The Secret Storyworld

The Inspired Morning Routine of the Invisible World

It starts at the Crossroads with a Time Traveling Chicken -er- check-in

I have always been a being who eases into my morning. I am abstract and fuzzy in the early hours, as I say hello to the sun cresting over the mountains, as I feed the animals and pour my cup of coffee, heading off to start my day at the computer.

Hmmm. Maybe starting my day at my computer is the first navigational error I am making.

Because I find that the morning hours get away from me. And that I don’t always get right to the things that matter most. It’s a tricky dance between accomplishment and enjoying an impulsive unfolding of my day.

I want to do both. (And if you stick around to the end of this morning ramble I will share a creative way I have found to have my proverbial coffee and drink it too.)

There are certain things that bring me habitual pleasure as part of my morning routine. That cup of coffee and the online equivalent of reading the newspaper. I subscribe to a compilation of online outlets and I enjoy reading an inspirational article by David Price on Medium, a political op-ed by Matthew Yglesias, and a couple of curated newsletters from major publications.

This news reading is new to me. I never really paid much attention to what was going on in the world. Now I almost always ace the NYT news quiz at the end of the week.

I am informed. And I didn’t use to be.

But here is the thing about a lot of things that I want to do with my days, weeks, months, and years. I want to create things that don’t exist. So immersing myself in the concrete doings of our world is not as helpful as I think.

Oh yes, I enjoy it but it is claiming some precious morning attention from what I want to do which is to write the guidebooks, produce videos, and organize calls, classes, and games. Things that benefit from doing first thing before my Monsters (who are also fuzzy in the morning) have had their own cup of Joe (or Sam or Lisa or…) and can get to their job of scaring me into not doing the things I am nervous about doing.

This leads me to the reason I’m reading. I read because I am uncertain of my path, and reading the newspaper as part of my morning gives me a sense of certainty. I feel that I am learning, grounding myself in life here on earth.

But that is not the most important thing for my day. Instead, I could be bringing all the experiences of the dream world into this world. Because the dream world is the invisible world. I just keep forgetting to write it down.

The dream world is invisible. We can’t experience it with our five senses. Our rational brain discounts it because it doesn’t find it concrete enough to focus much of our attention.

And that is a mistake. We are a people who have these marvelous magic powers of attention that we use to construct and interpret our daily reality. So for me right now I am waking up and turning my attention to the concrete physical world rather than the creative unformed invisible world.

Why? Because it doesn’t require much from me. I don’t have to be creative. I don’t have to be uncertain. I don’t have to imagine new possibilities which take a certain amount of brain power.

What’s interesting about this is that I believe I am here to imagine new possibilities, it is what I enjoy the most (and that’s likely true for you or you wouldn’t still be reading.) But what I have discovered is imagining them isn’t enough. You have to communicate them and share them and invite others to respond to them, to interact with them. I know this is silly that I didn’t realize this earlier but it is just the case for me. I did not know I needed to share with other people what I was thinking.

This is an important part of our world. We relate to it through our attention, and that attention forms our world. And it requires a lot of our attention to be focused on the same thing for us to work our magic to make things real in the physical world.

Just my attention isn’t enough. Yours either. But us together. Watch out world.

So here we are. Lots of people are writing and creating and there is an entire movement encouraging people to write and create together. That is a good thing. And I think we need to add in one other layer.

Creating together the things that matter.

What is health, wealth, love, happiness for all? How do we create, share? How do we do these things in our stories and with our focused attention so that we can create the world that we most truly want to live in?

Together. Not each of us struggling to survive, but rather each of us together, helping one another to thrive.

It starts with knowing the power we each contain in the invisible realms and then bringing those powers forward to collaboratively share. How do we do that? I envision monthly storygames but there are other ways too. Training in how to use your focus attention to make magic in this world. This is why we go to Wizard School and the Time Travel Hotel in the Secret Storyworld. To learn how to better wield our attention to create the magical and future world we envision.

This is how we write the world.

TRY THIS! The Inspired Morning Routine of the Crossroads Chicken

(The Chicken is a check-in)

Focus your attention — meditation works well for this kind of thing, it can be sitting, moving, gazing. It can start with your head, your heart, or your body.

Harness your energies — your thoughts, feelings, and your most important aspirations and why they matter. A journal or planner works well for this kind of exploration. I really like Buster Benson’s 750words.com. Don’t forget to add in the hot beverage of your choice.

Choose your top three actions that will focus your energy on what’s most important to you. Again, a planner works, or maybe a whiteboard where you can satisfyingly check it off at the end of the day.

Need accountability? Text a fellow storyspinner your commitments and your results for your daily actions.

Identify what is standing in the way. Eat your Monsters first thing before they eat up your energy and your day. My Monsters love it when I read the newspaper first thing. They cast their forgetting spells and stir up their anxiety butterflies and cross their claws that I will forget to adventure into the invisible realms to bring an inspired idea to physical life. It’s just their thing. They hate change. So I need to eat them first thing before they are fully awake. (Eating your Monsters is taking just the tiniest of Monster Moves towards the To Do on your list that you’ve been avoiding. Your Monsters know exactly which one it is.)

You get right to your creative doings and I will get right to mine. Let’s ̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ write the world.