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wholehearted

Tarot writing

Weathering the Storm: Anchoring Yourself with Writing and Tarot in Challenging Times

July 24, 2024

In my book, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition, I share about anchoring practices for challenging times. In this post, I describe the linked writing and tarot practice that has helped me navigate a difficult period of change recently. So powerful for me as a grounding and clarifying practice, I hope the writing and tarot insights below provide tips and ideas you can apply in your life.

Challenging times and writing practice

With the sudden death of my beloved partner Keith in late 2022, everything changed and life was difficult. I felt so lost as I navigated the shock and unexpected challenges. This went deep, touching every aspect of my being and daily life with uncertainty.

I am a regular writer. Call it Morning Pages, journalling, daily writing – whatever works for you. I call it Morning Pages, but I make it my own, writing any time of the day, as much or as little as I want. But with Keith’s sudden death, the shock meant I couldn’t immediately engage with these regular practices that supported me like swimming, writing and tarot. I was just surviving day to day in the fog of grief, making it through the initial shock, organising the immediate priorities.

After about two weeks, I returned to the page, writing to make sense of what had happened, was happening. I tapped into that rich weave of practices I already knew as I navigated this time. It has helped immensely. Over time, this practice has grown stronger, helping me navigate the difficult circumstances and intense emotions of deep grief. It continues to support me every day as I move through the stages of grief.

So here is what that practice now looks like and how it might help you.

First steps, working digitally and connecting practices

I write Morning Pages on my computer in a Google doc and I have done this for years now. Here are some reasons:

  • I have osteoarthritis so it is easier on my hands.
  • I can search the document for when the same tarot cards and themes have come up before and learn from my own insights.
  • It is private, transportable, easily accessible anywhere, anytime.
  • I copy and paste the weekly oracle card, monthly intentions, word of the year – whatever is important – to keep front of mind as I write.

I have a connected practice with the lunar cycle, monthly intentions, a weekly oracle card, and a daily tarot card. Writing helps us live more consciously and reflectively. Tarot is a way of tapping into our unconscious, what is just beneath the surface, making connections between what we might otherwise miss. It is a powerful source of self-awareness, self-leadership and conscious living. Connecting the two, writing and tarot, and making sure we have our intentions in front of us provides a powerhouse of guidance.

Example from my Morning Pages practice

Here is what a recent ‘frontispiece’ to my Morning Pages writing looked like:

Gibbous Moon (Doing) – I trust that the perfect intention is coming into form at the perfect time.
New moon intentions for this cycle:
Virgo: I find safety in connection. I nurture my most honest hopes and dreams for the future.
Aquarius: Each day is an opportunity to live a life that feeds me and improves my sense of wellness
Soulful Woman card of the week: 7 Loving from the Inside – It is a blessing to give myself the gift of my own presence.
Card for the day: Strength – fortitude, patience, gentle power (The Spacious Tarot)
‘Strength coaxes you to take a gentle but confident approach. There is a similar boldness in Strength as that found in the Chariot, but there is more grace and softness here. Strength affirms that you can bloom delicately even if you find yourself in a harsh environment. 
Approach challenges with fortitude, instead of ruthlessly bulldozing forward. Find empathy for the terrain you find yourself in. Have the patience to understand your circumstances and find ways to work with them instead of against them. The cactus lives in a dry environment yet holds reserves of water within. As such, this card reminds you that you also have great reserves of gentle power. Tap into those reserves. You are strong and compassionate – believe this, know this, and act accordingly.

Sources and scene setting for writing and tarot

Here are some sources for the entry above that support me:

I copy over the previous days ‘frontispiece’ as a template and some of it stays the same. This all sets the scene, helping me to focus and keep in touch with the lunar cycle and my intentions. I often check in with other tarot guides. The Gentle Tarot deck and Guidebook and The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin stay on my desk for further insight.

But the ground-breaking piece in this time of change has been connecting the daily tarot card with other occasions when it has arrived. Searching through my current and previous Google Morning Pages documents, I can see where this tarot card has come up before. Engaging with this has yielded powerful insights and learning.

Learning from our own wisdom

Working with a Google Doc makes this so easy. Using the Edit/Find and Replace function and popping in the card’s name, we can locate other times it has come up. It helps us see if it’s a frequent, rare or new card arriving. If it is a card that has popped up many times, that is enlightening. What did we reflect on last time and learn from its arrival?

I scan through the previous times and see what was happening: circumstances, emotions, realisations, priorities, how I coped, what I moved through, recurring struggles. Often I see the progress I have made and that in itself is helpful. We forget how far we have come in challenging times, often focusing on what is before us now. I frequently uncover useful insights, tools and wisdom that I apply anew as an anchor in uncertain times.

Sometimes I copy the text and learning from that time as a way into today’s writing and reflections. I come across lists of ideas already brainstormed I can add to or draw from. This method helps you rediscover a forgotten body of work with the links between writing and tarot strengthening focus.

Try linking writing and tarot more consciously!

It might seem like a lot and sometimes it takes time, but once in the rhythm, it is easily and quickly done. The insights gained far outweigh the time involved. It helps to stitch your progress into the fabric of your ongoing experience. Setting up this platform helps to have richer and deeper awareness to guide you forward. You also identify where you’re going over the same ground and need to try a fresh approach.

The reason I started using a digital approach to Morning Pages was twofold: my hand condition and exploring the advantages of digital methods. I have benefited in both those ways and many more. It provides a structured way to tap into your intuition and go deeper with writing and tarot. The outcomes for supporting you in navigating challenging times are supportive and anchoring.

So try it and see how it works for you. We all need frameworks, guides and anchors in swirly, uncertain times. And you can always fashion your own practice. You can find more tips, strategies and frameworks to inspire conscious, intuitive living in challenging times in Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. Wholehearted is available in audiobook, print and ebook here.

Books transition wholehearted stories

Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life. Audio excerpt from Wholehearted

September 4, 2022

Terri Connellan shares insights on beginning the journey of a wholehearted life with an audio excerpt from Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition, Chapter 1.

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Amazon Music | YouTube | Stitcher | Podcast Page |

Welcome to Episode 20 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life. It’s a solo episode celebrating the first anniversary of Wholehearted’s publication. And other significant life and Quiet Writing anniversaries and a birthday (mine)! I share insights to support and guide you in your own journey of change and transformation to a life that resonates and aligns with what’s important to you.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, I share about:

  • The first anniversary of publishing Wholehearted & the Companion Workbook.
  • The sixth anniversary of leaving full-time work and starting Quiet Writing.
  • The beginning of transition journeys.
  • How uncertain and unsettling they can feel.
  • The beginning of my own transition journey to a more fulfilling life.
  • Steps and processes that can help in navigating major change.
  • What can help us in the beginning stages of a making a significant change.
  • How my Wholehearted books can help guide you if you are going through major change.
  • How to get your copy of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook.

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Episode 20 of the podcast. It’s the 2nd of September, 2022 as I record this and an important time for me as I head into some key anniversary times.

It’s six years since I left full-time work and began to carve out a new, more creatively focused, fulfilling life.

Plus it’s six years since I started Quiet Writing as a website, business, community and concept.

And it’s one year on the 6th of September, my birthday, since my books, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook were published by the kind press and shared with the world after five years of writing.

These books were crafted from the heart of a deep and transformative time of change. My whole life focus and work changed. I learnt that change is external but the real work is in the transition piece. How we respond, integrate, shift our mindset, skill up in new ways, live with intention and find systems, structures or frameworks to guide and support us through change. For me these included: creativity through writing, intuitive tarot and oracle work, psychological type personality frameworks and becoming a coach. 

I share my personal journey of transformation and transition. And what helped me to navigate moving through such uncertain times in Wholehearted.

