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inspiration & influence intuition

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

March 12, 2018

It seems that we humans have always been drawn to find ourselves in the life about us.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

 

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

This week: seeking inner wisdom + messages of water

seeking wisdom

Theme for the week beginning 12 March

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards#34 Seek your inner wisdom.

seek wisdom

I always draw the theme card first to set the key message for the week. At its core, this week is about connecting with our inner wisdom in a variety of ways. This is especially the case when life gets challenging. It’s so easy to get rattled, to link ourselves to other’s emotions and to lose ourselves. We are reminded to seek the stillness of inner wisdom through the elements and especially water this week.

Advice from the Guidebook is:

Go within to communicate with the warmth of your true wisdom. Ask your wise-self what s(he) wants to know. Listen for an answer.

There might be much to work through but a place to start is always seeking the inner wisdom and stillness of our own mind and heart. Whether it be swimming, walking, working with tarot, writing – all favourites of mine – or something of value to you, keep doing it. Again, it’s easy when life gets swirly to let these calming practices slide. In them is a place to find inner wisdom if only we listen, through the rhythm of our footsteps, the flow of words or the anchor of our breathing as we move through water.

So the guidance this week is around making space for our wise inner self to be heard.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 March

seeking wisdom

Tarot Narrative: 

Go deep within for wisdom now. There’s much to sort: the gifts of challenging relationships, the love required to reach out, the final stages of work you’ve been progressing for some time, now coming to light. Listening for answers in the spaces, seeing the brightest piece, focusing on completion, even if it’s a struggle, are all ways to move ahead now.

Reading notes

Cards: Messenger of Water (Page of Cups) and Nine of Earth (Pentacles) from The Good Tarot and #41 Soul Mates in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

And so, the art of freedom becomes the necessary adventure of grasping the secrets that are everywhere in the open and stirring their aspects within us, in such a way that we come alive: learning from the fish how to surface and dive, from the flower how to open and accept, from the stone how to crack and let light in, and from the birds that wings are more useful at times than brains.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening – for 12 March (p. 86)

This reading reminds us of the power of seeking wisdom in water and the other elements as a way of accessing answers. The Messenger of Water (Page of Cups), via the affirmative and positive ‘The Good Tarot’ deck, speaks of the power of “seeing the best in others.” I love the imagery of the Messenger focusing on the seahorse, exemplifying looking for the rare, mystical and beautiful in our encounters.

This morning I swam with many fish again and found a sense of peace. When I intuitively reached out for Mark Nepo’s ‘The Book of Awakening’ message for today for this narrative, it is all about finding ourselves reflected in the life about us. There is a meditation or visualisation for each day’s reading in this book. Today’s, for March 12, is about revisiting a special place and reconnecting with one aspect of why you keep going back there:

It might be the wind through the grass, or the sound of the water, or the light through coloured leaves.

I visualised and connected with where I swim and that first feeling of pushing out and stroking into a small reef where fish swim. It is the most liberating and calming feeling. I return there again and again for peace and stillness, finding myself and answers as I move through the water.

seeking wisdom

The gifts of challenge

The Nine of Earth from ‘The Good Tarot’ deck reminds us of the value of pursuing excellence and of self-control and focus. We are almost there, and whatever else is happening, there is an underlying sense of progress despite obstacles now. There is freedom in this and part of seeking wisdom this week is realising how far we have come. Knowing what to do to focus and finish the work we have planned is of value.

My own transition journey has four key features: life coaching, writing, tarot and personality type work. And this is what I seek to meld to offer to others.

I’ve been working on each of these areas for many years but in a focused way for the past 18 months. It’s time now to bring this vision and unique set of connections home into practices and offerings to support others. I’m ready to roll this out and am weaving the blend of skills, knowledge and experience only I can bring forth.

It is the same for each of us. We all have our magic brand of wisdom and talent, our passions and personality, our values and desires.

The Good Tarot ‘Nine of Earth’ reminds us:

I am diligent and disciplined, focused on completing the work I began long ago. I stick to my program, trusting that the plan is unfolding before me exactly as Spirit intended.

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

These times are not without challenge and the energies lately seem so sensitive and highly strung. So as you work on your plan to bring goals to fruition, you may be facing challenges.

Seeking wisdom in the challenges is also encouraged. The Wisdom of the Oracle ‘Soul Mates’ card asks:

What is the gift in this?

We are encouraged to look in the mirror rather than blame others. There are old stories to be healed and seeking wisdom as we negotiate stormy seas is a way to a calmer passage. Wherever you are feeling relationships bringing you down, there is richness in there to be gained if we can dive deeper.

Seeking wisdom in the calmness of water and elsewhere may help to bring these lessons and answers to the surface if we can quiet our minds and listen.

seeking wisdom

Self-leadership in seeking wisdom

It’s important to remember what practices help you in your own self-leadership at this time. What helps you in seeking wisdom? Which activities calm you and bring things gently to the surface without so much fanfare?

