Mags – Your comment made me laugh – sometimes, the kitchen is my favorite place to crank up the creativity, too. I think buying a weird new vegetable is a great way to break out of a rut!

Millionaire Mommy – Thank you for stopping by! I agree completely – any forward movement is sometimes preferable to that sense of being stuck in the muck!

Barbara and Marilu – Thank you!

Matt – Never knock those hard lessons – they must have been a necessary part of the journey for you! I sometimes get into that “why didn’t I know then what I know now” mode, too. Then I recognize that there’s no way I was ready for “what I know now.” Love the example of how you turned on “flow” and everything flowed for smoothly! Perfect illustration of what I was talking about – thank you!

Akemi – Thank you for inviting more friends to come and play over here! I appreciate it!!!

Irene – Thank you! Can I tell you how much I love your domain name? “Light beckons” is just beautiful! I love the idea of an energetic “formula” for how it all comes together. I agree being good to ourselves – in whichever form is most appropriate at that moment – is a key part of that formula.

Tom – What a beautiful quote! Thank you for adding that, it’s so true and fits perfectly. We do have to come into alignment within ourselves, and it’s not always obvious how to do that.

Deb – Thank you! I did feel like my weekend was full of little miracles – nothing loud or obvious. “Following the energy” is the perfect way of putting it.

Suzanne – Don’t you love that we could solve a business problem by, I don’t know, getting our hair cut differently? I love the total lack of linear superficial connection, while there is a clear cause and effect energetically. And I have to admit, sometimes I enjoy baffling others with my “weird” way of problem-solving.

Slade – What a beautiful comment. Reading what you wrote brought the idea of really embracing all those overlaps, the way the different threads in our lives are all interwoven into one fabric. (Wait … didn’t the whole spinning/thread topic come up in one of your posts?) And if that fabric is bunched up in a knot at one end, sometimes we can pull a thread at the other and come back to a state of flow overall …. hmmm. Thank you!

Blessings,
Andrea

I remember a real turning point some eight years ago when I was in not such a wonderful “place” on my path when everything felt compartmentalized as you describe and none of those compartments was working out very well.

I realized that although they felt disconnected from one another, they really were not — the common denominator was ME.

From that point on, an overarching goal has been to integrate as much as possible — for there to be greater and greater overlap between what is my job, what are my hobbies, what my relationships mean. To find — no CREATE — a ME that powers all of them.

My creative hobbies nurture my spirit and energize my awareness, which affects my productivity and my work with clients; my relationships present me with writing material, or the other way around, an opportunity to practice what I preach… The examples go on and on, the more overlap, the more the lines of the compartments seem to blur, the more everything facet seems to be shine and illuminate the others.

Wonderful examples of how this plays out for you in a very literal way — you do this so well!
Slade

When I’m feeling ’stuck’ in one area of my life, eventually that ’stuckness’ creeps into other areas if I don’t address it. But sometimes, addressing the stuck area head-on makes me feel more stuck. So, I go looking for other areas in which to address my ’stuckness’…and it usually works. This points out to me exactly what you’re saying here, that everything is energetically connected, and at least from my own experience, explains why what Tom says (movement, any movement, is helpful) works, too. Cause and effect are directly related, I believe. Trouble is, they’re not always related in the ways we expect or look for. Just because I don’t see the connection, doesn’t mean the relationship doesn’t exist. So, you’re right – sometimes sky-diving might just be the answer, as odd as that seems on the surface.

Suzanne

Thank you for your great insights. I’ve invited a few fellow bloggers in the personal finance area because I thought this is interesting for them.

Sometimes my To-Do list feels unwieldy. When my energy feels stuck or blocked (usually via procrastination), I do find that doing something – anything – gets the energy flowing again. Everything feels better when the energy moves!

When our lives are too compartmentalised, we can end up blinding ourselves to the fact that sometimes changing the energy in one area of our lives is best accomplished by changing it in another area where it is perhaps easier to make the adjustments that we need.

A personal example relates to our house-hunting. A couple of weeks ago, everything ground to a halt – no houses that we liked, and our energy and enthusiasm started waning big time, with a corresponding knock-on effect to other areas. The easiest and quickest area to re-energise was my cooking – in my next shopping trip, I deliberately bought things I hadn’t ever bought before and I got creative in the kitchen! Since then, I’ve gotten creative in other areas too. And we had our best day of house-hunting last weekend… if all goes well, we will put in an offer on a house this week