So I thought it was fitting for these milestone times to share the first pages of Wholehearted with you in a different way, in audio form. It has also been a valuable way for me to honour and revisit these times through voicing them again. I hope that hearing my words in this way helps you in some way especially if you are navigating challenging and changing times. And these times are not one off. I know I’m going through another big time of transition and change. They’re iterative, and these skills can help you over and over again in new ways as you move through.

Get your copy of Wholehearted

You can get a copy of the transcript of this audio, Beginning the Journey, the first part of Chapter 1 as a download by heading to quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1. Or head to quietwriting.com/podcast to find a link to the blog page for this episode, Beginning the Journey of a Wholehearted Life and all the key Wholehearted book links.

If you would like to purchase a copy of Wholehearted and/or the Companion Workbook in ebook or paperback, head to books2read.com/wholehearted where you can find links to all digital stores easily.

Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook

I hope you enjoy listening to the first part of my Wholehearted book, hearing about the beginning of my journey to more fulfilling, creative living. I’ve really enjoyed revisiting my own words at this special and tender time of anniversaries and celebratory milestones.

Thank you for being with me on the journey, whether here since the beginning or connecting for the first time. It means the world to me.

I’ll be sharing some more solo episodes over the coming weeks and months. They are centred around the key themes of my work: creativity, personality, self-leadership, transition and wholehearted living. I look forward to sharing insights to support and guide you in your own journey of change and transformation to a life that resonates and aligns with what’s important to you.

And now, let’s head into Chapter 1 of Wholehearted!

Get your free copy of the transcript of Chapter 1 of Wholehearted as read on this podcast here: https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Terri Connellan

About Terri Connellan

Terri Connellan is an author, creative transition coach, accredited psychological type practitioner and podcaster. Her coaching and writing focus on three elements—creativity, personality and self-leadership—especially for midlife women in transition to a life with deeper purpose. Terri works with women globally through her creative business, Quiet Writing, encouraging deeper self-understanding of body of work, creativity and psychological type for more wholehearted and fulfilling lives. She lives and writes in a village on the outskirts of Sydney surrounded by beach and bush.

Terri’s links to explore

Books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-book/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/wholehearted

Wholehearted Companion Workbook: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-companion-workbook/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/companion

Free resources:

Chapter 1, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Personal Action Checklist for Creating More Meaning + Purpose: https://www.quietwriting.net/checklist 

36 Books Creative Influence Guide: https://quiet-writing.ck.page/36bookspdf

Coaching and writing programs:

Book your free Self-leadership Discovery call: quietwritingcoachingappointments.as.me/schedule.php

Work with me: quietwriting.com/work-with-me/

The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan: quietwriting.net/writingroadtrip

Connect on social media

Instagram: instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

Books reading notes

Review Wholehearted and help others find it!

May 21, 2022

Read Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and found it valuable? Please share your experiences and post a review to help people who would benefit to find it.

Your review will help people in transition looking for practical guides as they navigate challenging and changing times.

Here are some tips and links to help you share the word!


Booktopia Wholehearted Review

1. Go to https://www.booktopia.com.au/wholehearted-terri-connellan/book/9780645011333.html
2. Click on “Write a Review” (no eligibility requirements):

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.10.28 am.png

3. A box will pop up for you to fill out. 

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.11.09 am.png

4. Click “Submit Review” to complete the process.

Amazon Wholehearted Review

Important: Before you can post a review, you must meet the eligibility requirements detailed in the Community Guidelines. Submissions that do not follow review guidelines will not be posted.

To submit a review:

  1. Go to the book page: 
  2. Click Write a review in the Customer Reviews section and follow the steps.
  3. Write or upload your review.
  4. Click Preview your review to make sure your review appears as intended.
  5. Click Publish review to submit.

Eligibility

To post Customer Reviews, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com.au (or your relevant Amazon country area) in the past 12 months. Promotional balance or discounts that are applied to an order do not qualify towards the $50 minimum. You do not need to meet this requirement to read content posted by other contributors.

Goodreads Wholehearted Review

Goodreads reviews help readers on that platform but also feed through to Book Depository.

Just head to the Wholehearted page on Goodreads and submit your review.

Or head to wherever you purchased Wholehearted and share the word!

The Wholehearted Companion Workbook would love some love too if you are feeling generous!

Looking for inspiration?

It doesn’t have to be long or in depth. Write what you think people might need to know about the book and how it might help them. Here are examples of reader reviews of Wholehearted that might spark something for you!

Praise for Wholehearted

Extended Review of Wholehearted

Review of Wholehearted in TAGG by Meredith Fuller: Wholehearted: Self Leadership for Women in Transition, and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook by Terri Connellan

Amazon Wholehearted Review:

Goodreads Wholehearted Review:

Thank you to all who have written reviews and kind words for Wholehearted! I look forward to seeing these words shared with others so people can find Wholehearted and benefit from it.

Thank you for helping me in that quest! It’s why I wrote the book in the first place.

Further reading and listening:

Wholehearted praise – what people are saying

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 2

Create Your Deeper Story 1 to 1 Coaching

podcast self-leadership + leadership transition

Self-Styling Your Life with Janelle Wehsack

March 25, 2022

Styling a life on your terms with what you love and self-belief guiding the way.

Subscribe on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | YouTube | Stitcher | Podcast Page |

Welcome to Episode 14 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Self-Styling Your Life.

I’m joined by Janelle Wehsack – Certified Life & Style Coach, Creative Writer and Distant Francophile.

We chat about Janelle’s signature approaches to coaching based on clarity, mindset and action and self-styling your life. With 30 plus years in corporate along with concurrently operating both a successful coaching business and Distant Francophile focused around a love of all things French, Janelle is an inspiring example of how to intentionally shape a life that you love. Plus she is a Self-Belief Coach with an extensive tool-kit for wrangling self-doubt.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

  • Creating a self-styled life
  • Self-doubt and building self-belief
  • Janelle’s signature framework: clarity, mindset & action
  • Embracing a multi-faceted life
  • Choosing to work part-time in corporate and coaching
  • Integrating different skills and roles
  • Both/and thinking
  • Following breadcrumbs and experimenting
  • Working with evidence
  • The value of blogging
  • Distant Francophile

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 14 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 25th of March as I record this. There’s been a little gap in episodes as I’ve been travelling over the past few weeks, visiting Melbourne, the beautiful Great Ocean Road in Victoria and Mt Gambier in South Australia. We had a fabulous time away and it was wonderful to see new vistas, swim in pristine water and catch up with family and friends. You can see pics on Instagram @writingquietly.

I also met my writing partner and The Writing Road Trip collaborator, Beth Cregan, for the first time in person. That was a truly joyous moment. We’ve enjoyed such a rich connection, supporting each other with our writing and then creating a writing program for others to join us. So it was so lovely to meet in real life and we presented our Writing Road Map session together in the same room instead of miles apart. We will be kicking off the next stage of the Writing Road Trip soon with a membership program to help get your book or writing project completed with opportunities to write in community with support. And have fun on the journey. You can join our email list for the latest news.

I’m excited to have Janelle Wehsack join us for the podcast today. Janelle is a certified life and style coach and a creative writer who also happens to have 30 years experience – and counting – in the corporate world. In her coaching practice, Janelle employs her signature coaching framework that combines clarity, mindset and action to support professional women to dance with their self-doubt so that they can build tailor made, self-styled lives.

Janelle and I met online as fellow Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coaches and Janelle has also worked with me as a coaching client focused on transition. Our work dovetails around self-belief, self-leadership and shaping the creative, integrated life you desire. Janelle frames her coaching work around creating a Self-Styled Life which she also shares via her Self.Styled.Life podcast too. Self-styling your life means, in Janelle’s words: ‘you write your own rules and set your own limits. Or you choose to have no limits at all.’ Janelle shapes her creative, self-styled, highly individual life and business in new and exciting ways and that’s what we’ll be exploring today in the podcast. There are plenty of gems of insight to inspire you in self-leadership and navigating a path that integrates the unique aspects of you!

So let’s head into the interview with Janelle.

