…and what’s Squirrels got to do with it?
In my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into our Book Club selection! This week is Chapter 7 of BEYOND ANXIETY: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose by Martha Beck.
Got Squirrels?
In Chapter 7: Making Your Sanity Quilt, MB describes the boundless joy dogs experience when they chase the squirrels that they find endlessly fascinating, and she invites us to ask ourselves, “What’s YOUR squirrel?”
It might sound silly, but it matters. Because when we find squirrels for our curiosity to chase, our anxiety automatically tampers down.
Why?
Because we give our minds better, healthier options to occupy our attention, compared to the often unhealthy alternatives that our inner Firefighters like to use to help us feel safe in the moment, but hurt us in the long run.
Make Your Own Sanity Quilt
MB suggests that we do as the Amish community does when they finish making quilts comprised of highly precise geometric patterns: they collect the remaining scraps of beautiful cloth into a “ragbag of curiosities,” full of pretty patterns from which we can pick.
Not to make another precise, ornate blanket. But to make a free-flowing quilt that’s guided not by precision but by curiosity and intuition.
To allow the quilt’s design to unfold naturally, into a beautiful work of art — a “Sanity Quilt” — that’s designed based our own creativity, not a pattern we are forced to follow.
This is how we can allow our imaginations to flow effortlessly into a Creativity Spiral, guided by the same childlike wonder she experienced when she was a child, exploring the scraps in her mother’s ragbag.
Are You Open to Soothing & Comforting Yourself?
Personally, I’m excited to envision the creative scraps that I’d sew into my own Sanity Quilt.
I find the idea of a Sanity Quilt so comforting. I imagine wrapping myself in the comfort of all my creative interests (writing, making art & music, and dancing up a storm). Just the thought of it brings me immense joy & peace. Like hygge for my soul.
And I’ll always remember to keep the process light. How could I not? I can’t help but laugh when I picture MB’s description of…
A Sanity Quilt…made of Fuzzy Squirrels?!
What a fun & funny reminder that sometimes it’s healthier for us to put aside the “serious” geometric pattern that society usually demands from us.
Instead, we can follow what actually interests and excites our Creativity.
We can have fun & experience freedom quilting what our imaginations inspire us to design.
To go on a creative journey — one that need never end, no matter how old we get.
To honor the creative child that yearns to be listened to, inside all of us.
Now, take a Mindful Minute to reflect on your life:
⭐️📝 For our Journaling this week:
- ⭐️ 🐿️ What are your Squirrels?
- ⭐️ 🪢 What can you add to your own Ragbag of curiosities?
- ⭐️ 🧵🪡 What would you sew into your Sanity Quilt?
Are you as ready as I am,
to find the Squirrels hiding in your own backyard?
To embrace your Curiosity & Intuition,
and let go of society’s oppressive seriousness?
To live a healthier & fun life,
wrapped in the warmth of
your own free-flowing joy & self-soothing sanity?
👭 If you want to enlist the help of a Fellow Creative, to help you break free…
Our CHAT can be a safe place to tell safe people what you’d like to accomplish, so we can all support & cheer you on.
👭 If you’re comfortable doing so, feel free to tell us what Creative Practice you would like to try whenever one of your Anxiety Spirals starts to spin.
Let’s TRUST in our ability to create safety in ourselves by being the Creatives we are meant to be.
Together, we can support each other on our healing journeys.
Together, we can wrap our Creative Selves in the Sanity Quilts we all deserve.
The Sanity Quilter in me honors & respects the Sanity Quilter in each of you,
Marisa
⭐️ Remember, we don’t have to figure everything out, all alone. ⭐️
We can find solutions, together!
Please join us in my
This is a special group for Writers, Artists, & Creatives like us, to have deep conversations about the Books that we choose, so we can implement what we learn, and unearth our truest, most Authentic Selves.
It’s the perfect way to
Share Our Recipes for Happiness:
🔮 Have fun together;
🔮 Share our triumphs;
🔮 Vent from time to time — we’re human after all!
🔮 Take a lighthearted approach to private journaling & Artist’s Dates; and,
🔮 Grow the CREATIVE GENIUS inside all of us! 💐🌺🌷🌸🌹🌻🌼
Share Our Work (allow our True Self to be Seen):
🚀 With Notes Boost Challenges (NBC), we can share our favorite Notes of the week.
🚀 And, when we’d like, we can share our Works In Progress (WIP) and/or Final Posts, Music, & Art…whatever we’re proud of!
🚀 So we can Like, Comment, and/or Restack each others’ work to…
Share Our Joy (experience Connection with a kind & supportive Creative Community):
🙌 This is how we can come together, to grow through our own individual efforts, and feel the support of a kind & supportive Creative Community, too.
🤗 If that sounds good to you, then join us & say hello!
Join Marisa Victus’s subscriber chat
Available in the Substack app and on web
Come join us in the STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT! ☕️🍵 !
Looking for a regular place to help boost each other’s Notes & Posts every week?
I host Notes Boost Challenges (NBC) every Friday in my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT.
Feel free to share your latest Note or Post of the week, so we can Like/Comment/Restack yours & you can do the same for others, so we can all GROW!
Pull up a seat & come to our comfy & cozy Creative CHAT! Here’s to the Creative CHAT for me & you! 🎉📚🥳📚🎉
Subscribe if you want to see where this Creative Journey can take us!
Share
Leave a comment
BONUS — Did you know that all SUBSCRIBERS can read the 1st Book of THE OBSIDIAN CHRONICLES (OBSIDIAN: Birth to Venus) for FREE?
Subscribe now
Together, we’ll explore all the ways that we can 10x our life — mind, body, & soul.
We’ll learn the scientific, physiological, and psychological reasons why we are the way that we are. And…
We’ll combine that understanding with simple, active practices that will supercharge our self-improvement & give us unstoppable self-belief!
When you SUBSCRIBE TO MY SUBSTACK, you’ll gain access to these 2 resources:
(1) Every week, you’ll get my free Non-Fiction Newsletter on Substack, entitled Marisa VICTUS: Science of Synergy & Self; and,
(2) Every day, you’ll be able to entrain your brain — the quick & easy way — with my daily Mindset & Meditation (M&M) practice.
I’m building my own Mindset & Meditation (M&M) Community, so we can all invest in our truest, most Authentic Self.
🌸 Every day, I write ✍️1 handwritten✍️ M&M (Mindset & Meditation) Note.🌸
🧘🏻♀️If you want to grow with me, repeat these daily affirmations like I am.🧘🏻♀️
🙌Let’s entrain our brains to adopt these empowering beliefs.🙌
Plus, if you’d like to see me succeed (or flop 😂) as I practice in public,
(3) SUBSCRIBE to my free YouTube Channel!