The Five Elements Method™ - Discover Your Writing Element to Unlock the Creative Process

portal webinar. Thank you so much for being here, whether you're here live or watching the recording. Welcome and thank you for taking the time out. This webinar is for any, anyone involved in the creative process, more specifically writers and authors, but it really applies to anyone engaged in the creative, creating anything, whether it's a business or, or anything that's, like I said, involved in the creative process. And my goal is to help you complete, complete the process and to get your work out into the world. We all have messages that need to get out, and I want to help you make your way through that process. And so I've created what I call the Five Element— Five Elements Method that originates in Taoism and is a template for the creative process. All right, so I'm really, really excited to share this information. I've been working on this new business almost going on a year from now, for now, and my plan was always to launch in April, and it just so happens to be launching now, which I think is a great time. We are, you know, obviously in a new energy, and your messages and your expertise, your stories, your talents all need to get out into the world, and so that's what I wanna help you with. Today and moving forward. So on that note, let's get going. For those who— I know probably most of you are familiar with me and/or my work in some ways, but just as a quick summary for those who are not, I have been a self-help author for 10, 12 years. Before that, I was a practicing attorney. Before that, I clerked for judges. Before that, I went to law school. Actually, I went to law school because I wanted to become the female John Grissom, and that's still part of my path. I'm not there yet, but working my way towards that. But for now, I still have some nonfiction books and perhaps a memoir to go before I get there. But the through line throughout my entire career has been writing. And even as a lawyer, I wrote journal articles and journals, and my one feather in my cap was that one of my journals was used as persuasive authority to the Supreme Court. And now I'm writing persuasive— prescriptive nonfiction books on your home. So writing is that one thread, and so now I want to help you write your books and get them published. In the last 10 years, I've had 4 books published, all through traditional publishing. But I just re-released Mind Body Home as a self-published book that I'm really, really excited about. And I'll talk a little bit more about that toward the end of the webinar. So, that's, that's a little bit about me. Let me give you a roadmap of where we're going to go today. I'm going to start by explaining the 5 Elements cycle and how it relates to the creative process. For those who have been following my, my work in feng shui, this might be a little bit of a review or a little bit of a simplified clarification of the 5 elements. And then I'm going to help you identify your primary element, all right, and then your primary writing element, which those two may likely be the same element. It may or may not be. And then how you can complete your 5-element cycle, okay. I'm going to be helping you identify where your cog in the wheel is in the creative process. And even if, even for someone like myself who, and perhaps like you, who has already published or had success in completion and publishing things, I still, I mean, it's still, I still run into blocks, you know, in the cycle. And I, I know where my weaknesses are and I know where I kind of rub up against my edges and I need to and have to work through it. And so I want to help you guys identify where that is for you. So that you can get past those hurdles as well. All right, I'm going to introduce my, my 5 Elements method for doing that, and then I'm going to tell you about the Publishing Portal Group and the next steps from here. All right, so that's where we're going to go. Um, so let's get going. Um, first I want to kind of set the foundation a little bit in Taoism. Okay, the 5 Element cycle comes out of Taoism. Taoism is the umbrella of Chinese medicine, and then under Chinese medicine is feng shui, all right? So, it's a little— so, the layers there and just kind of rooting this 5 elements philosophy in something for you. And for any of you who are familiar with the I Ching, that is kind of the premier text for Daoism, and it's through the I Ching that we get the 5 elements, all right? And really what Daoism is, it's a philosophy. It's not a religion. I'm not pushing anything on you. It's a philosophy that we actually all know and we try to live by. So if you've ever heard yourself talk about, uh, say, I'm in the flow, or when I get— find my flow, that's really— that's really Taoism, okay? And the flow is, um, comes from nature. Nature is our teacher of the five elements and the flow, um, in the cycles of life, and finding, um, where you are in the cycle and your own cycles. And then nature has its bigger cycles, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about Living in harmony with the Dao, and that's where we get the five elements. Now, the five-element cycle— some of you may be familiar with elements from other systems. For example, in Ayurvedic medicine, you have elements. In Western astrology, you have elements. What makes the five elements in Chinese medicine different is that it's a cycle. Okay, now some of the language is similar. You had the fire