This is my weekly update from Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance.? Every Friday I? post my answers to these same questions (with a different ?bonus? question, based on what we?ve been exploring that week) and invite the Circle members to share their responses too.?

Answering these same questions helps us to track our journey ? healing and transformation are difficult things to track because when done right, you feel so at home in your new way of being that you forget how things used to be.? But when this practice is done consistently over time, it shows not only how far you?ve come ? but how far you?re able to go next.

My intention for Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance is:

Changing!

The original intention I started with is showing up so quickly!? This shouldn’t surprise me, but I really did think these were things I would work on for the year – not things that would just show up in the first month of our practice.

So, some new dreams are calling me and I can see them, but I need a little more time before I can articulate them clearly.? Until then, I’ll say that my intention for Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance is to get clear on my new dreams.

My intention shows up as:

A warm, warm golden light that zooms right into my heart and fills my energy field with delight.

I am Growing My Depth.? This week my practice was:

Deep!

I’m noticing places where I judge my practice based on how I thought it should be, instead of really noticing how magical it is, as it is.? I don’t have to spend hours with my journal every day to be deeply engaged with the process of growing my depth.

I do make sure to sit down with my journal twice a day – first thing in the morning and then again later.? But I don’t always write something.? The really important part is to take that time to meet myself, it doesn’t matter what happens during that meeting.

Some weeks I fill pages and pages, some weeks I don’t even finish one page.? There’s always good stuff, regardless of how much stuff there is.

I started to see more about why I’ve been having a bit of a rough time with this.

I am learning about what I want. I am seeing how this is good, even when I wish it was happening in a different way.

Struggles are always (always!) gifts. The past month has shown me so much about what I really want, which helps me in a zillion different ways.

I also did a lot of mandalas this week.

I am Nurturing My Brilliance.? This week things in my outer world were:

HOLY CRAP.? I am seeing big, big shifts in my life from this work already.

But first I want to say that physically, this was kind of a hard week.? In my last update I wrote how I’d hurt myself skating but was hoping to get back on the ice on Friday night.? I did – and while I was out I REALLY hurt myself.

I get VERY restless and frustrated when I am sick/injured, so that was a challenge.? By the end of the week it was much better.? I’m doing yin yoga every day, but no skating at all this week, which really takes a lot away from the delight of winter.

Though I did get out to our winter festival, which was really fun and a part of my intentions for how I want to nurture my brilliance – more fun time out with friends.

 

But the Big Change is with my creative work.

Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance is, to me, the most gorgeous intention ever.? It encompasses so much in such a nurturing and authentic way.? It also opens up possibilities that are bigger than our conscious minds can see for ourselves.

That’s what happened for me this week.

The way I want to do my work – how I want to serve – totally shifted into the framework of Grow Your Depth, Nurture Your Brilliance.

Grow Your Depth: Creative Soul Alchemy sessions to help you go deeper into your own inner transformation

Nurture Your Brilliance: Creativity Coaching to help you draw out your BEST work and get your project (book/artwork/blog/etc) DONE.

I am ridiculously happy about this – it feels so congruent with what matters most to me right now, and with the kind of difference I want to make in the world.

And I’ve mentioned before in these updates that I started a new project.? I want to write a whole blog post about this (hopefully next week?) because HOLY CRAP I AM EXCITED ABOUT THIS.

It’s a BIG project – like it’s felt “too big” to even start for a long, long time.

It’s an ART project – like it’s demanding that I make art for hours every day which makes me ridiculously happy.

It’s stretching my comfort zone and showing me new pictures of what could be possible for me.

I feel like I’m waking up, though I didn’t know I was sleeping.

New possibilities are everywhere.? I’m having more fun.? Making new friends.? Re-connecting with old friends.? Finding new things to do that absolutely light me up.

I’m making art that I’m in love with.

I’m learning about how to be more creatively engaged with my life.

I’m learning how to accept what is when it’s really different from what I’d hoped it would be and even see how maybe everything really is perfect exactly as it is.

I’m being more of a grown-up in my relationship with my body.

I’m really experiencing how magical it is to live more fully in my own depth.

It’s like I’m inhabiting my life more fully, which is a pretty amazing feeling.

It feels important that I remember:

TO BE MORE GRATEFUL.

It’s important to me to live with intention.? But sometimes this means being so focused on what I am creating next that I forget to feel delightfully appreciative of all that I have already created.

Now I need:

To explore this new idea I had this morning: DELIGHTENING.? Delight as a job: to focus first on delightening and the allowing everything I do/plan/decide to come from that place.? What does that mean? What are the practices of delightening?

My intention needs:

Clarity! To get super duper clear on it and then sit with it every day.? To let it change things.

Each week we have an extra journaling prompt, usually based on the new?Grow Your Depth Nurture Your Brilliance content from that week.

This week we were exploring doorways as transformational processes, and the two different kinds of doorways.? Can you think of a time in the past when you experienced an unexpected and unwelcome doorway – but then in hindsight you can see how it was actually a gift?? (Remembering times when this happened in the past can help you trust that future doorways you encounter are actually helpful.)

Ha! Yes. The thing that was the saddest thing that had ever happened to me.? I fought against it for a long time, which didn’t change the situation even a teeny tiny bit, it only kept me rooted in the pain and sadness of it.

At that time, I couldn’t accept the situation until I started to feel better.? And it took me forever to feel better because I was making the whole thing wrong (fighting against life is always a recipe for pain).? I really put myself into an impossible position.

For a long time, I was convinced that the only way for me to be happy about what was happening was for what was happening to change.

So, a thing happened that was sad.? And my response to it turned me into a victim and kept me in that place for a long time.? Luckily, it got so sad that it forced me to get some help!

The thing is – I didn’t even realise at the time that I had the option of responding in a different way.? And had that awfully sad thing never happened I might STILL be responding to life in ways that make me a victim!

Which means I wouldn’t even be writing this because I wouldn’t have this business – I would still believe that I needed more money/time/support before I could make that happen.

I mean, going through the healing process from that sad thing changed everything.

Looking at it in this light makes it easier to be more grateful for these things as they happen because I can assume that the process is going to bring me to somewhere amazing.

All doorways open me up to more of what is actually possible for me.? It’s up to me if I accept the gifts or not.