susannah conway Archives

Finding JOY in the everyday – reflections on my Word of the Year for 2018

December 13, 2018

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Joy is my word of the year for 2018. Have you worked with a word of the year? It’s a powerful way of focusing on what you want to manifest. The journey is not always straightforward though and sometimes we wonder why we chose this word in the first place. But the process of working with these words we choose, or that choose us, is full of rich wisdom if we take the time to reflect on it. Here’s my story of JOY as my word of the year in 2018. It’s a journey of finding joy in challenging times and learning how joy can sit alongside grief and be a source of resilience. I’m going to share this journey over a few days and posts. I hope you will come along and also share your Word of the Year experiences.

Find Your Word process + tools

First though, some information on the process and tools that can help you. Working with a Word of the Year is a powerful process. Susannah Conway has a fabulous free Word of the Year ecourse available each year that I often dive into. It works really well alongside the Unravel Your Year process and free workbook that Susannah also creates and generously shares each year. I’ve been working through both processes to review my year and plan for the next one since 2014.

I credit these practices with contributing to deep realisations about where I was stuck and needed to make change. For the first few years, I found I was writing the same goals each year and not achieving them. This was mostly about writing books and making space for creativity in my life. Each year was swallowed up by work and my creative goals kept getting lost.

You know that saying:

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.”
attributed to Jessie Potter

In 2016, I started doing things differently for different outcomes and began to make my transition. Now at the end of 2018, I am two years in to my change journey and life is very different. It’s much more in line with the dreams and visions I had way back in 2014 and about being in creative action!

Goddess of the Year

Amy Palko also offers My Word Goddess Readings with suggestions for your Word for the Year linked to a Goddess of the Year. Also a practice I have invested in for a few years now, it provides valuable intuitive insights and suggestions for words that might help drive your year’s energy positively. My Goddess for this year has been Hecate, the Goddess of Compassionate Witnessing and of the crossroads. It certainly has been a year of compassionate witnessing and crossroads. And this knowledge has helped me negotiate my path at a challenging times. This series of reflections will also be an opportunity to reflect on Hecate’s role in this year’s unfolding.

Choosing joy

So my word for 2018 is JOY. Choosing JOY was always going to be full of challenge. My mother passed away on Christmas Day last year after a very tough battle with metastatic breast cancer and her funeral was in the first week of 2018. Joy had been hard to come by in 2017. I just gave Christmas spirit generally a pretty wide berth last year. This wasn’t too hard being in a palliative care hospital for much of the time in the lead-up to Christmas.

Choosing joy as my word wasn’t difficult though either despite the contradictions. I didn’t need to work through a workbook or think too much. It just came to me. At the same time, my daughter gave me a hand-painted Egyptian papyrus Christmas card featuring JOY in large letters so that sealed the deal in the most lovely of synchronous ways. This beautiful card, the feature image for this post, has sat beside me all year shining a light as a reminder of my focus in everything I do.

Finding joy in stages through the year

In reflecting, I’ve realised each quarter of the year delivered a new lesson and experience about finding joy:

Finding joy alongside deep grief
Finding joy and resilience in challenge
Finding joy in travel and being away from home
Finding joy in creative work and my calling

As I’ve taken time to reflect on my learnings via Joy and Hecate this year, I realise I have much to say about my journey this year. So I’m going to post on these four journeys over the next four days as a way of reflecting deeply on this time. Plus in another post, I’ll reflect on my Goddess of the Year work and working with the energies of Hecate this past year.

Integrating learning from this year of finding joy

This has all reminded me that this reflection and integration step is so important as we move on and through into the next year and stage of our lives. So I’ll hope you’ll join me in this reflection process! I hope it might inspire your own reflections too and I encourage you to share your journeys of your word for this year. Or the process of coming up with a new one in 2019. I already have an inkling of what mine might be! Do you know? Love to hear. Share your thoughts in the comments or join the discussion on Quiet Writing on social media on Facebook and Instagram .

And if you are looking for a coach to work with you to light the way, I’d love to be that coach for you! I have two more spots for an early January start for a 3 month coaching series so pop over here to book a complimentary chat with me now to plan for a positive, productive and joyful 2019. You can go direct to this link to book a time for this free chat via Zoom video-conferencing.

Inspiring reads

Here are some more inspirational reads to light your way and look forward to sharing more on my journey of finding joy this year!

Joy: 18 inspiring quotes on inspiring what you do and love

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

Practices and tools to support creative productivity, writing and mind-set

Photo credits from elsewhere – used with permission and thanks:

Wood pathway photo by Amanda Klamrowski from Pexels

Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

You might also enjoy my free 94-page ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive the ebook straight away! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to 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. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

2 Comments

creativity inspiration & influence

Dance to a new beat – Full Moon in Virgo

March 12, 2017

It’s a Full Moon in Virgo and being a passionate Virgo, I’m diving into the messages and opportunities of this full moon via tarot.