These are the activities to engage in this week.

For me, they are:

  • Morning Pages and other writing
  • Tarot and Oracle work including this Tarot Narrative
  • Blogging
  • Swimming
  • Reading
  • Walking in nature

And poetry. It was lovely to get back to poetry recently via a contribution to Sabrina Davis 25 Tips to Living Unapologetically. It’s wonderful to remember and revisit what makes your heart sing.

Write your own list of activities for being in the now and seeking your inner wisdom.

It’s time this week for seeking your own messengers of water, ways to connect with emotion and deeper meaning.

This is a great week for seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere, whatever helps you listen to your own inner voice in peace. 

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere, especially what places and activities help you to be still and listen within.

  • Where are you feeling swirly and out of control?
  • How can you make time for the practices that calm you?
  • What special practices have you let go of and what is the impact of this?
  • How can you weave a little gentle wisdom seeking back into your life?
  • Which element is calling you – water, fire, earth or air?
  • How can you connect with the element you need or that sustains you?
  • What’s the magic seahorse in your life to focus your attention on?

All best wishes for this week of seeking inner wisdom especially if you are facing challenging times. See how you can work with the elements to connect you. I hope that you find wisdom and answers as you listen.

May the Messenger of Water guide you as you seek to finish those long planned for projects and heal those relationships that need it. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

seeking wisdom

This image by Lauren at Sol + Co

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

You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available in March + April for a May coaching start 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.

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You might also enjoy:

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

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

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love, loss & longing transition wholehearted stories

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

March 1, 2018

grief and pain

This guest post from Kerstin Pilz is about how grief and pain can be our most important teachers on our journey to wholehearted living.

This is the seventh 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, with 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 am honoured to have Kerstin Pilz as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Kerstin for sharing her story and photographs. Kerstin’s wholehearted story tells of how she moved from passion through to grief and loss and then to deep healing. It’s a story of learning ways to heal through silence, meditation, yoga, writing and living freely. Kerstin now employs her learning from her journey to help others through her work as a writer, yogini, meditation practitioner and online teacher. Read on to find out more!

Beginning the journey

My journey to a wholehearted life began exactly a decade ago with a tragic false start.  

I’d sailed around the world aboard a converted cruise ship for four months, teaching intercultural communication to university students from all over the world.   

Copies of Eat, Pray, Love circulated onboard. It was hot off the press and everybody but me seemed to be reading it. I’d recently found love and I was busy writing the next chapter of my own life.  

Between port calls in Capetown and Barcelona, my Italian sweetheart and I got married off the coast of West Africa, 1 degree south of the equator.  

grief and pain

I was living a fairytale. Even before our final disembarkation, I knew that I couldn’t go back to my old life.   

I had a tenured, senior position as Head of Italian Studies at one of Sydney’s Universities. It came with good pay and annual trips abroad.  Options to climb the career ladder beckoned.   

But there was a side of me that was unexpressed. Ever since I was a little girl I’d wanted to be a writer. Leaving Germany at age 22 to explore the world, had muted my writing voice. But the passion had remained. 

At 45 I had enough academic publications to prove to myself that I could really write in a foreign language. It was time to explore another, more creative part of myself.   

grief and pain

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion 

Long service leave allowed me to take an ‘adult gap year’ to chase a new, wholehearted life. I had a year to work out if I could transition into blogging and freelance writing.  

Months of careful planning went into preparing my sabbatical.  I booked a Spanish course in Buenos Aires and stopovers in exotic locations. I did evening courses in freelance writing and photography. I fired off pitches for travel writing assignments and started my first blog. 

When I handed the keys to the tenants who’d be living in our home for the next 12 months, I felt a pinch of foreboding. We’d planned the perfect year. What could possibly go wrong? 

You can’t prepare for life’s worst-case scenario 

On the day of our long-awaited departure, my husband felt a pea-sized lump behind his ear. We’d forgotten to plan for life’s worst-case scenario.  

He knew straight away that we’d be going on a very different journey – one from which he was unlikely to return.  

And just like that, my world imploded. One day I was about to step into the year of my creative transformation. The next day I walked into the nightmare of a progressive terminal illness – metastatic melanoma – and all that it entailed.  

grief and painPhoto credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images 

Without a home to return to, we were forced to live with his adult daughter. Instead of speaking Spanish in Buenos Aires, I became trapped in an Italian melodrama. It unfolded across two continents as an antagonistic family came together in pain and anger.   

I’d wanted to write a new chapter for myself and here it was. Except I hadn’t written it. Trying to fit into this alien scenario and its shifting emotional alliances slowly eroded my own identity.  

