writing Archives

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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!

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 the 36 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.

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The journey of a lifetime – a wholehearted story

April 26, 2018

This guest post from Chantal Simon shows how the wholehearted path invites you to weave the threads of your lifetime journey into a cohesive whole.

This is the ninth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, with each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I am honoured to have Chantal Simon as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Chantal for sharing her story and stunning photographs. Chantal’s story shows how following our heart, connecting the pieces of our skills and passions weaves a cohesive lifetime journey. A story with language adventures, healing arts, beautiful photography and a backdrop of changing landscapes, read on to find out more!

Answering the call to adventure

It was January 1991 and time moved unbearably slowly in my native corner of France. Going through the motions at university, dutifully attending classes that failed to hold my interest, and feeling increasingly restricted in other areas of my life, I was restless and needed a change. Fast.

As if on cue, one of my English professors called me at home to offer me one of two places on a European exchange program and a four-month grant to study in Galway, Ireland. Dumbstruck by this unexpected turn of events, I quickly regained my composure on the phone, gratefully accepted and took down the details. Time was of the essence, so there was no second-guessing myself. I made all the necessary arrangements and, less than two weeks later, boarded the ferry and embarked on a journey that would change my life.

To say that I fell under the spell of Ireland is no exaggeration. The rugged beauty of its west coast landscapes moved me almost to the point of aching, everything was exciting and I could see possibilities I had never considered. The canvas of my life had suddenly expanded and I loved how it made me feel. Free to be all that I was. I knew I had found my soul home and decided to do all that I could to stay and create as spacious and fulfilling a life as possible.

Finding joy in the outdoors and writing

Born in a port city on the western coast of France, I had always felt at home in nature and, as a child, spent countless hours playing with friends, my siblings or by myself in the wood at the end of our street. We climbed trees, found secret hideaways and ate all the berries. That sense of ease in the outdoors and need to explore my surroundings never left me.

A month after arriving in Ireland, I immersed myself in Connemara’s wild beauty and climbed my first mountain. I’ve never been the sporty type, but that way of being in the world, feeling my aliveness expand with every step or breath of fresh air, invigorated by the elements and at one with my immediate environment is as natural to me as it is necessary.

My first line of work in Ireland was as a teacher of French and, as such, I enjoyed three full summers off in a row. At the time, I was living in the Irish capital and was more than ready for an outdoor adventure when the much-awaited month of June would come. Two months spent cycling down the western coast of France and around Brittany, a summer of boating on the Irish inland waterways and hiking the West Highland Way during a rare Scottish heatwave presented an abundance of experiences, encounters and impressions which I casually captured with my camera as well as in a notebook. The storyteller and writer in me had been reawakened and, as synchronicity would have it, books on writing and creativity soon crossed my path, encouraging me to nurture that side of me – an invitation I happily accepted.

Broadening horizons and taking risks

After three years of teaching beginner, academic and professional levels of my native language to a variety of students from 3 to 80 years of age, I wanted to broaden my horizons and started seeking work as a translator. Within a month, an IT translation company booked me for a 3-day freelance assignment onsite.

I had no computer experience whatsoever, but that didn’t faze me. How difficult could that be? My willingness to find out still amuses me, as does my faith in my language, typing and on-the-spot learning skills. It seems they worked a charm since I was asked in for a second assignment. IT translation was a relatively new industry then, Dublin-based agencies providing a bridge between American software companies and translation providers in Europe. Before too long, I was doing regular freelance work for two of the largest agencies while maintaining various freelance teaching gigs.

Committing to self-employment

When one of the agencies offered me a full-time position with a 1-year contract, I accepted it as a great opportunity to learn everything I could about that industry. I did that, but also learned something equally, if not more, important: I wasn’t employee material. Being surrounded by people, stuck all day in a neon-lit office full of computers was so draining to me, it was physically painful.

The less positive aspects of city life were also starting to weigh on me and I was missing the wild Atlantic. With the terms of my contract met and realizing I merely needed a computer, phone line and modem to set myself up as a freelance IT translator, I resigned and moved back to the west coast. It was June 1996 and I felt professionally freer than ever before, having just committed to self-employment and made my work location independent.

