Archives for January 2018

The Power of Discernment as Seen Through the Lense of the Just Right Cookie

January 30, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Today I was in a conversation when one person used “discernment” and another person confessed not knowing what discernment meant. Considering it was the second day in a row a term I don’t think about much popped into a conversation I knew I needed to spend a few minutes tossing the meaning around.

I couldn’t just offer a trite, under done answer. IN that circumstance, no one gets any better.
The power of discernment is like a vat of wine aging just enough or a batch of chocolate chip cookies straddling the line between just the right amount of gooey and the perfect assemblage of crunchy.

The gooey may be seen as the ability to quiet oneself enough to hear the music accompanying the heartbeat. Sometimes it is just the rhythm or the beat, other times it may be the surprising throughline and other times a lyricist’s sweet contralto floats across the barriers we often raise up between one another.

The crunchy though – in the oven for the tiniest speck of time longer at perhaps the smallest nth of a degree higher brings the cookies of discernment to hearing and then understanding.

Actually eating the cookie and nodding your head in joy at the taste and texture and sharing the cookie – even if one wants the entire thing – that is the fully flowing power of discernment. Hearing and understanding and sharing what we’ve heard and understood and perhaps then seen and deepened and yes, acted upon whether or not it made sense to anyone except for ourselves.

The folks who do this are the inventors, the change makers, the ones others look at with their left eye scrunched up and their ride eye still. “What is she up to now?” the left eye asks, usually with distaste.

The right eye says, “I’m not going to miss a thing because I know the surprise more than likely will taste good.

= – = – =

This blog post was inspired in part to this question from the #SpiritChat Twitter Chat hosted each Sunday morning by Kumud Ajmani (@AjmaniK ‏ on Twitter) . I’ll be responding to the questions throughout the week as a way to “keep up” with the chat I’ve been sleeping through lately because Sunday at 6 am is sometimes just a little bit too early for me.

= – = – =

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books,

Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

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 links below 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.

First take: a window into process that includes falling (getting up). Veering more than slightly off course.

January 26, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This is not a blank page. This is a cure to the blank page. This is saying no to block, this is a singing declaration of “I have your back creative process and we are moving and grooving.”

Yes, this is a start.

I wrote this partially to write a brain dump, partially to get in touch with my friend Virginia and partially to tune into my past narrative. I keep telling myself, this is a start.

Next: I am going to make a list of times…. I avoided life in attempts to keep the peace.

My guess is some seemed to succeed (and may still be a bit of the glue holding feeling mediocre together), some failed and some are untried.

Here is the first take: a window into process that includes falling (and getting up) and veering more than slightly off course.

Enjoy – and stay with me – because the world is waiting for your words.

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

Virginia Woolf

This week I have felt consistently out of peace because I was doing things that made me uncomfortable. Who wants to do that?

We want to go where we are praised and adored!

We don’t want to have to say unsettling things and make people unhappy with us! Well, most of us anyway.

Even as I type this and take a sip of delectably bitter coffee I realize I have actually made it a spiritual practice to make myself uncomfortable. I regularly chat with people others toss aside, like today I conversed amicably with a homeless woman: I engaged her in conversation like I would anyone else.

I actually put myself in a place most people would never think of going and yes, I found peace there.

I think that is a big part of it: being willing to go where others won’t, being willing to recognize there is tension there and then just moving forward anyway. Repeatedly.

(And then I reached for a poem and my chair toppled over and I went with it. I think I can officially call that a take two needed?)

I found myself on the floor, reaching for my book of poetry for 2018 I carefully picked out in December. I wanted to read “January in Paris” because I felt a message from Billy Collins words:

“I followed a few private rules…” and that steers me back to what I meant to be saying the entire time.

What I have been discovering in my journey into the uncomfortable is this: when we are aiming to stay aligned with our personal values, we will bump into barriers that seem larger than life itself.

We may risk losing friendships.

