Archive for Spirit in Your Business
YOU are your Business. How are YOU?
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are a solo business owner or independent service provider, then YOU are your business. The health of your business depends on YOUR health and well-being. As you are one being, not lots of different segments, how you are in one area of your life will affect how you are in other areas.
For example, if your physical health is neglected, you may not have the energy to do what you would like to do. If your family life is not honoured, or is stressful, this will cause a constant pull on you, and will tire you out and will lower your vibrational level.
Many people set up in their own business because they want to be their own boss, have more time with the family, have more leisure time etc. For many it works out like this, but for others, especially when starting out, it can seem as if the business takes you over. There are so many aspects you never thought of when starting out – book-keeping, marketing, customer care, tax, selling, technical skills etc, etc.
I know when I first left the security of employment in 1995, to set up my own alternative health practice, I didn’t take into account, that I would have to develop a whole new mind set. In employment, I had my job title – in my case “teacher” and later “social worker” – to let people know who I was, and what my role was. Those titles gave me an identity – I didn’t realise this at the time, it was only when I went out to market myself, that I realised how terrified I was of being ‘just me” and asking people to come and see me. I was a homeopath, but that didn’t seem to give me the same status, as my societally endorsed roles did. As I said, this was all a huge shock to me, as I never knew I felt like this at all – and couldn’t understand what was stopping me just getting out there and doing it!! As I was my business, things only started to change, when I worked with someone to address these issues.
I can look back now and see how the way I put up the leaflets around the town, offering my services, demonstrated this. The first day I went out, I literally thought my legs wouldn’t carry me from location to location where I had planned to put up leaflets. I had set myself the challenge of putting up the leaflets by the end of a certain week. It was 5pm on the Friday, when I forced myself to go into town with them – I thought I would die!! My legs shook, and I felt so exposed and vulnerable. I had all kinds of thoughts going through my head “Who do you think you are, calling yourself a homeopath” ”Who would want to pay to see you?” ” You shouldn’t be charging for this – it’s healing.” I put the leaflets up in windows and on notice boards – but in places where I hoped that they wouldn’t be seen!!! It seems mad in retrospect, but it was the best I could do at the time – I met my challenge and I put the leaflets out. In time, as I worked through my beliefs around this, my confidence grew and my leaflets became more and more prominent – and of course, my practice got busier and busier. If I knew then, that today, I would be where I am now – I’d have been amazed!!!
So, I really know and understand this principal – how I am, affects how my business is.
Here is an exercise to help you see where you are now – it is designed as a tool, to help you assess your life. It will help you to become clearer about how things really are for you – and as I know, the clearer you are, the easier it is to make the changes that will lead you to your dreams.
- Write down what it is that motivated you to go into business by yourself? What benefits did you want it to give you?
- Give a mark on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being less satisfied, and 10 most satisfied) – as to where you think you are now in relation to this.
- Then look at the following areas of your life:
- Financial
- Family
- Social
- Relationships
- Health
- Leisure
- Hobbies
- Spiritual
- Business
Ask yourself the following questions about each area of your life:
- What is my ideal vision for this area of my life?
- How close am I to achieving that vision? Use a scale of 1 -1o.
- What is stopping me from getting closer to my vision? – beliefs, lifestyle choices, emotions etc
- What feelings does that bring up for me?
- What is 1 thing I can do to help me to get closer to that vision? And when you have done that
- What is the next thing I can do to bring me even closer?
You can choose just to work on one area at a time – especially if there is one that you feel a lot of charge around. Anything that you do, from a position of clarity, will shift your vibrational level, and bring you closer to achieving your goals.
Good luck, and I look forward to hearing how you get on – leave a comment below to let me know.
If you find this useful – don’t keep it to yourself, use the buttons below to share it with others. The more people there are who are working from a higher vibrational level, the better it will be for all of us. I know how much I’ve changed since I began this work, and I really want to share it with others.
Something to listen to listen to as you do the exercise: TELL IT AS IT IS…..
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Attracting Your Ideal Clients.
