Usually when I’m contacted for a review it’s about a product that I can hold in my hands but this time it was for a dream interpretation or life coaching. About a year ago I started looking on the internet for a life coach but couldn’t work my way through all the information and gave up so it’s kind of nice that this opportunity fell into my lap.
A lot’s happened since then with being in a relationship and starting a new job. My old job was one of the reasons I’d wanted life coaching in the first place and as I’d moved on with the job front life coaching had taken a back seat. But, I thought, there’s nothing to lose and always something to gain.
I had nearly an hour’s conversation with Jane Teresa Anderson from Dream Sight. We could have Skyped but I haven’t set mine up yet so we talked on the phone for nearly an hour. Life coaching sessions go for about 45 minutes and dream readings for an hour. I’m going to share what we talked about.
Jane Teresa first asked me to tell her a bit about myself. I shared my age and that I had a birthday yesterday, I’ve got a nine year old son who I’ve raised by myself, I’ve been in a relationship for about nine months now and that I started a new job a couple of months ago. I ended with the statement that I’m pretty happy and as I said it I knew she’d dig deeper into that one, and she did.
She asked me if there’s anything in my life that I’m unhappy about. I couldn’t think of anything there and then but as we kept talking about what I like to do and what my day-to-day routine is like I realised that there is something I am a bit unhappy about.
For the last few months I feel like my creativity has been sucked out of me a bit. That is reflected in the fact that I don’t blog anywhere near as much as I used to but it’s also related to the fact that I don’t have as much time as I used to. I don’t begrudge The Surfer for the time he takes up, or my son, or my job, but by the time I make time for these things there’s not a lot of time left.
I enjoy writing which is why I keep this blog but I’ve been stuck for what to write here for some time now. The rest of the hour went really quickly and apart from a couple of times where I didn’t know how to answer a question it was really easy to talk to Jane Teresa – I felt like I’d met her before.
So, how does one get the creative juices flowing? This is what I’ve started doing at Jane Teresa’s suggestion:
- I bought a little notebook and every night before I go to work (so four nights a week) I’m to get three books out of my bookshelf. I love that she assumed that I have a bookshelf because I’m sure that not everyone has.
- From each book I’m to open up to any page, wave my finger around and point to the page. I’m then to pick a noun and write the noun down in my notebook. I could choose an adjective but a noun is preferable.
- I do this with the other two books so I’ve got three nouns to work with.
- On the way to work on the tram I’m to look at the three words and think and daydream around those three words.
- When I get to work I spend five minutes ‘downloading’ the daydream. It might be one sentence or it might be the beginning of a story or article idea (with an idea of how it might go).
- It could be a dialogue.
- It could just be complete rubbish but it’s a stream of consciousness that should help unblock my creativity.
- I’m to do this for four weeks.
- I could also do this type of exercise with JJ as a talking thing rather than a writing thing.
- It could also be useful for work if I’m stuck. I’d pick three words around the project and build on that.
Last night I picked my three words – milk, chair, room and I ended up writing something that will become a blog post.
Already today I had lots of ideas for what I could do with my blog and some more enthusiasm for perhaps doing them.
One thing I commented to Jane Teresa was, ‘You always make time for things you enjoy don’t you?’ This is probably why I’ve done everything lately but my tax return and I think I’ve got just under two weeks to get it done.
All in all I enjoyed the experience and would consider doing more with Jane Teresa. Her website address: http://www.dream.net.au/. There’s a mine of information there with videos, podcasts and a bunch of dream interpretations.She also writes about what services she offers, how it works, and the cost.
I look forward to carrying on with the task she gave me and seeing what happens with my creativity.
[…] wrote the above as part of an exercise I’ve been given by a life coach in an attempt to unblock my creative juices as they haven’t been flowing much […]