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personality and story planning & productivity

How to align priorities with your directions and make a mark

February 12, 2018

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

Diana, Focused Intention

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

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

This week: focused intention + restructuring to align priorities

align priorities

Theme for the week beginning 12 February

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

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

Know what your priorities are and take action on them.

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

align priorities

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

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

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

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

align priorities

Tarot Narrative: Realigning priorities

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

Reading notes

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

Book notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Align priorities

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

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

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

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

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

align priorities

Making your mark

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

The wisest men follow their own direction.

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

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

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

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

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

align priorities

 

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

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

align priorities

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

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

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:

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

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

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

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

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

personality and story planning & productivity

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

February 5, 2018

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

Greg McKeown, in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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

This week: creating essential intent + determining what will help

essential intent

Theme for the week beginning 5 February

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

essential intent

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

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

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

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 5 February

Tarot Narrative: Discernment, seeing differently

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

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

Book notes:

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

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

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

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

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

Creating essential intent and making it harder 

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

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

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

essential intent

Creating essential intent and strategic choices

Greg McKeown reminds us in ‘Essentialism’ that:

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

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

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

Creating essential intent and what will help

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

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

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

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

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

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

essential intent

? of me above by Lauren, Sol + Co

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

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

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

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

You might also enjoy:

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

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

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

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

The Empress: vision, creativity and patience

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personality and story planning & productivity

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

January 29, 2018

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Reverend Howard Thurman, in Dario Nardi’s ‘8 Keys to Self-Leadership’

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

This week: self-leadership + marshalling resources

self-leadership

Theme for the week beginning 29 January

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – 16. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

self-leadership

This is a lovely self-leadership card and reminds us to practice listening to our bodies, intuition and others. And then to input that into the cycle of what we are doing. Especially when negotiating challenging times, it’s important to notice when our body is telling us to rest or letting us know what it needs more or less of. It’s also about the wider environment and people in our world and what they are telling us.

When I read ‘feedback’, I immediately thought of negative feedback and listening to where I need to improve or change. This is valuable but as Lisa McLoughlin reminds us via the Life Designs Cards Guidebook for this card:

Consider that feedback is also about appreciation as well as what needs changing.

Keeping open and modulating, adjusting our sails, taking on board new perceptions and realising when we have it right or our ideas resonate – all are supportive ways to move through this week as positively and productively as we can.

It’s a good time for self-leadership and self-regulation, tuning in with our bodies and personality. Being aware of what others are saying can help to feed into the loop of our growth at this time.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 29 January

self-leadership

Tarot Narrative: Marshalling your resources

It’s a time for marshalling your resources and taking action. You’ve gathered skills, knowledge and resources over time. You’ve worked at pulling together the golden threads of you. Value this resource, this currency, this way of being and working. Make it work for you now, but also for others. Share generously, choose your focus, listen to feedback, make a difference.

Reading notes: Cards: King of Swords and Six of Coins from the Sakki Sakki Tarot and #38 To Be Fair in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Our lead process remains the captain of our ship no matter how much developing we do. We use it in the background even when using other processes. Lead and supporting processes develop first, and each experience we have of nonpreferred process is cause for celebration and a doorway to change.

Dario Nardi, 8 Keys to Self-Leadership (p22)

As part of my personality type work, I had the pleasure of attending two training workshops with neuroscientist Dr Dario Nardi last year. Using EEG technology, his work shows how Jungian insights about personality type and cognitive functions are supported by physical evidence.

You can actually observe the brain lighting up as it works on something that it loves (or doesn’t like) in line with patterns identified in Jungian/Myers-Briggs personality type preferences. Here is a picture of me in a workshop with Dario Nardi with the activity of my brain being mapped and regions lighting up as I do various cognitive activities.

Self-leadership

Self-leadership and personality

This work reminds us that the self-leadership journey begins with knowing ourselves and the lead cognitive functions that are our natural way of being. From this, we can extend into less natural preferences to open our potential. Each time we venture into our weaker or less preferred domains, we open the doorways of change and potential. And we should acknowledge this in our self-leadership and cheer ourselves along!

Our lead cognitive preference is always directing traffic as we use it in the background. So marshalling our resources is about knowing our personality and our best ways of working. The King of Swords is a card that reminds us about being the master of our thought, knowledge and logic, achieving success through plans that can move us ahead. Our ability to marshal our own resources and loves is highlighted so we can act to create and put thoughts into action.