Transcript of interview with Janelle Wehsack

Terri Connellan: Hello, Janelle and welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Janelle Wehsack: Hello, Terri. It’s so awesome to be here.

Terri Connellan: So thank you for your connection. And I can’t wait to explore more about you and your self-styled life work today. So we’ve connected in many ways around coaching, living creatively, transition and self-leadership, and it’s great to be able to share those conversations today.

So can you kick us off by providing a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do now?

Janelle Wehsack: I’d love to Terri and it is really awesome to be able to share some of the snippets of our conversations with all of your fabulous listeners. And I feel like my background is something that people might resonate with because it’s a story of decades.

So back when I was a teenager, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I finished high school and got a job in a bank, interestingly 31 years tomorrow to the day since I started in with that job at the bank. And so my twenties turned into something that I would say was full of life lessons. Or what we’d commonly call life’s lessons. I was married at 21. I had a baby at 23. I was a single mum by the time I was 25. At 27, I remarried. And then at 29, I decided it would be the perfect time to go casual at the bank and head back to uni full-time. So we squeezed a lot into that decade. And then the thirties was all about building my career, which I did quite quickly.

And then my forties probably got me to where I am today. It was during that time that I started a blog all about France. I studied life and style coaching as well as deep diving into self-belief coaching while still working in that banking career. And today my life is a perfect for me mix of a blend of my day job, my coaching practice, writing, growth, Distant Francophile, which is that blog I mentioned earlier. And it really is a life I’ve styled myself.

Terri Connellan: Fantastic. What an amazing journey you’ve been on. And congratulations, firstly, on 31 years in the bank, that’s amazing.

Janelle Wehsack: Yes, can’t say that when I started there 31 years ago that I ever expected that I would still be there, but the bank’s been an awesome opportunity for me and certainly a really good lesson in the fact that you can thrive in corporate. And that you can also reinvent yourself in corporate, which I don’t think is something we talk about too much.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think something we’ll explore as we go through today is sometimes we can find ourselves being pushed from one view of life to another. And I think the fact that a theme or a thread of corporate life can be really positive thing in our life is something that ‘d be great for us to explore as we talk further.

Congratulations too, on all those incredible shifts and pivots. And I love that, like me blogging, coaching appeared as key markers and tools and supports in your journey. That’s fantastic too. So, a common feature of our work is self-leadership and as you frame it in your work, a self-styled life. Can you explain to listeners what a self-styled life means for you and what it might invite in our lives?

Janelle Wehsack: It’s really interesting, isn’t it, how we can language, what is essentially the same thing so differently? So your work around self leadership and what I call self styling for me, they both come down to really leading a self-determined life, however we language it.

Now, I dragged out the good old Collins dictionary Terri for this one. And that dictionary defines self-determination as ‘the act or power of making up one’s own mind about what to think or do without outside influence or compulsion’. And practically, I think that translates into a life where you know what you want and you know where you’re going and you live by your values and define your measures of success.

For me, when you’re living a self-styled life, you fill it with beautiful humans and beautiful experiences and objects that bring you joy and fulfillment. And I think it’s true for all elements of your life. Be it career, your relationships, your creativity, finances, your wellbeing, all of the things. And it’s about, for me having all of the areas of your life, firing, like you want them to fire. For instance, it’s not just about having a great career and no hobbies, nor should you be sacrificing perhaps your professional life or your creativity, because you’ve chosen to have kids or babies have come along.

It’s about deciding that it’s okay for you to be excited by all areas of your life. And for me, when you decide to self-style your life, you write your own rules and you set your own limits. Or you choose to have no limits at all. And I think you start to let go of that endless comparison that’s so ingrained in us from such a young age.

I’m sure some of your listeners will have heard that quote that’s attributed to Theodore Roosevelt about comparison being the thief of joy. And yet our whole societies are set up to compare us right from the start. From the minute we’re born, we’re compared by our birth weight, then we’re compared by our grades that ends up deciding what we’re going to do in terms of school or life choices. So whilst we talk about comparison being something that we want to let go of, it’s something that’s ingrained in society.

But for me, I think letting go of that comparison, or if you can let go of that comparison, that really does help you to live life your way. And I think the last thing I’d say on this one would be when you choose to self-style your life, you also build out the skills that help you deal with self-protective behaviors, like perfectionism procrastination and people pleasing that get triggered by self doubt. You’re regularly giving yourself permission to say ‘I’m okay to do life my way’. And I think that’s a really powerful thing for women in particular, to be able to do.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. And I love that in your reflections there, we had so many beautiful words like, self-determination. I often use the word self-directed, which is quite similar, I think. Self-honoring, self- styling and a term I use in my work self leadership, and I so agree that we often have a set of experiences that takes us towards something similar, but we all bring our own take to our coaching work and our unique vision on life that leads us to shape what might seem to be something similar or something that dovetails in different ways.

So I love that self-styling and self-leadership can be two different ways of looking at one particular, or many-faceted, a gem comes to mind, something that reflects different angles.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I think that’s a really beautiful way to think about it too. And I hadn’t considered it in terms of a beautifully cut emerald or a beautifully cut diamond at all. But that’s part of the self-leadership or the self-styling for me as well is actually choosing the words that resonate for you out of that piece. And for me, I’m not sure I was comfortable enough in the early days to have chosen different language or picked the words that meant something to me.

So again, I think that just emerges as you start to get better at this stuff, as you dance with your self-doubt, build your self-belief and really start to step into doing life your way.

Terri Connellan: Yes. I think a lot of the ability to really embrace some of these things we’re talking about comes as we get older, as we mature, as we experience more, as we grow in wisdom. But it’s all those life experiences and you gave us a beautiful snapshot of all the different milestones and hallmarks that have come in your life as you’ve moved through your journey. So with all of the things that you’ve been through and all the choices that you’ve made, how have you self-styled your own life?

Janelle Wehsack: If I really reflect on it, Terri, I don’t think that I really started self-styling my life, or living life my way until I got into my forties. It was around my 40th birthday when I looked around and realized that I’d built an amazing career or an apparently amazing career, but I hadn’t really built a life.

I was working seven days a week, almost every week in my corporate role. I was fighting hard with an inner critic who told me that I was a fraud and that I was going to be found out at any moment. I had zero hobbies. Whereas my hubby Scott had heaps and I was endlessly counting the days till our next trip to France.

Then there was the fact that my role as a mum was downsizing. Our son was starting to live his own life, and I’d been filling up the increasing space with my day job. And it was all leaving me feeling exhausted and dissatisfied and seriously questioning my life choices. And I realized at that point, that’s not what I wanted my life to look like. And so I started working with a coach myself to help me build more confidence in my career and build creativity into my life. Because if I was going to be able to do it on my own, I already would have.

So that decision started a journey for me that I now know is called following breadcrumbs. And this is where the blog piece started because when I was young, I really liked to write. And then as an adult, I love traveling to France. So I started blogging about France and then because everything style-related in France is just so fabulous, that led me to doing a style coaching qualification. And then in turn that led me to life coaching and becoming a certified life coach. And then ultimately discovering self belief and self-belief coaching.

So it really was a journey that started just with that creative piece. But in the meantime, because I was doing all of those things, my confidence grew as I was taking new actions, undertaking experiments, doing all of the things and that supported me in my corporate role.

So I actually went from having a big job to having an even bigger job. But interestingly, because of all of the other things I was doing, I was able to handle it better because I had so much more, I don’t even want to say balance in my life, but I had other things in my life that allowed me to, I guess, keep my job in perspective and it could be remain big, but I had other fun things that I wanted to do. Like I said earlier, today my life looks like everything I love and I find interesting all swirled together in a way that’s just uniquely me.

