Hey Guild! Long time no talk! As you may have noticed, Mikaela has been doing most of the articles recently. This is partially because between the two of us… she is definitely the writer. But it is also because my life has been all over the place.
BUT I AM BACK BABY!!!! And I am ready to continue our Astrology 101 series today.
As I just said, it has been a minute so let’s have a quick recap.
Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on human affairs and the natural world.
Your Natal Chart is a map of where the different celestial bodies were in relation to YOU at the exact time and location of your birth. This is divided into 12 ‘pie’ pieces.
The Zodiac wheel is the outer wheel of your natal chart and moves based on the sun’s apparent yearly rotation about our Earth, along the ecliptic. You will see this rotating on the chart.
The wheel of Houses is the inner wheel and based on the Earth’s 24-hour rotation about its own axis. This is stationary on the natal chart.
Natal charts map the sky at your birth
The Outer Part of the Chart Containing the Zodiacs ROTATES Depending on Birth Data
Inner STATIONARY Chart Containing The 12 Houses and Representing the Earth- – Using Words Instead of Symbols for Beginner Ease
In the last installment of Astrology 101, we looked at the 12 houses in the inner wheel of the natal chart. I like to think of these (this is very simplified) as categories or areas of your life (be that internal or external) that different energies can be in. Now let’s look at the planets and other celestial bodies that are placed on the natal chart.
The celestial bodies that are mapped are indicators of certain energies, needs, and drives. I have seen in a couple places that they are described as activators so let’s address this distinction before I move onto different associations and meanings. In astrology we are observing the planets and the synchrony it causes in our lives. Individuals born under different celestial patterns tend to have certain personalities, physical traits, life paths, etc. By saying that celestial bodies are activators, it insinuates that a planet “makes” something happen. Mars isn’t talking to me and controlling my actions but it being in a certain part of my chart INDICATES that I may be prone to a certain trait or action. I read a fantastic parallel online that described it like a clock at the end of a 9-5 workday. When it hits 5pm, the clock does not force you to leave work, but you do usually stop at 5pm (unless you are a workaholic like me) by choice.
You may also notice that I keep saying celestial bodies instead of planets. This is for a couple of reasons. Without digging too deep at this point into Astronomy history, the discovery of planets (and the argument about which ones count as planets- I see you PLUTO), etc… here are a few reasons that I am referring to celestial bodies:
Astrology is geocentric (earth in the center) and when it was originally created, the sun and moon were included in the list of planets circling earth. They are not planets, but we leave them on the list of “planets” observed and they are still 2 of the most important/influential bodies on our chart.
Astrology also observes several asteroids/planetoids that have a body and a calculatable orbit.
Sun or Sol: “I am”
The sun represents who you are at your core, your personality, ego, your essence, and your conscious mind, and the male principle. It is also a giver of life so can represent your will to live or creative life force. This is usually a deep, unchanging part of you. This is you in the BROADEST sense like we discussed in the first Astrology post we did (What is Astrology? Where does one start?). When interpreting your natal chart, one of the suns best qualities is rulership and one of the worst is dictativeness.
Moon or Luna: “I feel”
The moon represents the unconscious (or subconscious), emotions, the feminine. It also directly affects all life but is receptive, reflective, and passive, the polar opposite of the sun. It is also associated with memory, habit patterns, personal paradigms, role models AND how these condition and affect you. If the sun is what is apparent to others on the outside, the moon is the part of you that YOU see. When interpreting your natal chart, one of the moon’s best qualities is adaptability and one of the worst is inconstancy.
Mercury: “I think”
Mercury is the planet of thinking, learning, intellect, and communication. It can be associated with different speech patterns, senses of humor, and how one intellectually interacts with or comprehends the world around them. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Mercury’s best qualities is expression and one of the worst is restlessness.
Venus: “I love”
I was trying to remember the childhood rhyme about girls going to Venus and all we could do was come up with a more adult version. “Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider; Girls go to Venus to get more Penis.” Obviously, this is NOT the rhyme I was trying to remember from elementary school… BUT just like in our childhood rhymes, Venus is feminine and associated with love. It represents pleasure, beauty, romance, emotional attachments, marriages, harmony, and any other unions. When talking about beauty or pleasure, that can also be material pleasures like artistry. It is a very personal planet. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Venus’s best qualities is affection and one of the worst is pliancy.
Mars: “I act”
Mar’s is the opposite of Venus (see a pattern yet?). It is masculine and associated with conflict, aggression, and war rather than feminine harmony. That sounds pretty bad but there are some better associations out there like ambition, courage, vitality, action, desire, sex drive, and animal instinct. It can show how you pursue goals, stand up for yourself, attack or defend, and how you dissociate yourself from people or circumstances. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Mar’s best qualities is initiative and one of the worst is harshness.
Jupiter: “I grow”
Jupiter is all about plenty, expansion, knowledge (think philosophical vs mercury which is more factual), enthusiasm, abundance, luck, responsibility, exuberance, morality, charity, frankness, honesty, and the soul. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Jupiter’s best qualities is benevolence and one of the worst is conceit.
Saturn: “I achieve”
I find Saturn fascinating because of how it interacts with the other celestial bodies. It is associated with limits, restrictions, boundaries, safety, practicality, reality, seriousness, laws, and structures. These could all be interpreted as negative, but they are necessary and allow for more structured lives and a sort of balance. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Saturn’s best qualities is systems of organization and one of the worst is selfishness.
Uranus: “I evolve”
Uranus is a higher octave of Mercury. I read a description of Uranus that said its energy is like a bolt of lightning and I feel this is fairly accurate. It is about suddenness, revolution, change, shock, disruption, flashes of insight, revelation, creativity, invention, and innovation. It is destructive to patterns and limitations, so it helps destroy the old and bring in the new for growth. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Uranus’s best qualities is originality and one of the worst (debatable) is rebellion.
Neptune: “I dream”
Neptune is a higher octave of Venus. This feminine planet is associated with self-sacrifice, compassion, spirituality, devotion, beauty, the subconscious, illusions, fantasies, the magical or enchanting, and the primordial chaos before creation. Neptune is the planet associated with the quest for universal wisdom, but also for cloudiness, confusion, delusion, and unreality. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Neptune’s best qualities is Idealism and one of the worst is vagueness.
Pluto: “I empower”
Pluto is a higher octave of Mars. It can be about transforming repressed energies into a group energy to evolve society, or it is also associated with sex, obsessive desires, transformation, power, true upheaval, wealth, renewal, and rebirth. When interpreting your natal chart, one of Pluto’s best qualities is transformation and one of the worst is inversion.
I just want to say that these are BRIEF interpretations. I could (and will eventually) deep dive more into each “planet” and what zodiacs they rule, elemental associations, how to interpret them for each house or zodiac etc. In the meantime, if you do want more information, a good resource would be astrolibrarys’ page on planets in astrology.
Now I did say that this was about celestial bodies… not just planets. Asteroids, dwarf planets, etc. are used to further finesse your natal chart. There are more than 100 celestial bodies that can be mapped and have meanings ranging from your nurturing style to how self-indulgent you are to your fame. I just want to briefly mention a couple you may see in a standard online natal chart:
Chiron: Wisdom gained through self-inflicted wounds; this transforms your personal identity.
Ceres: Your style of nurturing AND how creative you are in giving/receiving.
Pallas Athene: Wisdom, problem solving, the balancing of polarities, and a connection to the world outside of self through cultural lines.
Vesta: Spirituality and your ability to focus or concentrate in an undivided manner.
Juno: Committed and loyal partnerships
Lilith: The shadow side of your personality… basically your inner bad bitch.
We are one step closer to interpreting your chart! We now have houses that tell us what celestial bodies can affect AND celestial bodies to do the affecting. But we still haven’t touched on the one thing that most uninitiated think Astrology is solely about… the Zodiacs. Before we go deeper into the chart and start looking at aspects or anything like an interpretation, we will be adding in the outer wheel of our natal chart. Keep an eye open for our next installment of Astrology 101!
Happy Tarot Tuesday! Let’s talk today about another simple ‘spread’ for self-reflection. I say ‘spread’ loosely this time, as this is technically a single card pull. Despite being small, it’s great for getting to know your deck and heavy on the introspective aspect- which I will always love. For this spread we will again be using the Dreams of Gaia Deck by Ravynn Phelan- but you can use any deck. Today we’re going to be talking about the “Guide Spread”.
The Guide
There is only one card to define in this go around, because well, it’s a single card draw as we’ve said. This card is meant to guide you, help you reflect on something that is prevalent in your life at this time, and can be used to help you reflect on your actions preemptively. Sometimes a guide card may only be relevant for a day. Maybe you happen to pull a card relevant to something that is a larger or more ongoing issue. On a rare occasion a card may need to keep you company for longer than a day.
