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Learning to live on the slow path and love the little things that light me up

June 10, 2019

This guest post from Kamsin Kaneko looks at learning to live on the slow path and shifting focus to creativity and the little things in shaping a wholehearted life.

This is the 19th guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I’m delighted to have Kamsin Kaneko as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Kamsin and I met via Instagram and shared interests in creativity, writing and gentle business. In this story, Kamsin shares how her focus has shifted to living in a slower, more focused, creative and wholehearted way in a different cultural environment. Read on!

Living life in the ordinary everyday moments

“Let’s eat out on the balcony,” my husband suggests. We are in the wine section of our local supermarket. It is a warm Sunday afternoon, and we’ve come to buy ingredients to cook dinner as a family.

“Sure. Sounds like a good idea,” I reply. One reason we bought our apartment was the spacious balcony. But we rarely sit out there to eat or use it for anything other than hanging washing out to dry.

This small act of cooking together and eating at home is one of the many small lifestyle changes we’ve been making. We’ve always wanted to do things like this, especially since we have a little boy who just turned five. But we haven’t always made the space in our lives.

We had got into the habit of going to the local sushi place on Sunday evening, which isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds in the context of urban Japan. You can wait 45+ minutes to be seated, it’s a popular family choice at the weekend. It’s cheap and easy, even if the quality of the food isn’t the best.

Nothing is better than a home cooked meal

We are home from the supermarket. There’s homemade pizza cooking in the oven, and the wine has been poured. We decide to move the dining table outside. As we’re doing so, our neighbour is taking in her washing. She laughs when she sees us.

The sun is starting to set over the trees and mountains behind our balcony and beyond; the light is perfect, and it is pleasantly warm. The inflatable paddling pool my boy was playing in earlier is still full of water. Alfresco dining by the pool, I quip.

A short while later and the food is on the table. My little boy closes his eyes, puts his hands together, and declares “Itadakimasu” (I gratefully receive this food), with energy and enthusiasm. My husband lifts his wine glass and smiles.

“I’m so happy,” he says.

Shifting focus

If I focus my attention on the thick, ugly pillars that support the balconies, I remember this is still in urban Japan. Power cables criss-cross the sky everywhere you look, and people crowd around us on every side. I grew up in the countryside, at times I miss the wide-open spaces which are so hard to come by in Japan.

So, I focus instead on the food, the table, my family. With my attention focused on the things I love, we are nowhere but right here and right now. Exactly where we want to be. We have created space in our day, and in our lives, to enjoy the little things which had felt so distant in our busy urban lives just a year or so earlier.

Until recently, I felt like I was always making compromises. I didn’t want sushi or a “family restaurant” every week. It meant being stuck in traffic, having to wait to be seated, and a noisy eating environment and unexciting food choices. It wasn’t lighting me up inside.

Our eating choices weren’t the only area we were making compromises. But food is so fundamental to a well-lived life as a family. So why had we been living like that? And how did we get from there to here?

Looking for the answers right here not over there

I grew up attending church and evangelical Christian groups. I no longer believe the fundamental doctrines that they taught me. But I experienced something of the divine, and I wanted more.

I can remember singing songs about loving God with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind. But I felt that there were parts of my heart that were locked away and I didn’t have the key. How could I love God with my whole heart if I didn’t know how to access what was inside?

Over the years, my understanding of faith crumbled and evolved. I am less concerned with trying to name or understand what those early spiritual experiences were. At the current stage of my life, I am more interested in learning to trust and believe in the divine within myself.

Gratitude and moving on

I remain grateful for the community and the guidance and the love of people in those groups. But I no longer believe that God can only be encountered through a specific understanding of Christianity.

Perhaps I thought that I would find God somewhere “over there” in the setting of religious groups and Sunday services. But God was never there. S/he was always here in the space between our intertwined lives. We had to learn to slow down before I could even see that.

I stayed a part of the church even though it had long since stopped meeting my spiritual or emotional needs. We stopped going about a year ago because my heart was longing for more space and more slow simple Sundays. And my husband wasn’t feeling the same connection to the church anymore.

Learning to listen to the longings of my own heart

In the last four years, I have been learning to listen more carefully to the whispers of my heart and act on what I hear. I’d got out of practice in doing that somehow. Through writing, journaling and mindfulness meditation, I started to find an answer to the question of how to access the locked places in my heart.

