I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the wise and wonderful Hiro Boga for my Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit that is going on now. You can catch Hiro on Friday, March 2nd as she talks with us about Spirituality in Business and how to bring all of you into your work. (Spoiler alert: I had to break out the tissues because I was so moved by what she shared!)

In my discussion with Hiro and my experience of her presence, I was reminded how important it is to come from a place of wholeness and integration in life and in business.

I’m guessing as a creative and spiritual entrepreneur, you may lean more to your right-brain tendencies – emotion, creativity, visuals, color, meaning, and intuition. You may not feel as comfortable with the more “left-brain” details like structure, data, logic, analysis, and numbers.

And yet to be a successful entrepreneur and to live a full, rich life, we aim for wholeness. It’s helpful to have both sides of our brain get along together and to know how to seamless integrate the two.

Below is a right-brain / left-brain assessment that can help you determine your natural tendencies in your business and where you might want to put some additional focus.

Rate each of the following statements on a scale of 1-5. Five means you completely agree and one means you completely disagree.

Left-Brain mind and matter meter:

· I have a plan of action.
· I know my numbers.
· I have information and data to help me track my progress.
· I’ve asked myself the tough questions.
· I’m taking action in the real work, not just living in my imagination.

Right-Brain heart and soul meter:

· I find meaning in my work.
· I’m emotionally connected to my work and I’m excited about what I do.
· My business is aligned with my values.
· My business allows me to express my creative vision.
· I’m connecting with other people in a meaningful way.

Once you finish rating the statements do some reflection. Are you surprised by your responses? Where might you choose to put your attention now?

Check in with yourself and see which of the lower scoring statements intuitively calls to you. Maybe it’s an area you’ve continually struggled with. Or perhaps it’s a place you want to dig deeper. Ask yourself, what would a 5 look like? Imagine what it would feel like to completely and utterly agree with the statement. How would your business be different? How would you be showing up differently in your business (and life)? What would need to happen to move from your current rating to a 5 or even just one score higher than you are now? Is there someone you can ask for support or guidance? Identify one small step you can take today to move the needle up.

If you’re not where you want to be yet, please show yourself plenty of compassion. Being a creative entrepreneur is very much a personal growth journey and every twist and turn along your path is full of valuable learning.

Next see which of the higher scoring statements intuitively calls to you. What does it feel like to be in agreement with that statement? What does it say about you and the work you’ve been doing? My guess is that there’s probably something – whether big or small – to celebrate here, so make sure to acknowledge your gifts and progress. Give yourself a big pat on the back! And ask yourself what can you continue doing and how can you build on those strengths?

Now, if you were to invite in even more abundance, imagine what would be possible if you agreed with that statement at a 10? What would be different for you and your business? Allow yourself to really dream big here and see what that opens up for you. Identify one small step you can take today to move toward that vision.

I invite you to check in with these left and right brain assessments periodically to see where you want to focus your time and energy to be most effective and fulfilled in your creative and spiritual business. And feel free to add your own statements that work for you on your entrepreneurial journey.

For a colorful and fun illustrated version of these assessments, you can download free play sheets from my book The Right-Brain Business Plan. And please come to our virtual meeting of the minds (both left and right sides) at the Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit.

Jennifer Lee is the founder of Artizen Coaching and the award-winning author of The Right-Brain Business Plan. Her bestselling book has helped thousands of entrepreneurs around the world grow their businesses authentically and creatively. Join her live for free at her 2nd annual Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit now through March 9th. You can find her on Twitter at @artizencoaching.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Beyond the Garden Gate: The Deva of Willingness
• All you need is love – and a letter
• Pulse: Rhythm, timing, sequence

Each of us is born with the knowledge that all possibilities-all the stories that ever were and ever will be-are already within us.

When we first arrive in this world, we know who we are. We know what we can create. We know our future is fluid, malleable-we know we can shape it by the stories we choose to tell ourselves, by the stories we choose to live.

And then, we lose that inner knowing. What we know gets clouded over by what we’re told is possible. By stories about lack and limitation. By Someday, and Maybe, and If and When.

We lose the knowledge that all things are possible, within the boundaries we have chosen for our incarnation.

Not all futures are probable. Some have more energy or juice behind them than others. Those stories that are most resonant with our gifts and talents, with our heart’s desires and our life’s ecology, are the ones we are more likely create. Those that cut across the grain of our innermost selves-our souls, our values, what we truly love-are less likely to happen.

We create our future by aligning our stories with our soul’s purposes-which are always about qualities we are here to express-and with our natural gifts and talents, passion and delight.

The story of your business lives in the land where your joy and your love encounter the world’s need. The spirit of service and the Deva of Prosperity are both essential allies who help to shape the ecology of your business and your life.

