You might know #7MagicWords, the week long challenge that encourages you to find seven special (or seemingly not so special) words that will illuminate your life, work, and art. Perhaps you’ve played with the daily prompts and met other Magic Makers along the way already. Perhaps it's time for you to see what the buzz is all about...
It’s something we do at the turn of each season, and we’re about to begin again as we welcome the fall.
Sign up now and read on to get the truth behind all the sparkle.
When #7MagicWords was born in June 2017, I desperately need to find - to create - something that was mine. It needed to serve me, and it needed to somehow align with what was mine to do.
I’d lost myself, you see. I’d lost myself in shoulds and the pursuit of the “practical.” I’d lost myself in partnership and a vision that was not my own. I was lost in the place between being a mom and being myself, usually mired in “not enough” on every front.
There was one thing I knew: I needed to focus in on bringing wonder-filled creativity and magic to the core of my life, and I knew I was supposed to call others to come along with me.
But, I also felt isolated by my own yearnings. The sense that I had something important to give but had no idea how to wrap it or where to send it constantly weighed me down.
It was when I was literally marooned on a sidewalk chalk island on a late spring day - my girls were drawing pictures around me - when the idea came to me.
(The best ideas are at once totally surprising and completely inevitable. That’s how it was with what would become this shared 7 day challenge.)
At the start of the year, I had launched #365MagicWords, a personal project that would help me connect to the creative impulse within and enable me to show up in the world each day. By June, I knew that there was power in the practice of finding a daily word. I had built a daily structure to hold the glimmers of insight, yearning, and experience already. It was clear that this project could hold me.
And after six months of an individual practice, it was clear that magic words could hold others too.
This is part of the mystery, you know. You create a container to hold your ideas and your dreams and then you soon discover that the container or project is actually holding you.
Develop an authentic space for others and you'll soon realize that it wants to become your own safest space to land.
Hold and be held.
Trust and be trusted.
Create and be created.
All of this #7MagicWords holding, trusting, and creating was happening within a much bigger story. It was yet another chapter of the adventure that had to be lived before it could be described. It was part of the quest for Sovereignty that’s at the heart of my life’s work. (And this is all part of the work in progress, The Book of Sovereignty that’s due out in October 2019.
“When you are sovereign, you are the confident, compassionate ruler of your own life.
You are rooted into your belief in your own worth and guided by your dedication to the greater good.
Confident, anchored, ready, you are able to hold and heal others so they can connect with their own sovereignty, their own creativity, and their own magic.”
Finding my magic words and developing the space for others to find their own words was sovereignty in action for me. Over four seasons I crafted prompts and curated quotes and assembled images. I was watching a community garden grow.
But somehow, as the project went on, things became imbalanced.
I felt like I was putting more energy into the whole extravaganza than I was getting in return. Somehow, the promise was not in alignment with the reality. What started as “easy, one word a day fun!” was being asked to do so much.
What was meant to be an offering of love and possibility was being weighed down by expectation and worry.
This sense that something was "off "wasn’t coming from the Magic Makers who joined in. No one ever hinted that I wasn’t doing enough to incite magic. It was all coming from me. Clearly I had my own empty spaces to fill...
Projects reflect their creator, of course - I am a chronic complexifier and over-deliverer. I’m also hell bent on evolution and transformation.
To simply update the prompts each time, but generally keep the same shape and scope overall? That couldn’t possibly be enough. I had to offer more.
As I write this, I remember that Mother Nature has never ever stressed that last spring’s flowers, last summer’s sunshine, last autumn’s brilliance, or last winter’s icicles looks just like last year’s. She serves up her magic according to the season and trusts that we mortals will welcome her offerings, hungry for the renewal that each new season offers.
But I didn’t see that until now.
The beautiful simplicity & utter necessity of consistency
This June, to counterbalance the effort I had been putting into the project, I upped the ante. I started to charge a small fee to participate in the project. I lavished so much time and attention on the prompts, the quotes, and the trimmings...
Only now do I see that we began to lose the original power of a simple invitation to “Find a word that…”
I know that the smaller group of Magic Makers who showed up each day and played with - and struggled with! - the prompts got something important from the process. There was true beauty in the project, but that initial spontaneity just wasn’t there as I strove to take it all so seriously.
Magic isn’t in the efforting. It’s in the allowing & the welcoming of the unexpected.
And then, things shifted
Recently, I told you about *All The Things* that I have experienced and have planned as a result of an unexpectedly full and fruitful summer. Rediscovering my inner performer, putting the book first, finally stepping more fully into my Sovereign Story…
This is a space of such exquisite freedom, a space that I always believed was available to the chosen ones, the lucky ones, but never me.
There’s a new lightness and a sense of trust that I don’t need to hustle for worthiness or do the stuff that “should” be profitable and popular.
I don't need to try to do more or to pull off the impossible in order to introduce you to your own magic.
In our complex, material world, more freedom is actually about the right amount of less.
And that’s what I hope to embody and transmit in the next #7MagicWords Challenge.
To join us, simply say “yes to magic” below.
You’ll receive daily prompts encouraging you to seek, create, and make room for simple creative magic each day. All it takes is a word. Really.