I am more and more present to the fact that people have a really hard time being objective in their life and realizing what they need to do in order to help them get to a place where they feel fulfilled. I am not saying this like I have it all figured out, but I often see people stuck and making the same mistakes over and over and not getting any closer to the things they claim they want for their life and that makes me feel like something might be missing for them. Maybe they don’t see how they are caught up in a cycle or know how to get out.
I suppose I have been as guilty as most people in this and I have also found ways to get me back on track. I thought I would share a generalized version for the benefit of all:
Pay Attention to How You Feel
If you feel any negative emotion (sad, angry, frustrated), then you are probably off track with your purpose in life.
Nothing wrong with that. You just have to get to a point where you are present enough to acknowledge that you are off track. Realize it so that you can do something about it.
If you are feeling great and/or better and better every day, you are probably moving in the right direction. However, if you are off track, you are going to want to get back on track as soon as possible.
How do you do that?
Establish a Life Vision
You need some idea of what you want your life to look like.
You need a destination.
This destination or goal may be obvious to you or it may not. It took me a while to figure out what my ideal life would be and it is actually a pretty simple one. You can also use how you feel to hone in on this. If the vision excites you or makes you feel peaceful and content, you are probably in alignment with the direction you need to be heading.
Once you have this vision or goal in mind, you have a guide for your life. You can make decisions based on if it gets you closer to your goal or helps you learn something that will get you closer. Once you have this vision, if you can hold onto it and the feeling you get from thinking about it, you will undoubtedly want to take actions that move you towards it.
Whenever I am feeling off track – sad, angry, frustrated – I re-orient myself towards my goal. I don’t beat myself up for being off track. I don’t blame others for getting me off track. I just try to figure out what happened so that I can avoid that in the future. Then, I figure out what I need to do to get myself back on track, even if it is the teeniest, tiniest step.
Think and Plan
A vision is essential—but you also need strategy and structure.
That might mean:
Learning new skills
Budgeting for investments in yourself
Seeking out role models who’ve done what you want to do
You don’t have to copy anyone else’s path. But seeing how others got there gives you options—and confidence. And when something doesn’t work, you adapt.
Keep thinking. Keep learning. Keep adjusting.
Take Action
Do what you can and the more you do, the more you will find that you can do.
Progress compounds.
Act from a Place of Love
This is important to me and I think it is an important thing to implement in order to reduce drama in your life so that you can focus on your life vision.
For me, I realize that I have no control over how people react to anything I do, but I know that if I am acting from a place of love in my actions, then whatever someone else’s reaction is, it came from something in them – that they are projecting something onto me.
That doesn’t mean I ignore it or tell them they are wrong. Most times I just hear what they say and try to get why they interpreted it that way. Usually, there is nothing to do but tell them that I am sorry that what I said or did made them feel that way and mean it.
As an introvert, I have often felt alienated and outside the norm and I would not want to do something that would make someone feel less than the awesome that they are. Sometimes that is enough, sometimes not. This is not always easy and the places and people where it is most difficult are likely the places where you can learn and grow.
Real Talk: Cycles Will Still Cycle
I suppose there is a lot more that I can say about all this, but the intention here was to keep it basic and, hopefully, still useful.
I would love to see what the world would look like if people were all spiraling upward towards the life they want to live. I don’t think it would be perfect all the time. We would all still cycle through ups and downs. It is the contrast of things, after all, that help us distinguish the good from the not so good.
I do think we would be more productive, though, and efficient. Not that I think we would be working all the time either, or, if we were, it wouldn’t feel like work. We would all be creating and adding to the world and enjoying the game, the challenge, and the beauty of becoming something more than what we were the day before.
Need a Little Guidance on Your Journey?
My friend Dave Baldwin and I created the 30 Day Experiment: The Life Quest Playbook as a way for folks to work through some of the things we have encountered over our years of self help exploration. You can find it on in my shop or on Amazon.
Sometimes I have to ask myself? Why do I want to write stories?
I love to write? Stories are fun to make up? Creativity is my drug of choice?
Those things may be true, but when motivation and energy dries up. When the chemicals in the body are unbalanced and I just want to sleep or I’m staring at a blinking cursor thinking curse words. What then?
Down to the Root
First of all, self care is important. Gotta keep the body and mind ready for action. Rest it when it needs rest, though.