Sam Roberts aka @escapingstars on Instagram has provided a Full Moon in Virgo tarot spread which I’ve used for this reading. The focus is on vision, blocks, what needs to be purged and the pathways that will unfold once the energy flow is opened up.

Here’s my tarot reading, using the Sakki Sakki tarot deck and featuring three major arcana cards – The Empress, The Fool and Death. So there’s some archetypal, journey oriented cards there for me to work with, plus the somewhat impetuous Knight of Swords, with his sword wildly waving above his head as he sits upon his long-necked steed!

Here’s my reading, based on my intuition with reference to a few key resources listed and linked below:

1 How can I seek out the greatest vision of myself? The EMPRESS

I’m loving that The Empress has arrived with her beautiful, alive, female presence in the space around seeking the greatest vision of myself. The Empress also came up in my Full Moon in Leo reading in the space around the question ‘What positive energies will come to fruition from this Full Moon?”

The Empress represents female aspects of motherhood, nurturing and creating. My word of the year is PASSION and it’s a continuing theme that passion, nature and creativity are key to the most powerful vision of myself at this time. It’s about living a pathway to the spirit through the senses and nature. Embracing my creative potential through reconnecting with nature, planting creative seeds, being patient and trusting in the process is highlighted.

As Playing with Symbols tells us about the Empress:

She is the force that can create out of nothing; the Mother of every creation, whether it is a baby, a cake, an enterprise, or the world itself. She inspires beauty, emotion, passion, trust and patience, and calls for a time to “do” by just “being”.

So I can seek out that greatest vision of myself just by being myself, celebrating what I love, relaxing into the creative process. I can connect with nature and spirit, allowing the vision to gently emerge over time, living it as I go.

2 What in my life is blocking my intentions of that version of myself? KNIGHT of SWORDS

The Knight of Swords is a somewhat impetuous, impatient, ‘let’s get on with it’ kind of guy. He’s insightful and can think and talk on his feet, and there’s plenty of his qualities that can help me at this time.

But in relation to the question of what’s blocking my intentions, having lots of ideas and a tendency to jump from one thing to another is definitely emerging as an impediment. I need to follow through with action and execution of these ideas in a measured and focused way.

Intuitive guide Amber Adrian working with her guides on my behalf, gave me the message ‘Focus on one’ just this week.

I need to not let impatience get in the way as I work on a gentle, focused way forward. Yes, I acknowledge that desire to just get on with it each day. But it’s about making sure I’m grounding myself, channeling my energies on the right project at the right time. Then I can get my unique vision out into the world in a way that also enables self-care, community and connection with others.

3 What energies and behaviours need to be purged this Full Moon? The FOOL

One of the feelings I am aware of at this time is: “Who am I to do this work? What do I know?” So when I pulled the Fool card in relation to this question, that’s what immediately surfaced: purging this “Who am I to…?” kind of negative self-talk.

It’s about letting go of the thoughts of “I don’t know enough about xxxx” They are so self-sabotaging! Who can ever define if they know ‘enough’? What is ‘enough’?

I need to take my life and work experience proudly with me to this next phase. To not be afraid to take risks and to not take it too seriously. Leaving behind any trace of that sense of feeling like a fool, it’s time to embrace new beginnings with an open mind and explore less trodden paths.

4 What possible pathways will unfold once I open up the energy flow between myself and that vision? DEATH

The Death card is all about transformation. The vision for my work is all about connecting with the passion and energy of what we love to find our unique voice in the world.

The pathways to this are about truly embracing what I love, working with that, being authentic and sharing this with others to help them do the same.

Opening this energy flow means actual change happens, with transition to a life based on doing what I am passionate about and sharing this with others. Resistance will break down, the negative self-talk will lose its hold and transformation of myself and others will occur.

The pathways seem untrodden in some respects; it is new ground, with butterfly paths of emergence and with a supporting tribe and community. It’s different to the old work world structures that I’ve lived and worked in for decades. There will be room for the new to emerge, building on a solid foundation of the past and its learnings, skills and connections. It means letting go of what no longer serves.

Final thoughts

Mystic Mamma’s beautifully curated FULL MOON in Virgo astral summary includes these insights from Leah Whitehorse that ring especially true for me at this time:

Virgo sometimes wants to shy away into the background but right now it’s important that we step up to the plate. Let others see your work…

This Full Moon it’s about having the confidence to show what you can do. Learn to control those fearful lions that tear at the meat of your courage…

Do what you do with love in your heart and to the best of your ability. Improvement comes with practice. Flaws add character.

It’s time to dance to a new beat that is characterised by natural passion, risk-taking, being seen and not being afraid to flaunt it a little. But working in a connected and measured way with focus on one step, one project, one day, at a time.