I was unable to read and I was unable to write the travel and lifestyle pieces I’d researched. My own story consumed all of me. I became paralysed by the fear of death and the prison of toxic family dynamics. 

Being a full-time carer to my gradually diminishing husband, gave me a sense of purpose and joy, despite the exhaustion.  

Eventually, we relocated to a beach-side home in Far North Queensland, but the Italian melodrama never went away.  

It was as if a second cancer had spread. Emotions and estates were negotiated amid the tragic suicide of my husband’s son and the discovery of my husband’s infidelities. 

grief and painPhoto credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images 

The healing power of writing 

I discovered the healing power of writing by accident. Living remotely, I didn’t have easy access to counselling. My journal became my on-call therapist. 

Watching my life implode felt like watching a movie in slow motion. It had more plot twists than I could’ve ever come up with.   

I wrote my story in mad, obsessive bursts. Naming my pain and anger felt liberating. Without noticing, I started to treat journaling like a creative writing assignment. The many hospital visits – flogging the old car for long distances across the wild remoteness of Far North Queensland during an epic wet season – became little vignettes. Creating word pictures was intuitive. Trying to capture the irony of my situation, finding beauty in pain, was a form of therapy.  

Writing allowed me to become a detached witness as my story unfolded amid the ruins of Rome and the Sardinian coastline of my husband’s homeland.  

In my journal the dramatic settings and the ongoing family feud wove into an epic tale. For several years I thought of it as a blueprint for a novel. 

grief and pain

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life  

My second attempt at creating a self-directed life started somewhere in the pages of my journal. 

When I accepted that death was inevitable, my writing showed me that this was a chance for deep transformation. If I was open to it.  

I knew that to find myself again, I could not slip back into my old life. For two decades I’d taught Italian Studies at universities. Italian was the language I spoke at home after I’d left Germany. But the Italian part of my identity died with him.  

I needed a new identity and a new professional direction, but I had no clue where to find it. My sabbatical year had been spent being a full-time carer. Resigning from a tenured position in mid-life was considered foolish. Everybody cautioned against it, but I followed my heart. 

I was scared and at my emotional rock-bottom, when I stepped into the unknown. 

Learning about the impermanence of everything 

I’d planned to give myself a few months to grief quietly surrounded by my beautiful community in remote Far North Queensland. The remoteness made me feel safe. I would have time to consider the next steps. But life had another dramatic instalment in store for me. 

Less than three weeks after the funeral I was asked by State Emergency to evacuate my beachfront home. The biggest cyclone in living memory hauled all night, blowing my beach-side haven to pieces. The next day an entire community was grieving. Overnight, my own grief became eclipsed by tales of lost homes and devastated gardens. 

When the airport re-opened, I caught the first flight out. The devastated landscape was a mirror of my inner devastation. I needed to look at things that were whole, not broken. I needed to speak to people who weren’t grieving. 

grief and pain

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing 

For many months I didn’t speak at all. I locked myself away in austere meditation retreats all over Asia. Meditation, like writing, became fundamental to my healing.  

Sitting in stillness, listening deep inside, trained me to recognise the voice of my inner knowing. It took months for the noise in my head to subside. Vipassana meditation taught me to become a detached observer. Watching pain and physical discomfort rise and fall for 10 hours a day for many weeks, was healing.  

Everything in life is impermanent. Nature’s fury had already hammered home this fundamental Buddhist lesson. But I needed to hear it again and again from my teachers. 

Sitting in the presence of His Holiness for two weeks in Bodhgaya, I learned about the true nature of suffering. Pain is inevitable. My story wasn’t unique.  

grief and pain

Yoga was another important anchor in my healing journey. My body became grounded through asanas. Living with death had made me tired and skinny. I didn’t sleep enough and I drank too much red wine. Yoga made my body stronger. Conscious breathing felt like reviving a dead tree. I was finally breathing oxygen back into myself.

grief and pain 

Finding my writing voice through journaling 

The landscape of my beach-side home has healed itself, as have I. After sadness has followed joy. I now know that deep pain can fade if we allow ourselves to heal. 

A sealed plastic box with two dozen moleskines is still the first thing I’ll throw into the back of my car the moment a cyclone warning goes out. I am no longer defined by my pain, but I keep my journals safe because they are an important record of my transformation as a writer.  

For the two years of my husband’s slow decline and during the years of my healing journey, I wrote compulsively. I told the same story over and over until I was finally free of it. It trained my writing muscle like nothing else could have. 

I haven’t opened my diaries for some time, but I know they contain some of my best writing. It’s raw and straight from the core.  

grief and pain

Finding joy after grief and pain

Ten years after my first attempt at a life-changing sabbatical, I feel happier than I ever have. Going through the fires of grief has transformed me at my very core. 

The journey was long and lonely. Crashing head-first into my own vulnerability has taught me that we can rise strong after falling hard.  

