Welcome to the second week of A Year With Myself!

Ladies, you’ve been amazing. In just one week more than 500 of you subscribed for updates. Do you realize what a passionate a community we’re building together?

I also saw that many of you started conversations in the comments, on Facebook and Twitter, visited each other’s blogs and connected. This alone makes me feel all the sleepless nights and days full of hard work I spent to make this dream, this project come true were worth it.

A huge thank you to all of you! Starting from this week, expect a visit from me on your blogs and websites. I want to personally visit and read what you’ve come up with so far. I so look forward to getting to know all of you better.

And I have good news for you: the Full Adventure Kit is finally available.

If you want or need more than just the weekly prompts and posts, and are yearning to equip yourself with the wisdom of over 70 Instigators as well as downloadable lessons and resources every single week, please head over to the newly updated Full Adventure Kit page. See and study for yourself the incredible content you will receive throughout the year.

If you haven’t downloaded Chapter 1 yet, here is the link again.

Now read on and enjoy this week’s magnificence!

Journal Prompt for Week 2

Reconnecting with Your Core

The theme of the 2nd week and our 2nd Chapter is: “Your Roots: Reconnecting with Your Core.”

When we talk about our roots or our core, we actually talk about self-discovery. This is one of my favorite subjects because it’s strongly connected to how we grow and flourish personally and professionally. After all, like Anais Nin once said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

With this in mind, I joined forces with three amazing women when creating this chapter for you. Here I welcome “Goddess” Leonie Dawson, Sandi Amorim and Sue Mitchell!

I Knew I Was a Goddess

by Leonie Dawson

Once upon a time, I was adrift. A boat without sails, a star outside of orbit.

In my heart, I knew there was a true north. I knew there was a guiding light. I just didn’t know how to make it. Until one day my life changed.

An indigo-haired woman at my work—the one who laughed loudly in elevators and cuddled strangers and used the word “vagina” with such surity and joy as if it was the most normal thing on earth, the woman who shone like she knew the greatest secret in the world… she invited me in. She gave me her secret. It was a women’s circle.

One ordinary night in suburbia, I found what I had been looking for. And when I walked in that room, smelling sweetly of incense, women of all ages gathered cosily on a leopard print couch, smiling serenely, glowing alight, I thought,

“I am home. This is where I want to be for the rest of my life.” Somehow, sitting around a circle with candles aglow, sharing our stories softly into the night, I remembered that this was what I had been missing.

For all the ages, women have gathered together in circles—in wisdom circles, in comfort circles—to be supported and to be alight. And along the way, we’d forgotten to. We’d forgotten we were great and ancient oaks, deeply rooted to the spirit, to truth, to each other, to ourselves.

Sitting in women’s circles, finding the wise, loving Goddess that lived inside me, I learned to stitch my own sails. I discovered my own orbit, around my heart, around my soul. I made a compass with an arrow pointing at my own true north. I knew I’d never be truly lost again.

Even when the winds of Post Natal Depression roared through my life, threatening to flip my boat over. Even when every part of my life seemed to be dismantling, I clung to my compass.

I knew I was heading home. I knew I was a Goddess.

Your Prompt(s) for This Week

Goddess Leonie says:

“Have you found your soul’s compass yet?

What would you like to call into your life?

If the 80-year-old you wrote you a letter, what would she say?

And in what ways are you a goddess?”

GODDESS LEONIE DAWSON is a writer, blogger, retreat leader, globe-trotter, visual artist, mama, and vessel of wild creativity and cosmic prosperity for the 20,000 Goddesses who orbit around her virtual altar each month. Leonie’s strategic musings and practical wisdom have been featured on Problogger, Tiny Buddha, spirituality magazines like Goddess, Spellcraft, Life Images and Spheres, and in three of SARK’s best-selling books on creative fulfillment and freedom.

FIND HER AT: GODDESS GUIDE BOOK and @GoddessLeonie

Actionable Idea for This Week:

(one of the many exercises included in the Explorer’s Worksheet in Chapter 2)

WRITE: Take an old childhood photo of yourself and study it for a few minutes. What do you see in your childhood face? What do you feel?

What Does Chapter 2 Include?

 

What Is Included in Chapter 2 of the Full Adventure Kit (28 pages):

• The Mission Brief outlines this week’s Chapter and explains how the approaches described in the two Vision Interviews are different, and why having these two perspectives is important.
• Mini Lesson and Weekly Prompts from Goddess Leonie Dawson (free above for the entire community)
• Vision Interview with Solution-Focused Coach and NLP Practitioner Sandi Amorim. Sandi talks about “being fully yourself” and explains why and how values and questions are powerful tools for self-discovery and personal growth. She also describes a very useful and amazingly easy method for self-discovery and grounding. She also shares some techniques she uses with her clients.
• Vision Interview with Kaizen-Muse Creativity and Creative Project Coach Sue Mitchell. Sue explains why taking baby steps are important and why self-discovery is a lifelong process. Then she shares tools such as the “Seed Questions” that really work. Sue also shares methods she prefers using in her coaching practice.
• 150 Power Questions Tool, which I have recently finished writing. This alone is a matchless tool for reconnecting with yourself especially during times when you feel blocked or you lose the deeper connection with your inner self.
• 2 Venture Maps that describe two useful exercises for the week.
• The Explorer’s Worksheet that includes ten additional exercises for doing, writing and thinking.
• A hand-picked Reading List and Resources.

Here are the questions I asked Sandi and Sue. Their answers filled 11 pages! I personally gained a lot and found some striking ideas I will be applying this week.

1. We often talk about our rediscovering our inner roots or reconnecting to our core. What do inner roots mean? What is your definition?
2. But why do we have to rediscover it? Are we not connected anyway? Why do we have to reconnect?
3. What happens when a woman reconnects with her deeper self? Why is it important and how does it change her life?
4. What is your approach to self-discovery? How did you explore your “inner you”? Was it easy?
5. What tools and methods did you or do you personally use?
6. With your coaching clients, what is the most common problem you come across with regard to reconnecting with the inner self?
7. How do you help them with that? Can you share with us your approach?
8. We know that introspective questions, which I call power questions, are often used for self-discovery. Why are they so powerful?
9. Do you use them in your coaching exercise? Can you describe your approach.
10. Can you suggest two practical ideas or exercises for rediscovering our roots and reconnecting with the inner self. I mean what should a woman do in daily life to get to know her inner self better and feel grounded?
11. Can you recommend one book, one author and one blog?

Head over to the detailed Full Adventure Kit page and see how you like it!

What Is Awaiting You Next Week?

The exciting theme of the next chapter is: “Self-Portraiture: Rewriting Your Beautiful Story.” We will have our journal prompt, a mini lesson and one weekly actionable idea published on the blog on Monday for the whole community.

Next week’s prompt will be announced by a “storyteller who lives in a forest.” Can you guess who she is?

NEXT WEEK FOR FULL ADVENTURE MEMBERS:

• The Mission Brief for Chapter 3.
• The “storyteller from the forest” and I are about to engage in an interesting conversation. You’ll get the transcript of this Vision Interview that resembles a story. I’ll also introduce you to another “storyteller who collect’s true stories”. She is sweetly obsessed with understanding yourself through telling and sharing your story. She has an interesting lesson in store for us.
• 2 Venture Maps that describe in detail 2 actionable ideas you can do in one week (and also anytime during the year) to understand your core story and learn to rewrite it.
• 1 Explorer’s Worksheet that includes 10 handcrafted exercises related to empowering yourself through deciphering and recreating your beautiful story.
• Reading List and Resources Guide.

Image credit: Brilliant Etsy artist Marishka Marie Schweitzer

Tagged as: journal prompts, power questions