Performing the Guide Spread
My regular recommendations for tarot apply here: give yourself ample time to complete it and find a quiet space where you can relax and focus. Keep a journal or notebook handy, as well as your guidebook. Find appropriate lighting and light a candle or incense if that helps you relax, same with music/background noise. The point is to intentionally relax and be present in your reflection.
Shuffle. There is no right or wrong way, just shuffle. Stop when it feels right, or your hands get tired. Whatever comes first. Whether you cut your deck or not is up to you.
Before you delve into meanings and reflection, spend some time looking at the artwork, just examining the card. How does its artwork make you feel without immediately knowing what it means?
Review the meaning of the card and take into account if it is upright or reversed/blocked. Reflect on how this may affect your day, if there is something happening that this could help/ hinder with? I find this a good tool to reflect on whatever quality the card is addressing and assess whether I think this is a strength of mine or maybe a weakness I need to pay attention to as I go about my day.
Take your time with this part of the process, as sometimes there are the immediate reactions and the secondary ones after you’ve had a few minutes to think and consider. Don’t judge your reflection as positive or negative. You are simply examining the prompt as it is.
Closing the Reading:
Take a few minutes to write about your experience. This is where we want to be thinking about how this makes us feel. Note that I do not say “where we judge the reading”. That’s not the point, you can feel positively, or negatively, or inspired, or melancholy- whatever it may be; without judging the answer. One is a sensation, the other is a statement. Be careful with this.
Keeping a journal will give you something to look back on, a way to notice trends, and a second round of reflection that is slightly different. Some people (like myself) process differently when we’re writing and the act of moving your hands to reflect things helps anchor the process into linear thoughts when your brain might otherwise be a basket of ferrets on espresso.
The point is that this is between you and yourself. Which means that honest reflection is not only encouraged, but necessary- especially if you can get out of the habit of judging yourself and just letting yourself feel what you feel without commenting on it.
Now you’re ready to go about your day with a reflection excersize done and your mind prepared to be present and take the day as it comes!
We’d love to hear about your experiences with intentional living and I hope you give this a shot.
Let’s talk about controlling your emotions, or rather the importance of it. Not everybody’s favorite topic, I know. A lot of us, especially I have found in social circles I overlap with, really dislike the word ‘control’. It brings up a lot of negative connotations. Many of us are looking for liberation, flexibility, freedom of expression, or just freedom. And ‘control’ pretty much sounds like the opposite of that.
Usually, we are looking for something because we don’t have it. If you’re looking for freedom, you probably feel oppressed. If you’re looking for flexibility, it’s most likely because you feel stifled or contained. By that same notion, if you don’t have control of your emotions, its likely that they have control of you.
Not controlling your emotions is the birthing ground for anxiety, stress, depression, pessimism and a victim mindset. I frequently find that people in my life that have chronic problems with negative self-talk or a generally negative outlook on life are sitting in the day-to-day quagmire of being steam-rolled by their emotions. It’s like trying to keep your head above water when the water line keeps getting higher.
What I don’t mean
When I stress the importance of controlling emotions, I do not in any way mean to shut down, ignore, or distance yourself from your emotions. I can’t think of anything more detrimental to your health or success than that. Your emotions act as a thermometer and warning system for your body and mind. They tell us a lot about our current state of being. Warning systems are meant to be listened to. However, there is a vast difference between heeding a warning system and allowing it to decide the course of action by which solutions are found.
Think of controlling your emotions like running a ship
Let’s say you’re the Titanic (depressing analogy, I know, but bear with me). You have a transcriber (your nervous system) that is taking in data and messages all day and converting them to electrical impulses that are transmitted around the ship (body) and to other nearby vessels (our social circle). Those messages are a constant mix of good, bad, happy, sad, congratulations, observations, warnings, reviews, feedback, you name it (stimuli for want of a better word). It’s the transcriber’s job to sift through all that data, pass on what needs to be passed on, disregard what’s not important, and process everything so it gets to the right place. Your emotions serve as the messaging system in which that data is conveyed, each one like a little memo to a different part of the ship.
The transcriber shouldn’t be labeling messages as good or bad. You wouldn’t want a secretary changing the subject lines of your emails, would you? Nor would you want a secretary holding on to messages for an undue amount of time and delaying important information either. Not when the information conveyed could be the difference between changing course correctly or sinking in the middle of the Atlantic.
Not learning to control your emotions essentially hands over the keys to the bridge to the guy translating morse code in the closet. He’s great at processing vast amounts of correspondence and information but he knows not the first thing about nautical charts, crow’s nests, or steam engines. He can get you the warnings, but he doesn’t have the experience to decide what to do with them.
Not to bore you with the ship analogy, but that’s what the captain is for. I mean you. Your brain. You have the ability to take those warnings, apply context and previous experiences, and make decisions that are based on rational thought as much as they are influenced by your emotions.
What controlling your emotions means:
When I’m talking about controlling your emotions, I specifically mean not allowing them to make your choices for you. This still requires you to acknowledge them and feel them. Perhaps more so than the average person. You can’t control something you’re not paying attention to.
We’ve all heard that person say “yeah, i’m just in my feelings”, “I’m letting this get to me.”, “I know I shouldn’t stew on this, but I can’t help it.” This is what we want to work on: Feeling our feelings without letting those feelings control our day. That’s where eventually the mindset changes will occur and freedom will follow.
Feeling your Feelings
Remember when I said that I didn’t mean shutting down or distancing yourself from your emotions? Let’s go back to that. The key to controlling your emotions is in making room for them. You have to allow yourself time to process them and make peace with what’s happening in your life. If you do not address your feelings, they fester and begin to bleed through into other areas of your life. Your job is not to judge your feelings, comment on your feelings necessarily, or ascribe positives or negatives to your feelings. Your job is to sit with them in the moment and allow yourself to actually feel them before we ever touch on the matter of figuring out what they are trying to tell us.
The warmth in your chest that is love. The Icy dagger that is sometimes fear. A trip drum in your chest might be anxiety and the hot flush and shaking hands might be anger. Don’t try to rush your body through the process of physically feeling them.
Your challenge
In future talks we’ll go through practices for analyzing emotions and figuring out what our emotions are trying to tell us, as well as tools (like mindfulness and meditation) for how to make space in our day to day lives to reflect on those emotions and what may have influenced them. But for now, your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to practice acknowledging your feelings on a day to day basis without judging them or analyzing them. and to allow yourself a few moments to really sit in them when they happen.
It doesn’t have to be a big to do or routine- I get it, we’re all busy. This might mean a mental “okay, I’m angry” when you feel it. But there should be no shame in the mental acknowledgment of “I’m angry”. Even more important is to acknowledge the positive ones: “This is Joy” as we often highlight the negatives in our life but don’t hold equal space for the positives. Take a second to pay attention to what that emotion physically feels like in your body. Then you can go about your day. But learning to identify what an emotion feels like is the first step to emotional clarity and control that we’ll be working toward in future talks.
We’d love to hear about your experiences! Remember, you don’t have to be perfect and you’re not going to get it right overnight or all at once.
Happy New Years! Already 2023 is gone and we are entering a whole new cycle around the sun. I’m not usually much of a ‘New Year’s Resolution Girl’ because I feel like I spend a lot of time throughout the year setting myself new markers, milestones, and magnetic goals as I hit previous ones. I don’t wait for the New Year anymore because I hear my dad in my head saying, ‘no time like the present’.
But it hasn’t always been like this for me. I was, and sometimes still am the person that struggles with hitting goals because I struggle to make and keep routines. However, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years figuring out what works for me.
We all know the pattern: January first sees an upswing in ‘New Year, New Me’, and by February more than half of us have fallen off the bandwagon. I even went through several years of ‘I’m not even going to set a Resolution because I know I won’t keep it’. In honor of New Years, I want to talk about setting goals. More specifically setting Magnetic Goals. With consistency and work, every day can be New Year’s.
None of this is anything I came up with. I am no expert or guru. I don’t have a degree in psychology or credentials to back it. But I do have my own experiences, several years of trial, error, and frustration figuring out what works for me. As well as lots of books, workshops, counseling, and classes to pull from. I’m hoping I can save you from some of the same frustrations so that you can learn to set Magnetic Goals yourself. At the bottom of this article, you will find a list of some of those resources.
