fbpx
Browsing Tag

oracle cards

intuition planning & productivity

Overwhelm, intuition and thinking

January 27, 2017

thinking and intuition

You can get overwhelmed when the intuition is firing and there’s an abundance of creative inspiration. Whilst it’s a good problem to have, without balance it can lead to inaction. Here are some thoughts on how to manage this.

As an INTJ Myers-Briggs Type Indicator type, Introverted Intuition and Extraverted Thinking preferences play out to a large extent in my life. They are my dominant and auxiliary preferences respectively. There’s a frequent tussle going on between intuition and thinking over which takes the lead role at any particular point.

Being the dominant one, intuition often leads, coming from an interior and quiet place. It’s an inner voice or a flash of insight, a mystery I don’t fully understand and possibly never can. It’s taken me a while to begin to understand this part of me even though it’s the preeminent piece.

Thinking then is not far behind, connecting the ideas that come from intuitive inspiration, shaping them into an argument or a project, a strategic plan or a blog post. It links symbols in poetry more overtly or plays the role of editor, cutting back, refining and polishing.

When our intuition is switched on and we learn to tune into it more, suddenly so much comes in. That big picture becomes huge and threatens to overwhelm. Our to-do lists that involve crafting that inspiration further become enormous. It feels like all that creativity is going nowhere, just spinning round and round our head.

The Seven of Cups tarot card from the The Fountain Tarot recently captured this for me so well.
7 of cups

So many ideas, so many options, so many projects, so many plans. I can relate to the look on the woman’s face. The first time I drew this card, on a day of particular overwhelm, I laughed out loud. It just captures the feeling so perfectly, a state of being stunned into inaction by the options.

And the upshot of all this? Nothing much gets done except a lot of brainstorming, scribbled notes of potential and words of promise. We need to learn how to bring the intuition and thinking functions together to ground ourselves more into action in the external world.

Coalescing intuition and thinking

So if your interior world is running hot and your to-do lists are longer than your arm, here are some suggested strategies based on my experiences to focus energy and attention into action.

1 Practise rest and self-care

Ironically, I am finding that rest and self-care is fundamental to coalescing intuition and thinking to get action happening. Self-care is fundamental to all things, but it’s a special consideration here.  Like self-care in emergency situations so we can be of service, we need to ensure our buzzing intuition and sparking ideas don’t drive us into an energy tailspin where we are of no help to anyone. As Amber Adrian, intuitive and energy healer reminded me, “Put your own oxygen mask on first.” Wise advice.

And lo and behold, when we do rest and practice nourishing ourselves, the well-springs fill and the right ideas burst forth. Suddenly we know the answer or the next best thing to do.

2 Capture ideas and work in bite-size chunks

One of the big issues with creative overwhelm is that it’s all so exciting. We can feast on that emotion and not much else happens. I’m working to focus on specific aspects of projects within the time available each day. My Write Your Own Adventure planner, with its open and spacious approach, is helping to make every day a creative step in the journey. It’s easy to document progress and it’s showing me where my energy is going and where it’s dissipating.

I’m also working on breaking things up more: time into chunks and words into achievable targets. I’m starting to work with Scrivener  more to shape writing drafts and manage inputs. I’m using tools to capture ideas and connections so I don’t lose them. I’ve been a long time user of Evernote for gathering ideas, references and images and tagging them to bring together later.

I’m exploring time management and productivity techniques like the Pomodoro technique. Linked to self-care, it’s all about short bursts and writing sprints plus getting up, walking and keeping refreshed instead of sitting for hours. This is something I need now.

In a Secret Library podcast interview with Caroline Donahue, Scott Carney explains his formula for getting writing done which combines these techniques. He explains how he uses Scrivener and writes 500 words a day, 5 days a week and that over eight months, this ends up the length of a book manuscript. Or it could be a lot of blog posts. Either way it’s a great practical way to focus effort into chunks and get the writing done.

3 Realise the benefits of strategy

Sometimes a combination of intuition and intellect can lead to ‘analysis paralysis’ and over-thinking, especially when combined with introversion.

At our best, however, we can bring these three orientations together to create visionary plans, then work out the logical steps and goals to get there. We can identify the measures that help us achieve the plan and we can define what success looks like. And we can leave room for the unexpected.