Is the story of your business in the first half of this year one that you want to be living? Are you happy with it? Do you feel loved and supported by your business? Do you love and cherish it too?

A couple of months ago, I realized that my business and I were living in a home that had grown too small for us in every way. It was the setting for a story that had lost its juice, its flavor. The new story of my business needed a new setting.

Here’s how I went about writing my new story.

Every creation has a spiritual counterpart, which holds the pattern for its perfect unfolding. I call these pattern-holders Devas, a Sanskrit word that means “Shining Ones.”

I began by attuning to the soul of my business.

The Deva of my business is an old friend. We have a long history together. Our relationship has been a constant, evolving conversation over the past thirty-five years. So there’s love and trust between us, and when it talks to me about what my business needs, I listen, knowing that it has my well-being at heart.

My business’s Deva said, “It’s time to move. You need a home that both you and your business can grow into. You need space to create, to dream, to do your work, to hold retreats and intensives.”

I didn’t say Yes right away. For an hour or so, I sputtered and stammered-somewhat half-heartedly, knowing all along that I would say Yes in the end.

“Yes, but…” But, I just moved. I hate moving. Maybe this could wait awhile?

And, then, knowing the truth in my heart, I said, “Yes. Yes!”

In that moment, when I said yes to the new story of my business, the future embodied in that story came forward to meet me.

I emailed a friend, and told her what I needed. She emailed right back, saying she knew the perfect place. A large, beautiful house overlooking the ocean. Her sister-in-law owned the house.

That afternoon, I drove over to see the house and to meet its owner, my friend’s sister-in-law. The moment I walked through the front door, my heart lifted, took wing through the floor-to-ceiling windows, out to the sea, the sky, the wide horizon. I knew that I was home.

Although we’d never met before, my friend’s sister-in-law and I drank tea and talked for over an hour, as comfortable together as though we’d known each other all our lives. We talked about her work and mine; about our families, our lives, our vision of love and service in the world.

I signed the paperwork. And moved, a month later, into the lovely home in which I now live.

The story of my business has changed significantly in the past couple of months, because this house is the right setting for its new, unfolding story.

Finding this house and moving into it happened effortlessly, miraculously, through the power of synchronicity. Not because I envisioned the exact house that I needed, and not because I repeated endless affirmations, or created vision boards, or had perfect, unwavering faith in my vision.

All of these things help, but only if they emerge from your wholeness. Only if they are held in an inner truth that embraces all of you, including your doubts and fears.

Being human, doubts and fears, fluctuations in energy level and enthusiasm, are part of our DNA.

This particular shift into a new story happened effortlessly for a number of reasons:

1. My lifelong daily practice of presence and inner connection lets me know that I’m safe, even in the face of uncertainty-even when I don’t know what’s coming next. It gives me the courage to recognize that my old story no longer fits me.

It gives me the support to dissolve the form of my old story, while keeping its essence.

So, I can take the essence of my old story — those qualities that are at the heart of all being — with me into my new home. And I can call in a new story, with a different ecology, a different landscape, with qualities that include greater flow and ease, gratitude and trust, service and prosperity.

2. I’ve developed a relationship of deep love and trust with the Deva of my business. So I asked for its help, and listened to what it had to say.

The Deva of your business holds, in its energy field, the entire ecology of your business. It holds all the stories, all the potentials into which your business can grow, and it knows the perfect timing for each story’s unfolding.

If you ask, it will help you. But you have to ask.

3. Then, I acted on my intuition, which is one of the ways the Deva of my business communicates with me. I emailed the one friend who could connect me with the house that is the setting for the new story of my business, told her what I needed, and asked for her help.

Devas are powerful beings, but they cannot act directly in the physical world without our help. My business’s Deva could not write that email for me-it relied on me to do the physical work to grow the story of my business.

4. I’ve learned, over many years of partnering with the creative flow of the universe, that if I trust it and surrender to its wisdom, it will carry me and my business into our new story. So, even though moving into this house was a stretch for me in many ways, I was willing to step into the unknown. To live the unfolding story without knowing where it will take me.

Trust, faith, surrender are qualities that are essential for shaping a new story. A new story requires your love and willingness, in order for it to enter your life.

So, as you think about the story that your business is living right now, and the story you want to shape for your business for the rest of this year, take a moment to consider this question.

When you think about your business’s future, is it something mysterious and unpredictable that lurks in the dark out ahead of you? When you approach it do you feel a kind of wary alertness–you don’t know if it’s going to ambush you or carry you to a glorious but somewhat hazy destiny?

Or do you meet it armed with shopping lists and plans and intentions? Do you sit down in a strategy meeting with yourself or with your business adviser and come up with goals for the year?