Healing modalities and deep spiritual unfolding

Building a business on my own terms was exciting, as was the freedom to take time off whenever I wanted, either to pursue my creative activities or to travel abroad. One dull spring, seeking a respite from the ever-pouring Irish rain, my then partner and I booked a flight to Crete. This marked the start of a love affair with Greece.

We returned the following year and eventually bought an old house on the Cycladic island of Paros. Being able to take time off to stay there all summer was priceless. My notebook and camera always in my backpack, I learned some Greek, spent my days exploring the island and neighbouring ones, visited whitewashed churches and temples, watched the sun set into the Aegean Sea every evening, and ate an abundance of sun-drenched fruit and freshly caught fish. It was bliss, pure and simple.

Back in Ireland, I continued to balance work, creative pursuits and the needs of my unfolding spiritual self. My spirituality had always been part and parcel of my creativity and time spent in nature, but another realm of experience opened itself up to me when I started training in Reiki in 1995. After years of practising, integrating, training in other energy healing modalities and treating friends and loved ones, I opened my practice to the public.

Working on people I knew nothing or little about showed me how intuitive and clairsentient I had become. This subtle awareness continued to expand and led me down a beckoning path of investigation. Specific books came my way, certain themes started to appear in my writing and art. Synchronicities abounded and I started to feel an undeniable pull towards a certain part of the British Isles. True to my nature, I heeded the call.

Art and the call of the feminine

The city of Bath, my home for the following two years, was not only stunning and a delight to live in, but also perfectly located to allow regular day trips to the ancient power sites of Stonehenge, Avebury, Stanton Drew and Glastonbury as well as farther north to the fascinating Forest of Dean. I constantly felt like I was bathing in a pool of potent yet nurturing energy. This had a huge impact on my personal unfolding and it is there that I experienced one of my biggest shifts in consciousness to date.

My creativity also flourished, at that point mainly flowing through the channels of collage and mixed media art, techniques I had come across three years previously. Having enjoyed publication success with the articles, poems and collages I occasionally submitted to magazines and journals, I took the jump and started a blog, hoping to connect with like-minded people. The sense of community that characterized what was commonly called the blogosphere back then was truly amazing. I forged lasting friendships with people who, like me, were creating more and more room in their lives for their creativity and art.

My awareness of the divine feminine became increasingly acute and embodied while living in Bath, so it was little surprise that related themes, archetypes and symbolism became prominent in the images I created. I enjoyed the conversations they prompted online tremendously.

It was a very expansive and busy period in my life: I was a high-tech translator by day, a creative by night and spent countless weekends exploring the area. However, some good things come to an end and my personal journey called me back to Ireland.

Forever seeking more congruence

Perhaps it had something to do with the incredible times we live in or simply was a side effect of turning 50. The fact remains that, last summer, I put an end to my 23-year career as an IT translator to focus solely on what truly holds meaning for me and, hopefully, be of service in a different way. My values and slow living aspirations were increasingly at odds with the consumerism-pushing content of my assignments and the near-daily deadlines becoming the norm in that line of work. There was no other true way forward than to pause and course-correct.

To me, living wholeheartedly means following the flow of your life, taking chances but saying “no” when needed. It requires recognizing and using your skills and the resources available to you, as well as being fully present to all that is within and in front of you, the opportunities just like the challenges and difficulties. Sometimes convoluted, the wholehearted path invites you to weave all the threads of your life, your passions, needs and values into an increasingly cohesive whole, and fosters self-responsibility, self-leadership and sovereignty.

Key book companions along the way of my lifetime journey

Anaïs Nin’s diary
D.H. Lawrence’s novels
Jean Houston’s books on human potential
David Whyte’s poetry
The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
Writing for Your Life – Deena Metzger
Synchronicity – Deike Begg
Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation – Dorothy Walters
Wild Creative – Tami Lynn Kent
Writing Wild – Tina Welling

Photographs by Chantal Simon used with permission and thanks.