It took many years to find a new professional direction. I revived my old travel blog. I worked as a Volunteer for International Development in the Maldives. I reviewed luxury resorts as a travel writer. All of it was fun, but none of it satisfied my core. 

For several years I exhausted myself, trying to prove that resigning from a flourishing career in mid-life hadn’t been foolish. I was surprised by how naked I felt without a career.  

Giving myself permission to heal, was met with envy. It was considered a self-indulgent luxury. And yet, the inner work I did in the aftermath of those events, laid the foundations for what I do today. 

When I finally allowed myself to be guided by the voice of my heart, not the expectations of an achievement-driven society, things started to fall into place.  

A new partner walked into my life. A new domain name appeared in the pages of my journal. I finally saw a new way to combine my passions of writing, travelling and yoga with my professional skills. I identified an income stream that allows me to be location independent. 

I taught myself basic graphic design, photography and how to build a website. I did a yoga teacher training course. I radically decluttered my house and listed it on Airbnb. Then I packed a small suitcase and headed to Vietnam to make my dwindling funds last a little longer.  

Today I live for most of the year in a rented home in the beautiful World Heritage town of Hoi An in central Vietnam.  

I’ve always loved teaching and I am finally teaching again. Sharing the tools that have helped me in my healing journey is deeply rewarding.  

grief and pain

In Hoi An I lead a weekly writing group. With my partner, who is a professional musician, I teach yin yoga and sound bowl meditations. Once a month we combine it with journaling in our signature “Journey to Self” workshop. Through my website, Write Your Journey, I run online courses. My first writing retreat will be held in Hoi An, this September.  

After years of stagnating, I gained momentum when I allowed the voice of my heart to write the next chapter of my life.  

Living a wholehearted, self-directed life is the only way to live the nanosecond we have on this earth. But make no mistake, it’s not the easy option. 

People tell me all the time how lucky I am. But luck had nothing to do with it. Hard work, the courage to follow my passion and being open to uncertainty is what allows me to live the way I do.  

PS: I wrote this post lying on my daybed on a tropical summer’s day with this view in front of me.

grief and pain Photos by Kerstin Pilz, except where noted and used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

While my own story unfolded into a story of grief, I found it very hard to read fiction. Instead I found solace in memoirs about grief, in the words of Buddhist masters and in Natalie Goldberg’s zen-inspired writing practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Claire Bidwell-Smith, The Rules of Inheritance

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within

About Kerstin Pilz

grief and pain

 

 

Kerstin Pilz Phd is a former academic, writer, photographer, yogini and meditation practitioner based in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she teaches a weekly writers group and holds workshops and multi-day retreats combining yoga, writing and mindfulness meditation. Through her website Write Your Journey she offers e-courses and downloadable guided soundbowl meditations. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Read more Wholehearted Stories

If you enjoyed this wholehearted story, please share it with others to inspire their journey. You might enjoy these stories too:

When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted living

Maps to Self: my wholehearted story

The Journey to Write Here – my wholehearted story

Ancestral Patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through – my wholehearted story

Message from the middle – my wholehearted story

The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

Breakdown to breakthrough – my wholehearted life

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

Becoming who I really am – a wholehearted story

Finding my home – a wholehearted story

My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’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 to the right or below You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing on personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, 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! 

inspiration & influence intuition

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

February 26, 2018

Our small lives, which so often can seem random, or meaningless, are actually an organic part of the cosmos.

Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom

___________________________________

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

This week: alchemy + conducting magic with spirit + heart

Theme for the week beginning 26 February

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards – Journal ‘Dear Nature…’

alchemy

I always draw the theme card first to set the key message for the week. At its core, this week is about connecting with ourselves through the alchemy and spirit of nature. When life gets a bit crazy, tuning into the magic of the sea, the bush and the sky is the perfect way to get answers. As I have moved through my transition journey, I’ve spent time sitting on the beach, journal in hand. It’s time to get back to this practice now and listen to the wisdom of nature, spirit and ourselves.

This is a great week for finding quiet space with a book and a pen and connecting with the cosmos. Advice from the Guidebook is:

Receive advice and guidance from the natural world.

We are encouraged to write a letter to Nature voicing concerns, asking for advice, to then walk and notice anything that comes to us. And then to allow Nature to respond by writing a second letter once home.

This is such a wise way to engage with nature and open ourselves to the alchemy of wholeness. Writing in nature is one of the simplest acts of connection. But how often do we do it? It’s so easy to get caught in our offices, our homes, our cafes and forget the magic that happens when we open ourselves to the natural world and its gifts.

Whether it’s finding shells that shape speak to us, stones that we can hold to ground ourselves, or feathers that seem like messages on our path, being open to these gifts can help us gain insight and meaning. The sheer act of opening up to a blank page in a quiet space in nature is a way of opening up to ourselves and seeing what the universe provides as an answer.

