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Mark Nepo

creativity intuition

Taking a leap of faith with structure + the gift of surprise

June 4, 2018

We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

leap of faith

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: taking a leap of faith with structure + the gift of surprise

Theme for the week beginning 4 June

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #45 Take a leap of faith with your ideals

After last week’s message – choosing the best thoughts to make a lighter way – this week is all about taking risks and a leap of faith. We’ve had a time of Introverted Intuiting and working on our work in the world in a more visionary introverted kind of way. Now it’s time to do something with all those thoughts and maybe all that behind the scenes work. It’s time for taking a leap of faith in many different ways and also seeing what can support and inspire us.

This message of taking a leap of faith has come to me twice in 24 hours: via the Life Design cards deck and also the Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. So I pass this message on to you here. Aine, the Celtic goddess and fairy queen, says: “Take a risk, and put your heart’s true desire into action!”

leap of faith

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook for #45 is:

Expand your awareness through the gathering of unfamiliar experiences.

Today’s narrative, led by the synchronicity of these theme cards, encourages us to take a leap of faith. Elements of structure and surprise are in there as we navigate the unfamiliar with some safe supports.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 4 June

leap of faith

Tarot Narrative: 

It’s time to take some risks especially on work you’ve been imagining and planning for a while. Put in some structure, order and plans to help control your fear and manage any risks. Also to achieve progress over time, step by step. This will build confidence and help fight any inner or outer challenges. Work out what’s important to you as a source of strength and guidance. And take a leap of faith now for surprise learning and inputs!

Cards: The Emperor and Seven of Rods (Wands) from the Morgan Greer Tarot and #45 Time to Go in protection (reversed) position from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Taking a leap of faith with support

Last week we had the Nine of Swords and Judgment and it was all about watching our inner thoughts and trying to lighten them. This week we head into taking our creative thoughts and projects out in to the world in some way. Having potentially worked on our self-talk and self-love in a big way this past week and moved on and through, it’s time to take some risks and a leap of faith in our creative projects. This week begins with a yin energy focus as we intention comes in to being more. Taking risks to get our work out in the world is highlighted this week.

The tarot cards drawn along with the focus on a leap of faith provide guidance as to what will help us make that leap positively.

Firstly, the Emperor encourages us to work with structure and an overall plan. In Jung/Myers-Briggs terms, some Extraverted Thinking – some frameworks, logic and order will help us make a leap of faith with support.

In The Creative Tarot, for The Emperor, Jessa Crispin talks about C.S. Lewis and his approach to writing the Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis plotted out the whole series in advance which led to increased consistency of his work. An INTJ personality type, he was weaving together his Introverted Intuiting with his Extraverted Thinking.

If you are planning a leap of faith in getting your creative work out in the world, use structure and a plan to help you. This was you will know where you are going in some senses so that leap of faith in writing or creating something new and innovative is supported.

leap of faithThis image via pexels.com

A leap of faith and self-belief

Another key support in the process of taking a leap of faith is self-belief. As the Seven of Wands reminds, sometimes we need to fight for what we believe in. This might be fighting for time, space and attention to get our work done. It might be working through issues that arise or countering naysayers. Perhaps it is shoring up our sense of belief that our work is needed in the world. Sometimes “you have to fight yourself down too” as Jessa Crispin reminds us for this card in The Creative Tarot.

As you craft your creative projects and take a leap of faith, see how you can strengthen self-belief as a key ingredient. Like putting in some order and structure, strengthening our self-belief is another valuable support as take risks and leap into the unknown.

leap of faith

This image via pexels.com

Book notes: A leap of faith and the gift of surprise

Our capacity for surprise is often an unused blessing.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

A leap of faith can also bring with it surprises. Staying open to the unexpected means we can make the most of any leaps of faith and their gifts. But we need to keep our eyes open and we need to keep our heart open as we move.

Mark Nepo highlights ‘The Gift of Surprise’ in his book ‘The Exquisite Risk’. Taking a leap of faith also implies we are letting go a little to see what comes. Whilst we might put some structure around our leaping, like a safety net, still we can move from the known to the unknown.

It might be putting down the first words of that novel that has been in your heart for years once you finally create a tentative outline. This structure helps you have the self-belief to be able to get those first words down, knowing they will go somewhere. And in that, the surprise of what appears can arrive. The seeds of ideas have the chance to grow.

strategy

How can you leap ahead with structure and surprise?

So how can you actively leap ahead, honouring both structure and surprise?