About Chantal Simon

A native of France, Chantal Simon is a writer, translator and photographer living on the North West coast of Ireland. As well as working on a memoir about her spiritual and energetic unfolding, she is currently creating a photographic series inspired by her natural surroundings and her love of the liminal. Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram, where she shares both her photography and snippets from her creative life, or visit chantalsimon.com (website upcoming soon in 2019).

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

You might also enjoy my free 94-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

creativity wholehearted stories

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

March 29, 2018

This guest post from Shalagh Hogan shows how gathering lessons of self-knowledge over time can lead to wholehearted Creative Soul Living.

This is the eighth 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!

I am honoured to have Shalagh Hogan as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Shalagh for sharing her story and photographs. Shalagh and I connected on Instagram via our love of creativity. Her story shows how growth and self-knowledge accumulate over time. Embracing creativity wholeheartedly via parenting, blogging, community, writing and social media, Shalagh’s gathering lessons evolve into Creative Soul Living. Read on to find out more!

Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Despite my low self-esteem and anxieties, I have enthusiastically gathered my self-knowledge with hope for a better life. I accept as a given, my need to seek and grow a more whole version of my formerly fragmented self. Yet up to even a few years ago, the concept of Wholehearted Living, or what I call Creative Soul Living, was still just a conceptual inkling. Having never felt whole, the definition and the feeling of wholeness eluded me.

One lesson at a time is how my self-guided journey has unfolded. I am busy gathering my lessons which rise like cream to the top. From the more important lessons about creativity, community, connection, self-care, and self-trust, I have learned who I truly am, what makes me happiest, and who I want to proudly see myself being. Growth takes its time, yet I always feel like my biggest and best lessons are the ones that have just happened.

Valuing intuition and introversion

As a child, I was fragmented. I held too many pains involving too many people. My self-mirrors were broken, and the chaos was draining. I was a creative with no permission to be me. As a teen, much-needed hope collided with my insatiable appetite for knowledge when my mother’s pursuit of a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences showed me that knowledge was power, and we can use this power to choose our life’s outcome.

It was then, I also began my life-long journal writing practice, developing my inner voice (which I now know to be my intuition) and the voice of my blog. It was then too that my Myers-Briggs test results pegged me as an ENFP. Although this felt mostly right, last year I was relieved to discover and own that I am equal parts Introvert and Extrovert. Although, for many years I neglected my creative callings, the introverted time I now take to think, write, and create are my self-care practices.

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

My self-care became essential when I was 38 and pregnant with my son. My anxieties and the last of my self-destructive behaviours shook and woke me. It became clear, how I treated myself would be how my kids would treat themselves. Doing as I did and not as I said, my children would inherit my anxieties, my self-doubt, and my repressed creativity. I truly committed then to taking better care of and healing myself mentally and physically that my children might hopefully do the same. Eventually, I quit smoking, I began eating better, and I continued to seek therapy.

My biggest authentic self “aha”, on which the rest of my work truly depended, was given to me in a therapy session. The therapist offered that I had low self-esteem. At first, I raged against this mis-definition of me. If I wasn’t who I thought I was, who was I then? Yet, this information freed me like a bird from my heart cage. I wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, nor did I need to help fix anyone I knew. Instead, I needed to have compassion and love for my humanity. And again, I began gathering my lessons.

Writing and connecting to heal

Bad things can happen for good reason, it may just take a while to see why. When my son was one, an American economic slump forced me to close my lovely little gift and antiques store named Bally Eden and I returned home to mourn the loss of my dream shop. I was anxious and desperate not to be stuck at home with my fast-growing-soon-to-be-a-toddler boy without something “just for me”. Encouraged by an old whisper in my ear, I began to write personal essays and publish them online. It then took five more years to start my blog at Shalavee.com which has just turned six.

I purposed the blog to make me a better writer, create a living resume, and voice my lessons regularly. While I achieved these goals, it was the community and relationships I’ve developed here online during my writing journey which have been my truest gift. My new unseen friends and our connections and courtships via comments and kind letters elevated my ego and gave me an immensely better self-image; a self-reflection where there once was none. I began to see my beauty and not my broken. And, as my voice of pain and healing came through on my blog, my readers said, “Keep writing what you are writing. We feel this way too.” Authenticity and vulnerability were my win/win.

