On Oct 26, we're going to explore DISTRACTIONS and how to keep your creative projects and emotional wellbeing practices going in hard times.
This is certainly on my mind right now.
It will be magic. See you there.
If you can't make it live, the replay will be here when we're done (you don't need an Instagram account to watch the replay)
I LOVED our Creative Genius Intuitive Planning LIVE on Instagram last Monday.
If you missed it, you can watch it here.
I'm going to keep doing them on Mondays at 10 am (Central, North America)
I'll be doing this live on Instagram - right here.
(If you need help attending an Instagram live - check out the Instagram Help Guide right here.)
It's about making some space to meet yourself where you are...
We're all processing A LOT right now, so we NEED SPACE to be able to really be with what's going on with us.
We all need more space for processing our feelings and reactions to everything that is happening in the world, which is an important part of Creative Genius Planning because it clears the channels so you can hear your inner wisdom more clearly.
It's a practice to help get out of auto-pilot and get into a deeper connection with your inner wisdom.
And then move towards where you want to be.
Once you are more connected to your inner truth, moving towards more joy and hope and opportunity and creativity tends to be the result.
We're not FORCING ourselves to "make it happen" or get to work - we're creating space our natural genius to flourish. We're playing with possibility.
I don't have one set way of doing this. It will be a little different every week.
As I said, for Oct 26, we're going to explore DISTRACTIONS and how to keep your creative projects and emotional wellbeing practices going in hard times.
It will be magic. See you there.
If you can't make it live, the replay will be here when we're done (you don't need an Instagram account to watch the replay)
I ordered the noise-canceling headphones of my dreams and they were supposed to arrive yesterday.
There was all of this fortuitous synchronistic stuff happening around the purchase of the headphones, and the whole thing felt like an opportunity to step into my next-level future dream self.
The headphones represented spaciousness and ease and having my self care needs exquisitely met.
The headphones did not arrive.
When I checked the tracking, I saw that they had arrived in my city, and then were returned to sender. Also: no more of these particular headphones (this particular choice being ridiculously well-researched) were listed for sale on the website of the Canadian company I’d bought them from. (Yes, I can check other stores, but NO I will not shop at Amazon)
I was so frustrated and disappointed.
I cried.
And while I cried a part of me was like “WTF? Are you really this upset? We’ll find the headphones eventually”
But it wasn’t about the headphones. It was about feeling like I was stepping into that next level of having my self care needs be exquisitely met and then having it taken from me.
Feeling like I don’t deserve it.
And then feeling into all of the losses of this year.
And then remembering that my friend is gone and feeling terrified that people can just die.
An then I was like “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, I get it, cry all you want”
So I did.
And when I was done crying I did some soothing yin yoga, kissed my husband goodnight, noticed how exquisitely my self care needs are already being met, and drifted off to sleep. I woke up feeling happy and inspired.
I see so many people asking for help dealing with their feelings, because 2020 has been so hard and we all have so many feelings.
But what most of them are really asking for is help DISTRACTING THEMSELVES or TURNING OFF their feelings.
We need to FEEL our feelings, now more than ever.
Un-felt feelings don’t magically disappear. They calcify in your inner landscape.
I’ve been helping people with this since 2008 because that calcification forms the basis of the INNER BLOCKS make it harder to pursue your dreams.
This calcification of un-felt feelings makes it harder for you to know your true self.
It makes it harder for you to act in integrity with who you really are - it keeps you in a life that is too small for who you really are.
It’s what is making parents say “but our children have lost so much already” and demand that Halloween go on without any changes, ignoring the facts about super spreader events.
It makes us entitled and greedy and short sighted and without empathy for those who are more vulnerable than we are. This is why our species are killing the only home we have. This is why white supremacy and colonization and capitalism and greed.
And this morning on social media what I kept seeing is people wishing for 2020 to end.
As though that is some kind of solution.
The end of 2020 is not a magical portal that’s going to bring us into a better place.
That’s not the way through.