For me, these Tarot Narrative readings are a way of doing that each week. I have the basic structure of a tarot reading, a blog post, the tarot narrative work I have developed over time. But I never know what the message is or what I will write about until I do the intuitive work.

I’m working on my Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Stories personality assessment and learning. I’ve had this plan in my head for over 18 months now. It’s new territory in many ways including for me as a new way of working. Recently, I’ve put my head down and created the container and structure. I’ve done the work and am now testing it with fellow creatives, coaches and Jung/Myers-Briggs professionals. The somewhat scary leap of faith in putting this work out into the world is next but the structure has helped me make that leap. Beginning to talk about it has brought some surprising linkages I hadn’t thought of and offers of help.

Tips for leaping ahead with structure and surprise

Some tips for leaping ahead with structure + surprise:

  • make a transition plan for where you want to be; that guide and safety net will help you move
  • create a plan for your creative project so you can make a start eg an outline, a timeline, a visual map
  • work with Instagram challenges that provide some structure but also some freedom. I am going to join in with Quiet Writing Wholehearted story author, Shalagh Hogan for her monthlong Creativity Challenge #OurCreativeJune this month. But any time on OG there are great challenges that provide structure while you provide the surprises!
  • go to an event you are interested in that breaks new ground for you – an Instameet, a conference – or message more directly an online creative whose work you feel a connection with.
  • go outside your comfort zone and natural preferences – if you usually do your social media lives outside, go inside and vice versa. See what arises for you! Go to an event if you are introvert. Stay inside and explore your creative thoughts more if you tend to want to go out a lot.

leap of faith

Thoughts for this week

Leaps of faith don’t have to be entirely without support. Use structure and order to help you. Shore up your self-belief so you feel strong inside and can counter any challenges. Value the element of surprise and new learning that comes from stepping outside your comfort zone.

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to how this message of taking a leap of faith with support and surprise resonates with you this week.

All best wishes for a week of going outside your comfort zones and stretching your creative projects and business. In the end, that’s the value fo being creative – enjoying the process and seeing what comes up for you – and for others.

May you find that a leap of faith can be an exciting way to progress your creativity and life passions. It also can be an important way to help others in their work through our example and what we create.

As Steve Pressfield reminds us on what of my favourite quotes of all time from ‘ The War of Art’:

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

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. And to help you ignite the psychological links in your passions!

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:

Creative courage to move on in small steps

NaNoWriMo – 10 lessons on the value of writing each day

Exploring magic as the heart of creative inspiration

Embracing a creative life – a wholehearted story

creativity transcending

Opening your heart to inspiration of a different kind

May 7, 2018

In each loss, there is a gain as in every gain there is a loss. And with each ending comes a new beginning.

Shao Lin via The Art of Life Tarot – Eight of Cups

opening your heart

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: opening your heart to inspiration of a different kind

Theme for the week beginning 7 May

The underlying theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards deck – #19 Design from patterns to details

opening your heart

We’ve hard this card before not so long ago! Last time it reminded us of the value of strategy and the higher order of connections. This week the message is similar but with a particular focus on moving through and not letting details get the better of us. We are reminded to look at ideas, patterns and getting our ideas and feelings out without getting stuck.

Advice from the Life Design Cards Guidebook is:

Are you concentrating too much on the details whilst missing the bigger picture, or vice versa?

Today’s narrative, led by this theme card, encourages us to step back a little and see the whole. Looking at patterns rather than flaws or minor issues will serve us well at this time.

It’s about being positive and macro focused rather than micro. We are encouraged to reflect on how working at a higher order of life design can serve us and others well now.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 7 May

opening your heart

Tarot Narrative: 

Moving on from the tyranny of details, you open your heart to inspiration of a different kind. You want to take your ideas forward but get stuck on the pieces which breaks your movement. So focus on higher order things: patterns and designing from a higher place. With spirit as your guide, work on manifesting your ideas in form and flow without obsessing about every small thing. It will all find its place.

Cards: Daughter (Page) of Swords and Eight of Cups from The Wild Unknown and #40 Co-create from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

It is the same with our minds and hearts. For our very self is the one window we have into this life. And so often, we suffer the mood of a dirty window, believing the brilliant world gray.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening (for May 7)

opening our hearts

Mark Nepo reminds us for today’s reading in ‘The Book of Awakening’ of ‘The Ordinary Art’. This is about keeping our minds clear and not seeing life through a dirty lens. One way of keeping things murky is to get caught up on the detail – the one piece of dirt on an otherwise clear window, the one thing that is not right. So much can get lost in obsessing about detail before you even make a start or begin opening your heart.

