Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.
On Fridays I do 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. Now I do my reports on the printable journaling sheet instead of on the computer, which I did for YEARS. I LOVE THIS. It just feels different on paper and I love this.
I'm looking back through my reports form the last few months. So helpful to see the little things I am figuring out along the way.
These "little things" are adding up to real changes - I am feeling more stable and grounded in what I want to do next. I am feeling more stable and grounded in my nourishing routines.
Slowly, plans are coming into focus: a new way to promote my work and a new project. After months of just... being in the mystery with this kind of stuff is the best way I can describe it... it feels so good to have some clarity and be making solid plans.
AND I am remembering to be gentle. Now that I have plans, I want to race ahead and DO ALL THE THINGS but I need to go at the pace that is right for my body and mind, not just my creative spirit, lol.
My focus for next week is: soul and space.
Lots of "meetings with the souls of things" using the Dream Lab meditation.
My Dream Book feels ALIVE right now, I am giving it time every morning before anything else and that time is feeling really rich and rewarding.
🦄⚡️Creative Dream Incubator Weekly Coaching Call is today!!
Hope to see you there - or catch the replay over the weekend! Call details + replays are here. And after the call I'll start a thread in the forum to share your plans for the week and as a space for accountability and support.
If you can't be there live but have a question or there's something you are struggling with, send me an email this morning and I'll discuss it on the call and offer you some suggestions for things to do.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your Dream Status Report or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
Creative Dream Q+A time! If you have questions to add to this series, let me know!
This came up on a group coaching call recently. And I said that this is something I had been meaning to write about on my blog because it happens SO often.
So imagine that you are here, where you are. And your dream is there, where it is. Between you..... are some outer and inner obstacles.
If you’re not facing your dream directly and committed to taking steps towards it, then you’re not really aware of those obstacles. I know you’re aware of some of them, and you’re like “Yikes! I don’t want to deal with that!” and so you’re not taking any action. But you’re actually NOT all that aware of what these obstacles are actually all about, you’re seeing them from a distance.
When you face your dream directly and begin to take steps towards it - you are actually moving yourself right into the obstacles. You don’t take one step and land in your dream, you take a step and land in the obstacle because that’s what’s between you and your dream.
Sometimes you land in the obstacle you knew about, sometimes you land in an obstacle you didn’t realise was there. Either scenario can be jarring. And it feels like the obstacle came to you but actually you went to it. You’re the one who made a move.
Being up close with this obstacle is progress towards your dream.
Avoiding the obstacles IS avoiding your dream.
Resources from the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership:
The Obstacle Is The Way Through: alchemy meditation for transforming your obstacle
The Un-Sticking Station: the classic way to "un-stick" any stuck, or obstacle
Dream Plan Kit: to work on a plan to overcome the obstacle
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
This is from a few weeks ago when anxiety was my biggest obstacle.
There is some medical stuff going on causing this and it's already getting better and hope we will get it sorted in the next few months AND here I am in the meantime, with anxiety as a HUGE obstacle.
So I am taking it to the un-sticking station practice.
Hello, Anxiety.
Anxiety is a little round, I don’t know… like a circle stuffed animal but with arms and legs. Big fuzzy eyebrows.
I hug it and it softens a bit.
But my body feels uncomfortable.
Then I imagine the stuffed animal gets really big, and now it’s hugging me, and this is a little bit soothing.
Does anxiety want to comfort me?
Now my head hurts.
I want to feel creative and free. I want to do all these things I want to do. You are making this all really hard, like painfully hard - why?
In the medication I am crying, sobbing, asking anxiety to explain this.
It’s just a stuffed animal, sitting there.
And that's all that happened.
SITTING WITH an obstacle is always better than avoiding it. But sitting with it one time doesn't necessarily change it.
It's a practice, so we keep practicing. Over time YES sitting with the obstacles absolutely changes them. You can use the Un-Sticking Station, or The Obstacle Is The Way Through or other Inner Work practices. Doing ANYTHING AT ALL with it is always better than doing nothing.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
I got to this part so I must be ready for this step
After I wrote it, it felt like a miracle.
Of course I did write this about a step I DID NOT feel ready for but... OMG YES. Why am I here if I am not ready for this step?
AND OF COURSE: Taking a rest, doing some research, asking for help… these are all valid next steps, especially when you get to a part where you’re not sure what to do with.
But… you got to this part because you are ready for this part.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
Every Monday I get a new Creative Dream Mantra from the journaling + alchemy kits that are a part of Dream Book. This week I got: I believe in myself
Use the meditation for the weekly mantras to dig in deeper to the mantra, or put your hands on your heart and take five deep slow breaths and repeat to yourself:
I believe in myself.
Notice where this lands in your body, what thoughts and feelings get sparked.
There is no right or wrong way to react. But your actual thoughts and feelings can tell you something about what you need right now.
How it lands for me:
I did the Your Self Doubt Is Not Yours You Deserve To Believe In Yourself class last month because of self doubt that kept coming up for me in my practice.
