A couple of weeks ago Jen and I held a conversation for all of us whose hearts had been worn out by many of the common approaches to manifesting abundance. It was all based on a manifesto I wrote recently, “Backwards: Why Common Abundance Manifestation Approaches Are Sabotaging Your Success.” (Jen: read this, it’s fantastic!)

We had hundreds of people register for that call, and, from what we heard, many of you received the same kind of relief Jen and I feel from these teachings.

In the hundreds of registrations that came in for that call, there were many questions we just didn’t have time to get to. So Jen and I decided to do it here, on the blog.

Without further ado, here’s what folks were asking (with any identifying information excluded).

Q: It seems greedy and shallow to want LOTS of money.  Yet I’m caught in this cycle of wanting more money and trying to figure out what I can do or offer that people will want to pay adequately for.  I’m stuck and doubtful.

A: I can so understand this, and why wouldn’t we all want more money? Having money can provide ease and generosity to our lives. To be able to buy a gift for someone you love, or to be able to take time off when you need to without worrying about whether you can afford it. You can’t buy love, but you can buy options and ease.

I think the shallowness you perceive is shallow—meaning only one layer deep. I get caught here, too. When consciousness finds me again and I realize I’ve become attached to money, I like to stop and ask, “If I had the money, what is my heart hoping it would get?”

It’s really the same question we ask in Forwards: Heart-Centered Goal Planning (included in the Backwards manifesto I mentioned above), where you are looking for the Divine quality that can nourish you in this relationship with money.

When my heart can access that quality directly, I can relax and find options. Sometimes I see options about how to relax without needing the money I thought I needed. Sometimes I see ways to increase the amount of money coming in.

Either way, my heart is nourished. So please be gentle with yourself around wanting money, that’s quite normal, just look a bit more deeply.

About what you can do or offer that people will want to pay for, that’s an interesting, creative business journey. If you go through the Forwards exercise about this, or even just ask the question above, I’m so curious what options you’ll see about what you might be able to offer, or work toward offering? I hope you’ll let us know.

Q: How do I know if a situation that arises is an opening to say yes or a test to say no?

A: This is such an interesting question! So many things show up in our life, do we just accept everything that comes our way as a gift of abundance? If we do that, we’ll get overwhelmed.

And yet saying No to what comes can seem ungrateful, or perhaps foolish.

Here’s what has worked for me:

When something arrives, I say Yes to it. Not “Yes, I will follow this opportunity.” But “Yes, this opportunity is here.” That little bit of acceptance seems minor, but it’s really critical. It means that I’m not holding the opportunity at arm’s length, but actually letting it in and getting intimate with it. That intimacy allows me to see what it is.

Then I can begin to ask my heart, “What Divine qualities characterize the healthiest relationship I can have with this opportunity?” Asking this question stops me from reaching for what I should do, and instead helps me focus on how to relate to it.

As my heart accesses those qualities, which often takes some time, especially if there is a lot of emotion tangled up for me in the offer, I can begin to rest into the relationship. And from there it becomes apparent what to do.

For example, a while ago, I had someone offer a joint venture to us here at Heart of Business. It was an opportunity to potentially reach many people. As I sat in my heart, I realized that the healthiest relationship to this venture offer was characterized by the qualities of gratitude, and what in Sufism is described as “The Guardian.” As I felt the guardian come into my heart, I could feel a natural distance being placed between myself and the offer.

I could also feel the gratitude. From a sense of safety, I could graciously and with appreciation, say No. My heart was left feeling calm.

To sum up, I think the key is to first accept that the opportunity is there, and then find the right, or healthy, relationship with the opportunity. The right decision and action will then be in your heart without having to struggle to find it.

Q: When is acting ‘as if’ and ‘in faith’ hopeful and when is it irresponsible?

A: Another fantastic question. I remember trying to act “as if” based on the recommendation of someone with whom I was working, and it just didn’t land for me. I always felt like I was lying to myself. Yet to act “in faith” is a tremendously powerful place to come from.

There are a couple of Sufi teachings that feel relevant here. The first is one that many people are familiar with, “Trust in God and tie your camel.” Meaning trust that you are being cared for, while making sure you are awake and paying attention to what’s around you.

Another one, which is similar, says, “Act in expectancy of Divine generosity and in patience with Divine decree.” The meaning here is about catching that subtle place of both surrender and expectation.

When faith buoys up our hearts and we’re filled with an awareness of the love and caring that is here for us, we can move forward with tremendous conviction and courage, taking on ambitious things out of a sense of service and love.

If we can guard in our hearts a surrender that we don’t know the outcome, that things may turn out differently than we’re imagining, and that always the path we’re walking is one paved with love, mercy and compassion, then we can receive things we never imagined.

It’s challenging, but the challenge is asking us to stay awake and present in as many moments as we can. To act in love, and to stay awake knowing that Divine creation is in action every moment.