Mark Nepo goes on to say:

Perhaps the purpose of authentic relationship is to help each other keep our minds and hearts clear. Perhaps inner work is the ordinary art of window washing, so that the day is fully the day.

Opening your heart 

The Page of Swords can often represent “a great idea with no outlet” according to Jessa Crispin in The Creative Tarot.  It can remind us that it’s “time to grow up and see a project through to completion for a change.”

Do you have a project that never seems to get going or even make it through to the draft stage? Do you close your heart down before you even start as the details cloud over you?

This reading starts with the Page of Swords as a weather report card telling us to get on with our work or relationships. Too much focus on the detail and the tyranny of perfection can stop us from even starting work or communicating.

One way of opening your heart is embracing the overall pattern of your work rather than obsessing with the details. Just as Mark Nepo reminds us, seeing our work or loved ones through a dirty lens is just not going to be helpful.

opening your heart

Inspiration of a different kind

The Eight of Cups reminds us to let go of what doesn’t serve us. It might be painful but letting go and leaving things behind can be positive. We might, for example, let go of an obsession with detail to finally get our work done. Walking on the beach, we might see the one stone or shell that speaks to us instead of being overwhelmed by many. We might let go of a way of thinking, a person, a job or an attitude that stops us achieving higher order goals like love, creativity or connection.

The Wisdom of the Oracle card Co-create also reinforces this message by encouraging us to see our life as art co-created with spirit:

Connections of the heart serve to inspire you, opening you up to new ideas you would never have had on your own.

This Tarot Narrative work I do is an example of that. I never know what these weekly posts will focus on until I do this intuitive work in partnership with spirit. It is a unique practice of mystery and manifestation that is larger than me. The tarot and oracle cards are tools for me to connect with my intuition. For this week and beyond, focusing on higher-order patterns and a clear view of my work and relationships will serve me well. And I share this in a spirit of co-creation with you.

Details, endings and beginnings

As the Art of Life Tarot Eight of Cups reminds us, endings and beginnings and losses and gains are often intertwined. Especially when big life transitions or events happen, it’s easy to lose the larger picture in the details. We feel hurt by small things that feel magnified. It’s easy to dwell on these upsets. We are encouraged to see the cyclical nature of life and to move beyond getting stuck through an obsession with detail.

Working with our intuition, seeing the bigger picture, working with patterns, choosing to see through a clean window can help us. It is as if we need to erase the details that can trip us up or hold us back. Defining ourselves or others by small events or a few words said can be limiting. Just as not developing the unique creative ideas that come to us because of a fear of not achieving our ideal will limit our productivity.

“Done is better than perfect” is a maxim I have embraced more this year. There is no point having such high expectations of ourselves or our work that nothing gets started. Or ever sees the light of day.

It’s a great week for opening our hearts to inspiration of a different kind.

  • How are we embracing our creative ideas rather than stifling them?
  • Where are we be generous in our relationships rather than fault-finding?
  • What have we learnt about the ways we stop ourselves from moving and how can we action this?
  • How can we find a higher order pattern to work from rather than getting stuck on details?
  • What can we do to invite inspiration in and take it through to completion?
  • Where can we work in partnership with intuition and spirit and the spirit of others to further our work and relationships?

Walking away from practices that no longer serve us can help us feel more inspired. Take some time to journal on how you can lift your eyes to see the positives without the details becoming a barrier this week.

opening your heart

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to how you are working from design and a different kind of inspiration this week.

All best wishes for this week of seeing the big picture to guide us in moving forward.

May you find inspiration in opening your heart and seeing new beginnings. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

opening your heart

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:

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

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

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

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

inspiration & influence intuition

Strategy, patterns and the higher order of connections

March 19, 2018

We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

 

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: the value of strategy, patterns + higher order connections

strategy

Theme for the week beginning 19 March

The theme for this week to guide our overall focus is from Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards#19 Design from patterns to details.

strategy

This week is about strategy, patterns and seeing higher order connections. We can get so lost in detail especially when times are tough, not seeing the forest for all of the trees. There is a higher form of pattern and strategy there if we step back for a minute to see it. It might be new ideas, seeking solutions to problems, being more counterintuitive, putting the pieces together in a different way. Whichever, we are encouraged to see from the perspective of recurring patterns, images and signs, to notice synchronicity. We are reminded to see the geometry of our experiences: the spiralling as we revisit old habits to see anew or recognising the higher architecture of our experiences.