Strategy is elegant clear thinking, being confident and assembling what we have logically. As Colette Baron-Reid says in relation to the ‘Thinker’ card from the ‘Wisdom of the Oracle‘ deck, when strategy is calling…

Things are exactly what they seem. You have all the information you need. Keep it simple and you will win the game of life you’re playing now.

thinker

Joanna Penn is my role model in this respect. Her webinar on how to achieve your goals in 2017 is a valuable example of strategy development in creative spaces. Joanna’s achievements over time exemplify how to work with both intuition and strategic thinking goals to make excellent progress.

Like any journey, knowing the destination helps with managing the steps to get there and avoids the wasted time of going down wrong paths.

4 Keep showing up

The overwhelm of so many creative ideas can make us feel that we are not getting anywhere compared to our aspirations. Consequently, we get discouraged and do nothing or not as much as we had hoped.

So it’s important to keep showing up to write the words, get the blog posts published and focus on the inputs that will help manifest our vision.  It’s vital to keep learning the skills that will help us do the work of our heart. But it’s achieved little by little as we show up each step of the way to bring that effort to bear.

Sometimes it’s hard to see where it’s all leading as an intuitive creative. But just ‘doing the work’ in line with our vision and plan is the way to take it forward.

Steven Pressfield is the best person to read about showing up and doing the work. His work has clearly shown us that the ‘not sitting down to write’ is resistance and ultimately, fear. We need to break the impasse and show up to find the intuitive mystery of the words as they unfold. In Turning Pro, Steven reminds us:

That place that we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper than our petty personal egos. That place is beyond intellect. It is deeper than rational thought.

It is instinct.

It is intuition.

It is imagination.

So the plan, the strategy, the structure, the formula are all valuable, but the heart of the work and the journey is at that space where the pen hits the page or the fingers hit the keyboard. It’s when the instinct, imagination and intuition find form.

And we only make that journey by showing up and writing, unfolding the mystery of our intuition, word by word.

Making the connection between head and heart

So my reflections on this have led me to realise that intuition leads the way, being the inspiration and destination. The intellect is there too but its role is to shape the map, plan the timeframes, create the doable list or corral the effort into something manageable. It has its place and its ultimately about keeping things simple and on track, not over complicating.

But the intuition, the active imagination comes first. It’s not so neat and time-sensitive nor is it predictable, but it’s the heart of the effort, the raison d’etre.

We need both. Without intuition, we wouldn’t have the creative imagination to start with. Without thinking, the inspiration wouldn’t see the light of day in a practical way.

In comes the Queen of Swords

I left this piece open-ended overnight as I thought how best to finish it. And in the night, the Queen of Swords came like a flash, her sword glinting in the darkness.

Queen of Swords

And this brought all the pieces together. You see, the Queen of Swords has been my poster girl for a while. She sits at the front of my Softly Wild  journal, guiding this piece of my life, where it says: “I dedicate this notebook to making the connection between head and heart.” I am on the last page of that book now.

And only yesterday as I work through Susannah Conway’s fabulous 78 Mirrors course, I discovered that the Queen of Swords can be seen as the court card for the INTJ type. Cutting through, clarity of thought and commitment are her specialty. I’ve recently completed my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator certification so this link holds special meaning as I seek to take this work into the world.

So in the end I find that I have the answers within me. That intuition is the heart and conduit to feeling. Thinking is the sword to cut through to the essence and bring it to light for me and others. It’s time to finally commit and do the work, given that I already know the strategies to get there.

I hope the spirit of the Queen of Swords and these ideas can give you the courage to face the overwhelm and get on with your work in the world too. Because we so need to see its refined shining light.

This piece is written for #IntuitiveFriday – you can find more about this initiative celebrating intuition here.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is now on Facebook so please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on creativity, productivity, writing, voice, intuition, introversion, Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type , tarot and yes, passion!

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions including personality developments and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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

Featured image from Shutterstock via Pixabay and used with thanks.

Queen of Swords image is from the Sakki Sakki Tarot deck.

inspiration & influence love, loss & longing

The unique voice of what we love

November 30, 2016

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart.

