Self Mastery

Have You Left Out The Most Important Thing?

November 25, 2007 By Cara Lumen

I’ve been working on my Magnetic Marketing Method series which is a collection of individually packaged marketing techniques that allows you pick the one you want to learn when you want to learn it. But I found one concept that has to be included in every marketing strategy we use that I think is easy to lose sight of as we immerse ourselves in the details.

Why are you in business?

No, it’s not about making a living. It’s not about making something, or selling something, or doing something. Those are surface things. What is underneath? What is driving you? What is the passion, the core need you must express that is being satisfied by your work? What makes your life better because you are doing it?

Kahlil Gibran says, “When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.”

It takes the involvement of your heart to create your business. Gibran suggests, “It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.”

Wow! I’m not certain I do that as well as I might.

Passion is your foundation

Why do you want to be in the business you are in? What do you love about it? How will your life change once you shape it the way you envision?

Sometimes it takes time for our true passion to become visible. Although I think that everything happens for a reason, it feels like I sort of fell into being an internet marketing coach. I kept studying and learning wonderful things about marketing myself on the internet and one day I thought, “Hey, I sure know a lot about this. I can help others understand it too.” So my business shifted into that niche. And I love it.

But I also love to learn. And then I get excited about sharing it with others. That makes me a teacher at my core. That is the passion that drives all I do. Can you see how simple designing your business becomes when you can identify your core passion?

Keep building on your passion

If you are like me, you have many things you love to do and you are good at them. So how do you choose? How do you keep building your business on your true passion?

By comparison. As each new idea presents itself, hold it up to your core passion. Is this as close to living my passion as I can get? How can I change this idea to get even closer? For instance, I write. I love to write. And it is the most satisfying when I can use that writing skill to teach. Yes, I use it to write web content and sales pages, but my whole being is engaged when I create something that helps others learn. So now, one of the facets of my coaching is that people learn why they are making certain decisions and they can then go repeat what they have learned in other circumstances. I’m a teaching coach. I’ve brought my passion into my business.

List three reasons you are in business

Write down at least three reasons you are in business. Ignore the physical plane results. Go deep within. Look for the heart of your passion. That’s why you are in business. That’s why the hours you spend at work are like play. As Gibran says, “Work is love made visible.”

You passion is the power behind the success of your business. It’s what attracts people to you. Don’t leave it out. Make its presence known in every aspect of your business.

The Case of the Curled Bark

September 4, 2007 By Cara Lumen

by Cara Lumen

It lay curled on the ground beside the tree it had served, beautiful even as it moved into uselessness. I noticed it on my walk and was drawn to pick it up; looking for the message it might hold for me.

It comes from a Crape Myrtle tree—a tree that blooms late in the summer and grows by adding beautiful flowers in shades of red on the tips of each branch, These flowers then become the branches for next year’s growth. It is also s a tree that gracefully lets go of the old.

The bark was on the ground because the tree had expanded and split if off. It has completed its work. I’m certain it had done its work well, protecting the inner tree, but it no longer fit. If it had stayed in place, the tree could not grow.

What do I have in place that is keeping me from growing? How have I expanded and what do I need to allow to split off? What no longer fits into my vision, my plan, my passion?

It was the message I sought.

I’ve had several opportunities lately to move backward—take up services I used to offer but have outgrown. That’s why the idea of doing them again held no appeal—I had outgrown them. I am in a different mind set. I have new skills I love to use more. I have new ideas I wasn’t to express. Why would I ever entertain the thought of moving backward?

Sometimes we are offered choices in order to fortify our determination to move forward.

What has changed for you? What are you willing to do? What activities and interactions bring you joy? But more importantly, what are you no longer willing to do? What needs to drop away, just as the bark has dropped from the tree it once served.

From moment to moment we are different. We gain new insights with every interaction. We find new adventures that excite us. And we cannot go on the new adventures unless we stop carrying the old stuff around. We cannot move forward as long as we are holding on to old beliefs and habits. We cannot grow without holding new expectations.

The Crape Myrtle tree adds new growth in the form of beautiful flowers, just as add new aspects to your life as you open up to new experiences. But in doing so, the tree outgrows its skin, its bark, and releases and discards what it no longer needs.

What do you need to release?

The Joy of Completing

August 15, 2007 By Cara Lumen

by Cara Lumen

The only reason I get to talk about the joy of completion is because I took over a year to do the final editing on some teleclasses I had recorded and it is now done and I AM JOYOUS!!!!

Isn’t it amazing how long we can put off something that will give us as much joy and satisfaction as completion? I can’t tell you how many half started (or is it half finished) e-books I have. And when I rediscover them I always find I’m a lot further along than I thought.

I wonder what made me stop. It was probably that something else popped to the top of my completion list, or I found something totally new and exciting to explore. And things pop to the top because they needed. So perhaps it’s simply that their time has come.

But back to the joy of completion. When I finished my first CD cover, and had that jewel case sitting on my desk it was a thrill. When I complete an e-book and make the sales page and post it in my shopping cart I am ecstatic.

Why do we neglect completion? Why do we put it off when it feels so good?

You know, it doesn’t have to be a very big completion in order to count. Hey, taking the notes that are all over my desk and putting them into my Quick List is a win. Listening to a downloaded teleclass I’ve been meaning to get to gives me satisfaction and new knowledge. Taking a moment to organize the files on my hard drive should be properly celebrated. And making a new mind map of my next steps demands a pat on the back.

Yes, I have a “To Do” list. I call it my “Quick List.” It stays open on my computer and every idea I have goes on it. It has a section for article and e-book ideas, things to do to strengthen my web site, phrases I like, links to remember and next steps to take. It holds a calendar with the phone numbers of the teleclasses I plan to take, my coaching schedule and my “Do Today” list. So keeping track is not the problem. But sometimes completing is.

I think it’s time for sticky notes. What if, at the end of each day, I acknowledged myself for something I had completed and write it down? Hopefully the number of sticky notes could become quite decorative. At the end of the week I would read them over and bask in the joy of completion. I would really take time to acknowledge myself and feel how good it is to have moved forward through completion. Then I would clear the decks and start fresh for the upcoming week.

My coaching clients are usually entrepreneurs with a lot of ideas. Part of my job is to get them to focus on one idea, complete it and then choose a next step. Often I meet with resistance. Not intentionally, just because they are excited about so many things and want to do them all. Do you know that feeling?

If you run around with a lot of half completed aspects of your business you will never feel like you are making any forward motion. On your calendar, schedule specific times to work your business. It may be to write articles or research potential radio interviews or it may be to invoice work you have completed. If you don’t set aside time to work your business every week you will stay at exactly the place you are now. And if you don’t complete a few steps each week you are simply dog paddling to stay afloat.

Completion is tied into commitment. And commitment works wonders. Commitment lines up all manner of magical gifts from the universe in the form of tools we need, people we need to speak to, and circumstances that offer new opportunities.

Sometimes I don’t complete because what’s left to do is not very interesting. It’s much more fun to create something new than edit something you’ve already done, or write the thank you page for your web site, or set up a new product in your shopping cart. But it is tying up those final ends that is the icing on the cake. Don’t let a project go uncompleted because of three things on your “To Do” list that will take you 20 minutes to complete. You are robbing yourself of the great pleasure of completion.

I know that part of my non-completion is because of bumping other things to the top of the list. And maybe they do need to be bumped up. Maybe they are more of a priority. Perhaps I can focus on celebrating what I do complete rather than what remains to be done.

What we focus on we attract more of. If I focus on completion, and if I celebrate each success, I know that I will find myself completing more and more…..and more.