The problem with Setting Goals…
One of my biggest obstacles with ADHD is feeling easily overwhelmed, which leads to executive dysfunction and decision paralysis…that can make it very hard to meet goals. As a result, I spent a lot of time referring to myself as “A quitter” or “An Idea Hopper”. If you speak that over yourself often enough- it can really undermine your confidence over time. It becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Think about how magnets work. Have you ever tried to force together opposing sides of a set of magnets? When the Polarity is off, nothing you do will make them stay together. They will resist the second you let go, pushing against themselves with tension in the opposing direction. Unknowingly, a lot of people do this to themselves with goal setting. They create goals in situations and with lifestyles that are polarizing and doomed to not mesh.
But if you flip those exact same magnets around, you get an attraction so strong it acts as a sort of glue, You almost can’t keep them apart. This is what we want: Positive Tension. Magnetic Goals. It’s one thing to say it however, and quite another to figure out how to apply it.
Creating a ‘Magnetic Goals’ Environment
Creating reachable goals is all about curating an environment that is designed to make it as hard as possible to fail. That doesn’t mean setting the bar so low that it’s a tripping hazard in hell; because that’s not a goal. But it means setting yourself up as much as possible for attainable success. Its about creating tension, especially if you’re an ADHD’r like me. That tension is going to keep you engaged, which is crucial to meeting goals.
A roadmap to Magnetic Goals
Actionable steps:
The first step to setting magnetic goals is to break up bigger goals into actionable steps. By actionable steps I mean physical things you can do. We’re not listing out all the passive things outside our sphere of influence or how the stars need to align for something to happen. I was first introduced to this concept in my freshman year of college, but it didn’t hit home until I took an accountability class that was actually taught by my cousin, Angela Totman.
This is the biggest step I find I can take to curate success. It prevents the big picture from seeming like too much or too far away, thereby causing that pesky paralysis. In a way, it goes without saying. But I’m going to say it anyways: baby steps. Take whatever your goal is and break it down into the smallest steps possible. For me, not only is it much easier to “take the next step” than it is to contemplate climbing Everest. But also, each tiny achievement reinforces the bigger goal. Over time, that will help rewrite the personal narrative you have told yourself about your success for who knows how long.
The Risk of Losing Magnetism
When magnets get too far apart, what happens? They stop pulling towards each other, their gravitational influence ends, tension is lost, and they collapse. Your goals are exactly the same. If your bigger goal is miles and miles away from your current capacity now- it will seem so grand that it becomes separate from yourself. Because I could never do that! As a result, you don’t even try. Why would you if you’ve already written yourself off?
But if your goal is just a little bit outside of your current capacity, you can stretch yourself that little bit. All of a sudden- that’s worth trying for. There’s tension when something is just out of reach. And then you just have to do it again and again and again.
Be specific.
Uber specific. Let’s say your bigger goal is to buy a house. Your actionable steps might be get your credit score up, talk to a mortgage professional about what you’d need to qualify, save up for a down payment, and talk to a realtor.
That’s a great place to start: smaller chunks, physical things, sorted in order of urgency. But it’s not enough. There’s a lot of grey area left there for inaction. I don’t know about you, but if there’s a loophole, my brain will find it. Quantifying what each of these steps looks like is the only way to tell you when you’ve hit the next step. That was something Angie was big on: It had to be measurable. She called it getting in the weeds.
You need to define each of those actionable steps. Sometimes those steps require micro steps of their own- but this is how you build your road map. A better example of the previous list is: Get your credit score up 80 points by talking to a credit specialist and following their advice. Research mortgage companies to decide who you’d like to use and make an appointment for a consult; take action on any steps they give you. Set aside $100 from each paycheck into a savings account until you reach $______. Talk to a realtor about what you’re looking for in a home and what kind of loan you are looking at with the downpayment you have saved.
Set yourself deadlines for each step:
This kind of feeds into being specific but I have time blindness on a monumental scale, so to me this is worth noting separately. If you are not explicit with deadlines you will say “someday” forever. Instead try “I’m going to make an appointment with the credit specialist tomorrow”. “I am going to have my credit score up 80 points in 6 months by following the list of steps they gave me”. Be realistic, but specific. I work better under the pressure of a deadline and that deadline allows me to hover in the sweet spot of ‘baby steps’ meets ‘I can do anything under pressure’. That’s the ‘magnetic goals’ tension we want.
Create routines that support each step through habit stacking:
Routine is so HARD when you have ADHD. It’s boring, it’s not stimulating. There’s zero novelty in it and therefore no dopamine. If there’s no dopamine, there’s no productivity. I have struggled with this and the resulting dopamining my ENTIRE life. My need for structure combined with my utter inability to build lasting routines led for the longest time to deep feelings of anger and shame towards myself “what is so hard about this?”, “Why can’t I just do it?”, “What, am I stupid?”
Two books shattered my understanding of this. A combination of habit stacking behaviors and the compound effect gave me not only a better understanding of positive reinforcement in the brain, but also gave me the grace to allow myself to succeed a little at a time instead of feeling guilt that I couldn’t do it all at once. One percent better every day is momentous growth compared to no growth at all because you’ve paralyzed yourself with a lack of systems. I have both books listed in the resources below.
Surround yourself with supportive and like minded people:
This is crucial. We’re talking about creating environments of success, and the people you surround yourself with are central to that.
At least one person that is farther ahead in your goal than you are:
someone whose tail feathers you can grab onto to keep you engaged and retain that tension. Even better if you can get them to take you under their wing. If your goal is more niche- you might be limited to following them on social media but even better if you can find someone in your community. More or less, a mentor or close competition. If you’re really dedicated, find both.
An accountability buddy:
In some ways this sounds so silly, and it can be uncomfortable if you’re an introvert like me. Pick someone you’re comfortable being honest with, accountability doesn’t work if you’re sugar coating the truth. You want somebody that is supportive of your goal, will hold you accountable, but will also be encouraging when you mess up, otherwise the ‘accountability’ can be confidence undermining. If you don’t have someone like this in your life, this is where accountability coaching can be helpful because it teaches you to be better accountable to yourself.
A Supportive community:
you can only control your environment to a certain extent. You still have to go to work, you still have to interact with society, you can’t control what other people say or think. People are People, so you’re going to encounter negativity and disbelief. The bigger the goal, the more you’re going to get. One of the best things I learned from my time with World Wide Dream Builders is ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’.
The more positive, supportive people you have in your corner, the easier it is to dilute the negativity you can’t control and stay focused on your magnetic goals. This doesn’t mean tell everybody about your goal. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Studies show that sharing goals too much or too early can trigger early dopamine reward, reducing your motivation to reach them. Pick a few select people to share with.
Resources for Magnetic Goals:
Angela Totman:
Angie has a 20 year career in financial education and entrepreneurship training. She is a speaker, writer, financial coach and systems and accountability expert. The co-author of Your Financial Mastery, a college level financial literacy curriculum. Angela is also a featured contributor in Think and Grow Rich for Women, written by international bestselling author, Sharon Lechter, in cooperation with the Napoleon Hill Foundation. She is the Founder of Hero Life Alliance and Vice President and COO at Pay your Family First. Angela has dedicated her career to empowering others through educational programs and practical application of tactical action steps to drive results.
Her accountability course really helped me break down some mental barriers and set the stage for future successes by understanding where I was shooting myself in the foot. She was the person that helped me understand the difference between ‘setting a goal’ and ‘creating Magnetic Goals’. She has one of the best Grit mentalities I’ve ever seen and the discipline to match it. And If you can’t tell- I trust her a lot. You can find more about her on LinkedIn, Facebook, or her website for the Hero Life Alliance.
Atomic Habits by James Clear:
one of two books that entirely shifted my understanding of how to build lasting habits and systems. This book is a wonderful read, though in some ways it was hard because there’s just so much truth in it. Atomic Habits taught me the principle of Habit Stacking that I referenced above. After reading it I felt like someone had been gatekeeping this information from me for my entire life. This is one of those books that made me question the education system and ‘why isn’t this taught in school?!’. I reread it regularly. If you want magnetic goals, this is where I’d start.
The Compound Effect Darren Hardy:
The other of two books that changed my perspective on creating habits and the power of consistency. There are so many useful apply-in-the-moment exercises, it really helped me put things into place and explained concepts in a way that made sense. You can purchase a copy of the book and find more tips and tricks on Darren Hardy’s Website.
Grit by Angela Duckworth:
This book is so fascinating, it was the first time I really reflected on my ability to believe in myself and trust my own word. This was when I stopped referring to myself as a quitter and started actively exercising my grit muscle, because it was the first time I’d ever heard it referred to as a muscle. Ms. Duckworth’s book was the first thing that ever described it in a way that made me understand that it was something I could cultivate even though I didn’t feel like I was born with it.