For me, the “acting as if” is not truly acting. I ask to help access love in my heart, and when I do and am lifted up by the faith I feel, then it’s real. From that place, I move forward, but without expectations of a particular outcome.

Switching from Outcome to Relationship

Each of these questions brings to light the freedom that we can find in shifting from being attached to an outcome, to attaching to healthy, Divinely-inspired relationships.

Thanks Mark for such grounded, inspiring answers. My heart feels bigger just having read them. I hope you will hop on over and read about Mark’s work, especially his Heart of Money Transformational Journey.

This week, I’m choosing to shift from busy-bee hell-bent on making-it-happen Jen (who is very attached to outcome) to pausing to have a relationship with something larger than myself Jen. To act with and in love Jen. Wow, isn’t that a more spacious (and fun) place to be! My whole body  just relaxed.

These mini-retreats are so good - I shiver with awe at the aha’s that pop and sizzle around the room- and for me, they are a bit frustrating, because they are only one day. I want to keep going! I want to keep learning together!

Strength and Weakness – The Thin Line

One of my strength is loving. I love to love. It strengthens me. But love can pass over the thin line into grasping. I feel that when I finish a mini-retreat. I want to hold on.

Do you see a pattern?

Momentum = strength
Doing too much for too long = zap

Tenacity + persistence = strength
Inability to let go = zap

Eye/ear for detail= strength
Perfectionism so nothing gets started or finished or enjoyed–zap

Sensitivity= strength
Princess and the Pea = zap

Creative/ing=strength
Must Be Productive at All Moments = zap

Thanks for these brilliant strength/weakness comparisons from Fabeku, Living Savvy and Carol from the Strengths post.

The pattern I see in myself and my friends and readers?

What strengthens you can become what weakens you when you don’t know what enough is.

Your strengths need a container, a form, something to work within.

In my call with Mark Silver last week, Mark talked about how you have a path in life. Your strengths help you recognize your path. But having a path in life does not mean you will automatically follow it. You need help staying with it. Mark used the metaphor of wire tomato plant cages, the kind you use to hold up your very abundant but floppy tomato plants.

The cages support your tomato plants to grow to their full potential.

Conditions of enoughness do for your strengths what the cage does for the tomato plant.

COE’s give you rails for your path, something to bump up against, to lean on, to resist even. A way to know where you are.

Without COE’s, I’ve seen so many wondrously talented loving people’s desires disspate into resentment and resignation.

Back to Love

I’m feeling twitchy today because I forgot to set COE’s for myself for the Ohio retreat. I forgot because what should have taken 1 hour of travel time took 11, plus no luggage, plus the giant yuck of dealing with an incredibly rude and resigned United airlines. (At least, it is fun to blame somebody.)

But without my own COE’s, my strength of love slinks over into whining and grasping, and then can turn on me, “Did you really do a good job? Did you really help those women? Is this really the work you should be doing in the world?”

Without COE’s, your strengths cannot help you shape the life you want – or see the good life you already have.

So this is new understanding about COE’s and strengths is very exciting to me because I’ve been musing on enoughness as a key piece to a good life for years and writing about it and I’m almost ready to share what I wrote. Maybe tomorrow. To get a first dibs on my new book/video/kit thing, please get on my newsletter list today.

But for now, I’m just grinning and grinning at how knowing what is enough can help you stay with your strengths and your life’s path. Can help you feel free and full and alive. Can help you know your unstainable goodness again.

What do you think? As always, I’d love love love to hear.

Doing more of what strengthens you = Life Force More.

Doing more of what weakens you = Life Force Less.

Or so Yoda might say.

Knowing your strengths is  like having a Super Power – you have more energy, focus, the ability to cut through the noise and crap of life, a sort of inner shining clarity.

Your strengths are those things you want to do more of, build your work around, pay exquisite attention to, use to decide “yes this, but not that.” They lead you to, and keep you in touch with, your Great Work.

Your weaknesses, on the other hand (because there is always another hand, or so it seems), you want to have as little to do with those as possible. Because they take away your Super Powers. They weaken you. Zap.

At the Comfort Cafe, we are studying up on our strengths. Getting cozy with them. Intimate. We have a call today with the Super Powered Danielle LaPorte because she wrote a kick ass chapter about strengths in her new Fire Starter Session (that’s an affiliate link – I bought her product and love the first chapter a lot).

I’m extra jazzed about this month’s topic because lately, I have been playing to my weaknesses far too much.

One of my best strengths is my playfulness, my lightness, my humor.

It completely comes across in person. I am so funny and goofy when I create a retreat (well, at least I think so). But in other places and ways I present my work, I can lose the playfulness.

I can try too hard.

