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introversion

introversion personality and story

Quiet in my life – how learning the value of quiet made all the difference

September 25, 2018

quiet in my life

As part of the #quietwriting hashtag and Instagram Challenge, we shift now to looking at the value of quiet in my life and yours.

Use the #quietwriting hashtag across platforms – for the challenge and beyond – as a way to create, connect and link us together on our ongoing journey to draft, process, create, make space for writing and other creativity and otherwise live a wholehearted creative life. Read on to discover more and connect with creative others about the value of quiet.

Quiet in my life

When I was thinking of prompts for the #quietwriting challenge, it wasn’t long before the word ‘quiet’ popped up.

Why? There’s no surprise that quiet is a value I hold very dear as a writer, an introvert and an INTJ in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type. You only have to look at my business and website name to see that!

For the challenge, I’ve chosen to share an image of two books that made a huge difference in my life:

  • Quiet by Susan Cain
  • Quiet Influence by Jennifer Kahnweiler

I’ve written about both books in more detail in my free e-book, 36 Books that Shaped my Story.

The first time I understood my need for quiet in a deeper way was when I worked on assessing my psychological type with a coach. My coach said to me, asking about work contexts as a leader, “Do you close your door?” It was a light bulb moment that helped me to value my need to close the door occasionally, get quiet and regroup. It was okay to do it and it was something I needed to do.

That insight and conversation was the beginning of a deeper journey into understanding my introverted intuitive nature and its needs. These two books helped me immensely in that journey.

quiet in my life

Quiet in my life as a leader

I read these two books on quiet and introvert strengths when I was a leader in the adult vocational education sector. My role involved leading many people, up to 3,000 staff and with responsibility for tens of thousands of students and their learning environment and programs. I often had to speak to large groups. Tough negotiations and meetings were commonplace. I also worked in the political arena, advising our state Minister for Education in an environment that was mostly anything but quiet or relaxed.

These books, furthering my knowledge of my INTJ personality type, helped me to understand the value and strengths of being a quiet worker and leader. Skills like the ability to listen deeply, read widely, prepare and research well, ask valuable questions and use writing as a strategic skill. You  need to learn how to deploy these skills and use them to effect in different ways. Not comparing yourself to extraverted others helps. Being able to understand and marshal your strengths is a powerhouse of knowledge and skill you can quietly own and use. Jennifer Kahnweiler’s book particularly helped me understand key six skills of quiet influence and recognise my strengths in this space. Writing is one of these and my superpower that I use in many ways to enact quiet in my life and its influence.

quiet in my life

Quiet in your life

How about you? Think about roles you have been in and where you have learnt the value of quiet in your life. As an introvert, you might need to learn to work differently and honour what is natural rather than see it as a weakness. Extraverts might need to learn to carve out space in their lives for quiet because it’s not always a natural preference.

  • Were you a quieter person growing up? How did it make you feel?
  • How do you make space for quiet in your life now?
  • What does quiet look like in your life?
  • How does quiet play out in your relationships, between the extraverts and introverts in your life?
  • Did you feel different if you were a quiet person at home or at work?
  • What did you do about this? Do you understand it?
  • If you were not the quiet person, did you find it challenging to make space for quiet in your life?
  • What helps you quieten?
  • Which practices at work or in your creativity help you to harness the power of quiet?

Love to hear your thoughts and see any images on Instagram – just use the hashtag #quietwriting for the challenge or anytime so we can connect with you. Or share your thoughts in the comments or on Facebook.

quiet in my life

Understanding your personality

If you’d like to work more on understanding our personality, I’ll be rolling out my offerings in the personality space in mid October. It’s not just about introvert and extrovert aspects though these are important. You learn about your preferences around sensing and intuition; thinking and feeling; and perceiving and judging as well.

The Personality Stories package includes:

  • personality type assessment online
  • an online course on personality preferences so you can understand your type
  • a coaching package to work on deep-diving into the wholehearted story of your personality.
  • a Quiet Writing personality type summary, and
  • email support for two weeks after.