So, by the end of 2011, you say, I want my business to grow by 50% with an annual income of a million dollars and I’m going to see 5,000 clients this year and teach 98 classes and sell 25 million widgets and hang out on social media for 19 minutes a day…

Or do you meet your business’s future in some other way entirely?

It’s not that any of these ways of relating to your future is in itself good or bad — there is no right or wrong way to meet your future.

Your relationship with your future is just that – it’s a relationship. We are incarnate souls. We carry our own future within us.

As we move towards our future, our future moves to meets us too, because it’s already within us in the form of possibilities and potentials.

What you love, loves you. What you want, wants you. The soul of your business is invested in you, and in the success of your business. It has its own reason for being, its own allies, its own ecology, all of which form its unfolding story.

Similarly, your own soul is invested in the success of your incarnation. It too has its allies, and the soul of your business is one of them.

As an incarnate soul, you exist along a vast continuum. At one end of this continuum you are your own particular self, everything that makes you you, as unique as your own fingerprint. And at the other end of the continuum of your being, you are pure spirit. You are one with everything that exists. And you have your being both in this concrete, material, physical world, and in many, many, many other dimensions as well.

Each dimension has its own natural laws. So here in our physical world, you are supported and challenged by gravity, by time, by space. Your body can’t be in two places at once. Time, in our world, is linear. The past is followed by the present, and the present leads inexorably to the future.

But on the other end of the continuum, there’s no such thing as linear time. So what we think of as the past, the present and the future, have a much more complex relationship with each other. In one sense, they’re all happening simultaneously.

I’m sitting here in my living room, looking out at the ocean, which is composed of drops of water that form waves, and waves that form currents, and currents that form the ocean, and yet they are all part of one continuum. You can’t separate the drops of water from the ocean.

It’s the same with each of us. At this universal end of the continuum, you are one with everything, which means you contain everything within you. All the possible futures are already potentially within you.

This means that your future is not out there somewhere, it’s not shaped by someone else, or at the mercy of the marketplace, or of the economy, although each of these factors play a part in the ecology of your business. Your future is happening right now. You are already living alternate versions of your future, in other dimensions of your being.

So if you have a secret jazz singer inside you, chances are there’s a dimension of your soul that is living out its life as a jazz singer. There’s a you that is or is not a parent. There’s a you that’s written books on physics or math or history or astronomy. There’s a you that’s principal dancer in a ballet company, or the head of a mining operation in the Arctic, or an adventurer out in Swaziland. You contain all of these futures within yourself, within the vast potential of your being.

Your relationship with your future is not one of two strangers meeting at some point in the distance. Instead, it’s a relationship of love and intimate recognition. Because when you meet your future, you meet an aspect of yourself.

Now, although all future stories exist as potentialities, it doesn’t mean that all of them are equally likely to happen. Your own personality, your own tastes, your own free will, your skills, your preferences, the gifts and talents and resources you have, will determine which of those future stories you’re most likely to experience.

If you’ve never played a musical instrument before, you’re probably not going to pick up the cello and play like Pablo Casals. But if your soul wants you to have the experience of playing the cello divinely, it’ll bring cello music to your attention in all kinds of different ways. People will give you cello sonatas on CD, you’ll be driving in your car and you’ll hear Andres Segovia on the car radio and you’ll fall in love. You might find yourself buying a car with a trunk big enough to hold a large instrument and have no idea why you’re doing it. These are ways that your soul brings new stories to your attention.

When you pay attention to the stories your soul gathers for you-when you act on these intuitions, and these subtle flutters of recognition, you coax your stories out of the realm of potentiality and invite them to come and play with you in your world.

Your soul has its own essence. It has its own particular and unique vibration, which is unlike any other in the world. It holds within it, all the potentials of your being, all the stories that exist, or ever have exist, or ever will exist. By cultivating presence, you experience your soul’s vibration in your body-you fill yourself and your world with the qualities of your soul.

These are universal qualities, which form the essence in all things. They are qualities of love and joy, enthusiasm and creativity, emotional depth, resonance…

You know when you are present, and experiencing your soul’s vibration, because you will feel these qualities strongly. You’ll feel a heightened sense of awareness, of power and love, generosity and kindness.

Similarly, you know when you are disconnected from your soul because you’ll experience a sense of contraction and isolation. Your body, your mind, your breath, your emotions, will all feel narrow and constricted. You’ll feel isolated, unsupported, unloved.

And the interesting thing is that it takes just a little turn, a small switching of frequencies, to switch from one state to the other-to move out of these contracted states and back into connection with your soul.

So as you consider the story you want to create for your future, and for the future of your business, it’s useful to recognize that the future is not a far-away, mysterious land of fairy tales and myths.

