What are your core desired feelings?

• Brilliant
• Expansive
• Intuitive
• Safe

What are you doing this week or lately to generate your core desired feelings? 

To feel brilliant – I spend more time furiously dancing, and I hunt for opportunities to get back onto the stage.
To feel expansive – I blog more, and I’ve upgraded my newsletter from monthly to weekly.
To feel intuitive – I schedule time for unstructured play and exploration.
To feel safe – I make it a habit to prioritize billable hours over infrastructure hours – having 5+ hours every day that someone else is paying me for makes me feel safe.

What lightbulb went off for you when you started to look at how your feelings related to how you did your life/work?

The Desire Mapping process validated my intuition. When my gut told me that something was a bad idea, I used to push through it if I was reaching for a goal on the other side of the discomfort. Now I can honor my discomfort as a legitimate influence, and guide my life by my intuitive reactions.

When you got clear on your CDFs were there any goals that you were chasing that fell to the way side? Did new or different goals/intentions emerge?

I focus less on making money and more on being awesome.

The first time I went through the Desire Map, in the digital version, I was dancing around Excellence and Enthusiasm, and trying to wedge some word that sounded like Prosperity in there. I do want to be rich, it’s true, but I don’t actually care to have a lot of money – I just want the expansiveness to do what I want to do, without being limited by the monetary buy-in.

Once I stopped hunting for the word that meant ‘rich’ to me, I found the word ‘safe,’ and I recognized that this was the core feeling behind all of my money-related searching.

What tunes are revving up your core desired feelings these days?

Snow Patrol, Zero 7, and Postal Service are my go-to working music. For play and dance and yoga, I love east Indian trip-hop – Cheb i Sabbah, the Dum Dum Project, and Dancing with Shiva.

What’s a goal that you’re focusing on this year?

Every week, I talk with my wife about each of our three kids, one by one, to discuss what they need and what we should focus on with them, right now. That’s my biggest goal for the year, and it feels right to put family so far first.

What’s not working that you want to change?

Right now I’m scraping by on freelance income. I don’t have a paycheck or health insurance, and I’ve been keeping our financial ship afloat with duct tape and twine for quite a while. I want to change that and make some serious money this year. Everything else in my life – health, relationships, creativity, spirituality – I’m doing great in every other area, except for cash in hand.

Just this week, I finished the keystone of the portal out of this stage of my life, and into the next one: http://huntress-for-hire.com

What are you feeling really grateful for?

Sunshine. Whether it’s there or hidden behind the clouds, I try and spend some time every day feeling grateful for the light and heat of the sun.
My kids are incredible people, and I am honored to shepherd them into the world.
I have developed a skillset at the intersection of art and technology, ensuring my career will be spent doing things that I love.
I have an exceptional body. I am strong, flexible, and healthy.
I have a beautiful wife who supports my gypsy adventures.
I have no fear of rejection. This makes me impervious to the impossible.
Finally, I am grateful I have cultivated a practice of listing my gratitudes every day. This keeps me focused on the good in my life.

Feel free to riff on anything Desire Map related. Insights, quotes, imagery. Whatever moves you. Or not.

I really enjoyed the journey to find my CDFs this year.

On my birthday, I moved through a block in my second chakra because of my work with the Desire Map. This story gets seriously into the woo-woo, so I’ll save it for another time.

This is where I worked last year, in a mountain valley in Costa Rica. This was where I first went through the Desire Map.

Visuals: We’d love it if you share an image of some “literal” desire mapping in your life. Like, the book in your favourite space, or a shot of your CDF’s posted in your day planer or as the screen saver on your iPhone. And any “life” shots you want to share that speak to your CDF’s and your soul, send ’em over and we shall curate and cull.