Healing through community creativity

These voices from my community have helped to shift my purpose to offering others my voice to speak through. Our self-reflections echo each other through our communications and we begin to see ourselves as both individuals and as a collective of women with one voice of self-love and acceptance. We are gathering our lessons together. Strangers have become mirrors I will treasure forever, and the internet helped make me visible and whole again.

Although I was terrified, in May of 2016, my community encouraged me to host my first Instagram Challenge called the Soul Selfie challenge. For one week, we explored our souls, our fears, and our truths together in a deeper way via the hashtag #Soul_Selfie. My esteem and courage to lead increased incredibly as I hosted another that Fall and two more in 2017.

Then a small gathering on the evening of the first women’s march in January of 2017, inspired me to start a mindful meet-up group of my own in real life. We meet monthly to discuss a soul topic, eat well, and drink prosecco. We witness, acknowledge, and validate one another and that is so very necessary to my process of seeing my wholehearted self. I have created what I needed which benefits me and others and heals us all.

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Two years ago, even with all the progress in my writing and my self-healing, I knew my anxieties were still running the show. I found a new kick-butt therapist, a new resolve, and heading into my 50’s saw me amp up my efforts of self-discovery and visibility. Reading was one huge resource I used to finally reach the summit of the value hill I’d struggled to climb my entire life. I discovered I could say and mean, “I can”.

I read four books last year with willful intention to change my life’s outlook and my understanding of myself. First, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert gifted me with such validity and permission for my creative process. I came to understand that I was an Uber-Creative and my inner child needed to be creatively indulged until she trusted me again. From this, I was inspired to create online projects and a creative community to support myself and others in being our creative selves.

I had barely put Big Magic down when I read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. From her brilliant work, I came to understand the necessity of community, vulnerability, and authenticity. Disconnection is our worst fear and we need to be authentic to belong to, trust, and reconnect with ourselves. And I now understand there’s a connection between creativity and vulnerability.

Then, on my therapist’s recommendation, I read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns which was the very first book that permitted me to understand and name my anxieties. I learned how to refute the lies called Cognitive Distortions that cause them. Eventually, this book helped me win the battle against my anxieties.

And lastly, on Terri’s suggestion, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. This book showed me that I may be even more capable of making a difference in the world if I allow myself the time and visibility to work on and publish my theories. My deeper thinking and writing will help me and the world, and this feels like a noble purpose.

Creativity conquers all

While reading and gathering my lessons, I became aware of an internal dissonance which my therapist suggested was my inner child throwing tantrums. It seems denying my creativity had my creative inner child furious at me for not allowing her to play. So I decided to just give her what she wanted.

First, I indulged in thirty days of creating paper collage through an online creative community challenge. Having really enjoyed that, I created my own Instagram challenge called Our Creative May and this gave me another month straight to play. From this, our IG creative community established the hashtag #ourcreativeselves to continue posting our creations. I immediately did another challenge in June and July creating daily postcard art for the #ICAD project.

Four months straight of daily creating and continuous authenticity had proven that I did have enough time to create and I was trustworthy. My creative indulgence grounded me and greatly dissipated more of my anxieties. As I continue to replace the slave-driving parent who preaches art as impractical with the compassionate empowering present parent, I recreate a trust in myself proving my word is good. Self-trust is the truest most important result of our authentic creativity.

As my anxiety diminished, I began to understand this powerful lesson of how creativity and anxiety cannot coexist, and how indulging one represses the other. Love and presence conquer fear.

Creative Soul Living

This profound understanding of the inverse relationship between creativity and anxiety, and knowing many others need permission to create too, led me to develop and lead a Creativity Workshop this past November of 2017. I believe that our permission to live more creatively is necessary and integral to us being wholehearted individuals. I believe less consumerism and more Creativism will heal the world as we find creative solutions to its problems.

