You Do Not Have To Be Good

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

from: Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

This is your natural way, and mine.

Love,

Barbara

To say Yes to this, say No to that

As you are finding Your Natural Way, you will find philosophies that 'fit' your way of being and others that frankly, do not! I was chatting to a client today about 'motivational' e-mails and how they always make him feel bad! My personal style is inspiration, not motivation - if you have to push me to complete something, why am I doing it at all?

Anyway, if it's not Your Natural Way, if it's not feeling good, if it's not feeling easy...bin it! Why keep reading things that make you feel bad? Remember that Your Natural Way is absolutely valid for YOU. Not everyone in the world will agree, and nor do they need to! And the more you cull the things that DON'T work for you, the more space you will have for things that DO work.

Love

Donna.x

Radical Responsibility

Radical responsibility - what does this mean? Sounds kind of scary! Well, it is both liberating and scary, I guess. We know that to be responsible is to pay your bills on time, to pick up the children on time, to walk our talk, to be truthful, to commit and follow up, and more. Here is the dictionary meaning of responsible.
1. answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management...

Radical responsibility is accepting that you are 100% answerable and accountable for everything that is happening in your life. That would mean that everything in your life is within your power, control, or management. Further, that would mean that you have chosen and can continue to choose in each moment, how your life expresses through you in the world.

Nothing happens to you. You are not a victim of circumstance. Somewhere, someplace, sometime, you chose that circumstance. No blaming someone or something else allowed. It all comes down to you.

Kind of liberating and scary, eh?

Love,

Barbara

Useful or Useless?

I love hardware stores and gadgets. I can spend hours browsing through building stores looking at everything that would make a job easier, from knee pads (mine are purple!) to fruit ripeners to plant moisture measurers. I'm fascinated by what the human mind can conjure up. I just know that someone was in the middle of a job and a light bulb went on as they thought of that tool to make their life easier.

We seem to naturally move toward what is easier for us. I use a tool for making decisions and choices easier. I ask myself, " Is this useful or useless?"

Is it useful or useless to buy the multi-tasking tool that is so cool looking and easy to store but the handle gets in the way when you use the screw driving attachment? Is it useful or useless for me to subscribe to 5 different newsletters on marketing my coaching business? Is it useful or useless to focus on what feels good and move in that direction? Is it useful or useless to buy my dog booties to keep her feet warm when she hates anything touching her feet? (they are soooo cute!)

Give this little tool a try. I find it very useful!

Love,

Barbara

'You' Are What You Are Selling

"All the resources you will ever want or need are at your fingertips. All you have to do is identify what you want to do with it , and then practise the feeling-place of what it will feel like when that happens. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have. ... There is nothing holding you back, other than your own contradictory thought. And your emotion tells you you're doing that. Life is supposed to be fun - it is supposed to feel good!...Savour more: fix less. Laugh more; cry less. Anticipate positively more; anticipate negatively less. Nothing is more important than you feel good. Just practise that and watch what happens..."

- Abraham/Hicks  March 2003

How many contradictory thoughts have you had about getting clients? Is that nasty word 'should' part of your self-talk? 

Take a moment and close your eyes and get the feeling you have when you remember why you are doing what you are doing. Hold that for a moment. What could you do to hold that good feeling longer? What action could you take now that would make you feel good about you and your business? How does that feel in your body compass?

'You' are what you are selling. And when you feel good about yourself and your business, you are very, very attractive to clients. How more natural and easy can it be?

Love,  Barbara

Your Natural Self

Many of us were brought up to think that being an adult means doing a lot of things we don't want to do. This does not have to be true. We can fulfil our responsibilities and still evolve by being  true to ourselves,  clearly focusing on what is meaningful and natural to us, and following that path. It's about you being you and being comfortable with that.

Being true to ourselves allows us to have more clarity around our intrinsic gifts and how to use them in the world. We can listen to our bodies for cues as to whether we feel comfortable with what is happening so that we can choose to stay or to make a change. We can notice our feelings about a situation and the people we are with, and decide whether to be there or not, or listen to our intuition about how to change it. We can detach from outcomes and find the gifts in our experiences. Then, we will have a conduit into our own profound wisdom - that which is true for ourselves.

This is not selfish. This is self-centred in the best possible way. This frees us to be all we can be. This allows us to fully contribute those attributes that are uniquely ours. This allows us to listen carefully to others with a reduction of self-talk in the background, because we are listening to only one voice, our own. This is living from the inside out. This is freedom. And this is the place from where we can be truly responsible and do everything we choose to do, in our natural way.

Love,

Barbara

"The question isn't who is going to let me, it's who is going to stop me."

- Ayn Rand    author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and more.

From Abraham Hicks Daily Quote (sign up at www.abraham-hicks.com)
Everyone doesn’t have to be the same. Most say, “Well, it’s so much easier if we’re all the same.” And we say, it is not easier when you’re all the same; conformity is the thing that thwarts you most. That massive wanting to get you to conform—to all think the same way and want the same things—is what is causing the revolt that is happening within you. You are determined to be freedom-seekers in a Mass Consciousness society that is determined to make you the same.

Excerpted from a workshop in Asheville, NC on Saturday, October 25th, 2003

All Is Well
Abraham Hicks

Be the freedom-seeker in your business. You don't have to be the same as everyone else.

Love

Donna.x

Is it Easy or Not?

I thought of Your Natural Way when I read this blog post by Stacy Brice:

Some relationships simply aren't meant to be, for any number of reasons. You'll know one of them when things are hard, all the time, or even most of the time. Great relationships are full of ease. And while that's not to say that great relationships never have rough spots to be worked through, it's because they're fundamentally easy that working through the rough spot is - you got it!- easy (or, at least, easier).

When it's just too hard, and everything you do seems to be a mistake, see the sign for what it is...a chance to make things in your business better... and get off that gerbil wheel you've been running on. Graciously (and quickly) say what's so to your client, ..... part company, and move on without giving it another thought! Better clients for you are waiting to avail themselves of your mad skills and overall fabulousness! 

-Virtual Moxie, April 16, 2008 

Forcing things through acts of will are a habitual not natural way of being.  

What relationships are you struggling in? Would you and your client be better off working with someone else?

What would it feel like to let go of that struggle? 

Love,

Barbara