Personality Stories coaching package

Here’s the detail of the coaching package. You receive:

  1. Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (MajorsPTI™) online assessment. This helps you to begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs 4-letter personality type.
  2. Self-paced online course on personality type: Working through the self-paced Personality Stories ecourse. It takes about 3 hours (max) to complete this short online course. I hope you will find it fascinating learning about Carl Jung, his followers and their rich work on personality type.
  3. Coaching debrief to work through your results: Once you complete the ecourse, we have a 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report, and the four letter code arrived at, in this session. The coaching debrief focuses on checking that your assessment result is your true or best-fit Type and discussing your results. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward and embed it in your life.
  4. Quiet Writing summary: Once your true personality type is confirmed from the coaching session, you will receive a Quiet Writing summary of the key aspects of your personality type to take forward. This includes links to further reading, tarot connections and suggestions for managing stress and fostering creativity in your life.
  5. Email contact for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is priced at $350AU as a special ‘first release’ price. Just let me know via email at terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited October enrolment.

Quiet connections via #quietwriting

So I welcome your comments here or on social media. I look forward to seeing #quietwriting images that share thoughts and open up dialogue on quiet in your life. Just share an image on Instagram using the tag #quietwriting and follow the prompts each day for ideas. Here are the prompts:

#quietwriting

And the #quietwriting hashtag will continue beyond the week of the challenge, so use it anytime to create and connect. You can learn more here about #quietwriting

Just a reminder of the key points:

  • Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect.
  • Hashtags are such a fabulous way to gather, finding our creative kindred souls and inspiration online.
  • On Instagram, you can now follow hashtags as well as individual profiles. So follow #quietwriting now and into the future to connect around creativity and your quiet work, writing and making art.
  • You can head on over to the #quietwriting hashtag on Instagram or Facebook or other social media anytime and see what’s popping up. 
  • You could also post on your own profile on Facebook as well using the hashtag.
  • Often we write quietly, behind closed doors or in busy cafes, privately. Let’s shine a light behind the scenes and capture the process of writing and creativity in action, wherever we are.

Get on board with #quietwriting + the hashtag challenge!

These are just some ideas and they will evolve as we all contribute. It doesn’t have to be all about writing – it can be any form of creativity. Nor do you need to be an introvert; all of us need quiet writing time to get creative work done.

I’ll feature my favourite images from the tag here and on Instagram and Facebook so share your images for the chance to be featured!

So join the #quietwriting party and let us know what you are up to! Who knows what creative connections you might make to support you on your journey or inspire your next creation?

Welcome your comments and images to inspire and connect our creativity online from the quiet in my life and yours!

quiet in my life

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

You can work with me to help reset your creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide to help you create with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for an October coaching start!

You can download my free 94-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:

#quietwriting – growing creative community and connection

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

How to be more aware of cognitive diversity in the workplace

Personality skills including how to be the best you can be as an introvert in recruitment

Introverted and extraverted intuition – how to make intuition a strong practice

introversion planning & productivity

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

August 20, 2018

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

reset

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

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

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

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

Being away, coming home

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

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

reset

Symbols to reset for a new start

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

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

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

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

reset

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four of Swords – letting it rest and synthesise

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

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

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

reset

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

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

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

The things that are composting for me right now include:

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

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

Rest not quitting as part of reset

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

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

Banksy

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

And you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can work with me to help reset your creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for August and an August/September coaching start!

You can download my free 94-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:

Ancestral patterns, Tarot Numerology and breaking through: My wholehearted story

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

6 inspiring podcasts for creatives and booklovers

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on doing what you love

Feature image via pexels.com

creativity introversion

Retreat within to find approval with yourself as the best guide

May 14, 2018

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Marcus Aurelius via The Art of Life Tarot – The Hermit

Retreat

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: retreat within to find approval with yourself as the best guide for creativity + life

Theme for the week beginning 14 May

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #46 Find approval with yourself before turning your eyes to the world.

retreat

This week we are reminded to retreat within and look inside to find approval. We can so often measure ourselves against arbitrary external measures. It might be someone else’s website, career, latest offering, lifestyle, Instagram feed, family, friends, writing – anything really! There are limitless ways we can measure ourselves against the metric of another’s life. This week, it time to halt that and go within for approval and wisdom. A little personal retreat is a wise way to proceed with this week’s energies.

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Don’t get hooked upon social approval. Let integrity and personal essence guide your way. Get to know who you really are by spending time alone.