Recently I drew the ‘Bone Collector’ card from Colette Baron-Reid’s The Enchanted Map Oracle Cards.

bone-collector

I don’t know about you but this image evokes lots of different reactions in me. It sounds a little grim and the bones hanging about are a bit confronting but there’s smiling and a sense of richness. My initial  feeling – there’s much to work through with this card.

The overall message of the card is positive and reminds us:

You are whole and have everything you need within.

However, there is a dark side about what is buried and casting shadows. The Bone Collector particularly focuses on life experiences when young and how we can become wounded and feel less than, damaged in some way. The wounds can dive deep beneath the surface. We may not talk about them or even be aware we are acting a certain way because of them. We may feel essentially flawed. There’s a message about the Bone Collector as an inner resource to help us to “reclaim lost or stolen power”.

Speaking up to let love live

Not long after, I was working with Alana Fairchild’s Sacred Rebels Oracle Deck, when this card came to light, developing that same theme:

release the dark wound

This card reminds us:

You are being asked to honour the path of your own love – what inspires you, what feels exciting, joyful and perhaps even rather different? Let that live! Release the dark wounding of false belief.

And a key way this ‘false belief’ plays out is as a tendency to perfectionism where our ideas and thoughts wither on the vine and do not even make it to formation or light. The dark wound especially “demands perfection and denies process”.

What a tragedy of spirit this is.

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart. Every word, every piece, should be a fight back, a healing process, a spiritual journey to uncover our possibilities and potential.

And part of this is knowing it is all already within us if we can only be kinder and more trusting with ourselves and let our ideas live.

Discovering our unique voice

The New Moon in Sagittarius is gently beaming energy into these dark places too right now. Mystic Mamma has a fabulous New Moon post which brings together key messages about the moon energy and how to work with it.

The words that spoke to me, reflecting the spirit of Quiet Writing, are from Patricia Liles:

It may also be pushing you to take care of yourself in ways you never were able to see before. Speaking up for those parts of your self that have not had a voice before.

There’s a whole raft of reasons why these parts of ourselves have not had a voice before: time, distractions, pain, fear and dominant discourses where these voices just don’t seem to fit or be heard.

But as Colette Baron-Reid reminds us (via The Enchanted Map #47 Sacred Pool – reversed):

Dimming your light serves no-one

We need to value process and not silence ourselves with concerns about product and outcomes. We need to challenge that perfectionist part of us that won’t let ourselves shine and or even turn the light on in the first place. We need to quiet those voices that stem from ‘comparisonitis’ and feeling envious, less than or better than. You can easily see there is nothing to be gained from going there and there are no winners in this intellectual warfare. So why is it so compelling that we go there, allowing it to deny our unique abilities so savagely?

Time to collect the bones

It’s time to collect the bones and honour them. It’s time to release the dark wound, like returning a fish to water to enable it to swim, upstream if necessary, into the sacred pool where we accept what we love and find a voice for it.

With my natural creativity to guide me at this time, I’m digging deep into wounds and possibilities, knowing that I have so much to give, as we all do. This collecting of the bones is about not being afraid to go there and being able to speak out and not worry about what other people think. There’s been too much silence.

And a key part of this digging is hearing my voice now weaving spirit into words – finding the broken pieces to heal them, holding on to words like fins that can propel me and linking with other kindred souls also now speaking up.

The advice from the Bone Collector is:

Act as if you have what you need and you’ll find you have it after all. Anything is possible.

Even the strength and ability to collect those bones, to honour those wounds and to speak up and in doing so, find that unique voice that others may recognise.

unique voice of what you love

This image is from pexels

Thought pieces:

Reviving the Ancient Sisterhood is an excellent article that came to me via the sisterhood at The Mojo Lab’s Inner Circle. The article focuses on feminine wounding, women’s collaboration and community as a healing force, archetypes, traditions and sacred aspects of women’s connections including equality and mastery of expression.

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney wrote extensively on these issues many years ago including the impact of such dynamics on women’s sense of self. Marcia Westkott’s The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney offers an analysis of this work:

In breaking through the inner fear, in embracing what she has dreaded, the female hero shatters the internal form of her victimization. External shoulds are driven from their internal stronghold, and conscious choice rather than fearful compliance informs her actions. She experiences, finally the extraordinary power of her ordinary real self.

 

spirit-into-words-wings

PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy Policy

COOKIE POLICY

Cookie Policy