I’m sad to say I have lost friendships because they were no longer in alignment with me. I’m proud to say I have been strong enough to do so.

Our barriers may be huge organizations we’ve supported our entire lives. This also happened to me in December and January. It took 29 days of consistent follow up to get a single returned phone call and some restoration, though I still wonder if they are actually doing as they should be.

When we choose to pursue peace even when it leads to falling on the ground with our hands scuffed up or finds us alone on yet another Friday night or finds us with a cloth over our mouths because we choose to not speak even in our frustration because we think the friends we have left will desert us when they hear our story, we are also able to know it is in these very experiences that we come to know ourselves and our life more intimately.

We connect more authentically, in a sacred joy, in a holy connection – which for me is a combination of soft socks and knowing laughter.

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 soon!

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

Stop Taking Action Towards OTHER peoples Goals: Focus on YOUR Dreams Now

January 12, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Is this action moving me toward my goal?

This is the question that is guiding my “in the moment, going to get this stuff done” reprisal Passion Activator Friday, a regular activity I used to do when my website and personal development business was humming along in a pleasantly sustainable way.

Is this action moving me toward my goal?

Not someone else’s goal, vision or dream but MINE.

In December I created a wheel of life which broke down my overall life vision into 8 categories. I continue to review those and when I ask the question, I can easily scan my categories and see how that action fits in such as:

Is this action making me healthier?

Is this action engaging me in creating more abundant financial sustainability?

Is this action helping make my family stronger?

There are 5 other categories I can quickly scan and see if it fits or not. Today, if it doesn’t fit, it is off my list. If there is any hesitation it is off my “now” list and onto “later if I have extra time” list.

With that, I will move to my next thing, which is taking a water-and-walkabout intensive time and prepping for about 30 minutes of intense marketing focus work.

Are these actions moving me toward my goal?

Why yes, beloveds, these actions are! What about you?

Tell me how your next actions are moving you towards your goals. If your current actions and plans are NOT empowering you to reach YOUR goals and dreams, please let me know because I’ve been where you are and I have tools to help. After all, this was written because I noticed for a couple days I was other-centered constantly instead of my dreams and goals centered.

In a moment, that changed by asking the simple question and found support for my continued process.

Let’s support you now, too.

Is your next action going to move you toward your goal?

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

Restore to Better Than Ever (Payment of “Feeling Awful Temporarily” is Worth It)

January 9, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

What I say as a reflex: I want to fit in. I want to have a group of friends who are both a support system and who love me unconditionally where there is a reciprocity not because of expectations, but because we value one another.

Then there is the unaligned to a certain extent contrast: I don’t want to conform to the norms of any particular group because I don’t appreciate or value being “boxed in” to those norms.

I’m remembering back to my initial coaches training and listening skills. Are you listening to agree or disagree so you know how to “lob back” the conversation like a tennis match or are you listening from a perspective of, “Oh, that’s interesting, tell me more” space.

I know this past year was very lonely and I was rather isolated.

I intentionally took a year away from theater and at this point I would very much like to perform but I also know I just don’t want to audition for whatever comes along, I want to find a project and give my whole self to it. I am not sure what that will take or if it is possible now or in the near future.

Subtracting myself from a favored activity was difficult.

Subtracting myself from this activity reawakened other areas of dormancy and allowed me to focus on what was most important going forward: what would help me to build financial sustainability.

Subtracting myself hurt yet I was hurt by staying in a space that didn’t feel good anymore, too.

One of my biggest blocks is the fear of being abandoned and during this past year, some of these choices I made leaned toward to the natural experience of being left outside the foxhole. People didn’t even notice I was metaphorically out in the rain without an umbrella.

Because I wasn’t in the trenches with my theater friends, I wasn’t invited to other activities. My feelings got hurt over and over and it wasn’t until the Fall – nine months into the year – that I got the courage to say “this hurts my feelings.”

Some of my friends still don’t seem to know. I would rather believe they don’t know rather than they don’t care.