Today’s narrative, led by this theme card, encourages us to retreat to channel our creative and personal energy wisely. Listening to our inner wisdom is only possible when we quiet the external noise. Then we can hear the small still voice of our intuition in a much clearer way.

This is what Quiet Writing is all about! Self-leadership through listening to yourself and letting your wisdom guide you. Prepare to retreat this week – a little or a lot – to access that inner wisdom to guide you on a clearer path.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 14 May

retreat

Tarot Narrative: 

Are you feeling scattered because of unfinished business and all that you want to achieve? You might be feeling restless as you strive to do all the things. Taking some time to retreat within for clarity is advisable now. Setting your own pace, knowing your own best priorities, discerning procrastination from the need to gather yourself, can all be sourced from listening within. Moving ahead is just a matter of pausing to listen to ourselves and our own wisdom sometimes.

Cards: Knight of Rods (Wands) and The Hermit from the Morgan-Greer Tarot and #10 Unfinished  Symphony in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

To engage in disciplined action first requires disciplined thought, and disciplined thought requires people who have the discipline to create quiet time for reflection.

Raymond M.Kethledge & Michael S.Erwin, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (p. xiv). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

retreat

Today’s theme is all about taking time to retreat for solitude and reflection. Through this, we can create disciplined thought. We might go about this in creative ways, opening up our options first to distil them down. But it’s all about pausing and taking a kind of personal retreat to review and be still so we can hear our inner guides.

This fabulous book, Lead Yourself First, is all about how self-leadership through solitude and retreat can be a source of wisdom and insight. The book has numerous case-studies of how leaders have used this form of retreat to guide wise and disciplined action.

Wholehearted self-leadership

I have written extensively about the book in a guest post for Worksearch: How to become the heart of successful leadership: this is what you need to know so you can read more there. Also in this post on Quiet Writing. Here are a few thoughts from the latter explaining how wholehearted self-leadership is key to Quiet Writing:

Two key threads underlie Quiet Writing: one is being wholehearted and how we create our stories; the other is self-leadership and how we work towards being wholehearted through taking personal action. The key to taking action and knowing which actions to take are:

  • knowing ourselves and what we value and desire
  • learning to listen to our inner knowing
  • understanding our innate personality, including its strengths and what is challenging for us
  • seeking out, incorporating and acting on influence and inspiration from others.

Pursuing passion and creativity

The Knight of Rods (Wands) focuses our attention on pursuing our passions and creative projects. But the energy of the Knight of Rods can be a bit restless and impulsive. On the positive side, this type of energy can help us break through barriers and be more creative. On the flipside, we can also be trying to do all the things and all at once. It’s a great energy to work with though if we can harness it. The Robin Wood Tarot describes it as “practical action in spite of distractions.” The trick is to find a way to channel that energy in a sustainable and disciplined way. And to find a way to negotiate the insistence of multiple of ideas and the noise of numerous distractions.

retreat

Retreat and going within to find clarity

The Hermit comes along to beautifully remind us of the value of retreat to find approval with ourselves. This card symbolises that it’s time to value the need to retreat for clarity and inner listening. As The Fountain Tarot guidebook reminds us for The Hermit, “Silence leading to clarity” is key here.

Quiet Writing is all about this process of retreat to find wisdom and self-discipline. We can get so caught up in comparisonitis, measuring ourselves against others. Or it might be some pace or goal we have set ourselves which has no real rationale. With the energy of the Knight of Rods being ignited, we might be trying to achieve too many things at once.

We are encouraged to go within, to retreat into our own inner knowing so we can access the discipline of thought and intuition to proceed. It can all get so complex and multifaceted, especially as creatives, as we have one idea and then another. Stopping to gather our thoughts, make lists, mind-map, distil, make a plan, unravel, walk or free write can all be valuable ways to use this time of retreat.

Sometimes we might just need to nap or rest altogether, freeing our mind of all the thoughts running. A few days of mental rest however that manifests can mean we can see afresh and listen anew to ourselves. In ‘Lead Yourself First’, we can see a variety of ways leaders access solitude for self-knowledge including running, walking, flying, laying bricks and writing. Leaders intentionally and systematically “build pockets of solitude” into their lives. An example is Bill Gates who:

during the rise of Microsoft, set aside entire weeks to just go away and read and reflect, what he called “think week.”

Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude (p. xv).