People keep asking about the online healing circle I did where I lead you through the working through a difficult feeling to get to the other side of it and feel free. You can get instant access to it when you sign up for the Your Next Steps free course.
Creative Genius Intuitive Planning LIVE on Instagram.
This happens Mondays at 10 am (Central, North America)
I'll be doing this live on Instagram - right here.
(If you need help attending an Instagram live - check out the Instagram Help Guide right here.)
Use this time zone translator to make sure you've got the right time where you are - it's already got my time entered in, so you just have to select your time zone to see what time this is for you.
The first on happened on Oct 19, watch it here.
Creative Genius Planning:
This means planning from your creative genius instead of from your head, which is where we tend to plan from.
Planning from your head looks like:
- making logical to-do lists
- pushing yourself to do the things you think you "should do" or "need to do" to reach your goals
- not noticing where your unconscious limiting beliefs are getting into the driver's seat to sabotage your success
Planning from your creative genius looks like:
- letting your intuition lead, especially when it gets weird
- creating space for growth, healing, and magic-ing your way to where you want to be
- planning from a deep alignment with your inner wisdom, power and creativity
I love my Monday morning Creative Genius Planning Sessions and can't wait to share it with you.
Here are 19 ways you can make space for your next big thing, right now:
- Look at what you can delegate - either tasks in your business or cleaning your house or getting groceries delivered instead of shopping, there are lots of things you do that other people can do instead!
- Get up 1/2 hour earlier to work on it a little each day (it's a cliche because it works - though I would add to also go to bed 1/2 hour earlier because sleep is important)
- Meditate on it
every day - Let go of the things you're doing that aren't fulfilling anymore (yes even if other people expect you to keep doing them - your dreams thrive with strong boundaries!)
- Book a creative retreat - just go somewhere where your only thing to focus on is this new thing you want to be doing
- Do Dream Book! Within the first month you'll see all sorts of new possibilities for how to do your thing
- Take a social media break, or severely limit your social media time
- Block off a week in your calendar where you just don't book anything. Of course you'll still have other things to do, but you'll have quite a bit of time in this week for your new project
- Work on it during your lunch break
- Let your house get messy
- Get take-out or pre-made meals at the grocery store
- My favourite is to go out for coffee on Saturday mornings to work on dream projects
- Be really honest about how you are spending your time and look for things you can temporarily give up to make space for your new project
- Exercise every day. It gives you more energy
- Stop watching Netflix/tv
- Cancel all of your social plans for 1 month
- Make a list of everything you can put off to make space to do this thing now
- Get together with some friends for an afternoon where you all work on your projects together
- Consider the idea that "I don't have time for this" is actually a lie
MAKING SPACE is a part of the process of making the thing happen.
No one just magically has all the time and space they need to do what they want to do.
You've done it before and you'll do it again.
When it FEELS impossible to make space, that means something else that's in the way.
Staying in this story that you "just don't have time" keeps you from the truth: That this new thing is terrifying.
How much would it hurt to give this thing everything you've got, and still fail?
THIS is what makes it hard to make space for a new thing.
It takes an INCREDIBLE amount of trust in yourself, and COURAGE, to wholeheartedly pursue your creative ideas.
So this is actually THE BEST WAY to make space for your next big thing:
Have a consistent practice for:
- listening to your intuition (it knows exactly how you can make space for this new thing)
- cultivating the courage to act on your intuition
- calming your fear and self doubt
- transforming your patterns of holding back
- connecting with who are becoming as you do this new thing (every creative project and dream your pursue GROWS YOU)
- accessing your inner POWER to take brave steps and make things happen for yourself
I do this work every day in Dream Book and would love for you to join me there.
You are infinitely wise, brave, creative and powerful.
You already have everything you need for your next big thing.
Today was not a good day. I woke up dizzy and overwhelmed.
It was really hard to find my creative flow and I was thinking... maybe I should just take the day off. You know - have a me day. Make popcorn, catch up on my Netflix queue.