Terri Connellan: Mmm, and as you were talking, I was thinking of the other women and men that I’ve interviewed on this podcast and it often seems to be a journey. I think that we perhaps spend time focusing on things like corporate or like our work, like our family, for example, being a bit one-sided. And then, realising typically as we get into our forties and fifties, for me, it was more in my fifties, realising that there’s these passions we’ve left behind or there’s these things we really love that we want to incorporate more into our lives. And, almost it’s like becoming more multifaceted as we get older, bringing those threads back in. But I think also too, reflecting on what connects them.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I’d agree. We’re back to that gem analogy though, aren’t we, around allowing things to be multifaceted. And I know for me, I didn’t bring any of that creativity forward in my life. And then I had to consciously go looking for it. And what’s interesting is how often we don’t know what it is that we want to do. So we understand something’s missing, but actually working out what we want to do can be a real challenge.

And so I think that’s where that idea of following breadcrumbs is really helpful because you can just start with something and see if you like it and then see where it leads you without putting any pressure on yourself for it to become the be-all and end-all or for it to fill up your whole life. You’ve already got a full life and you can add more in, it turns out.

Terri Connellan: Beautiful. I love that bread crumb analogy. It’s something I’ve used in my own thinking, whether it’s following the trail of the books that you love or the passions that you love, the skills that you love, there’s lots of different trails that you can follow.

And, yeah I love that idea of testing and trying and not feeling like we’ve got to find the one thing that’s the answer.

Janelle Wehsack: Yes. I agree entirely and yet, so often it is that we think we’ve got to find the one thing. But yeah, that either or thinking doesn’t always serve us.

Terri Connellan: No, not at all. So you integrate a corporate leadership role in the banking sector with coaching others in your own business. So what have you learned about how these two areas support each other.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. Well, we’ve mentioned we’ve had lots of conversations in the past Terri and one of those conversations has been around how I’ve consciously chosen to work part-time in both arenas. And that’s not necessarily typical for people to be coaching and still working in a big role in corporate. And like all working environments, both the corporate and the coaching industries have stories that tend to tell you how you’re supposed to do these things.

So if you’re in corporate, you’re giving all of your blood, sweat, and tears and your weekends and your nights to corporate if you want to do a good in inverted commas job.

And then similarly we know in some coaching circles, certainly not all, but some coaching circles, it’s the be all and almost end all to be coaching full-time and leaving your corporate role. So I know the way that I’ve put things together isn’t necessarily the norm.

But for me, apart from providing a really good example of how I’m self-styling my life, I feel like I get the best of both worlds and show up better to both worlds because of the way that I’ve integrated these pieces. Coaching’s my way of supporting others and I absolutely love it, but I also enjoy the leadership opportunities that come with working in corporate transformation, which is what I do for a day job.

I have stimulating work. I’ve got an awesome team. I have options for growth and I value all of those things really, really highly. And I feel like, although my team might tell you differently, but I feel like I show up as a better workplace leader. Thanks to my coaching skills, I have a deep understanding of those protective beliefs that hold professionals back, and I’m able to use those skills to support my colleagues’ success.

But similarly, I think I’m a better coach and mentor because I’m still working in that corporate space and I’ve got three decades of experience behind me and my coaching clients work almost exclusively in multi-national and national corporations and things shift really quickly in those spaces.

So for me remaining in corporate helps me to understand their environments, their trends, and even their language. And that I think helps me support my clients even better. And then finally, I think one of the key words in your question is around integrated and it’s become really important to me that I use all of my skills and experience in an integrated way.

It’s not something that I’ve always done, but it’s become more and more important. And as I said, just a minute ago, either or thinking doesn’t really support me or my clients or my employer. And if I can bring everything together and show up wholeheartedly in everything that I do, I think it means that I add more value both to my employer and to my clients. And ultimately to myself.

Terri Connellan: That’s an incredible story of the value of not engaging in either or thinking isn’t it? It’s that idea of, some people talk about both/ and thinking as the opposite of that. So have you found it’s easy for people to get into either or thinking about their life options?

Janelle Wehsack: Oh my goodness. Yes, absolutely. I see it all the time. And as I said, if you talked to me in my thirties, I think I’d fallen for it absolutely myself and I think what we were saying before, especially for those of us who might be in our forties or beyond, that idea of having to choose the one thing and get it right was ingrained right into us, right from the start. And you can tell from that question that we ask every child or that every child’s been asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like we have only one choice when we answer that question. And I think while it’s really pleasing that we see books like Emma Gannon’s The Multi-Hyphen Method and Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose, sharing a different message now, I think there’s still a whole lot of societal rules that tell us what you have to be, X or Y. Or you can only have one or the other, you can’t have both.

And I think for women in particular, that means that they can limit themselves. Surely you can’t have only one or two things, hobbies or passions for yourself if you’re being a good girl and putting everybody else first.

I think my best advice for exploring more integrated options is to adopt what I call the ‘and’ strategy. So whenever my clients or my team share an either or option, I always ask them to explore whether there is an and or both option available to us. One where we don’t have to choose and we can get the best of both worlds. And often I find just opening people up to that thinking can bring forward other ideas and there can be a real excitement when that creeps in, when they realize, oh, I could have both. Maybe I don’t have to choose.

But I feel like I’m the wrong person answering this question because I think you’re the real leader in positioning the fact that we can bring together the many facets of our lives in a whole hearted way. So I’m curious to know what you’ve seen in that space.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s a great question to ask of me cause it’s what I’ve certainly thought about and often work on with coaching clients. And as you were talking us, I was reflecting on my situation, which is post paid employment in the job that I was in, but crafting my own creatively focused life.

And the question I often get asked by people is: how’s retirement? So, there’s again this dichotomy in society that, you finished paid employment, therefore you are retired and therefore you’re just spending your days relaxing and freewheeling. But my life, my partner’s life, we know we both work in different ways, but similarly are both very busy and I think it’s about choosing to see that the life options that we have don’t necessarily fit into those categories that society chooses for us, whether it’s by lifespan or by definition of paid employment or role, mother or grandmother or whatever it might be, retiree.

But I think it’s important for us to tap into what we really want to do, back to those breadcrumbs and those passions and those life options, and craft a life. That’s why I called this, Create Your Story. It’s about creating the life that you want from all those different passions that you have, including earning an income in one way, shape or form, because we need to have money to survive, but also being creative about those aspects too. Like how do we earn an income? How does money come in? What’s a portfolio career look like?

Meredith answered it beautifully too in the podcast chat with her where she divided up her week into: How much time have I got for counseling? How much time have I got for making films? How much time have I got for doing psychological work? And I think that’s was a beautiful way too of looking at all the things you want to do, seeing how you can take those life options and craft them into a life. And I know that’s something you’ve really explored beautifully in the work that you do.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. And I loved the episode with Meredith. That was just such a beautiful conversation. And certainly I’d encourage anybody who hasn’t listened to that episode to go back. I thought it was just perfect for these times, but I think it’s also really great Terri, that you are leading these conversations because we’ve talked a lot about the societal norms, but they’ll only shift when we start having a different conversation about, you know, no, just because you’ve finished, paid traditional employment doesn’t mean you’re retired and it just that you choosing to do completely different things in a completely different space.

And similarly, no, you don’t have to choose one or the other. You can work in corporate and you can coach at the same time. And I think just having these conversations and normalizing this will be the start of making different choices for our children. Down the track, it sets a new example.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. And I really appreciate those comments and yeah, it really excites me to be having this conversation, to be chatting with people on the podcast about where they’ve been, where they’re going. Those turning points where you make a choice, what you decide to open things up, I think they’re important times and we have many of them in our lives and they continue. I think they’re important conversations to have. So another string you have to your very busy bow is working in self-doubt area. And you’re a self-doubt coach having graduated from Sas Petherick’s Self-belief Coaching Academy. So how does self-doubt and self-belief play out in living or embracing a self-styled life?