I left doing what I loved, I lost significant social relationships and there were lots of other tangled twists and turns AND it also feels like the tide is turning for me here in the beginning of January.

At first I thought I didn’t exactly switch my narrative here, but then I realized I didn’t conform to anyone else’s ideal in order to feel less uncomfortable. I stuck with the misery in order to process through it and now I feel 1000% better about life in general.

My goals for the New Year are in process, very cool activities and experiences are lining up for me. I am asking for support when I need it and I am no longer afraid to tell people how I feel, especially when I feel hurt.

Most importantly, I have clearly gotten better at releasing relationships that no longer serve.

Old narrative: Do what it takes to get approval of others so you won’t feel all alone.

New narrative: do what it takes to create breakthroughs, even if for what feels like a long time feels pretty awful. The invitations and opportunities will return. Trust, trust, trust the process.

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

3 Simple Steps to Knowing What You Believe & How to Achieve Extraordinary Results

January 5, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I sat down this morning to write for five minutes. I literally rolled out of bed thinking about the power of rewriting my narrative (after being horrified about rewriting my narrative publicly) and I thought about how to dig deeply into what is actually going on in the day-to-day narrative when I am feeling good and strong and in alignment -rather than triggered.

I had a prompt that was totally simple and yet left me totally stumped because I didn’t want it to be a cliche, I didn’t want it to be a bunch of trite phrases or posters hanging in the hallways of junior high schools.

I don’t know if I succeeded, but I know I went on a journey during my five minute writing that I could not have entered without this prompt – and without sleeping on it and waking up and writing soon after I got out of bed.

(On the way to writing, by the way, I plunged the toilet, cleaned up a mess or two made overnight and made a pot of coffee.)

To discover your beliefs and how they shape your world, follow these simple steps:

Write for 5 minutes a day to simple writing prompts.
Before you go to sleep, review what you wrote when you first woke up as you do an overall review of your day mentally and create a brief t0-do (or I call it a possibility) list.
Repeat, preferably in community so that your transformation may be witnessed by people who believe in your newly rewritten narrative and may support you as you set out to create and live your life accordingly.

Here is the prompt and my response and I wanted also to offer a dare to you to write for your five minutes as well. Your “I believe” may be completely different than mine. Whatever you write is absolutely perfect. There are no rights and no wrongs here and I never ever ever expect other people’s beliefs to match mine. That would make for a very dull, uninteresting world.

I believe…love is the question and the answer. I believe the path isn’t paved with good solely good intentions like the common perception may believe, I believe the path is a playground for practice between love, fear and apathy. Love, hate and uncaring.

I don’t believe the opposite of love is hate or fear, I believe the opposite of love is apathy.

The road is paved with love taking form.

The road is paved with our actions which are most fruitful when they begin with the love question and are completed (if there is truly such a thing beyond momentary satisfaction – I have to sit with whether I believe in that whole finality rather than infinite loop de loop later.)

Our actions, projects, plans are the most productive, the most abundant and feel the best when we ask the question with love as the coating, the primary content and is filled with our breath of love inviting your breath of love to join the game.

I believe love is both the question and the answer and I believe that together, we will continue to make things better and better for now and the furute when we bring ourselves to make that belief into something whether it be word on a page or a photo in the book or a business that employs people or a song we sing on street corners or a meal we create to feed whoever happens to be hungry.

Love is the question and the answer.

And when the timer went off, I felt like a few more words would add value for you so I wrote –

So for you, love personified, reading these words, how will you take this reality and create something from it?

Perhaps this one and only day with this date upon it will be your first creation.

Perhaps you will write a thank you note in five minutes, free flow, #5for5BrainDump style like this one was.

Perhaps you will invent something or make a new life or be thoughtful by speaking up for someone (perhaps that someone is yourself) or maybe you will incognito take a task off another person’s overworked schedule.