Through this process we can work out what matters, however we might choose to do this individually.

Unfinished business

The Wisdom of the Oracle card Unfinished Symphony steps in with wisdom around working out what is procrastination and what is real work. Our unfinished business can be a key to where we might be operating out of fear or putting things off. Being clearer about this can come through retreat and stepping back to listen within.

But we are encouraged not to stall:

Don’t overthink things or let yourself get distracted – just tie up any loose ends and deliver the results. (p39)

I am in a Coffeeshop Writers’ Group coaching program with Caroline Donahue to support reaching my writing goals. In a group call, I shared my thoughts about feeling stuck with so many projects not going anywhere or as fast as I want them to. It’s very Knight of Rods with so many projects on this ‘To Do List’ next to me. Taking some time out this week for clarity along with a little mental rest will help me reorient. It’s ironic that sometimes we need to stop to move forward more productively.

Part of us wants to run on and get out there with all of the ideas racing through our minds. Another part of us realises the wisdom of retreat to reorder and assess our ways of working. Stopping to listen within to work out priorities and in that, addressing any unfinished business, is valuable work now.

comfort reading

Honouring the need for retreat

How good does that image of a comfy bed, blanket and a book look to you right now?

It looks perfectly dreamy to me and I can hear my soul saying, “Well do that then if that is what you need.” With an eye to working out what is procrastination versus a real need to rest, retreat and rejuvenate, it’s time to seek a little quiet now. It’s time to listen to our soul and our creative longings and how they want to be expressed.

How might you do this? You will know your own ways to do this but here are a few ideas:

  • work with tarot and oracle for intuitive guidance and free write about what comes up
  • walk along the beach or in the city or on a quiet country road and see what surfaces
  • make a list of unfinished business that is troubling you so you can reprioritise
  • rest in bed with a good comfort read and empty your mind a little
  • make a visual collage to see what messages emerge
  • journal about what’s important to see what comes through
  • go on a self-guided writing retreat
  • practice yoga, meditate, swim or do whatever works to clear your head
  • declare a few days of retreat to concentrate on planning the next six months ahead
  • take a few days to clear your head with good food, yoga and walking to reset a new way of living
  • think about all the reasons to go on a writer’s retreat and then plan one!
  • sign up for a retreat like this one later this year in Vietnam, led by my friend Kerstin Pilz, to carve out times of retreat in your life more generally
  • identify the self-leadership practices in your creative tool-kit

Honouring the place of retreat in our lives is key to moving ahead productively. Take some time to journal to quell the noise and listen to your quiet inner voice this week.

retreat

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to how this message of retreat to listen, check in and find approval with yourself resonates with you this week.

All best wishes for a week of untroubled retreat, embracing your hermit and connecting with your soul’s voice.

May you find inspiration in listening to your inner wisdom and knowing what matters. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

retreat

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 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 94-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:

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

Finishing on a high note – closure, letting go and moving on

How to make the best of introverted strengths in an extraverted world

Being a vessel – or working with Introverted Intuition

inspiration & influence introversion intuition

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

January 22, 2018

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

Roald Dahl

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

This week: exploring magic!

Exploring magic

Theme for the week beginning 15 January

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

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

Exploring magic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 22 January

Exploring magic

Tarot Narrative: Exploring the magic of creativity

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

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

Book notes:

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

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

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

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

Exploring magic

Exploring magic

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

The word ‘magic’ keeps popping up too.

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

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

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

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

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

? by Lauren, Sol + Co

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

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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 knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

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

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

introversion personality and story wholehearted stories

My wild soul is calling – a wholehearted story

August 28, 2017

wild soul

This guest post from Elizabeth Milligan reminds us that listening to our wild soul calling can provide important clues to a more wholehearted life.

This is the second 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 if you are interested. 

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 my online friend, Elizabeth Milligan, as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Elizabeth and I met through Susannah Conway’s e-course, Blogging From the Heart, years ago now, and have followed and celebrated each other’s journeys ever since.

My sincere thanks to Elizabeth for the contribution of her beautiful personal story to Quiet Writing, including the stunning images from her journey. It’s a journey that has taken her to many new and rediscovered places – read on to find out more!

