342 Holly Worton ~ How to Follow the Breadcrumbs in Your Life

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Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 342. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about finding and following the breadcrumbs in your life.

This episode was inspired by a reading that I recently got, that Joanna Hennon did for me, from Bridget, or Brighid, as her name is properly pronounced in Irish. So Brighid is an energy, a being, a goddess, that I used to connect with. I used to work with her quite a bit and I still have a shrine to her in my office. It has been a long time since I tuned in, it has been a long time since I did any channeling, it has been a long time since I connected with her at all. So when Joanna put out this offer, which I will link to in the show notes, when Joanna put out an offer for this reading I instantly jumped at it because I really liked the energy of Bridget and I wanted to see what she had to say to me, especially since it had been so long since I connected with her.

Her message was very useful, very practical, very focussed. It gave me a lot of really good information about my path forward, but the first paragraph is the one that I want to read to you now. So, in this she says to me:

“You know that our work together isn’t done. It won’t be done until you accept that your path is to bring back a connection to the earth, to nature, but not in the woo-woo sense, in the practical sense. Your work with the healing power of plants, your work with feeling the power of the earth in magical places, your desire to grow things and to communicate with the nature around you, your walking… these are your breadcrumbs. Follow them and they will keep leading you towards the expression of your authentic, true self.”

So that was super-clear and very, very, useful because I feel like, for the last ten years of my life, I have been following breadcrumbs but in a very haphazard way. So in today’s episode I want to help you identify what are the breadcrumbs in your life, so that you can see them more quickly, and clearly and easily. And follow them, so that you can start living a more fulfilling life. It has taken me such a long time to get to where I am today, and I am finally at a place where things really feel like they are coming together, and they really feel like I have got a much clearer sense of my path. And this message from Brighid totally confirms it.

But before we get into today’s episode I wanted to say a huge thank you to Lisa, new patron, on Patreon, thank you so much for joining and I really appreciate your support. And if you, listener, feel like you get value from this podcast I would love to have you support me over at Patreon, if you head to: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. You get different things at different levels, whether that is access to my monthly Q and A or access to all of my eBooks, or even printed copies of my books – things are available to you. And I would love to have your support, I love putting out this podcast each week, it is a significant investment of my time, and also some money, so it feels very nourishing to receive support from my listeners. So I really, really, appreciate that to all of my patrons and to all of my new patrons who are coming. So back to the episode.

So, according to Brighid I wanted to run that list, through that list of breadcrumbs, that she kind of listed out for me. So the first thing she said was “the healing power of plants”, so, to me, my work with the healing power of plants kind of intensified over the last year. Not only through some retreats that I did for my own personal healing, working with certain sacred plants, but also the shamanic plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship that I did last year, and that I am going to be continuing on, I don’t know if it is the advanced version but kind of the second phase of that journey this year and I am really looking forward to that, it starts in May.

So working with the healing power of plants has been an important part of my life, and that is something that is really shifted from the pure mindset work that I was doing over the past few years. Mindset is still very important to me, it has been an important part of my journey, and I am working with it in different ways, through working with plant spirits and also plants themselves. So that is the evolution of the way I work with myself and perhaps with other people in the future, we shall see.

She also said my work “with feeling the power of the earth in magical places”, so if you have read my book If Trees Could Talk, you know how important Avebury is to me. The energies have been shifting there and I no longer feel the strong connection that I once had with that area, but it has been a massively, massively, important part of my life for the past three years I would say, since I walked the Ridgway in 2016. I am feeling a really, it keeps popping into my head, and I am feeling a strong kind of calling to it, so I feel like I need to revisit Avebury, even though the energies are changing. So my sense of feeling the power of the earth in magical places has also been a really important part of my life and it is something that I want to continue to work with and continue to understand. So that is a clear breadcrumb but, again, it is very useful to have this shown to me, and clearly explained to me.