As an example, as an INTJ personality type, my preferred cognitive function is introverted Intuiting. I’ve learnt over time to value this as the lead to bring the pieces together – via work such as envisioning, strategising, tarot and oracle and intuitive writing. I can use these preferences as the lead and marshall the resources I have to help bring the pieces together across the gamut of my personality. Everyone can do this – although the lead will differ depending on personality type preference – and awareness is key.

self-leadership

Self-leadership and giving back

Another theme that popped up in this reading alongside self-leadership and knowing ourselves is generosity and giving back. When we are experiencing the harvest from our work and others, we often focus on our value and what we bring forth. We need to learn from that feedback, but we also need to be generous in how we share this work.

In our self-regulation and self-leadership, it’s a good time for thinking about how we are giving back. It might be to causes or others, making a difference for the highest good of all and not just for ourselves. This is especially the case if we have experienced good fortune or are receiving from others. It’s a time to think about how can we accept this and turn it back into the world in new ways.

So for this week, it’s a great time for recognising your strengths, knowing yourself and exercising self-leadership as you marshal your resources.

Listening to feedback – both positive and instructive – is highlighted. As is recognising when we are benefiting from a time of fruition, so we can put back to benefit others.

Notice when people say good things about the work that you do and see where it can take you! What clues does this provide you?

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around self-leadership, feedback, marshalling resources and generosity.

  • How might you practice self-leadership and self-regulation?
  • What resources are you marshalling?
  • What are the good things people are saying about you and the work that you do?
  • What does this tell you? Where could you take it further?
  • What are you feeling or hearing about what is not working for you?
  • What can you do step up your self-leadership in the coming week?

All best wishes for this week of exercising self-leadership and marshalling resources including giving back. And let me know what you think of this post and the idea of weekly Tarot Narratives!

self-leadership

? of me (top + bottom) by Lauren, Sol + Co

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

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

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:

On the special value of self-leadership

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

Personality, story and Introverted Intuition

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

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

creativity inspiration & influence planning & productivity

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

January 26, 2018

creative tool-kit

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming a life coach

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

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

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

Being coached yourself

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

creative tool-kit

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

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

Writing, writing, writing

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

Personality type work

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

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

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

Energy healing, channelling and spirituality

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

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

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

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

You just need to give magic room to step in.

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

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

creative practices

Being in rhythm and working with lunar cycles

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

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

Working with intuition via tarot and oracle

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

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

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

 

creative practices

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You might also enjoy:

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

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

The courage to show up

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

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

Images by me except for:

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

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Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

January 22, 2018

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Roald Dahl

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: exploring magic!

Exploring magic

Theme for the week beginning 15 January

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards. With their emphasis on ‘weave a different story’, these cards align so well with Quiet Writing’s focus on ‘creating your story’.

The theme and card for this week is 48. Stay bewitched by your own consciousness

Exploring magic

This card immediately made me think of ‘introverted Intuiting’ – a cognitive function that tends to be the primary way of working for INTJ and INFJ Jung/Myers-Briggs personality types, but one that we all can access for perspective and meaning-making.

As neuroscientist, Dario Nardi, describes it in his book, ‘8 Keys to Self-Leadership’:

At the core of introverted Intuiting is a metaperspective – the highest level or the most flexible frame of mind or form of behaviour that each of us currently has access to. One metaperspective is our own mind’s workings: we can shut out the world, quiet our minds, and ask our unconscious to take us to a new level of awareness. (p73)

Key to introverted Intuiting is focusing on and working in the language of “symbols, archetypes, totems, and their abstractions, such as visual models.” (p 73).

This week calls us to work from inside ourselves, go deeply, find our own language and symbolism and play with creative inspiration, exploring magic.

As the guidebook for Life Design Cards suggests for this card: “Through meditation, observe your mind observing the world. Play out creative inspiration with art, pure fantasy and dreams.”

So in terms of themes for this week, it’s a good time for exploring magic via collage, poetry, looking at symbols in our lives and businesses, making art and seeing where our intuition takes us for creative inspiration.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 22 January

Exploring magic

Tarot Narrative: Exploring the magic of creativity

You’re at the end of one part of your journey, completing key steps, signing off, finishing up. You’re also at the portal of a new adventure with opportunities opening up. At this time, root and ground yourself in the stillness of creative inspiration and the flow of your inner mind and intuition. You’re broadening out with confidence, initiating projects, capturing ideas from the fertile soil of within. Work boldly with intuition and discipline as your guides now.

Reading notes: Cards: Knight of Swords and King of Cups from the Sakki Sakki Tarot and #45 Time To Go from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

…we do all this because it fulfills us and makes our hearts sing. But when we explore the deeper reasons behind this time and effort, there is something even more important than what these pursuits do for us, and that is our desire to shine a light in the world that others might need to take their own daring leaps.