My wild soul is calling

It’s difficult to say where my story of living a more wholehearted life started.  There was no one dramatic, life-changing event.  It was more of an ongoing unease and restlessness that prodded me awake at night through my twenties and thirties.  A gentle tap-tapping, a whispering breeze, a far-off voice calling my name.  I tried to listen and follow my heart.  I travelled widely and far afield but I never found an answer.  I kept on moving.  I switched careers, jobs and countries more times than I can recall, but still something was missing.  Depression hit me.  Anger.  Despair.  Why couldn’t I just be?  Why the restlessness?  The continual searching?

I arrived at my forties and decided it was stability I needed.  I stopped moving, got a job, met a man.  For a time I was able to breathe.  The elation and euphoria of a new love blotted out all other concerns.  Or did it?  Soon the question of our combined futures was gently raised, and it turned out we were both looking for something other than the lives we were leading.  Ten months into our new life together we jumped ship, left the city and ran away to the countryside.  The plan was to use our savings, take a sabbatical of sorts from life and work in the city and do something more creative with our days, surrounded by nature.  We found a housesit in the middle of nowhere in rural France, gave notice on our jobs, put our stuff into storage, and set off.

Doing the groundwork

It sounds like this was all a smooth transition, but in reality there was a lot going on before any of it could happen.  I’m talking about mind-set and subtle changes that take place through conversation, discussion, self-questioning and research.  Where ideas and thoughts start to become viable possibilities.  I had been listening to Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions and was wanting to take a more proactive approach to my life based on my true values.  I had made my first vision board and stuck it on the wall opposite my bed so it was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing at night.  I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for but I was certain I was looking for something different.

wild soul

I felt like I had spent the best part of my life as an observer and onlooker.  When was I going have the starring role in my own life rather than a sad, out-of-camera cameo?  I could see very clearly where I was in life and to most people, this probably looked like a pretty good place.  A good job in a nice French city, a leisurely cycle to work, regular meetings in Paris, outdoor markets for shopping, and beautiful city parks or the hills of Beaujolais for weekend jaunts.  But in reality, my job was boring me to tears.  It was not who I was and it was not what I wanted.  I felt guilty for not wanting it but I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I realised things had to change and I had become aware of other options.  Instead of constantly trying to quash the panic and feeling of wanting to run, like I’d been doing for so long, it was time to listen to my gut and break free.

Taking a risk and breaking free

So we took a risk, threw everything up in the air and allowed the universe to catch us.  Ever since I read the books of Oriah Mountain Dreamer many moons ago I have wanted to trust in the power of the universe, to open up and surrender to something bigger and infinitely more powerful than we will ever be.  This was my chance.  I knew that we were going on a journey but I didn’t realise, and still don’t fully understand, the long-term implications of that decision we made one warm summer’s evening in our tiny French apartment.

Before arriving at our housesit, an isolated farmhouse sitting alone in over one hundred acres of rambling fields, I had no plan of what I would do every day.  I wanted to see how things would unfold.  I was not going to force myself to do anything.  I was craving unstructured days and freedom and this was the perfect opportunity.

Finding my inner child

Being completely free with no commitments, no expectations from anyone, and no structure in the day is rather strange at this age.  I can see how some people may be uncomfortable with this, but for me it was a wonderful and decadent regression.  I felt like a child left behind in a secret world after all the adults had gone home.

I found a pair of wellington boots that fit me and spent my days in wellingtons and shorts trudging around the fields spotting the local wildlife.  Deer, hares, coypu, egrets, foxes, wild boar, although these I never saw.  I only heard them some nights when the moon was full, calling across the fields with their terrifying blood-curdling screams.  I chopped wood for the fire and foraged for herbs and fruit, making nettle soup, elderberry jam and mountains of quince chutney.  I made friends with the barn owl that lived in the unused kitchen chimney, and the bats that flew around at night, often through the open windows.  I watched the sunrise in the morning and the sunset at night and every full moon I would run into the field behind the barn to catch the first glimpse on the horizon.

wild soul

Feeling like I was finally in my true environment, I became re-acquainted with the little girl inside and realised with relief that she hadn’t left me after all.  She had just been hiding and waiting for the right conditions to show herself again.  As a child I loved cycling and I had forgotten what fun it was to cycle around quiet country lanes.  Using bikes we found in the barn we started cycling to the shops for our groceries instead of driving.  When the weather was warm we would stop off and swim in the river on the journey home.  I felt alive.  I felt in touch with this beautiful planet we live on.  I had rediscovered a missing piece of the puzzle.