I checked my email and saw that one of my students was wondering the same thing.
She's hit a hard part in her work with her dreams, plus there are hard things happening in her personal life, plus the whole world is overwhelming so she was wondering if it was better to just take a "self care break" and come back to it when it's easier.
But no, it's not better to take a break. Working on your dream is THE BEST form of self care that we've got.
It's just that REAL self care is hard sometimes.
It asks you to face the hard things and make the hard choices.
Taking a break, having a me day - sometimes that's exactly what we need and sometimes (more times actually) what we're talking about there is numbing and distracting ourselves.
Which is fine it itself...
But when you dress it up as "self care" then it's problematic because you are legitimizing your excuses for not facing the hard thing.
You're actually just leaving yourself stuck in the hard place.
Here's the solution: you NEED practices that meet you where you are and help you move towards where you want to be.
NO ONE always feels brave and capable.
But there's lots you can do to connect with your inner wisdom, courage, creativity and power and then you WILL feel brave and capable... and filled up and happy and ready to explore your dreams.
I do this work every day in Dream Book.
Some days I meet myself crabby and feeling disheveled from a night of weird dreams.
Some days I meet myself feeling inspired and lit up.
It doesn't matter where you start - your Dream Book shows you how to get to where you want to be.
Having more ideas than you know what to do with is a natural part of being creative.
You're a creative genius and your mind doesn't stop. That's good!
But you can't let your overabundance of ideas overwhelm you. I know it's easy to be kind of frozen not knowing what to do next, but all movement is good, so you need to get yourself out of that frozen place.
This place where you're trying to pick which idea to go with is RIPE with opportunities for your inner critics and limiting beliefs to just take over.
So it's important to not stay in this place very long!
These journal prompts will help you get moving sooner.
It's usually not all that important WHICH idea you choose, just that you CHOOSE something and get moving with it.
But we all hesitate and second guess.
Your journal is such a good tool for this, to give you some space to dig deeper, maybe get some insights around WHY you're hesitating and second guessing this particular project, and help you get more clear about what to do next.
Journal prompts for when you have too many ideas and don't know which one to focus on:
Start by writing down ALL of the ideas - get them together on one page.
Then let’s play with ranking them!
Which one would be the MOST fun?
Which one would be the LEAST fun?
Which would be the EASIEST to do?
Which would be FASTEST to get done?
Which would take the most time?
Which would be the most difficult to actually pull off?
What's THE MOST inspiring idea?
Do any of the ideas feel kind of blah or heavy to think about?
Which one will help you reach your goals?
Which one has the biggest potential payoff?
Which one feels the most impossible?
You don't have to answer each of the prompts. It's more important to follow the rabbit-holes.
The point is to explore your ideas from different perspectives.
And while you do this...
What fears or limiting beliefs makes themselves known and what does this tell you about the inner work you need to focus on at this time?
This is the real thing to explore here.
I do have a this set of journal prompts for overcoming fear if you want to explore those.
Take the (free!) 10 day Creative Dream Journal Challenge and get my You Are The Magic guided journal for Creative Dreaming.
This will give you a new way of working with your dreams, for more momentum and clarity.
(Artist Jaime Black started the Red Dress Project in 2010 as an aesthetic response to the more than 1,000 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. Find out more here.)
Oct 4 is the MMIWGT2S Day of Remembrance.
Due to the pandemic, here in Winnipeg the West Central Women’s Center is asking us to hang red dresses around the city as a way of marking the event and encouraging discussion.
Discussion is needed.
There was an inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in Canada which shows in detail why First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are vulnerable to violence in our society and lists specific calls for justice which we can all participate in.
Canada is in this weird situation where we try to look like we’re not racist but we’re not willing to do the work of actually not being racist - so we’ll fund something like a national inquiry into MMIW (there was also an in inquiry on reconciliation) but we will not trust or act on the findings of the inquiries.
The findings of the inquiry are clear: Indigenous women are murdered as a part of an ongoing genocide.