The story of your future is not out there. It’s already within you. You already know how to create the future of your business, even if you don’t know exactly what the story will be, or how it will turn out.

When you cultivate presence, when you cultivate your relationship with your soul and pay attention to your soul’s promptings, you consciously shape the story you are living. You shape your future.

Your soul flows right across the continuum of your being. It is the rainbow bridge between you and your future.

Come play with me and a posse of creative story-makers to shape a new story for your business. Join us for Dreaming in the Dark, June 13 and 20th, noon to 1:30 pm Pacific Time. Early registration discount available until June 1st.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Making things happen: The power of alignment
• The Deva of Safety
• Beyond the Garden Gate: The Deva of Willingness

She knows her work is valuable. She knows her business makes a tremendous contribution to her clients and customers. She knows this slump is temporary.

And yet, she’s frustrated, and scared.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

As I tune into her energy field, I see the inner stories that are swirling around and through her right now.

Stories of Not-Enough. Stories of Do-This! and Don’t-Do-That! Or Else!

Stories that she is alone. That she can rely on no-one but herself. Not Enough collides head-on with Have To and Must and Should.

I’ve been there. Chances are, so have you.

When business is flowing like a sparkling stream of champagne, and the mouths of the Not Enoughs are so full of scrumptiousness-Cake! Chocolate! Chocolate cake!-that they can’t wail out their warnings of doom, we forget that they’re there.

We forget that they believe their stories. Those stories they hunch over like a sack of stones slung across their painfully bent backs.

Stories of lack and not-enoughness hurt your heart. They swirl a smoke-screen of fear around you, so you can’t see the light of your soul.

And the world sees your fear. It sees your heartache and self-doubt. It feels your urgency, and responds by staying away from you, from your business.

You may think you’re hiding these things, but you cannot hide the truth of your being.

It shows up in your life. It shows up in your business.

So, what do you do?

My client–who is brilliant, and radiantly creative–was temporarily hijacked by her Not-Enoughs and Have-To’s. They wailed in frustration.

“I’m doing everything right,” they/she said. “I’m taking care of myself. I finally recognize that taking care of my body comes first. When I do that, my business thrives. Except-it’s not working!”

Of course it’s not working.

Her Not-Enough is afraid that her needs won’t be met. And that fear overrides her love for her body. So her relationship with her body changes from one of love, unity and tenderness to something colder, more transactional.

Not: “I take care of you because I love you. Because I want you to flourish and be your best and happiest self.”

But, rather: “I’ll take care of you so that my business will flourish. I’ll take care of you so that this slump will end. Sales will go up again.”

It’s a bit like being in bed with your beloved, who turns to you with love, passion and delight, and breathes into your ear: “I love you. Let’s make love.”

And you say, with a worried frown: “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’ll help relieve my stress.”

It may indeed relieve your stress; but it will almost certainly cause problems in your relationship.

Your relationship with your body and with your inner being is the foundation for all your relationships.

When your relationship with your body is transactional-I’ll give you this so you can get me that-then your relationships with your clients and customers will be transactional too.

Not: “I offer this, knowing it will benefit you and bring you into greater wholeness and coherency within yourself. And–because Wholeness benefits everyone–by serving you with integrity and love, I will also serve myself and my business. The same Wholeness that brings you benefit and blessing will also bring me what I need.”

But: “I offer this because I’m scared that my needs won’t be met. I need you to buy this because if you don’t, I’ll be homeless, or at least, I won’t have enough chocolate cake.”

The difference may appear to be subtle.

But when you place the source of your sustenance out there, you hand over your power, and responsibility for your survival, to someone else. Then, you have to manipulate and control them to get them to give you the sustenance you need.

It makes for poor relationships. And it’s not good for business.

Traditional marketing advice invariably goes something like this:

1. Address people’s pain. Where are they hurting?
2. Talk about the benefits. How will your products and services help them?

But if you’re addressing your clients’ and customers’ pain because you’re afraid you won’t survive if they don’t buy from you, then the message that goes out over the subtle energy airwaves is one of lack and manipulation.

It will draw to you clients and customers who believe in Not Enough, and are manipulated by their fears. You’ll perpetuate the pain you’re in, by extending it out into the world of your business.

If you want to change the pattern, create a new story.

1. Begin by acknowledging-with tenderness and compassion-the story you’ve been living.
2. Feel the pain it causes you; forgive yourself; release the story.
3. Attune to the qualities you want to bring into your life and your world.
4. Shape your new story, with these qualities at its heart.

If you’d like to go through this process in community with others, and with the structured support of a teleclass, please join us for Dreaming in the Dark.

We’ll spend two 90-minute sessions together, June 13th and 20th, exploring the story you’ve been living during the first half of 2011. And you’ll shape your new story for the second half of the year.