Christine Mason Miller, Desire to Inspire: Using creative passion to transform the world (p10)

Are you finding ideas are coming to you easily lately like it’s a very fecund and fertile time? I  certainly am and the challenge is to catch these thoughts before they disappear or we forget them. It’s easy to think we will remember a key concept or intuitive connection, only to find we don’t later as our perspective shifts. So frustrating.

Only yesterday, I found myself capturing ideas for a Quiet Writing ecourse. This has been the plan for a while as a signature piece for Quiet Writing and it’s something I’ve worked on before over time. But it came together really clearly yesterday and I can see it as a whole. Importantly though, I had I had to stop and take the time to listen within and feel that ‘desire to inspire’.

Exploring magic

Exploring magic

I’ve had to realise too this is no longer just about me; it’s about how I can share my experience and help others shine. As I move on in my life to a new way of working as a career and creativity coach, I need to connect the dots of my experience and share what makes my heart sing to benefit others.

The word ‘magic’ keeps popping up too.

I need to be exploring magic in the heart of creative inspiration and believing in that magic, as Roald Dahl reminds us in the words above from his last story, ‘The Minpins’.

This is my favourite quote of all time because it captures the interplay between what we see and notice and connect. And then how we bring it to life in our quiet spaces and creative work to enrich the lives of others as well as ourselves. It is the heart of it all really, certainly the heart of Quiet Writing and the coaching and writing that sit within its focus.

So for this week, it’s a great time for digging deep into your introverted Intuiting perspective and seeing what surfaces in stillness or creative play. Taking that time to journal, work with visuals, mindmap, play with symbolism or write poetry can be a rich way to connect disparate themes into something new. And make sure you are balancing that internal, introspective work with a touch of Knight of Swords boldness and action!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these introverted creative energies and possibilities too and what is coming up from within as magic you can share with others. What practices seem to be working for you for helping those pieces connect and shine in new forms?

All best wishes for this week for enjoying the pleasure of intuitive creativity and exploring magic. And let me know what you think of this post and the idea of weekly Tarot Narratives!

? by Lauren, Sol + Co

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

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

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

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

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

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

inspiration & influence intuition love, loss & longing

Creative courage to move on in small steps – Tarot Narrative Monday 15 January 2018

January 15, 2018

You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage

to lose sight of the shore.

Christopher Columbus – via The Art of Life Tarot

This is the first of weekly Quiet Writing deep-dive Tarot Narratives each Monday to share intuitive guidance and the wisdom and insights from aligned books.

Eight of Swords

Reflections on 2017

Welcome to Quiet Writing for 2018! 2017 was a most challenging year for me. I spent the year focused on supporting my beautiful mother as she battled terminal illness in the form of metastatic breast cancer. She passed away peacefully on Christmas Day after the toughest time. It’s all so very raw still and in some ways, grief has yet to fully hit. My mum was very special to me and so many people. The time we spent together in 2017 was such a treasure and the memory of our time then and over the long term is helping to ease the sense of emptiness and loss now. But there’s a long way to go on this journey I know. More on this as I move through this time and reflect further on 2017.

At the same time, I was planning a new future knowing I needed to find a new career and life path focused on creativity. I trained as a Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy to complement training I had already completed in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type assessment. And I spent a lot of time diving deep into my intuition via tarot and oracle cards.

I worked on my spirituality and the sacred side of my creativity via work with Amber Adrian. I’ve learnt to listen within for guidance and seek help from spirit guides, angels and ancestors.

I wrote 50,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo, finally embracing writing every day and in challenging circumstances.

Also during the year, my job of 30 plus years as a leader in the government vocational education sector was ‘deleted’ and I am soon to be made ‘redundant’. Even though this is a change I desire as I already knew I needed to move on, it is not without its own pain and grief. Certainly, it’s a time of shifting identity, but it’s a shift I embrace wholeheartedly.

Overall, it was an incredibly transformative year, but one of chronic uncertainty with a deep underlying sadness.

Tarot and oracle work

One of the three key platforms in making this shift in life focus heading into 2017 was a deeper dive into tarot and oracle work as a way of honing my intuition. As an INTJ personality type, Introverted Intuition is my dominant gift and this was a time of really leaning into it to discover its mysteries. I studied tarot more deeply via Susannah Conway’s 78 Mirrors e-course and I began a daily practice of tarot and oracle reading and journaling.

In June, I began to share this practice publicly in the form of Tarot Narratives on Instagram and Facebook. Each day, I would do an intuitive reading of two tarot and one oracle card and write a narrative of the overall message. Then I’d link this intuitively to a book, quote or song and share it with others. There was such a positive response to this sharing of intuitive messages over time which I so appreciated.