I was no longer going to give my time to anything which didn’t help my heart to keep expanding. I had wanted to spend more time with my husband and young son. I wanted the rhythm of Sunday as a day of rest.

The irony that by attending church, I wasn’t getting this wasn’t lost on me. But I thought because we lived in Japan, I would never have the slow Sundays I remembered from my childhood in England. Besides, times have changed, maybe no one lives like that anymore.

But we were living on autopilot rather than making conscious choices about how to spend our time. Now we often spend Sundays in our neighbourhood playing outside without any particular plans. We cook a homemade meal together and our little family has never been closer or happier.

Our slow and simple Sundays are one example of the ways that listening to what I want and need has led me into a more wholehearted life. Slowing down and believing that the longings of my heart can be achieved if I approach them with an open mind wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Learning to believe in the possibility of a wholehearted life

The first step was learning to notice the places in my life where my behaviour did not align with the things I said I wanted. I had to learn to do that with self-compassion and let go of any judgment.

I was tied up in a long list of “shoulds” and “ought to’s” all of which caused my heart to be locked up tighter than ever before. But I started to believe that I had choices about how I spent my time. I could say no to what I didn’t want and yes to what I did.

I had to find processes to gently allow me to listen and believe I could act on what I heard. Journaling and meditation and carefully chosen books, podcasts, and safe spaces online are showing me how to do that.

I had spent too long allowing other voices to drown out the voice of my own heart. It takes time to learn to tune in and act on what you hear.

How writing and early motherhood changed everything

When I was in my early twenties, there were three things I wanted to achieve in my life. One was to travel and live abroad. I’ve lived in China, Japan, Bosnia, and then Japan again. When I married a Japanese man, Japan became my home.

The second was to become a mother. I’d given up on this idea for a long time, but it happened five years ago when I was thirty-eight. It wasn’t an easy process through miscarriage, medical error, and 2.5 years of trying to get pregnant. But my son is the most delightful little person on the planet.

The third was to be a writer. And it was that final goal which has proved to be the hardest. I took my first writing class as an undergraduate back in the mid-’90s and others on and off over the following twenty years. But it was only after my son was born that I began to unpick the places in my heart which had been standing in my way.

Motherhood in Japan was the key to unlocking my heart

As a new mother in Japan, I was stressed out and struggling so far from home. I felt like I was drowning in cultural norms and expectations, which I was never going to live up to. But I wasn’t about to settle for a slow descent into bitterness and resentment, which seemed to be where I was heading. I wanted to enjoy my little boy and life as a mother. But I needed help.

I began to meditate through the Headspace App. And when someone gave away their copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way I began to keep a journal. Something I hadn’t done consistently for years.

Through these two activities, I found the key to access the locked up places in my heart. I’d felt that wholehearted wasn’t something I would ever achieve all those years ago singing about loving God with all my heart. But over time, all the things which had been leaving me feeling overwhelmed, including unhealed trauma from childhood started to feel more manageable.

Writing is leading to radical transformation: that’s why it’s so hard

The more I wrote, the more I understood that I’d neglected the craft of being a writer and I had a lot to learn. Through online writing classes and working with tutors and writing coaches, I started to understand how to create a scene and a character.

I had a background in academic writing. But to tap into my neglected creativity, I had to bring my writing into the world of sensory detail. I had to connect the emotions and the details that ground a story and bring it alive to a reader.

And that is that process of getting out of my head and into the sensory details of everyday life that is allowing me to unlock my heart. In powerful writing, it is often the little details which bring the most magic to the page. The same is true in our everyday lives.

Writing through the dark to find the light

But I didn’t want to feel the painful things. I tried to go straight to being grateful and finding positive affirmations to help me overcome writers’ block and self-sabotaging habits. I didn’t want to feel the painful things that had been locked up inside of me. But the only way out was to go through.

Thank God the Universe provided me with gifted teachers in the process. This time last year I took an online writing course by Martha Beck; there were guest lectures from Elizabeth Gilbert, one of my favourite writers, and it was completely transformative. Hard work and painful but amazing.

The course comprised the most incredible set of lectures which blew everything I thought I knew out of the water. The writing exercises were designed to take you into the hell of your worst moments and keep writing until you brought everything out into the light.