and the water and earth that you find those also in those other systems, and there is some similarity, of course, because these are elements that are natural to our planet and to creation. But like I said, what makes the five elements different is that it's a cycle, and it's this cycle that is the key to balance and successful completion. Okay. All cycles are about completion. It's a circle. Cycle is a circle. So there is no beginning or end, although it's— I usually like to find a beginning and an end, and I'll go over that in a minute. But this cycle we can see in all areas of our life. Okay. Not just our life, but on the life of all things. So you can see this in the seasons, is one of the most associated areas we see this, okay, and I have the seasons written here on the slide. And so you can see it in our calendar, our annual cycles, okay, and of course the weather goes along with that. You can also see the cycles monthly with the moon cycles, with the waxing and then the the half moon and then the waning, or excuse me, the, yeah, then it hits full moon and then wanes and then goes back to new moon. New moon being the inception point. And then we can also see the cycle in our day. So let me just kind of go over the cycle a little bit more in detail. So all things are born in the water phase. Okay, all things are born and die in the water phase. This is basically the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. More specifically birth and everything in between there and death and then rebirth. All right. And so, everything starts in water, in the water phase. All right. And so, you can think of waking up from your sleep. Sleep is the water phase. All right. Sleep, meditation, journaling, dreaming, these very passive yin activities. All right. And then, you get going in your day, which is the wood. Spring. Things are starting to manifest. You can start to see the blooms on the trees. Things are starting to grow, and we're right, right now, right in that wood element— excuse me, wood phase of the cycle as far as our seasons go. And then the heat kicks in and we hit the summer, which is the highest expression of energy. It's when things are at their biggest bloom, right? This is that peak of your day when you have the most energy. All right. Another way to look at the cycle is your lifespan. Siri just had to chime in on that. Your lifespan of being born out of water, your young years of growing up, adolescence, and then your fire is that your 20s, your 30s, perhaps even into your 40s, you hit your highest peak of energy. Okay, and then we kind of come to a pause, all right, and this is the earth, this is the earth element. In our seasons, it's late summer, but more technically it's the equinox, okay, when day and night are 12 hours, 12 hours. That's when yin and yang are at their even balance point. In our life cycle, that could be midlife or menopause, that time when the energy has hit its peak, and now you're starting to not slow down yet because that's going into the metal, but you kind of pause, all right? And then we go into the metal phase. You start to gray, and the color for that element is actually gray, and you start to slow down. Energy starts to be extracted from the process, so it slows down. So we begin the yin phase, and then We get really old and we die, which is back to the water phase, and then we're reborn and so forth. So you can see this cycle in so many areas. For my yoga instructors out there, it is— it's a yoga class. You start out in child's pose or meditation, you get going, you hit those sun salutations when the energy is at its peak, you go into balance poses, that's the equinox, and you start to wind down, cool down, and then you go back to shavasana where you started. Okay, so you can see this in all areas. So let's talk about it with regard to the creative process, and we'll use, of course, writing a book for our example, as our literal example. So all things are born in the water phase, the idea. Okay, the idea comes to you out of nowhere, right? It comes obviously from somewhere. The water phase is the phase closest to God, closest to source. So these ideas might come through a dream. I have had many, many good ideas come from dreams, from meditation, from journaling, these passive activities where we are in tune with source. Okay, we are still, and with all the stillness that we're being forced upon right now, I'm sure many of you are getting ideas dropping in. Okay, and so, but however, ideas are really worthless. We all have great ideas, right? Even in the legal world, an idea is— there's nothing valuable about an idea. It's not until you put it down into some tangible form that it becomes intellectual property, right? And that's the wood phase, starting to put pen to paper, starting to outline, starting to get some things on in a tangible form. Just like we now see the buds blooming, a tangible expression of that bulb that we planted in the winter. We can see, start to see a tangible expression of that idea. That's the wood phase. All right. And then we move into the fire phase, and that's when we start writing everything we know about this topic or the story. It's the write, write, write, write, write phase. All right. And then After you have your 60,000 to 80,000 words or whatever your manuscript consists of, you pause, you take a break, you step away, you reflect, you think about the monetization, you think about how you're gonna sell the book, you think about the practicalities, the earthly practicalities of this book. Okay. And then what's next? Editing. Yes, we move into the metal phase, editing. And so in the same way that energy is being extracted at this point of the cycle, the same is with our book. We maybe not— we need to edit things out. Yeah, so the energy hit its peak in the fire season, and then we start to need to take some things out in the metal phase, all right? And so we had to put our editor cap on. You might also rearrange sections, get it a better structure, right? And usually this is the last phase. Of course, you might go through several of these several times, but in the big picture, from the, from the editing phase, you have completion. And of course, the cycle starts all over again when it's time to market the book. But that is the completion, the completion of your project. All right. Pretty cool, right? So the next consideration is what is your element? So these, the 5 elements also have archetypal energies associated with them. And each one of you has a dominant element of one of these, could be 2, but definitely 1. So 1 or 2 of these are going to be your dominant element. All right. So, I'm going to go through each of these elements from an archetypal perspective. And there's lots of ways to kind of discover your primary element. It's— there's none of it's an exact science, okay? In my book, "Decorating the Five Elements of Feng Shui," I have a whole chapter on ways of kind of deciphering or discerning your primary element. You can use Chinese astrology, face reading, numerology, there's a great questionnaire. But one of my favorite ways is just tell you about them and you can pretty much, you can pretty much recognize yourself of like, oh, that's definitely me, or that's definitely not me, or that's kind of me. Okay, so as I go through the 5 elements as an archetype, you could even kind of rank them like definitely, definitely me, kind of me, definitely not me. Okay. So that's one, one way of doing it. So it's, it's really helpful to know what your primary element is because then you can, you can know what your— where your strong— your strong suit is, okay? And then we're going to talk about where your weaknesses are as well, okay? So we're going to start with the wood element, all right? And the archetype for the wood element is the pioneer. Alright, so you know that it's the first visible expression of energy. It's kind of the leaders. Alright, so I go through each one of these and I have a photo of— you can even spot elements through people, through how they dress, their wardrobe. I can pretty much look at someone through face reading or how they dress to kind of know what their element is. And so it shows up in our, in our physical, but also in our personality, but more specifically how we kind of run our energy. All right. So our wood people, they are the leaders, the seekers, the inventors. They, they have to be flexible because here's the thing about my wood people is that they are initiators, they are creators, and when you're initiator or creator, you're inventing the wheel. And when you invent the wheel, you have to be flexible because you're not going to get the wheel right the first time. It's going to take several times to figure things out. There's going to be kinks. There's going to be, you know, it takes time to figure, to figure out something new. And so for my wood people, the key is being flexible. It's the, um, you can think of a bamboo tree, of how it has to take the winds It has to be flexible, really any tree, or else it will fall when the storm comes. But Wood people, they can work solo well, they can work in groups well. And so with each of these elements, there's also a challenge, of course. That makes us— that's what makes us interesting humans, right? And the Wood element challenge is frustration. When things aren't moving forward, they're all about forward motion, because remember, this is the beginning of that yang energy. When things aren't moving forward, then they can get frustrated. And so their key challenge is knowing when to step back in order for real expansion to occur. Okay. So the picture on the left is— so cotton, you know, in the same way they have to be flexible and kind of vacillate between, you know, kind of be on their toes, they wear clothes that are like— that can vacillate easily. They might have, you know, cotton on the day and then put a jacket on like a a nice suit jacket to go to meetings, you know, very flexible in their wardrobe. Okay, let's move into the fire. So, we're hitting that peak energy. I call this, the fire people, the manifestors, okay? 'Cause you have that, if you're hitting the peak of your energy, can you imagine that these people are high energy, generally extroverted, all right? Often life of the party, they enjoy life, they enjoy people. They're the folks right now, they're having the most difficult time of, of the quarantine, because they're used to having a lot of people, having stimulation. And they— so because it's the highest form of energy, it's in the form of enthusiasm and passion. And there is nothing better to manifest than enthusiasm and passion, right? And so they often add the fuel and projects that are needed so that the project can hit its highest potential. So, you can imagine what the fire element's biggest challenge is, is knowing what to do with all this energy. Okay. When they can focus that energy, they can move mountains. When they scatter their energy, it's like a