I’m cooking with creative fire, flow, and power these days- I’m loving life and loving creating. I’m feeling lighter and I attribute it to three things.

1
Using the Inner Organizer weekly, keeping it out where I can see it, and letting the questions work on me at a deep level.  Here’s an update of some of my pages.  Putting the pages in a big art journal and pasting things and playing has made the process much richer for me.  So has connecting with you incredible women who visit the message boards!

Inside
cover with a clipping of a card from my friend Mary about the Woman’s
Comfort Book and how she still loves it after all these years

Brag page with two great emails printed out

Insights
- reworking them into color scraps helped me clarify them and also
every time I flip through the book, the roughness and color catches me
eye.

2
Practicing excellent mental hygiene by noticing when the worm of shoulds and hurry ups and do more are eating out the core of my life.  First I notice the thought or body sensation of the worm at work. Then I say, "Not mine anymore."  Then I replace the worm thought with a thought like "I am completely stopping" (see previous post) or "I’m choosing to do what I’m doing right now and I’m loving it."  Coupling these thoughts with a long inhale and even longer exhale is key! 

It’s also key that I’m sussing out what is behind these worm thoughts- for me, it’s all about safety.  I believe if I’m hyper aware and getting lots done, I’ll be safe because nothing will fall through the cracks and I will make enough money.  This insight is leading me to all kinds of good stuff- I actually broke down my income last year to see where I made what so I can start to choose where to let go of things and where to put more energy.  I ‘m working on a household budget- but instead of "We can spend this much here, here and here," I’m looking at our nut, what we spend no matter what on things like the mortgage, insurance, food, etc. and then separating that amount from lovely extras like art supplies (!), travel, theater, garden, clothes, entertainment, etc.  Thus I know how much I actually have to make and what is left over for extras or that I can choose to slow down and then not have those extras.This may sound odd for those of you who have a fixed paycheck but I think the process can apply to all of us, to some degree as it brings choice back into the money picture.  I’m naming reality- we cannot create the future we want if we are not paying attention to what is at the same time we keep in mind our vision of what we want.  (Robert Fritz developed this idea.)  I’m great at the vision and hate the details of reality, at least when they are related to money.

3
Making art
Here is a recent art creation, made as a gift for a dear client.  The juice, the flow, the creative ideas that come for other projects, I just can’t get enough.