As I wrote, I kept finding feelings of being unworthy, and crippling fears of never being good enough. A numbing fear that if I spoke my truth, I would be judged, criticised, and rejected. I was so good at avoiding those feelings I’d been unaware of how much they were driving self-sabotaging behaviours like procrastination and perfectionism.

I could only learn to be wholehearted by looking at those feelings of shaky self-worth in the eye. And writing through them to find the validation I need within myself. Perhaps I will never believe that I am good enough to be a “real writer.”

But I have learnt to trust the voice inside of me that says I need to write. And if all I ever achieve is to heal the fractured places in my own heart, it will be enough. I pray also that I can gift my readers a tiny bit of courage to continue on their own wholehearted journey.

Key book companions along the way

The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron

Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert

Martha Beck – Finding Your Way in a Wild New World

Loving What Is – Byron Katie

And the poetry of Mary Oliver

About Kamsin Kaneko

Kamsin Kaneko is a writer, mum, teacher, and traveller, not necessarily in that order. She writes about living a wholehearted life of depth and meaning. You can find her on Instagram most days capturing small moments of beauty in the urban sprawl of her home in Japan. Get your free gift: I Believe in the Magic of Everyday Moments. Kamsin Kaneko’s website The Slow Path can be found here.

Photographs #1, #2, #3 + bio image by Kamsin Kaneko, used with permission and thanks.

Photograph #4 of pen on page by Debby Hudson on Unsplash used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

You might also enjoy my free ‘Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches and Writers‘ with a summary of 45 wholehearted books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library which includes the Reading Wisdom Guide and so much more! 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 Instagram and Twitter so keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

love, loss & longing wholehearted stories

Year of Magic, Year of Sadness – A Wholehearted Story

May 6, 2019

This guest post from Lisa Dunford looks at how her year of magic and change was also one of sadness, the two coming together to weave a wholehearted story.

I’m thrilled to have Lisa Dunford as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Lisa and I met via Instagram and share interests in creativity, coaching and travel. In this story, Lisa shares how her year of magic also incorporated times of immense sadness. How often do these two elements come together in life especially when we make major changes? So often. Lisa shares how magic and sadness have become key compasses on her journey. Read on!

Year of magic and sadness

The year 2016 was a magical one. I’d stepped back from writing travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet full-time to pursue a more personal growth-oriented path – both in my writing and in my life. It took a few years of stops and starts, but by 2016, I finally felt like things were beginning to flow. Along much of this incredible journey, the inspirational talks and writings of Martha Beck kept me company. I found the book Finding Your Way in A Wild New World particularly influential. I’d always been good at following my gut for big decisions. But Wild New World opened me to the idea of everyday connection and magic.

The more I read Martha’s books and essays, the more I wanted to learn. I took online workshops and listened to her lectures. I branched out to workshops and lessons taught by Martha Beck Institute (MBI)-trained life coaches. I hired a coach myself, and before I knew it, I’d become fast friends with a number of other MBI coaches.

Walking the walk

In spring, with just one month’s notice, I committed to walking the last 100km of the Camino de Santiago in Spain organized by three MBI coaches. Saying yes was a big deal. I’d fallen completely out of shape while living in two car-oriented, pancake-flat places. And I didn’t usually take on anything I might fail at. But a series of serendipities urged me on – Paulo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage falling off the shelf as I considered, a friend asking me to edit an essay, that turned out to be… about her Camino trip. I embraced my willingness to fail, my willingness to be wrong about failing. Taking even the first step was a win. When I managed to walk every one of the 100 kilometres without getting in the support van, I knew I hadn’t done it alone.

It’s not like the trek was easy. Every morning I had my blister-covered toes sewn up, and I popped pain relievers like candy. But the Divine was there every step of the way: in the unusually unwavering support from my spouse, the unexpected inspiration from nature and faith, and the very practical advice and assistance that arrived from friends and co-walkers exactly when needed. I had accomplished what in my mind was impossible. It began to be hard to say what I couldn’t do.

Being led

“Ok, so if you could do anything, what would it be?” asked a life coach friend. That was easy – go to Africa, I answered. It had always seemed like too big of a dream: too much money, too much distance. I continued writing, I went to retreats, I followed my path. Four months later, out of the blue, another coach asked if I wanted to take her discounted place on a South African safari she’d already paid for, she couldn’t go. Um, let me think about that… YES.

I realized I wanted to learn more of the tools taught in the MBI training, go deeper into self-discovery, into self-belief. In September 2016 I began my own life coaching nine-month training. I’d gone in thinking I was doing it for myself. I planned to use the techniques to inform my life, to help with my writing. Much to my surprise, I really loved coaching. It felt as if I was following magic breadcrumbs to a life I loved.

Things happen

And then halfway through the training, my mom died – suddenly, at the very young, very healthy-seeming age of 71. She collapsed in my father’s arms and was dead three hours later. They’d just gotten back from mom’s first – her last – post-retirement, cross-country driving trip. I was home for an extended visit from where I lived abroad. She and I talked for a long time the night before she died. She went into the tiniest detail about her trip. We made lunch plans for the following week. The next day I left for California and my MBI life coach training meet and greet.

I walked onto the LA car rental lot and discovered they’d assigned me a white Ford Crown Victoria. I was not really feeling the old school, cop car vibe. When I asked to change, the rental guy was more chipper than most. “No problem, I get it,” he said. How would I like a cherry red Mustang convertible for the same price instead? Um, sure. At the time I didn’t think about how much the car looked like the little red Mazda convertible Mom used to drive.

Feeling connected

Some nice lot attendant came out of nowhere to help me as I struggled with the seats and the top. “No, no, no,” he said. I couldn’t possibly take the freeway at this time of day. He was insistent, I had to take the Pacific Coast Highway. “Ok, ok,” I said. I agreed and he sent me on my way with a “Have a Blessed Day.”

As I inched up the coast in traffic, the late afternoon sun sparkled off the ocean waves. I alternated between watching the dancing light show on the water to my right and the orange and blue and yellow wildflowers dotting the hillside to my left. Mom would have loved it. She was the big driver, not me. I was almost to San Luis Obispo when I got the call.

I couldn’t quite process the information. After the heart attack, Mom had been life-flighted to a nearby hospital. We’d figure it out, I told my dad. In the background, I heard the alarms and shouting that meant Mom was coding – again and again. I didn’t understand. I said I would come back right away, we’d take care of her. We patched my sister into the call. We were all together, in a way, when the doctor told dad the news. She’d never regained consciousness. I did the math. She’d been with me on the drive after all.

Going deeper

I’d meant to go deeper with life coach training, but I hadn’t really known what that meant. In the aftermath of Mom’s death, things I thought I’d understood suddenly became clear. I felt everything more deeply. I cried not only for the amazing and infuriating and incredible mother I’d lost but for everything, everyone’s pain. Though I’d never had children, I could better imagine the depth of my friend’s loss as she sent her son off to college (and for mom’s when I first went away). I could imagine the incalculable pain of someone’s miscarriage (of which mom had had three). But I also saw beauty and felt gratitude more deeply. When I returned to Africa the next year, I was more – and less – of myself.

Mom had been fierce and fun-loving, but she had also been an anxious person. After her death, I had the strong sense that she was immediately free of all that. And that if she could be free in one minute, I could be. She would want me to be. So I doubled down on the life coach training. We all have thoughts, habits and patterns that are no longer serving us. I became very aware of how important this work was – freeing myself, so I could help free others. Even if I only helped my sister or my nieces break the chain, it would all be worth it.

The next steps

I would love to say that within six months after mom died, I finished my life coach training and established a thriving writing-coaching-creating business. But that’s not always how things work. And that’s ok. I took time to grieve. I was committed to feeling my feelings, to allowing intense gratitude and sadness to sit side by side. We had other setbacks in my husband’s family, a hurricane that targeted our town in Texas. We had more loss in my mom’s family.

But there’s a big difference now. I have tools to use and a community to turn to. I’m much less hard on myself. I’m not panicked that I haven’t accomplished as much as I think I “should”. I had other things to do, other things to learn. I’m still writing, still using my coaching. I’ve continued to study tools and techniques to help others as a coach. I’ve begun to build my business and a website to reflect that. And I’m still doing my own inner work because it’s a process.

I’m immensely grateful for so much from the past few years – the lessons I’ve learned, the friends I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had. But mostly I’m grateful for an amazing mom, a woman who inspires me every day to dig deeper and do more, be more, help more.

Key book companions along the way

The Pilgrimage – Paulo Coelho

Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino – Joyce Rupp

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want – Martha Beck

The Joy Diet – Martha Beck

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live – Martha Beck

Born to Freak: A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans – Sarah Seidelmann

About Lisa Dunford

Lisa is a traveler, a writer, a creator and a life coach. Her house lives on a river east of Houston, Texas, her husband works in a desert west of Abu Dhabi, UAE. She alternates between the two. Before becoming a life coach, Lisa roamed the globe for 12 years as a travel writer. She’s lived in six countries and seven states. More than anything Lisa believes that so much more is possible in this life than we tend to think. Follow her travels @lisadtraveler and her attempts at learning to draw, learning to paint and learning to live @lisadlifeartist on Instagram.

Photographs and artwork by Lisa Dunford, used with permission and thanks.

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Joy in travel and seeing new landscapes – a photo essay

January 3, 2019

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

Henry David Thoreau

Joy and travel align so beautifully! This post explores how the joy of travel and new landscapes helped refresh my senses and provide new perspectives.

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Joy was my Word of the Year for 2018. I’m reflecting on my experience of JOY last year in a series of posts here as a way of rounding off the year and stepping into 2019.

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

alongside deep grief
and resilience in challenging times
in travel and being away from home (this post)
in creative work and my calling (to come soon)

I hope you find these reflections valuable for your own journeys with joy, grief, resilience, creativity, travel and wholehearted self-leadership. And I look forward to your thoughts and experiences too on these issues and feelings.

Finding joy in travel

It’s pretty well nearly always joyful to set off on an anticipated overseas trip. But this one was so long in coming, it felt extra joyful.

We were just about to go overseas when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and so of course, we cancelled that holiday. In all, we cancelled six holidays over 18 months as we dealt with the challenges of late 2016 into early 2018 and focused on supporting loved family members.

Finally in the second half of the year, we set off overseas for a trip to Europe and the UK. We travelled first to Singapore and that evening after arriving, we sat in our favourite hotel with a drink relaxing and I felt quiet tears of joy.

It meant things were okay and settled down now. It was a desperately needed change of scenery, an opportunity to relax and see new places, and fulfil a dream of going on a river cruise down the Rhine. We also planned to visit towns in Germany where my ancestors departed from to travel to Australia, to catch up with online friends I hadn’t met in person, and to connect again with family and friends overseas. It was the most joyful of times.

Joy and travel revisited

Just as absence makes the heart grow fonder, so the inability to travel made me yearn for new landscapes. Until I could travel again, I would follow other’s journeys with such wanderlust, eager to also embrace travel as we had planned for this time of our life. This whole experience helped me to take nothing for granted. After the challenges of the previous months, I immersed myself in every new place and experience so in the moment.

In Singapore, we love the orchids and visited the National Orchid Gardens and the Gardens by the Bay as well as the zoo. We indulged our senses in every way in the humidity of Singapore, surrounded by flowers and animals. It was so refreshing for my jaded sensibilities.

We then headed to Frankfurt as a base for exploring Germany and connecting with ancestral places. I caught up with my friend Kerstin Pilz of Write Your Journey. First connecting online, we had met face to face in my village in February in 2018, then found out we were both flying into Frankfurt, from Vietnam and Australia, within the same 24 hour period. What synchronicity! It was such a joy to connect and have lunch in the Römerberg Square in Kerstin’s home-town. Catching face to face with online friends was a special feature of this journey creating such treasured moments I cherish.

Joy, travel and family history

A key driving factor in our holiday planning was heading to see the places in Germany where my ancestors left from to travel to Australia. Much of my family is from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, but my paternal grandmother’s grandparents came from Germany. So I was so very keen to see the places they lived in and where they once walked and lived.

We visited Würzburg, Wertheim and Eichel on the outskirts of Wertheim where they lived. I went to the church where my great, great, great grandfather Johann (Jakob) Leonhard Roos was baptised in 1826. My ancestors were vineyard workers in this region of Germany and then came to work on Henry John Lindeman’s vineyards in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney. I could feel their ancestral presence everywhere in this region of Germany and felt so much at home.

The joy of river cruising

The central part of our trip was a river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel. We’d never been on a cruise of any kind and thought a river cruise would be the best way to commence our cruising experience.

