Yesterday, I ran my first writing circle in Chicago and it was beautiful.
It always amazes me how simply creating spaces where people connect and talk freely about their dreams can be so impactful.
In this writing circle, I offered a practice I regularly do myself – dream visualization.
I started this practice in 2016, after leaving my corporate career behind. At the time, I knew I wanted to travel and tell stories about the world, but I also felt lost, not sure what step to take next.
So that's when I wrote down a simple list: ten things I wanted to become by the end of the year.
One of those ten was to become a Lonely Planet contributor.
Shortly after I wrote the list, I saw a call for submissions from Lonely Planet for their annual travel anthology.
Without expecting much, I submitted my nonfiction story, The Night Is Young.
Legendary travel editor Don George replied to my submission with an email that opened with this line: "Dear Yulia, congratulations!"
It got picked up.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Lonely Planet travel anthology I contributed to in 2016, followed by one of my first Lonely Planet articles in 2017.
Ever since that exercise in 2016, I became a believer in the power of writing your dreams, and I've been practicing it now for a decade.
Many of my dreams have come to life, many times over!
Here's the neuroscience behind why it works:
A vast amount of signals and information enter our brains every second. Most of those signals throughout each day get discarded in an automated, subconscious process we don't even notice.
Yet, when we get specific about what we want, it is as if we're sending a directive to our consciousness that says: "Hey, pay attention to this. Don't discard it. This is important."
The brain gets the directive and starts filtering in – aka bringing to the surface – messages, signals, and data that are relevant to what we've outlined on paper.
Soon enough, events, people, and things start lining up in our lives seemingly out of nowhere. But it's not out of nowhere – it's out of the dreams we've visualized.
Try this yourself this week and watch the power of visualization in action.
And if working with travel publications and tourism boards is on your list this year, consider this your sign:
I'm opening spots in my individual mentorship program this summer.
If your creative dreams include getting published at a particular publication, developing a body of work, writing and sending out your first pitch, or finally putting that book proposal out in the world, I can help you fulfill these dreams.
During this 12-week mentorship, we'll work together 1:1 to accomplish your goals. We will meet once every four weeks on Zoom and communicate via WhatsApp and email.
Mentorship dates are Monday, July 13, through Friday, Oct 2.
The last day to join us is Friday, July 10.
To understand how this structure can help you, book a 15-minute call with me here.
xx Yulia
🏠 Inside Going Places
Crowdsourcing hope
For our podcast season finale last week, 18 guests and 5 of our community members answered this one question: What gives you hope? This crowdsourced episode turned out to be a meditation not only on hope but also on what it means to be human.
Special thanks to our community members Carrie, Siham, Alice, Maxim, and Ami who sent in their answers!
Check it out here.
Yulia Denisyuk
🚀 Paid Members Corner
This week's creator opportunities
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🚀 Seeking a writer for a Huda Beauty interview – contact by Thu, Jun 18
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🚀 Win $3,000 writing about Minnesota's parks – apply by Monday, Jul 6
🚀 Sail Away Magazine is seeking contributors – no deadline
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Member news
Updates from our paid member community
Our member Mark Eden has published a new coffee-table travel book, Global Village.
Congratulations Mark!
This collection of stories and photo series from around the world explores the diversity and similarities among people and why they both matter.
In an excerpt, Mark explains:
"A Cuban farmer continues his family tradition by tilling his small patch of earth for a subsistence living after decades of the same back-breaking work.
Similarly, a 9th-generation Japanese indigo dyer walks stooped across the packed dirt floor of his family’s 200-year-old workshop.
A market stall holder in Hội An barters the price of fish and wishes for an easier life for her family, as does a young girl in Mumbai, studying hard and dreaming big.
Across the world in Seattle, individuals strive for connection in a big city.
Wherever we come from and wherever we’re going to, we all have hopes and dreams and needs. Global Village is about how those needs make us more similar than we think."
🌍 In The World
The World Cup fever is here ⚽
I'm not a diehard sports fan, and I rarely watch live events (unless it's figure skating; my grandmother and I gather around the TV to watch it together, as we have done ever since I was little).
But every four years, when the big game comes back, I bask in the collective fever that overtakes much of the world, and I track the countries, the matches, the dramatic upsets, and the stories of individual athletes like a real Culer (iykyk).
For a few weeks this summer, I will once again join in the utopian vision of what the World Cup represents – a global celebration bringing the world together – even though I know too well that this is but a dream.
So if you, like me, become a fútbol fan once every four years, you'll appreciate this thoughtful guide that my friend Ghazala Irshad – a fellow journalist and the writer of The Brown Line – has put together to kick this World Cup off.
While The Brown Line is focused on Chicago, the commentary it provides is relevant elsewhere. This guide not only lists the games happening this week, but also explains the meanings behind the pairings, such as the France vs. Senegal match tomorrow. "This match," Ghazala writes, "is the one to circle—empire and colony, bound by a shared language, and the rematch of Senegal’s stunning 2002 upset."
Some more of Ghazala's beautiful words:
"The Brown Line curates the gatherings where the game carries real meaning for diaspora communities often carrying grief from their homelands while being treated as a threat in their new home of the U.S.
These are the immigrant-owned restaurants and bars, pickup crews, grassroots groups, art spaces, and community halls where soccer is bigger than FIFA—where it’s as much an extension of who you are as the language, music, family rituals, and food you were raised on.
So this week, see for yourself how football really unites our world—not through a government playbook of sportswashing, but through the people who play the game, argue over it, and still scoot over to save you a seat, because there’s always room for one more on our team."
Radostina Boseva is our Founding Member
Radostina Boseva is a film wedding photographer with an editorial flair based in San Francisco.
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