Creative Success (Beautiful Image by the powerful designer Infinite Mantra)

I have co-created a creative coaching and motivational platform with American Coach and International Opera Singer Maeve Hoglund and Canadian Designer and Yoga Expert Lindsay Kokoska in one almighty powerful magical International Programme. This programme is for 16 budding dreamers ready to seed their dreams into their virtual realities. I truly believe this is a virtual reality and we have the power to really play within it. We've set up The Orchard Circle to help you to shake things up and begin creating by design. This is open to anyone with a dream who's willing to get focussed and really question your patterns and take inspired daily action towards making powerful changes in gentle and fun ways.

What would you do if you knew you would succeed? Which direction would you take if you had absolute guarantee that you wouldn't fail?

How many times have you thought there might be more to life than this? Or is this the best I can do? Or why do I always end up here? Stuck in old patterns…old cycles..old habits…habitual relationships…limiting belief thought patterns? What would you honestly do if I said that you couldn’t fail, that you were safe, that you would absolutely achieve you goal if you take the steps? Think about the excuses that you use when you think of any kind of change…Maybe people around you have suggested a drastic change - how did you react? Did you go straight into all the reasons why it cannot be done now, without even brainstorming how you might achieve that change? Perhaps you have the seedling of a dream and every-so-often or when your out with friends you might take the seed out of your pocket and show your friends how shiny your dream is and then put it back in your pocket…you may have even taken steps to go towards your dream very cautiously and are stuck in the caution of it all? I’m here to ask you - what if you knew with total certainty that you couldn’t fail? What would it take for you to make it happen? What steps would you need to take to make it happen? Working backwards from the point of success - what did you do to get there?

Through decision, intention and inspired action anything is possible. It’s all about how you frame it. It’s all about intention, focussed action, mind behaviours and flow. Anything is possible. I’m here to tell you that whatever that dream is that you have in your pocket - it’s worthy and can totally be achieved through decision, intention and inspired action. There may be traumas to heal, patterns to clear and self-limiting beliefs and language to clear out, but within 90 days you could make a huge shift with guided support, creative exploration and new patterning. Through visualisations, planning, daily focussed action and taking steps towards your dream every day for 90 days, you could move to your next level, where it all becomes possible and your next level life can become a reality.

Take a look at The Orchard Circle - here the platform for dreamers making it happen! What would you do if you knew you would succeed?

https://divinevoicetransformation.com/the-orchard-circle/

The Freedom With Aging

Looking at videos of me ten years ago when I thought I was too fat, too thin, too dark, too light, too freckly, too blah blah blah - and I was beautiful. I was young and had lots of energy and didn't know it. Just like now. In ten years time I will look to me now and laugh that I had no idea of what I held in my hand.

There is only now....and now...and now... and all nows happen now. She's still here looking in the mirror with me as is the me in the future.

I've spent ten years dying my hair and feeling the shame of having white hairs springing out from under my not-so-well managed birds nest of a hair do. Natural hair dye kits have been guest listed in my bathrooms for a decade and my scalp has endured an outrageous amount of bleaches, dyes, natural hair dyes, chemicals, paints, heat and sun and here I am looking in the mirror at the one who was worried about three or four white hairs and her cheeky sparkle is still sparkling.

What is this thing called time. It steals my child, just as I think I'm getting a handle on where we are at, time kicks in and he's changed, transformed, grown. Time steals my days unless I'm in the forest. It's flying so fast and I spend so much time chasing it. I chase time. What does that actually mean in the grand scheme of anything.

Time. I've spent so much of my time trying to cram so much into it to make things work or to feel right or to feel real and now what's important to me is to really find out who I am. Who I truly am. I want to know what my favourite foods are. Not the ones I just eat every week because that's what there is but what I love to eat, I want to know what a book would be like if I wrote it, what a painting would look like if I painted it now. I want to know what its like to swim with my son in a warm ocean. I want to know who I am and how I like to do things.

I've begun a new phase it seems in life and its coming through thick and fast. It feels like everything is changing and everything is slowing a little in me whilst everything around me is speeding up. I'm falling in love with the seasons. My seasons.

There's a melancholy to me that's always been there and now I'd like to see what album she would really love to write. Unashamedly.

My hair is thinner, my body older, my face is aging and in ten years I'll look back to today and think about how I didn't know what I had. Strange. Please don't get me wrong with this - I'm only pondering all of this now in this moment and its good to assess and wonder. I'm not sad about any of it - just learning to go with it.

I'm learning to like me - its taken a long time. I'm learning to see me. I'm choosing to find me. I'm starting to love me. It's taken many lifetimes in this one lifetime of mine and so many incarnations of painful trauma and trauma release and finally, I'm learning to want me. I'm listening. Do I like coffee because it makes me get more stuff done or do I really like coffee? Do I miss dancing? I do? Well, I'd better do something about that then. Do I want to dress up more often? I do? Well, I best get designing some lovely pieces for my new silvering hair then. It's time to find out who I am now. Who am I really?

David Bowie said aging was an extraordinary process where we become the person we always should have been - I see this. I'm going to find out who I am now. I'm going to see how this version of my body likes to move, what these tastebuds prefer, what this voice likes to sing, what these eyes love to see, who this heart loves to love, what this mind likes to invent and what this creative wants to create. It's strange though - I no longer have the drive to do it - I just think i'd like to give it a go now.