bonfire out of control with sparks just flying everywhere. And they can easily scatter their energy in too many areas, and that can lead to anxiety. All right. So, if you're a fire person, you're probably a little— you might tend to be anxious. Focus is really important. So, and there's a picture on the left. They like lots of accessories. Even this picture, the fire elements are actually— doesn't have to be real fur, but fake fur, animal products of sorts. Is a common fire element, particularly in interiors. All these elements also show up, of course, in our interiors, which is the basis of my book, "Decorating with the Five Elements of Feng Shui." All right. So we've hit our highest peak of energy, right? And so now we move into the earth element. And this archetype is the mother. All right. So the mother is the one who keeps everything grounded. Okay, the Earth Mother doesn't like change a lot. Okay, this is kind of the, the quintessential, like, two-party system when nothing gets done, you know. It's like stagnant, like, things come to a standstill, and that's the status quo. We don't want things moving too quickly. All right, so that's the Earth element. The earth element people are highly supportive people that bring harmony to groups and help maintain the peace. Think of like a mother who has all of her kids at home, probably like some of right now, and they don't like bickering among the children. They want harmony, peace among everyone. So, and even though I'm using the word, the archetype of a mother, that doesn't mean all mothers are earth elements, okay? It's just an archetypal way of seeing it. And so, my earth element people, their challenge is change, okay? And they can become a little controlling, kind of that helicopter mother archetype of not wanting things to change. And so, worry is their default emotion, all right? And these challenges that I'm mentioning, these are actually in Chinese medicine, all right? And all of these elements come to us through Chinese medicine. And if If any of you get acupuncture, these are all elements within your system, within your organ systems that get balanced out in acupuncture. This is actually the whole point of acupuncture is balancing out your 5 elements, all right? And so, all of us have all 5 of these in our system, in our— even coming into this world is your inner wood element, all right? So, we all have all of these within us, but there's some that you're going to notice that are more specific to your personality. Okay, and that's what we're going for. All right. So, our earth element, worry is their default emotion and based on change or the lack of change. Now, when an earth element person makes a change, it's big and it's lasting and it's a big deal. So, it's not that they can't change, but when they do, when they do, it's big. All right. All right. Next up, we have the metal element. So, we've hit our still point, and now the energy is starting to deplenish. Is that a word? Deplenish? Diminish. And so, the metal element is our organizers. It's the editors. It's the people who keep us on schedule, focused, detail-oriented, Architects, even designers, professional organizers, all of these are examples of metal element occupations. They're very precise. They only— they know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the best in life from the clutter, you know. And even in the way they communicate, they cut to the chase and avoid embellishments. So, for this webinar, I'm really putting on my Metal Element hat so that I cut to the chase and don't waste your time. Okay. The Metal Element people love an orderly environment. And they're— imbalance or their challenge can show up as maybe being a little OCD, a little perfectionist. They can be critical to themselves or others. And they tend to have tunnel vision without the ability to see the big picture. All right. So, that is their challenge. A little bit too honed in to details, right? My person here on the left, Probably metal elements would not have their shirts quite that unbuttoned, but the point is their clothing is very tailored, ironed, and very streamlined without a lot of embellishments, very simple. Okay, next we have the water element, and so now we've moved into the most yin of the cycle, and this is where the energy is the most withdrawn. So you can already imagine that my water element people are the introverts. The archetype for them is the philosopher. They're quiet, they're, they're unassuming. A water element person may seem kind of fragile or, or kind of weak, but they are actually extremely strong because they have deep reserves, reservoirs within them. They have a strong internal system, and they, for that reason, unassuming, you know. They hold a very quiet strength, deeply creative, contemplative, intuitive, introspective, because they're tapped into source, you know. When you're quiet and still, you're tapped in, you know. When your energy's not out there and in here, you get those ideas. And so it's the water people that, like I said, probably have the key to world peace, but it'll be up to the other elements to implement it. They're the idea people. And their challenge when out of balance is that they become withdrawn, aloof, perhaps even lead to depression because there's a lack of— a lack of outward energy. So they tend to keep their emotions close. To them and process slowly before taking action. All right, so you can see how there— it's kind of the opposite of the fire