[week 6/52 review] starting points & critical awareness; walking into my story

Posted on by stargardener

You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.

Brené Brown

Week 6/52 was tending to administrative details, home repairs and contractors along with multiple surges of anxiety and grief-fatigue.

  • “We can come to the (grief) fatigue as we come to anything else…” –Megan Devine

Color wheels, mark-making and random scribbles serve as a way to hold space with whatever I am feeling/thinking so I can honor my pace, but also move beyond distraction.

It feels messy, overwhelming, or hard because that’s how it works: it is always going to feel this way when you’re trying something new, making a change, or building something.

Stephanie Harrison

The new moon became permission to explore [embrace] the backstories of my “procrastination” and repeated pauses; allowing for new starting points + envisioning a new cycle — the next level of my living after everything that has happened within the past year.

Every human life is a wild conversation between the horizons outside us that draw us and an inner horizon that often first presents itself as troubledness.

David Whyte

Practicing critical awareness means linking our personal experiences to what we learn from the questions and answers.

Brené Brown

The past four years have been a continuous cycle of purging/renovation, and releasing my hopes-deferred along with (unfair and unfounded) expectations. ♥

Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest in it with meaning.

Katherine May

Sam Thomas Davies describes Deep Work in three sentences:

  • Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
  • Shallow work is non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style work, often performed while distracted.
  • Deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy.

Citing the following four disciplines of execution:

  • Focus on the Wildly Important
  • Act on the Lead Measures
  • Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
  • Create a Cadence of Accountability

Having a sense of structure in place makes “it is easier to thrive and flourish” (Julia Cameron). My creative structure (sequences and task lists + compiling these weekly summaries of what I am reading and observing) serves me as both a balm and compass.

We project into the future about what the task will feel like and predict that it will be hard or stressful. Then, our emotional coping strategy kicks in to keep us away from this bad feeling, so we avoid the task.

Kathleen Davis

[Lyrics]—how they are poetry, of course, but also how they can be mirrors, showing you what you’re feeling, or directives, telling you where to go. When you’re lonely, they can provide comfort and company. They can be prayers, they can be hope.

Suleika Jaouad

You are hurt the moment you believe yourself to be.

Epictetus
  • before/after “It has to feel like this before it feels like this.” (The New Happy) | ⚡️”The hoop dance tells the story of the people and the dancer shows us how we are all connected within the circle. Spinning. Changing. Dancing through the many seasons of life.” –Tony Duncan | five-minutes (holding space with feelings and thoughts)

What does all of this have to do with planning?

Chronicling the details of our days is a way of understanding ourselves + mapping our desires. Tracking (and reviewing) our thoughts and routine activities reveals our beliefs and values — and helps us to discover our pace and rhythms.

Showing up for ourselves on the page along with setting aside time and space on a regular basis for both tangible and intangible processing is how we come to identify our desires + get clarity.

  • Everything is an opportunity. Everything we have lived and loved, questioned and lost is a part of who we are.

And, Braveheart, there is enough time and space and energy for our dreams and desires, wishes and want-to’s (even when we doubt that enoughness).

Our dreams take time. Without some type of visual chronicle to serve as a “map” — as well as a reminder and directive — the timelines of our desires and experiences become jumbled. What matters most becomes forgotten and ignored.

Thank you kindly for your presence here, Braveheart. 

I appreciate your interest and support.

~love & good wishes~

2024 Right Brain Planner® Kit | field notes | Right Brain Planner® FAQ

2024 Right Brain Planner® Kit [Theme] Kaleidoscope Perspectives ✨ [Focus] — Noticing Beauty (within the kaleidoscope of your living: the ongoing, ever-changing “formations” of color and meaning)

❤️ Braveheart, as the Creator/Artist of Right Brain Planner® I am ever-grateful to have the opportunity to share my creative work online + support other creators since 2008! 🎉 This is possible, in part, by {you} and your presence here. But also because of the support of my Ko-fi patrons and the other other member/subscriber communities I host (via their presence, input and subscriptions).

P.S. I have been devoting more time to writing here about my creative practice. 😊 I hope you will join me here, Braveheart. 🎉

[other posts from Week 6/52]: