Archive for Investing in Self
Exciting News!
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We’re testing a new, 9-question version of the BoldMoves Readiness Index. We’d love you to try it and let us know about your experience. On your score page, you’ll see a link for leaving your comments.
Here you go: BoldMoves Readiness Index And thanks again, in advance.
I could give a hundred reasons why the BoldMoves Readiness Index is important right now, but I’ll keep it to these few:
- There’s a mood of optimism that’s come with the new year.
- The longer we wait, the more it begins to melt away.
- Lots of people are sick and tired of feeling stuck.
- It’s hard to know how to get going again.
- Some are tempted to just take a leap of faith.
- Leaping without looking isn’t a great idea.
- A truly bold move doesn’t ask for a jump off a cliff.
- It asks that we listen in a new way.
- You may be ready!
Check it out: BoldMoves Readiness Index
How Fun!
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Well, today’s meeting was everything I hoped it would be! There’s a draft of the business plan coming back to me sometime before midnight, and great energy for moving forward to get it ready for presentation to others.
Allan and I will crunch numbers again soon to complete that piece. And to top it all off, we have a plan for testing our marketing funnel – something I’ll be sharing here in the next few days, so stay tuned.
I knew when I took on responsibility for getting the plan together that it would be a big job, but I certainly didn’t think it would take so long. Just a lot of ducks to row up – ducks roaming like cats!
We’re on our way, though. How fun!
Hanging in the Dangle
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I just love it when the universe conspires to provide exactly what I need regarding my daily schedule. For instance, after an exciting meeting with Allan yesterday, I am pumped to begin working on the next draft of the business plan. So many compelling opportunities await its completion. But my schedule for today was full and, alas, my next planned writing window was not until Sunday.
Then late yesterday a three hour meeting this afternoon was canceled because the organizer was feeling poorly. And this morning, a client called feeling unwell too, so another hour opened up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not reveling in the discomfort of my associates, just noticing that I all of a sudden have four extra hours today. A perfect block of writing time. Yeah, ease and effortlessness rule!
Bold Blubbering and More
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Yes, it’s true. I blubbered. I blubbered yesterday all over Skype. How humbling! The changes and other challenges in my world right now are touching in deeply to the little kid part of me who, it seems, is a blubberer on occasion––on Skype. Yipe!
How does this relate to writing a business plan? Well, today’s subject is Management and Organization which means I need to make our team members (me included) appear stellar, strong and credible. And I blubbered yesterday on Skype.
No worry. Because I also received some great support yesterday, from Allan, and from Tim, Liz and Paul who responded to my blog. Thanks so very much to all. You made my day!
So, moving boldly forward into the joy of writing about the amazing people who have worked together to bring the Bold Moves work this far over the past six years, Allan, Roger, Diane, and let’s not forget Janis and Paul. Oh, and of course, the blubberer – who did get a good draft of the Technology Plan completed yesterday!
Get Moving!
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It probably sounds like an oxymoron to say Get Moving this week when everyone is rushing around performing on all of the expectations that come with the season, so I want to explain. My “Get Moving” is an invitation to move deeper into yourself and simply ask the question, “If I could move any way I wanted to this week, what would I be doing?”
If your answer is something very different from what you are actually doing this week ask this question: “Why aren’t I following my heart?” Isn’t this season supposed to be about heart centeredness?
What do you think would happen if you did follow your heart – just for today? Or just for one hour? Isn’t it possible that you would embody the gifts of love and caring that we so venerate this season? I know it’s a radical idea, but hey, give yourself the gift of just checking it out. You have our full permission!
Celebrate, for real––even for just one hour––the true meaning of Christmas, regardless of your spiritual orientation. Open your heart and share the gift of the real open-hearted you!
Sweat Lodge Sovereignty
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The sweat lodge tragedy in Sedona, Arizona has rocked the news this past week. It can have potent meaning for us about how we make important choices in life.
The nightly news prompts us to choose a side. Do we identify with the victims of the tragedy whose plight we can all respond to with horror? The Native American community which seems deeply justified in its indignation over the appropriation of its traditions to the purpose of making money?
Can we see the viewpoint of Yavapai Country Sheriff Steve Waugh who seems to be doing his job in trying to determine what charges should be brought? The community of Sedona that understandably wishes to preserve its reputation as a safe haven for spiritual seekers? And can we empathize, even a little with the focal point of all of the debate James Arther Ray? Like other top, self-help gurus he can readily justify his huge fees by the fact that in our materialistic world the fundamental mantra is You Get What You Pay For. For moneyed folks looking for deeper meaning in their lives, that can easily translate to entry fees in the thousands of dollars. Anything less might simply not have them invested at a level that fosters real results.