Posted by: | CommentsWhen people start out in business, they often get caught up in all the details of how to get started – finding premises, training, logos, decorations, websites etc, etc. If you’re a solopreneur, and new to business, this can be very challenging and take a lot of time and energy. I often coach people, who have got so caught up in the details of their business, they have lost sight of the vision – what their intention was when starting the business. I coach others, who are so attuned to the vision of what they want to do – that they cannot get down to the detail at all, they have so many ideas, but they never seem to be able to put them into practice.
I have been in both situations in the past – and can still sometimes find myself being pulled one way or the other. What my aim is, and now I achieve it more and more frequently, is to be able to move freely and easily between the detail and the vision.
Initially, when I was setting up my homeopathy practice, I wasn’t able to call it a business at all!! I didn’t see it as a business, and therefore didn’t approach it in a business-like way. Business was a dirty word to me, and didn’t fit in with my view of myself as a healer. Many years later, a lot of coaching and personal discovery later – I am very happy to see myself as a business-owner. I can see by making this transition, my ability to serve people has actually improved. I am making more money than I did previously, am attracting people who really benefit from what I have to offer, and am much more efficient with my time and focus.
One of the tools that I have found really helpful in doing this, is to draw up a clear vision of the type of Client that I want to attract. I have an activation that I use, which serves to really align me to my inner guidance. I listen to this and then write down the qualities I seek in my ideal client.
You can do this easily too – get yourself into a relaxed, highly attuned state and then ask yourself the following questions (change them as you wish and as appropriate to you particular business).
who is my ideal client?
what is their gender?
what is their age?
what are they seeking?
how are we aligned energetically?
what are their financial circumstances?
where do they live?
how do they find me?
how can I best serve them?
how will we work together?
what previous work will they have done?
what type of personality are they?
what are their interests?
You might come up with something like this:
My ideal client is:
male
35yrs+
lives in the GMT time zone
can easily and willingly pay my fees
knows the benefits of coaching
is prepared to take action to achieve their goals
has artistic/musical interests
is an energetic match for me
has a good sense of humour
(or something completely different!! – it doesn’t matter, there is no right or wrong answer, as long as it reflects you and the people you want to attract to your business.)
Any other questions which come to you will be perfect also. Some of the questions may challenge you – just note that with interest, and see if there are any messages their for you.
I would then suggest that you write out, or type up a description of your ideal client, and display it somewhere that you can easily see it. Read it often. I find that it helps me to read it before I make any decisions about my business. This helps to keep me focussed, and has stopped me going off on a few tangents – and if you are working on-line at all, you will know that there are many distractions calling you like the Sirens, trying to steer you off course! I find that reading my Ideal Client, description helps to re-centre me. I read it and them go back to the choice I was thinking of, and just ask, will this help me attract my ideal client or not? If it won’t, then I don’t have to think of it anymore. If it will, I give it more consideration.
Once you are clear about who your ideal client it, it makes it easier for you to align your own energy, so that you can attract them to you. Remember, your main task is to manage your own energy, so that you are vibrating at a level that allows you to attract what you want into your life. If you want to attract people who are at ease with money – you’ll be much more likely too if you feel completely at ease with money yourself!
Have fun doing this – and let me know what a difference it makes to you and the clients you are attracting.
Live Life Moment by Moment
Posted by: | CommentsI want to thank Johneal for a comment I picked up today , written on an earlier post. Johneal was saying “raising our vibrational levels is a lifetime moment by moment task…but one that is worth the rewards in every single way.”
That is a great comment and really got me thinking, that every moment we make a choice, whether we are going to do something that will lower or raise our vibrational level.
It’s true of everything:
- our thoughts
- what we eat
- what we say
- what we do
- what we believe
- who we choose to spend time with
- what we read
- what we listen to on the radio
- what TV or movies we watch
- what music we listen to
- what we drink
- what medication we take
- how we spend our time
- what exercise we take
everything, absolutely everything is a choice. Of course, I have always known this on some level, and have thought about it a lot before, and acted on it in my life.
But today – I REALLY GOT IT!! You know that feeling, when you get something in your soul. As Oprah calls them “Aha Moments”.
I love to be able to simplify things – and especially with the questions I ask myself. I know that to say to myself ” Will this raise or lower my vibrational level?” – will instantly bring me back to where I want to be in my moment of choice. I am still free to choose whatever I want to do, but it will be a conscious choice. I will be aware that I am choosing, and if I choose to lower my vibrational level – I’d have to laugh at myself for making such a disempowering choice – so that would raise my vibrational anyway!!! It’s a win, win situation.