In the past, I have struggled with how to keep on keeping on. What I couldn’t see was that I didn’t have a great guidance system to help me stay on track. So, I had to do some work to get down to the root of the matter. It turns out that all I needed all along was a purpose for my writing. I needed something more than the idea of earning a living that way.
Once I uncovered what that purpose was, it has been the motivation to help me push through blocks that would have otherwise held me up for an indeterminate amount of time.
So What’s My Why?
In case you were wondering, here it is:
My purpose in writing is to create enjoyable stories that cause young readers to imagine and experience new and expansive ideas.
That’s the root of the matter.
Yeah, that’s pretty hefty. But, it’s fun. And inspiring to me. I may not be as great at it as I want to be at the moment, but I am working out the muscles. 🙂
This past weekend I received the transmission of Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya through Sadhguru and The Isha Institute. I’m not sure what I was expecting to get from it. Perhaps I hoped to be more focused or clear of mind. What I got that surprised me is a sense of peace and the feel of time slowing down around me.
When we are present in each moment, there is joy in being alive and the possibility that creates.
I find it amusing that as I take on stories to write that I begin to see similar lessons or challenges in my own life. My characters and I work through our issues in tandem. It’s the same with Goddess Game. Bethany, the main character, has taken the safe path her entire life. She’s not particularly unhappy, but bored and wishing her life was more. Of course, to make that leap, she has to do the internal work she has been avoiding.
In that respect, Bethany and I are different. I haven’t avoided the internal work. I was just making it so much harder than it needed to be.
I mentioned in a previous post (Evolving Backwards) that in 2012, I transitioned from freelancing to a job that provided a steady paycheck. This allowed me to take control of my life in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. The last time I had been single and working was when I was in college. Now I was single and, other than work, my time was my own. It was quite wonderful. I love learning new things and began qigong and reading more.
When I left South Carolina in 2009, I was a raw foodist. I stopped that lifestyle as it was a lot of work for me at the time and I had lost a great deal of muscle mass. While my mental clarity was amazing, I didn’t feel balanced and so began consuming cooked food again. In 2012, I decided to explore the idea of some sort of fusion between a cooked diet and a raw food diet. Perhaps I could find a middle ground that supported my mental awareness and my need to feel like I could carry my groceries. 😊
Delving back into the raw food world of things, I found out that there was going to be a raw food retreat in Arizona on my birthday in October. In my newfound freedom, I decided that I wanted to go.
A Birthday Trip to the Middle of Nowhere
Did it matter that I didn’t know anyone there? Did it matter that this was essentially a camping trip and I would have to take all my gear with me on the plane ride? Did it matter that I had only flown once before and that I had been with someone who had flown often to guide me along the way?
Nope. I was ready for adventure!
I purchased my ticket to the event. I then bought a small tent, a rucksack, and made my checklist for supplies. I managed to pack everything I needed into the rucksack. When the weekend came, I had a friend drop me off at the airport and I was on my way. I made it to Arizona and met up with others on the way to the event. We all boarded a van to be bussed out to the middle of nowhere. We got there, I put up my tent, and had a great time being by myself while being with others.
A couple of things about the event: It was hosted at a hot springs – bathing suits were optional. Outside of soaking, there were vendors and speakers. The two speakers were David Wolfe and David Wilcock. I hadn’t come across David Wilcock before the event, but I was definitely interested in the types of topics he covered.
One of the things that came up over the weekend was past life regression. I don’t remember how it came up, but it reminded me that it was something I wanted to explore. After the event, I came home and found a local hypnotherapist that also offered past life regressions. I admit I was a little skeptical about what might happen during the regression. I was also worried that it might not work on me.
The Doorway to Something… Very Blue
If I remember correctly, the process took a couple of hours. I do remember when the hypnotherapist guided me back to my most current birth. I didn’t see anything. Again, I was worried that it wasn’t working, but then it occurred to me that my most current birth had been pretty traumatic for me and my mom and that I probably was blocking that out. I mentioned that and we moved on. Part of the process was the hypnotherapist leading me down a hallway with multiple doors and I chose one to enter. This doorway would take me to a past life that was relevant to me in my current life.