element, right? So you can already start to see how these elements kind of pair together. So fire and water, and sometimes you might even have two elements that seem very opposing as your top two elements, and that just means you have an internal balancing system going on. So a lot of times my fire people actually have water as a close second, okay, because all that external outward energy they have to tune in and turn out, turn away from the world in order to replenish. This can also show up in relationships. So the opposites might attract. A lot of relationships have the wood-metal combination. So the wood would be like, have all these grand ideas of things, and the metal element is like, 'How are you gonna pull that off? How much money is that gonna take? I don't think that's realistic.' You know, the kind of the critic. And so if you understand how, what, how your energy and how your partner's energy, whether it's a business partner or relationship partner, you can have more acceptance and really work together better with it. Instead of chopping down the tree, you can trim the tree, you know? And really come up, come out with a workable plan, you know. So my book, "Decorating the Five Elements," has a section on how these elements work with, in relationship, and compatibility. All right, so you can see I could spend so much more time on all of these, but I think that probably gives you a good idea of of what your kind of dominant element is, or at least kind of probably one or two of them. And so, which element do you most relate to? Okay. And then, of course, which element do you least relate to? All right. So, I'm sure you've already hopefully thought about that along the way. So which element do you most relate to and which element do you least relate to? So our next step in our process is identifying your writing element, okay? And most likely the elements that you related to just now are going to be the same as your writing element, all right? So I don't need to reinvent the wheel.. But it'll be interesting to see if it is different and how you, how you run your energy with in a creative project. All right. So I'm going to go through each of these and how it shows up in writing. All right. So my water people, you spend a lot of time journaling. Okay. And again, it's that inward energy, you know, contemplative, very philosophical. And so, you likely have very prolific ideas. All right. And so, again, I'm going to point out the challenge of each of these. Okay? Again, this is what makes this interesting. This is what is why we're here. Okay? And so, my water people, their biggest challenge is fear of visibility. All right. Think about how I just described the water element. They're kind of quiet, kind of aloof. Visibility, outward energy is not their strong suit. Right? They just rather stay, stay, stay close, close at home. My water people are loving, loving right now of the quarantine. All right. And then the wood people, they're the quick starters. All right. And as a card-carrying wood person, if you're like me, you have all kinds of projects that you've started. Whether they're books, any kind of projects, but books. If you started— I have probably, oh my gosh, probably 10 manuscripts in my computer folder that I think are all really great ideas. And so they're good with project management, okay, but their challenge is staying the course, staying the course and keep going because they just— when they want to start something new, always starting something new. They're starters. Um, but so they, they need to figure out how to stay the course. Of course, they could partner with the fire person because what we know about the fire person, they love writing. They can write, write, write, write, write, write. Okay, the fire people energy of writing, they have no lack of content. And so what does that lead to? Overwhelm. What do I do with all of these words? And so they need more structure, okay? Which is, guess, the metal element. We'll get there in a second. Okay, my earth people. My earth people, they're solid earth people, and they have their finger on the pulse of what's relevant to their audience. They know what their people want to hear, okay? And they also have the perseverance and the patience to see it out. They also have a good money mindset of what works, what will, you know, what the people need, so to speak. Because they're the mothers, they know, you know, think of a mother, they know what their kids need before the kids do, right? This is my earth people. But their challenge is self-doubt, all right, self-doubt. Specifically, as it pertains to worried about what others think. All right? Because they fear change, you know? They don't want any— anyone's feathers ruffled. And so, they're worried about what others think and how that might impact their people. Okay. Next is the metal element. These are, as you know, the— they're organized. They know structure. They are really good with structuring content. They have the strength and brevity of really cutting to the chase and really explaining things well. Their challenge, of course, is then the inner editor, okay? So their inner editor prevents them from really going into the fire and just writing from your heart, writing from passion. Instead, they're constantly editing themselves. All right, so that's, that's my number 2. I'm wood first, metal second. Um, all right, so be thinking about where— let me go back to that slide so give you a chance to, um, identify. So