What choices do you make each moment? Do they lower or raise your vibrational level?
Be conscious in the moment of what you are doing/thinking/saying/being/ watching/ hearing and see if there is any other choice that you could make, NOW in this moment to change your vibrational level.
If you would like some ideas for how to raise your vibrational level – sign up for my free e-course at the top of the page.
Thanks again Johneal for the comment. Any other feedback is very appreciated.
very best wishes to you
Christine
Are You the Greatest You Can Be?
Posted by: | CommentsI saw Muhammad Ali today! I’m really excited. It was exactly the view in the clip below, but it was enough for me.
Muhammad’s Great- Grandfather emigrated from Co Clare in the West of Ireland in 1860 – and today his great grandson returned for the first time to become the first Freeman of the Town. Thousands turned out to watch and to celebrate. Young, old, black, white, boxing fans and many children too young to know much about him.
I grew up in the 60′s when his presence was very strong. We’d be awakened in the night to snuggle in front of the TV to watch his fights. I found it hard to take to his mantra “I am the greatest” at first – being brought up in a culture where modesty and humility were highly valued! But I could see his spirit and his integrity shining through, even as a child.
I heard that he once said :”I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”
What he did was to create the vibration around himself, that he WAS the greatest – and he became the greatest. He didn’t just sit around and wait for it to happen – he TOOK ACTION. He hated training, every minute of it, but he knew that if he put the work in, he would be able to reap the rewards for years to come.
Muhammad Ali has a centre and a foundation now, whose motto is ” To make children and adults the greatest they can be.” (or something similar).
Are you the greatest you can be? You don’t have to be world champion boxer, or famous – that might not be your path in this lifetime – but are you the greatest you can be? Are you using all your talents and skills? Are you the greatest parent you can be? The greatest friend? The greatest employer? The greatest employee? The greatest golfer?……. whatever it is, are you being the greatest YOU, you can be?.
What can you do today to move you closer towards being the greatest you can be?
How can you change your vibrational level so that you become the greatest you?
What actions can you take to move you closer to being the greatest you?
The Importance of Appreciation
Posted by: | Comments
I just love that picture of contentment and curiosity – and put it in this post for no other reason than it always makes me smile – and I hope it will you too!!
I realise that I haven’t written any posts for a while. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I am taking a fantastic on-line class at the moment, learning how to build your own web-site using WordPress. I am doing most of the work off-line, so you wan’t see any changes here until the new site is ready to launch. This is taking quite a bit of time, and as I tend to limit how long I spend in front of screen each day, it hasn’t left me much time for writing my blog. Another reason, was I wasn’t sure how many people were reading the posts, and whether I was connecting with anyone while writing them. As I have been so busy doing other things – courses, teleseminars etc – I took my focus away from the blog.
Well as we know, the universe always finds a way to guide us when we loose the way. In the last two days, I have received three emails from different people people, in different parts of the world, telling me how much they enjoy reading the posts and how inspiring they find them.
I was immediately inspired to prioritise writing a post today. To my surprise, I found when I started blogging, that I really enjoy this kind of writing, so it feels great to me to be sitting here writing again.
This whole experience got me thinking about appreciation. How important it is to let people know when we appreciate the things that they do. We live in a culture where it seems to be more common to criticise than to show appreciation. We complain about things and are quick to notice when people don’t live up to our expectations – but how often do we give people our appreciation for what they do?
Appreciation is different from gratitude to me. Appreciation is given to someone, whereas gratitude is between me and God/ Spirit or whatever you call the greater power.
Having realised how good it made me feel to receive appreciation, I began to think of all the people in my life who give so much, and who I really appreciate. I wondered if they knew how much I appreciate them. So what I am going to do is to find ways to tell them and to let them know. I can already feel that it is going to be fun for me as well – to work out the best way for each person. For some people it will be spoken words, for others written words, maybe a gift for some or a special meal. Even thinking about it raises my vibrational level!! So when I do really give my appreciation I know that it will really make a change for all of us.