Rewriting my story

The next piece of the puzzle I found was regarding personality type.  I was in an online group of women and one week a discussion about personality type came up.  This was new for me so I did an online test and identified as personality type INFP on the Myers-Briggs scale.

This means nothing if you don’t know about this scale.  But what the test results revealed was that I was an introvert.  I had never considered whether I was extrovert or introvert before but the realisation felt like the penny dropping.  I suddenly saw my past with startling clarity.  I had felt like an outsider my whole life.  An observer.  Someone who kept their distance.  I thought I was maybe anti-social.  I had been called shy and quiet at best, and aloof and stand-offish at worst.  Here was something saying I was perfectly normal and not only that, other people felt the same way too.

I realised that if the stories I had been telling myself were no longer true then everything could change.  If I nurtured my introvert qualities and stopped trying to be extrovert like the world seems to want, then I could rewrite not only my past, but my future.  Astounding.

wild soul

Freeing my creative soul

So I started to nurture my newly discovered introvert self.  I very tentatively started to allow myself to enjoy being who I was, rather than reprimanding myself for not being someone I wasn’t.  I tried to stop worrying about all the things I was not and focus on all the things I was.  Of course, this is easier said than done.  But what seemed to help me was the daily pursuit of a more creative way of life.

To document life in the farmhouse I had started a blog and this became my way of communicating my newly discovered introvert self to the outside world.  Using writing and photography I started expressing myself and sharing my journey online.  Later on in our housesitting adventures, I would learn to express myself through art, something I had sadly locked away for years but which thankfully resurfaced along with other creative pursuits as yet another important, and previously missing, piece of the puzzle.

Intuition as a guiding light

Trusting my intuition, although incredibly difficult at times, has become a guiding light on my journey.  If I had planned things out too much I would never have discovered my creative side as I have, because I would have been busy committing to those plans.  I still have a lot of problems trusting my intuition and tend always to look outward first even though I know that only I have the answers to the deep questions I ask myself.  But I’m slowly learning to take the lead in my own life.  Inhabiting my life with my creative, nature loving, introverted self rather than filling the role of onlooker in a life that appears alien to me.

Bit by bit the negative and fractious energy built around the person I thought I should be has dissolved and been replaced by a more positive, gentle, flowing energy that is built around who I truly am.  Some parts of me I am still shy to show to the world, but these things take time and if I continue to trust my intuition then I am sure everything will slot into place as and when it needs to.

The struggle of self-discovery

All of these new experiences and discoveries were not without struggle though.  My demons showed up time and time again in dark moods, self-doubt, fear, impatience and insomnia.  Try to imagine this wonderful farmhouse in rural France in the middle of winter when we have been living in a grey cloud for the past few weeks.  There is no dry wood for the fire and the wind is howling through the badly fitting doors and windows.  The boiler keeps blowing out so there is no hot water and we are sitting there in the kitchen with our demons wondering how long you can spend in such isolation before going completely insane.

wild soul

In dialogue with my demons

This part of my journey I was not prepared for.  But one by one as the demons showed up at the door, snarling at me in disgust, taunting me with their snide comments of ‘not good enough’, ‘failure’ and other such niceties, I invited them in and I sat with them.  Quietly hearing them out until they had no more to say and disappeared off, one by one, back into the mist.  I knew they would return but I felt like it would be ok.  For the first time in my life I had opened up a dialogue with my own mind and somewhere deep inside I knew this to be a turning point and something to learn from.  I am still learning, but I now know that once we let the light in and start to show up every day as our true selves, everything changes.

We never did go back to real life, whatever that is, like we sensibly thought we would after our one year sabbatical, now four years ago.  Our savings lasted longer than we thought and it was difficult to say no to other housesits.  A winter by the sea looking after a tiny hotel.  Another two winters looking after an 18th century château and the resident cat.  A summer in a city apartment in Copenhagen.

