A New Year: The Spiritual Side of Life and the Literary Side of Life

The new year has been very much a NEW YEAR for me. My trip home to Florida was transformative, mainly due to my sister giving me a book on Lightworkers and talking to me about how she believes I have the ability to heal others. I used to do a sort of energy healing on her 10 years ago and she's never forgotten it. 

Anyway, I have learned a lot about how my intuitiveness and empathy can be powers, not things that make life harder, but moreso, how I can use them to heal people. I've done about five energy readings and they've all been incredible experiences. I even have a client I've started doing them for and am incorporating it into the manuscript development services. 

It seems like the things I care about most: the spiritual side of life and the literary side of life, are finally coming together in a more open and dynamic way.

Having said that, I have taken a giant step back from my own writing. In fact, I decided about a month ago to "give up" and it was actually very freeing. I have to dissect out the true love of writing I was born with from all the rules and ego stuff that got entwined along the way. I feel I haven't really found my voice, or how to transmit my voice into my books, and that is why I haven't finished anything. 

So I am working at just being one with God, with my higher self, and with the things that truly bring me joy. And the wonderful thing is that I am starting to feel that buzzing in my chest again, that honest spark that comes forth when a real piece of writing wants to come through. So I am journaling every day first thing and starting to keep a space open for something authentic to come through.

I've also been really focused on work. I decided a couple weeks ago that I wanted to make $1,000 a week, so I made that my goal and really what it required was just pushing myself a little and making sure I worked more billable hours and less unpaid hours. I really wanted to see if I could do it, but also I am moving to my own place in March, so I want to have a lot of money for rent and deposit. 

All this together has meant that I've spent a lot of time either working or meditating or giving readings this month and it's put me in a sort of rarefied state of mind. Not very social or bloggy.

Those of you who visit the blog, thanks for checking in. What have you been working on?

Launch of New Book and Publishing Company

Just a note to say that I haven't posted yet this week because I've been busy getting ready to launch The Best of Follow Your Bliss ebook and Cordage Books, my new publishing company.

A lot of awesome things are happening. I'm going to be on this radio show today:

And it even got featured on Blog Talk Radio's front page:

So, thanks for checking in! And if you want to learn more about my journey of following my bliss, tune in to the show today! Or stay in touch through Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NinaAlvarez.WriterEditor

About Being Energetically Owned By My Work

12.27.12

Yesterday I woke up alone in my parents' house to the patter of Florida rain. I woke up with the familiar tension of responsibility. Christmas was over and I had told myself today I would get back to work. So I entered the day as I have for so long, with a sense of tension and unhappiness. Then remembering to attempt to stand outside of the response and see through the illusion of conditioned emotion, I decided to order my day differently. See how my soul reacted.

All I know, to start with, is this: I have had three days off – given by myself – from my work. I usually can't stop thinking about work for long. Anyone with their own business and a perfectionist, fear-based response to life probably suffers the same. But because of Christmas, having family around to distract me, and being in a different location from my office, it was easier than usual.

The cruel irony is that, being a freelancer, I can take three days off of work whenever I want. But I don't. Why? Taking time "off" doesn’t mean I’d actually be able to let go of work. I think about work while going on hikes, hanging out with my boyfriend, watching TV. Saturdays and Sundays are almost painful for me, trying to not do work, so I'd begun filling them up with different kinds of productivity.

But I figured if there were three consecutive days in a whole year that I could pull off true relaxation, if would be during Christmas at my parents' house. And I was right.

Having three days to truly break up the constant attachment to work productivity, I feel significantly less energetically owned by my idea of ‘what has to be done.’ I feel there is some more space between me and it.

Every year I get a Christmas miracle, and this year's was this: a bit of relief from the prison I keep myself in the rest of the year. It has nothing to do with my clients - who are wonderful - it has to do with something in the way I perceive my life.

So I tried something I haven't tried in a long time: I chose to do my own writing first.

I opened my computer and the next thing I knew I was checking email, Facebook, even Perez Hilton. I also checked my work email, telling myself I just waned to see what was waiting for me. And you know what? There was nothing new. After all it is just the first day after Christmas.

And then I started journaling. And it was so good to hear my own inner voice. To start to clear up and clear out a lot of that muck and confusion, needless worry, and lack of faith in the universe.

Because here is the truth: if you are miserable, it is your soul telling you to find your joy. Find your joy. That is the only thing in life that is real. Everything else is illusion.

It will be steps. The tick to go online, check email, use Facebook, these are things I have done every single day for six years now at least.

And there are other psychological traps. A voice that says I could turn this into a blog post. A nice way to share an honest part of myself on the blog. Already, not 300 words in, it was saying it. I was saying it. And here it is. A blog post. And maybe it was meant to be one. But it can't start out as one, you know?