Who are the important people in your life? They may be personally known to you (parents, partners, children, friends, relations, teachers, work-mates) , or writers, film-makers, teachers, dead, alive……….
Do you tell them often enough how much you appreciate them? Do you think they REALLY know how much they mean to you?
If you think they my not – how can you let them know how much you do appreciate them? Make sure there can be no doubt that you really appreciate them, and what particular qualities in them it is that you value so highly.
Have fun with it……. and let me know how you get on.
There is a community of people reading the blog, so if you want to connect with others who are vibrating on the same level as you, you can get to know them by writing in the comments boxes.
I would like to say a big THANK YOU to the people who wrote and expressed their appreciation for the blog. It meant a lot to me.
How do your clothes affect your vibrational level?
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a very wet and windy day here – more like winter than late summer! When I first saw the weather this morning I was disappointed as there are a lot of things I am wanting to do outside. I had hoped to get outside and have some time in the garden when I had finished my morning’s coaching sessions. However, now I feel great and am really enjoying the day. What turned it around for me was 2 things.
1) Acceptance. The day is just what it is. It is what I feel about it that will determine how I experience it. So I decided to embrace the wet weather and to give myself the day to catch up on lots of things that I have been wanting to do on-line and for my business development.
2) Changing my clothes! I had bought a new outfit for the autumn over the summer, which I was thinking I would start wearing around mid-September. However, today seemed the perfect day for it and so I am wearing it. I feel great in it and it feels totally appropriate to the weather and the feel of the day. I am getting lots of work done, and feel efficient and productive.
Of course, this set me off thinking about the importance of clothes and what we wear. What our choices say to ourselves and what they say to others.
I know for me, that comfort is the number one criteria. If I don’t feel comfortable in what I am wearing, then I don’t feel that I am myself and that lowers my vibrational level. I like my clothes to fit properly, to be made of natural fabrics and to feel soft on my skin.
The next most important thing is that my clothes are appropriate for what I am doing. I may change my clothes several times in a day. If I am walking the dogs, gardening, coaching, socialising or going to the shops, I will usually wear different clothes. This is partly for my own comfort and partly out of respect for people I meet. I wouldn’t be coaching or going out to the shops in the clothes I would wear to do the garden. If I did, I would feel ill at ease which would lower my vibrational level, and maybe create disharmony with others.
It’s important to be aware of the messages about ourselves that our clothes are sending out to others. Do they have have the right degree of formality or informality for the occasion. Do they show respect for yourself and the people you are meeting? What message are you giving out to others about what you wear? (I’m laughing at myself as I’m writing this, because it sounds very formal and as if it’s from a book of Social Etiquette. I’m also thinking that if my mother was here she’d be laughing as she remembered all the rows we had when I was a teenager about her views of appropriateness and mine!)
I worked as a social worker for many years, and was sometimes surprised to see social workers wearing scruffy jeans to work on a normal day. I would do that if I was going to be helping someone with something that was messy or dirty, but on a normal day, I would find that disrespectful to people i was working with. Neither would I wear a suit unless I was going to court, as that would seem to formal, intimidating and setting me too far apart.
I also can feel the difference that colour makes to my vibrational level. I often check in with my inner guidance to see what colours it is optimal for me to wear on a particular day. It makes a huge difference to me when I do this. I always seem to make better choices when I check in than when I just choose a colour.
What do your clothes say about you?
Does what you wear raise or lower your vibrational level?
What changes could you make to raise your vibrational level?
So to me a balance between comfort and appropriateness is the key.
How Fifteen Minutes is Changing My Life
Posted by: | CommentsI’m not a natural when it comes to housework and keeping the house in order – which often surprises me, because I come from a long line of very efficient women who kept their houses running like clockwork. That gene hasn’t seemed to come alive in me yet!! I like things to be relatively neat and orderly, and so I can feel that it pulls my vibrational level down a bit if the house is a mess. I was reading someone’s blog the other day about clearing clutter and they suggested just doing it for fifteen minutes at a time. I often suggest to people to set a limit and do a box, or a cupboard at a time, and that is what I do myself. Somehow, I have never thought of setting a time limit on it. Well, it got me thinking, and I decided to apply the same principal to housework. So I’ve been saying to myself,” I’ll just spend 15 minutes cleaning this now,” or” I’ve 15 minutes free, what can I do now?”