The way forward

I’m not sure what’s next and I’m not sure it really matters.  My life has changed from the inside out and although I know I’m not there yet, I’m certainly on my way to living a much more wholehearted life.  Letting go of what no longer serves me and focusing on what lights me up.  Most importantly though, I’m enjoying the journey. ♥

Key book companions along the way

The Fire Starter Sessions – Danielle LaPorte

The Creative Fire – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Writing Down the Bones – Natalia Goldberg

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

Women who Run with the Wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life – Dawna Markova

Turning Pro – Steven Pressfield

The Big Leap – Gay Henricks

The Invitation / The Call / The Dance – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

About Elizabeth Milligan

Elizabeth is an aromatherapist and quiet creative.  She is currently redesigning her life and work around her own wholehearted values of creativity, positive interaction with nature, and slow and simple living.  You can find Elizabeth online at https://smashedmacarons.com or on Instagram Twitter and Pinterest.

Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes developments on coaching, personality assessment offerings, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on intuition, influence, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality based on Jung/Myers-Briggs theory.

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

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

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – 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

Our heart always knows the way – a wholehearted story

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

inspiration & influence introversion reading notes

In praise of comfort reading

August 18, 2017

Comfort reading is a ritual, like worry beads or a nice hot cup of cocoa at bedtime. It relies on repetition and familiarity. It makes unbearable times bearable.

Jane Sullivan

Turning Pages – The authors you read when you need a bit of comfort

comfort reading

Here’s a round-up on comfort reading. Find out about the comfort books people read and reread, and why for when it feels a perfect time to hunker down with a good book.

What comes to your mind with the words ‘comfort reading’? I think of revisiting the books we love and that special genre or author that just makes us go ‘ahhhh’ and rest up, all cosy, hot chocolate or cup of tea in hand.

So here are some links and thoughts on comfort reading including my favourite comfort reads. So if you’re feeling unwell or just in need of some rest and respite, here is some inspiration for reading, comfort style.

I hope you find some time to rest and read. Would love to hear about your comfort reading preferences and practices too!

Podcast on comfort reading

A podcast that features and praises comfort reading is:

Reading the End Podcast Episode 10

There’s a great list of books on the show notes plus thoughts on what makes a comfort book. The hosts reinforce that there are different categories of comfort books: ones that put things in order eg. Georgette Heyer books; episodic books that don’t require so much effort; books for when you are sad and books that represent ‘wholesome olden times’! They include one of my comfort book authors, Rumer Godden. It’s a fun listen and a great list! It reinforces that comfort reads are contextual and different for everyone, though there may be common themes and authors that reappear.

There were surprisingly few podcasts on this important issue!

Another option is to let the guys on The Casual Academic do the reading for you and read along when you can or just learn from them. I really enjoy this podcast when I just want to listen and learn about literary fiction but I’m finding it hard to do as much reading as I would like in the genre. Always interesting and educational, as well as fun, I’m sure having a laugh is important in this type of reading.

comfort reading

Books and reading notes

In line with my post on reading more productively and accountability here, I finished David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. This was a very special read that will stay with me for a long time. There’s so much richness on work life and our identity as we express it through work and how we can be lost and found there. It’s a book I will continue to revisit and explore. I also enjoyed reading Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging.

Book and blog notes on this week’s theme of comfort reading

It was fun to explore what other people have said about comfort reading and their suggestions. But first, my favourite comfort reads.

I love a book that I can just curl up inside, a setting that I love, a love story or psychological engagement, something that takes me into people’s lives as I watch the events and relationships unfold. I like the warmth of people connecting or a narrative that takes me into a place where I can just be or watch, especially engaging with character and place.

So here are my comfort reads and authors:

Maeve Binchy

A long-time love, there’s just something so cosy about curling up with a Maeve Binchy book. They are all wonderful; the ones that come to mind are: Tara Road, Quentins, Circle of Friends, Evening Class and A Week in Winter. I love how the characters often reappear as familiar faces across different novels. They’re grounded in a spirit of realism as well, as Maeve Binchy explains:

I don’t have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks. 

Jojo Moyes

Jojo Moyes has become more famous with Me Before You which came out as a movie. This is fabulous as she is an excellent writer and I love stepping into the world of her books. All her narratives have that sense of comfort in story and love engagements but in various settings and environments. Enjoy any or all of: The Ship of Brides, Silver Bay, Peacock Emporium, Foreign Fruits, Silver Bay, Night Music, The Girl You Left Behind and The Last Letter Your Lover. 

Daphne Du Maurier

I’ve shared my love of Daphne Du Maurier and especially my favourite novel, Rebecca. My Cousin Rachel is a great read too and enjoying attention due to the recent film adaptation. But also really engaging are The House on the Strand, Don’t Look Now and other Stories and The Birds and other Stories. Du Maurier’s short stories are especially good reads when you just want a shorter bite.

comfort reading

Liz Fenwick

Being a great lover of Cornwall, Liz Fenwick’s novels are often my first choice when I’m looking for a holiday read or just want a relaxing chill-out read. I love books that take me to special places and Fenwick’s novels are enjoyable and engaging reads with a mix of love, family history, intrigue and Cornish landscape. I’ve enjoyed: The Cornish House, A Cornish Affair, A Cornish Stranger and Under a Cornish Sky.

Rumer Godden

Rumer Godden is another special author whose books I seek out when I’m needing comfort. My preferred stories seem to be ones like The Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede that involve nuns and the drama and personality of cloistered communities. They are books I reread and enjoy, often at times of illness and bedrest!

comfort reads

 

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

For thoughts on comfort reading, here are some excellent posts:

Booksellers share their best comfort reads and tips, via Readings a fabulous Aussie bookshop, including fantasy, Agatha Christie, Harry Potter, poetry and Anne of Green Gables (a recurrent recommended comfort read!)

In The appeal of comfort reading, Psychologies Magazine explores what makes a comfort read we return to:

‘I can read it over and over again,’ people said, and perhaps that is the most important thing of all. Like prayers, our comfort reading becomes a ritual. I may find something new in the Anne [of Green Gables] books every time, but the words themselves never change. Our comfort reads are talismans, touchstones, that will never let us down.

In The Irish TImes, The Guyliner postulates on why he reads the same books over and over again:

They’re not cerebral, they’re not impressive, but they wrap themselves around me every moment, even when I’m not reading.

Rebecca is one of the books he returns to, with such a beautiful response to it:

Gloomy and glamorous and beautifully written, I always come back to Rebecca. I never want it to end, and always wish we could find out what happens next. With each reading, I will the second Mrs de Winter to tell Mrs Danvers to sod off, to speak up and be confident, to enjoy her time as the lady of Manderley. But, of course, she never does – she can only be herself.

In Turning Pages: The authors you read when you need a bit of comfort, Jane Sullivan says that comfort reading is a ritual and notes the authors who pop up consistently: Raymond Chandler and L M Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame). Of Raymond Chandler, she says:

It worked because I knew that voice. I’d read the book before, I’d seen the movie, I knew what was going to happen. And the voice took me into a familiar world: guns, hooch, faded glamour, treacherous dames in seamed stockings, telephones on the wall, guys wearing hats and trenchcoats in the warm California rain.

Sarah Bessey shares 10 books she reads over and over. It’s a fabulous list and includes Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden.

In Comfort Books. Is this even a thing? The Bloggess queries why her comfort books are “full of murder and angst and bizarreness and are not really what anyone in the world would consider to be a happy or relaxing read.”

It seems we revisit books for all kinds of reasons and different ways of sourcing comfort. Do share your thoughts on your comfort reads in the comments or on Instagram or Facebook – would love to hear!

On Quiet Writing and Tarot Narratives

On Quiet Writing, we explored the art of efficient blog post writing in a guest post by Benjamin Brandall, How to write a blog post when you have almost no time. It’s been really well-received, providing practical strategies for being organised with blog posts and getting the actual writing done.

My Tarot Narratives on Instagram have continued to be a rich source of inspiration and insight for my creative journey. Thanks for all the interactions! Twyla Tharp’s reminder today, from The Creative Habit, was around working environments and habit:

In the end, there is no one ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn’t scare you, doesn’t shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that’s habit forming. (p17)

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

comfort reads

Feature image via pexels.com

Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free e-book on the books that have shaped my story is coming soon for subscribers only – so sign up to be the first to receive it!

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on intuition, influence, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion, and personality including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

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

You might also enjoy:

Creative and Connected #9 – on the art and love of reading

Creative and Connected #8 – ways to honour your unique life blend

Creative and Connected #7 – how to craft a successful life on your own terms

Creative and Connected #6 – how to be a creative entrepreneur

Creative and Connected #5 – being accountable to ourselves and others

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