Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

What are you up to today? Let us know in the comments!

Tell us what you're working on, struggling with, ask questions, share your goals, etc, in these daily posts. This is a great way to put stuff "out there" where only people who "get it" are going to see it.

On Fridays I post my Dream Status Report which is a series of prompts I use every week to help me have more clarity, momentum and groundedness on my path. The prompts are here. You can do them with me, or do your own thing.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

For my practice today I am doing Creative Dream Love Letters.

I'm writing it to my project. Doing this once in a while has been sooo helpful!

Dear project,

You have changed so much since I started writing to you! I guess that’s partly the point of doing this, not so much that you’ve change but that my relationship with you has changed and so I see you differently now. Which is what helped me make the changes.

This is the creative process, hey? You have an idea and you dive into it and you get so many more ideas and so many new possibilities show up and then it all gets very complicated. 

I am tempted to say… to believe even… that it’s all clear sailing now. I do think I have the concept nailed down. I know what you are, I know your form and shape and what you’re made of. It’s just a matter of filling in the details.

So… I guess I’ll just send you my love, and get to work on those details.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

The book project is flowing and this morning in my meditation and journaling I am thinking about something else.

This one feels kind of long-winded, but basically it's about making a change to a structure that has been helpful for a long time, but knowing that you need it to change a little but the whole thing feeling uncertain.

For so many years, I have written about my practice and shared it here every (weekday) day!

I started it because after doing a few 30 day journaling things, I got a lot of feedback from longtime members that the daily posts were incredibly helpful for helping them use the other tools here, that it helped see the options in a new light.

But over the years it’s been SO helpful for ME to have this structure.

BUT now I need the structure to loosen a little.

I’ve been sitting with this for a while because I haven’t know what “loosen a little” looks like but I am starting to see it.

With the new community forum where there is more space for everyone to share and connect, I will stop posting on this private blog and will just have the one blog on my website.

I WILL share something on the forum each day, though I think some days it will be very short check ins. When I have more to write, I will put it on my blog and put a link to it in the forum.

Writing helps me sort through my process and sometimes I can write three or four “daily posts” because each one brings in the next steps of my process.

And then sometimes I could go a week without writing because I’m just in a different place.

AND everything that is coming to me from Marketing as a Creative + Spiritual Practice says: I just need some structure/routines around sharing my work. Thinking of the daily posts as… not quite daily but regular… and then moving them to the public blog… this feels like it could be a solution to a bunch of things.

I have tried this idea of sharing the daily posts on my public blog MANY MANY times and I’ve never been consistent with it. Will this be another one of those times?

One reason why I think it may work this time is that we have the forum where I can still share on the days when I really don’t feel comfortable sharing in public. That’s always been the part that gets tricky - I don’t want to share EVERYTHING in public that I share here.

But even if this IS another time when I try this and it doesn’t stick? It doesn’t matter. I’m doing what feels inspiring and interesting, I am following the flow, it’s not a failure if it doesn’t last forever.

AND sometimes we need to do a thing over and over before we find the way that works for us.

Maybe I’ve never been able to stick with it because the timing was not right?

I mean - who knows? All we can do is keep listening to our own inspiration and doing what we can do follow. It doesn’t matter how messy or circular that looks from the outside.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

This morning my perimenopause depression and anxiety collided with “I’m going through a rough time in my creative process”.

Nothing was working. NOTHING. I couldn’t even journal all of my messy feelings, which is usually so satisfying to me, everything was off.

Now that I’ve moved through that a little I can see one thread of it more clearly…

The part where this little voice in me said: this book doesn’t feel right. As a printable? It feels too small, like you are playing small and not allowing this project to be with it IS.

And I instantly shut that voice down.

Because I don’t think of it as “too small” I think of it as being an independent artist.

Because, in my mind, the opposite of “being a too small printable” would mean getting this stuff published by some big corporation who has loads of options and could turn my work into something really sharp.

And, of course, water down my ideas so that they’re not so weird. And turn my work into another “positive vibes only” super cute journaling thing that you can already get at any big bookstore.

EVEN THOUGH I stand by my reaction, and all of my reactions are valid….