I remember in school learning about genocide and apartheid and I would wonder how the people in those countries allowed these atrocities to happen in their homes.
Meanwhile, it was happening in mine -the last residential school in Canada closed four years after I graduated from high school.
And it's still happening to this day.
This is how we allow it to happen, by not talking about it.
So many well-meaning white people, settlers, hear about what’s happening and are all “OMG it’s terrible what’s happening I feel helpless” and leave it at that.
If that's you - please don’t leave it at that.
If you haven’t yet, please read the findings from the inquiry into MMIW and the truth and reconciliation commission.
Come up with some things you can do (the TRC has 94 recommendations).
Follow your local Indigenous leaders, artists and writers online and listen carefully to what they're saying.
No one can fix this alone. We all need to be a part of the solution.
There’s this thing that happens, both with our personal dreams for our lives and with how we collectively want to change the world, where we shy away from taking action.
I could knit this one sweater, but I don’t know how to quit my job and make a living knitting, so I do nothing.
I could make a red dress and hang it up in my neighbourhood but what if someone asks me something about it and I don’t know the answer? So I do nothing.
With our own dreams, we can take baby steps, learn to listen better to our intuition and get into the flow and find our way to where we want to be. You never have to know HOW before you start the journey.
When it comes to changing the word, the good news is that it’s NEVER our job to know HOW.
Especially when it comes to white people wanting to help end white supremacy and systemic racism, we’re not supposed to be the leaders. We’re not supposed to have the answers.
We need to be willing to listen and learn and show up and support.
It's that disorienting time of the year when I am starting to wake up before the sun.
This morning I lay in bed in the dark, with my husband's arm around me and my arm around our cat Bear, just feeling so grateful to feel clear-headed, inspired, and happy.
I felt.... S P A C I O U S.
Spacious is my holy grail of inner states.
For most of 2020, I have NOT had space for everything, so waking up feeling spacious was a real miracle this morning.
Thirty days ago, I started Project Miracle.
This is a 30 day meditation + journaling program designed to generate a breakthrough/miracle. (You can try Day 1 for free here!)
I had a very specific miracle that I wanted to call in, and I've been feeling like I did get a LOT out of the last 30 days, but I didn't get what I wanted.
Today I re-read my journaling from 30 days ago, I looked at what I wanted and realized - it was already here.
It doesn't quite feel how I thought it would, but it's here.
I was working with two main things in Project Miracle:
- figuring out my work/home situation - I was dreaming of getting a new place to live and using the Dream Loft as my work space
- figuring out my next steps in my business - my marketing has felt "off" for some time, like the public part of my business and the things I offer for free are not matching the big magic of Dream Book and need to be updated but I didn't know HOW and figuring it out felt completely overwhelming
And now:
- I feel *at home* in my home in a whole new way. I decided not to move, and am more grateful than ever for all of the gifts of working from home. We got new furniture, re-arranged everything, and I LOVE IT.
- I know what to do next in my business. In fact I HAVE ALREADY RECORDED + EDITED a whole new free course! I see why my marketing felt off and know what to do about it.
But the bigger thing is that I discover what it is I REALLY need, which was hiding underneath the things I thought I wanted.
Yesterday I started to see it and then today I got this prompt in my Dream Book kit and I knew:
My habits and routines need a re-set.
I did journal about this yesterday already, but today I got the next piece.
It's ME.
This thing I am looking for, this thing I wish was different. It's ME.
While yesterday I was focused on what kinds of routines + habits I want to create for the fall/winter, today I see I need to look at the habits and routines I need to QUIT.
This is how I've always been with my business dreams.
YES I DO want to move forward.
YES I DO have a LOT of ambivalence.
You can have ambivalence and doubt and fear AND ALSO pursue your dreams wholeheartedly.
I don't think dreams should be reserved for people who have no doubts.
I'm highly sensitive and insecure and struggle when my work doesn't live up to what I thought it would be, when I saw it in my head. This also describes most creatives.