Creative Soul Living is the term I use to describe my process of Wholehearted Living. I intentionally seek and share my life lessons, prioritize my creativity in all areas of my life, develop my self-trust, value authenticity, commit to self-care, am mindful and present, stay connected with my people, and intuit my grandest Why for being here. And while my Why continues to firm up and my path widens, I know I have fought to reach my here and now, gathering my lessons one lesson at a time.

My future “I can” will include more creativity workshops, e-books, and eventually a book about crafting our own life plans based on our life lessons. My inward soul work has brought me the gift of knowing me and that feels like permission to hope. Hope is what I want to share with the world through my writing.

Photos and artwork by Shalagh Hogan used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns

Deep Work by Cal Newport

About Shalagh Hogan

Shalagh Hogan, said Shay-la, is a personal essayist, a blogger, a designer, an uber-creative, and mother to a five-year-old ginger girl and just turned teen boy. She resides in an ancient house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA, and is always amazed and amused by life’s abundance of lessons. Thrice-weekly she shares the lessons she gathers on her blog at Shalavee.com (Chez La Vie was taken) and currently, Creativity is her Why. Follow her as @shalaghhogan on Facebook and Instagram.

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

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey.

Just pop your email address in the box to the right or below. You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

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love, loss & longing transition wholehearted stories

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

March 1, 2018

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

This is the seventh guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

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

Beginning the journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

The healing power of writing

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

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

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

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

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

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life

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

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

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

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

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

Learning about the impermanence of everything

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

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

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

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing

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

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

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

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

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

Finding my writing voice through journaling

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

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

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

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

Finding joy after grief and pain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key book companions along the way

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

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Claire Bidwell-Smith, The Rules of Inheritance

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

About Kerstin Pilz

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

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

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey.

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transition work life

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

February 22, 2018

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Leaving an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years, I reflect on this transition and the gift of learning from my body of work over time.

Leaving a long-term job role

Today marks an auspicious day when I leave an organisation where I have worked for over 30 years. It’s not without sadness. And it’s been a strange conclusion in many ways. I’ve been on leave for some time caring for my mother who recently passed away after a long battle with terminal cancer. So not being in the workplace as I leave, the usual farewells have not been part of the process. It’s as if I have disappeared off into the sunset on another journey.

This is in part very true. I realised about two years ago that I no longer enjoyed my job or working in the organisation. The organisation had changed and so had I. It was time to get back to my long-harboured creative loves and pursuits that lingered in the margins of my days. The books and creative inspiration I craved and hung onto as I made a long commute to work by car and train became key. This liminal time became a passage of transition as I sowed the seeds of my leaving into the stitches and seams of my days. I realised my heart was no longer in it as I applied for jobs I didn’t really want.

In truth, this leaving had been a long time coming and at this stage, I had already started to move on and transition to another life. The one I really wanted to be living. You may know that feeling – your heart has left the building, or relationship or place. And you walk in the door each day feeling so empty dragging yourself through the day until it’s time to leave. So you make a plan to leave for good to create a new life.

The greatest gift

My time in the organisation – a large government department focused on adult vocational education, TAFE NSW – was not without great joy and opportunity. The greatest gift of this transition has been to reflect on my body of work over time to plan a vision for a new life.

It’s so easy when we feel the sadness of moving on to devalue the past, all that we are and all that the organisation and its people have given us. The opportunities, the connections, the people, the learning, the vision, the strategy, the excitement – it can all get snowed over in a narrative of loss. There’s a tendency to risk losing the good and the valuable continuing threads with all of these feelings.

Pain is a player in this scenario too as we may feel undervalued. In my situation, I’ve been made ‘redundant’, my job ‘deleted’ in a restructure I am no longer a part of. The language itself is a challenge to deal with, not exactly creating the best of feelings. We can tie our self-image to this boatload of emotions and feel ourselves being towed behind it, awash with anger. In this, we can risk losing focus on the valuable gift of the resources of such timing.