Janelle Wehsack: The first thing that I would say, Terri is that Sas is an absolutely incredible teacher. And so unsurprisingly working with her in that course fundamentally changed how I approached the concepts of self doubt and self belief. And in terms of coaching tools they’ve really changed the way I think about approaching these topics with my clients. Because unfortunately, oh well, it’s not unfortunate. It’s just natural, that everyone feels self-doubt at different times and different levels. The bit that is unfortunate though, is that for some of us, that self- doubt can really, really keep us stuck and it can stop us from living wholeheartedly, as you would know, it slows down self-leadership and it certainly slows down living a self-styled life.

And I think it’s really helpful to remember that any time we encounter protective behaviors like procrastination or perfectionism, it’s just our way of keeping us safe from psychological risk of things like failure, disappointment, rejection, and judgment. But in remembering that it’s also good to reflect on the fact that by not doing the things, by not following what you love, by not taking that brave step and maybe trying something brand new for the first time, you open yourself up to the same levels of feelings of failure or feelings of disappointment or judging yourself. So it becomes a cycle where whether you act, or you don’t act, you end up facing into the same risk.

Choosing to self-style your life helps you grow your self belief and your self-trust, because in taking action for the things you want, you gather a whole stack of evidence about yourself and the things you can actually do, rather than just listening to those stories that we all tell ourselves about what you can and can’t do, or even the societal stories we’ve been talking about today. And you also get to know more about you. Your own likes and dislikes. For so many of us, we’ve been almost conditioned to like what others have told us we like, and we’ve never really looked into what’s important to us.

So I think self-styling your life helps you overcome that self doubt. And at the same time, build the self-belief. So the two really do go hand in hand.

Terri Connellan: And do you think it’s something women experience, particularly that self-doubt piece? We talked about societal conditioning.

Janelle Wehsack: I think all humans experience self-doubt. It just shows up differently for different humans. I think for women it’s that there is the extra pressure, particularly I think, as any of us that have 40 or older probably came from a different era and so had different environments when we were growing up that might feed into that.

But at the end of the day, I think we all have the capacity to doubt ourselves. It’s about actually being brave enough to take a step anyway, and just build up that evidence that those psychological risks might feel really scary. But once you put yourself out there, it’s not as bad as you first thought.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s great. And I love that reminder that self-doubt looks different for different people, whether it’s from a gender perspective or even individuals. Everyone’s going to have their own brand of self-doubt. I love too that idea of gathering evidence in the face of self-doubt and it’s something I often remind my clients when I’m working with them, if there’s areas where they’re feeling uncomfortable is to just start looking at the facts.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah, there’s nothing more powerful than really questioning whether the stories you tell yourself, have any basis in fact, or there’s any factual evidence behind them. Because so often when you ask yourself the question about, well, is that true, the answers, often, more often than not, well, no, it’s not true. And it’s just a way I’ve been protecting myself from taking a step forward and things may be not going my way.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s a great way of practically tackling those limiting self beliefs that we’ve often been carrying around for many years, that just become part of how we live and breathe. Don’t they?

Janelle Wehsack: Yes they do. And that’s where I think the evidence and taking some action in the face of those things builds up that evidence of, oh, maybe it’s not true. And quite often you end up with more evidence about what you can do than what you think you can’t do. It’s just a matter of building up that filing cabinet full of evidence that says, Hmm, maybe there’s a different perspective on this.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And speaking of different perspectives and gathering further evidence, you also have another fabulous business, life interest and website presence, which is Distant Francophile, which you mentioned early on, and that’s focused on your love of all things French and inspiring others from this.

So can you tell us about Distant Francophile and how it connects with other aspects of you and shaping a self-styled life?

Janelle Wehsack: Ah, yes, Distant Francophile. It was really my first step into exploring creativity back as I said around the time I turned 40. I’d let all of that go in my twenties and thirties and starting a little blog about France, which is a country that I simply adore back in 2014 was actually my way of establishing a writing practice.

So, I remember my son saying to me, if you’re going to start a blog, mum, you’ll need to be committed. Uh, I managed to raise you for this long, I’ll probably be able to stick to a blog for a little while. But he had a point because I think just saying that I was going to show up and write and post every week. I made that promise to myself, but I made that promise to my readers.

And so by doing that, I had to start creating and I look back at some of the early blogposts and I don’t think that they’re going to win any awards Terri at all, but, it was a place for me to just explore creativity and joy and beauty without any expectations. If nobody had ever read Distant Francophile, that was okay. I was going to show up and I was going to write and share something that I love.

And interestingly, it’s still that today, but it’s so much more and I feel like it’s almost taken on a life of its own. I would never imagine that it would introduce me to so many opportunities and amazing people. We’ve got to experience so many things in France that we wouldn’t have been able to do without the DF community.

And we talked a minute ago about those baby steps and experiments. And DF was a real place for me to experiment with all sorts of things. So. I could experiment with writing. I could experiment with recording podcast interviews. I could experiment with all sorts of different things that have then led to, or have supported me as I’ve moved into coaching and expanded in different areas.

So I would never have expected that Distant Francophile would become the jumping off point for so many other things in my life. And then interestingly, because we share a lot of my hubby Scott’s photos on Distant Francophile, there’s been a real interest in the fine art photography that we share there.

So fairly soon, Distant Francophile’s going to be a business in its own right and I’m super excited to see what the next evolution of that ends up looking like.

Terri Connellan: Hmm. That’s another beautiful story of the breadcrumbs and following the breadcrumb trails of passions and seeing where they lead. And, yeah. congratulations on your commitment. You obviously did take that advice on board and extend the success of distant Francophone. Your Instagram posts are just beautiful. Your website is stunning. And in terms of self-styled life, it really shows, you know, if you took that out of the equation, it wouldn’t be the same sort of self-styled life that you have. It gives you another dimension to style in itself and the things that you love being part of that self-styled life.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. And I think for me, it was all of the aesthetically beautiful things that I love about France was what triggered me to look into style and that then went to style coaching. And so I can’t imagine my life without Distant Francophile. It is the outlet that I can play with the pretty things and the things that just look nice just for the sheer joy of doing something that I like with that.

Terri Connellan: And I love that your creativity started as a blocker cause that’s what also happened with me because I knew I had to make more space for creativity in my life. And that was how I did it through starting a blog. I started a blog in 2010 and I remember putting that first one out in the world and just feeling so fearful.

But for me, it was about working out what I wanted to focus on, what I wanted to say, where I wanted to focus. In my ten tips for people about developing meaning and purpose in their life, blogging is actually one that I offer up as a tip because I think whether anybody reads it or not, it’s actually that beautiful way of shaping up what’s important to you, working out what you want to say, finding your own voice, plus developing skills, the amount of technical skills that I have learned through that experience that I’m applying in launching courses and podcasting. It’s also building up practically, isn’t it?

Janelle Wehsack: That was absolutely my experience of it as well, Terri. It always makes me feel a little bit sad when people say, oh the era of blogging is over and it’s like, yeah, I’m not so sure about that. And particularly for those of us who want to explore our creativity or perhaps have it on their hearts to write, but aren’t quite at the point where they’d contemplate a book or something like that, even just starting, as you say to craft your words, find your voice. I think there’s still a lot to be said about having a writing practice and the practice, as you say, with sharing it with the world, because I think we all feel like that the whole universe is going to read our first blog post or maybe our first 10 blog posts.

And then after we’ve written hundreds of blog posts, we realized that perhaps they’re not. But it still gets us used to writing and sharing. And I think that’s the powerful thing about creating and for me it created such a community. And as I said, an almost a life of its own that I would never have imagined.

Terri Connellan: It’s a beautiful thing. And again, in the podcast chat with Penelope, she gave a tip about free writing and then writing for publication and doing both. And I think that’s a really lovely way of looking at it. And blogging is a way of writing for publication, writing for audience. And I think frames up our writing in a different way to have both those lenses.

Janelle Wehsack: Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re absolutely correct.