Goals by Zig Ziglar:
Zig Ziglar was a famous motivational speaker, and many of the mindset quotes you’ve probably seen me post on our Instagram are from him. He is the author of over 17 personal development and success books. You will find him referenced by a lot of other Grit Paragons in the modern world. While he passed in 2012 this book remains relevant and is a great source of positive input for your ‘dilution tank’. This book specifically covers some of the things I have found most useful in great detail.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey:
This book is amazing because I am a hands on, learn-by-doing person and this book is actually a guided journal. It really helps with the practical application of elevating magnetic goals effectiveness.
The Power of Discipline by Daniel Walter:
I picked up this book because ‘discipline’ is something I have always struggled with, even with things I really want to do or complete, the mental toughness portion has always been a struggle for me. This book reframed some of my misconceptions regarding willpower and discipline.
Go for Stupid by Steve Sims:
I had the opportunity to hear him speak at The Refiners Conference in 2021 and I have been hooked on his content since. A self-labeled ‘Creative Disruptor’ I have never seen someone in his field convey information quite the way he does. He is also the Author of ‘Bluefishing, the Art of Making Things Happen’. This man has made a living for himself by setting ridiculous goals and achieving them. My favorite line of his is ‘how far can I take this?’
Go for Stupid covers how to ignore what others think and how not to shrink your goals in response to negative feedback and ‘gotcha’ culture. This book is PACKED with truth bombs and useful tips. He’s also a very useful person to follow on social media. It may sound a little backwards since I’m talking about creating tension by using small steps to create magnetic goals, but that requires you to have a big enough vision to excite you to action. This is the book for that. you can find more about Steve Sims on his website.
Don’t Get Overwhelmed
I know this was a ton of information, but I truly hope this can become a guide to setting magnetic goals that you can refer to later. Don’t let yourself become overwhelmed by the resources either. Pick one at a time. It definitely takes time too. Learning doesn’t happen overnight and its something that I will probably have to practice for the rest of my life, I feel like its worth it for how much of my life it affects, and how its changed my relationship with myself.
Like I said, I am by no means an expert. Far From it. But the resources I have listed above are all from people who ARE experts. I really encourage you to lean into their knowledge because its been life changing for me. Trust me, If I can do it, so can you.
Okay nerds… Buckle up because I have a lot to say this time.
Today I want to talk about creating your own Dungeons and Dragons campaign or more specifically world building. A while back we did a video on our personal experiences from when Mikaela and I were first learning to play DnD where I mention not ever having DM’d. For the uninitiated, that means to be the Dungeon Master or the one creating the world, plot, deciding dice role outcomes, etc.
DM’ing is very underrated. The DM is (for lack of a better descriptor coming to my mind at the moment), the game god. It is a lot of work, prep, blood, sweat, tears, and love to be a good DM. But it is also very rewarding! You get to see your world come alive and be a part of not one character… but EVERY character as you are the playing all the NPC’s but also helping to develop and grow your players characters over time. You are constantly flexing your creativity, quick thinking, organization and, depending on the DM, your acting.
That being said, the prospect of being a DM can be intimidating. I can say that for a loooong time I avoided it like the plague because I knew it would be a commitment and I didn’t feel I would be able to do it justice. Earlier this year I decided to say, “fuck it” and start building my own campaign anyways. It may be a learning curve, but I have wanted to try my hand at being on the other side of the table and was done psyching myself out. Turns out my OCD ADHD self LOOOOOOVES world building and what I should have worried about is getting stuck in a creative concept hole.
That being said, I just want to preface my world building process with a couple notes (big surprise since I always do this).
I want to emphasize the distinction that this is about WORLD BUILDING for your campaign. Writing a campaign is like writing a story whereas the world building is just focusing on building the world the story takes place in. You need to take into consideration things like the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG), character deadlines, etc but we aren’t focusing on them as that will develop and change to some extent during game play and I could/will eventually go more into that at some point.
I am sure you can find a bunch of other lists and articles that tell you how to world build. They will probably work. At one point or another I looked at some of those lists to make sure I didn’t miss anything. What I want to do today is show you the process that, specifically, I went through and what tools you might use.
I will point out that you could definitely buy one-shots, books of campaigns, maps etc and have just as much fun but this is how to build your own world for a new campaign because worldbuilding is just as much fun as playing in my opinion.
Again, I also want to preface this with the knowledge that there are MANY ways to go about this and none are wrong. This is just what I did. I will also be using my world as an example, so I do not go off into more tangents than is already inevitable with me.
I like to start big and add more details as I go. My thought process behind this is that when writing campaigns, you want to let the world grow with the characters and let the players help build it with you. It was easier for me to consider the bigger picture and start filling in necessaries so they had a starting point with the knowledge that smaller details can, to some extent, be thought of on the spot or become lore through the actions or back stories of my fledgling party.
WHAT TYPE OF GAME PLAY DO YOU WANT?
I am not sure if this first thing is necessarily world building, but the first thing I considered was what kind of campaign I wanted to run. It helps set the tone, what kind of world I want to build, scale of the world, etc. For example, if the campaign you want is going to be a dungeon crawler you might build a high fantasy world OR do a more modern realistic world with Indiana Jones vibes. If you want a suspenseful murder mystery, you could go with a Victorian or a sci-fi space setting. Maybe you really want steampunk political intrigue. The point is that by determining what type of game you want to play; it will hugely affect what type of world you want to build. I also feel like mentioning that you can take inspiration from anywhere and to not avoid mixing and matching things. You are creating a new world so you can have new concepts! But on the flip side of that, do not be ashamed to steal a concept that is already out there and play it with maybe just slight tweaking because your players are going to add their own flavor to it anyways.
In my case, I was building my campaign world off of a book concept I had considered writing. Additionally, I am a huge book worm and also avidly consume Anime and Manga and there were certain tropes and plots that I loved and also wanted to incorporate so I pulled inspiration from a couple places. I decided on a high fantasy style game that combined an adventure/dungeon crawling style with political intrigue. I also love adventurers’ guilds but didn’t necessarily want players in one… maybe just something similar. I also loved the idea of playing something based off either a mirror image of earth or its cultural beliefs. So, imagine if the earth was populated by the myths, legends, and fantasy creatures we write and talk about and in this world, humans and our meta cultures are the stuff of their myths and legends. Again, this was kind of a vague idea at this point, but it gave me a concept to start building everything else on.
This is also less of a step, and more of a reminder for me and you; a tip if you will. When thinking about all the following steps, remember to keep some meta things and change some meta things. What I mean is don’t have a world so far removed conceptually that players can’t understand it or struggle with game play BUT also don’t have it be so normal in comparison to our meta world that it is exactly the same. If NOTHING in your world is relatable there is a steep learning curve. Additionally, it makes it hard for the players to have a starting place to be creative. I love being able to use my own meta knowledge about our world in creative ways… like sciencey shit etc but if NOTHING is applicable in that world it makes it hard for me to improvise. On the flip side, if it mirrors our current world exactly… what is the point? You are describing my reality, not a new world. At that point I would just call it TTRPG Sims… or I would go play my Sims… or even better, walk out my front door and interact with my normie neighbors. You need to change at least one thing about our world and then watch how it affects everything else.
START BIG. HOW IS YOUR WORLD LAID OUT?
Map out continents
Start adding borders…
… Or don’t add borders at all!
This was my big map step. You will constantly be making maps of cities, dungeons, encounters etc. but you need to have a larger, general world for those to fit into. I already said this… but I like to start big and narrow down details later so my next step was creating the world or planet itself. Think about how big you want your world to be. You can start with a universe and then add planets that you add continents to and then later country borders to and so on, and so forth. For this world, I started at the scale of a planet. To start, I drew an equator (there is a reason for this) and then started drawing continents. This was easy for me because, though not exact, I based my continents off our meta world, BUT you could draw literally anything. The sky is the limit. Maybe your whole world is only one continent or a bunch of islands or a single spaceship or everyone lives in ships because there is no land. You get the point.
After that, think about if and how your continents would be further divided up by “human” constructs such as territories or state/country borders. Do they have defined borders or is everyone nomadic? Or maybe the world isn’t very populated and is mostly uninhabited wildlands. When I got to this point, I chose to take a bit of a hybrid approach. A planet is large and if there are multiple continents, it stands to reason that not all of them will be the same. Because I was basing my world off of our myths, legends, cultures, etc. I did research on those cultures and made decisions accordingly. The continent corresponding to our Europe has country borders that are not a mirror of but are vaguely reminiscent to Europe’s countries. The continent corresponding to North America is completely different. I chose to base it off of Native American lore and their cultures as a whole had less defined borders. To reflect this, I chose to show the territories where nations are generally found but avoided hard borders and many (not all) of the nations were nomadic or semi nomadic.