You, after all, are love. Be the answer. Live the question. Report back what you find in your world. If you would like individual guidance, my phone number is listed below. Text me or call me and we can set a time for a transformational conversation.

Contact Julie now to schedule a Writing or Transformational Conversation Session at 661.444.2735. Please note she is in California in the USA in the Pacific Time Zone.

The Song You Have Been Singing May Not Be the Best For You: Rewriting Your Narrative

January 5, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I’m about to share an actual thought I had two days ago. I haven’t shared this yet due to mortification and hoping if I procrastinate long ago it will just go away and the true confessions of Julie narrative might be an episodic program that gets canceled right after the pilot.

Unfortunately or fortunately I also know the most productive action I can take is… writing and hitting publish. Rewriting in my new snazzy pleather journal I bought specifically so I could categorize my old and new narrative and find a new way because quite frankly that old one was clearly not serving the world or me very well.

I received a facebook messenger post from a playwright I met probably eight or nine years ago. I was in the play he wrote and my friend directed. I never felt like he was happy with my portrayal of his character and never really felt like he even liked me at all.

Fast forward and more confession, I don’t feel like the man who directed that production likes me anymore either, not that I would be brave enough to actually sit down with him and say, “What’s up?”… yet, anyway.

“Why did you send this to me?” as I read the post. I started singing inside, too, like a catchy commercial jungle: “You know you hate me, you know you do.” Over and over and over my mind sang this ditty until the conscious Julie swooped in and said, “What the Hell, Self? This man has NEVER told you he hated you just STOP STOP STOP and rethink and rewrite NOW!”

I obviously rethought but you know the rest of the story: I’ve been sitting on the avoidance of writing this for three days.

The facts are, I don’t know if this particular individual has even thought of me once since we worked together.

<< I left the keyboard again, this time for about 36 hours, to digest and move forward.>>

The truth is this:

I have bruises from long ago and I have current bruises that become tender when I am tired or feel alone or left out or unsure.

I am triggered by the thought that people don’t like me and I risk being alone in the majority of my life.

The overlying truth is I have the choice to make insignificant actions mean whatever I choose to make them mean. This message may have gone to every single facebook friend this person happens to have and I happen to be one of them.

I also have the choice to be gentle with myself when I say things that are hurtful towards myself. I have a lot of years to heal. From moment to moment I pledge to treat myself with as much love and respect I am capable of in that moment.

Finally, I can embrace the truth that most people enjoy my company after they meet and get to know me. Some people even like me right away. What really matters is whether or not I like me, whether or not I am enjoying my company. Whether or not I create a community and live in a community of people who care about me, my feelings, my growth and what I create.

I have the choice to make insignificant actions mean whatever I choose to make them mean.

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

The Most Important Writing Tip of All

January 3, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Are you ready for the single most important writing tip there is? The one that will change your writing game forever?

I can feel some of you cringing and some of you perking up.

One side says, “There are no single most important writing tips.”

You excited ones are literally thrilled that I have THE answer. I have THE secret that will help you to become a best seller!

Here is the most important tip:

Keep your butt in the seat and write. Don’t think about anything else, just move your fingers on the keyboard or your pen moving across the page and write.

You may be in a coffee shop, you may be on your treadmill with your voice activation tool writing AND the intention is to WRITE: so you aren’t reading about writing, talking about writing, sharing your writing goals or watching livestreams about writing or taking a class about writing you are actually doing it. Writing.

You might be ready to throw something at me at this point. Please don’t. Please stay here and I’ll give you the secondary part of this tip which is HOW TO keep writing.

#1) Write anything. Good bad or indifferent, write anything even if all you write is “Look at me, I am writing!” over and over on the page.

Sometimes I have been known to write “I love writing” and after seven or eight times writing “I love writing” more starts to flow. It is like turning the writing key into the ignition. Suddenly, with a little bit of gas and movement of the necessary elements (words and motion) you find yourself going somewhere with your words.