It was sublime. From the moment we stepped on, we enjoyed every moment. A combination of the pleasures of onboard experiences with onshore excursions made for such a pleasurable journey. Once you are aboard, you unpack your bag and just kick back for the week and watch the world go by.

We had also never engaged with more organised travel with a structured itinerary and tour guides. Again, we enjoyed this as it meant we didn’t have to navigate and could learn from guides with local knowledge. You could choose to opt out of onshore excursions and stay on the boat often cruising to the next stop. This was an occasional introverted treat when all the interaction and input got too much.

Travelling by river means seeing so much you cannot see any other way. A highlight was the mid Rhine River lined with castles and vineyards, the Lorelei a central feature we snaked through. We sat atop the vessel as we wove our way through, seeing castle and after castle and wondering how such immense structures were able to be built.

We visited cities and towns along the length of the Rhine River, hearing of their history and traditions. A broad-brush approach perhaps but a fabulous way to get a sense of place and identify where we to return to with more time to explore. We especially loved Colmar, Strasbourg, Rüdesheim, Cologne and Koblenz. A visit to the underground Maginot Line in France near the German border was an incredible insight into the lengths taken to defend against the potential reoccurrence of conflict after World War I. Our hosts went to every length to make sure each port provided opportunities to taste the unique flavour and history of each place we visited.

And then to Vietnam

Shortly after we returned home, I headed off for a solo trip to Hoi An, Vietnam for a yoga and writing retreat with Kerstin Pilz. It was my first solo trip overseas at 57 which caused much mirth in our family. But it was truly great to set off alone for a week of writing and yoga in beautiful Hoi An, a place I’d long wanted to visit. Having my trusted friend Kerstin, a local Hoi An resident, leading and shaping the retreat meant I felt well looked after and knew my needs would be supported.

They were supported and so much more. I’ve written a full review of the retreat here. Following on from time away in Europe and the UK, it was all about seeing with fresh eyes in every respect. The week was pivotal in getting back to both yoga and writing practices after my time away. I made enduring friendships and my senses were refreshed and revitalised, bringing a deep joy after an at times challenging year.

Having stretched both my writing and yoga muscles and revitalised my senses in every way, the scene was set for the last quarter of the year and experiencing joy in my calling and new work in the world.

Photo by Nigel Rowles

Find Your Word process + tools

First though, some information on the process and tools that can help you. If you have never worked on a Word of the Year, it’s 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.

In 2016, I started doing things differently. I 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!

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.

You might also enjoy:

Joy and resilience in challenging times

Joy and grief: the paradox and wisdom of finding joy alongside deep grief

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

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

Writing retreat in Hoi An review + photo essay – seeing with fresh eyes

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

You might also find inspiration in 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!

introversion planning & productivity

Reset time – with a touch of jet-lag, life-lag and rest

August 20, 2018

Home from a beautiful holiday and I’m feeling it’s time for a reset. But jet-lag and life-lag are teaching me that reset can mean rest as much as anything!

Home from a beautiful holiday overseas and I’m feeling it’s time for a reset. It was always my plan to come home after this break and get stuck into my writing, business, coaching and ecourses. I know where I want to go with it all and I have more open space to work. Yet I come home feeling that the jet-lag has morphed into a kind of life-lag. I can’t seem to quite get into synch with it all.

Do you ever have that feeling? Like your plans are known, but you can’t quite reach them or enact them? That you know the timing and can write the schedule but it keeps pushing out because you are not up to it? It feels like you are out of body and can’t quite connect the pieces to make them happen.

Life-lag seems to be the best way to describe it. Circumstances mean that you haven’t been able to keep up with yourself or your plans for some time, so you start to feel permanently in a state of lag. I’m thinking it’s all about needing to learn to rest as part of resetting, acknowledging that life-lag means you are still catching up with it all.

There’s really no need to push so hard. What is this pressure I put on myself? It’s something I need to consider and take into account.

Being away, coming home

Being away meant enjoying being in the moment and that was important and special. One thing about travel is that being away from your usual surrounds and commitments makes enjoying the moment much easier. I imagine that’s a reason why people seek the experience of travel at times. Your normal life circumstances are changed. You are more likely to eat out, for example, and not have to make plans for daily tasks like buying food and cooking. Everything is new and fresh and your senses are revitalised.