Feels like a new me is coming through and the cracking of the shell is painful but necessary. There's a freedom to this though. It's amazing to not worry about what my hair looks like because it doesn't really matter, the silver is just growing out and I surrender and am curious now and what matters to me is the condition of it and nourishing it and loving it. There's a liberation to being able to not worry about whether my eyes are sagging or not because they definitely are so, and I'm committed to learning to love them. Its quite funny - I spent a few months thinking I maybe wasn't resting enough because I was waking up tired every day and then realised that's what sagging eyes feel like. Must find a new graceful word for sagging so I can reframe that too. Hmmmm... reframing is definitely key. Its like reframing opens new doors and healthy ways to loo at aging.

There's a wisdom coming through and I can feel it. It's making it's way into my thoughts, my answers, it's making it's way into my choices, the company I keep, the songs I listen to, the books I read and the ones I don't.

We don't speak of this enough as a society. There is a grace to this. I can see it in many and I am enjoying the process of learning how to step into that.

Thank you for reading. Please leave me a message if this brings up anything in you - I would like to know. Good night xxxx

What is your intention?

So it's 2.33 in the morning and I woke up ten minutes ago in a panic - I thought it was Ray's birthday and I hadn't bought him birthday presents. Blurrrrghh... what a horrible feeling that was. Anyway, once I realised that I still had a week I got out of bed and came downstairs to spend some quiet time by the fire. Some very strong thoughts were brewing.

See, I was on a huge mission around a month ago - there were plans for music world domination all over my wall. This plan was extreme. It was hugely intricate and hugely consuming. There were marketing plans, PR plans, video plans, singles plans, you-name-it-plans and too many plans. I had written myself into a practically impossible plan and felt so comfortable and excited by it. All I had to do was get the funding and the plan would be in flow. Except I didn't get the funding and thank the Universe that I didn't because it wasn't going to be a healthy or successful journey, I now know that for sure. I was already getting stressed out with venues and the team I hadn't even hired yet! I was already becoming someone I did not like and I was certainly not in flow.

I have an incredible capacity to work REALLY REALLY REALLY hard. For little to no reason other than as the sum of my parts. My parts. We are all made up of many parts - parts created throughout our lives from external source trauma inflicted fragmentation. Too far for 2.55am. As a result of these 'parts' I have a capacity to work myself and everyone around me into a cyclone of overactivity iced with madness and sprinkled with a little more trauma. This time, however, an amazing ally and very clever man called Howard stopped me in my tracks as I was deliberating over whether I should borrow the money to pay for one expensive venue over another expensive venue (neither that expensive but expensive for me) anyway, I had asked Howard's opinion about which venue would be best and he asked this question... 'What's your intention?'

What's your intention. A question I know so well in coaching and amazingly had not even considered it in my plans. A question that had more impact than I think Howard might like to know.

I had been headed for a huge mental car crash and was being really difficult and controlling over things like life and conversations and friendships. I know so because I wasn't in flow. When I am in flow, I am sailing down a river and even when its hard I'm still just sailing down a river but I wasn't sailing - I was swimming really hard upstream and feeling like over productivity was an olympian sport that only I had been chosen for and I was competing against myself. This, I know, is impossible...because I don't give up - I just become a cyclone.

'What's your intention' stopped me in my tracks. I realised that I had trying to decide between two paths that both led to the same place - nowhere I really wanted to go to and somewhere I had pretty much already been.

I had been unsuccessful in a funding application that week that I was absolutely certain I was going to get. I was so sure and when I received the letter to say I hadn't got the funding it really threw me. I fell into a 30 second dramatic sadness and had a cry and then felt a huge sense of relief because I realised the mental car crash wasn't going to happen, the music world domination chase wasn't going to have to consume me in the process and I could just breathe.

This sent me into a second wave, automatic backwash of over productivity and I began a smaller, less intricate plan to launch my new album. I decided to create a threecity launch off my own back and asked Howard his opinion on venues. What's your intention...

I was stumped. How could I have not asked that before I began all of this!

I stepped back.

Then, I stepped right back. I cancelled everything to do with the tour and went fr lots of walks in the forest and sat by the river...a lot. I listened to and read everything I could get my hands on to do with 'surrender'.

I've spent a few weeks now really thinking about that question on a very deep level for me. I've really sat with that question as though it were a pair of glasses and looked at everything in my life and all the choices I'm making. I began to question what it means to surrender to life. To be guided by life. To go with the flow. To surrender.

Surrender. A scary and very difficult thing to do, I realise. I identified myself with 'being'. I was busy, I was a touring musician, I was launching an album again, I was popular again, I was flavour, I was musical, I was a performer, I was aging and that was ok because I was still on the stage and I was being funded. Except I wasn't. I delved into that. I swam around in that. I practised. I was so used to saying, 'I'm really busy...' when folk asked me how I was doing and now I wasn't busy. I sat with what busy means and why we get busy. I tried to understand what non-identity means. I felt the loneliness underneath that and sat with it. That was really hard. Then...it dissipated.

So, its 3.22am and I woke up inspired to write these words on this new blog of mine. Good night. Its 3.33am. Love and light xxxx

I'm listening to this before I sleep - lovely Maddie Broad - https://soundcloud.com/maddiebroad/the-hill

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