Advice from the Guidebook is:

Are you concentrating too much on the details whilst missing the bigger picture, or vice versa?…Aim to find unique solutions where possible.

There is guidance in there too about avoiding making assumptions or having preconceptions, remaining open and seeing links and connections in new ways.

So the guidance this week is around making space for new strategy and design in our thinking.

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 19 March

strategy

Tarot Narrative: 

Look for strategy, patterns, the higher order of connection now. See what you’re missing, the geometric shape that can hold the unfolding patterns, events and designs. Perceive what is real and what is fear. Work with the counterintuitive, have courage and be creative in finding solutions.

Reading notes:

Cards: Queen of Air (Swords) and Five of Fire (Wands) from The Good Tarot and #36 Come to the Edge in protection (reversed position) from Wisdom of the Oracle.

Book notes:

When we assume that we author everything we experience, we snuff the possibility of being touched by the more numinous dimensions of reality.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk (p116)

This reading reminds us of the higher order of the strategy of the spirit and opening ourselves to answers beyond the obvious. As Mark Nepo reminds us in ‘The Exquisite Risk’, our ego can have a strong role to play in how we see circumstances; sometimes this means we miss other things like signs, patterns, signals, connections and counterintuitive ways of looking at the situation.

Recent experiences have encouraged me to open up to energy connections and ways of working on more spiritual planes. We can get so preoccupied with the here and now, we forget to breathe deeply, seek answers from our higher guidance and work with energy healing that can help us on another level.

Strategy can sound like a cold word but as an INTJ Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type, it’s second nature to me to see higher patterns. Or at least to attempt to. Like everyone, I can get bogged down in detail and confounded; or conversely, so high in the sky, I miss the real connections.

The Queen of Air (Swords), who links with the INTJ/Mastermind personality type, reminds us to wield our swordy clarity in a real way. As The Good Tarot Guidebook prompts us, this might include: setting healthy boundaries, seeing the underpinning whole, having a clear purpose, and being more honest with ourselves about what is happening.

The Five of Fire (Wands) suggests that freedom to explore ideas and be open is a powerful way to move at this time. Just as Mark Nepo reminds us, it’s not just a mind thing either, it involves openness of heart:

We can’t learn to see if we can’t keep our eyes open. In just this way, staying open to the unexpected expands the openness of our heart.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

strategy

The gifts of strategy

I’ve worked in strategy in many areas of my life including leadership of strategic policy in government. The gifts of strategy are many and they include:

  • stepping back to see connections
  • seeing the whole
  • allowing the framework to emerge
  • letting go of false assumptions and unreal fears
  • searching beyond easy solutions
  • putting steps into place to reach higher order solutions
  • being clear in purpose
  • seeing patterns and connections
  • looking for ‘out of the box’ answers, unfamiliar or counterintuitive options
  • doing the research to know the facts
  • brain-storming to open up the possibilities

Applying strategic skills to our lives and looking for patterns and solutions in more holistic ways is encouraged now. This might involve creative work: collage, poetry, brainstorming, mind-mapping, Sacred geometry might be a way of doing this, as Lynn Hanford-Day has found: mandalas, recurring patterns and seeing the whole in a creative and spiritual way.

Sometimes we have to step away and do things differently to see the patterns, connections and emerging solutions. I know working with visual imagery can help me. I am a person who works with words a lot, so working another way such as through visual collage can help me to break through to new ways of seeing things.

strategy

The above is a visual collage in my journal as part of the Softly Wild ecourse by Victoria Smith. This is a kind of paper altar at the start of the journal, a snapshot in time of what I was trying to make sense of then. Once I saw it all together, I understood the message perfectly. But I would have had trouble coming at it in more logical ways. Just taking a few hours with some magazines, a glue stick, a pair of scissors and an open blank page can be the way to work out the critical strategy for the next steps. It’s a way of accessing the unconscious directly, just as tarot is.

We are encouraged to do work counterintuitively now, so lean into what is not so natural for you to open up new possibilities. If you always work with visuals, try writing. Conversely, if you are a word person, take photographs, colour in or make a visual collage to free up different senses and cognitive functions. If you are a logical step by step person, try mind-mapping. Perhaps breaking things up into steps would be helpful if you can get stuck in the big picture and not take action.

