My work helps you:

• Make sure your work is compatible with your true nature; your life purpose, your unique strengths and your blind spots; your values and your loves; your pet peeves and your deepest wishes. Why? Because then you have a much higher chance of succeeding financially, and of liking your life.
• Get in touch with your deep guidance and source of strength. Why? Because you have a much easier time knowing what to do and much more confidence doing it
• Create a work environment that is genuine and respectful
• De-program past failures and beliefs that get in the way of succeeding now
• Translate your yearnings to “make a difference” into profitable business practices
• Bring quality and meaning to a hard-driving professional life

How to tell if you would benefit from working with me:

• The easiest way is to join me on my free teleseminars, where you can ask any question you’d like and/or listen to the recordings. Sign up in the top right corner and you will get all the information you need to access them.
• You can also read a free report from my “Dealing with fear” page, which gives you novel ideas and techniques you can use right away.
• Scroll down this page and read my posts. I welcome your comments by the way.
• Just ask me; feel free to send me an e-mail at the address shown at the bottom of this page

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• My love of animals
• The fact that we need to be who we are rather than try to mold ourselves into what we “should” be, and that’s for our own happiness and because we’ll be much more successful that way.

It’s not possible to put the video on my site but you’ll see it if you click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGODurRfVv4 .

You won’t regret taking the time! Actually you should do it especially if you feel overwhelmed right now.

You’ll take a breath, sink into yourself and reduce your overwhelm either by changing what you do or what you think.

Let me know what you think of it!

Don’t you resonate? I sure do; even though I’m really good at helping other people with their business, I’m in the same boat; I would love to “just do my coaching and not have to worry about selling and money.” That’s one of the things I loved about the Star Trek series way back when; they never had to worry about money! People did their work and went on with their lives .

This is a big issue for most of us and one that can’t be resolved in one article, post or conversation, but I’d like to make 5 suggestions:

• To very loosely paraphrase Buddhism, we can lessen our suffering through acceptance and detachment.

  Accepting that being in business in our society means having to sell and trade money.
  Accepting that everyone has money issues and that we will be on the receiving end of some of “their stuff” and detaching from the sting of what that feels like.

  Yes I know, easier said then done but when I remember to remember this, I’m able to take more action and feel less stress.

• One common mistake most of us make is that we are self-focused, and that’s the case even for giving practitioners or coaches who want to make a difference in the world.

  You see, we love our processes: they are fascinating, soul-enhancing, health-inducing. So we talk about them and hope to convey to others the power of our tools.

  Since other people aren’t interested in our tools, they tune us out especially if we use specialized lingo (which doesn’t sound specialized to us since we live it every day). I’m not only referring to health terms here, but also to coach-ese, new age-ese, or spiritual-ese.

  Instead, we should relate to them in their language, talking about their problems. Now that’s a conversation that would be interesting to them and to top it off, it naturally flows into how we can help. Doesn’t that feel better than a sales pitch?

• Remembering that people want a solution to their problems also allows you to feel more welcome and more confident. Doesn’t it feel better to think that you are reaching out to lessen people’s burden, than to think that you’re selling something to them?
• The dark side of being caring is forgetting that it is their decision whether to move forward with anything including our services. Now you might think that this sentence doesn’t apply to you but let me ask you; why do you take it so personally if they reject your offer? Yes I know, it’s darn frustrating when your work isn’t being valued and you need to eat and pay your bills.  Fact is, most people won’t be able or willing to hire us, which means we have to keep reaching out to many more people to find the ones who just happen to be ready to act.
• Reaching out with our message is one thing, quoting a price is another. Now that rattles our money and self-worth issues! I’m not an expert on that topic (well, I am an expert in the discomfort of it but not the solution ). I have come across a few people who do a very good job on this issue. One program that is coming up (and repeats every so often if you’re reading this post later on) is called “Transformational Fee Setting”. Isn’t that title intriguing?

  
  

  Intriguing enough that I’ve signed up; I can always use help in operating on a higher ground when it comes to money, as long as what they recommend is  practical in today’s world. I’d recommend you explore for yourself if this suits your needs by going to the transformational fee setting program page.

