When I follow through and write like I say I will write, I am never disappointed. I am always glad – even if what comes out seems like the biggest mish-mash gooey meaningless slop of words, it is better than not moving my pencil, my pen or my fingers on the keyboard.

I know this is how satisfaction starts.

When I say, “I am going to write!” and I don’t – it is as if my hands get stuck in a tar-glue and I can’t move a thing. I can’t engage with my thoughts because everything gets heavier. Nothing is clear. It all slows down.

You might be thinking, “If I write freely, I might dislodge something I would rather forget!”

I’m slightly embarrassed to confess this, but I am guilty of not returning to yoga because the last class I took opened something up in me that caused me to sob so strongly I may have disrupted the class. I am yoga blocked even though I love it because of that similar fear I hear from writers.

I hadn’t realized that until right now.

So there you have it. I am with you in your writing block in my yoga block.

Who wants to join me in making an agreement?

How about it?

You “Yoga” (I’m using it as a verb here)  or Write (or Yoga and Write – a truly tremendous combination) and I will as well.

How about we start on Monday.

For some reason, in my head, I am hearing. “I’m Tarzan, You’re Jane.”

I’m willing to take it one more deeply.

I’m willing to take and share a photo of me Yoga-ing. Starting Monday.

I just sighed at myself. Really? Julie, are you certain about this? You’ve done some crazy stuff before but… are you sure?

I am sure of this. I need several breakthroughs. The only way to create breakthroughs is to take specific, focused action. This I can do.

I know it.

Note to self: When I follow through and yoga like I say I will yoga, I am never disappointed. I am always glad – even if what comes out seems like the biggest mish-mash gooey meaningless slop of a pose, it is better than not moving my body on the mat.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the social media links above to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Writing makes things right again, pure and simple.

Writing makes things tangible again, brings us back to real time rather than yesterday or tomorrow. Writing allows us to sort the facts from the fantasy, both idealized and frightening. Writing makes things right again, every time we allow ourselves the space to let our thoughts flow freely – you know what I’m talking about, I am sure of it.

Not laborious, face of the red-pen bearing grim reaper of words third grade teacher you would rather forget but words, flowing freely like the cursive e’s I didn’t even know were “e’s” scrawled along blue lined paper.

When I close my eyes and allow my memory to drift, I can still feel that paper across my lap, against the skin on my little four-year-old-thighs. “I’m writing,” I would say, I’m sure earnestly. “I’m writing” and I knew it felt good and I knew writing could make anything better.

It isn’t the actual mechanics though it is.

It isn’t the finding perfection, it is allowing the perfection and the imperfect imperfection to crowl quietly down your forearm and dive off the tip of your pencil or pen. “Julie, do you remember? Julie, do you hear what I’m saying? Julie… darling one…. Hi.”

I remember the first time I was in a psychiatrist’s office and my head was bent and eyes, downcast in a stew of numb disbelief, unnamed fear and the silent, unwhispered help I sometimes see in the faces of homeless people who have given up begging because it stopped working.

That dear psychiatrist but his face in a place where my eyes would see him.

That’s what words do, too.

Sometimes I don’t recognize it until the first re-read and I say, some level of surprise greeting my face, “I wrote that? That came from me?”

YES! The you buried underneath all the stuff people say you should be, the tasks others say “you should do that” all the beliefs that created this brick wall of unworthy which we want to deconstruct and make into a meandering path to what is actually true for you.

I found in my Brain Dump the other day “righting” for writing – and that’s how my words reminding me, “Writing makes things right, every time.”

There are some words that make me swoon.

There are some smells that actually have been known to make me close my eyes and moan from someplace deep in my gut, beyond my physical hunger there is this place that understands the smell of rosemary and flour, a soft tickle of a breeze in the mid-summer desert heat, an especially tight harmony all land there and my response is a pleasure-sound from that ancient depths place within me that doesn’t even have a proper name.

(Perhaps its name IS a sound?)

Contemplative is one of those words.

Four syllables whose definition is pleasurable and the experience of it moving from my throat across my tongue and teeth and the sound like a prayer, “Con – tem – pla – tive” bursts forth, almost prayer like each time.

Is it possible to have a crush on a word?

I talk about spreading the word-love virus and I am serious about that. Words are potent and getting more adept at their use provides a power few understand yet. We are at a point of word-breakthrough here yet my fascination with contemplative feels almost like – dare I say it? – word lust more than word love.

Is this why I enjoy onomatopoeia, internal rhyme and assonance? I’m not a big fan of overused alliteration – too ordinary.

Oh, for a well-placed combination of vowel sounds. See what I mean. Say that aloud, “vowel sounds”. Now wait, this entire sentence. Say it! “Now say that aloud, “vowel sounds.” All those round, muscular “o” moments.

If you will excuse me, please. I need a drink of water and perhaps my notebook and some pens. And some uninterrupted time.

You understand now. I know you do.

We often make choices based upon the things other people say to us or have said to us in the past.

“Monday isn’t a good day to…” and “People don’t like people who….”and sometimes as ridiculous as “only skinny girls may wear skinny jeans.”

There are times we don’t give any conscious thought of who from the past or present is actually steering our life. Think about it with me for a moment.

Your life may be driven by a belief implanted by someone long gone from our every day experience.

My thoughts go to my third grade teacher, who I often hear scolding me for my ugly handwriting or my siblings as children who were, like me, just doing the best they could to survive in their everyday existence, too.

Now that we are adults, we are able to – and privileged and honored to – make choices according to what we know is true. Sometimes this takes stretching our belief muscle to fully integrate that belief, to make it show up daily in our conscious actions.  When we do so, we practice making other potent decisions based on passion and purpose rather than fear and scarcity.