What we are attracting and noticing

The law of attraction also has a place in all of this as we work with more spiritual and intuitive dimensions of energy. Thinking about questions like these can help:

  • What are we fearing and how much energy are we putting into that?
  • Are we envisioning the positive of what we desire rather than the negative of what we don’t want?
  • What is leading your thinking – fear or positive desires?
  • Are we taking time to notice signs, symbols and synchronicity or have we dulled our intuition?
  • How are we flexing our intuitive skills in the everyday to find higher wisdom?

We are encouraged to open our eyes to the higher order of connections and symbols and to their magic now. As Carl Jung reminds us:

Life is a luminous pause between two mysteries that are yet one.

strategy

Strategy work in action

It’s important to remember what practices help you in your own strategy work and making connections at this time. What helps you in making sense of things? Which activities open up options and solutions?

Here are some ideas and options for tapping into your strategic side:

  • mind-mapping
  • brainstorming
  • making lists
  • colouring in
  • drawing and painting
  • taking photographs
  • making collages
  • journalling
  • poetry
  • gathering facts
  • envisioning
  • creating mandalas
  • researching ideas

Write your own list of activities for developing strategy, identifying patterns and making connections this week.

This is a great week for uncovering more strategic and connected approaches to life!

Love to hear your thoughts!

I’d love to hear if you are feeling these energies around the need for strategy, seeing patterns and deeper connections.

All best wishes for this week of making new connections, being open, seeing patterns and using all this to progress in our creativity and in life challenges.

May the Queen of Air guide you to clarity and openness in matters of ideas and of the heart. And let me know what you think of this post and this weekly Tarot Narrative!

strategy

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.

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:

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

Alchemy and conducting magic with spirit and heart

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

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Creative and Connected #4 – the wholehearted edition

July 7, 2017

 

wholehearted

Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected and an exciting wholehearted Quiet Writing guest posting opportunity!

Here’s a round up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms with a focus this week on being wholehearted in life and creativity.

One of the core concepts behind Quiet Writing is being wholehearted and having the self-leadership to connect with others and feel integrated within ourselves to achieve our creative goals.

This week, Creative and Connected explores this theme:

What is wholehearted? Why is it important? What are the factors in having a great life? How can we bring our whole selves to our careers and creative practices?

And there’s a special opportunity for you to share Your Wholehearted Story’ on Quiet Writing! Yes, I’m putting out a call for for guest bloggers – I’m looking for some special people to write for Quiet Writing about what being wholehearted means to you. More on this below but I’m very excited to be opening Quiet Writing up to our collective voices so we can share the living of a whole, creative and connected life in support of each other.

Podcasts on wholehearted living

The 3 Most Important Factors for Having a Great Life with Jonathan Fields

Jonathan Fields is a leader in helping people create meaningful, connected and happy lives. In this interview on Melyssa Griffin’s Pursuit with Purpose podcast, he shares his work across different careers including shifting from law into different directions that were more in line with his heart and what he wanted in life.

Key points for me were:

  • Jonathan’s core set of questions and metrics to consider when making a life change
  • The three areas of your life that determine whether or not you’ll have a fulfilled, happy life: connection, contribution and vitality – and suggestions for how to achieve these.

Elizabeth Dialto on The Wild Soul Woman

This fabulous podcast chat between Julie Parker and Elizabeth Dialto on The Priestess Podcast was so much fun. Elizabeth is the founder of Wild Soul Movement, author of Untame Yourself, and host of the popular Untame The Wild Soul Woman podcast.

This conversation is about how the Divine Feminine can mean all manner of things for women in being untamed including embracing less traditionally female archetypes. The podcast also explores some of the traditional roles that women play that can keep us in people pleasing mode and not embracing our fuller, wilder, more assertive soul within. Super enjoyable and an invitation to wholehearted divine feminine living!

Books and reading notes

Reading wise this week I started Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard about a dysfunctional family of apple-growers in 19th century America.

Tracy Chevalier is a favourite author of mine. Her specialty is historical fiction and she has a wonderful way of taking a historical story and building on it with a fictional narrative. She is especially strong on creating a sense of place. ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is probably her most famous book but my favourite is ‘Remarkable Creatures’ set in Lyme Regis in Dorset and based on the real life story of pioneering fossil hunter, Mary Anning.

Tracy Chevalier announced on Twitter this week that Remarkable Creatures is currently being made into a movie.

This is so exciting! When I read Remarkable Creatures it just begged to be made into a movie – it’s so evocative and visual and such a fabulous story. Plus if you love Lyme Regis, Dorset and fossils as I do, it’s just pure heaven. It’s a story of discovery, self-belief and strength, especially of female strength and courage, in the face of opposition.