I'm curious as to whether your, your primary element and your primary writing element are this— are the same. Okay, if anyone has any feedback on that for me, I'd love to hear it. And if it kind of matches up with, with, with your dominant element. And then, so going back to the slide, you know, the point is we need all 5 of these to complete a project, to complete a book, okay. All right, all 5 of these have to be in place. And so How do we get there? So, tip number 1: don't overindulge in your dominant element, okay? So, if you are a wood person, you're constantly starting new projects, try to, you know, be— at least now you have awareness over it. Try not to overindulge your dominant element. This is, in Chinese medicine, is an exaggerated— this is what gets us out of balance in our system. It's called— the technical term is exaggerated. For example, exaggerated wood. So, and if you're a fire person and you're just, just writing away, you might take a step back and think about, okay, how can I put this in some kind of structure? Okay, and then of course also embracing your missing element. All right, this might be— not just might, it it is your cog in the wheel. Okay, it is your cog in the wheel. Um, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. All right, so it's that missing element or your weakest element that is your cog in the wheel. All right, it's where you get tripped up in the creative process. So let me share with you my Five Elements method. So just explain how all 5 of these are needed to complete something, complete anything, all right? And you know where your strength is, or strengths are, you know where now where your weakness is, all right? And so there's lots of ways that we can kind of fill in the gap of our weakness. This is where collaboration really comes in handy. So if If you need a more metal element, then you can obviously hire an editor, you know. Of course, this is also how we, like I was saying, we tracked in partnerships. Not that you're going to have your spouse do your editing for you, even though I've been recruited many times to do that. But, you know, I know it's really good for me to partner, whether it's in business or in relationship with fire people. I need that, that cheerleader, that enthusiasm to say, "Keep going, keep going." You know, I know that I need that. And also, I know that I need to have that within myself as well. So, we all have all of these within ourselves but can also use other people for— to help us out as well. All right. And then, you can also fill in these elements through your environment. I don't have time today to go through that. That would be a whole nother webinar, but in my book, "Decorating with the Five Elements," that's pretty much the whole gist of the book is how to use your environment to kind of balance your energy out. It would most pertain to your writing space, wherever that is, and bringing in the elements that you're needing. All right, and not overindulging in the element that you're already strong in. Okay, and then for the Rare Wardrobe as well as other ways. Um, and so this is, this is the reason, um, that I am creating the Publishing Portal group, okay, because I have this vision of having this group of all of these wonderful elements there. And so, um Really, one of my favorite examples of the five elements is a basketball team, because it's literally five players, and each of them represent one of the five elements. Okay, you have the point, the shooting guards, which is the wood element. You have the center, which is the earth element, and so forth. So, um, I'm imagining all of these basketball teams in this group, and each of us contributing our strengths and finding support from those who have our— that can help us with our challenging elements, even if it's just motivation, resources, cheerleaders, writing prompts, whatever we need. Okay. And so, with this group, I am going to have— starting tomorrow, this starts tomorrow, okay, for those who are going to join. The writing room, which is my private Zoom meeting room that will be available every Tuesday night from 5 to 7 Pacific Central Time, Pacific Standard, whatever, California time. That would be 7 o'clock Central Time. And then Thursday mornings, or Thursday midday for you guys on the East Coast. And so this writing room is going to be open. God willing and the creek don't rise, which you never know these days, but assuming nothing crazy happens, I will have the writing room open and just really holding space and providing a time and place to show up for writing. Now is such a great time to set new habits because our routines are so different. Like, it's the best time to create new routines, and it's really the key in setting habits as routine and making it routine. So I started this a couple of months ago of making every Tuesday night my writing night. And so now I'm going to help you guys create this habit as well. And so it'll be Tuesday nights and Thursday mornings, and you can just show up whenever you want. There's no obligation. And we'll have some provided community time as well if you want to share some of your writing and all that good stuff. There's a private Facebook group which will be kind of more the portal for the group for announcements, sharing things, and so forth. And if you're in the group, you get a discount on— I'm going to start holding virtual writing retreats. Okay. And my first one is this upcoming Saturday. And so I'd love for any of you, all