Terri Connellan: And podcasting too can be a very similar thing. So I’m sure everyone listening is wondering how do you manage all these different aspects of your fascinating and rich life Janelle? So can you share some tips about how you balance and integrate it all in practical terms?

Janelle Wehsack: I’ll give you a theoretical answer and then I’ll give you some practical ones as well. I think Terri, I think the first thing is that I’m incredibly intentional about my life and the things I bring into it because I wasn’t in my thirties. But as I’ve moved through my forties, I now choose very deliberately about what’s in my life.

I didn’t like where I was at when I had a big job and an increasingly empty nest. And I’d really prefer it if I didn’t end up back there. So as a result, I really choose where I focus my time. And right now I love investing my time into my day job and the creativity of Distant Francophile that we just talked about and supporting my clients through coaching and creating new tools and new ways of thinking for my coaching clients. And building that into my coaching practice and that blend of intellectual work, creativity and service really sparks my energy. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in both of my clients and in my corporate colleagues is that when we put all of our energy into things that don’t actually make us feel good or don’t make us excited, that’s when burnout tends to creep in especially I’ve noticed in women.

And so, if the things that I have in my life really drain me rather than fill me with excitement and vitality, I don’t have a problem anymore with putting them on the shelf. And the best example I have of that is French lessons. I did French lessons for many, many years, but the minute they started becoming a chore and not something that I thought was fun and interesting and exciting, I had no problem shelving them.

And it’s not the side that I won’t pick French up again one day. But for right now, it’s just not something that I want to spend time on. And I think being able to pick things up and put things down without feeling like you’ve got to stick with things forever, really helps with that idea of, ‘No, no, I’m going to do things that fill me with excitement and energy and I get to choose what that looks like.’ So I think that’s just the first position on being intentional and choosing what you want to do is for me how I can pack things in, because any time I choose to do anything, it’s something that I love.

So I’m either creating, or I’m playing with Distant Francophile or I’m working at my day job. And when you’re filling your life up like that, I don’t get overly tired, I think because I have all of the variety. It just seems to work really well for me because I’m choosing to do a whole lot of fun things rather than things that I feel like I should do or have to do. I think too, in the downtime of that, I’ll cook or I’ll read, or I’ll walk along the beach. I’ll still do other things as well, as long as everything is, feeling like fun. So that’s sort of the theoretical position on it.

The practical things. I’m really good with my calendar. Thirty years in corporate has taught me that my day runs by my calendar. If it says I’m going to be somewhere, I will show up. And so I do the same thing with my personal life and my calendar there. If it says I need to write for DF right now, I’ll show up and I’ll write for DF. And like, that’d be fun. But similarly, if I’m coaching I’ll coach and so I’m very good at stopping one thing and picking something else up because the calendar tells me so. And I think probably just the other thing, Terri, is that, I don’t watch telly. I don’t watch telly very often. And so I always thought that I’d rather create rather than consume. So I guess that gives me a bit more time too.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, for sure. And, I love that you mentioned how the blend of things, sparks energy. And I guess it’s back to that bringing together different strands of our life and it sounds like one sort of bounces off the other. And, back to that multifaceted gem that we’ve created in this conversation, that idea of bouncing light and energy from one thing to another. Doing a range of things that you don’t enjoy might be draining. When things spark each other and reflect aspects of each other, the story that I’m hearing from you is that it’s actually energizing.

Janelle Wehsack: It is for me. And I think I knew the difference because when it was all work and I was just filling up the time that I used to spend parenting with more work, it wasn’t like that at all. And it’s interesting that it’s a different role within the same company, but I’m still at that corporate job. But by building more things into my life and not expecting my corporate role to fulfill all of the different desires and wants that I had. So it doesn’t have to cover the creativity for me. It doesn’t have to cover service for me. By just letting it give me the leadership opportunities and the intellectual part, it took the pressure off. It made me enjoy it again.

Terri Connellan: That’s lovely. So we’ve touched on aspects of how you’ve created your story, but it is a question that I’m asking every guest of the podcast. And I’d love to hear your answer. How have you created your story over your life?

Janelle Wehsack: The short answer is that I’m still creating it, and I think that I’m going to continue to create it just one baby step at a time. And the longer answer around that is that I think just following my curiosity and heading into things in a wholehearted way. And you know how much your books have really supported my thinking when it comes to living wholeheartedly. I think just still consciously doing that and understanding that I get to choose every day. I get to write my story every day, underpins the way I’m choosing to live my life at the moment.

Terri Connellan: I love that – it’s come to this point, but we’re still creating our story as we go forward. Yeah. And it’s lovely to hear that Wholehearted has been really helpful in framing up some of that thinking too and adding to your own thinking.

And I think any body of work we put into the world, it’s lovely, the way other people can receive that work and then take it forward in new ways. So thank you for reflecting that back to me too.

Janelle Wehsack: Oh it’s, such a resonant piece of work, Terri, I think. It’s certainly one that I recommend all of my clients, you know, I think you gave the world a real gift when you published that book last year. So, there is a lot to take from it.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. I appreciate that. As you know, in Wholehearted, I share 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices. So to add to that body of work or amplify, what are your top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women.

Janelle Wehsack: Before I get to that. I said the word ‘ book’ in the singular. I think everybody needs to know that there’s two books and they’re both recommended reading on any list. You do share so many tips in the books for wholehearted self-leadership and I could go any which way with trying to pick out my favorite tips.

But I’m assuming you don’t want this to be the world’s longest podcast episode. So I I’ll start with the fact that clarity, mindset and action form the basis of my signature coaching framework, Terri. And I created that framework after I’d seen so many women either burnout or walk out and leave just so much goodness on the table behind them. And so it was a really career based thing when I started thinking about it.

But today I believe that women everywhere can tap into the benefits of clarity, mindset and action to live wholeheartedly. So my top tips would include getting clear on what you value and how you define success. I’d also suggest you spend some time thinking about how you want to spend your time.

And then when it comes to mindset, I think the place to start is catching those stories that we were talking about before and really digging into whether there is any truth in any of them, or if we have any of that evidence that we mentioned earlier. Finally, I would suggest that we take some of those safe forms of actions. So those experiments and the baby steps, we pop on our lab coats, or our imaginary lab coats, and we just go out there and try some things. And by trying the things, by following the breadcrumbs, that’s when I think we take ourselves as close to wholehearted as we can.

Terri Connellan: Oh, what a truly beautiful answer and example of clarity, how you could express that so clearly. Your signature program in your coaching around clarity, mindset and action is beautifully framed. And I think the ability to share that with people is also a real gift and something you’ve developed over time from your own experiences. So thank you for sharing that with us through your coaching and also through the conversation today.

So we’re just about at the end of our time together, and it’s been a lovely chat. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with me and it’s been fabulous exploring all the things we have chatted about together. Can you let people know where they can find out more about you and your work online?

Janelle Wehsack: Well, thanks so much, Terri and thank you for having me on today. It’s been an absolute honor and a joy.

If listeners are interested in self-styling their lives, they can find me on the interwebs at janellewehsack.com and make sure you check out the free resources that I have to help you do life your way. You’ll also find me on Instagram at @janelle.wehsack or on my new podcast, Self.Styled.Life which should be out in the wild by the time you are listening to this episode of Terri’s podcast. And if you’re after a dose of French inspiration, you can join me over at distantfrancophile.com or on Insta, where we are @DistantFrancophile.

Terri Connellan: So many places to be. It’s wonderful. And so many wonderful places for people to find out more about you and explore your work. So thank you so much for sharing so much about you and encourage people to check out your work, all the different angles and to engage with you if they feel called. It’s very important to connect with coaches and people’s work that feels resonant with you with.

Janelle Wehsack: Yes. I know for me, that’s how we’ve built such a beautiful community across a number of these online platforms. So, yeah. But like I said, Terri, thank you so much for having me on it’s such a joy.

Terri Connellan: Oh, my pleasure. All the best with your podcast. Look forward to listening.

Janelle Wehsack: Thanks again.