Next breadcrumb, my desire to grow things, I have always liked gardening, but I have this really strong desire to have my own vegetable garden. It is something that I grew up with as a child, my parents always grew vegetables, and we had fruit trees, and I really, really would like to have my own vegetable garden. And I know we are renting where we live, we could get an allotment, I don’t yet have time for this, so I am aware that my desire to grow my own food is probably, well definitely not, going to happen this year with all the things going on, but it is a very strong desire that I have. And it keeps showing up in the novel that I am writing which I think I have mentioned to you a couple of times on this podcast, the novel is not part of my plans for 2020, it is not part of my goals, it is kind of my side hobby that is going on in the background. The characters in that novel have a very strong connection to the earth and they grow their own food, so I have been doing a lot of investigation and research on that and I am really, really, enjoying it, so my desire to grow things.

My desire to communicate with the nature around me: well if you have read or you have heard me talk about my book, If Trees Could Talk, you know that communicating with nature is a very important part of my life. It is something that I haven’t been doing as often lately, because I haven’t been going on my walks. The way I do my walks is kind of changing, rather than doing my weekly one-day walks, I have some longer walks planned for this year, which leads me into my next breadcrumb, my walking. That is changing but I have got two new walking books planned for this year, not to release this year, but to start writing, and I will be walking in different countries this year, in addition to England. And I will also be releasing a second edition of my South Downs Wey book which I am really, really, excited about.

So these are my breadcrumbs, as I said it is really helpful to have these spelt out for me, very clearly, and listed out for me, because it has taken me such a long time to get to this point. It has taken me a long time because I came from a place where I didn’t really know myself, I had to get to know myself, I had to fumble around in the dark before I found my way. So let’s use myself as an example. I got here by realising that plants were important to me, and I just started doing things that I liked with plants. So I started growing my own flowers and things in my garden, I started working with plants for healing, by signing up for these retreats, that I have gone on. I signed up for the shamanic plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship. I just started paying attention to things that were on my radar and signing up for them. Even before I signed up for the shamanic plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship, I started going to the plant-spirit initiation days that Suneet was holding. I am going to link to her in the show notes so that you can see her website. I just started signing up for things that piqued my interest. Last year when I did the plant identification for wild food and medicine course, through the woodcraft school, that was something that, I don’t even know how I came across it online, it just instantly piqued my interest and I signed up for it and I loved it. I just absolutely loved that course and I am doing two more courses with them this year. So once you find something you like, keep going with it.

My work with feeling the power of the earth in magical places, that is something that happened really quite by accident when I walked the Ridgway and I did a circular walk around Avebury which was the first time I went there. I went into West Kennet Long Barrow for the first time and I felt the energy there so strongly that I went back the next morning before I actually started on the Ridgway. And then I kept feeling compelled to going back there and walking in the area and I just responded. And I kept doing it and doing it until I really built a relationship with the area. That was something that again, it happened quite by accident, but I felt that call and I responded. So, this is another thing, it is actually taking action so when you find that first breadcrumb, keep walking, keep looking, keep feeling until you find the next one. With my work in communicating with nature around me, that is something that again it came to me in an Akashic records reading that I got from Vickie Young and it was where the Akashic records keepers encouraged me to start talking to the trees, I started, and I just kept doing it. There was a lull for a while where I wasn’t doing it, but I kept doing my nature walks and I kept being out in nature and being among trees and then I saw that meetup group for the forest bathing, and then it just got to the point where I had that conversation with the yew tree that gave me the idea for the book. So it was again following the breadcrumbs that got me to this point where I am with that. And walking, I have always enjoyed walking ever since I was a teenager and when I moved to England, I found that walking book in Waterstones, and bought it, and started walking and just kept going and that has led me to my love of doing longer walks.

So, how can you identify the breadcrumbs in your life? How do you see the breadcrumbs? So to me it is about just paying attention to the things that pique your attention and paying attention to the things that call you. Paying attention to the things that keep popping into your head, whether it is an image of something, whether it is a word, whether it is a feeling, whether it is music, a song, a colour, whatever it is, pay attention to the stuff that keeps popping into your awareness and write it down.