So the guidance this week is around the alchemy of being receptive to the elements and wisdom of the universe. We are actively encouraged to engage with this practical magic with book and pen in hand.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 26 February

alchemy

Tarot Narrative: 

You might be focusing on all that’s not perfect or right just now. Or maybe you’ve learnt through habit to think in terms of loss, feeling poor or less than. But you are standing like a magician posed between the earth and sky, conducting creativity like alchemy. Get out into nature and ground yourself like the conductor you are. As you manage change on many fronts, know that connecting yourself with joy and spirit through the elements – wind, water, earth, warmth – will yield solutions and magic as you co-create with forces beyond you.

Reading notes

Cards: Five of Earth (Pentacles) and The Magician from The Good Tarot and #12 A Change in the Wind in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

Our small lives, which so often seem random, or meaningless, are actually an organic part of the cosmos. This is one of the great teachings of the Tarot, and ultimately one of the reasons we do readings – not just to find out information, or to seek guidance or self-knowledge (all of which are important) but also to demonstrate to ourselves that the universe is not broken pieces. Things connect.

Rachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom (p. 34)

This reading and narrative sends strong messages about connecting with the alchemy and wisdom of the universe. Rachel Pollack in ‘Tarot Wisdom’ emphasises that The Magician is a card that is auspicious especially for writers and other creatives “for it symbolizes creativity itself.” The Magician is the card that I have chosen to symbolize the alchemist creator spirit of Quiet Writing. So it was exciting to see it arrive today in this first week of beginning a new phase of my creative journey and business, free from my former work role and fully embracing my body of work in transition.

Today’s narrative reminds us that though we might find ourselves having a habit of focusing on what is not right or not done or over the next horizon, we just need to still ourselves in nature. Connecting the inner and outer especially through writing in nature are highlighted at this time.

alchemy

Dealing with a habit of loss

The Five of Earth from the beautiful ‘The Good Tarot’ deck reminds us that reminds us that we can get preoccupied by “the illusion of lack”. It also mentions “overlooked treasures.” I have included the Rider-Waite version of the card too in the tarot flat lay so you can see the visuals there. It is all about difficulty, feeling in exile, out in the cold, or like we are seeing everything through a glass half empty lens.

My journey through transition and leaving the organisation I have worked in for 30 plus years has certainly had overtones of just this feeling. With my job deleted and becoming redundant, it’s been easy to feel like I’m out in the cold and focus on the negative. This can happen with any experience of change – change of location, relationship or job. All can have elements of feeling shunned, undervalued, less than or just plain nostalgic for how things used to be. With all of this melancholy, we can miss fully embracing the treasures unfolding under our nose.

The Good Tarot ‘Five of Earth’ reminds us through its beautiful imagery that the answer is to ground ourselves in the earth, in nature, connected to the magic of nature and the beauty of the world. As the Fountain Tarot puts it for this card:

From a place of quiet you can assess what is truly imprtant, learn from what the moment is teaching you, and determine what resources are actually at your disposal.

Just as last week’s narrative focused on blossoming, this week’s theme is about the alchemy of connecting with nature to work out our magic.

Alchemy + conducting magic

The Magician reminds us of the importance of partnership with spirit and gaining a broader perspective of our efforts. Just as the habit of thinking in terms of loss can cramp our vision, so can not opening ourselves to spirit. Again, the Rider-Waite imagery for this card is valuable in reminding us of how we can be a conduit for creative magic through being receptive and grounding ourselves.

This card shows us that we need to be reaching up to alchemy, to spirit and the power of the universe, to the magic of synchronicity. At the same time, we need to be grounding ourselves in nature and the elements, represented by the items on the table at the Magician’s disposal. The Magician is like an orchestra conductor as he stands between spirit and nature, connecting them. So too we can be conductors of magic as we open ourselves to spirit and inspiration, especially from natural sources.

Sallie Nichols in ‘Jung and Tarot’ talks about the Magician in terms of synchronicity and how we can open ourselves to increasing chances of meaningful coincidences at peak times:

It is our inner Magician, of course, who is responsible for these miraculous eruptions of the unitary world into our everyday world of space and time, cause and effect. (p62)

alchemy

Alchemy + connecting things

The Magician’s art of alchemy is about connecting things, especially between the inner and outer. So we might be outside in the elements, gathering thoughts in our journal as we connect with nature and notice gifts in our surroundings. Or we might work with tarot and oracle cards for guidance and wisdom as a way of engaging with spirit and connecting with our inner wisdom. Synchronicity might be a visitor as we tune in for signs and symbols especially at times of change.

Alchemy and making connections to transform them positively is a key theme this week weaving through all of the cards. Sallie Nichols shares in ‘Jung and Tarot’ that:

Magic is sometimes called the science of hidden relationships.