Coming home, I have felt really excited to make a new start. But as I said on Instagram recently for this image below, snapped looking out at the ocean I wanted to dive into but was too tired to get to, it does all feel a bit raw coming back home. It’s like a reset, a restart, which I’d anticipated and looked forward to after a break away. But I am having trouble getting to it in real life.

Symbols to reset for a new start

As I worked through this time, the Aces kept coming up in Tarot, signalling fresh starts of all kinds. I want to work on my business plan, realign priorities and time for that and life generally: family, friends, writing, coaching. Finish my book and see it out in the world. But yes, it does feel a little tender as you come home, stepping back, resetting, looking at things a little differently and imagining next steps. Reality hits and collides with the fresh start aspirations, along with jet-lag and it all starts to feel out of reach again.

A New Moon also aligned with our homecoming, throwing a focus on starting afresh. As my friend Jennifer Cockcroft reminded me on IG: “lots of r words”: reset, raw, restart, rejuvenate, refresh, reboot, recharge, realign.

So what to do with all these Aces and plans to reset? Maybe it is just the cosmic energies, Mercury Retrograde (just finished as I write!) causing havoc recently? Perhaps life-lag really is a thing and I need time to catch up with myself and rest before I launch ahead again.

I’m thinking my cat, Azzie, is really on to something!

Reset, jet-lag and life-lag, travel and rest

There’s no doubt that jet-lag is a thing. I don’t usually suffer too badly but my partner was also sick on our return home within a few days. We had sleepless nights from that. Suddenly we were on weird sleep cycles again and staring up at the ceiling for long hours during the night. Our reset suddenly became quite problematic.

And then it felt like all of life was lagging. A gap between my plans and where I wanted to be. Definitely a chasm between the energy I needed and what I had. I returned to swimming and yoga last week which both helped me feel more connected with my body. Sleep is returning now in more natural patterns which I am grateful for.

The life-lag is something I am learning from. Maybe it is too early to get out the door with all my plans just now. Even though I’d made this plan, it doesn’t mean it was a good one or the right one. After all the recent years of challenge, one thing after the other, it doesn’t mean one holiday renders you all ready to go, perfect in mind and body.

And travel itself, although wonderful and inspiring, can be tiring, especially for introverts with all that sensory and people input. I loved it all but my introvert soul needs to recharge again with time alone.

Perhaps this life-lag is all about balancing my personality needs and time alone, and rejuvenation, Four of Swords style, is what is needed. I had the best time, seeing so much, meeting so many online friends in real life and making many new friends. But all that extraverting sensing and interaction can take its toll and some quiet writing time is what I need, no pressure.

Four of Swords – letting it rest and synthesise

Speaking of the Four of Swords, it’s a card that has been on my mind. So I checked in with the Spolia Tarot to see what it has to say about this time of reset. A very wise deck, it reminds me that this time is about synthesis:

This is the creation of an intellectual foundation. For that, knowledge has to become almost unconscious, it has to move from remembering facts from your cramming session to an ease with handling the information. It requires synthesis.

We are reminded that we have done the work: the swords are on the wall. We can still be working intellectually, reshaping, crafting all the inputs we have gathered. All the work we have done can be honoured by resting and allowing it to connect and compost, without so much active engagement on our part.

What I’m thinking about: my wholehearted self-leadership questions

In the midst of all of this travel and homecoming, I have been thinking and reflecting a lot. I welcome any thoughts and input you might have in this reset phase.

I focus on wholehearted self-leadership in my business and personal focus. I’m always seeking input and connection via coaching, colleagues, online friends, books and courses. But I’m constantly also reflecting on my key questions at any time. Here’s a snapshot of this now in this reset phase.

The things that are composting for me right now include:

How can I find out what the Quiet Writing community needs and wants?
Perhaps a survey of readers and subscribers would be helpful for getting input?
How can I serve and provide value most effectively?
What would help better connection within our community?
Where does tarot fit with my life and business?
How do I share my tarot insights in a way that helps people and is balanced?
Where does tarot with my blogging schedule?
How can I finish my book draft now and edit it meaningfully myself before I seek outside help?
And then, how much outside help is needed?
How can I revamp my website so it’s more focused on my business as well as my blog and writing?