These were points made by best-selling author Sonia Miller in a recent teleseminar, the first of a 3-part free series called the “Ultimate Manifestation”. Now I’ve explained them in my own words and if you are interested in the Law of Attraction and why it doesn’t always work, I recommend that you sign up for the recordings (and the next two classes).

She gave a lot of other good information in the first class alone, such as:

• 3 ways to overcome confusion, overwhelm and inertia
• 3 ways to get Universal energy on your side

Again, here’s my link to her free series.

Now you can’t all be like Will nor should you be. It’s all about being yourself and finding your way within the laws of the universe.

Actually, it was! Let’s be realistic, sometimes life is difficult and we really feel beaten down, or we have people in our life who are going through a bad time and find it hard to believe in positive thinking, law of attraction, create your own reality, or everything-happens-just-as-it-should philosophies.

So we talked about what we can do when that happens. What works, what doesn’t.

Paula’s first suggestion was to start by noticing how you feel and what you are thinking. This is the starting point for a couple of reasons:

• When you feel down and out, it’s often too much of a leap to try to change how you think, but most of us are able to at least observe.
• Besides, when you want to change anything, the first step is always to establish your starting point. This is the big red X that says; “You are here” on the map.

The next step is to deepen your observation, to make it more specific. For example, you could ask yourself:

• What have I tried, exactly?
• What has been the connection between my circumstances and my thoughts?

I’ll give you an example to illustrate this last point. It’s rather trivial, but that keeps it simple. I was trying to open this supplement bottle, and it had a child-proof cap.

The first time I tried to open it, I persisted for less than a minute and then left it for later. When I came back to it, I was frustrated in advance, wondering why they make it so hard, thinking the cap was probably defective.  Actually, it seemed like it had this everyone-except-for-mechanics-or-engineers-proof cap! It would not budge despite me trying the usual moves.

Then I took a breath, told myself it didn’t make sense for them to make it this hard and that it had to be easy. I tried again, and it opened in one smooth move!

I expected it to be hard and it was. I expected it to be easy and it was. It reminded me that life often lives up to my expectations.

So when life is quite difficult, it might serve us well to observe whether we are bracing ourselves in advance for trouble…and get it on cue.

Paula went on to talk about the tool she uses when she, or one of her clients, temporarily lost hope: Byron Katie’s “The Work”.

And she suggested we do 4 things when we are faced with lost hope:

• Be compassionate
• Listen (or observe, if it’s about yourself)
• Don’t deny or lecture
• Love yourself even when you’re down

You might enjoy listening to the interview; you can find it here.

• Too self-absorbed and even self-indulgent
• Not a high priority, especially in difficult times
• A personal growth topic to be pursued at best in your spare time

And I can understand that point of view; I probably would have said something similar in the past. What changed my opinion is that I have personally paid a heavy price for not realizing earlier in my life what my purpose was (see my last post ). If I had known it, I would have been able to:

• Choose work (or a business) that was more consistent with my purpose. Now let me explain something; your life purpose is bigger than your career or your business. That makes sense when you think about it; don’t we all know that there’s more to life than your job? The trick though is to make sure that the work you do for so many hours a day expresses your purpose in some way. If your life purpose involves being a healer, you wouldn’t be very happy doing a technical job with few human interactions.
• Be more successful in my work, whatever it is. Going back to the healer example, let’s say that Jane studied engineering before she got to know her deeper self better, and now she doesn’t want to toss her training, experience and security out the window to start again in another field. She could still live her daily life more on purpose by:
  • Being the one who uplifts morale, negotiates differences of opinion, or increases the level of trust between various sub-groups
  • Choosing positions in her company that involve these kinds of activities; not only will she enjoy them, she is likely to excel at them.
  • Doing volunteer work that allows her to be a healing presence
  • Taking self-development courses that interest her in alternative healing, counseling, coaching, mediation, or wellness
  • Making time for listening deeply to friends and family members

• Be happier and less stressed. Doing work that contradicts your purpose is exhausting because your heart isn’t in it and you’re not playing with a full deck since your subconscious knows that you’re off course. You’re missing on that feeling of deep satisfaction, and constantly “making yourself” do things to earn money, rather than doing good work that expresses who you are. And you feel empty, tired, and disconnected.

