You know, one of those days in which you wonder, “What is it I do?” And you bemoan not becoming a nuclear physicist because at least they know how to split atoms.

One of those days in which all your plans, which just a moment ago were so shiny and promising, suddenly resemble false fronts on a movie set.

One of those days when you calculate how little money you can live on.

Otherwise known as a farm-fantasy day. Or move-to-the-ashram day. Or find-a-cozy-cave-in-Greece day.

You are going to give it all up for the simple life.

Give up the struggle, the effort, the bustle, the doing, whatever it is that feels so hard right now.

Yurts are always part of this fantasy. As well as spaciousness and time to do what you want. Shelling peas also shows up for me, not sure why.

There is a desire for wholeness and rest in the farm fantasy – you want to heed that.

There is also a desire to be rescued, to not have to be a grown up anymore – you don’t want to heed that.

Hold the desire for spaciousness, living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal in one hand and

in the other,

hold the exhilarating, humbling truth that choosing your life is damn hard work, putting yourself out there takes a huge amount of courage (whether selling your paintings or putting up a profile on Match.com), not to mention brain glucose, and being conscious,in general, is rewarding, sure, but also very, very taxing.

Farm fantasies are fun as long as you don’t confuse them with finally being safe. Finally being enough.

Watch a BBC period drama, read a historical novel, churn some butter and get back to putting one foot in front of the other. You aren’t doing anything wrong – it’s hard, it’s scary, and you are so not alone.

P.S. Non-farm fantasy retreat this weekend at Kripalu with me. You get to give up the struggle while staying awake. That’s good stuff.

P.P.S. Links: Living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal, enough.

Related posts:

1. Choose Your Life Mondays- The Hand-Crafted Edition
2. Desire Vs. Mood
3. Drumming

Sometimes our business is doing well – or well enough – but WE aren’t doing so well. 

The light has dimmed.  You’re not fed, fired up, vivified by your business any more.  I call it losing your mojo.

Maybe you’re not working in the way you work best or growing your business in a way that’s not a fit for you.  Or maybe your mojo got lost in some other way: a loss or life change.  A new phase of your own evolution. Who knows?

You can get your mojo back, but first you have to know you’ve lost it!  Here are the red flags that pop up:

You’re not your lively, energetic self.

This one’s sneaky.  Maybe you’ve just been busy, right?  Or it’s the change of season?  Too much fun? [Jen's note: neglecting your minimum requirements for self-care?]  That’s not it.

The lost-my-mojo weariness shows up at the end of the day: your work drained you, it didn’t energize you.  It’s also there on Monday morning:  you’re not stoked to get back to it.  And there’s just a certain spark that you may or may not remember, but that IS you, and is just not around.

It doesn’t feel easy.

Whether it’s a proposal, a meeting with a prospective client, or delivering the work you promised, the work lacks a certain sense of ease and rightness.  Things come together in funky ways, not serendipitous ways.  Or they don’t come together.

Struggle is the hallmark of mojo-less work. [Jen's question to Michele: what about when you are stretching to do something new that is scary and hard? That's not the same thing, right?]

You’re not drawn to reach out or grow the business.

The second warning sign shows up when someone asks you what you’re doing to market or grow your business.  Maybe you’re still taking a lot of action, but it’s not effortless or inspired.  It’s not coming naturally.  And if you’re like many people, because you’re not inspired, you’re not actually DOING enough marketing.

My marketing has always been easy and fun for me [Jen: oh god Michele, really? That's make me like you a little less]:  I write articles like 10 Spiritual Mistakes I’ve Made in Business or interview my favorite authors.

The new opportunities that come to you are ho-hum at best.

The lack of inspiration for marketing – warning sign #3 – leads to this one:  because your outreach isn’t inspired, you’re not driving your own new opportunities.  You’re not reaching out – either literally or energetically – and connecting with new projects and people who light you up. You may be taking what you get, and that’s a bad sign.  Further, notice whether the things that are coming to you are more and more exciting or less and less so.

In my corporate work, I noticed that new opportunities came, but I liked each one less than the last.  Still, it was work, right?  They wanted it, so I should do it?  That’s a lousy feeling, and one it took me a while to recognize. 

You’re not excited to talk about your work.

I don’t want you to be a yakking narcissist who can’t shut up about your work.  Instead, I want you watching for this warning sign:  when someone asks you what you do, you mutter. It’s the “mutter”, coming from someone who was, in the past, confident and successful in their work, that warns of a precipitous drop in mojo in that person’s work.  

Before I shifted my focus to corporate training and executive coaching, I was always excited to say that I helped business owners reduce stress and increase profit by integrating their spiritual path into their business. But when I got off track, not so much. Bad sign.

Now What To Do about this Loss of Mojo?

I can hear you now:

Great, Michele.  Thanks a ton.  You just let me know I’ve lost my mojo.  I had a feeling, but now I’m sure.  But NOW WHAT?  I’ve got a business to run, here.”

Me too, me too.  Losing your mojo is, at best… well, INCONVENIENT.  But getting it back is really, really worthwhile.  I mean, it’s your vitality we’re talking about.  Your verve.  Your connection to life, and quite possibly to the Divine.

Sure was, in my case.  God started to feel like a nag, really, because every time I tapped into my spiritual connection, it gave me warnings I was off track.  Rather than adjusting course – because I thought I needed the money for my mortgage, my nanny, my next travel adventure – I adjusted my relationship to spirit. I shut it down.  Hhhhhuuuuggghhh.  It’s SO embarrassing to admit that. [Jen's note: Right there with you friend! Another post perhaps?]

But I’d rather tell you about it than keep it a secret, if it will save you from the same fate.  