(Membership members can get that class here, it's also available outside of the membership, here)
Self doubt is something I keep experiencing and the more I work with it the more simple it becomes... self belief is a choice. But you have to keep making that choice.
So, right now, repeating I BELIEVE IN MYSELF to myself feels like a balm.
But a few months back, it felt stressful because there was so much for me to explore. And it's not like I had never explored self doubt in my life before that! So of course it feels frustrating to feel like "Oh here I am AGAIN with this self doubt bullshit" ...
...but it's not exactly the same bullshit, lol.
It's more like NEXT LEVEL SELF BELIEF is calling, and to answer that call, there are things to look at.
This happens SO OFTEN with Dream Work, in order to call in a thing, we need to work with it's opposite, too.
How does it land for you?
If I believe in myself feels good and encouraging, hold it with you this week. Look at problems, questions, stucks and obstacles through this lens and see what ideas it brings.
If it brings up some discomfort - that’s your stuff to work on. To do that work, in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership we’ve got the un-sticking station and the library of inner work practices. If you’re not sure what practice to use, you can email me, or post in our forum, let me know what’s going on and I will make some suggestions for tools you can use.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.
On Fridays I do 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. Now I do my reports on the printable journaling sheet instead of on the computer, which I did for YEARS. I LOVE THIS. It just feels different on paper and I love this.
I want to highlight that last week my Friday post was all about disappointment and this week is the opposite.
This week I want to cry because I feel so grateful and happy to be where I am.
I've had three days in a row of feeling exactly like how I had hoped going on hormones would help me feel. I feel like I am 39 and I have never heard of perimenopause, lol. I am optimistic, creative and clear-headed, I have energy and I am so grateful to feel this way. AND I understand that this may be a part of the swings I have been experiencing and there is no guarantee that I will stay feeling exactly like this.
And with my dreams - for quite a while I've been in the process of figuring out how I want to be showing up in certain areas of my business, and feeling like I've been flailing around and not getting anywhere. And then this week it all CLICKED.
This happens! Things click! IF we stay in the process, we do work through it. Even when we are just circling around the answer, the process of circling is helpful.
This week my focus is on grounding and acclimating.
Feeling so grateful for the way my relationship with myself and my dreams has shifted, feeling grateful for new systems and routines I have built... it feels like a miracle to be where I am right now, and I want to take the time to get grounded and acclimated to this place, with THIS relationship with myself, my dreams and my creativity. I know I need these inner changes to feel really STEADY before I do the next part of the outer work.
🦄⚡️Creative Dream Incubator Weekly Coaching Call is today!!
Hope to see you there - or catch the replay over the weekend! Call details + replays are here. And after the call I'll start a thread in the forum to share your plans for the week and as a space for accountability and support.
If you can't be there live but have a question or there's something you are struggling with, send me an email this morning and I'll discuss it on the call and offer you some suggestions for things to do.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your Dream Status Report or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
Creative Dream Q+A time! If you have questions to add to this series, let me know!
If you want to succeed at ______ then you have to ______.
The question I got was… Do I have to do video to succeed? I am better at connecting in person.
And the short answer is always no.
You don’t have to do what other people say. When it comes to your dreams, you are the only one who can build the path. Your ways of doing things are always best.
When it comes to unsolicited advice, always feel free to just reject it and never think about it again.
You didn’t ask for it, you don’t need to spend any time thinking about it. Especially if it’s advice that you don’t like, you can end up wasting a lot of energy being kind of upset about someone telling you to do this thing that you don’t want to do.
Don’t waste your energy on that, save your energy for building your path to your dream. Show them they’re wrong, that you didn’t need that unsolicited advice, you did it your way.
But if you did ask for advice, before you reject it, it’s good to understand WHY that was the advice that was given.
So, for example, if a business coach sees that people who do video have a better job at connecting with people to grow their businesses, then they may encourage you to do video.
So, if the video is meant to help you connect with people - what are you doing to connect with people instead?
It’s not enough to say - I don’t want to do video. You have to identify what you will do instead.
The person who asked me this question said that they connect better in person - so they need to look at how they are doing that, how to do more of it, and how to get better at it.
If you want a different result you generally have to take a different action. And often that different action is going to be uncomfortable at first. And sometimes, we reject advice because it makes us uncomfortable.
When you do that, you are letting your fear of your feelings control your life.
To make your dream happen, you need to be in control of your life - you as in your creative, intuitive and brave self, not your fearful self.
So for this person who asked about video and said that she connects better in person - if she’s not doing anything to seek out opportunities for in person speaking engagements and networking, then something is stuck there and her next steps are to look deeper.
Resources from the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership:
Alchemy process for hearing your intuition to figure out if you are just avoiding discomfort or if it's true for you to not do the thing you don't want to do.
Dream Plan Kit to work on your plan for how you will make this thing happen!
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
I was having an anxious morning and didn't know what to do, so I went to the Creative Dream Alchemy Library to find something to do, and chose Dream Work. (Inner Work would have been good too, but there isn’t a way to choose wrong, doing anything is better than doing nothing).