You’ll meet the characters who live in the stories of your past, and develop loving relationships with the inner selves and allies who create and inhabit your future.

Many of you want to work with me privately, and can’t afford to do so.

My intention, with this class, is to offer an affordable way of getting skilled support to release the stories that no longer serve you. And to consciously create the stories you want to live and contribute to your world now.

Which stories are you summoning to you now? Which ones do you want to release? What stands in your way?

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story
• How do you serve?
• Barefoot Business

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• How To Rule Your World From The Inside Out
• Rule Your World Giveaway, Week 4
• 4th Chakra: The dance of sovereignty and love

Now, a mild blue sky swims through the bare branches of the oak tree outside my window. Sunlight flickers on the mountain’s ridge, undulating gold over deep gray shadows.

Earth, in her wisdom, is beginning her descent. Down the vertical labyrinth, into the dark belly of winter.

The year that was has brought its gifts and is now departing. Fall’s orgy of ecstatic leaves drifts over summer’s exuberant offering, spring’s shy hopefulness.

My business and I are both transformed by the events of this year. So are you and your business. Did you shape this transformation consciously?

You can choose who you are becoming, who your business is becoming. You can partner with the soul of your business to create its life in the new year.

Deep in the belly of the earth, the stars of tomorrow are seeded; they grow quietly, steadily in their underground bed. Later, they will begin the long journey up the vertical labyrinth, to their summer home in the sky.

You and I, your business and mine, make this journey too. Separating from the year that was. Seeding the year to be. Dreaming in the dark, where the new year is born.

Please join me for a two-session class–Dreaming in the Dark–to traverse this passage through the vertical labyrinth.

We’ll celebrate the year that was. You’ll meet the characters who have shaped your story in 2010. You’ll receive fully the essence of the gifts they’ve brought you. And we’ll invoke the qualities of separation and completion, for your life and your business.

Together, we’ll complete the cycle of the year, the descent into the heart of the earth.

Then, we’ll seed the new story of your life and your business for the new year. You’ll meet the stars of your future-those characters and events that you’ll plant in the belly of the earth. And you’ll trace their passage through the vertical labyrinth. You’ll write the new story of your business for 2011.

Who does your soul want you want to be, by this time next year? Who does the soul of your business want to be? Together, you can co-create the future of your business.

Details and sign up for the class are here.

I’d love to hear what cycles you’re completing, as the year comes to a close. What challenges do you face, in finishing those cycles? I’d also love to hear what you and your business are dreaming about, for the new year.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• This business of chakras…
• Growing the House of Your Business
• Chasing The Next Shiny Thing

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

–Leonard Cohen, Anthem

It’s a chilly October morning. Outside my window, the mountain’s powerful face is veiled in soft, shifting clouds. A single arc of ridge undulates into view when the clouds part. The ridge disappears again as mists drift over a trackless sky.

That’s a lot of what this summer and early fall have been like, for me.

Something new is being born. I catch glimpses of it-in my dreams, out of the corner of my eye as it wings past, waving, offering the curve of a cheek, the delicate angle of wrist bones, before it vanishes into its cloud-wreathed home.

The gentle swell of expectancy it leaves behind after these visitations nurtures my tentative faith into something more robust. Faith that this Something is being teased into shape in the inner realms. Even though I don’t yet know what It is, or who I will be when it emerges into the world.

Much like the last few pregnant weeks before each of my sons was born-I sleep a lot, meeting this new being in the communion of dreams. She greets me there, so vividly alive, so full of love and delight and generous joy that I am bereft when I wake up without her in my arms.

I am both preparing, and being prepared, for her arrival.

The tissues in my body are loosening, softening. My mind and heart are loosening and softening too, releasing their grip on the-way-things-have-been, opening to embrace warm baby weight, preparing to inhale that fresh-baked scent of new baby.

Sixty-one years old, and this birth is as filled with expectancy and wonder, awe and a tinge of breathlessness, as the very first time I encountered the power of the creative spirit.

The first time I climbed a tree. Or met a panther in the wild. Or sketched a blade of grass on thick vellum paper, the radiant life before me shining its light in my heart, the stick of charcoal pencil a magic wand in my hand.

My business and I are doing practical work to prepare for our new arrival. We’ve painted her room a tender shade of sky blue. A sturdy crib stands under the window, lined with flannel sheets and silk blankets, to cradle her in her new home. On the ceiling, a glistening mural of stars, moons and galaxies-a reminder of her other home.

Everything around me conspires to support this birth. The earth breathes with me; its pulse beats in my neck, in my temple. Cedar trees wave their arms in celebration and welcome.

Clients bring offerings of needs and desires, adding their longing and genius to the push of arrival.