This is even more important as an entrepreneur because you don’t have the same ability to leave the job behind when you go home, or console yourself that at least, you’re enjoying social interactions at work. Not only that, having strong positive energy is essential to sales success, and we know that being in business for yourself means selling what you have to offer.

There are a number of popular techniques designed to help you ground yourself which you’ve likely heard:

• Visualizing chords connecting the center of the earth with your spine and the bottom of your feet
• Just setting the intention of grounding yourself
• Walking barefoot on the ground
• Sitting against a tree
• Doing a walking meditation
• Walking in nature

Here’s a couple more that you might not have heard as often:

• Imagine spurs coming out of your heels, and visualize them grinding themselves in the soil while you take a sumo wrestler stance. (OK, you don’t have to exaggerate the posture that much, but it’s fun to visualize you doing it. The point is to get our gravity center lower to the ground.)
• Look around you and start counting how many kinds of shapes you can see. For example, the street light is one shape, a leaf is another, the tree trunk a third, the cloud a fourth, and so on. Doing this brings your mind back to the physical world while keeping it happy counting things.

Now when asking you to be more grounded, some people are really talking about wishing that your ideas were more practical. That’s not quite the same as what I’m talking about, though it is often an outcome of grounding yourself.

First, you have to bring your attention back to your body because that is the vehicle through which you experience the world. When your thoughts and your body work together, you have a much better chance of being an entrepreneur that makes good decisions, practical plans, and successful actions.

And if you don’t implement something it either means that you haven’t made it a priority or you don’t know how. That’s certainly been the case with me.

So why haven’t I always made it a priority?

• Sometimes it’s because I’ve overwhelmed with so many things on my plate, which is precisely the time when I would benefit the most from grounding myself.
• Sometimes it’s because my monkey mind just forgets how important being grounded is so maybe it would be useful for me (and you) to explore that one a bit.

Grounding, by definition, helps me get out of my head and into my body. It helps me land my ideals into physical reality. It gives me a better perspective on my priorities, on how to get things done. It’s a reality check on whether I really want something or whether it’s meant to remain in fantasy-land.

If I don’t ground myself, I’m much more likely to:

• Not accomplish things because I’m too much in theory, not enough in practical steps
• Deny reality
• Be vulnerable to others’ opinions because I’m not solid in my own
• Be overwhelmed as I’m not sure what’s a priority, and I don’t have a clear picture of what must be done to get to where I want to go
• Not know what I want
• Be indecisive

It’s a paradox; being grounded means paying more attention to my physical world, which sounds more superficial than my deeper thoughts. Yet if I’m not grounded, I’m much more likely to circle around “frothy thoughts” that are not solid enough to allow the creation of what I want (or think I want).

Hum…these are great reasons for an entrepreneur to remember to ground him or herself; practical, having a direct impact on business success, and well, grounded!

Most sensitives would tell you that it’s been difficult functioning in our mainly action-oriented, fast-paced and attention-seeking culture and business world. For example, sensitive persons would tend to:

• Find confrontations difficult since they feel their impact many more times than another person, and since business often involves negotiating, that places them at a disadvantage
• Take on a protective role as leaders which is a great quality unless the leader ends up sacrificing too much in the process. That happened when a manager allocated himself a 0% salary increase 5 years in a row because he felt his staff was underpaid and wanted to do what he could to remedy the injustice.
• Misread other people’s meanings since a sensitive spots small changes in facial expressions and voice intonations. The customer may not be as angry as you think…or angry at all!
• Undersell because they think they portray emotion or enthusiasm but the listener may not “get it” because the communication is too subtle for the average person.
• Be drained because their nervous system is on constant alert, and because they have to deal with not only their own emotions but also the ones they pick up from people around them.

As you can see, sensitive people need tools to handle these challenges and maximize the unique opportunities their nature provides.

And I mean something else besides being told to “get a thicker skin”, or “not care as much” or “get a less responsible job”.

Hum….as I said in my reply to a comment to September 3rd’s post, I feel a personal mission brewing and am considering creating something to support sensitive people in business. What do you think; do you see a need for it?