It’s made a massive difference to me. I used to devote a whole morning – or often a Saturday to cleaning the house, and feel overwhelmed. Now, it seems simple. I’ve tackled jobs that have been on the long finger for months – I have cleared the laundry room, even of all those odd little special items that hang around the bottom of the laundry basket for months! All by just doing 15 minutes at a time. I might spend a couple of hours during the day in total doing chores, but by breaking it down into 15 minute slots, I am feeling much more present to what I am doing, and enjoying it all a lot more.
I wish I could remember where I found the blog, so that I could thank the person. It was one of those comments that didn’t mean much to me at the time, but came to me later.
I’m not saying there won’t be times when there’s a big job to be done that I might spend longer on – I tend to enjoy the bigger projects more than the small daily ones, but this is really helping for now.
Is there anywhere that you could use this principal? Breaking something down into a small chunk of time and really feeling much more present to what you are doing. Be inventive, have a go.
Listening to your inner guidance.
Posted by: | CommentsOver the years I have developed several ways of accessing my inner guidance – for me, the ways have changed and developed over the years, as I have changed and developed and my skills and knowledge have grown.
One of the first ways that I learnt was to use a pendulum, and to check in with my intuition/ inner guidance in this way. Initially, I didn’t really have much faith in this and didn’t seem to have very good results. I was still drawn back to this method over the years and read and listened to others about how to use it more effectively. One of the things which changed my belief in it as a system for accessing guidance for myself, was when I learnt to ask in the clearest way. For me now, the question that I ask is: “All things considered, is it optimal for me to ……… (fill in the blanks) at this moment in time?” This covers all aspects – it takes account of other people’s interests as well as my own, by considering all things. It balances all possibilities and sees what is optimal and it deals in the now. If I ask the same question tomorrow, I may get a different answer, as other factors change. Asking in this way, has proved really helpful for me. I use my body as a compass when I am out and about or in situations where I don’t feel comfortable using the pendulum.
Another method that I find really helpful is to write down questions and then write the answers in my journal. I sometimes use my dominant hand (left for me) to write the question and the non- dominant hand (right for me) to write the answers. You can read a lot more about this is Lucia Capacchione’s books about the use of the non-dominant hand. I find this really gets me out of my left brain, logical, rational way of thinking and more into my unconscious thoughts. The answers I receive when I ask in this way often really surprise me – I didn’t know I knew some of the things I write when I read these back. A disadvantage can be that my writing is almost illegible when I write quickly with my right hand, so it can be hard to read back later!
Another thing I do sometimes is to use my journal and to ask God for answers as I write. If I am looking for guidance in a particular area, I start to write ‘Dear God, I really need your help today, can you give me any guidance on how I can best find my way through…………………. (fill in the blanks). I find this really helpful and have received great insights – which of course were always in me, but I didn’t know how to access.
What ways do you use to access your inner guidance? I love learning new things, so would love to hear of ways that you use.
If you aren’t used to doing this, have fun using some of these ways and see if they help you at all. You may be sceptical at first – which is great, it’s always good to question things – try it out and see what happens in your life. Start with small things, which aren’t going to have too much impact on your life, while you discover what works best for you.
Is Your Alternative Health Practice a Business or a Charity?
Posted by: | CommentsI know from my own experience of being a homeopath and running my own homeopathic practice what a struggle running a practice can be!!
Now I can look back and see with the benefit of hindsight some of the mistakes that I made, and how I made things more difficult for myself.
One of the main things that caused me problems, was that I never saw or treated my practice as a business. I loved homeopathy, and I wanted to share it’s benefits with people. I wanted to serve the people who came to me. I over-delivered, and often didn’t charge for my time, or the remedies that I gave to people. I was passionate about homeopathy and what it could do for people – but I wore myself out in the end, with the struggle of the business side of things. One of the main reasons for this struggle was that I never realised that I was running a business!!! In many ways business was a dirty word to me, and I wouldn’t have wanted to apply it to the “purity” of my homeopathy!