I did this every day from June up until mid-December when it all became too much. Whilst it had been a supportive practice in a time of change until then, I was in the hospital with my mum day and night for long shifts and everything else simply had to stop.

Coming back to life generally and to tarot and oracle work following this time has been challenging and I’ve been rethinking so much. Sharing my Tarot Narrative each day was a great support in 2017 and a practice that helped shape my journey and sharpen my intuition. But it’s not a sustainable practice on a daily basis in 2018 as I work on crafting a new life and concurrently deal with grief and the impact of loss.

I’ve thought about how to balance Tarot Narrative work with my other priorities – writing, life coaching, personality type work. And I’ve decided to do a weekly deep-dive Tarot Narrative each Monday. It seems the best way to share intuitive guidance and book wisdom in a sustainable way. This means I can also provide more insights on the reading and especially exploring the aligned books, songs and quotes.

So here’s the first weekly Tarot and Oracle Narrative for 2018!

Theme for the week beginning 15 January

Firstly, I want to share a theme for each week to guide our overall focus. For this, I will work with Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards. With their emphasis on ‘weave a different story’, these cards align so well with Quiet Writing’s focus on ‘creating your story’.

The card for this week is 21. Use small and slow solutions.

Life Design Cards

I love this card with its spiral imagery centred around a snail making progress slowly against the backdrop of an ammonite fossil which seems to suggest a larger version of time. It’s true in one way, we have plenty of time. Time is an arbitrary man-made concept and something we can work with by making small steps and changes day by day.

I found a real sense of comfort in receiving this card. It made me reflect on how I have tried to work in 2017 in challenging times to just do something every day towards my overall goals. This is a practice that has served me well in this transition phase of life.

Making slow movements and small commitments will take you in the direction of your dreams incrementally. Even in the most challenging of times.

As the guidebook for Life Design Cards suggests for this card: “find a way to monitor progress so you can see how far you have come.” This is an excellent idea. Whether it be word count, books read, blog posts written, days writing, time spent on an activity of value, the number of clients or subscribers you have – find a metric or a few metrics that help measure your progress so you can notice it. It’s often easy to forget how far we have come. Take time to recognise the value of these small, slow solutions in your life so you feel inspired.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 15 January

Tarot Narrative

Embrace creative courage

You’re embracing creativity and leadership, the lessons of years evolving into now. Notice where you are holding yourself back, keeping yourself trapped or feeling safe, lacking in courage. See also where you might even be dulling the feelings, the excitement of opportunity, out of habit from times past. Embrace this creative time you’re crafting and the chance for mastery so you can cross the ocean into more prosperity and abundance.

Reading notes: Cards: Father (King) of Wands and Eight of Swords from The Wild Unknown Tarot and #51 Milk and Honey in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Reading fiction as you commute to a job you don’t like will make you feel somewhat more fulfilled; being in the right job will make you feel incredible.

Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time than You Think

I’m reading Laura Vanderkam’s ‘168 Hours’ – listening as an audiobook as I drive. The book provides a fresh perspective on units of time, suggesting we focus on priorities and productivity over a week or 168 hours rather than the typical 24-hour unit focus.

Research based on logbook keeping suggests people over-estimate the time they spend on some tasks such as the hours they work. Laura Vanderkam suggests collecting your own data and having an evidence-based approach to decisions about how you spend your time.

In this, it’s valuable to look at the bigger picture of how we are choosing to live and whether we have the courage to make the changes we desire. Just as our theme for the week reminds us, using small, slow solutions to make change can be a valuable way of working.

For example, working on NaNoWriMo was a real opportunity to look at the metrics of how I use my time to write. The aim was to write 50,000 words in November. I achieved it by realising that this was 1667 words a day and learning that I could do this in under an hour. This realisation and metric made it doable and helped break through resistance. I could make practical strategies for finding an hour or 2 x 30-minute spots in the day to write even when life was super-challenging.

So for this week, maybe re-examine your weekly allocation of hours and see where your time goes. See if you can make some small, incremental changes in line with where you want to be, that job you wish to be in or that project you really want to tackle. Having the courage to lose sight of the shore, be in action and notice self-sabotaging behaviours can be powerful steps in moving into the career we desire or finally achieving our creative dreams. And in this we can also practice self-care as well.

Laura Vanderkam reminds us:

If you love what you do, you’ll have more energy for the rest of your life, too.

All best wishes for this week for moving on with courage in small steps closer to doing what you love. And let me know what you think of this post and the idea of weekly Tarot Narratives!

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

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

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:

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

Creative and connected #12 – The courage to show up

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

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

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