It’s remembering also there is a community and tribe of like-minded souls, friends and family to support me in doing what I love to the best of my ability. Just as I support them to do likewise.

Card from The Wisdom of the Oracle deck – Colette Baron-Reid

Thought pieces and references:

Mystic Mamma Full Moon in Virgo, March 12th 2017

Full Moon in Virgo March 2017 – Flawed – Leah Whitehorse – “The highly efficient Virgo Full Moon is saying that we need to get down to the nitty gritty if we want to achieve our dreams (Sun in Pisces).”

Playing with Symbols – The Essential Companion Book to The Sakki-Sakki Tarot & to Your Creative Journey, Monicka Clio Sakki with Carol Anne Buckley

78 Mirrors – Finding your self in the tarot e-course, Susannah Conway – highly recommended

Amber Adrian and Activate – activate your genius, power and life with a group of soul sisters – highly recommended support for your creativity.

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 tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes tarot, MBTI developments, coaching and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. New opportunities and special offers coming soon.

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

music & images

Seeing afresh – The August Break

August 4, 2013

It’s time for the August Break, a challenge started by Susannah Conway a few years ago as a way of taking a break from blogging so intensely and with words. Basically you aim to take a photo each day in August and share it via your blog or instagram or on the flickr pool set up for the group. It’s a way to sharpen your visual awareness, practice your photography skills and also connect with others focused on the same challenge.

I am loving this year’s August Break. For me, it’s doubly lovely and exciting as I am doing Susannah’s ecourse, Photo Meditations, at the same time. The two dovetail perfectly and without pressure and I am loving learning about photography from Susannah on the one hand via the e-course and then learning to look around me and see afresh on a daily basis for the August Break.

This year’s August Break also has a list of daily photo prompts that for me has been like a visual treasure hunt! Day 1 was Breakfast (easing in), Day 2 was Circles and Day 3 yesterday was yellow.

I had a huge and difficult week this week with my mum having some medical emergencies and being in hospital for a few days. Finally she was home and settling yesterday and I was doing some shopping for her and myself. In between, I am looking for yellow, something of value, something special, something I can practice my ‘Photo Meditations’ learning of week one on, something that sums up how I feel now some normality is returning.

There in the middle of the supermarket, a trolley of yellow sunflowers, a little oasis of yellow and sunshine inside a busy place. I park the trolley, get out the iphone, take a few shots and keep working till I get what I want, find the right plant that speaks to me and then I have it. I am so pleased with my yellow shot of flowers and walk out of the supermarket as if on air.

That’s what the August Break is about…seeing afresh, looking for beauty, for meaning in the visual world around us, the treasures that we can find or make from the details of our lives to share with others.

Many thanks to Susannah for the joy that is this year’s August Break – as always brilliant! As well as my own experience, I am loving seeing all the versions of breakfast, circles and yellow in everyone’s lives. And it’s only day 4! So much to look forward to this August. And now to find something that defines today’s prompt, ‘Love’….

inspiration & influence

Seeing stars

February 3, 2013

Orion Nebula – by the Smithsonian Institute via flickr

These words are running around my head…

Look at the stars,

Look how they shine for you,

And all the things that you do.

Yes, they are from a song from a while ago, “Yellow” by Coldplay but it’s suddenly on high rotation in my head and I woke up to these words running through me in the middle of last night. They are beautiful, speak of possibility, potential, opportunity. They are sad and make me think of my brother and what I didn’t get to say to him when he couldn’t see the light shining any more. They are words of encouragement to continue to see the light and positives ahead.

These words sit by my desk…

Perhaps they are not the stars but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy

This is an Eskimo proverb apparently. Even before I came across this quote, it was how I liked to think of the stars. I found myself in my deepest moments of grief looking up into the stars with some sense of connection and comfort. It’s something I still do.

These stars shine for me…

I wrote about my seven stars a few years ago when I was just starting out here. These stars still shine for me. Weekly, daily, their words and projects influence and guide me. Here are some recent thoughts on their influence:

Shanna Germain wrote a brilliant post ‘Do the Words: On (Writing) Productivity‘ based on sitting and writing in a cafe while overhearing a conversation about all the barriers the speakers faced to writing. She tweeted:

People at next table spent 2 hrs kvetching about writer’s block. In that time, I wrote 827 words, edited 2 stories. Shut up. Do the words.

Shanna cuts through, does the words, gets on with it and through the resistance and is such a great example of writing productively. This is a message I will be remembering this year: stop talking (or blogging) about it and just get on with it!

Susannah Conway. What can I say, I am a huge fan and cannot capture just how influential Susannah has been to me. This recent post, ‘From the Heart‘ just floored me as Susannah reflected so openly on both the personal toll of her work effort and her sense of being alone; my heart and many others went out to her in return. This post demonstrated, in the deepest way, the sheer vulnerability and honesty that is ‘Blogging from the Heart’, why it is so valuable and how the online community of the heart can provide so much support to each other.