Janelle Wehsack

About Janelle Wehsack

Janelle Wehsack is a certified life and style coach and a creative writer who also happens to have 30 years experience – and counting – in the corporate world. In her coaching practice, Janelle employs her signature coaching framework that combines clarity, mindset and action to support professional women to dance with their self-doubt so that they can build tailor made, self-styled lives.

You can connect with Janelle:

Website: Janelle Wehsack.com

Website: Distant Francophile

Instagram: Janelle Wehsack

Instagram: Distant Francophile

Terri’s links to explore:

My books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Other free resources: https://www.quietwriting.com/free-resources/

My coaching & writing programs:

Work with me

The Writing Road Trip – community writing program with Beth Cregan email list

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

planning & productivity writing

Author – my 2021 Word of the Year check-in!

December 30, 2021

My word for 2021 is AUTHOR.

Here’s what I wrote on Instagram about what that meant sitting on the threshold of 2021:

  • stepping into the identity of author
  • embracing life as an author and learning new skills – publication, launching, author platform.
  • keeping writing front and centre in every way
  • completing, beginning and progressing writing projects
  • being visible as an author and talking about my books and writing
  • helping others embrace writing and being an author
  • helping women be the creator of their stories and the active author of their lives through enhanced self-leadership.

Here’s how that shaped up over the year and some tips for applying this learning in your life!

Stepping into the identity of author

What’s the difference in identity between writer and author? That’s something I’ve pondered this year. For me, WRITER is more focused on the process and act of writing. AUTHOR is more about what we shape and produce through writing: a finished book, something published and out in the world in some way.

I love writing especially the writer’s process so have always aligned myself to that identity. Stepping into the identity of author feels more public. It meant committing to completing my book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook. After four plus years of writing, it meant moving through the long haul of creating a book – or two – and finishing them. Receiving my books in print for the first time. Having them sold by book-sellers. Seeing them in online stores. Working in partnership with editors and publishers like the wonderful the kind press. These were thrilling milestones and I’ve loved stepping into AUTHOR as my writing identity in 2022. Thanks to those who have read Wholehearted and supported me on my author journey!

Tips for you:

If stepping into the identity of author is a priority in your life for 2022:

Embracing life as an author and learning new skills – publication, launching, author platform.

This has been a huge focus this year and I have learnt so much through a combination of doing, reading and listening. Working with the kind press as my publisher has been a wonderful introduction to independent publishing. I deliberately choose the indie author path. This is because I want to keep control of my work as much as I can and have creative freedom. Learning the skills to independently publish has been something I’ve invested time and money in over the long-term for about 10 years now. So to go through the process was so exciting.

I chose to work in partnership with the kind press because even though I had some knowledge, I didn’t have the practical experience. It felt overwheling to do it all on my own. Through this partnership I achieved two goals:

  1. I independently published my books in a way I am totally delighted with, and
  2. I learnt about the independent publishing process; information I can use again and again on my journey.

Another valuable process was working through and creating my Author Business Plan with the help of Joanna Penn’s book Your Author Business Plan. This helped me to gather together what I already had created on my Quiet Writing business journey as a creative. And to work out the next steps to focus more on my author platform.

Key players in understanding the launch process as an author were my publisher Natasha Gilmour, editor Penelope Love, publicist Sian Yewdall and Jessica Tutton who I have worked with over 2020-1 on launching.

This Book Launch Checklist shared with me by the lovely Amanda Rootsey helped a lot too. It feels overwhelming at times as launching anything often does. But strengthening my skillset around launching generally helped immensely.

The other part of embracing life as an author was learning new writing skills especially around long haul writing. Editing, especially editing two books at once, was a challenging process. I was so grateful for the partnership and support of my editors, Penelope Love and Dr Juliet Richters, as well as my publisher, Natasha Gilmour and my co-writing buddy Beth Cregan!

Tips for you:

If embracing life as an author and learning new skills is a priority in your life for 2022:

  • Read Your Author Business Plan by Joanna Penn. It’s short but powerful and then do the work to create your Author Business Plan.
  • Join Beth Cregan and I for the Writing Road Trip in 2022 where we will talk about all aspects of the writing journey and support you including writing your Author Business Plan.
  • Listen to The Creative Penn Podcast.
  • Make a list of all the skills you want to work on and possible paths to learning these skills in 2022.

Keeping writing front and centre in every way

Co-writing with my buddy Beth Cregan of Write Away with Me most week mornings is a crucial element in keeping writing front and centre. I start the day with Morning Pages and Tarot as anchors for the day. The accountability with another writer helps me show up to the page regularly. We talk about writing too which keeps it centred and supported in my world.

Honouring the place of writing in my life as an author has been so important this year. To see my work published in the world is affirming and a goal of many years. Continuing to write and make space for writing as a wholehearted self-leadership skill that supports all of my life is so important. It’s the piece that holds everything else together and makes sense of it all. So I honour its place in my life including writing first thing most mornings.

Tips for you:

If keeping writing front and centre in every way is a priority for you for 2022:

Beth Cregan

Completing, beginning and progressing writing projects

I like the energy of this one. And it captures the idea that writing is an ongoing process and one that has many parts: including getting ideas, researching, drafting, editing, publishing. This year I have worked on the mindset to have writing projects going at different stages. Anne Janzer’s book The Writer’s Process has helped me with this through getting clearer about the different cognitive gears and tools used at different stages of writing. We can use knowledge of the writing process and our personal preferences to juggle multiple projects:

…stagger the start times so the projects are in different phases: research, drafting, incubation, revision. Create the right work environment and conditions for each type of work. If you are freshest mentally in the morning, do the drafting first thing. Schedule research and revision for the other parts of the day, and remember to leave unstructured time to ponder what you’re learning in the research.

Anne Janzer, The Writer’s Process p.142

As I completed both books ready for publication, I also worked on combining the Wholehearted Stories on Quiet Writing into a single draft. It helped manage my energy and keep me motivated to have a new writing project to work on as the others were completing. This idea of managing multiple projects is one I want to work on more in practice.

Tips for you:

If completing, beginning and progressing writing projects is a priority for you for 2022:

The book The Writer's Process by Anne Janzer sitting on a weathered table next to a Traveller's notebook and pen with a spiralled shell and an anemone shell.

Being visible as an author and talking about my books and writing

This has been a big one this year. As writers, we often operate behind the scenes. The work happens in relative privacy and sometimes no-one else sees what we are writing for a long time if ever. But the writing is one thing and the being visible and talking our books via Instagram or Facebook Lives, Masterclasses, virtual or in personal book launch events and on podcasts is another. It’s been new territory for me to be so visible as an author and I’ve embraced it.

I stepped up into talking about my book via Instagram lives. I’ve enjoyed speaking about Wholehearted and the writing process on the following podcasts:

The more you do it, the better you feel. Taking the time to prepare speaking notes on questions provided or brainstormed ahead helps immensely to be clear in what you want to say.

I also started my own Create your Story Podcast launching on 29 October 2021 and have enjoyed sharing conversations on my Wholehearted book with key connections. I’m loving podcasting and the deep conversations shared. I hope you find inspiration in there too – there are many gems!

I held two virtual book launches of Wholehearted given we were in lockdown. You can catch them on the podcast as Episode 2 and Episode 3. I also had a live event with the lovely Anna Loder.

You can join a Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club where we will do a year long community walk through the book with me as your guide and coach. It’s not too late to join. Our community call on Section 1 of the book is in mid January. So head here to join up now – there are still a few spots available.

It’s been a time of stretch talking about my books and writing in all these different ways but I’ve loved it and I hope it’s been helpful. I have so much more to say and share.