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

There have been some interesting blog posts on wholehearted living, being clear, moving through and understanding your personality type and its influence recently:

The only 3 things you need to live a good life explains Jonathan Field’s concept of how the joy of living can be seen in terms of three simple buckets: connection, contribution, and vitality. It’s easy to focus on and check in with, clear and remarkably helpful.

In Why your introversion doesn’t dictate your career path over on The Introvert Effect, Rebecca McFarland explains how being an introvert doesn’t limit you with your career paths and ways of working. You just need to learn to work it differently. Rebecca shares some fabulous tips for managing career and roles outside your comfortable energy zone.

In a great post on The Leadership Styles of Every Myers-Briggs® Personality Type, Susan Storm explores each MBTI type around the strengths and weaknesses of its unique leadership style. The key message?

Any type can be a leader, but every type is going to do it a little bit differently.

Insightful, thorough and grounded in practical experience, it’s a valuable reference for understanding leadership and personality type.

A post that spoke to me deeply this week was Nicole Cody’s Small Steps and a Pep Talk for Hard Days. It seems I’m not alone in finding this year to be a challenging one. Sometimes it’s hard to see that we are making progress. This post is a great reminder to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come. This is also a theme that popped up for me this week in my Tarot Narrative intuitive messages.

My own post on 10 Amazing Life Lessons from Swimming in the Sea was also really positively received in all sorts of ways which was so heartening. I loved writing this post on the many things that swimming in the sea has taught me this year. It’s been such a valuable learning experience in exercise, connection with community and feeling more whole through vitality and being coached by inspirational fit women buddies, Jeanette Buchanan and Samantha Wheatley.

sea swimming

An invitation to guest post on Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’

And now to an exciting opportunity to guest post on Quiet Writing!

Quiet Writing celebrates wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity.

But what does wholehearted mean to me – and you?

It’s a word I found coming out of my mouth in a negative sense firstly. About a year ago, I found myself saying, “I am just not feeling wholehearted any more.” And this sense started a deep search and a time of transition to a more wholehearted way of creating and living that is expressing itself in many ways. This is through Quiet Writing here, in my writing, in learning to be a Life Coach, in becoming certified in personality type assessment and in working more with intuitive tools such as tarot and oracle. And it’s also expressed in my developing work in coaching to support others who want to feel more creative and connected. And I am so loving all of this!

In the early stages of this transition journey, I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast “Who gets to decide if you’re a legitimate artist?‘ with poet, teacher, storyteller and artist, Mark Nepo. In discussing how to help Cecilia, a poet who has become marooned with writing because of not feeling good enough, being rejected and not being able to get into an MFA program, Mark offers her the word ‘wholehearted’ as advice and reads his beautiful poem:

Breaking Surface

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won’t let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can’t be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.

I listened to Mark reading this poem on the podcast again today and cried (again). It touches me so deeply and is what Quiet Writing is all about: letting no one keep us from our journey and being the creative explorer of our hearts.

So I’ve decided it’s time to hear more voices around wholehearted living and what it means to us here at Quiet Writing.

I am offering you the opportunity to consider guest posting here at Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’. Initially, I have six places on offer for 2017 – one per month to be featured here so that we can learn from each others’ journeys of the heart in this space.

I am hoping that we can also consider a regular or one-off publication or online magazine as well. I feel that there is a wealth of wholehearted stories to tap into to support us all, as source that we can add to and connect with over time.

wholehearted

What is ‘My Wholehearted Story’?

So here’s a summary of what I am thinking and what I am looking for:

What is wholehearted?

  • bringing your whole self to career and creative practice
  • not leaving parts of you, especially the creative, poetic, spiritual aspects, at the door, any door
  • being whole, being authentic, being light, being present
  • self-care and care of and connection with others
  • yin and yang, dark and light, strength and weakness, shadow explorations
  • living our unique passions, gifts and influences
  • being our body of work in the world

How does it connect with Quiet Writing?

Quiet Writing focuses on the core values of being

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

It’s about the strength that comes from working steadily without fanfare in writing and other spheres to coalesce, create, influence and connect. And it’s about honouring the process as much as the product; the being, becoming and journey, as much as the arrival. It’s about the artistry behind closed doors and how it merges and weaves into that of everyday life.

This beautiful quote, from Irene Claremont de Castillejo, in the frontispiece to The Heart Aroused by David Whyte captures the feeling for me around this more soulful kind of living:

Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes….Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting opposites together. But there are some who have no recognised artistic form to serve this purpose, they are the artists of the living. To my mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.”