The good news is, you can get your mojo back easier than you think, now that you know it’s gotten lost.  And since your mojo is your authenticity, the best of who you are, and your source of energy and courage for your business, it will only do your business good to revive it.

Stay tuned for answers on how to get your mojo back… tomorrow!

Michele Lisenbury Christensen helps women embody joy, ease, profit and love. She is co-creator of the 12 Elements of Power, a template for integrating masculine and feminine power for sustainable, soulful success.  She blogs here. She’s also one of the most smart, loving, and spiritually attuned people I  know.

Related posts:

1. Lost and Found are the New Black
2. Long Lost Me
3. Freedom From Self-Improvement: No More Fear-Based Marketing

Photo by Benimoto

First, a Finding the Good Wish

Wishing you

strength to love the curl of the question mark

around your heart

patience to wait for the stirring of your confusion to reveal

your next leap and

most of all,

the humility to listen to what wants to be heard.

And Now a Thought about Question Marks

We waited two decades for it. Clarrisa Pinkolas Estes, the esteemed author of the ground-breaking “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” is releasing her new work through a series of live classes offered by the amazing Sounds True.

Yes, it took almost twenty years for her next great work. And here is what she said about the gestation period:

What you’ve heard over the years about my having disappeared and gone underground to work and write is true,” says Dr. Estés. “When people ask where the heck I’ve been and why I so seldom come out when called by the “clattering world,” I often respond by saying that one can’t fulfill one’s calling by being called away. Rather one fulfills one’s calling by filling up… by studying, thinking, listening, looking at, living in the layers of life beyond the collective ones. Then . . . one can pour outwardly again.”

When I read Dr. Estes’ words, I started to wonder:

How do you discern between what Seth Godin calls “shipping” – getting the work out the door – and priceless diving-underground-time, away from the clattering world?

The need to fill up is built into the creative life, yet filling up time can so easily slip into not creating because you aren’t “ready.”

On the other hand, not taking time to fill up can leave you creatively bankrupt.

But how can you take time off? People around you are “shipping” everyday. They are creating so many cool partnerships and products and making millions.

And anyway, you need to post on your blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

So where would the time and space to fill up come from? You’ll be left behind!

So, is it time to ship or time to fill up? And how do you know?

What I do: If there is question mark curled around  my heart, I ask it if it wants to ship or go underground.

I turn to a community of honest peeps to help me see if I am hiding rather than filling up underground.

What about you? How do you know whether it’s time to retreat and rest, or if it’s time to ship? Please comment as this is dear to my question marked heart and I would really like your input, questions, and ideas.

Related posts:

1. About Ordering
2. Being Alive: Such Tender Weirdness
3. Kindly Finding Yourself

Wait, need one

more.

Do I mean it?

Yes, yes I believe I do.

Then here I go: leap

with love

and surrender

by my side.

No holding back, no plan B.

Oh sweet friend, come watch with me.

Let us see

what wondrous net appears.

Related posts:

1. Kindly Finding Yourself
2. Finding the Heart of my Art
3. Blah Blah Blah

As a child, I remember many a summer evening, lounging on the floor of my uncle Walter’s house in Bedford, Indiana, listening to my dad and Walter and Uncle Pryce talk business.

No. Not talk, pontificate. Extol. Preach.

The theme was always the same: be in business for yourself. Business was god. With a small g.

But still, god. (Yes, we went to church, too.)

When I got my first job out of film school, as an assistant to a literary agent in LA, my dad said, “Why did you get a job? I thought you wanted to be a writer?“

Oh no, Dad was not a patron of the arts. He believed that I would make more money working for myself than working for the Man.

My Dad did not have in his possession the statistics that most writers earn poop.

This week I feel like I returned to my family roots by writing about being self-employed.

It may be a new direction for me, working with self-employed women (and maybe men, I like men, I live with two of them and they are very lovely) around the inner work of being self-employed.

I’m feeling such a nice tickling about this idea.

In the meantime, in case you missed them, here are some great things to know about – not just for the self-employed.

Swooning

I’ve only been reading Danielle LaPorte for a few months. Oh the grief over all the juicy good I have missed. She’s sexy, truthful and loving. Good stuff.

Swigging Tequila

I sometimes paint myself into a corner with my writing, feeling I have to be serious or comforting or… Why do I tell myself that? That’s a topic for another post.

I love reading the very naughty Naomi Dunford’s very very very popular blog.

(I wrote a guest post this week. I don’t really swig tequila. It’s a metaphor. Or a joke. Or both. )

Admitting Mistakes

I’m putting on the Big Virtual Retreat next week. I made some marketing mistakes promoting it. I feel bad about them. Here is where I talk with the uber smart and very grounded Dave Navarro about what I learned doing this project.

Do I really make these faces?

You know Molly Gordon’s brilliance, right? If not, you are missing out big time.  I made a video blog post for her and you have to got to see the very odd expression the video froze on.  I laughed out loud when I clicked over.

Everybody loves Christine!

Christine Kane and I met when we did an event together a few years back. I fell in love with her immediately, everybody does. But what has made me sit up and take notice is how she has gone from struggling artist to paying off her mortgage!  Read my post about depletion, and learn more about the amazing Ms. Kane!

Hungry Ghosts, Part 2

Where the sexy sharp ass Jennifer Howard tells you how everything is really going to be alright. This woman has a brain and half. Plus she’s intuitive! Plus she’s really really cool.

I hope all these goodies help you remember that life is a wondrous game for playing and failure is just another label.

Related posts:

1. The Dark Side
2. Am I in the Business of Self-Improvement?
3. Comfort During Fearful Times: Fear Reflects How Much You Care