She says Jung identified through research that “hopeful expectancy” is an ingredient in common in many magic, miracles and parapsychological events. We need to embrace the “archetype of the miracle” at this time instead of the stories of loss, lack or poverty we might have told ourselves.

It’s time this week to channel our inner magician, get our conducting wands of spirit and creativity out that just might be in the form of a pen and book. And seek natural environments that will open us up and renew us, rather than shut u down.

This is a great week for alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart. 

Look to see where you might be working out of a perspective of loss, comparison or lack and see where you can conduct your own magic. Get out in nature and write. Don’t be afraid to use the tools that work for you, being unapologetic. Embrace what you love. You too could have a desk like mine 😉

alchemy

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart, especially being in nature to help connect our inner and outer worlds now.

  • Where have you developed the habit of thinking in terms of loss or lack?
  • How are you making time for connecting with the magic of nature?
  • Where are you practising alchemy and where could you deepen your practice?
  • In which areas are you holding back because of fear or other’s opinions?
  • How can you conduct magic in your writing or other creative work?
  • What stops you feeling that sense of alchemy and magic?
  • How can you be more magical in your approaches to life?
  • Where can you be more receptive to synchronicity or meaningful signs?

All best wishes for this week of being out in nature and writing, conducting creativity with the aid of the cosmos and grounding ourselves with the wisdom of the earth. I hope that you find meaningful connections, alchemy and synchronicity arising as you create this time and space in your life.

May The Magician guide you in conducting creativity and connecting with spirit to guide your path especially if it’s a time of big change. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

alchemy

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

You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available in February and March for a May coaching start 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.

You can download my free 95-page ebook on th36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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

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

You might also enjoy:

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

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

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

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

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

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

inspiration & influence planning & productivity

Blossoming on your own terms for long-term success

February 19, 2018

You are just getting started, so have patience with yourself and the process, and do not give up.

Aeracura, Blossoming

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

___________________________________

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

This week: blossoming on your own terms + patience for long-term success 

blossoming

Theme for the week beginning 19 February

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

Blossoming

Anyone else feeling they want to burst out there with your work but knowing you need to be patient right now? This is a great week for realising those tensions and being patient, remembering where you are in your process. Advice from the Guidebook is:

In many ways, you are like a flower bud who is ripe and ready to open and grow. Don’t try to rush this process, as it’s part of your beautiful path.

This theme is key to Quiet Writing generally with a focus on process, not just product. The steps in getting there are just as important as the point of arrival. But it’s hard to remember this sometimes as we struggle to create all that is in our mind or vision. We need to be gentle with ourselves; keep focused, yes, but not overwhelm ourselves with action. Sometimes we need to integrate what we are learning, taking things in and working with them internally before the blossoming stage. To represent the energy of this phase, working with flowers in any way including with flower essences is highlighted for this time.

So the guidance this week is around moving forward but with gentleness and self-compassion, with an eye on the long-term creative blossoming process. And in this, understanding the true nature of any fears and working intuitively is a powerful help.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 19 February

blossoming

Tarot Narrative: On your own terms

You’re standing strong, clear and analytical with plans you can work with. You are gathering yourself, researching the options and content. You’re poised on the threshold of a time of self-sufficiency when it all culminates into joy and satisfaction. Have patience with the tenderness of it all and look to see what is real and what is masquerading as fear. You are blossoming and on your own terms now.

Reading notes

Cards: Father (King) of Swords and Nine of Cups from The Wild Unknown Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

When we turn to face our fears, we discover that our fear is False Evidence Appearing Real – an illusion manufactured by our egos.

Debrena Jackson Gandy, All The Joy You Can Stand (p. 332)

This reading and narrative sends strong messages about being analytically clear and organised as we head towards blossoming and experiencing the fruit of our labours. The seeds of joy are real and we are so close to tasting them as they come to fruition. But we are encouraged to take time: to research, be patient, and to work with fear.

How we marshall our resources is key. This is a theme that popped up recently here (29 January reading) also with the King of Swords. This King is all about gathering, marshalling, making workable plans, putting emotion aside and getting on with it. He encourages us to put our knowledge into practice with swordy clarity and analytical skills. Conquering fear practically is also a way to move through these times.

Managing a sense of urgency

The Nine of Cups reminds us in this blossoming process that we are heading towards creative self-sufficiency. We are learning to be more self-sustaining, knowing when to listen to others and when to trust our own judgement. As Jessa Crispin reminds us in ‘The Creative Tarot’, this card is about “finding satisfaction all on your own.”

This rings so true for me as I head into the threshold of a new life. This week I will be finishing up in my work role of 30 plus years. I’ve been planning and working for this transition for the longest time. My goal is to establish a ‘self-sustaining creative life’. This means not working for someone else, working for myself, with creativity as the heart of what I do. Getting to this pivotal time, I feel a sense of urgency. I’ve been struggling with a feeling of pressure to get everything I have planned out into the world perfectly formed – and now!