The work that I do has always been spirit at play, patterning the everyday world of work and business, love and health, money, family, relationships, children-a magnet shaping dreams into reality.

Now, I see we’re all hungry for more.

When I first began teaching and doing transformational work, more than thirty years ago, the gap between spirit and the world of work and business was a chasm-it required feats of engineering, bridges with steel girders between this shore and that.

Today, we’ve all grown up. We’re cheek to cheek with our souls, eager for a more intimate relationship with spirit in our lives and in our businesses.

We aren’t waiting for Prince Charming, or Princess Leila, to wake us up to a world of magic and possibility.

We’re rolling up our sleeves, and learning how to co-operate with the world of spirit to co-create the world in which we want to live.

For me, this means listening closely to the needs of my world–to my clients, students, colleagues and friends. Creating ebooks and what my friend Danielle calls multimedia experiences. Creating programs and classes, workshops and retreats that are practical, affordable, and that help people and their businesses flourish.

It means finding accessible ways to teach skills of inner connection, co-creation, intuition and working with energy and spirit to as many people as possible.

For me, it also means supporting the work of friends and colleagues who are ringing bells and shining their light in the world: Havi, Pam, Colleen, Danielle, Mark, Jen, Susan, Jean, Amna, Charlie, Naomi.

It’s scary to let go of what’s familiar, especially when it’s working. Yet life calls us to take risks, to welcome newness into the world and be willing to be changed by it.

What is calling you today? What bells are you ready to ring? Ah, the cracks–the cracks through which the light streams in!

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Fireworks and birthday cake: Rituals for a wired community
• Pattern Makers and Playpens
• Beyond the Garden Gate: The Deva of Willingness

In a session with a client a while ago, I described the chakras of her business, and how they related to some problems she was experiencing.

If you’re wondering how chakras and business ended up in the same sentence, bear with me-All Will Be Revealed, I promise!

Chakra is a Sanskrit word that means “wheel”. Essentially, chakras are energy vortexes (like bio-computers) that process information from the world around us, as well as from our inner worlds-including our history and biology. They extend from our physical bodies into the subtle-energetic space around us, and link us to our larger, multidimensional selves.

They are the interface between subtle energy and physical matter.

Yet, they’re no more exotic than the mysteries of how blood flows through our veins, or how our marvelous bodies digest food and transform air into fuel for our cells-or any of the other astonishing capacities we have that are more familiar to us only because science has focused its attention and resources on understanding them.

Whether chakras are metaphors or vibrational realities matters little to the empiricist in me. What interests me is effectiveness-if working with them extends my creative capacities, I’ll happily play with them.

So I approach the chakra system as one way of mapping, organizing and working with information to transform and create my life-and my business-in precise, efficient ways. There are sophisticated systems from other spiritual traditions that offer similar technologies of transformation, but this is the one I’m most familiar with. And, after three decades of working with it, I continue to be enchanted by its beauty, flexibility and power.

It’s an efficient, elegant mapping system through which we can explore our reality, and change it.

The implications of this for business are as practical as they are profound.

For one thing, developing skill and precision in working with chakras helps you, as a creative entrepreneur, handle day-to-day situations in your business with an ease that can seem miraculous. (Although the real miracle is that we have these enormous, untapped capacities which we so seldom use.)

An example: You have a big presentation coming up first thing tomorrow. You’ve researched and prepared for it; rehearsed your presentation until its cadences feel natural, easy; and you’ve laid out the clothes you’ll wear in the morning. You’ve gone to bed early so you’ll be rested and ready.

Now, it’s 2 am and your mind is racing. Should you really have used “Oscar the Grouch meets Shrek at the 42nd Street Starbucks” as your central metaphor? What if that funny rattling sound your car made when you were heading home today turns out to be something monumental and the steering wheel falls off just as you’re about to drive to your meeting? Or the car’s okay but you’re halfway there before you realize you forgot your laptop at home and have to go back for it and then you get caught in traffic and then you get pulled over for speeding and then . . . What If?

Sound familiar?

If you knew something about chakras, you would probably realize that the disaster scenarios running through your head while the clock ticks over to 2:30 a.m. are driven by adrenalin pounding through your body. And that by closing down your first chakra (the energy center in charge of keeping you safe from dinosaurs and roving marauders) to a manageable ten percent of its capacity, you can slow down the production of adrenalin in your body almost instantly.

If you were reasonably skilled in working with chakras, you would then clear the debris of the day from the cord that connects your third chakra (which controls your power and energy distribution) to your subtle body; release any energy that isn’t yours; and disconnect from all the other folks who are going to be at tomorrow’s meeting. Many of whom are lying awake, worrying about their presentations too. You’d do this because you’d know that all that worry ends up in your own subtle energy field, unless you consciously disconnect from it.

