9 Ways to Make Peace with the Inner Critic

No matter if your creative confidence sings from rooftops or hides in the darkest garret, rise above the rantings of your critical voice and make peace with your inner critic with these techniques. Speak Kindly to Yourself “Every time you judge yourself, you hurt yourself,” as Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho once said, a statement that is true on many levels, and […]

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15 Tools Inspired by Eastern Wisdom to Find Stillness in a Storm Part II

“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realise it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become asource of beauty, joy, and strength, […]

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[Interlude] Compassion, Vulnerability & My Unexpected Plot Twist

“In order to flower, self-compassion depends on honest, direct contact with our own vulnerability. Compassion fully blossoms when we actively offer care to ourselves,” wrote Tara Brach, psychologist, meditation teacher, speaker and author of True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. Reading these words, an uncomfortable chord struck, for despite my musings on […]

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Poetry | Call Me by My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.   Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, […]

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7 Ways to Embrace Vulnerability and Write Your Truth

When you create with openness, with a willingness to trust and be vulnerable for your art, your writing is all the more authentic and true because it is uncensored, drawn from the deepest part of yourself — pure feeling articulated on the page — but it can be hard to share our truths, to write without censor, especially when the […]

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Poetry | The Summer Day ~ Mary Oliver

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is […]

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Inspire Portal | Wisdom, Wellness, Writing and Conscious Creativity

The microphone screeched for the third time then the lights went out completely. In a confusing combination of elation and fear, Brighton’s famous theatre was plunged backwards through time, pausing only after reaching the Chinese year of the Water Snake, way back in 1893. The auditorium was dark, it’s guests barely visible behind the stage […]

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