for ideas. Here are the prompts:

And the #quietwriting hashtag will continue beyond the week of the challenge, so use it anytime to create and connect. You can learn more here about #quietwriting

Just a reminder of the key points:

Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect.
Hashtags are such a fabulous way to gather, finding our creative kindred souls and inspiration online.
On Instagram, you can now follow hashtags as well as individual profiles. So follow #quietwriting now and into the future to connect around creativity and your quiet work, writing and making art.
You can head on over to the #quietwriting hashtag on Instagram or Facebook or other social media anytime and see what’s popping up.
You could also post on your own profile on Facebook as well using the hashtag.
Often we write quietly, behind closed doors or in busy cafes, privately. Let’s shine a light behind the scenes and capture the process of writing and creativity in action, wherever we are.

Get on board with #quietwriting + the hashtag challenge!

These are just some ideas and they will evolve as we all contribute. It doesn’t have to be all about writing – it can be any form of creativity. Nor do you need to be an introvert; all of us need quiet writing time to get creative work done.

I’ll feature my favourite images from the tag here and on Instagram and Facebook so share your images for the chance to be featured!

So join the #quietwriting party and let us know what you are up to! Who knows what creative connections you might make to support you on your journey or inspire your next creation?

Welcome your comments and images to inspire and connect our creativity online as we progress our works in progress!

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 knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

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

#quietwriting – growing creative community and connection

Practices and tools to support creative productivity, writing and mindset

Creative and connected – on the special value of self-leadership

coaching transition work life

Become a Life Coach + live your change

September 21, 2018

You must be the change you wish to be in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

I’m excited to share my journey to become a life coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy + opportunities if you also want to become a life coach!

As a certified life coach, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I am truly delighted to share my experiences with you.

My key message is to be the change you wish to be.

Truly live it! And a fabulous pathway to this is to embark on the personal development journey to become a life coach. In this way, you can support the growth of others, as you beautifully enhance your own.

My journey to become a coach

It’s hard to believe it’s more than two years since I started on the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Life Coaching course journey. I remember receiving my learning resources with the most gorgeous, handwritten welcome note from lead trainer and CEO, Julie Parker.

I identified becoming a life coach as a key part of my transition from 30-plus years as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector. For a long time, I’d yearned for more freedom and time for creativity, especially to write the books I desired to write.

I had already started to make a plan to leave and start a new life. But a particular incident at work one day was like a kick in the guts, accelerating my transition journey. A message delivered in a meeting left me stunned, staring at the blue sky outside, unable to participate any further. It left me reeling. In essence, it was saying that after all I had invested in the organisation, I was no longer valued. I cried all the way home and hardly slept for days. Unable to work the following week, I spent days recovering. In that time, I began to plan my new future.

The first thing I did the morning after the incident was reach out to my friend, Victoria, who was a life coach. Feeling very raw, I asked her to help me chart a course to create a new life. Soon after, I started coaching with Victoria, then began part-time job-share arrangements at work to make space for transition. Before too long, it became clear that a new life plan was not a choice, it was a necessity. Redundancy was imminent – the organisation was also headed in different directions and I truly was not valued.

Fast forward to now

Since that time, I completed the Beautiful You Life Coaching course and honed my life coaching skills through a series of deep engagements with clients. Building on my skills as a teacher and leader, I’m now a practising Certified Life Coach focused on creativity and self-leadership, especially for women in transition. Women who are undergoing experiences like I have been through. I am an accredited Personality Type assessor and practitioner, as well as a writer and intuitive tarot reader. These are all skills I chose to learn or deepen as I went on this journey – my passions and loves.

Life coaching is linked to writing and teaching as key aspects of my life. Writing is my creative focus and raison d’être, but teaching and supporting people to reach their potential is also what I have engaged in deeply through-out my work life. I’ve been a coach and mentor in the workplace and worked with coaches in the workplace as a leader. So when the time came to leave my job, my transition plan had writing and coaching as two core elements complementing each other.

Becoming a life coach became a key pillar of this plan for a new life. It’s a skill and personal journey you can integrate with many other life skills and passions as you seek to shape a new life and be of service to others.

Working with life coaches + life transition

I can’t say enough about the value of being a life coach and working with life coaches to support you on key transition journeys. Working with coaches has been a key support along this two-year transition journey, helping me to make meaning. My coach, Victoria, helped me start my journey at that very tender time when I knew I had to make plans to leave. As well, on the coaching journey with Beautiful You, every trainee has the opportunity to buddy coach with a fellow trainee. Below is a picture of me (on the left) with my gorgeous and inspiring coaching buddy, Jeanette. We shared powerful and supportive learning and coaching experiences as we mutually embarked on this adventure.

My coaching needs focused on strength and self-care as I was also supporting my mother who was very unwell with cancer. Sadly, she passed away at the end of last year after a very difficult time. I focused on making sure my self-care and wellness strategies were in place when life was tough. When I was caring for another just as I was making a major life transition.

Now, I am much healthier and stronger, swimming in the ocean a few times a week and back to yoga after a break. I also worked with a certified Beautiful You coach on my writing to make sure it was a priority on this journey. I went on a writing and yoga retreat in beautiful Hoi An, Vietnam.

After two years on this journey, working with a number of coaches, studying with Beautiful You, becoming a Personality Type practitioner and establishing both my coaching and writing practice, life looks very different. I’d like to help you make life look different too – so read on!

Why become a life coach?

Life coaching is an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to achieve our goals. Especially those long term goals we have held very close. Life coaching and the support and community of coaches is simply part of how I make meaning in life now.