Journalling can be helpful with this because it helps you to see the patterns. I find it really hard without writing things down to see the things that have shown up over the years and over the months and the weeks as patterns in my life. But when I go back through my journals and this is the important thing to go back and flip through – you don’t have to read every page but flip through, browse through them, and see what comes up for you and what things you notice, highlight the key words. So it about being aware and paying attention to feel good, that sound good, that taste good, that register as pleasant, pleasurable and enticing: the things that you are drawn to; the things that call you like a magnet. Pay attention to those things and write them don and then take little steps. My first step working with plant spirits was not signing up for that apprenticeship, it was signing up for, every once in a while, a one day plant-spirit-healing initiation. The first step for me, in signing up for all the courses I signed up for this year with the woodcraft school ,was signing up for that five-day course last year and now I am on two new programs for this year. So there is a lot that you can do, there is a lot you can accomplish, by just paying attention to the things that call you. Pay attention to the things that catch your eye, write them down, that helps you to see the breadcrumbs in your life.

And then the next important step is to take action; take action, to take the first steps to follow those breadcrumbs. Again, a lot of those things I am talking about involve an investment of money and they also involve an investment of time. So make a list once you see a breadcrumb so, like outdoors classes, make a list of all the things that you could do. Some things are expensive, and some things are less expensive – a lot of meet up groups are $5 a meeting, some of them are $1 a meeting. So go on meetup.com and find events, or things, that are related to the breadcrumbs in your life and start going to those things – that’s a very inexpensive way. Another think I like to do I use Evernote to create lists of classes and courses and things that I want to do. Maybe I can’t afford them right now, maybe I don’t have time to do that right now, maybe they won’t fit into my calendar but I want to do them some time and so I copy and paste the link into a list so that every year when I am signing up for stuff I can go into that list and see what the highest priorities are.

I think that creating this habit of following the breadcrumbs, when I say take action, again taking action could be adding something to your list, you don’t have to go out and take the class this weekend, but taking action on those breadcrumbs builds up your breadcrumb muscle and makes it easier for you to see and follow those breadcrumbs in your life. It is like I talk about in my Business Intuition book the more you pay attention to your intuition and the more you take action on the wisdom that your intuition gives you, the easier it is for you to listen to your intuition and hear the messages that your intuition gives you in the future. In the same way that there is kind of an intuition muscle and, I think there is also a breadcrumb muscle. So the more you pay attention to this, the more you kind of heighten your awareness and train yourself to take action in the future, so don’t feel like you have to go out and do a bunch of things and spend a bunch of money right away, it is taking action, it can be very, very, simple.

I think the next thing that is important for me to cover is: how to know when you are on the right path? I would say it is when synchronicity starts happening. When you start finding similar things that appeal to you. When I went on my first retreat last year, working with sacred plants, I started talking to people and I started learning about new things and then I went on another retreat at New Years and I kept meeting new people and finding new things and new ways of working with people and new ways of healing and it kept leading me to new things and new healing plants that I want to work with this year. So when you see things starting to line up, as a result of taking that first step to follow the breadcrumbs when you kind of see more breadcrumbs on the path and sometimes you don’t actually, or most of the time actually for me at least,  I don’t see the full path, it is not like I see a line of breadcrumbs, I usually just see the next breadcrumbs and so follow that and then I see the next one and then I follow that. And, for me at least, that can be really frustrating because I like to see the whole path and so it is frustrating when I can’t, but I have come to see that that is part of life, at least how it works for me. I just take one step and then I see which direction the next one needs to go in. And I really do believe that following these breadcrumbs in my life, has led me to the point where I am today where things are really feeling like they are coming together. I said this a couple of weeks ago when my new website went live, it really feels like such a coherent, aligned representation of who I am right now, and what I do right now. I actually just went into the backend of my website yesterday morning and deleted, I just trashed a bunch of pages based on the one-to-one work I used to do because I am not doing that work now and if I ever start doing that again I want to start with a fresh slate, I want to start with a fresh webpage within my site.