But the greatest gift hidden in all of these experiences is what Pamela Slim calls our ‘body of work’ – the thread that ties our story together. This is the story we have been crafting and creating from our desires, our dreams, the opportunities, the interactions, the people we worked with, the projects envisaged, the products created and the services delivered. Therein lies the seeds of so much wisdom.

Your body of work

It took a painful experience for me to realise all of this and to start to move on. A chance gut-wrenching workplace experience one day was the catalyst that made me realise I could no longer stay. I had to make changes. The next day I reached out to my friend, Victoria Smith, a life-coach and inspiration, someone who’s been down this road before me, to help me track a new path.

I’d reached a low point and I knew I could no longer navigate this time by myself. My coaching series with Victoria became the blueprint for a new life. A conversation about Pamela Slim’s ‘Body of Work’ in that coaching series was a pivotal piece that helped to tie my transition journey together.

The trick with a wise transition is to reflect on the driving force and heart of your work over time. What really drives you? Across all the job roles you have done, what are the recurring passions? What makes you come alive? Which themes occur in various ways again and again?

Pamela Slim says that her motivation in writing the book was to:

find a set of “new” skills for the world of work in the twenty-first century that would provide options, flexibility and freedom to workers across every mode, in every industry.

Her work enables us to do just that by identifying these core elements:

defining your roots
naming your ingredients
choosing your work mode
creating and innovating
surfing the fear
collaborating
knowing your definition of success
sharing your story

My body of work in transition

As I’ve moved through this time of transition, I have worked through all these areas. You will see these themes woven through my blog posts, as I’ve shared my story along the way. I have realised that the key threads that tie my story together are:

making a difference (always a motivator for me, sharing skills and knowledge to help others);
teaching, coaching, mentoring, blogging (different forms of empowering others and sharing knowledge, skills and experience);
creativity (innovating, leading it, fostering it, writing);
leadership and self-leadership (leading others means leading yourself first);
being a reflective practitioner and knowing myself (a constant search for self-understanding, professional development and reflecting on experiences in work and other life roles);
writing (the authentic heart of it all, being a writer, becoming a teacher of writing and weaving it as a strategic and professional superpower in my life);
introversion and intuition as key strengths and gifts as an INTJ, the captains of my personality ship I needed to learn to work with; and,
in all of this, being wholehearted in how we live and work, not bringing parts of ourselves to the door of any workplace or relationship.

Bringing all this together in a new way into a new life and business is exciting but challenging work. It’s taken consistent work towards my vision sustained over time. And it is about hard work and not luck as Kerstin Pilz reminds us in this beautiful piece, ‘Why luck had nothing to do with my self-directed life.’

Making a path for my transition

So finding myself feeling half-hearted, experiencing a ‘loss of heart’ as Lynn Hanford-Day describes it, a kind of burnout, I shifted to a job-share arrangement 18 months ago to plan a new future. Coaching with Victoria helped me shape this new path and I knew the ingredients for the future, based on the key threads of my past and taking them forward.

I set my goals of:

becoming a Beautiful You Coaching Academy life coach (achieved July 2017)
becoming a certified Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type practitioner (achieved December 2016)
working with my Introverted Intuition preference as a key compass especially via tarot and oracle card tools (achieved via courses, personality work and ongoing practice in 2017)

Setting and achieving these goals has been the backbone of my transition journey, with key learning milestones stepping the way.

Core desired feelings as guides to transition

My core desired feelings are at the heart of everything I do. I want to feel and convey being:

creative, connected, flowing, intuitive, poetic.

Connection especially has been a theme now and finding new kinds of networks. Not being in a traditional workplace can mean a loss of connection. At a time of leaving the workplace, I’ve developed rich connections with a beautiful community of fellow life coaches. We support and inspire each other. I’ve also had the chance to develop deep connections with valued coaching clients who have honoured me through sharing their journey.

Via social media, especially Instagram, I have found the most amazing kindred creative souls. Through Quiet Writing, women have shared wholehearted stories of transition inspiring me and others as we reflect on and initiate change. The hallmarks are startlingly similar across the stories, though they play out in different ways. I am meeting more and more online friends in real life in the most incredible encounters where we share our stories. The personality type community is another tribe of people where I feel a strong connection and source of learning and growth. And I know I will reconnect in different ways over time with many special people from the workplace.