It is especially powerful at times of major transition and creativity like: experiencing redundancy, not wanting to stay where you are, starting a business around your passions, writing a book or seeking more creative life options.

I struggled as I wrote this piece to separate out the journey to become a life coach from the fabulous support and experience that life coaching has afforded me. They are in essence all part of the same journey. It becomes a skill you learn but also a mindset you live. My learning to become a coach coincided with other deep life experiences that involved holding space for others at critical times. My skills as a life coach helped me navigate those times with self-leadership and strength.

Some of the reasons to become a life coach are that it is:

something you can do from anywhere, a flexible skill that is infinitely portable.
work that you can dial up and down, in combination with other life priorities and work streams.
a skill that integrates with other life passions: Life coaches work in all kinds of niches reflecting their uniqueness.
a rich and ongoing journey of personal development.
a way to connect with other like-minded people interested in self-development and deep connection.
focused on being in service, using your skills, knowledge and experience to support others.
a rich skill-set for all of life: mindfulness, listening, asking questions, holding space, supporting, encouraging and cheering others on.

Why Beautiful You Coaching Academy?

As a graduate, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I wholeheartedly recommend the Academy’s Life Coaching Course. The many positives of the program and experience include:

solid theory and practice, well-structured and professionally managed with the ability to study online from across the world;
exceptional leadership and teaching via CEO and lead trainer Julie Parker and her team, all skilled, successful and experienced life coaches;
a rich, diverse, supportive and welcoming community of coaches within the Beautiful You network;
the ability to learn how to build and grow your own coaching business you can operate from anywhere in the world and with a global reach;
an academy that supports and promotes the work of its coaches, providing opportunities to shine and extend;
the opportunity to pursue a certified coach pathway; and
making many new deep friendships and connections across the world via a common interest in personal growth.

Become a life coach with my support

So, I am so excited to be offering a number of coaching opportunities for you to become a coach as an affiliate of the Beautiful You Coaching Academy.

Firstly, if you know you would like to sign up for the first Beautiful You Coaching Course in 2020, don’t delay. It’s 80% full already and places fill quickly.

As an affiliate, I endorse the course and receive an affiliate payment for providing this recommendation. You have no additional costs in enrolling and there is an exciting benefit for you as well!

You can read further below about the opportunity to work with me also for a 6-session coaching series at no cost to you as well.

You can find out more about the course at the Beautiful You Coaching Academy website here.

Importantly, if you wish to access the 6-session coaching session with me at no cost to you, make sure when you complete the order form to enrol in the course, that you enter MY NAME – TERRI CONNELLAN – (first and last) in the CODE field of the order page. This will link you to me and my offer. So easy!

Important Note: If you enter my name in any other area than the one instructed, (which is the code field at your enrolment stage – please see graphic below), or not at all at the exact time of your enrolment, you will not be able to receive my affiliate offerings. This is not something that can be amended at a later time and so please be careful at your sign up stage to do this as I want to be able to support you on your coaching journey!

Thanks to @annamarialocke for this image!

Create Your Deeper Story life coaching series

So more on my offer!

In choosing to become a life coach with Beautiful You, I would love to offer you the opportunity to work with me as your coach! This is via a ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series of 6 sessions over a 3 month period on areas important to you and your life path. Just remember to email Beautiful You with my name BEFORE you enrol.

The value of this investment in your future for this life-changing series is $330AU per month, a total of $990AU over 3 months. But it will provided at no cost to you. You only need to make sure you enter my name at the CODE field in the Course Order/enrolment form (as above) and remain in study to the end of the refund period.

The ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series helps you identify where you want to be and how to get there in very practical goal and action-oriented steps. One step at a time with wholehearted, grounded support and practicality. I focus on creativity and self-leadership coaching but you let me know exactly where you want to focus! It’s your story. Skilled in personality type assessment, I weave personality type knowledge deep into my coaching and offer special deep-dives into this area as a separate opportunity.

As a Certified Life Coach with Beautiful You, I can help you with your own pathway towards certification as a life coach with the Academy. A six-session coaching series with me can count towards your own certification pathway as well.

Where to contact me:

So I hope you are excited by what all of this means for you!

To become a Life Coach, you can enrol straight away via the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Course Page (make sure you include my name on the form as above!) or you can contact me if you have any questions:

via email: terri@quietwriting.com
or via direct message on social media – via Facebook or Instagram if we are already connected

I would love to support you to become a life coach and to work with you!

Please feel free to share with anyone who you think might benefit from this opportunity.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes life coaching, writing, personality type and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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

You might also enjoy:

Life Coaching – making meaning in times of transition

How I fulfilled my vision to become a Personality Type Coach

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

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave and helpful

Creative practices in my tool-kit

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

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?

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

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 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.

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?

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!

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

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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

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.

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

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.

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..

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.

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.

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!

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.

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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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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’

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.

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Theme for the week beginning 2 July

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 2 July

Bring it all together via a strategy or system

Bring it all together with quiet strength

How can you bring it all together?

Tips for bringing it all together

Thoughts for this week

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

Carl Jung

Theme for the week beginning 25 June

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 25 June

Clear the way by being practical

Clear the way by working with opposites

Dealing with a sense of lack

Book notes: Mysterium Coniunctionis

Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis

How can you clear the way in practical terms?

Thoughts for this week

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living

Theme for the week beginning 18 June

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 18 June

Check in to the calling of your heart

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

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

How can you listen to the calling of your heart?

Tips for tuning into the heart of your calling

Thoughts for this week

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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