I’ve had to learn that, though this time feels urgent like I want to burst out into full flower, I need to move steadily and take my time. I need to realise much is in the process of blossoming already. Taking a moment to get perspective and see how far I have come helps with feeling more joyful about my progress. I am still integrating everything I am learning and it’s a process to enjoy, not one to rush through. I’m reflecting too on my body of work over my life so far and how I am taking it forward into this new time.

Fear management + blossoming

Fear can be part of this wanting to rush forward too. As both the ‘Come to the Edge’ card and the quote above from ‘All the Joy you can Stand’ remind us,  Fear can be ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. Our job at these sensitive times of change is to work out what really is to be feared and what we have ourselves may have manufactured into fear. Facing our fears and identifying what is lowering our energy is important as we are working on blossoming into new times.

This week when you think about your plans, think of how any fear or impatience is manifesting. Sometimes it can be fear of being left behind, a kind of comparisonitis, as we see others write books, start businesses and come out of the blocks in places where we too want to shine. We can feel like we are never going to get our act together as we compare ourselves to others perhaps much further down the road than us. And in a way that will never be kind to ourselves.

Being creatively self-sufficient, knowing what you need to do in your own time and on your own terms, is powerful work this week. It might be rest, revisioning, stepping up, recasting, finishing a draft, starting a project, knowing what to do first. Perhaps it’s taking on board other’s feedback but knowing what to do with that feedback.

Sometimes fear can be a sign we are stepping up into a new phase as Tara Mohr reminds us in ‘Playing Big’. Tara explains that there are two kinds of fear concepts in biblical Hebrew: ‘pachad’, projected or illusory fear and ‘yirah’ – “the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to.” Both are useful concepts to work with as we come to the edge of our blossoming – and learn which fear to play down and which to embrace.

blossoming

On your own terms

The Art of Life Tarot deck has a beautiful way of coalescing messages in art and quotes. For the  Nine of Cups, we are reminded via Marcus Amnaeous Seneca that:

A happy life is one in accordance with its own nature.

That is a key theme this week weaving through all of the cards. If we are to truly blossom as ourselves, we need to follow our own path. Creative influence is a wonderful thing but we need to take it on board and coalesce it our own way, finding our own path on our own terms. This week provides energies for doing just that, working with wisdom on our fears and frustrations.

This can show up in so many ways for us: Where are we feeling impatient? What plan have we put in place to make the work happen? Is the plan actually workable? How do we know? What research is there to help us define our creative way in the world? How can we use it?

This is a great week for blossoming on our own terms in our own time.

Look to see where you might be undercutting your own process with fear or comparisonitis. It’s not a race; it’s bringing ourselves wholeheartedly into the world and that takes time, patience and discovering our own unique ways of working.

Blossoming

 

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around blossoming on your own terms, patience and fear now.

  • How might you bring blossoming forth more gently?
  • Where might you support growth with planning and action?
  • Which fears are helpful and which ones are not?
  • Where is there a valid reason for fear and what can you do about it?
  • What will help you create workable plans?
  • Where can you value and enjoy the process more?
  • How can you be more self-compassionate?
  • Where can analytical clarity help you make decisions and move through any blocks?

All best wishes for this week of being patient with blossoming and long-term plans and getting there on our own terms. It’s powerful work and not always easy, but I look forward to a week of moving through some threshold days in my own life.

May Aeracura also guide you with blossoming, with patience, and on your own terms. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

blossoming

Keep in touch & free ebook + Wholehearted Library

You can download the Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches + Writers as well as my  free 95-page ebook on th36 Books that Shaped my Story.

Just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library and Beach Notes updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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

You might also enjoy:

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

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

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

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

creativity inspiration & influence

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

February 16, 2018

Joy

Joy is my word for the year for 2018. Here are 18 quotes about joy, spirit and soulful work sparking my year. I hope they inspire you too.

Choosing a word for the year is like deciding on a destination for how you want to feel but not knowing how it will play out. It’s like setting an intention for feeling the tone of the year with no plan for the details. Inviting the energy of a word into your life, you wait to see how it unfolds and manifests.

PASSION was my word for the year for 2017. It was such an inspiring way to get back to what I love as a guiding force in my life. I shared 17 quotes about passion about the driving energy of doing what you love. Last year was a challenging journey which took me back to the heart of what I love as the map and soul of its next steps.

I discovered passion was about feeling your authentic heart, in my case writing, and getting it into its rightful place in your life. It was about following my intuition more deeply and finding a vision that went beyond the everyday. Moreover, it was a guide for transition in a year of crossing over to a new place, sensing potential, seeing opportunity and knowing how to combine my skills in new ways. It was about learning to play bigger and weave all that has happened to me into a book, a new way of living, a new career, a creative life. In there also was an understanding of my uniqueness, the elements that combine as passions within me. As Meryl Streep reminds us:

What makes you different and weird, that’s your strength. 

