As a creator, I'm very familiar with the challenges of the creative path. You could say in a spiraling way I've been through this process many many times, where first I'm excited, I'm in a creative flow. I create something. And then usually, when it's gone out into the world, there is no response. This cycle has pushed me back to myself. It's brought up a lot of pain. It's challenged my creative vision and woken the ever present inner critic, which I really really struggle with.
At the start of this journey, I had reached a point of having gone around this spiral so many times and reached the point where I felt I cannot move forward like this anymore. Something's wrong. In that space, there was a really a desire for emptiness and a desire to stop trying. And really the feeling that the dream is broken.
So you could say I entered Unravel as a bag of different colored balls of wool that were all knotted, tangled, and in a bit of a mess.
One thing that was really burning inside me was to define success in a different way for myself, to free myself of the expectation that the value of what I do should be given to me by the outside world.
From the age of 21, I was really on a search for myself. My whole adult life had been defined by a search to find out who I am, and that has included meditation and personal growth work across the world.
I came out of the Unravel journey with all the balls of wools separate. I could see all the different colors, and everything was unraveled. I could see the different parts of myself, including the shadow parts, the problems and challenges, but also the talents and the experiences, and I could envisage creating a new tapestry within them. So it really cleared the inner space.
On the path, you've got to keep dusting that mirror and it always gets dusty again. So Unravel for me was a really good dusting of the mirror to really move forward.
Unravel is an infinite pool. It is definitely life-changing. As we all know, on the path, you reach a peak and there's another peak. You have to go back down in the valley and continue. I came away with a lot of additional tools for my onward journey, and I have quite a lot of tools in my knapsack already, but these were like fine tuned tools.
I had done inner child before, but your exercise with the inner child where we write with the left hand and allow the inner child to speak I had never done. That was such a revelation and a beautiful, mysterious happening for me. I was absolutely astounded by the wisdom, depth, and archetypes the inner child was bringing. It was almost like you've given me a connection to that voice that I've never heard before. So that was really really precious. And, now you get me going. There are so many other things.
The way that Unravel helped me redefine success was very much in the unlearning phase. Working with statements and turning them around- this was really really really useful for me and it opened a door for me. In seeing that, the whole process helped me look on my life and see that it's not a failure. It may traditionally not be successful but I really redefined that for myself and I started to honor the creative output that I have done over the years. So that's been really precious.
I had been doing work that I wanted to stop. Around the unlearning phase, I knew I had to leave that particular work and I did. So Unravel helped me get a lot of clarity that I had to leave my job.
Unravel is a reminder that existence is showering on me and is taking care, and when you need help, it's always there.
I'd tell prospective Unravelers to jump. You will be pleasantly surprised. You will not regret it.