The questions can go round and round though at times and I am learning I need to rest more in this reset phase. Allowing answers to come through rest and recuperation, not pushing so hard, seems a valuable part of reset.

Rest not quitting as part of reset

Of course, feelings of giving up and hopelessness can come up too when we are not pushing as hard as we think we should. We don’t quite measure up to where we thought we would be. Thoughts like, “I’ll never finish writing that book! I’ll never see it out in the world!” for example, have started to run around my head. But as this post and quote reminded me today on LinkedIn via Andrew Johnson, rest and relaxation are a critical part of resilience:

If you get tired, learn to rest not to quit!

Banksy

A very valuable reminder. Reset is as much about resting and reflecting as anything. It doesn’t mean we are failing or need to quit!

And you?

Are you finding you need rest as part of your reset right now?

Has travel or holiday time left you strangely feeling in need of rest?

Does personality come into it for you with your need for rest?

Do you struggle with the need to keep going when rest is probably the best reset you can focus on?

Do rest and quitting get tangled up for you too sometimes?

Welcome your thoughts on these or any of my wholehearted self-leadership questions to guide me and others in our work. Just post in the comments or on social media posts on Facebook or Instagram.

Found this too while thinking about jet-lag and life-lag! You might enjoy it if you find the jet-lag/life-lag experience resonates with you: Jet-lag? More like life-lag

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 alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for August and an August/September coaching start!

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Poetry in the heart of Tokyo

June 21, 2014

When in Japan recently, I visited Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine near Shibuya, dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken and established in 1920. Surrounded by a forest of thousands of trees threaded through with peaceful streams, the shrine area is a sacred sanctuary in the heart of Tokyo.

Poetry is also at the heart of Meiji Jingu. Both Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken were poets, writing the traditional waka, Japanese poems of 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-5-7). The divine virtues of the Emperor and Empress are celebrated through their poetry.

Visitors can draw a poem from 20 specially selected poems, with English translation and explanation, from the “Omikuji” (poem drawing) box in front of the main shrine building. It is a special way of keeping the spirit of the Emperor and Empress alive in the shrine itself through their poetry.

My special poem:

‘Ever downwards water flows,

But mirrors lofty mountains;

How fitting that our heart also

Be humble, but reflect high aims.’

– Empress Shoken –

More information about the shrine and the Waka poetry by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken can be found here: “About Meiji Jingu“.

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music & images poetry

Poetry: Destinations

October 27, 2012

Meow Gallery: The gallery is empty.

Destinations

You are the exotic destination
I depart to, my fervent feet
walking the streets
to the Venice of your heart.

Or perhaps you are Oliphants,
deep in the Kruger, from where high
above thorn trees, I watch hippopotamus
float down the river somehow.

Or perhaps the Eiffel Tower,
shimmering in the morning light,
from where I look down at the city
laid out like the story of a novel.

You dream and then one day,
you step on a plane and arrive
to do the most ordinary things
in the most exotic way.

You are my destination,
sometimes nearly ordinary,
sometimes taking
my breath away.

Older

travel

Living life in the ordinary everyday moments

Nothing is better than a home cooked meal

Shifting focus

Looking for the answers right here not over there

Gratitude and moving on

Learning to listen to the longings of my own heart

Learning to believe in the possibility of a wholehearted life

How writing and early motherhood changed everything

Motherhood in Japan was the key to unlocking my heart

Writing is leading to radical transformation: that’s why it’s so hard

Writing through the dark to find the light

Key book companions along the way

About Kamsin Kaneko

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

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Year of magic and sadness

Walking the walk

Being led

Things happen

Feeling connected

Going deeper

The next steps

Key book companions along the way

About Lisa Dunford

Read more Wholehearted Stories

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Finding joy in travel

Joy and travel revisited

Joy, travel and family history

The joy of river cruising

And then to Vietnam

Find Your Word process + tools

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Keep in touch + read the books that shaped my story

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Being away, coming home

Symbols to reset for a new start

Reset, jet-lag and life-lag, travel and rest

Four of Swords – letting it rest and synthesise

What I’m thinking about: my wholehearted self-leadership questions

Rest not quitting as part of reset

If you get tired, learn to rest not to quit!

Banksy

And you?

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

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Like this:

‘Ever downwards water flows,

But mirrors lofty mountains;

How fitting that our heart also

Be humble, but reflect high aims.’

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