Finding joy

So in turning the corner into 2018 after a challenging time, joy was beckoning me. Sometimes you can take a while to work through your word for the year; other times it arrives, more obviously and insistently. And then there are synchronicities also, like the card my daughter gave me for Christmas. It was a beautifully crafted message of JOY made from handpainted Egyptian papyrus. This sealed the deal perfectly.

As often happens with your word of the year, you have a sense of its meaning but a deeper dive yields surprises and connections. And there is serendipity and further synchronicity too.

This week via an inspiring webinar on Energy Matters in Coaching with Meg Mann I was introduced to the work of David R Hawkins. In particular, we were shown his map of the scale of consciousness as we progress through achieving greater levels of consciousness. And my eye zeroed in on JOY sitting right up near the top described by way of self-view as “complete” and emotion as “serenity”.

David R Hawkins says of the energy of this phase:

As we move up towards this level, inner joy, quiet, and inner knowingness begin to take place. Within this energy field, we connect with something that is rocklike and ever present.

So this year’s focus is no lightweight endeavour but one that has enormous potential to calm and ground me. I knew choosing joy this year was always going to be a challenging task and this scale just helped highlight this.

Being unapologetically joyful

As part of a Goddess Roadtrip Sydney workshop recently on ‘being seen’, we were asked by Jade McKenzie to stand up and say to the group what we were unapologetically going to be this year. Given my focus for the year, I chose “joyful”, but when I stood up to say the words “This year I will be unapologetically joyful…”, I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was so mired in grief after the very recent loss of my mother. Eventually, I did say the words with the support of a room of beautiful women who held space for me, quietly, as I got there. But in this moment, I realised the intensity and depth of exploration in this journey of learning about joy this year. In part, it’s about allowing the juxtaposition of grief and joy in my life, something that can seem an uncomfortable fit just now.

Joy

Quotes about joy

I love quotes. The distilled wisdom of others in the form of words we can hold, repeat, learn from and reflect on is a balm and portal for me.

I found the 17 quotes on PASSION last year were a place to start from, a way to begin to explore the terrain of what it meant. Frequently, I returned to those words as I did to the Pinterest page I created on PASSION. Both are great ways to unravel the multiple meanings and nuances of words as we seek to explore them in our lives.

So to commence my exploration of JOY in 2018, here are 18 quotes about JOY to begin to tease out its contours and character for this year’s journey. I hope you find some inspiration for your journey this year.

“We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy.” – Joseph Campbell

“If all you did was just look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyous, spectacular life.” – Abraham-Hicks

“Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu 

“The body heals with play, the mind heals with laughter and the spirit heals with joy.” – Proverb

“Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” – Mooji

“Joy comes to us in ordinary moments. We risk missing out when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” – Brene Brown

“Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.” – Anne Lamott

“Strive not to get more done, but to have less to do.” – Francine Jay

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” – Maya Angelou 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi

“Your joy is where you locate your white hot Truth – your pure-burning is-ness, from where you have the creative power to turn thought into matter.” – Danielle LaPorte

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” – Marianne Williamson

“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” – C. S. Lewis

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.” – Annie Proulx

“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect before you decide to enjoy your life.” – Joyce Meyer

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” – Oscar Wilde

“JOY is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and self forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the street, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter: the sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was other than us.” – David Whyte

Do read the whole David Whyte’s beautiful meditation on JOY from which these words come. It is pure magic. They are such a balm for the soul. It seems like much of this work on joy is about spirit, inner stillness and soul, quiet writing perhaps. I welcome joy in as we venture forward together getting to know each other in a deeper way this year.

Share your thoughts

Which is your favourite quote from these ones? Or do you have another quote or thought on joy that inspires you? What does joy mean to you? Would love to hear – share your thoughts in the comments!

Keep in touch

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

You might also enjoy:

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

The unique voice of what we love

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

Joy

Image of me above by David Kennedy photography with thanks.

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How to align priorities with your directions and make a mark

February 12, 2018

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

Diana, Focused Intention

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

___________________________________

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

This week: focused intention + restructuring to align priorities

align priorities

Theme for the week beginning 12 February

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

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

Know what your priorities are and take action on them.

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

align priorities

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

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

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

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

align priorities

Tarot Narrative: Realigning priorities

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

Reading notes

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

Book notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Align priorities

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

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

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

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

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

align priorities

Making your mark

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

The wisest men follow their own direction.

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

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

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

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

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

align priorities

 

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

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

align priorities

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

You can download my free 95-page ebook on th36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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

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

You might also enjoy:

Secret superpowers for creative energy and inspiration

Creating essential intent and making the right choices

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

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

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

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

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