That voice needed more space to be really HEARD. By trying to avoid that inner voice AND my emotional reactions to it I was making all the hard things even harder for myself.

Eventually I settled down enough to listen to it.

And of course it doesn’t want me to water down my work for commercial success.

It’s saying - this project, as it is right now, doesn’t quite feel right.

And it’s right.

It’s just that, besides not wanting to sell out, I feel so sensitive and delicate these days and I just couldn’t bear to face the fact that it WASN’T feeling right.

And once I saw how much it wasn’t working it was REALLY depressing because…

Did I just put in months and months of work into this and do I now have nothing to show for it? In this economy?

But once I worked through that layer…

Actually it’s just a small shift that is needed. It DOESN’T work as a printable journal! Like, just layout-wise.

The “information” parts of the journal actually look better as slides… as in use them as slides to turn the journal into a meditation + journaling class.

And the journaling pages actually work better as… a journaling kit! The way I do in Dream Book, so you cut + paste prompts into your journal and give yourself as much space as you life.

Anyway, everything feels like it’s back in order. And the project can move forward.

This DOES NOT MEAN that I for sure won’t put this back into “book” format. But right now, it works better as a class + journaling kit and thinking of it in this way has brought back the creative flow.

It’s actually feeling EASY to work on this and, especially since everything has felt really HARD the last few days, this is such a gift.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

As I make space for the new community forum, a bunch of little things are shifting.

For one, I had been posting the Monday post on Sundays, which absolutely made sense when I started doing it and hasn't been feeling right for a little while so here I am posting the Monday post on Monday which feels good.

I write my updates the day before, so usually I would write Monday’s post on Friday but in all honesty, I am doing this on Saturday evening.

I share this just to be transparent that showing up every day means some days are going to be a total mess. Friday was a total mess.

Saturday didn’t start out much better.

I DO feel a lot better now and even have new clarity about how to move forward, but I felt it would be disingenuous to share that post now without saying that there were some really hard times in between.

I’ll share that on Tuesday’s post, and for this post I’ll just say - everything was a mess. I did my best to stay with myself and to believe in my dreams when most parts of me felt ready to give up on everything.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

What are you up to today? Let us know in the comments!

Tell us what you're working on, struggling with, ask questions, share your goals, etc, in these daily posts. This is a great way to put stuff "out there" where only people who "get it" are going to see it.

On Fridays I post my Dream Status Report which is a series of prompts I use every week to help me have more clarity, momentum and groundedness on my path. The prompts are here. You can do them with me, or do your own thing.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

Of course, I am hoping for a repeat of yesterday.

Feeling connected to my creative flow and in alignment with my project - just calmly and joyfully moving forward with it.

This morning on Facebook I saw a story about Leonard Cohen. He was writing Hallelujah and had like 80 verses but still hadn’t found the right verse. He was lying on the floor, hitting his head on the floor in agony that he couldn’t get it right.

I feel that! When we know how it should FEEL but then we do the thing and can’t get it to that place where we know it should be??!?!!? Agony!

Which is what I was touching on in my love letter to my project yesterday. I don’t want it be coming from that place of trying to prove my worth via creating an amazing thing, or trying to be “good enough” to do this… but there’s also the natural creative process of KNOWING how it’s supposed to be and then struggling to get the thing into alignment with that. Like our creative vision can grow faster than our skills. And it can be a fine line to walk.

So, starting with the love letter practice feels like the best place for me right now.

Dear project,

Thank you for working with me so delightfully yesterday! Everything about this felt easier, and I feel so much more confident about it now.

As I’ve been working on this project - starting with 1 book, which is now 2 - I am getting a clearer sense of the whole thing. I am really FEELING this first one, which is really more of a booklet, an introduction to “creative dreaming as a practice” which is really a way of explaining my work and an invitation for people to create their own creative dream practice. It’s like an ULTRA LIGHT version of Dream Book.

It feels so good to create this invitation! I don’t feel that pressure to “get it right” right now. It feels like play and this is exactly where I want to be with it.

So - thank you! I am getting to work now!

With love,
Andrea

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

 Happily, today is off to a much better start than yesterday!