Because you’re working with subtle energy, which moves much faster than physical energy, you can do all of this work in less than three minutes, without ever leaving your warm bed. Add some simple belly-breathing, fill your chakras with support and safety, and et voila! Before you know it, you’ll be asleep.

In the morning, you’ll be rested and ready for your presentation.

This is just one very simple example of how working with chakras can help you in your business.

But there’s another reason why chakras matter to the health of your business.

Your business has its own presence, its own soul, and its own life. As it grows, it develops a subtle body of its own. Complete (ta-dah!) with chakras.

By exploring the chakras of your business, you can get a clear map of its terrain. You can see the hills and valleys-which areas of your business are strong and can bear heavy loads, which ones are fragile and need care and nourishment.

You can see where your business is leaking energy-this can take the form of money flowing out as fast as it comes in. Or maybe too many clients who aren’t right for you. Which makes you cranky, tired and overwhelmed-not the best way to make decisions.

The good news is, you can change these trends by working with the chakras of your business.

When you remove stagnation and restore subtle-energy flow in a chakra, your business will respond with concrete, positive changes. More of your right clients “miraculously” show up, while those who aren’t right for you leave. Income begins to flow in a steady stream. Miscommunication and missed connections become a thing of the past.

It seems miraculous. Yet these changes are simply a result of using capacities you already have. You may not have developed them yet, but they are there, and they are yours.

Learning to work skillfully with chakras makes you more effective in your business.

If this interests you and you want to know more, take a look at the Become Your Own Business Adviser program, which starts on September 15th. We will work with the chakras of your business to help it grow into its vibrant potential.

How about you? I’d love to hear how you use your extended capacities-your intuition, creativity, genius and multidimensional skills-to help you create and grow your business.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Growing the House of Your Business
• Desire
• Making Things Happen: The Power of Alignment

We’ve learned energy technologies to help us craft our lives.

As I get ready to teach Become Your Own Business Adviser in a couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about sovereignty-how essential it is to living an authentic, creative, free, exuberant life.

We come into this world filled with the joy and radiance of our souls. We are overflowing with love, brimming with excitement at our own miraculous capacities, thrilled about all that we intend to create, to give and to receive.

We offer ourselves to the world without fear, shame or inhibition. We expand with delight to meet what’s in front of us.

If we’re lucky, our parents or caregivers see us for who we really are-powerful spiritual beings incarnated as babies. They see our physical vulnerability and our spiritual wisdom. They know we have our own purpose, creative vision and gifts.

If we’re lucky, the people who love us help us grow more fully into ourselves. They take care of our physical needs, and keep us safe, warm and nourished. They give us space and freedom to feel our feelings and think our thoughts.

They don’t impose their agendas, their fears or their beliefs on us.

They encourage us to explore the world, to develop our own relationship with it, to follow our natural rhythms and our curiosity wherever it leads us.

If we’re lucky, the grownups in our lives support us in experiencing ourselves and our world directly, unmediated by expectations about how things should be. They show us their love and appreciation openly and often. They encourage us to trust in our own judgment and choices, to learn from our mistakes, and to celebrate both our successes and our failures as milestones of learning and growth.

If we’re lucky, we grow up trusting ourselves, knowing our limits and our powers, and having faith in our ability to shape our lives by following our inner guidance.

If you haven’t been so lucky, you may find yourself with what my friend Mariko calls a wonky GPS system. You may have trouble making decisions about aspects of your business or your life.

Decisions like: Should you lease that extra office space now, while it’s available, or is it simply going to add to your overhead without increasing your sales.

Should you spend a chunk of your budget to hire that marketing consultant, copywriter or VA? Will they be a good fit for your business, or will hiring them be a costly mistake?

When’s the best time to launch your new product, and how much should you charge for it?

These day-to-day decisions shape your business and can make the difference between a successful year and one that’s less than great.

Since you’re a responsible, intelligent person, you gather information, research your market, and make your decisions based on the variables you know about.

But there are often hidden factors that affect the success or failure of any course of action.

Intuition and clear seeing are two of the capacities of your soul. We’re all born with them. They are practical, useful qualities that can help us navigate our lives and our businesses with skill and wisdom.

These capacities can be developed, just as you develop a natural talent for language, or sports, or making art. Practice makes us more skilled at using intuition and the ability to see things as they are, and as they can be.

Inner guidance-knowing what you want and what’s right for you-is a useful and practical way to make good decisions for yourself and your business.

But energy technologies and sacred skills have more profound, equally practical applications in every aspect of your business and your life.

For example: You may be a person who has many creative ideas, but they never quite seem to get off the ground. Maybe you begin new projects with great enthusiasm, only to see them fizzle away when the gremlins of resistance, anxiety or self-doubt rear their heads.