I also started adding major topographical landmarks (think major mountain ranges, great lakes, things big enough to show up on a world map) at this point but I didn’t focus too much on it yet. It is a whole planet, and I could easily get super sucked into this FOREVER.
You do not need to pull all of this from thin air either. Think about your inspirations and work smarter, not harder. I pull images and information from the real world and resources already out there. Here are a couple I use(d) on the regular.
The internet in general- This is obvious. I used this for research and for images. Google search the shit out of everything. I was all about using reputable sources and fact checking but depending on your world and what you are searching for, realism may be less relevant honestly.
Inkarnate – Create Fantasy Maps Online– This is a favorite resource of mine for several reasons. You can use this site to make your own custom maps fairly easily in multiple styles for free and with paid versions. Additionally, there are randomization options for those who want less work or care less about this aspect or are stuck. This service works for world maps but also for cities and dungeons, so it is VERY useful long term. Finally, many users publish their maps for other world builders to use FOR FREE so you can also find a map that suits your world if map making from scratch is not your thing.
AI art- AI gets a bad reputation but if you are looking for fun visuals for your world without spending forever, this is the way to go. As an artist, I sometimes (a lot of the time) hate AI art and what it means for me BUT sometimes I go this route. I just find free programs online and sometimes I know what I want or other times I will use the weird things it makes as inspiration. Either way, I love having visuals for my players and myself and while I enjoy hand making things, I will also supplement with this.
When I talk about thinking of the rules of a planet, I am talking about the laws of nature. Once the campaign is running, this is mostly not thought about in game play because it is second nature (baddump-tsss) to accept those everyday rules. I mean, how often during the day do you consciously think about tectonic plates, gravity, or the tidal currents of the ocean and how that affects landscapes, weather, and where certain things live? The answer is A LOT if you are me but probably not at all if you are the general public. Just think about that for a second though and what this would look like in your world.
I would recommend using our world as a reference for these laws. Remember: keep some, change some. It will make the world more relatable and avoid awkward gameplay. I am not saying that you need to become a meteorologist, zoologist, geologist, etc. to make your world. How in depth you go and how much you change is up to you. I knew I could spend forever creating this new world and never actually play if I got stuck in this. I went VERY DEEP and will probably always be adding to this. What I am saying though is to just put a bit of thought in… I started with these categories for me:
Bonnacon
Tectonics- I went there! You don’t need to. But I just briefly thought about it because it helped me decide where to put mountain ranges and volcanic hotspots. I did use our planet as reference, but I didn’t want placement to be 100% the same.
Seasons- Do you have the same seasons or are they completely different? I kept the same seasons. Both because of familiarity and because a lot of ancient lore revolves around the seasons, so they were relevant. Also, I knew I was going to focus more in other areas and was avoiding even more work.
Natural Disasters- What types are there? Are they more prevalent in certain areas? I decided to keep our normal ones and add a couple new ones since I had a highly magical world. For example, I added a Chaotithaumaturg Storm with is basically a big word describing a huge storm event that happens around areas that are particularly dense with magic, and it causes your own magic to react and manifest in weird ways or not at all.
Gravity- This was easy for me… I kept Earths gravity. This may be different on your planet, spaceship etc. If you are in space, you could have VASTLY different ranges of gravity and that will affect races, game play, technology, flora, fauna, etc.
Distance from Equator- I told you this would be important! Again, because I used earth as a reference, I knew my rules and could mostly ignore its placement BUT, on your planet, think about how this affects everything. On Earth, closer to the equator means more light and warmer weather which means that the races and flora and fauna there have adapted to that. It also means the water in the oceans is warmer near the equator, leading to more hurricanes.
Wind and Ocean Currents- Again, for me, Earth was a reference, and this was one area I chose not to mess with. There is one big thing to remember about currents though if you have different terrain/ continents and it is that currents will follow the path of least resistance. This could mean flowing downhill if we have Earth gravity or up if we have a different gravity rule. If wind hits a mountain range, it will be forced up which will cause different weather on each side of it. Water will flow until it hits an obstacle (like a continent) and then will be redirected to flow along the coast until it is redirected again by another obstacle. When apposing currents meet you could have a strong up or down current or a whirlpool. Just things to think about if you want to make more realistic maps/terrains.
Flora & Fauna- This is where I chose to make more of my changes and where I am still making new things constantly. Think about what plants and animals are in your world and what/where their habitats would be. I kept a lot of our meta plants and kept them native to areas relative to our world while adding larger carnivorous, magical, and monstrous options as well. For the “animals” or creatures in the world I may have gone a bit far (to the point of dichotomous keys). I did keep some of our animals but for the most part I wanted to make run of the mill animals, like pigeons, the equivalent of a mythical creature like a phoenix. Instead of Pigeons, they have something that looks like tiny rat pigeon gryphons called a Rageon. A shifter that turns into an earth wolf? How magical! What is a cow? Instead, my cultures have domesticated and made a global industry out of Bonnacon farming. I just felt like it really made for an immersive world and opened up opportunities for fun interaction.
You don’t have to focus on all these things, or you can look at other “rules” than I have here. I would recommend though that whatever you are thinking about, consider how they interact and change in relation to each other if you tweak just one thing. How would less or more gravity affect your natural disasters? What if there was only 1 season… or 13? And how would that affect how plants, animals, or even people adapted?
TRIBES: WHO, WHERE, AND WHAT ARE THEIR RELATIONS?
So now we have a planet and need to start adding “people” as it may be. I like to think of this in terms of “tribes” because it is a bit more in depth and pushes me to think about things in different ways. Tribes can be defined as:
a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.
A tribe can be a race in the broadest sense of the word, or we can narrow it down to nationalities, religions, government factions, a club at school, a friend group, etc. I like to start thinking about who my tribes are, where they would be found, and what do their relationships look like. Do you only have 2 races; one that has adapted to water and lives on the coast and an inland hunter gatherer race. Do they get along and trade for resources? Or do they compete and have a long history of conflict? I once again find it easy to start big and narrow it down:
What races inhabit your world? I went high fantasy and had a lot of options since each culture has numerous intelligent characters to turn into races. Just think Celtic Fae or Japanese Oni and the variations within those categories alone. Therefore, I have a very diverse world.
Where does each race live? In my world I based this generally on what culture the mythos is from, but you may need to look at things like where resources would be available and where their physique would make sense. Or maybe your race has to live someplace odd but there is a relevant reason that you are writing into your campaign (ie. dwarves living in trees because of extenuating circumstances no one will tell you even though they hate it).
Next, start dividing into smaller tribes. Maybe it is the scientist in me, but I love to categorize things. First, I started with broader groups that I thought would relate to each other best. In some worlds this could be nationality. I did consider nationalities as a tribe but I actually went with categories of races first such as the fae, shifters, mer people, demons, angels, tauric races, vampiric races, shades and revenants, giants, etc. Within those I then broke them down into subcultures. Take dwarves for example… just to name a few I put in that category I have the Menehune of Hawaii, Duwende of the Filipines, Duergar of Northern England, and the Zwerge of Germany. These were my own categories that I used for my world so I did take some creative license, but you get the point.
Think about how these different categories or tribes interact with each other and why it is how it is. Just as a note, I feel that tribes closer together are more likely to have either the most conflict or the most harmonious relationships. It is this duality of naturally wanting to be seen as unique/different and competing over the same resources while simultaneously having a lot of commonalities due to similar environments and an exchange of goods/ideas. If you are in forced proximity you are bound to either love or hate each other eventually.
Start adding smaller tribes. Here are some I considered/added: countries/ governments, gangs, organizations, guilds, and religions. Maybe in your world it is fleets or packs. Regardless, make yourself some groups and decide who they like and don’t like.
I feel like a lot of other articles that talked about world building didn’t really talk about tribes and their relationships, but I think it makes it more realistic. Especially if you are looking to make a very large world and if this is a campaign you plan on making a long one. It adds layers that you may not interact with at first but will add complexity later.
This was actually a suggestion in a Master Class about Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing by N.K. Jemisin. By this point you should have a very clear idea of what your setting is and who is interacting with your world. Think about your daily routine and what that would look like in the world you are creating. This will help you flush out the minutia like transport, money, language, prepping food, bathroom routines… little things. This is probably where I get stuck the most trying to make things consistent and make sense. N.K. Jemisin listed off some different areas to consider how your world is different or the same as ours: Deviance, Military, urban vs rural, gender, politics, inequality, medicine, technology, health, family, stratification, law, conflict, race, economics, culture, education, religion, environmental, ethnicity, science vs magic (how does it work in your world), and industry. I wouldn’t even know where to start to give examples for this step because once again I went a little cray cray at this point. I decided that like different countries in our world had different day to day routines, currencies, socio-economic structures etc…. so too would mine. I will say that I originally started just flushing out the deets in the area my players started in and am building other cultures etc with my players as we go to an extent. It also helps that I am once again basing much of it off of our meta world so if it is an area of the world that historically bartered and was nomadic… the culture in my new world will barter and be nomadic.
