The Journaling Muse – Issue #40 The Bottleneck and the Breakthrough
A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling.​
My intention is to help you slow down and soothe your nervous system — through colour, texture, and expressive journaling that speaks gently to your inner world.
Dear Reader,
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Imagine a glass bottle filled with light.
Life, ideas, and possibilities flow through it—
but only as fast as the narrowest point allows.
That narrow place is our bottleneck.
It’s where desire and fear meet in tension.
I’ve been feeling this lately—
living between two countries, my energy divided,
my creativity slowed by small logistical knots.
It’s not that inspiration leaves;
it just moves as freely as I make space for it.
Sometimes keeping the cap on feels protective.
The routines that once kept us safe
can quietly start to confine us.
Real change doesn’t come from pushing harder—
it comes from loosening the seal,
from offering awareness and permission
to what’s been held too tightly.
A bottleneck isn’t failure, it’s a doorway.
Journaling Prompts
- What part of my life feels most constrained right now?
- If I could free one area, what ripple effect might follow?
- What am I afraid might happen if I let go of control here?
- What belief keeps this bottleneck in place?
- Who would I be if this bottleneck were gone?
Write slowly. Let the tightness name itself; that’s how it begins to soften.
Creative Play
Try one of these light practices to invite flow:
- Opposite-Hand Drawing – sketch for ten minutes with your non-dominant hand.
Awkwardness is the medicine.
- Collage Improvisation – tear and rearrange images without logic; let story form itself.
- Releasing Gradient – paint colour shifting from pressure to openness.
Each mark widens the channel a little more.
Closing with Painting
This week’s painting is Wildflower Waltz —
where Prussian blue and orange dance across soft green fields,
touched with cream, peach, and white.
It feels like butterflies circling freely again,
a quiet celebration of movement returning after stillness.
I painted it thinking of our wild garden at the eco house —
the place where I first learned that colour can breathe too.
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The breakthrough always begins in the narrowest place.
Cheering on You,
​Beáta
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