What might you write about?

I’m interested in the ways that you have strived to build all or any of these values – creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected – into living more wholeheartedly. And how you have worked and written and created quietly to make this happen, behind the scenes, as a form of the art of the living.

I’m interested in guest blog posts and writing around these types of questions:

  • What makes you feel wholehearted and what does it mean to you?
  • What have your learnings been about being whole in heart and mind?
  • What tools, tips, practices, do you have for others?
  • Which intuitive tools, exercise, learning, skills or courses have made a significant difference for you?
  • How have you worked your strengths and weaknesses to blend and find wholeness?
  • What have been the challenges, the shadow journeys and how have you overcome them?
  • What fears have you faced and wrangled on the way and what have you learnt from this?
  • Which passions and loves come together to make you feel whole?
  • What have been the features of connecting to feeling more whole: rhythms, women’s voices, cycles, the journeys of others?
  • What have been your key influences: which book or other inspiration helped make sense of all this for you?
  • What aspects of your identity or personality journey have you worked through eg introversion, extraversion, understanding of your personality/MBTI type, your artistic or poetic self?
  • Which critical learnings about an aspect of your personality made all the difference in feeling whole and comfortable in your uniqueness?
  • What symbols, archetypes or natural cycles work for you and how do you work with them?
  • How have you practised self-leadership to feel more wholehearted?

As you can see, there are so many ways of looking at this concept of wholeheartedness and what makes us sing and be able to do our unique work in the world. I’d love to hear your story!

You would need to contribute:

  • a 2000 word (maximum) blog post draft to me a week in advance of an agreed date for publication
  • any suggested accompanying images and photos that you would like to include
  • a bio and accompanying photo

What are the benefits?

The benefits for you are:

  • being featured as a creative and connected voice in the Quiet Writing community
  • the opportunity to share your work, business, writing and learning
  • the opportunity to flex your writing muscles in new ways
  • the chance to reflect on your journey and experience in being wholehearted and share this
  • increased connection with like-minded others
  • the possibility of inclusion in a regular or one-off online publication if there is sufficient interest

The benefits for the Quiet Writing community are:

  • our voices coming together to celebrate being creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected
  • sharing journeys to living more wholeheartedly so we can help each other to shine
  • feeling more connected with a community of like-minded people around creative living and blending this with career and other aspects of life
  • the opportunity for publishing as a collective of voices to help inspire others in wholehearted creative living

If you’re interested?

Initially, I have six guest blogging spots available for each remaining month of 2017. But I’m hoping that the response will be such that we can consider an ongoing ‘My Wholehearted Story’ feature each month or more regularly as well other ways to showcase our stories together.

If you are interested in one of these initial guest blogging spots, please contact me as soon as possible at terri@quietwriting.com with your immediate thoughts on what you would like to focus on for your piece.

I’ll provide more details on specifics following this but I’d love your initial thoughts and a sense of response.

Or feel free to provide any thoughts on the concept of ‘My Wholehearted Story’ in the comments or via email. I’d love to hear your thoughts and can’t wait to receive your responses!

wholehearted

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Underwater swimming image via pexels.com

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 in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free ebook 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 tarot, intuition, influence, passion, 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:

6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers

Creative and Connected #3 – on self-care

Creative and Connected #2

Creative and Connected #1

Personality, story and Introverted Intuition

Shining a quiet light – working the gifts of introversion

intuition music & images

Music, intuition and messages of songs

March 2, 2017

Before we live what’s next, it always seems like there is some answer we need to arrive at. But daring to enter, we are humbled to discover, again and again, that the act of living itself unravels both the answer and the question. When we watch, we remain riddles to be solved. when we enter, we become songs to be sung.

Mark Nepo – The Book of Awakening – for 3 March

lyrics intuition

There’s a special form of intuition that comes through music and the lyrics of songs that is there if you listen.

Lines of music in the night

Recently, this intuition has been speaking to me through lines of music in the night. It’s more than just remembered music, the lines stuck in your head. It comes as random lines, perhaps from something I’ve been listening to but sometimes it’s a song I haven’t listened to for a while. This intuitive messaging via lyrics, song and music is marked by the qualities of being:

  • random
  • meaningful
  • repeated
  • a direct message
  • sometimes almost painstakingly pointed, sometimes a little more oblique
  • insistent enough to wake you night after night.