I've never aimed to eliminate ALL ambivalence. I'm sure there are lots of life coaches and internet gurus who want to help me do that, but I don't see that as a healthy goal.
I prefer to allow myself to FEEL HOW I FEEL while also PURSUING WHAT I WANT TO PURSUE.
Still. This one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes thing is ANNOYING.
I go full gas sometimes, determined to keep my foot on the gas - only to have the other foot hit the brake so gently that I don't even notice our momentum slowing down.
Then when I do notice we're almost stopped. And I'm SUPER ANNOYED with myself for doing this AGAIN.
Also, I do teach people how to transform patterns and I'm actually really good at it so why haven't I transformed this one?
Because I know that brakes = a deep sense of safety.
And putting my foot on the gas tends to be exhilarating, exciting, and scary. At some point, scary starts to take over. At that point, it's REALLY REALLY REALLY GOOD to have an effective way to bring in a sense of safety.
So I know WHY I do it. Knowing that is NOT enough to change it.
The thing I usually do to try to change this is actually the thing you should never do.
And I know this isn't how to change a pattern, but I always think that *this time will be the one exception*
And so I decide: this time I'll just keep my foot on the gas. And I won't put my other foot on the brake. No matter what. Just for 30 days. Just to get over this particular bump on the path.
But we can't strong-arm ourselves into new ways of being.
And one-foot-on-the-gas-one-foot-on-the-brakes is a VERY established way of being for me, so I can't even imagine how strong that arm would have to be for strong-arming to even begin to work as a strategy.
So it's never worked.
But we *this time will be the one exception* ourselves because the way to ACTUALLY change our patterns is so hard that we would rather do anything than do that.
What happens for me is that I have ENOUGH gas to get to where I want to be, so I am not all that disturbed by the other foot on the brakes slowing me down... for the most part.
But then sometimes, like today, I get to these places where I notice that I didn't fully follow through on my plans/ideas and I get really frustrated with myself.
And that frustration is driving the decision to say: OK I AM DOING IT AGAIN AND THIS TIME GAS ONLY FFS!!!!
All that is is a desire to get out of my feelings of frustration.
That's NOT an effective approach to changing patterns.
And so the result is: I temporarily get free of my feelings of frustration, but I am just setting myself up to repeat the whole thing.
Because "JUST DO IT BETTER NEXT TIME" it NOT a strategy.
I'm writing this from inside that place of frustration where I really want to just make myself do it better next time.
Instead, I'm writing this out.
I'm spending some time with my feelings.
I'm cutting myself some slack.
And I'm asking myself: are you ready/willing/able to do the ACTUAL work of changing this pattern?
What I DO feel ready to do is to take the "Just keep your foot on the gas and do better next time" option off the table completely. It doesn't work, it just sets me up to get frustrated later on.
Of course, since it's a knee-jerk reaction for me at this point, that means I'll have to work on staying aware of this and not falling back into the pattern, which means probably catching myself IN THE PATTERN and choosing to get out of it sooner.
And eventually get to a place where it's not an option for me anymore.
What I really want is to be more HONEST with myself about this.
The truth is, I will never be a person who keeps her foot on the gas all the time. And it feels liberating to write that in public.
What I do want is to be a person who has more control over the brakes though. Who doesn't auto-brake the second things feel scary.
Actually I want a new metaphor. Because I always want to brake for danger, and it's a much more subtle issue of determining what is actually dangerous and what just feels scary because it's new and dreams are terrifying.
I feel ready to switch into a new metaphor for momentum.
And the first step to doing that is to be more honest with myself about my feelings ALL THE WAY THROUGH the process.
So that's where I'm starting now.
This morning I poured my heart out into this blog post.
Then I re-read it right before I was going to hit publish - and instead I deleted the whole thing.
Now here I am trying to re-write it.
After a year ago, I got a LOT of attention/comments from people about my new look for the Creative Dream Incubator. The funny thing was, it wasn't a new look at all. I was just using art that I'd made for my journaling printables (which are a small part of Dream Book)and sharing it on social media.