Creating your story

As we move through times of transition, we can create our story, as George Bernard Shaw reminds us. The special ingredients of our body of work, our drivers and passions, are the greatest gifts and teachers on the journey of change. Painful as it might be at times to feel redundant, rejected or no longer belonging to the team, it’s an opportunity to create ourselves anew.

This time can be an opportunity to interrogate what Steven Pressfield calls our ‘shadow careers’, where our lives are an imitation of the real thing we want. He suggests in ‘Turning Pro’:

If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.

That metaphor will point you toward you true calling.

So now I move full steam into a new career focused on being a writer and a personality and life coach supporting women to create their wholehearted story at times of transition. I know the ingredients of my body of work. Writing, creativity, making a difference, coaching, teaching, reflecting, sharing knowledge, leadership, self-leadership, introversion and intuition are the threads taking my story forward in support of others.

Distilling all of this brings me to the focus of this transition and new phase of life:

choosing to journey deeper into your wholehearted story

This is the theme of my journey and body of work. And it is what I offer to you through my writing, this blog, my coaching and personality type work and my intuitive tarot work. My deepest threads weaving together into a new story to inspire yours.

Thank you for your support on this journey. May you find your true calling, bringing together all the elements of your body of work forward into a new life. I look forward to sharing my newly formed self-sustaining creative life with you in all its guises in support of your own.

If you’d like to find out how to work with me, you can find out more here. I’d love to work with you!

Image of me by Lauren of Sol + Co

Thank you

With gratitude and love to my family and all my key influences, special friends, life coaches, teachers, coaching clients and fellow travellers on the journey this past year or so, especially my dear friend Victoria Smith.

Thanks to TAFE NSW and all my colleagues for our time together. It is a time I treasure and one from which the deepest friendships and connections have come. I’ve been blessed with inspiring leaders and mentors who have taught me so much about leadership and self-leadership.

Much love too to my beautiful mum, Shirley, who supported my journey transition generously and with the greatest enthusiasm even as her journey was coming to a close. This truly is the greatest of gifts for which I am forever grateful, her body of work being the deepest love of family.

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How to align priorities with your directions and make a mark

February 12, 2018

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

Diana, Focused Intention

Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards – Doreen Virtue

___________________________________

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

This week: focused intention + restructuring to align priorities

Theme for the week beginning 12 February

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

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

Know what your priorities are and take action on them.

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

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

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

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

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

Tarot Narrative: Realigning priorities

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

Reading notes

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

Book notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Align priorities

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

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

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

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

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

Making your mark

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

The wisest men follow their own direction.

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

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

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

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

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

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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

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

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

You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 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.

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writing

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

Theme for the week beginning 14 May

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 14 May

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.

Wholehearted self-leadership

Pursuing passion and creativity

Retreat and going within to find clarity

Unfinished business

Honouring the need for retreat

Love to hear your thoughts!

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

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Answering the call to adventure

Finding joy in the outdoors and writing

Broadening horizons and taking risks

Committing to self-employment

Healing modalities and deep spiritual unfolding

Art and the call of the feminine

Forever seeking more congruence

Key book companions along the way of my lifetime journey

About Chantal Simon

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Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Valuing intuition and introversion

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

Writing and connecting to heal

Healing through community creativity

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Creativity conquers all

Creative Soul Living

Key book companions along the way

About Shalagh Hogan

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Beginning the journey

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion

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

The healing power of writing

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life

Learning about the impermanence of everything

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing

Finding my writing voice through journaling

Finding joy after grief and pain

Key book companions along the way

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Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Leaving a long-term job role

The greatest gift

Your body of work

My body of work in transition

Making a path for my transition

Core desired feelings as guides to transition

Creating your story

Thank you

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

Diana, Focused Intention

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Theme for the week beginning 12 February

Tarot Narrative for the week beginning 12 February

Book notes:

Align priorities

Making your mark

Love to hear your thoughts!

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