Tips for you:

If being visible as an author and generally is a priority in your life for 2022:

  • Send a pitch to me to be on the Create Your Story Podcast. I’d love some new author guests!
  • Listen to podcasts to see how others talk about their books, writing and authorship. Check out my interviews above.
  • Prepare speaking notes for answering questions on podcasts and author interviews so you are ready. Do this even if you don’t have any podcasts booked as yet! This helps you get clear on what you want to say about your writing.
  • Check out Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn for lots of author books and podcasts including her book, Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives & Other Introverts.

Helping others embrace writing and being a new author

As I’ve gone on my writing, authorship and publishing journey, others have reached out to me for advice and support. I’ve helped them in various ways – through my coaching and more informally. I’m a writing teacher by background and helping others to write and create their story is a consistent thread in my life. I found as I committed to writing in a deeper way and stepped more fully into the author role, it’s natural for me to help others.

Throughout my transition journey, I’ve offered women the opportunity to share their wholehearted story and step into being a guest writer on Quiet Writing. Over 20 women have taken up the offer. I’ve helped each of them to craft and share their story so they can feel proud and empowered. You can read the Stories of Wholehearted Living on Quiet Writing. Women have found this to be a healing process that helped them share their deeper, more personal story, sometimes for the first time. Each wholehearted story helps others to write theirs. Readers feel inspired and not so alone in their journeys to living more fully. I collated these stories into one volume for potential publication in 2022. It reminded me of all that I have done in this space as a writing teacher and coach and the powerful voices shared.

For a long time I’ve felt called to offer a program to create community, inspiration and connection for people while writing. This is especially for longer pieces where you need support and tenacity. In partnership with my morning writing buddy, writing teacher and mentor, Beth Cregan, we’ll be kicking off the Writing Road Trip in early 2022. So if writing is high on your list of priorities for 2022, get the support, mindset insights, skills, community and conditions to help you write. You can get on the email list for the Writing Road Trip program now. We are sending out writing inspiration via our newsletters. Working on this partnership and community with Beth is a real joy and I look forward to shaping a supportive writing-focused community in 2022.

Tips for you:

If embracing writing and being a new author is a priority in your life for 2022:

Helping women be the creator of their stories and the active author of their lives through enhanced self-leadership.

All of my work is about helping women to be the active creator of their stories. It’s the focus of the Create Your Story Podcast, my Wholehearted Books, my 1:1 coaching and my group coaching programs. I have a mindmap here of my planned creations when I kicked off my business with ‘Create Your Story’ firmly in the centre of that map of ideas. Create Your Story and Wholehearted Self-leadership are aligned concepts. And 2021 was the year in which many of these ideas came to fruition especially with the podcast and books being launched into the world to share inspiration and strategies with other women.

The place where I work most intimately with women is 1:1 coaching and this is the quiet undercurrent of my work which continued in 2021. Women set goals and moved through blockages; they dealt with unhelpful mindsets and they put practical strategies in place to help them achieve their desires. Coaching has been a bedrock in my own transition journey and I invite you to consider coaching with me if wishing to make change need support on that journey. We all can benefit from such guidance. Sometimes there’s only so far we can go by ourselves. Coaching is via 1:1 or group programs including the Book Club and Writing Road Trip in 2022.

Tips for you:

If creating your story and being the active author of your life is a priority for you for 2022:

So what was your Word of the Year and how did it manifest?

So take some time to reflect on your word of the year – or intentions and goals – and see how it played out. It’s not always as we plan. Sometimes it’s more conscious as it was for me this year. Other times it is more subconscious and we forget our word or focus and then find it has manifested anyway. But take the time to reflect! There are often buried jewels there and important realisations to take forward.

Let me know in the comments here on social media how this played out for you!

I’ve got my Word for 2022 ready to go! it came pretty easily this year. I’ll share more about it in the first week of 2022. So stay tuned. Love to hear what’s coming up for you as a focus for 2022 too.

Books self-leadership + leadership writing

Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club

December 8, 2021

The Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club next gathers together to take a deep year-long read together of Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook in December 2022! So get on the waitlist so you don’t miss out! Here’s why I created it, what it is, how it works, how to access it and why you might want to.

About me and my Wholehearted books

I’m Terri Connellan – an author, creative transition coach and personality type practitioner.

I wrote two books Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the Wholehearted Companion Workbook over 4.5 years as I went through a major life transition. Shifting from long-term government employee of 30+ years, I now enjoy a more creative life focused around writing, coaching, personality type, wellbeing and inspiring others.

My books written from the midst of transition, share the journey and the learning on the way to inspire your creative transition. The books chose me if you like because of the particular set of experiences I’ve been through and learned from that enabled me to write and share my story with heart.

I know how uncertain it seems, how lost and alone we can feel, when making major change. So I share my experiences to support you to be more wholehearted and shape the self-leadership skills to create what you desire.

Photo by Samantha Burns of the @MaianbarBeachCafe

The why of Wholehearted

The WHY of Wholehearted is to support women to develop the self-leadership skills to live more creative, wholehearted lives.

This WHY helped me to make sense and structure what was happening into something useful for myself and for others from this time of major change. And I offer this learning to you to help you shift to what is more positive to you.

If you haven’t read or bought Wholehearted yet, you can download Chapter 1 for free. This also provides an overview of the contents pages so you can see what’s in the book as a whole.

It was always my dream and desire to create support and a space for discussion about transitions people are going through based on the insights of the books. That’s why I’ve created the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club for a year-long read of the books together.

So why a book club to support you in transition?

So you might be asking, why a book club to support me as I contemplate or go through change?

If you are going through a major change in your life, you’ll know it can feel VERY destabilising! The transitions can be many and varied such as:

  • job change
  • retirement
  • redundancy
  • retrenchment
  • wanting to write a book
  • making space for creativity
  • making art more central in your life
  • working for yourself instead of others
  • tree change
  • sea change
  • moving house
  • becoming an author
  • stepping into a new phase of creativity or writing or art
  • kids leaving home
  • relationship change
  • leaving paid employment
  • learning new skills you want to shape a business or practice around

And so much more. You might not even know exactly what it is but that where you are is not where you want to be.

Navigating change can take time and leave us feeling lonely at times as we re-create a new identity. Our networks might change. We are building on the foundations of what we have already created and working with our personality strengths in new ways which is positive but takes work. It is often about how we have defined ourselves so it means looking at ourselves in new ways.

So the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club is a way of processing all of these experiences in a structured, supported way. Wholehearted is full of rich insights and resources! It’s the wisdom of a lifetime distilled. People are telling me they are savouring it, meandering, going down side tracks, reading other books mentioned within its pages. And that is exactly what I envisaged the reading experience to be like: something we carve out time for. It is a practical book above all; that’s why there’s an accompanying Wholehearted Companion Workbook.

About the Book Club + how to join in

So yes, it’s a book club, because book clubs are an awesome way to reflect and connect around reading. But it’s also a community/group coaching program with 90-minute monthly live calls with me as your coach asking questions to prompt growth, support you in transition and creativity, suggesting just the right resources, and guiding you to the best outcomes. Plus you get to learn from others, tap into my experiences of transition and writing the books and ask me anything you want!

We’ll work through the book and workbook one section at at time in a deep, guided read you can apply immediately in your life. So whatever change is happening (or not happening) for you, I hope you’ll join me in the book club.

This is a cost-effective way to get coaching guidance and commit to change with support and community. There is a monthly payment plan and an annual upfront one where you can save as well as 50% scholarship options for Black Indigenous Women of Colour, women with disabilities and LGBQT women and non binary people to encourage participation and equity. Apply here for to be considered for the scholarship option.

So head to the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club enrolment and info page to find out more and join us. And join the waitlist to be the first to know when enrolment is open for our December 2022 into 2023 start!

I hope you will join me and the community of women that is gathering. You can DM me on social media too if you have any questions.

Want to read more?

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Wholehearted Companion Workbook

Wholehearted Reader Praise

Wholehearted Book Walk-through

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 1

Wholehearted Virtual Book Launch 2

Wholehearted Book Club Notes – generic Book Club notes, but they give you an idea of what we will cover over the year!

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