Your projects fail to gain momentum, not because you’re lazy or incompetent or lack willpower, but because you don’t have the skills and tools to work with the fears, beliefs and issues that inevitably arise when you set a creative intention and begin to act on it.

Intuitive skills are powerful. And because they are already within you, using them reconnects you to your own power.

Instead of driving yourself crazy making pro-and-con lists, asking all your friends for advice, or hiring costly professionals, you can turn to your intuition for guidance.

As you practice applying your intuition to concrete situations in your life, you regain trust and confidence in your choices. You begin to use energy skills and processes to help you work through fears and resistance. You make friends with your emotions, and with your inner selves. And you learn to work with non-physical allies to help you create your business and your life in seemingly effortless, miraculous ways.

If you’re ready to regain your power and sovereignty, learn intuitive skills and practice sacred technologies to help you craft a sustainable business and life, please join us for Become Your Own Business Adviser.

This 14-week program starts on September 15th. And you’ll save nearly $300 if you register before midnight on Wednesday, September 1st.

How about you? How do you experience sovereignty and intuition in your life and in your business? What challenges do you face? What do you wish you’d known, or learned, about these skills and capacities that are so much a part of you?

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Grumble Hook Guidance
• Rule Your World Giveaway, Week 4
• How To Rule Your World From The Inside Out

The first aha and inspiration for the Playground bloomed near the end of January, during a retreat in Monterey. Being Havi, she listened deeply to the voice of her inner genius and then acted on it. The search for the perfect Playground space began.

The road from there to here has been a winding one, with hairpin turns, U-turns, and turns of heart as well. Like all creations, this one has been about transforming and giving birth to new aspects of Havi, as well as birthing her beautiful baby Playground. And like all births, there’s been mess and blood as well as transcendent joy.

Today, we celebrate. We celebrate the Playground, its birth, the process of its creation, and Havi. We celebrate the birth of possibility and vision, of a new space for these to unfold. We celebrate love in all its forms.

Please join us.

Here’s a recording of a conversation Havi and I had earlier this week. Enjoy!

A Conversation with Havi

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Chasing The Next Shiny Thing
• Dreaming in the Dark
• Rule Your World Giveaway, Week 4

Healing Internet Hangover? Slaying the ice-cream dragon? Wha…?

Maybe you’re one of those folks who aren’t susceptible to ice-cream. Or dragons. Or the internet. If so, please click away. You don’t need to read the rest of this post.

For the rest of us, being on the internet can become an ice-cream slide down a slithery slope. Sweetly deadly, in a hundred flavors. Chocolate and chili; persimmon and praline.

It starts out innocently enough. Check email, Twitter, Google stats on your website. Read and comment on your favorite blogs.

Ignore the bitter breath of the ice-cream beast so deliciously cold on the back of your neck.

Or it starts out virtuously: Research for that article, for that blog post, for that presentation that’s due tomorrow. Not ice-cream! Spinach!

Next thing you know, the morning’s been swallowed whole. It’s lunch time. You’ve forgotten to eat. Or pee. Except for that giant bowl of ice-cream. You feel sick.

Your body is wa-a-ay down the-e-re somewhere; your head is swimming in clouds of sugar.

You’ve forgotten what you came here for. Or why you’ve been clicking links for the past hour. You’re a zombie looking for your ice-cream fix.

Your shoulders are hunched, your eyes squinty and glazed. You feel stunned stupid.

And…there goes the rest of the day.

You WANT to write that article, work on your book, create that genius product that’ll change your world.

But the folds of your brain have melted into a chocolate puddle. Any creative ideas you once had have long since slithered away.

You feel guilty, ashamed, weak of will. You swear to do better next time.

You promise yourself: No more ice-cream! At least, not until after dinner. Work first, then a visit to Ice-Cream InternetLand.

You vow to ice-cream in moderation: Just one cone, ten minutes, no more. You set a timer.

Your inner ice-cream freak rebels. Want. Ice-cream. Now!

You get in a fight with yourself. And emerge bowed, bloody, covered in creamy chocolate-chocolate-chip.

Is there another way? (I’ll whisper the answer to this in your ear…come closer…yes!)

Healing Internet Hangover: The Class.

May 12th, 19th, and June 2nd.

Early bird price of $48 ends Saturday.

Slay the ice-cream dragon! Discover your inner sugar-free superhero! Do join us. :-)

You’ll find details and registration here.

I’d love to hear your stories about those Internet Ice-Cream Hangovers. What gets you started down the ice-cream slope? How do you make your way back? What’s the worst ice-cream hangover you’ve ever had?

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Growing the House of Your Business
• Chasing The Next Shiny Thing
• To Change a Pattern, Create a New Story