MAKE SOME NPCs… BUT NOT ALL OF THEM.
Okay… Now that we have general groups of people, we need to flush out some NPC’s. Your NPCs should constantly be evolving and growing as the campaign progresses. Don’t worry too much about having the info for every person in the world and their whole genealogy. Just focus on some NPC’s you will need either on a regular basis, to progress plot (like your BBEG), or in your next session. When deciding who to initially create, I asked myself a couple questions:
Who do my players already know? I try to have at least one NPC per player that would be tied to their backstory and the players themselves can help with that.
Who are some of the local vendors?
Who are some local figures of authority?
Who are a couple NPCs that you may NEVER meet but everyone would know their name? This could mean adding celebrities, higher ups in your star fleet, or the king for example.
Who is my main villain?
What NPC’s do I need to progress any story I have?
This is just how I started to get the dice rolling and for each one I tried to make note of a couple things that made them relevant and interesting so that I had a starting point to play them later. Things like how they look, likes or dislikes, their role in the world, maybe a couple sentences on their backstory, a quirk, or a skill that isn’t obvious, but your players could accidentally discover and take advantage of.
There are lot of d100 lists, charts, and online generators to help randomize NPC’s. Here are a couple of resources that I like.
AI art- again, just using free online programs to have visuals for your players.
Dndspeak– This site has lists and AMAZING generators for everything from names, designations, physical traits, character quirks, etc. They have them for fantasy AND scifi themes. Additionally, they have generators and lists for even more than this… loot, locations, weather, wares in a store, dwarven insults… EVERYTHING.
Fantasy NPC Generator with 5E Stat Block (npcgenerate.com)– This generator is nice because it lets you narrow down modifiers like age, race, or profession. It still gives a blurb and description of them but gets in depth enough to describe the voice for DM’s who live more role play. Additionally, it creates a stat block in case they end up in combat or so that you can save it.
Youtube- I watched youtube videos to help create NPC voices. Two in particular that I found helpful were How To Create 100 Distinctly Different Voices by “Improve Your Voice” & Laban’s Eight Efforts demonstration by “David Bareford”.
IS THERE A BASE OR HOME FOR THE PLAYERS?
Now we have a general map, general groups of people, and specific people (NPCs). The next thing I needed was to zone in and become more detailed with my map as we got closer to where the players were based. In my case I followed all my previous steps for map building and still used Inkarnate to get a bit more detailed on a map of their country, adding a few towns for now and some topography. I don’t need to know a bunch about those towns yet. Next, I picked where my players would be based. If this was a city or town, I would then make a detailed map of that as it would be referenced a lot over time. I chose to have a home base outside a town, deep in the woods but there were still multiple buildings, so I mapped that. If your characters have a house or home base you could make a map for that. You could stop at country scale and use theatre of the mind for the rest. Do as much or little as you want. For now, I have not mapped out the inside of shops or their base and instead opted for theatre of the mind, but you never know when that will change.
CONSIDER THAT A WORLD HAS LAYERS AND HISTORY.
This is another one of those steps that is more of a reminder than anything else. To avoid a flat to two-dimensional world, you need to have layers. Here are some things to just keep in the back of your mind and use as you will.
Worlds have long and convoluted histories (unless it is a new world) and usually there are multiple truths depending on the perspective of the teller. Additionally, the average person does not know everything about that history or remember it clearly if they were educated in it.
Everything is connected so think about the butterfly effect and how each decision you make in world building will change something else OR what repercussions there will be for gameplay.
Usually, two of the same things are NOT the same. What I mean by this is that there is always some variation. Unless you are copying and pasting something digitally, there will always be differences and you should play with this. This could be variations between individuals of a race. Or within a pack of wolves where some have different abilities or stats.
So now that I have dumped all of this information on you, I just want to remind you that this was just how I decided to approach it and is way more in depth than some of my friends have done. Some campaigns I have played, they started with just a partial idea of a town and built out from that as we went and another, I have done was a dungeon with a new world on each floor. However, you choose to build your world, I hope this has been at least an inspiration rather than it making it seem more daunting.
Well, my days of the week/ the month are all sorts of messed up right now. It’s a combination of my need to adapt to a state that has daylight savings time (I know, I know: EVERYBODY has daylight savings time except Arizona), and the fact that I’m far enough north that its dark by 4PM. I feel like my day is over before it’s started and I have utterly no idea what time of day or day of the week it is anymore. I’m leaning into it. This is my time to hibernate. With no family visiting this year- the holidays are going to be quiet in a way that I’m not 100% sure that I like, but I’m making the best of it by taking advantage of the chance to rest after a long and chaotic year.
I’m not used to the cold and it has me wanting cozy snacks and warm desserts, the kind that make you feel toasty and childlike on the inside. Since I don’t havefamily in town- I’ve been trying to rein in the labor and the compulsive need to bake en masse. Instead, this year I am focused on small batch, fresh made desserts and sweets. Thomas and Taylor appreciate it because it means my kitchen does not quite look like a perpetual war zone this year.
What’s not to Nog?
A few months ago I made my Grandmother’s Rice Pudding for the first time on my own and it came out great. I have only ever had it cold, however, because that’s how she made it for my grandfather. I heard somebody talking about warm spiced rice pudding the other day and it got me to thinking. Holidays, toasty desserts, rice pudding, spices….what says holiday spice more than Egg Nog? So, I nabbed some of Taylor’s bottomless Egg Nog stash and here we are.
You will not find any standard rice pudding with a dash of ‘Egg Nog inspired spices’ here. Oh no my friend. What we are about to make is a full fat, clog your arteries, buttery, warm-you-from-the inside-out, sweetly spiced, real cooked-in-Egg Nog creamy rice pudding. So buckle up buttercup. Grab a glass of Scotch, turn on some Nat King Cole, and take your cholesterol medication. We’re gonna get nogged.
Mis en Place (get your shit and get it together):
2 Cups Cooked, UNSALTED Rice, you can use brown as it’s more nutrient dense, but I find this is one of the few things that white works better for me (1 cup dry white rice will yield 2 Cups once cooked)
2 Cups Eggnog. Any ‘nog will do but I am of the opinion that the thicker the better. Alcoholic is fine, but for family baking purposes, I actually prefer store bought non alcoholic Eggnog. For the consistency we want, Lucerne is king here.
1/3 Cup white granulated sugar.
Pinch of salt (less than ¼ tsp)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 ½ tsp vanilla
Procedure:
In a medium Saucepan combine all ingredients on medium heat. Stir, to break up clumps of rice and combine thoroughly.
Stir until the egg nog begins to simmer and bubbles form around the edges. You do not want a full rolling boil as this can scald your eggnog and cook the eggs.
Reduce heat to low and continue to stir gently.
Continue cooking until pudding is thick and creamy with an almost porridge like texture but slightly softer (about 15-20 minutes). TRUST THE PROCESS. It’ll seem like it is developing slowly and you may be worried its too thin but it will all come together at once.
Can be chilled and served cold which is still delicious but honestly, warm with a dash of cinnamon is the way to go in my opinion. If refrigerating, cover to the surface with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap to prevent a skin from forming.
All real symbols have power: The rising sun, the peace sign, Harry Potter’s Lightening shaped scar, the ‘S’ on Superman’s Chest. But symbols only have power because people believe in them. Symbols have the power we give them. Let’s talk Sigils. We’ve discussed setting intentions and using manifestation as a tool for change already. Today I want to dive a little further. Sigils are a psychological tool that you can add to your belt to help manifest those positive changes.
History of Sigils
Sigils have been used for hundreds of years in a number of cultures and religions as marks of power. Symbols of everything from deities to prayers and promises. The word sigil derives from the Latin word segillum or ‘seal’ and etymologists also speculate connections to the Hebrew word segula meaning ‘action, talisman, word’.
The Ancient Egyptians used sigils for invoking deities and for protection. In medieval they were common in the science of Alchemy. Sigils are one of those topics that usually has people getting defensive or accusatory quickly and I have never understood why. ‘Sigils’ as a concept is a very broad term, and they are ubiquitous.