I did a dream meeting first thing in the morning and my Dream encouraged me in my plans for the morning - to go to a coffee shop and work on the project.

My dream said: This is definitely your next step.

I didn’t go to my usual place because the fruit trees are blooming right now, and going in the opposite direction meant I got to go through whole streets of huge pink flowering trees. So pretty!!!

Now, at the coffee shop, I feel energized and ready to start my day.

First, for my practice today, I want to write a love letter to my project:

(I woke up today thinking that this would be a good practice for me right now)

Dear soul of my project,

I’m not sure if I mean the BIG PROJECT like everything that I see for this, or just the two journals I am working on now or even maybe just the one journal I want to focus on this week. Feels like you are all one and you know who I am talking to.

I guess, as I notice my feelings for you, I feel conflicted! And then I feel conflicted about feeling conflicted, because I just want to feel love and excitement for you. But I feel conflicted because I feel a sense to TO MY BEST for you. As though WHO I AM is not enough I need to be MORE.

I know this isn’t true. And it’s not you, it’s me!

But that sense of trying to prove myself worthy via doing a “good enough” job… this is really weighing me down.

Of course it’s tied to life-long patterns of trying to prove I am worthy and it’s not really about this project, it’s just that I bring my stuff with me where I go.

And I’m sure you’ve noticed this but the midlife experience is not being easy on me. But of course the gifts of this time, the new perspective it brings, is (I hope!!?) helping me with this worthiness pattern.

Well, I had started this letter hoping to express the love and excitement I feel for you and it’s not going how I thought it would. But it really is an act of love to try to spot our own patterns and not engage with them unconsciously, so that we can be better partners?

One thing that keeps floating into my mind lately is affirmations. I need more affirmations. I want to work with affirmations. I want to work on my mindset around this project. I want to feel worthy of this project. I think so highly of it.

It’s so easy for me to fall into a space of wanting to feel GOOD ENOUGH to do it, but what I want is to feel already worthy, regardless of what I do.

I mean I say this to clients all the time because I know it is true. Our dreams and our projects pick us because we’re the right person.

Whoa. OK. That landed. I am the right person to do this. I have so much love and excitement for you, to make you real and share you with the people who want you.

With love,

Andrea

UPDATE:

Yes that was exactly the right practice to get me into the frame of mind to do my next steps with this project. I had that "perfect creative flow" kind of experience where everything just worked.

On my way home, I stopped at the new conservatory, which has a butterfly garden, and just sat in the butterfly garden while butterflies of all sizes and colours flew around. I thought about how important it is that I do these things that make me feel good because my work needs me to be - not "my best", but filled up.

I really feel filled up today.

And I am marvelling at how TERRIBLE yesterday was - which I do think is mostly perimenopause but it's also a part of the creative process to hit walls like that and have all of our stuff be in our way.

And that doing our best to be with ourselves, and our feelings, is the most effective way through.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

This seem hyperbolic but it’s also how it feels.

Any time I try to do the things I want to do, I feel super uncomfortable tightness in my throat so I think I’ll start there, by scanning my body. What else am I feeling?

Stiff jaw

A desire to yawn, suddenly feeling sooooo tired

I also want to cry

I feel so frustrated

My mind is so foggy

And I want to cry more

My chest is filled with rage

OK the more I pay attention to my feelings the more feelings I have.

I had stopped taking my perimenopause support supplements about 3 weeks ago, and then just started taking a new kind about 4 days ago and this is my first PMS in these changes and yeah my hormones are all over the place.

Feels like my body needs me to not work today, to not try to figure things out. To take care of it.

So the plan for today: journaling my feelings. Take a nap. If I feel up to it later: tidy up and get ready for tomorrow so I can feel like I did what I could for a good creative start to tomorrow.

I do feel resistance to this! I was making good progress on a project that I want to continue working on, but my mind turns to goo when I think of it so I have to accept that today is a day for feeling and processing, not writing and creating.

This was so satisfying to draw out!

I am feeling a little better, having made space for all of this, but I will still move slow today.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

What are you up to today? Let us know in the comments!

Tell us what you're working on, struggling with, ask questions, share your goals, etc, in these daily posts. This is a great way to put stuff "out there" where only people who "get it" are going to see it.