Once again, we are spun about by the confusing perspectives presented to us by the images and voices of the external world. In this whirlwind lies perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this very controversial disaster. As a people, we all-to-often look to others to define our reality for us. Whether it is the teaching of a famous guru, the authority of a stalwart sheriff, the consensus of a community, headlines and sound bytes of media coverage, or the wisdom of indigenous peoples, we seek answers outside of ourselves––often to our detriment.
What to do? We can learn to listen to our own internal wisdom. Listen to our bodies when they say, I am too hot now and need to leave this sweat lodge. Listen carefully to our minds until we can readily distinguish between fear-based thinking and possibility-based thinking. Listen to our intuition when it asks us to draw healthy boundaries. Tap and utilize our internal creativity. We can learn who we truly are so that when various options are presented, we know how to choose wisely.
Then, we can have compassion for all of those victimized by the disasters of life because we have no need to project our internal frustrations onto others in the form of blame and shame. And we have the power and clarity to use our personal sovereignty like a laser for making wise choices even in a high-end sweat lodge experience where there might be a lot of pressure to conform.
Waking Women BoldMovers
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Okay, so our world has slowed down in recent months and it seems we’re all looking around hoping someone will get things moving again. We search the news and the net for any signs that it might be safe to get motivated and take new action, but remain unconvinced as our trusted indicators surge and then sag on a daily basis. So what to do?
Every challenge has its attendant lesson and the big take away from the current doldrums is that the energy needed to get things rolling isn’t out there somewhere. It lives within each and every one of us.
Imagine for a moment that each woman who belongs to any women’s group is a single cell in a body that has been lying on the couch watching the world slug along. Then imagine that just one cell in that body––one woman in that organization–– decides to turn her attention inward instead of outward. Suppose that one woman sees within herself, the heat of a desire cooling to just an ember from neglect, and that just because it is noticed once again, that desire receives enough energy to flare up into a genuine flame.
Imagine that the heat of that cellular flame is felt by the cells next door, signaling them to also look inside for what is waiting, wanting to manifest. It’s easy to imagine from there, that before long, that whole body would be warming to action, stretching into new possibilities, rising from the couch to create traction in a fresh and amazing dance.
Sisters, we are the traction we’ve been waiting for. The remedies for what ails us are our own courage, conviction and creativity. If we look inside and give ourselves a fraction of the belief we have so willingly given others, we’ll get this world going again, against all odds.
This article was adapted from one I write for ForbesWoman earlier this week.
Optimal You!
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Bold Moves Country is your unique, internal terrain, your inner world of imagination, intuition and individual insight. In Bold Moves Country, your key opportunity is to develop an Optimal Operating State––a sustained experience of being where your choices are exceptionally clear and your moves, both powerfully satisfying and accomplished in a mood of ease and grace.
Regardless of your primary challenge in the present moment––finding a job, increasing sales, losing weight, meeting the perfect mate, ending a bad relationship, etc––that challenge is most powerfully met by working from the inside-out and by exercising self-wisdom and self-honoring. For most of us, this requires developing new skills that are not taught in schools or business trainings. There are many such skills. Let’s look at three.
New Skill 1: Identifying who you truly are without all of the overlays provided by family, friends, school, work, and the many other external authorities you are exposed to everyday. Self-ignorance and self-denial are actually promoted by most educational institutions because their job since the start of the industrial age, has been to norm people into a standardized workforce. Don’t color outside the lines. Unique individuals need not apply. Drilling down through your normed version of self requires courage and commitment, but the reward of an Optimal Operating State makes it worth doing.
New Skill 2. Reconnect with your unique, creative spark. In today’s world, the value of a normed workforce is fading and the value of individual uniqueness is increasing rapidly. We are told that our greatest personal asset in the emerging paradigm will be our creativity! We’re hearing new messages. Start your own business, become your own brand! But many of us don’t know how because of societal preconditioning. That is why creative companies like Google have started providing their own creativity-based educational programs, but you don’t have to work for Google to develop the skill of reconnecting with your unique, creative spark.
New Skill 3: Accessing your authentic needs and desires. When asked what they want, most people will answer quite quickly with whatever fleeting desire has been most recently programmed into them by external influences such as media ads, peer pressure, family rules and scripts, etc. They want a million dollars, a new car, a new job, a new spouse, a new body. If you don’t really know who you are, and if you’re out of touch with your creative spark, it’s likely that you too, are relying on external voices to tell you what you need and want. After exploring Bold Moves Country for a time, your answers change to: a deeper sense of fulfillment, a greater ability to communicate, a more connected relationship, a job that has me excited to get going every morning.
We are in a potent time of cultural and economic transition that requires us to develop fresh opportunities and to do things differently. Never before have the innate drive for full, individual self-expression and the need for new societal solutions been more closely aligned. And, never before has it been easier to understand how an optimal world can only be created by individuals functioning in an Optimal Operating State.
