LET’S CELEBRATE THE BIRTH OF TRUE LOVE!
Today is my daughter Valerie’s 12th birthday, which got me thinking about birthdays in general. And then it occurred to me… Your Burning Desire came to life about one year ago, now. Which means I should probably find a way to celebrate YBD’s birthday, too. And oh, what a year of True Love it’s been, this first year of life! So many changes, so many stages of growth.
YBD just keeps unfolding, day after day, as though it contains a life of its own, independent of me. I may be the creator of YBD… but I’m not its creator with a capital C, if you catch my drift. Rather than lose you in a sea of abstract spiritual musings, though, I want to make the point that True Love has a way of working its magic, mystery, and miracles in the direction of positive growth, just as long as a person’s goal is rooted in love.
One year ago, I had the idea to start a life coaching practice focused around the pursuit of helping people get what they want — to put them on a path to fulfilling whatever their “burning desire” might be. To that end, I wrote a book called The 36 Ways to Your Burning Desire: A Manual for Getting What You Want. I’d used a bunch of its wisdom and practice exercises with my therapy clients over the years, often to great success.
But I still had no idea how I’d get the word out about what I had to offer. The only idea I could think of, to get myself out in the community talking about my coaching offerings, was to set up a tent at the Mishawaka Market the following summer to tell people about it. But on second thought, who the heck would want to stop by a booth that only had one puny little book to sell? (Even if that book did have the power to change their lives! I mean, try writing that on a sandwich board, trying to catch the attention of somebody who’s shopping for cucumbers at theh Market.)
That’s where my idea for the postcards came in. I’d been making colorful collages for years, and it was the only art medium I had any confidence in. But I realized I could use collage to create a simple but fun visual representation of each chapter of The 36 Ways to Your Burning Desire. Then I could hand them out in postcard form: the perfect memorable little marketing material.
But once I started making the postcards, I was a goner.
Every time I sat down with my photo backgrounds, my ‘80s models, my chunky black text blocks, my hand-painted red hearts, and a big jar of Mod Podge to glue it all together, I felt like a child set free for an hour of glorious recess. And play soon became passion!
So the postcards ended up taking on a life of their own. They weren’t just a means of crystallizing the information in the coaching manual — they were becoming an end in themselves. You might even say the postcards are the coaching program, at this point.
Wow, how did I end up writing the Your Burning Desire origin story, here? I think that’s enough for one day.
To be continued… as always. ❤️🔥—Y.B.D.