of you to join me on that. And I'll talk about— talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. So if you're in the publishing portal group, you get a major discount off of the virtual writing retreat. So it's a no-brainer to join the group if you're going to do one of the retreats. OK, the ultimate point in all this is to complete your project, get your message out to the world. OK, this is what it's all leading to. All right. And so I'm offering the group at a ridiculous— I mean, like, seriously ridiculous price of $1 a month. OK, the eventual The full price of the group is going to be $24 a month, okay? But I'm offering it at this rate for several reasons. For one, I want to— you being an inaugural member, I want you to have the benefit, okay? To help all of us be in the wood element to start this group, okay? This is a lifetime, as long as you want to be in the group. The price will never go up. You can stop anytime you want. So it's kind of like a why not kind of thing. If you're gonna— if you want to spend some time or have carve-out time, hold space, have community around your writing. I know writing is extremely solo activity, all right, and it takes a lot of discipline to set aside the time. I struggle with this still, and I've, you know, had 4 books published, and I still struggle with making time, you know. It's— I can find a million other things that seem more important And so writing is the simplest and the hardest thing you can ever do. It's simple in that it's very simple, and it's hard in that it's— because it's harder than it seems. So it's important to have community around it. Okay. So I will have links to the group here in a minute. I will also have a link to join the group in the email that I will send out with the link to this video. Okay, so links will be provided. Let me tell you a little bit about the virtual writing retreat coming up this next Saturday. So I plan on having these at least 5 times a year, one for each element. So I'll be following the calendar with— so this one next week will be featuring the wood element because we're right in the wood element season. But the whole day will revolve around the 5 elements. So we'll start with water, we'll move into wood with some writing prompts and get going, getting pen to paper, and then we'll spend quite a bit of time in the fire of writing, writing, writing. Because I know how precious it is to find time to actually write, so I want to take advantage or help you take advantage of this time to write, spend time writing. All right, and we'll share, we'll We'll have a break for our earth element and, and kind of reflect our stuff with each other. And then wind things down like a good 5 element class should be. And so the— if you want to sign up for that virtual writing retreat, and like I said, if you're going to attend that, then you definitely want to join the group because you get $50, $50 discount, right? So you can spend $1 to get $50 off. Okay, I also just want to plant the seed in your head. This might be down the road for you, or maybe if you have a manuscript that's about ready to go, then this might be more applicable to you. But I have the publishingportal.com, and this is to help you. This is a self-publishing portal, okay, basically. So I have all the same resources that all the major publishing companies have for cover design, editors, interior designers, getting your book out into the world. And so, so much, so much traction has happened with self-publishing to where it really is— the decision to go to traditional publishing versus self-publishing, the gap is narrowing more and more and more of which process is best. And as I mentioned at the beginning, I just re-released my book Mind Body Home through the publishing portal, through my process, okay? And I have a cover designer that worked at HarperCollins, okay? So all the resources come from the same place now. If any of you are familiar with this book, you might have remembered it from when my traditional publisher had it and had the big flowers. I was never a fan of that cover. It wasn't my choosing at all. And this time I got to pick the one I really wanted and have the designer design the way I wanted it. So these are, you know, decisions you get to make as a creative. So I have packages depending on how much assistance you need in that process, varying from kind of bare bones to the whole deluxe model. And all that can be found at thepublishingportal.com. There's lots of, you know, business strategy, marketing strategy that goes into a book. And so having kind of a business mindset or strategy is really important, particularly as it pertains to nonfiction books. And so that's where I feel like I can really help out as well. So when and if that becomes something you want to think about, take a look at thepublishingportal.com. All right. Okay, here are all the links, and again, I'll put these in the In the email that you'll get, or if you're watching this as a recording, then you've already gotten it. To join the Publishing Portal group, here's the web— the URL. Of course, all these are accessible just through my website, tishamorris.com. On the front page, you'll see somewhere a link to any of these. All right, thepublishingportal.com, virtualwritingretreat.com. And if you have any questions, you can email me directly at my email address here. All right, and I think that wraps it up. Sorry I talked so fast. I was, uh, hopefully didn't talk too fast for you guys, but