TO BE OR TO DO – is that the question?
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We have seen the language for a couple of decades – suggesting we live life from a “being” state verses a “doing” state. Self-help gurus have challenged us to look at the quality of our lives not from the quantity of activity, the smile for being recognized for long hours at the job, or a work ethic that prohibits taking time for a vacation. Rather, the goal is to embrace living through the lens of adapting more presence in one’s day-to-day life. And, the question is – as we approach the tenth year of a new century – “how are we doing” or better yet “how are we ‘being’.”
We know that on an average day in the United States, adults are bombarded with thousands of external messages telling us what we should care about, the automobile best to look good in, the clothing to wear or the latest techno-gadget we simply have to have. And from many perspectives, those external marketing engines are winning.
What may come to a surprise to many is that our critter brains actually make us think that by buying the latest cell phone, loading our music on the newest mp3 player, or purchasing the new improved headsets will make us actually feel happier. Unfortunately, the research is proving that kind of thinking dead wrong. In fact, people are more apt to get more depressed (1) with managing all of the new tech toys and service / warranty agreements along with the management of batteries, adaptors, charger, etc.
So how do we enjoy the technologies of today, the warp-speed options that life offers and managing all the external messages coming at us through the fire hoses of marketing machines while improving the quality of our lives – assessing more ‘being’ into our lives?
Working with top performers for over a decade who have struggled with this issue, the following four steps offer a starting place leading to more ease and presence; healthier lives and relationships resulting in enhanced quality of our lives with more “be” and less “do.”
Step One: Adapt a Daily Practice – Start the day with a couple of minutes unplugging from any noise (externally and internally!) before the day gets moving and check in with the quality of your mood. Ask yourself “how do I want to lead this day? What is the one Desired Outcome that would have me energized and satisfied at the end of the day?”
Step Two: Allow for Mood Management Check-Ins during the day. Pause to ask, “How is the quality of my productivity?” Am I operating with a clear head, do I need a break, and am I in optimal state to provide my best work and thinking?
Step Three: Take Body Breaks during the day. – As humans, we were not designed to be operating at the speed many of us live life by. Get out of the office and take a walk, exercise, or find a place where you can unplug for a couple of minutes and re-energize and refocus.
Step Four: Have a plan for the evening set at the beginning of the day. No matter if it is dinner at home with the family, meeting a friend, or going out for dinner – by having a sense of what you are doing at the end of the day – allows you to manage your energy deliberately so that you can show up for the evening event energized and excited verses arriving with your reserve fuel light on red.
Ultimately, it comes down to each of us taking ownership of managing our day – controlling our energy and ensuring our pace for the day is set appropriately so we are engaged, productive and purposeful in all that we are involved in – our relationships, our families, our health, our work and our planet will be better of for it.
(1) – Dr. Martin Seligman, www.AuthenticHappiness.org
Your Best Investment Now!
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What might happen if we took the time to appreciate the beauty of nature on a regular basis? Might we be investing time and resources differently? Might we feel we're getting a better return?
An illusion has overtaken us, the illusion that because the money belt has been tightened, we have no resources to invest in creating a better future!
How silly! Here we are, populating the most abundant civilization ever, and all we can think about is what we don’t have: that once flush IRA, that fat-cat portfolio, the ready means to afford upkeep on that second or third home, that steady job (that was driving most of us crazy). Why is that? Why is it so easy for us to focus on what isn’t working? Even when it wasn’t really ever working to our satisfaction?
We have come to equate happiness with affluence, which we narrowly define as having robust financial means. We have completely forgotten the true definitions of the word affluence, which are flow, movement. We make affluence mean the flow of only one thing, money. But it is also the flow of ideas, the movement of people, and of human resources like intelligence and meaningful, passion-based work. Why have we forgotten this? Because for decades, prompted by perfectly produced pop culture, we have been looking to financial affluence to sate us and solve all of our problems. And in the end, the flow of money simply doesn’t run deep enough or wide enough to water our roots of authentic satisfaction.
Now, for the first time in decades, we are beginning to mine resources that have been buried deep in our psyches, resources that have proven, time and again over the ages to be the most potent agents for creating true human satisfaction. With the loss of jobs, many of us have the resource of time on our hands. How are we investing that time? With a reduction in buying power, we are remembering the resource of individual creativity. Where are we investing that creativity? Practicing the art of cooking our own food? Designing our own clothes? With fewer diversions at our fingertips, we have the resource of attention to invest. Where are we investing that attention?
Maybe, the most powerful place to invest resources now is in learning about our true selves, reclaiming our individual creative genius so that we can innovate satisfaction in our world from the inside-out. What if we dared to focus time and attention to reclaim that bright individual spark of uniqueness that lives in each of us? What if we nurtured it as our most precious resource? What if we dared to flow into who we really are and share that affluence with the world?