And I have been doing a bunch of decluttering. In the same way that I have been deleting pages on my website and that is making space for new things, because as I pare things down it gives me clarity on my focus and vision for the future. So, decluttering things, I have had this really compulsive need to declutter lately, I went through my wardrobe and decluttered four bags of clothes that either didn’t fit anymore or I am just not wearing, sent them to the charity shop and went up into the loft and pulled down some bags of stuff that could just go in the trash. I am getting rid of things and paring own and getting rid of stuff that, for me at least, helps me open up to new things, not necessarily stuff, but new experiences. It helps me have the clarity of vision to see new experiences or new opportunities, come my way. So decluttering, I keep mentioning it and it keeps coming up because it is such an important thing to do. So if you are feeling kind of that impulsive urge or need to declutter, do it. Go through your kitchen and throw out old stuff that maybe has expired, or old spices that you never use or I don’t know, go through your house room by room and declutter stuff, it is really, really, freeing and it is really, really satisfying and I believe that it will help you to see the breadcrumbs in your life. Even though it is not a very logical step, decluttering and following the path in your life, but I think it works, it works for me. And I don’t think it is surprising that I have been having this really compulsive need to declutter things lately.

So, questions to ask yourself so that you can get tuned into finding the breadcrumbs: what is important to you? What do you enjoy doing? What sounds like fun to you? What have you always wanted to do? What is on your bucket list?  What do you do when you procrastinate? What is the little thing that you love doing, maybe it is reading a book or going outside and doing some gardening? I don’t know, pay attention to the things that you do when you procrastinate and sometimes those are just time-waster things like going on social media, or playing games on your phone, but sometimes it is a sign to the stuff that you really love. So yes, pay attention to the things that catch your eye, the things that keep popping into your mind and write those down, I can’t stress those enough. Getting this stuff out of your head and onto paper or into a file on your computer, is really, really, the best way forward in terms of documenting this stuff so that you can see the trends, and you can follow the trends and you can walk the path of your breadcrumbs. Oftentimes there are multiple breadcrumbs and multiple paths. So as I was reading my list of breadcrumbs from Brighid, there were five different things there and I think there is one thing that wasn’t on there which is my writing. I think that is because she knows that I am pretty solid on my writing path right now and what she needed to do was bring me back to my nature path rather than my business path, because I have been focussed on my business books as of late because I am releasing second editions of all those books.

So, those are my thoughts on how to find and follow the breadcrumbs in your life.  I would love to hear from you and get an email from you: [email protected] and feel free to send me an email when you get off this episode and let me know: what are the breadcrumbs? What are the top five breadcrumbs you think you have in your life right now? I would love to hear what you think your breadcrumbs are because obviously they are going to be very, very, different for everyone. So take action today, whether or not you choose to share your breadcrumbs with me, I would like to challenge you to find your top five breadcrumbs in your life. And, what is one action that you could take for each breadcrumb. That’s what I am going to leave you with today and please, if you feel like sharing with me, I would really, really, love to hear it. So, that is all for now and please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode. Again, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. Again I would love for your o find me on Patreon Again I would love for your o find me on Patreon if you head to: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff I don’t share anywhere else.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast I would love for your to do so and I am aware that I just gave you about 9000 calls to action in the last minute and a half. So the last thing I am going to suggest you do is to visit: http//HollyWorton.com/342 for the show notes on this episode. So if there is anything you thought: oh I missed that, I want to write that down it is all in the show notes and in about a week or two the transcript for this episode will also go up online.

So that is all, have a fantastic week and please let me know what your breadcrumbs are I would love to hear it. So happy breadcrumb hunting and have a great week.