On Fridays I post my Dream Status Report which is a series of prompts I use every week to help me have more clarity, momentum and groundedness on my path. The prompts are here. You can do them with me, or do your own thing.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

Structure is changing everything!

Just to make this make more sense: I was a few days ahead in writing my updates, so I've had a few days to be with the things I learned about the structure I need.

On Monday I did a Creative Genius Planning Session and listed out all of the things I want to do this week. Somehow this practice had been feeling out of reach for some time, and I was trusting that it wasn't what I needed.

It felt amazing to set SMALL do-able goals for this week and to give myself that time to really think about what I want and need. I had been feeling really overwhelmed, but also I had stopped taking my peri-menopause supplements to see where I'm at without them, and without them I am foggy, overwhelmed, anxious and depressed.

I'm back on supplements, I have these goals written out and a really simple plan for how to work with them this week. It seems so small to write it out but it feels like everything.

It shifted how I show up, like moment to moment in the day. I'm checking in with myself more often, re-reading my goals for the week, remembering how I want to feel. I am getting things done, but then also stopping when I start to feel tired or overwhelmed, taking a small break, then getting back to it.

Last week I was doing a lot of distracting myself and so this week, to stay present with myself AND with my dreams, just feels like a miracle. I love how everything I've been working on - the dream work and inner work and outer work - is starting to come together and feel more cohesive.

I know it can't ALWAYS feel cohesive, I just love the times when it does.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

The big message from last week’s Dream Status Report is that I need more/better/right-fit STRUCTURE. I lost so much structure/routine in the pandemic, and then I rebuilt the best I could but it is definitely time to look at this more deeply.

So…

What structure do I need?

What structure do I have?

Why do I want structure?

How do I want my structures to help me feel?

This seems like enough questions to start, I am taking this to my Dream Book…

OK wow. The magic of writing things down!!!!

Turns out I did know a lot about what kinds of structure would be helpful, and putting this all together on one page feels amazing. I feel like YES I CAN DO THIS. I was feeling like I had NO structure and that’s not true, I do have the foundations, I just need a few extra things to give me the support I am looking for. AND I CAN MAKE IT FUN! I can can make it fit what I need Writing out what I want to get from this and how I want to feel was so helpful. I feel dialled in to my needs, and like OF COURSE I can figure this all out.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

I’ve had a few days to sit with my big un-sticking from last week.

I spent some time with my “art therapy journal” where I just paint, draw and write out my big feelings. I see now that I’ve been in resistance for the last few weeks, like not ALL THE WAY in it but in it. I’ve been allowing some feelings while avoiding others, and so some things were working in my creative process and some things were not.

The big feeling that surprised me was the grief about how split the new age/life coaching/wellness worlds became. I remembered that in 2019 I was writing about anti-racism and I honestly believed that if people could see the roots of white supremacy in these healing practices, that we would all work together to do better. I mean yes it was slow going, but I thought we were getting somewhere. Then the pandemic hit and so many went so far in the other direction. Especially in the local communities I was involved with, I don’t think I can ever participate in anything with them again.

That just hit me, again.

BUT THEN I was going out one day this weekend and my neighbour was outside so we got to talking about her new job. She is the Executive Director of a new kind of homeless shelter that is aiming to end homelessness, which is funded privately. She asked me to do journaling classes for the people there. So that’s a new way to be involved with people here that is more in alignment with my values.

Life keeps flowing!

And I know that making space for my feelings, all of the hard ones but also including my feelings about what I wish I was doing and my dreams for who I want to be, is the way through. Even when I am lost in all of the layers of feelings and don’t know which way is up.

Get the calendar of upcoming calls here. | Get your next Dream Book lesson here.

What are you up to today? Let us know in the comments!

Tell us what you're working on, struggling with, ask questions, share your goals, etc, in these daily posts. This is a great way to put stuff "out there" where only people who "get it" are going to see it.

On Fridays I post my Dream Status Report which is a series of prompts I use every week to help me have more clarity, momentum and groundedness on my path. The prompts are here. You can do them with me, or do your own thing.