A funny thing… My hypnotherapist was recording the regression so that he could send it to me afterwards and I would have it to listen to again if I ever wanted to. What I found out later was that when he went to prepare the recording to send to me, he found that the recording had shut off. When he called to tell me, he said it a little eerie because it stopped the moment I opened the door in this process. He didn’t have a back-up recorder going so all I have to go on are my “memories” of what I saw and the notes that he was taking that he typed up and sent to me.
Now what did I see when I went through that door?
It still amuses me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when I went through the door, he had me look down at my feet and describe what I saw. I remember hesitating and almost laughing.
“That’s not human,” I finally said.
The feet I was looking down at appeared birdlike. They didn’t look like skinny chicken feet or anything, it was more like two thick toes and a back-claw. Weird, huh?
The hypnotherapist took me through different parts of this bird-person’s life.
Her name was Ahna. In the first scene, Ahna was wearing something like a flowing dress made of layers of light fabric and had a hat that resembled what you see on the bust of Nefertiti, but much, much bigger. She was blue and thin. Her face was flattish where her nose holes were and her eyes were larger than they would have been on a human face. Other than that, she appeared to have a body similarly-shaped to a human. I don’t remember anything particular about the hands. In the second scene, though, she was not wearing the dress or the hat and I could see what the hat had been covering, which was a shock of blue feathers that grew upwards and back sort of like a Native American headdress.
Over the years, I have tried to sketch out what she looked like and I have never been particularly happy about what I created.
From Regression to Resurrection (of a Character)
I had a need for a special character in my recent book, “Sentenced”, and Ahna seemed like a good fit. I decided to give drawing her one more go, but in a style that would mirror the playful and unusual nature of the book. This is what I came up with:
She’s cool.
(For those of you wondering if I wore a bathing suit or not in the hot springs…stop being nosy! 😄)
I just published “Sentenced” and I’m already fleshing out my outline for “Goddess Game” so I can begin drafting it over the next few weeks. After “Goddess Game,” I have several more books lined up in the creative pipeline. Many of these book ideas I have had for years. I’ve done a lot of work in the past freewriting about them and creating outlines.
Why am I only finishing them now? What has changed?
The Fog Before the Flow
I spent a good part of 2023 (and probably 2022, if I’m being honest) feeling that while I had gotten myself in a job situation that felt secure and where I had a certain amount of autonomy, it also kept me a bit stressed. I did not have a consistent schedule and it was difficult for me to try to do the things that I wanted to do in my personal time because I felt like I had to decompress from the job and then figure out what I needed to do towards my creative aspirations. My mind was in a fog most of the time and I realized that something needed to change if I was going to make any headway in my life goals.
Getting Help, Finally
I was constantly looking at people who were doing something similar to what I wanted to do and people who were doing what they wanted to do in general – the types of careers that seemed to be true self-expression. I kept seeing over and over that many successful people had mentors or coaches to help them along the way. I talked it over with my husband and decided that I was committed to completing my books and to that end I would find a writing coach.
When I first started looking for a writing coach, I kept coming across people who wanted to help with editing or actual writing. That didn’t feel right to me. That is not what I felt I needed help with. I wanted to find someone who had already been down the path I wanted to go on so that they could help me stay on that path and actually get projects completed. I intuitively knew that there was something I couldn’t see about myself that was in the way and I needed someone to help me see it.
The Write On Purpose Shift
Back in 2019, I had participated in an experimental writing group organized by W. Bradford Swift. I remember writing a bit, but not getting much done in the short time I was a part of the group. However, as I was looking for a writing coach, it popped into my mind that W. Bradford Swift had mentioned something about being a writing coach. I went to his website and saw that was still the case and immediately requested an initial consult.
After speaking with W. Bradford Swift, I felt strongly that this was the route to go. Not only had he published over 30 books, but he had over 30 years’ experience being a life coach. The fact that he had merged those life coach skills into a Write On Purpose program seemed like a great fit.
My Write on Purpose journey began in November 2023. I published “The Resurrection Incident” by the end of December 2023. “Sentenced” only took as long as it did because of a lot of life changes in early 2024, including my husband and I moving to another state in April.
So, What Changed?
So, what has the Write on Purpose process changed within me that has me moving and shaking (and typing)? It has helped me uncover the purpose behind my writing and is helping me stay present to it. It has helped me uncover indicators of when I am on track and when I might be heading off into distraction-ville.
And, I know this process is working because I’m still writing and completing projects. It’s a great feeling. I have so, so many more to go.
