{In which I explore some of my lately favourite dirty words}
I am moving forward fearlessly, into the new.
I am moving forward fearlessly, now.
Affirmations are great. I love them. I’m a total sucker for those little books of gems, that you can leave beside the toilet for some gentle reading matter whilst you’re clearing out the crap.
Well, I’ve moved mine away now, since my toddler dropped one down the dunny for a laugh. Mummy wasn’t laughing much at the time.
‘Moving forward fearlessly’ came out of a lovely healing session I had with one of my spiritual teachers a couple of months ago. I couldn’t understand why everything I was trying to achieve kept getting stuck. I could see what I wanted but I couldn’t quite create it. And now I see that stucknesses are always about the dirty little F-word …
… Fear.
There’s a certain amount of fear coming up for me with the launch of this new project. It’s a step into new territory. There’s some major changes taking place in the way I write, and the things I want to write about. I’m moving rapidly out of my Comfort Zone, and trying to find that place of comfortable S-T-R-E-T-C-H, which stimulates the intellect and imagination into confident creating and Flow. But every so often, I overreach and stumble headlong into Panic.
Last night I was trying to find a balancing point on this spectrum, whilst writing the new ‘Me’ page for this site. The first few paragraphs spread easily across the screen; I’ve gotten used to talking about my witchiness and spiritual things, but as I tried to round it off I had the sense that something was missing.
I knew what it was, but I was avoiding it, as if it was a great big hairy monster. The elephant in the corner. It’s the thing that so many spiritual teachers and healers I’ve known really don’t want to engage with, because they think it’s a dirty word:
Business
Does ‘Business’ have to be a dirty word?
You start out as a healer, or a teacher, or an artist because you love what you do. Because you want to reach people and help people. Because you want to share some of the beauty of your own creative/spiritual path with others. You’re not thinking about stuffy horrible subjects like Business. That’s for people in suits who want to work in banks, or insurance or customer services. Not a holisitic homegrown mama, like yourself.
What makes it worse for me is that the Business-thing is tied real closely to the other big old thorny subject of Money. Yuck. Double-whammy. Up until a few months ago, I still quite strongly believed the old adage that “money is the root of all evil”. And I know some of my favourite holistic hippie friends still hold tight to that motto too.
That’s because we have a dream of an utopian future, where no-one needs to struggle to pay their bills, or worry about buying shoes for their kids, or have to choose between fixing the computer or just getting by in general. What’s the biggest problem for us? Not enough money in our wallets. Not enough money in the bank. And so it’s a pretty quick leap to thinking that Money is the problem.
It’s not. Poverty is the problem. And Poverty-Consciousness is a really difficult beggar to shake off your back. It’s a pervasive fear of never having enough, so that even when you’ve got it, you’re afraid you’re going to lose it. And you know it’s not going to stretch to the end of the month, or the next payment coming in. You start to live in a ongoing cycle of panic.
There’s a funny thing about fear, though. What you focus on expands, and becomes your reality (Wayne Dyer). If you are focusing on ‘ lack of money’ or ‘poverty’ all the time, that is what you draw into your life. Fear makes you focus on it; fear perpetuates it. You start to experience more and more proof that you’re fear is correct. Fear reinforces itself.
Holy Shit.
At some point, you just have to make a choice to break the cycle.
For me, this has meant a massive re-evaluation of my attitudes and behaviour. This is not an easy, overnight task. And it’s taking a heck of a lot of energy and commitment to maintain.
I believe that when the holistic, homegrown, earth-loving hippies get over their fear of money and start stepping into their power, we will create the utopian future that we have been dreaming of for so long now.
Will we do it by selling a few pieces of our beautifully crafted efforts on Etsy every month? No. And we sure as hell ain’t gonna do it by taking a part-time 9-5 at Asda/Wal-Mart/Tesco/Target whilst our kids are growing up.
There is another way, and it’s called Business.
Don’t freak out. Stay with me now.
I don’t think Business has to be a dirty word. In fact, I’m having lots of fun right now. I was going to babble on about how success comes from doing what you love best, but I’m going to borrow the words of my first, most-respected, female business role-model, Anita Roddick:
First, you have to have fun.
Second, you have to put love where your labor is.
Third, you have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else.We communicate with passion—and passion persuades.
What we need is optimism, humanism, enthusiasm, intuition, curiosity, love, humour, magic, fun, and that secret ingredient… euphoria.
Doesn’t that sound good?
Is this an explanation, or a justification for the changes you’re looking at now? Maybe. But not an apology. It’s been coming for some time, as I discovered when I looked back over my blog posts from the last few months. Back in May, I wrote this in a post called “Getting Down To Business“:
Dear Friends ~ you might notice some changes around here, some new stuff appearing. It might just be small stuff for now — but wait and see. There is the potential for more dramatic changes to come! And I hope you’ll feel as excited about that as I do.
You see, when I started my blog, I had intended to make it link to a website that would promote my creative and spiritual projects. I’m still feeling tentative about calling it ‘my business’, as I think many of us round here feel that ‘business’ is a rather dirty word. Well, in my time here, I’m discovering people that are recreating ‘business’ into something far more authentic and inspiring…
Yes, business as we once understood it, was run on competitive, commercial, capitalistic principles. But some of us want to create our own businesses that will support our lives and our dreams, based on what we do well and what we love doing.
I’ve struggled with my business since I became self-employed as a Therapist & Spiritual Teacher in June 2007, mostly because I am absolutely terrible at promoting myself. I’m just not very good at getting out there, and I’m pretty shy in social settings (apart from when I’m in my Teaching/Leading role). Also, my dreams and plans for what I wanted to do have very much branched out and expanded, organically, in different directions, so that my original clarity of purpose and my USP (ugh! hate the jargon like that) have become unclear to everyone, including me!
I’ve been in a period of hibernation and incubation recently. Getting some clarity. Getting in touch with my roots. Now I’m almost ready to start branching out again.*
These are still just baby-steps for me. The emergence into the new is not yet complete, but I’m getting a sense of where I might be going. And maybe you can feel it too.
Do you want to join me for the ride? I hope you will.
Abundant Blessings.
Namaste
* The use of the tree metaphor came from a great little e-book that I was working through at the time, from Mynde and Wendy at Your Web Coaches, called “The Small-Business Tree Roadmap: a guide to growing your business organically” and you can download it free from their website here.