Yet if it wasn’t a business what was it? Someone once said to me – if you’re not running it as a business – it’s a hobby or a charity! My Homeopathic Practice was more than a hobby – I was charging people for my services, I was investing a lot of money and time in my own training and education and a lot of my time was spent “in my business”. However, I never really knew how I was doing financially, or how what my real overheads and expenses were. Because I had other sources of income, I didn’t rely totally on my income from homeopathy – in fact, when I did eventually sit down and take a long hard look at my finances, I saw that what I had actually been doing was to use my income from other sources to subsidise my homeopathic income. (On one tax return, I actually lied and increased the level of my income from my homeopathic practice as it was so low, I was embarrassed!)
My practice wasn’t a charity either. I did some work for very reduced rates, as I never wanted people to be excluded from the benefits of homeopathy by lack of resources. The problem was, that I was often undercharging other people, and not keeping track of my expenditure properly, to see if I had covered my costs before offering reduced rates.
Since I became a coach 4 years ago, I have learnt so much more about running a business. Things which I wish I had known in my days as a homeopath. Things which I am keen to share with other alternative health practitioners. I have seen too many really passionate, talented, well-meaning people struggle and eventually give up their practice.
The first question you need to ask yourself is – is my practice a business, a hobby or a charity?
If it’s a hobby, that’s fine. You know that you are not intending to make money from it – if you do, it’s a bonus, but that is not your prime intention. You would be doing it anyway, whether you were paid for it or not.
You might want to ask yourself, how much you want to spend on your hobby? Where this money will come from? What other things in your life you will sacrifice to maintain your hobby – money , time, family life etc?
I once worked with someone who had a small craft business – quilting. They taught classes and made products for shops and craft fairs. When we looked at what was happening, it was clear that this was not being run as a business at all, but a hobby. Yet it was the sole source of income other than a small pension, and finances were a huge source of worry. There were so many outgoings, that it was really necessary to look at a way to increase the income, in a way that did not involve making anything else. The person was already spending so much time making things that they did not have anymore time to make anything else, and there seemed to be a limit on what she could charge people. Looking at the greatest expenditure it was materials – but these were also the greatest resource. There were thousands and thousands of beautiful pieces of fabric, which could easily packaged into quilting packs and sold as kits. The person in question struggled with the idea of selling off any of the fabrics – because she loved them so much, and had so many plans of things which she would make with them in the future. She could not face the idea of selling them. Yet, in the present, she was in a constant state of anxiety about money. Her health was suffering because of the worry. There was a serious doubt as to whether she would ever reach the “future”, when she would make all the various quilts she planned – and yet she could not take the steps necessary to ease her financial burdens. It was so clear, that one of her main problems was that she was trying to live off her hobby, and was unable to take the necessary steps to turn it into a business. Unfortunately, we did not carry on working together, or we could have untangled some of the beliefs which were holding her back. Instead she, remained in a high state of anxiety over her financial circumstances, unable to take the obvious steps which would have helped her turn her hobby into a business, which could have supported her.
The above story is not uncommon. I know that I had aspects of it in my practice. I knew that something wasn’t right with the way I was running things. One of the ways that I knew this was because I was defensive and vey reluctant to actually sit down and look at the figures and to do a proper analysis of my income and expenditure. Always a sign for me that something is not right! I am so happy that I am now very clear that I am running a business. The thing that helped me to make this change, was that I learnt about the concept of Spiritual or Conscious Business. I can still keep my desire to serve and to work with people in a spiritual way, whilst being clear that it is a business, and that my intention is to make a good income from my work.
Get clear for yourself. Is your practice a BUSINESS, A HOBBY or a CHARITY??
If you want to make money from it, it is a business. Even if you have the same negative views that I used to have about the word “business” – it is a business, unless it’s just a hobby, or it’s a charity. It really doesn’t matter what it is, the main thing is to be clear to yourself, and then you will have the appropriate relationship with it. You won’t be trying to make money from your hobby – so if you need money, you’ll know that you need to make the money from another source.
ACTION STEP
Make a decision for yourself – are you running a business, a charity or is your work a hobby.
If it is a business, you may want to subscribe to my blog, so that you can receive notice of future posts, which will give ideas on how to develop your business with spirit.
Or sign up for the free report – How to Grow Your Business with Spirit.