Danielle LaPorte’s ‘Desire Map‘ project and current posts continue to cut through to new thinking. Elsewhere, I was reading about email overload this morning and rules about managing this in the workplace in terms of redefining when people can/can’t email and should/shouldn’t read emails. Part of me is thinking, ‘good idea, we need to manage this better in my workplace‘ and another part of me is thinking, ‘well, what about personal choice and the customer, who might want an answer now?’ Shortly after, I read this post from Danielle, Bag your Boundaries. Wham! Love that fresh, pure, direct thinking.’ You can have both, Danielle says:

You can protect yourself and be open-hearted.

Cool! So I am now thinking about how I can do this in my workplace from a different perspective altogether.

And then there’s Chris Guillebeau who probably started all this; through him I linked up with Danielle and then through to Susannah. He has helped me make so many connections – people, thoughts, plans – and is still out there building empires, fostering world domination and writing posts that, like Danielle, make me look at things from a non-conformist standpoint. Take for example, ‘Changing the System’:

If you want something to change, therefore, show us an alternative. Show us a new way of life.

You are the role model. Not the politician, not the celebrity, not the evangelist. Don’t throw up your hands in resignation, and don’t look for another leader.

It’s all on you, in other words. No pressure.

Whew! No pressure indeed! But it’s so true. It’s easy to complain; it’s easy to give up or to look for someone else to lead but the solutions come from taking responsibility and working through to find another way. My work role as a leader is about making a difference. This is the exactly the way I need to lead: finding the alternatives and being the role model, helping us to work through them.

So, I am seeing stars all around me, a constellation of words, thoughts and song that gather and cluster to propel me to also shine.

What stars are you seeing? What’s making you shine?

blogging creativity transcending work life

What sustains you

May 26, 2012

11 Comments

blogging

The 7 link challenge

July 24, 2010

I only have about 16 posts so far being a fairly newbie blogger but what the hell, I am jumping in to the 7 link challenge from Darren Rowse at problogger. I love a chance to reflect on where I am, where I’ve been and where I’m going in all aspects of life: writing, work, relationships, family, blogging.

The idea from problogger is:

‘to publish a post that is a list of 7 links to posts that you and others have written that respond to the following 7 categories. Your links should be to:

Your first post
A post you enjoyed writing the most
A post which had a great discussion
A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
Your most helpful post
A post with a title that you are proud of
A post that you wish more people had read’

I first came across the challenge at Susannah Conway’s beautiful site and here’s Susannah’s interpretation. As a regular reader of her blog over the past twelve months, it was exciting to see her first post, what it heralded, the intentioned first steps and the special posts chosen from so many. There are many comments with links from Susannah’s post and many more on the original problogger site posting. You can see the effect and the excitement. This idea is so clever in so many ways:

it’s based on reflection on where you have been and what you have achieved
it has a cumulative and connecting effect with others
it enables you to find a whole lot of new people to read about, link to and talk to
it’s a way of people linking to and learning about your own blog work
it’s a way of learning about blogging itself: tags, memes, how the tech side works

Genius! I can’t wait to find some time soon to read through all the comments and links on both the problogger and Susannah Conway sites with so many potential treasures to be found. So here’s my list, albeit from a limited but special pool. To be honest, I have had the best time with blogging since I started nearly three months ago.

My first post: Welcome to Transcending – May 2, 2010

The post I enjoyed writing the most: Why Transcending? – because it coalesced months, maybe years, of thinking and feeling and it felt very right when it came together

A post with great discussion: I loved the comments from my key influencing people on My seven stars – I was so honoured by the warm and encouraging responses from people I had learnt from. It was like meeting my favourite celebrities 🙂

A post from someone else’s blog I wish I had written: Many posts from my seven stars inspire me but I loved the post Transitions by Chris Guillebeau on The Art of Non-Conformity for its sheer brilliance in articulating an intensely felt thought I could relate to. Chris is excellent at that special skill. I constantly marvel at his writing and reflect about what he has written.

My most helpful post: I am noticing some interest in the post Planning to be fluid about goalsetting. The links in that post are very powerful sources of information that have helped me immensely.

Post with a title you are proud of : The value of howling into the wind – on one of her wonderful podcasts, Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn talks about the feeling of ‘howling into the wind’ to describe how she felt as a blogger when she started. I loved the phrase, it captured how I felt and I used it to think about the value of this space where you finally launch off but you know so few people are reading your words.

A post that I wish more people had read: It was difficult to write and probably difficult to read but The healing power of family history was about a critical journey for me through a (still) difficult time. I hope that it might help other people to find an anchor through their grief.

Off to read some other fantastic 7 link challenge posts! Thanks Darren and Susannah for all the fantastic leads!