My mind is slower and cleaner today that it has been in a long time. Slow almost like the day I wrote "A Bird in the Hand," an article for the January 2011 issue of Follow Your Bliss and the piece I am most proud of. This sanity is the true goal. This connection with myself. And yet I am not there yet – writing to explore, to go beyond, not aiming everything at some end of sharing it with people.

Steps, it will take steps.

Maybe more than that, it will take a shift – sitting and writing until I shift into the other mind where the words come through me and for the universe.

The Day After Christmas

12.26.12

On the day after Christmas, 1986, I wrote in my first diary about how the day was palpably less fun and magical than Christmas had been. Presents were still sort of exciting, but less so. 

On December 27 I wrote of the further diminishing returns.

Somehow over these years I’ve learned to gracefully move from phase to phase, holiday to workaday and actually feel a certain fond familiarity for the return to normal life. The glow of the holidays still upon me, but accepting of what is. 

I suppose we learn to adapt because there is nothing else to be done. And we can even eventually turn that adaptation from resignation into pleasure. That is one of those amazing things about being human, I guess. They call it "growing up," but I think it's a way to allow every day to have its own magic.

Global Shift and Follow Your Bliss

Friday, December 21, 2012



We survived the apocalypse.

That means another Follow Your Bliss Friday.

That also means I have to step up my game, speak more from the heart.

I want to talk about the global shift in consciousness that has been happening for years and that some say is hitting a pinnacle no-turning-back marker today.

I want to talk about how I took fifteen months of work on a now-defunct magazine and followed my intuition to re-purposing it into an eBook that I'm excited to publish. And how this was the direct result of a year of working to get closer to my intuition, sense of joy and ease, and to work through love instead of fear.

We can't separate making smarter, more powerful choices from our subsequent efforts to develop into more conscious versions of ourselves. The self-work WILL reflect in the outer work. If you aren't seeing the results yet, give it time.

I see this happening in my family and friends too, even those who are resistant to concepts that seem New Agey (but really aren't). They're getting on board and acting with increased awareness, self-care, and openness to the concept that we are here for a purpose: the basic motivating message behind "follow your bliss."

But growing pains are ... well ... pains. The last couple months I've had a heck of a time getting to sleep before 5 a.m. I've also felt a lot of symptoms below. Have you?

• Have your emotions been more intense lately? 

• Does it seem like there are more thoughts racing through your mind? 

• Have you noticed your body tensing up for no apparent reason? 

• Have you been feeling a vague - or not so vague - sense of anxiety? 

• Are you finding it difficult to get a good night’s sleep? 

• Do you seem to be compelled to keep busy? 

• Are you feeling a mysterious sense of urgency? 

• Do you have less patience? 

• Do you find yourself obsessing more over things? 

• Have your moods been shifting quickly from optimistic to discouraged - from delighted to downhearted? Does it seem harder than it use to be to enjoy life?

If you are experiencing some - or all - of these things, take heart. Believe it or not, it is a sign that something very positive is happening to you, and to the planet. These symptoms are (in most cases) a “by-product” of an extraordinary spiritual awakening - or “consciousness shift” - that Planet Earth and humanity are currently undergoing. (read more on How the 2012 Shift in Consciousness Might Be Affecting You)

Following your bliss will put you in touch with the mystery that's the ground of your own being. It's not just about enjoying your work, it's about trusting that the universe WANTS you to enjoy your work. That you are here to ENJOY your work so that it may build a better energetic universe as well as material one.

I invite you to join me on January 3, 2013 at 2 pm on the online radio show The Life's Dash with Michele Mattia as I talk with Michele about The Best of Follow Your Bliss, full of articles and personal narratives of ordinary people propelled to extraordinary versions of themselves through the transformative process of following one's bliss.

Why Not Do Things Out of Love Instead of Fear?

Fear is not necessary. There is the idea that fear is good for us, that it is beneficial and has all kinds of hidden, mysterious values. People will look back and rationalize how fear got them to do this and do that, and all I can say is, "Too bad." 

Too bad they did not do it out of love for themselves or for their fellow human beings. Too bad that they did not do it out of love for life itself, love for their own aliveness, and love for their body. Why not do things for our body out of love for it instead of out of fear of the consequences? Why not keep it healthy and happy because we love and value it, not because we are afraid of a heart attack or something else?  -David R. Hawkins 

My Top 5 Books for Writers

Today is Writer Wednesday and I'm keeping it simple.

Here are the top five books that have given me the most support, information, instruction about the craft of writing. I recommend them all to any writer searching for help.



1. Stephen King's On Writing

2. Julia Cameron's The Artists Way

3. Sol Stein's Stein on Writing

4. Browne and King Self-Editing For Fiction Writers

5. Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones



What are your top five?