It’s a strange phenomenon. I’ve always been a lover of music, lyrics and the poetry of songs but it’s only lately that I can remember waking up with insistent and direct musical messages coming to me.

The most recent experience has been hearing the lines of  ‘New York’ by Alicia Keys coming to me in my own voice. And it’s a specific set of lines that keeps coming to me in the night over and over:

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new…

Read more: Alicia Keys – New York Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I haven’t listened to this song for ages and I’ve never been to New York but I understand its symbolism.

The main message for me is the inspiring words: ‘There’s nothing you can’t do’. It seems like an intuitive message from spirit, from angels, from ancestors. I don’t really know who it’s from, but it’s a message of encouragement from my intuition, just as rainbows appear in my life at key points. It’s saying that I’m on the right track, able to do much, and to tap into a collective creative spirit such as New York as a city might symbolise.

Intuition, symbols and learning to listen

Personality types for whom introverted intuition is a dominant or auxiliary function are the ones most likely to be finding this type of intuition coming to them. MBTI types who tend to rely on or experience this type of visionary insight are: INFJ, INTJ, ENFJ and ENTJ. People with these personality types can find that answers come from an interior intuitive kind of knowing. This can be via symbolic ways such as images, metaphors, lines of songs, words and dreams. And all people can learn to strengthen this type of intuitive insight whatever their type.

It tends to come as a whole piece that summarises the answer, feeling or thought succinctly in a kind of code you can hear or read if you learn to listen. It’s similar to how we can learn the language and symbolism of dreams. But like dreams, you almost have to go through an education or opening to its wisdom which is collective in nature but individual in context and application.

Intuitive Friday and intuitive music

I launched a hashtag project a while ago called #intuitivefriday about taking time to celebrate intuition in a mindful and deep way on Friday.

@todorf shared a particularly beautiful piece on considering intuition from the perspective of lyrics that move you, the poetry in compositions and people’s stories of lives changed by a piece of music or song:

20 Pieces of Music That Changed the World  is the most amazing series on music and influence and its impact to make change from an interior to a wider world. It is about “feelings which coalesced in music first then moved out into the rest of society”. I am so thankful to @todorf (nod) for sharing this.

I was struck by the comments in the introduction to the first episode by Robert Harris about music as an “emotional package”, which has the “ability to crystallise emotional states”. He talks about how music:

has the power to show us a future that we only dimly understand intellectually but understand emotionally.

Music is unmediated and “beyond the power of words” but “our brains understand it instantly.”

Lyrics and intuition

So lyrics, lines of songs, coming to me in this way unmediated in the middle of night, through words somehow beyond the power of words, is a kind of intuition.

When I wake in the middle of the night, I get up to capture the words in my notebook in the dark because I know I will lose them if I don’t. They are a knowing without knowing, words beyond words, and a dialogue with spirit that I need to heed and listen to. They are messages from beyond that we need to get in some way though we do not always fully understand.

As I finish this piece, the lyrics singing out in the room from my own Spotify playlist are from The Stranglers’ ‘Skin Deep’:

Some days there’s things on your mind you should keep

Sometimes, it’s tougher to look than to leap

better watch out for the skin deep…

It’s a song I have listened to over and over, nodding and smiling, watching out for the skin deep, going deeper, leaping rather than looking and understanding that some days there truly are things on my mind I should pay close quiet attention to.

That power of music, lyrics, songs to reach from the beyond – or into the future –  has a magical ability to make you smile, understand or get a sense of something.

Every life is a language no one knows. With every heart-break, discovery and unexpected moment of joy, with every lift of music that touches us where we didn’t think we could be touched, with every experience, another letter in our alphabet is decoded. Take a step; learn a word. Feel a feeling; decode a sign. Accept a truth; translate a piece of mystery written in your heart.

Mark Nepo – The Book of Awakening – for 3 March

Thought pieces

Love to hear your thoughts on music and intuition:

  • When has a song or music come to you in the night? What did it say and what does it mean to you?
  • When have you sung words, listened to lyrics knowing they deliver something deeper that you don’t as yet understand ?
  • What music, songs, lyrics takes you back to a special moment you can hardly put into words? One that enables you to be able to capture exactly where you were, what you felt: the tears, the laughter, the grief, the purest emotion that you could not put into words if you tried?
  • What song has changed the world for you?
  • What’s your favourite song and you don’t even really know why?
lyrics music intuition

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:

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

Being a vessel or working with introverted intuition

Lyrebird: spirit animal for Quiet Writing

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