Once in the Dream Work section, I chose the Dream Lab meditation.
I put pillows on the floor and got really comfy and really got into it…
And my dream just wouldn’t show up.
The meditation did soothe my anxiety, I felt calm from being in the field in the meditation.
But my dream was just... not there.
This is from a few weeks ago. Then last week I did the dream lab meditation in our Friday weekly call, and again - my dream would not show up.
On Friday, eventually I saw something in the meditation... me, from the back, and far away. Like I couldn't reach myself.
My dreams feel far away right now.
This has been so uncomfortable but I finally realized... this is GOOD.
My dreams are taking space to shift, grow, change, become who they want to be next.
Which means... I am taking space to shift, grow, change, become who I want to be next.
Pursing a dream is an alchemical process. You have to let it grow and change you. You have to let the dream itself grow and change.
The work is always only to keep showing up.
It doesn't matter what the outcomes are.
And it doesn't matter how many times I say that, I really prefer certain outcomes!! I prefer clarity and confidence and feeling like I am moving forward in measurable ways.
But you're not IN THE PROCESS if you only allow some parts of it.
So, I keep showing up. Even if that just means sitting in the fog and contemplating what might happen next...
I mean, if I am honest, and we should always be honest in our practice... I do know what's next. I know what's calling me and I have not been answering.
Art is calling. And I feel too heavy and tired to answer.
Maybe it's the side effects of this medication I am on, which means I'll feel better by or before early December and it will be easier to get into it then if I kept showing up in the meantime.
Maybe it's resistance, which means I just need to keep showing up and be with what's there. Maybe even make the worse art ever in my journal to help spark some flow.
Maybe it's depression, which means if I keep showing up that's actually really good for me.
I don't have to know why I feel too heavy and tired to answer this call.
I just need to keep showing up - that is how I answer the call, it just doesn't look like how I think "answering the call to make more art" should look and the older I get the more it sinks in - nothing looks like what I think it "should".
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
I light incense and/or a candle.
I sit in front of my altar, which is a bookshelf that is in the process of becoming an altar to my new dreams. (I wrote a blog post about creating an altar to your dreams here, and then did a 45 minute video on creative dream altars inside the membership)
I speak what I am doing: Lighting incense to clear the way, to dissolve anything in me or my space that would keep me from being who I really am today. Lighting a candle to light up the connection between me and the soul of the Creative Dream Incubator (or some days, the soul of my dream).
I speak of how powerful and creative I am, and of what I am creating now.
I thank the universe and the medicines for their support in this, for helping me be who I am.
I feel this is helping me be more grounded in myself as I go into my day.
I used to get up and quickly get moving - walking or biking to a coffee shop with my journals. I loved that ritual AND it’s not feeling right, for who I am now and who I want to be next. So, I am learning about a slower start to the day.
And then I do my Dream Book practices. Today - it’s the Dream Self meditation and seeing where that leads me…
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.
Every Monday I get a new Creative Dream Mantra from the journaling + alchemy kits that are a part of Dream Book. This week I got: I am a portal of possibility.
Use the meditation for the weekly mantras to dig in deeper to the mantra, or put your hands on your heart and take five deep slow breaths and repeat to yourself:
I am a portal of possibility.
Notice where this lands in your body, what thoughts and feelings get sparked.
There is no right or wrong way to react. But your actual thoughts and feelings can tell you something about what you need right now.
How it lands for me:
I am using the meditation for the mantras today, and sharing my thoughts as I go...
This mantra is an invitation and a reminder to BE who I AM. I'm not resisting the mantra, but some parts of me are a bit afraid.
This mantra is teaching me how POWERFUL I actually am, because I forget all the time.
Ohhhhh! How might this mantra help you with your Dream Work this week? felt like an important question, so I paused the meditation to sit with it longer.
I am really feeling the magic of how all of our obstacles and "stucks" are actually portals for transformation. That option is always there. We are more than our 3D bodies, we can heal, grow and transform in ways that appear like magic. WE are the miracle.
It's so easy to get bogged down in all of the WORK of making dreams happen, going into my week remembering that I AM A PORTAL OF POSSIBILITY would help me to not get bogged down. I've been thinking (dreaming?) about making lino carvings of some of my mantra drawings, maybe I should carve a lino of this one and hang a print above my desk.
OK back into the meditation...
Oh WHOA. Taking the gifts and lessons and putting them in my heart feels WILD. Like an energy and "mental state" upgrade.
This is a practice I want to keep practicing this week.
If you want to work on this with me:
If I am a portal of possibility feels good and encouraging, hold it with you today. Look at problems, questions, stucks and obstacles through this lens and see what ideas it brings.
If it brings up some discomfort - that’s your stuff to work on. To do that work, in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership we’ve got the un-sticking station and the library of inner work practices. If you’re not sure what practice to use, you can email me, or post in our forum, let me know what’s going on and I will make some suggestions for tools you can use.
Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:
Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.
Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.
Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.
Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.