I wanted to try to fit all this in, and also I'm gonna get to your questions here in a second. Please hit me up on social media, Tisha Morris Author on Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is @tishalmorris. And so thank you. Let me stop sharing my screen. And take a look at what comments or questions you guys have. Oh, well, my only comment is from Rachel about my editing skills. All right, so she's fire and I'm metal. Metal and wood. All right, what questions do you guys have? I'd love to hear what any of you found out about your dominant element, where you found your kind of your block or your, your, um, your what I call cog in the wheel. Deborah Denson, um, are you saying that you're a fire or you're questioning that you're a fire? Thank you, Dawn. Glad you enjoyed it. Okay, so, all right, we have a water, um, but your sign is fire. Yeah, you can't really go by your astrological sign because your astrology sign, well, you're just— is your sun sign, and sometimes there is a correlation, but your, your natal chart as a whole, you know, has all kinds of elements in it. And so your, your sun sign in astrology doesn't always mean that you're— you're— doesn't always translate perfectly. All right, Deborah says she's not sure if she's fire or metal or both. You know, you definitely have Did you not relate to wood? I can see some wood in you. There are some people that, you know, for those who are familiar with Ayurvedic medicine, you have the doshas, and there's a rare— some people are rare in that they're called tri-doshic. Okay, and so the same thing can happen with the 5 elements. There's some people that actually are really pretty across the board the same. Okay, and these are kind of our jacks of all trades. So if you're like, I'm kind of all of these, which again, we all have all of these in us. So, but it's like, where is your, like, your go-to, your default of what you're best at? All right. So yeah, Deborah said related to wood. You have some, which because I've met you in person, you have some water features and fire. So you have I can kind of see you might be my tridoshic. I need a quinta, quint element. I need a word instead of tridoshic for someone who is strong in all 5. All right, let's see. Dawn says she feels like a mix of fire and wood. Yeah, I can definitely, definitely see that. You have a lot of yang energy, a lot of active energy, so I can definitely see that. I could probably burn yourself out if you, if you're not careful. Jennifer asked if there's gonna be recording. Yeah, so you'll all get a recording, and then I'll get an email out either later tonight or in the morning, and please share with socials and have have them join the group as well. I'm going to keep running this dollar special for a couple of weeks unless it gets crazy and there's too many people. But so please share it with your friends and have them join too. Rachel says, tell them about your quiz. I talked about the quiz, but I didn't— it's in my book, Decorating with the Five Elements. But I feel like this probably gave people a good snapshot. To what they might be. Jennifer says, pretty sure she's 99% water, no earth. Yeah, metal, water, and earth are not the most friendly. So it's probably— if water and earth together is what you call stuck in them, stuck in the mud, stuck in the muck. So it's probably— there's some tension with earth and water. But it might be, the earth might be where your, where your, the cave that you need to enter that is the practical, you know. Sometimes the earth people, when they get stuck with that self-doubt, they have to, they need to go to the water and find out their why, you know. Finding out your why of getting your message, of what your message is, particularly with nonfiction. With, if it's fiction, it's the why is your story and getting that story out. And so the water is where you go back to for the why, and the fire is where we also kind of reassess the why because it's where you find the passion. And it's the passion and enthusiasm that gets us the energy to really move forward and crank out the 80,000 words, you know. Deborah asked about how this relates to Enneagram. I'm I know about the Enneagram, but I haven't studied the Enneagram, so I do not know. I think the Enneagram is a combination of different systems. I don't know if it involves— if it was inspired by the 5 elements at all or not. So I do know the Human Design has aspects of the 5 elements integrated within it. Barbara says— oh, hi, Barbara— that she's tri-elemental. Fire and wood. Yeah, a lot of times, um, for, um, fire and wood will go together because that's the yang. You get started on something and keep going. Um, and then other times you'll have people who have the opposites as their, as their top elements, like fire and water or metal and wood. Um, she says fire and wood for my projects, good at ideas and adding fuel. Perfect. Also metal. Yep. Um, which, you know, Barbara is— you've been in writing for years, so you have kind of, um this creative process. You might not have thought about in terms of 5 elements, but it's a process that you're very familiar with. Jita says, would fire help me write if I am water? Yeah, so my water people, they need, they need more energy to get, to get moving and get out into the world. So definitely getting pen to paper in the wood phase and then keeping it going, which is the more yang energy that may not be as— may be not as native to you, that either help from other people or