How the moon became my creative guide
Using lunar cycles to navigate big decisions and creative practice
I never considered living by the moon phases until I stumbled upon Human Design. For the uninitiated, Human Design is a meaning-making system that categorizes people into five energy types. I love to use self-discovery frameworks such as Human Design as a lens to examine my behaviors and expand what I believe is possible for myself.
In 2020, I plugged in my birth time and place to get my Human Design chart and discovered I was a Reflector. This rare energy type has no reliable energy center to rely on, so their strategy is to wait a lunar cycle before making any big decisions.
Yep, one whole lunar cycle. That’s pretty much an entire month. The other types are advised to trust their gut response, inform others before acting, or wait to be invited—all more commonly employed life strategies than monitoring how I feel while I sit on a decision for 29 days. At the time I shook my head at the impractical nature of this idea, ignoring how it was calling me towards patience and self-understanding.
Making a big decision
This time last summer, I spent every single day spiraling over whether I should quit my tech job. Even though I had “decided” this many times before, vowing to quit by a certain date and saving in a separate fund, I kept doubting if this was the right choice. It felt so wrong to give up a high paycheck and great benefits for the complete unknown.
Given that I had already spent many months waffling on this major decision, I decided to try the Reflector lunar cycle strategy for the first time. I wrote a log of things that were happening each day that were related to the decision, noting whenever I felt particularly activated or unsure after receiving an external opinion.
Here’s a redacted version of the log I kept below:
By the end of that month, I was much more clear on quitting as the choice I wanted to make. But what was most enlightening was how susceptible I was to outside input and how much that was causing me strife. Maybe there was something to this lunar cycle strategy, trusting the moon as a source of wisdom to ground my fluid thoughts.
Working with the moon
Much like my career, I notice these same doubting and overthinking patterns in my creative practice. I wonder which of my ideas I should be working on. When things inevitably get hard, I wonder if I should put the project aside. When I start to dread showing up for my practice, I wonder how to keep on going.
The more I learn1 about the moon (and make a moon zine which you can buy here!), the more I see how its phases can align with creative work and help people move towards clarity.
There's the dreamy phase of the new moon when we take note of our inspiration. There's the difficulty of first quarter, challenging us to find ways to move through obstacles and accept resistance as part of the process. We have the celebratory, high energy of the full moon to share our work, then the reflective state of the waning moon to complete the month.
After months of paying attention to the moon’s eight phases and aligning its cycles with my creative practice, I’ve condensed my learnings in my latest video. If you’re curious to learn more about the lunar cycle along with practical suggestions for aligned actions during each moon phase, please give it a watch!
I’m also sharing my lunar journal Notion template for free in case it helps any of you! This journaling system has been hugely helpful for me to see my own patterns and energy levels during each moon phase, some of which I’ve shared in my recap of my analog February experiment.
The template includes prompts for the four main moon phases as well as a Daily Log button that generates a simple journal entry with three questions about your energy and emotions. You can duplicate the page to your own Notion workspace to start using it right away, or use the prompts to journal in your own physical notebook. Try it out here!
🌜 Do you pay attention to the moon cycle? Have you ever noticed your mood or energy shifting with the moon? I'd love to hear your experience and if any of what I’ve shared resonates with or helps you!
This is an awesome rethinking of the process Carolyn. And the video was super well done.
I love how you're digging into your Reflector cycles with Notion!