That was just one of many things I was doing to experiment with how I want to put myself out there.
This is the part of my business that is the most challenging for me, and the place with the most opportunity for growth.
Dream Book changed things for me.
I made my first full e-course in 2010 - The Creative Dream Incubator e-Course. That course contained everything I learned during my four years of training become a spiritual counselor/healer/teacher.
I thought it was the final step for me in this work - and it is a truly life-changing course - but it was just the beginning.
Now, ten years later, I have created Dream Book which is a totally new way of holding space for navigating the space between where you are and where you want to be.
Dream Book has changed everything for me. And I want the way I show up in my business - my marketing - to reflect this.
It doesn't.
Yet.
A few weeks ago I had a LOT of stories + explanations for WHY I was stuck and how it wasn't my fault.
(Defensiveness is a form of being stuck that will keep you zooming around in circles inside your stuck 
)
The thing is, being stuck with this felt exceptionally painful.
But I know that ALL stucks around our dreams feel that way.
Because our dreams are leading us towards our True Self, who we are here to be, so being blocked from means you are being blocked from a vital part of your self.
That's going to hurt.
It was important for me to be with all of those feelings.
I felt shame that I haven't already done the things I want to do. I felt shame that the fact that I haven't done it yet could mean that I'll never do it.
I felt fear that everything could fall apart.
I felt like no one cares why bother?
I felt like eating cookies, watching Netflix and ignoring this whole thing.
Being with all of these feelings was an important part of the process. Not wallowing in them, but actually processing them - to turn them into compost for growth. (This is one of the things I teach in Dream Book)
If you don't do that work, the feelings will not go away. They'll go underground and you will continue to hold back on wholeheartedly going after your dreams.
This is the part that is amazing to me:
Once I'd worked through all of my emotional reactions, all of these impossible-feeling feelings - I came to a place of clarity and calm.
Suddenly it was all so simple. After feeling heartbreakingly and impossibly complicated for so long, it felt SIMPLE.
The truth is: Marketing is simple. We make it VERY complicated because of all of our stuff around: visibility, vulnerability, owning our gifts, having clear boundaries, actually HAVING the things we really want, self doubt, etc, etc, etc.
But it's simple.
Once you understand the basics it's just a matter of how you want to implement it. Marketing is actually VERY creative and fun and can be a source of healing and light, especially in a business like mine.
I want to be putting myself out there in a NEW way. I want to bring the full force of my creative magic to how I put myself out there.
Of course I don't know exactly HOW to do this!
There is no way to fully clearly see the way to do a thing I have never done before.
This is the nature of NEW!
You learn by DOING IT: giving it time + love + attention. You learn by EXPERIMENTING WITH YOUR IDEAS and learning from those experiments.
But when it comes to marketing your heart work, experimenting with your ideas can feel sooooo awkward and vulnerable and very, very, very public. Which is why I got so twisted up about.
But now, having worked through my feelings and brought healing and transformation to the parts of me who needed it, it's not twisted.
I have NEVER put as much energy into marketing my work as I have into DOING my work. I know every business guru says this is the wrong way to go.
The thing is, I've had people stay in the Creative Dream Circle for YEARS. I've had long-term one-on-one clients for YEARS.
So I don't need to keep finding new customers.
But now that I've had all the space I need to grow and evolve my work, now I want to grow and evolve my marketing.
It just feels important now that the Creative Dream Incubator be shining it's light more clearly.
It should be simple in that: it's just about giving marking more of my time attention. APPLYING the magic of my creativity to my marketing.
I have thousands of ideas for how I could do this.
I am starting now: experimenting, playing with my ideas, letting marketing have more of my TIME and ATTENTION.
As always, I'll share my daily steps, ups + downs and the practices I use as I do this in the daily miracle masterminds that are a part of Dream Book. I also teach you a way to journal that will turn your stucks into compost for your growth! Join us here.