Don’t believe me? Star of David: Sigil. The cross of Jesus Christ: Sigil. Yin and Yang: Sigil. Buddhist Om: Sigil. Hamsa: Sigil. Nazar: Sigil. Triquetra: Sigil. Astrological Sign: Sigil. Zodiac: Sigil. Rose Compass: Sigil. Sun Symbol: Sigil. Moon Symbol: Sigil. See where I’m going with this?
These symbols travel, evolve and are absorbed and adapted by cultures as they move. It’s a concept that has always fascinated me and probably part of the reason I was so obsessed with the Dan Brown ‘Davinci Code Books’ and Tom Hanks’ later portrayal of Professor Langdon as a kid.
Formal Modern Uses
In modern witchcraft sigils are used to focus energy and strengthen manifestations. Some Wiccan doctrines use the practice of turning people’s names into sigils for positive sympathetical magics (general protection and positive attraction). These can be highly specific phrases turned into images, or general big concepts you are trying to introduce to your life: Protection, Guidance, Focus, Manifestation, or Determination.
Psychology and Sigils
From a psychological standpoint think of it as a meeting of “The Mind attracts what it dwells upon” and “Seeing with your Mind’s Eye”. ‘Out of sight out of mind’ but in reverse. Rewiring your brain isn’t easy. A lot of people struggle with positive affirmations; with our inner dialogue either being too loud or not loud enough. It’s very easy to get disconnected from it, or have it be drowned out by the constant flood of outside input.
Sigils provide a visual reminder, a front-and-center image to keep at the forefront of your day-to-day existence. Which, if you are a visual person, or ADHD like me and struggle to keep specific thoughts in your head at any given second- is a priceless tool. Sigils provide a visual touchstone during the chaos of any given day to remind me about whatever my current manifestation or self-talk project is.
Nothing is inherently ‘powerful’ or ‘mystical’ about the concept of sigils. Symbols have power because we give them power. The idea behind the application of sigils is that it is a grounding point or a tool to help you focus on the manifestation at hand.
Creating and Using Sigils
Technically, you could choose any existing image or symbol as the touchstone for your manifestation. However, if it’s a symbol that already has a strong meaning attached to it- that can kind of defeat the purpose. Plus, you want it to be as specific to you as you can make it. You want the association of that symbol to be so strong in your own mind that it creates instant visual reinforcement every time you see it. It should also be highly specific to your current project. Unfortunately, using standard symbols makes this hard as almost all of them have some kind meaning attached to them already.
So how do we bypass this? We make our own symbol. Now if you’re an uber creator like my sister, Taylor, where ideas and pictures readily flow into your mind- this could be anything and probably sounds like a piece of cake. If you’re more like me, and you need some kind of inspiration, flow of concept, or launching pad this can sound really challenging.
The good news is: There are tools for that. A number of different systems exist for creating sigils and they are all different and range from simple and more runic to complex and highly abstract. An easy pinterest or google search will bring up a myriad of results and how-tos.
I prefer the straightforward method because I feel like life is complex and abstract enough without me mucking about too much.
Simply Put:
Write out your sentence, desire, or goal in Capital Letters. An example might be: SETTING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES.
Get rid of every repeating letter. The above example will leave you with: GLYBOUDR
Simplify the remaining letters into basic shapes.
Overlay those basic shapes into a single graphic.
Enclose the graphic in a basic geometric shape (circle, triangle, square, hexagon, or trapezoid, etc.) I am partial to circles because they are soft and warm, but sometimes a more masculine shape feels better for a particular concept etc. You do you.
Remaining Letters broken down into basic shapes
Basic shapes overlayed into a single graphic
Graphic enclosed in a solid complete shape
Application:
Once all that is done, you now have a sigil. Now you take that image and you put it someplace you will see it all the time, or multiple places. Your car, your bathroom mirror, the door of your fridge, the wall of your cubicle, your wallet. You can draw it on a piece of paper, wood burn it onto something if you want to get more fancy, or take a picture of it and make it your phone screen. But every time you see that image you repeat your phrase and you repeat this action until the picture is synonymous with your phrase.
After a day or two of essentially Pavloving yourself with this concept or idea it takes on a bit of a life of its own. Instead of you seeing that graphic and making an effort to intentionally repeat your message to yourself as a reminder, the graphic does it for you and it goes from conscious effort to unconscious byproduct, subliminally reinforcing that thought every time you see it. It magnetizes itself into the forefront of your mind all on its own. Congratulations- you’ve given a symbol power. Maybe not to everyone, but for yourself. That’s impressive and the amazing thing is- it wasn’t even that hard.
Give it a try
Next time you feel like you’re struggling to manifest something or get truly intentional about a change in your life go ahead and give this a try. It really is just spicy psychology. If you’re an out of sight out of minder like me, then put it in sight in a way that isn’t just another ignored sticky note with a scribbled sentence on it crammed in with all the others. Make it unique, noticeable, and something that will catch your eye. I really hope it helps!
“Why don’t you do something more valuable with your time?”, “Parents should be encouraging their kids to pursue more productive hobbies.”, “What’s the point?”. I hear a lot of variations of these sentiments, and it grinds my gears every time something like this comes up in conversation. Hopefully it grinds yours too. So today, my young adventurers- we’re going to discuss the academic benefits of Dungeons and Dragons. That way the next time a co-worker, friend, PTA mom, or your least favorite and overly judge-y aunt or uncle gives you a hard time you are prepared defend your questing decision. Or maybe you are that judge-y friend/aunt/uncle/PTA mom; let’s talk the truth about D&D.
Critical thinking and Problem Solving in D&D:
I personally think this is obvious- however, it must not be, considering the number of people that make scathing remarks. D&D really stretches your critical thinking and problem-solving muscles. It’s a large portion of the game. You are solving constant unexpected problems in real time.
Weather as a player unraveling puzzles, piecing together plot points, and trying to solve the overall mission of your campaign. Or as a DM who has to constantly outmaneuver their own players because someone made a ridiculous decision and the entire party went in the wrong direction as a result. The Paladin read too much into an obscure detail and now you have to figure out how to get them back on track without telling them you’re getting them back on track.
You have to ask questions and collect information through observation and constant character development in order to further the plot. Because the game is open world and open dialogue there are millions of possibilities in every interaction. Which means that your solution to the problem isn’t the only solution. And the decisions you make at the beginning of the campaign may force you and your DM to create or solve an entire different problem by the end of the story.
I haven’t played a single campaign where myself or my party didn’t unintentionally complicate or thicken the plot through our own actions thereby creating NEW and unforeseen problems to solve. The entire game is one constantly evolving puzzle that technically nobody is in control of. Which happens to make for great fun.
Creativity in D&D:
Dungeons and Dragons exercises all your creative capabilities. Not only character creation but also execution. You have to figure out how to play the character you’ve created: how they talk and what they would do in any given situation. Its almost like method acting a video game.
A rendering of Mikaela’s Character Niamh by Chris Vernam
Creativity is also in necessary in finding solutions to every unexpected plot point your DM throws at you. You have to remember that your character is limited to the resources they have on hand or can create and utilize within their environment. Their magical, frequently hostile, and foreign environment. That means most of the time you have a team of people trying to McGuyver their way to solutions in a pinch.
I once played in a party that came upon a large camp of goblins on a mountain. We were trying to reach the top of it in order to access the temple at its peak. Our DM implied that the goblins were hostile and would be an active obstacle to us reaching our goal. Technically we were supposed to defeat the goblins, and 9/10 times that would have resulted in combat. Except we were low on supplies, two of our party were injured and we were far outnumbered.
Instead we used a magic frog totem we had picked up somewhere, Mage-Hand, a really good illusion, and my characters pet pygmy dragon to convince the goblins that a member of our party was their deity. Then we demanded a blood sacrifice that led them all to joyously jumping off a cliff. Not what our DM had in mind. But as far as solutions go- we technically defeated them. Creative problems require creative solutions.
Creativity as a DM
If you’re a DM- I take my hat off to you because you have the hardest job of all. regardless if it’s a homebrew campaign or you’re running one of the classics. You get the challenge of creating the ambiance your players experience and setting the tone. Whether that’s music, food, scents, lighting, props, maps, or creating the whole world. You also play 85% of all the different characters, stretcting yourself to distinguish each individual NPC and switch between them smoothly. You are a creative genius.
Teamwork and collaboration in D&D:
Very rarely during a campaign have I ever found myself off on my own without the rest of my party. In a successful campaigning party you learn to utilize everybody’s strengths. This balances out the team and helps cover your weaknesses. You begin to rely on certain characters to cover your back and collaborate in order to come up with solutions and ideas and solve mysteries.
D&D teaches you how to trust your teammates and how to delegate. You learn how to best utilize the players you have on your team- something that is a hugely useful skill in any leadership role. You don’t always get to pick the players on your team (or your employees) but you can learn how to best utilize the team you do have.