You could try:

“Yes, Julie told me to write, so I am writing!”

“To write is to live to live is to love I love to write.”

“I love writing.”

“I love writing tweets” or “I love writing blog posts” or “I love being the content queen!”

“Look at Julie (insert your name) write. Write, (Your Name), Write!”

You may join our Word-Love Writing Community on Facebook and/or participate in our #5for5BrainDump writing sessions offered via Periscope/Twitter and Facebook Live.

The most important writing tip ever?

Keep your body planted and move your pen, pencil or fingers on the keyboard to say what it is you want to say.

Your voice is so important. The world is waiting for you to write. Your audience is lining up… perhaps impatient or more likely than not they’re just making due until YOU arrive!

So let’s go, let’s write. Today is the only today you have. Write in it!

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

Writing the New Narrative: Life and exhilaration and pain and love and injustice and apathy happen.

January 1, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Have you ever made a commitment to yourself and yourself alone and then found yourself saying it out loud and then realized the people you said it aloud with would hold you accountable even if your knees were knocking and you did and really didn’t want to do what you just committed to do?

(Please tell me I am not alone in this.)

I did exactly that this week – I stood in front of a group of friends and said, “I am going to work on rewriting my life narrative every single day until my birthday. I said back in November I was going to do this and I got scared. It is time to write it and write it publicly, anyway.”

So here we go. Here I am, publicly sharing my process. It is not an exaggeration to say I am feeling slightly nuts for doing this. So be it. After all, I am slightly nuts.

One of the most common theme songs running underneath my daily life is familiar to many. “You are wrong” is one song. “You are not (good, smart, pretty, athletic, young, fit, defiant, brave) enough so why bother?” and the ever popular “No one will ever want you.”

Long ago to comfort myself I declared God must have really wanted me to be born because he made sure I came into existence. After all, my parents were using birth control effectively and I was conceived, anyway.

Something occurred to me today I had never thought of before.

What would happen if I let go of being a product of birth control failure?

That actually felt pretty good until the related thought appeared.

Would I then be required to let go of “God must have really wanted me” too?

Until today I had never consciously thought of that possibility for holding onto the “other end” of the story.

Here’s the thing: I love the verse Psalm 139 and I hold fast to that declaration of God Wanting me alongside “You are fearfully and wonderfully made in that secret place inside your mother” almost as much as I’ve held onto people I don’t want to lose.

In Theology According to Julie it is the perfect bible verse for Island of Misfit Toys people like me who wonder why we’re here?

Why are we here if we aren’t or weren’t wanted in the first place?

Basically, in the Julie JS translation Psalm 139 goes like this:

God – you know me up close and personal. Let’s be realistic: you know me more than I know me and you knew me – all of me – before I was even conceived. You know (what I see as) my flaws and you call this all of me “wonderful.” Help me live up to this, God. May I be bold enough to ask to collaborate with you in this, my life, and in this your world? Help me to keep doing right, please. I know I mess up, and I so want to do right by you in this, your world you so generously share with me and all these other glorious people.

When Marlena was stillborn, I got a bit of what may be a slightly warped idea that I went through that horror because I could take it better than other people. And then a co-worker experienced stillbirth, too. I was flabberghasted. How did that happen? I experienced the pain so other people I loved wouldn’t have to experience it. God wanted me here for a reason and a part of it must be to take on pain and loss because I clearly do it so well.

My old narrative said “God must have really wanted me because he pushed my conception through even though my parents didn’t want me. This means I must live up to painful experiences in order to make my existence ok to the rest of the world.”

What I now know to be true is this:

Life and injustice and love and apathy and bliss and pain and exhilaration and boredom happen. I have the privilege to choose, every day, how to approach each aspect of life. God does, in fact, invite me to collaborate each and every day in each and every experience with each and every person in my path. We are – each of us – wonderfully made and a unique distinctive gift to one another. Now, go love richly and live fully.

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