I told a story in Comfort Secrets for Busy Women (still have not forgiven my publisher for that crappy title) about biking up a big hill my first year at university. My boyfriend looked over at me, sweat pouring off me in the summer sun, and said, “Why don’t you shift to an easier gear?”

I said, “Isn’t the point to make it as hard as possible?”

Here is what nobody talks about: how our beliefs lead us toward our weaknesses like moths to a flame.

I believe trying hard is better. But trying harder weakens me and leads me away from many of my strengths. It’s my Kryptonite. Zap.

This week I’m on the look out (eyes peeled, arms akimbo) for the link between trying really hard = good work.

Because what really happens for me is trying really hard = getting snarled in significance, seriousness, overproducing and lack of focus. Zap.

Strengthen = lightness.

Weakens = trying too hard.

So my intention for this week (this life!) is to notice when I’m trying too hard and lighten up instead.

To keep dropping the story I should be doing more.

Because more and trying harder, they are best friends.

What about you?  I’d love to hear what beliefs lead you toward what weakens you. Or what beliefs lead you toward what strengthens you! Let’s talk!

Way to state the obvious, Jen.

One reverberation of my time with these wildly loving people is I discovered a huge hunger to live a more hand-crafted life.

It’s not that I live a McDonald’s reality TV sort of life right now. It’s pretty contemplative around here.

Still, the retreat showed me there is something new that wants to coming into being through me, something maybe quite a bit different, and yet the same. Something to do with this hunger.

Threads showed up during the week. I want to be brave and, gently, tug on them. See where they lead.

One thing I know: whatever is coming, it won’t have a landing page.

So This Week I Will

sit with this hand-crafted hunger. I will sit by the side of whatever was stirred in Kalamazoo. (Which means land of the boiling waters, which makes me smile as I certainly feel boiled and that I am boiling, in a very good way, and without boils, I’m happy to report).

I imagine lots of pausing to smell the lilacs and stare at the tulips and read the poetry from all the poets I spent last week with.

I feel such a commitment to whatever it is that is stirring in me and I feel the parts of me that are speedy and driven rallying for a fight, taunting me — “hand-crafted life, my ass,” they hiss. “Go feed some hungry people.”

Oh well, the conscious life is a life of holding the opposites.

We shall see.

How about you? What opposites will you hold this week?  What tulips will you stare at?  What hunger, what hand-crafted stirring, is beckoning to you?  As always, I cherish your comments and read them again and again.

My hip hurts.

Why do I write this blog? Or my e-zine? Who really cares?

And that digital thing I’m creating, who will read it?  The world doesn’t need more information.

Why do I live where I do? I want to move. Someplace bustling and exciting. Someplace different.

I want… I want…. argh!!!

2

I didn’t do yoga this morning because my yoga mat is in the washer because the dogs got it muddy.

I’m itchy and stuffy, a sure sign I have either eaten the dreaded gluten, too much sugar, too much dairy, eggs or all of the above.

Come to think of it, I did not do my yoga practice the last three mornings.

I spent yesterday driving three and half hours each way to take my daughter to a soccer game.

1+2 = light bulb!

I”m feeling all knotty and dissatisfied and snarky with my life because I’ve been neglecting my minimum requirements for self-care.

And just what are minimum requirements for self-care?

They are the rather ridiculously long name I gave to a very important concept in The Life Organizer.  MRSC’s are the basic things you need to stay in touch with yourself, to have a strong foundation to meet the rather constant challenges of life, and to ease the noise in your head.

Things like loving yourself with yoga, getting enough sleep, being outdoors in the teasing spring wind, saying no to a great invite cause you need time to putter alone. They aren’t sexy, they aren’t earth shattering, but without them, you tend to get all blurry and knotty and resentful.

You’re probably nodding your head as in “I know this.”

But do you know (you really want to think about this): When you neglect your minimums, not only do you get all pissy and resentful, you start thinking something out there has to change.

Or, even more tragic, that something in you is broken or bad and irredeemable.

When, really, so much of the time, it’s the simple lack of what you need to feel like you, to be resilient and resourceful and human, that is causing your suffering.

Did you know getting enough sleep will make you happier than making more money?

So how are your minimums today? (You can learn more from this free audio – part of the Find the Good Booster Pack – sign up for it at the top of the right hand column – just scroll up – and come to Ohio and we’ll explore this with the help of our community during the retreat.)

Stay tuned for what to do when you don’t feel like giving yourself your minimums and what to do when you find you can no longer go very long without your minimums. In other words, I feel a blog series coming on.

This week, I’m going to be paying a whole lot of curious attention to my minimums.

How do they can help me choose my life? How do they help me find the good, in myself and others?  Have they changed — perhaps I think I know what they are but it’s time for a bit of fresh exploration?

What about you?  Have you been taking care of your minimums lately?

If not, could you be buying your story that you are a permanent subscriber to KFUCKED, a station with a very strong signal, when in fact, you might just need some time by the sea?