When we choose to take passionate, conscious actions we will shape our life experience so much more richly. “One choice defines your belief. One choice can transform your life,” said Veronica Roth. Every action, every choice we make proclaims to the world what we truly believe, not just what we say we believe.

Will you make a different choice today?

Will you choose to transform your life and world today through making choices that match with what you say you believe?

Today, I’ll devote myself to following my own heart-mind-soul beliefs rather than be limited by endlessly playing loops from the scolding or just limitations imposed due to unconsciousness from others.

What about you?

Will you devote yourself to consciously make choices that serve you and the world? Will you devote yourself to consciously make choices that are in alignment with the world you want to inhabit?

Share with me as your day goes along.

I’ll be tweeting and snapchatting my adventures as a way to stay accountable.

I would love to hear your adventures as your life is transformed through the conscious choices you are making now.

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Stream of Consciousness Sunday: 5 Minutes on Solstice

Today is Passion Activator Friday – a day of intentional productivity many of us settle into as we end our week. I also use it as a platform to leap into the week to come.

On our opening Periscope Broadcast we collectively created this question in the form of  a writing and creativity prompt:

“Where is intention inviting me to play?”

Imagine for a moment "Intention" the energy or life force that fuels your goals, your mission, your purpose, was a being of some sort.

Flex your imagination muscles for a moment.

This is something that comes naturally to actors, artists and writers. I imagine if you've found your way here you are more than likely in that category.

Just let your mind go and allow yourself to engage with "Intention" as if she was living, breathing, had a voice and perhaps even a magic wand or pixie dust or the power of breath energizing her in a particular direction.

I brought to mind a Sylph character I frequently find myself doodling or painting.

Here is what I wrote:

I settle into my chair, music in my ears, Alice by my side. I vaguely hear my fingers tapping on the keyboard. My space bar isn’t catching up yet and I know she will.

My hands and words feel connected with other writers out there, writers who may feel stuck or wounded or unable to speak (because I’ve been there) and intention is inviting me to reach out to them and others who are passionate… yet perhaps disconnected. My people who don’t know it yet who are ready to be who they are meant to be, to express themselves more fully… to once and for all open themselves… to let go of the shackles around their wrists, their throats, their personal intentions.

My people are waiting to join me. As I type, I see intention pointing to the crowds gathered…

I see their fingers on their keyboards… I feel their hearts beating toward mine. I feel connected to their rhythms, their happiness… right on the edge….

With my words I step up and knock, I issue the invitation…. Intention has invited me to play. “Can Sue (Katie, Martin, Prima, You) come out and play with me?”

= = =

Are you a writer who uses Periscope? Join our facebook group PeriWriters today for inspiration and activities to fire up your writing and broadcasting experiences. Click the image in the link to connect with us.

Are you interested in Passionate Productivity with an Intentional, Mindful twist?

 Do you wonder if you are visionary?

Do you consider how to use the secret methods of visionaries to bring your projects and ideas to life?

It is so simple to access their ways of being, doing and creating: look at these five steps as a pathway to your own brand of "Visionary."

1. Visionaries PLAY: they remember how it was to be a child in a land of make-believe.

A visionary is simply one who remembers how to play "make believe".  They aren't controlled by other people's opinions. In fact, they shock ordinary minds with the way they take something that seems like a fantasy and turn it into reality.

An example? Facebook.

An example? The Telephone.

An example? The car, the train, the airplane.

2. Visionaries EXPERIMENT – they don’t get angry if their hypothesis was wrong, they see what may be “more right” and choose to follow that.

As visionary adults we continue to playfully experiment: we get giddy with excitement about an idea and a visionary holds tight to that idea and sees the good ones through to fruition and let’s go of the one’s that aren’t so great although she may allow it too “percolate” in her subconscious mind.

3. Visionaries are PASSIONATELY EXPRESSIVE – even though they may be quiet, they are cauldrons of heat waiting to be served to many people who are hungry for their particular brand of Vision. 

That way she doesn’t abandon it fully, she just allows the “water to boil” because as all children have learned from their grandmother’s “A watched pot never boils,” visionaries remember quotes, proverbs and wisdom from ages past.

We don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and when we are smart, we use stories to communicate. We don’t use language people have to spend time translating in order to understand what we are trying to say. We meet people face-to-face, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul.

4. Visionaries see time differently than others. Visionaries see time as expansive and dynamic.

Visionaries remember how as children we mastered the art of seeing time as expansive, those days when we were busy building castles in the basement and our mother’s called down, “A half an hour until Julie has to go home!” and Danny and I squealed in delight at that glorious time left to continue with the castle.

We might finish it, we might knock it down and build it up several times. We had a vision which held our passion and we loved the thought we had so much time because… we did. As visionaries, we remember this expansiveness and reach into memory to manifest this childlike positive energy.

5. Visionaries LEARN FROM EACH OTHER – They make discoveries when they hand over leadership, even if just momentarily.

Visionaries remember to joyfully play follow the leader (readily swapping out leaders and learning from one another collaboratively only they don't use big buzz words, they say "yes, let's!" instead of blabbering on at length about engagement, they simply are engaged.

Children and visionaries who play follow the leader laugh, mimic, grow and learn without knowing this fun stuff is actually adding to the increase, making the world a better place, changing lives if and when they remember the power of make believe.

Remember, say it aloud and write it down:

A visionary is simply one who remembers how to play "make believe".

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter:   and on Periscope for writing prompt, tips and inspiration daily created to ignite your artistic rebirth.

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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Fall, 2015 and beyond.

  To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735

  Check out the links above to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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