Scripting

To script is to centre our focus, our energy, on what we desire. Words hold power.

I have worked with these seven questions for more than seven years, adapting and shifting them over time. Never have I regretted this practice. On days when I have only ten minutes, or when my energy is low, I still feel the shift. On days when I feel excited and free, I can devote longer time and anchor more deeply into the life I desire and am creating. Some days I write a page, other days far more. Weeks may pass and I forget, only to return and find solace again. Practice. It is life-long. For years I wrote variations of the same line: I am experiencing a tidal wave of creativity. To feel that now, so strongly, after so many years of scripting, feels surreal.

Light a candle. Sit in the sun. Play soft music. Give yourself what your being craves most: your presence.

The Seven Questions

  1. My affirmation today is:

  2. A pattern I want to be more aware of and shift:

  3. I am grateful for:

  4. Three characteristics or strengths the person I am becoming has:

  5. The person I am becoming is experiencing more:

  6. Today I have an opportunity to be my future self when I:

  7. When I think of the person I am becoming, I feel:

꩜

During a Positive Psychology unit in my Bachelor’s degree, I wrote a literature review on journaling. Contemporary research shows that structured, positive structured formats tend to bring more beneficial outcomes than unstructured “stream-of-consciousness” methods, which can sometimes reinforce rumination and shame.

Of course, everyone should journal in the way that feels right for them. The classic three-page, stream-of-consciousness-style Artist’s Way method is huge for a reason. It just never stuck for me personally, never became a centring practice like this structured method of scripting. I would drown in the vastness, weighed down by the time commitment. Through many years of feeling creatively blocked, or better yet cursed, I found my way to these rituals.

When I feel most me, stream-of-consciousness writing flows naturally, effortlessly. It never comes with pressure or force. Only when my body feels safe through somatic practices and deep rest do I find I can tune in... funny that.

꩜

There is a reason ‘spelling’ once meant casting words as spells, messages, stories, creation of perception. Searching the etymology of the words that come to me, their origins and shifting meanings, feels like uncovering the roots still alive inside language. When words feel charged, echo through me and return in the voices of others, I recognise the synchronicity. This interplay guides me.

꩜

Tidal (adj.) means “of, pertaining to, or caused by the tides or a tide,” first recorded in 1807, from tide + the Latin-derived suffix -al. More generally, it carries the sense “characterised by rise and fall, ebb and flow.” From this came tidal wave (1819), at first simply high water, later used for great inundations, now distinguished as tsunamis. By 1870, it was already figurative: “a widespread manifestation of strong feeling.”

But the roots go deeper. Tidal flows from Proto-Germanic tīdiz meaning “a point in time, a season,” rooted in the Proto-Indo-European di / dei meaning “to shine, to divide.” With -al it becomes “of the tides,” carrying the mythic pull of time, sea and moon.

This is the meaning I claim: tidal as connection to the eternal ebb and flow. Self as vessel of water. Creativity as channel.