2-22-2019 I finished reading The Courage to be Disliked Today. I found it really insightful because it talked about work and about the intrinsic reward of contributing to your community, regardless of whether you are recognized or not. What the authors shared resonates with me deeply, because as I’ve continued to shift away from seeking recognition to doing the work, I’ve felt a deeper connection to my community and a deeper satisfaction about the work I am doing with that community. Doing the work and being in the moment is what matters. Anything else is a distraction. Realizing that has helped me shift my awareness around creativity, my work, and my sense of self-worth in a positive direction.
2-23-2019 Even if with all the work I’ve done around recognition and realizing that being recognized isn’t necessarily as good for me as I’d have thought at one time, there are still moments where it hits me hard that I’m in the background now. When I see a local event happen, with presenters, and no one’s asked me to present, it hits hard. I felt that way today and at one time it would’ve hit much harder, but for the moment I just feel a sense of loss because I realize I’m not being asked to present, and I likely won’t ever be again. Yet I am finding my way around that. I am connecting to my community, having dialogue with the people that need my work and contributing something. Have I really lost anything if I can continue to contribute and make a difference? I think the answer is I haven’t. Yes, may never present at conferences again because I chose to speak up about problems I saw, but I am still connecting with my community, still writing, still making videos, still doing something. That won’t ever stop. So I acknowledge this desire to be recognized and I let it go. I don’t have to be out there. I simply need to do my work and let it speak and find the people that need it.
2-27-2019 One of the tasks I've been working on is recognizing when I'm creating content because I'm telling myself I have to create it versus creating content because I actually have something to share.
In my experience with social media, it seems very easy to get caught up in the former, to pressure yourself to say something, share something, do something for the sake of putting something out there, versus just trusting yourself to know when to speak and when to be silent.
I'm learning to trust the silences more, to know that when the time is right I'll be ready to speak and until then just be in the moment and soak in what's happening.
3-1-2018 It is really easy to get caught up in the narratives of fear. I felt fear today, my mind imagining things and making mountains out of molehills. But if I take a moment and look at all the evidence I know the fear is just a reaction.
Learning to play guitar is proving to be a good experience for me creatively. It’s teaching me more about music, but also about what I can do. It illustrates for me that it’s never too late to do something or learn something new.
3-3-2019 I finished the third round of the elevations for SOA. I'm noticing a continued refinement and expansion of what I’m working with. In this last round it was deepening the connections with the relevant energies and tying them together to create an experience that went deeper into the sphere.
Creatively, I’m continuing to really enjoy all the writing i’m doing. My goal is to launch my fiction this year and I think its entirely possible that could happen, because the two fiction projects I’m working on are coming along swimmingly. doing something that brings me such satisfaction is a joy.
3-4-2019 Today I was reading Zero to One and the author points out that competition basically serves no point because it ends up being destructive. And my own experiences bear that out, because when I was focused on competing, I became less creative, and didn’t really focus on serving my community. When I stopped competing and just focused on doing my own work I became happier and I’ve stayed happier. Competition has been a distraction and its one I’m happy to go without. As I flow into creativity, I also recognize what stops creativity: Fear and competition is another form of fear.
3-8-2019 I’m re-reading Epstein lately. It’s refreshing, oddly, to read something and know you’ve essentially out grown and learned what you needed to. In the case of Epstein, I read his books on psychotherapy and Buddhism about a decade ago and got some value out of them and now it’s pretty much…I know this and I’ve done the work. I’ll send these books onto a new home so someone else can benefit from them.
Otherwise I feel like I’m really beginning to step into my own creatively. the more I work with creativity, the more I really see a direction for the work I need to do hereon out. I don’t know that my work will ever include coaching again or if it does it will be in a different form than it has been, but regardless I’m stepping into what I know and trusting it.
3-10-2019 A person’s creativity is supported by their community. This is something I know, but am realizing all over again as I’ve watched another author I know do some of the same stupid things I did a couple years go and alienate part of their community. I’ve worked really hard to regain my community’s trust and its taken a while, but I’m grateful all over again for the people who spoke up and shared with me their own responses to my less than stellar behavior. Sometimes we have to fall, but if we have people there to help us up, we can keep going and those people did just that for me.
3-11-2019 Finished reading zero to one today. It’s a book I’ll reread from time to time because it provides the blueprint of successful business. The authors say that doing something different is what’s good for society and it reaffirms that what I’m doing with magical experiments and my plans down the line are exactly what I need to be doing. When I have really done my best its because I focused on the problems that no one else was paying attention to and I’ve found that all over again with my reinvention of magical experiments. At the same time, I am reminded all over again NOT to buy my press release, but instead to be humble and appreciate my community, while letting what is created speak for itself through me and through my community.
3-13-2019 One of the experiences I’ve been having each day is a sense of just being in the moment. Oddly enough working at the job I work at has helped with this experience, perhaps because I can’t pick a specific end in sight with this job. So as a result its caused my to change my outlook and go into a place of presence and timelessness each day. I am here, this is my day and I am in the moment instead of trying get somewhere or do something. I find that this experience, as a result, has helped me go deeper with my spiritual and creative work. I appreciate the moments more than I might have previously.
3-17-2019 Today I did another elevation working with the liquid for Malkuth and Sandalaphon showed up. He showed me the cycle of life, how everything has a cycle of life, of renewal and regeneration, but also of letting things go and showed that cycle to me in relationship to my life. It made a deep impression on me n regards to my creativity, but also the patterns of my life. I have let so much go and I’m renewing myself rediscovering who I really am.
And I’ve also been sitting a lot with my thoughts and feelings around money because I’m beginning to realize I may have inherited a lot. When you have a sudden change in your life, one of the best things you can do is pause and go about life as usual as you figure out how to adjust to changes you didn’t expect…This prevents you from making hasty choices and that’s what I’m doing right now.
3-18-2019 Today I decided that getting caught up in possible futures isn’t helpful to where I am now, so I wrote the following and placed it on my monitor: Right Now HERE You Are. It reminds me to be in the moment and not get attached to possible outcomes.
On a different note, one of the lessons creativity is teaching me is the importance of focusing on what to be creative with. In other words, I could be creative in many ways, but I don’t necessarily need to be and it may not be in my favor to be stretched too thin.
3-19-2019 I’ve committed to practicing the guitar each day a little bit each day, in order to build my muscle stamina for playing. I’d gotten sore in my shoulder and arm because I wasn’t used to it, so I realized I needed to rest the shoulder and arm and then start practicing a little each day to strengthen them. On a different note, very excited about my next adventure with writing and where that seems to be taking me. I feel this crystallization around what I’m doing and I’m starting to see results.
3-20-2019. Got some upsetting news today and there’s not much I can do about it, so it becomes a matter of preparing myself for how I’ll handle interacting with someone I don’t want to interact with. In such situations I find its best to avoid contact if possible and otherwise just limit the interaction, so that’s what I’ll do, and fortunately I’ve time to prepare and process but it still feels like a hit in the gut.
3-21-2019 I’ve been thinking a lot about results lately and my approach to them is becoming further refined by the design perspective and aesthetic I’ve taken on with my magical work. People focus on results as the end goal, but a result is just a step in the journey, and when you realize that it can significantly shift your perspective on results and how to approach them in your magical work.