Math & D&D:
Math has never been my strong suit. My father would tell you that math was my greatest challenge in school and therefore one of his greatest challenges as a parent. Many of his evenings were spent sitting with me at the dining room table going over whatever the current school math topic had been. Or reading my math book to see what was coming next so he could teach it to me at home because I really struggled to focus in class on it.
I always thought it was a combination of ADHD (what I find uninteresting is almost impossible for me to focus on because there’s no dopamine in it and it is therefore a chore) combined with the fact that it was a “real time problem solving” kind of subject. Meaning it wasn’t full of information I could zone into reading or gobble down and memorize (those were the subjects I loved). I might have been able to memorize a rule or the definition of a numerator. But each equation was different and it felt like having to start over for every single math problem.
Creating Interest
D&D really helped me with my basic arithmetic as well as being able to do equations rapidly in “real time”. All of a sudden I had constant, basic math problems wrapped in an adventurous package tied up neatly with a ribbon of spontaneity and excitement (AKA dopamine). Exactly what my overactive imagination needed.
Application of Skills
During game play you are constantly adjusting your hit points, health points, cantrips, and major spell slots based on the moment to moment interactions and combat.
“I rolled my D6 for damage three times for that attack with my Warhammer and I’m advantaged because I’m raging and utilizing dwarven resilience. So that adds 2, plus my strength modifier of +2, so I deal….17 damage”
It sounds silly, but it was an effective tool in helping me apply practical math. I did better in school because of it.
Story telling in D&D:
Say what you want about story telling not being a necessary life skill- but this is a hill that I am willing to die on. Mankind has been telling stories since the beginning of time. We use them to teach lessons, share faith and beliefs, and connect with people from generation to generation. Some of the most popular modern stories are variations of the same tales we have been telling each other since the bronze age. No fairy tale: Origins of some famous stories go back thousands of years (sciencenews.org)
A Valuable Skill
Live Action of Niamh, Mikaela’s favorite D&D Character
Story telling is one of those skills that’s hard to teach or learn because of the way modern society is structured. But it is a valuable skill, a vastly underrated one. People connect through story telling. And I believe connection is what drives humanity. Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to figure out how to connect with their audiences.
Story telling can make you a better communicator. It can help you relay problems and solutions in a way that people can relate to. If you work in merchandising or marketing it can help grab people’s attention.
Now you can take meetings full of statistics and numbers that nobody is really listening to anyways and turn them into a problems, situations, or stories that are relevant to the person you’re talking to. People listen to what they find relevant to them. Become a good story teller, and all of a sudden you have their attention.
If you are a DM- you’re a story teller.
You lead a group of people on an epic adventure that they have to interact and engage with. You describe worlds and people and lay multi-faceted plots at people’s feet in a way that brings them alive in the moment. If you always wished you could be in your favorite movie or book, Dungeons and Dragons is a dream come true. You get to bring that world to life for someone.
If you are a player- congratulations, you’re also a story teller.
You may not have written the campaign or created the world you’re playing in. But you tell your character’s story. Their current situation, adventures, and their backstory. You bring to life the way they talk, think and move.
I think Educators need to consider the value of D&D as a practical application way to stitch multiple topics together. The key to educational benefits of Dungeons and Dragons is that in play, kids’ curiosity is turned on. And curiosity happens to be education’s rocket fuel. The Surprising Educational Benefits of Dungeons and Dragons – Let Grow
Are You a Teacher?
I would urge you to look into the science and psychology behind it and talk to your local educational board about incorporating it into curriculum or the classroom even in small ways. If you have a critical thinking class (and I believe all schools should) that’s a great place to apply it on a larger scale.
Run a one shot set in the time in history or event you are studying and make your student’s participate in history in groups. You’d be amazed at what they learn about an event or time period when all of a sudden the weaponry of the American Revolution affects their hit points, or they’re struggling to complete their mission because the taxes on tea are to high and all of a sudden they get why people were pissed off.
Pull a Miss Frizzle. One shot episode where all of your students are a white blood cell and their mission is to fight off a disease. Osmosis Jones here we come!
English?
Guess who gets to break their students up into teams and assign each team a different Shakespeare play. Tell them to run a one shot based off their play using only Shakespearean vernacular.
Assign each student a different author, then let build a character based off that author. Their mission is to battle the other authors but they’re limited to weapons and resources found in that author’s stories.
Have the entire class campaign through a book after you read it, see how they interpret it and what they get out of it. All of a sudden the Hunchback of Notre Dame is a lot more interesting to your students when they are debating whether or not Frollo is a warlock or a dark paladin.
If nothing else, I hope this has opened your eyes to the possibilities and the amount of value there is in the game. Come back soon to see the next installment of our Dungeons and Dragons series. You can find our previous post here.
It’s Finally happened! It’s cold outside. I think the last of the heat snaps are behind us and there is frost on the ground in the mornings. The holidays are literally around the corner now. That means that grilling season is (mostly) over for me and now begins the long baking, roasting, braising, soup eating season. I’ve got a serious weak spot for anything I can turn into a tart or savory pie. Today we are going to be making Savory Mushroom Tarts.
Autumn always makes me want to cram in a few more foraging hikes before it gets too cold. Somehow, in my head, that translates into a strong need to cook with mushrooms. Which are, in my humble opinion, a highly underrated flavor and food category. The pacific northwest is a great place for portabellas, porcinis, and oyster mushrooms.
I’ve finally turned my husband on to mushrooms if they’re cooked into things in interesting ways. But I’m also that weird person that, as a child, could easily be found sitting down at a table with an entire container of white button mushrooms, eating them whole.
I promise this recipe is not as “bland” as that. Its savory, warm, and speaks straight to my prehistoric “hibernation brain”. It’s also super easy to make and looks way fancier than it is. It’s homy enough to be eaten at home alone, but unique and dressy enough to wow at your next dinner party if that’s more your thing. With minimal prep, low cook time, and mostly hands off cooking, this recipe is one of my Go-To’s.
I really dislike it when people wax poetic for a million pages that mean you have to scroll through before getting to the recipe, so let’s get right to it.
Mis en place (aka: get your shit, and put it in its place):
1 premade pie crust (you can use Pillsbury if convenience is necessary- and let’s be honest, this time of year its usually necessary. Or, you can use my recipe here.)
1/3 of a cup ricotta or goat cheese (Ricotta will give you a sweeter, more mushroom forward flavor. Goat is going to result in a stronger more aromatic tart).
6 ounces (about 170.1 g) of sliced mushrooms (you can use cremini or portabella if that’s what is available to you but if you really want to elevate the flavor, I love using oyster or porcini mushrooms or a mix of several).
¼ of a yellow onion, cut into thin slices (not diced, it makes for a weird final texture).
1.5 ounces (about 42.52 g) of shredded gruyere cheese
2 ounces (about 56.7 g) grated parmesan for garnish
A touch of kosher salt or sea salt and black pepper
A Pinch of Nutmeg
1 egg, separated
Olive oil
A sprig of thyme, chopped or 1 tsp dried thyme
A flat baking sheet
Parchment paper is useful, but not necessary.
A medium large skillet
Procedure:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. While your oven is preheating, heat a medium Sauté pan over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and heat through. Add your onions to the pan and sweat. Then continue to cook until they are beginning to caramelize and turn golden, but not crisp.
Add mushrooms to the pan and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are tender. This should take about 4 minutes. Add the thyme and stir briefly to combine. Then, turn off heat and set aside temporarily.
On an ungreased cookie sheet or sheet pan lined with parchment paper (if using), roll out prepared pie dough. If you are making your own, roll it out into about an eleven or twelve inch circle.
Brush the egg white all over the crust, leaving about a 1 ½ inch perimeter bare.
Spread the ricotta or goat cheese across the area covered with egg white. Then sprinkle your parmesan garnish over the cheese. Top with a pinch of salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Gently spread the mushroom and onion mixture over the top of the cheese. Cover evenly with gruyere.
Fold over the edges of the exposed pie crust so that a strudy edge is made; creating gentle pleats as you go. Don’t stress too much here- this style of tart is meant to look rustic, so it doesn’t have to be Rachael Ray picturesque.
Brush the top of the pastry with the egg yolk. Finally, top with another sprinkle of parmesan if desired.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, crust should look golden but not burnt. If you are using store bought, you’ll land closer to the 20 minute mark, homemade pie crust or slightly thicker pie crust will run closer to 30 minutes.
Let cool for 8-10 minutes before transferring to a serving dish or slicing.
Let us know what you think, and feel free to leave any pictures, variations you enjoy, or questions and trouble shooting. Have Fun!
