Overwhelm, confusion + frustration: This week’s installment of how I create my creative courses

note: The course I was working on while I was writing this How I Create My Courses series is Creative Journal Magic.

If you missed it – I am sharing my creative process as I create my new creative course on Soul Journaling.  You can catch part one here and part two here.

This week I don’t have a video update.

It was great to use video to talk it out in the beginning, but at this point there is way too much information to keep doing that. At this point talking it out feels like juggling invisible balls.

It’s hard to juggle invisible balls and if I don’t have things written down there I can see them – talking it out is just going in circles and not helping me get to where I want to get.

So.  Time to write things down.

At this stage there are about 5.7 million details to sort out. Slightly overwhelming.

I am making charts that show what I want to see happen with each lesson and how that could happen. Experimenting with slotting this exercise there, or that exercise here. Where is the most useful place for this bit of information? When is the best time to share this idea?

At the same time, thinking back to other workshops and courses and my work with clients over the years – how does this exercise really work for people?  What does it do?  Can it get them to where we need to go for this next part?  What happens when we combine this with this and that?

All the while, remembering the essence of each lesson and letting that be a guiding light – though at this point the light can get kind of dim.

Because It’s a highly annoying number of details and questions and this is the part that I find frustrating.

I don’t think this part is inherently frustrating, it’s just that I don’t like piles of details just kind of lying around.  I like things to be organised.  I like knowing how things fit together.  Piles of stuff stresses me out.

So I need to take it easy and go slow.

Remember that I am giving birth to something huge and it’s taking a LOT of energy even if on the surface it looks like I am doing very little.  Seriously – I can spend all day exploring this and end up with nothing useful at the end of the day… just a bunch of charts that don’t quite fit together.

Except, of course, I know that it is useful.

This part is hugely useful. This part is laying the groundwork for what comes next. Without this part, my courses would just be a bunch of information, ideas and assignments.

It’s because I spend so much time and energy on this part that my courses are actually adventures and invitations and doors that you can open that lead you into bright new worlds.

It’s like in the movie Inception, how the architect creates the dream.

I’m creating an experience, I am building a world of Soul Journaling for you to come into an explore and play in.

And every part of it has to just right or else you won’t be able to really let loose and play and explore.

So here I am with all of these bits and pieces.  Building blocks and blueprints and landscaping materials.  The contents of a whole world just kind of dumped into a pile for me to sort through.  I’m examining each piece carefully. Which parts really are important?  Which parts are we better off leaving out of this magical world?  And how does each part fit and interact with every other part?

This part kind of stretches my brain.

And no matter how much work I do, that big pile hardly looks touched.  Until at one point, critical mass is reached and the parts will start to put themselves together.

Yay!  I love when I get to that part.

So what is in the pile?

In my first video I talked about the lessons and how they would flow together, so I have those here:

• Commitment and Purpose and choosing your own prize
• Exploring and Experimenting both Creative Journaling techniques and the Creative Magic stuff (Transformation, Healing, etc)
• Opening up to what is really possible for you
• Accepting the prize and discovering where it’s going to fit in your life and how it’s going to change your life

And remembering, most importantly of all, that there has to be space for you in the course.  It’s about your experience.  It has to be a magical world that you can run around in and explore.  You have to be able to bring your stuff and your dreams and your soul into the experience.  It can’t be flat or rigid.

But it also can’t just be a playground.  You can build your own playground, you don’t need me for that.  This is a course and you want to learn something so it comes down to structuring the lessons within a container of freedom and adventure.

This part is confusing.  Finding the just-right-balance.

The amount of energy and work and attention and love I am putting in here is pretty intense.

I am love with this course and what it can do for people, so I am inspired and compelled to keep going even though this part is really overwhelming.

And this is a much smaller e-course than the last one I made – the Creative Dream Incubator e-course.  That one had me in this stage for a very long time.  So I am remembering how I was when I was in this stage with the Creative Dream Incubator.

And, since the first session of that course is finishing up now, I am receiving lots of emails from the participants.  With lots of them saying things like “I can’t even begin to tell you how powerful this whole process has been for me…I can see you put so much careful thought into every part of this and I feel I really benefited from that…”

So remembering how amazing the end result is, I am staying with the process no matter how frustrating it gets.

And really – some parts are starting to get clear already.  Some little path are being created.

I do believe next week’s update will be much more fun.

If you like this post, you may also like:

• Talking to a Creative Block
• [note to self] The bigger your dreams are, the more steady your foundation needs to be.
• Creative Depletion + Filling The Well
• I have (another) secret
• How to create an amazingly sparkletastic course