Posts Tagged ‘Change’

Brilliant Gorgeous Talented Fabulous

Marianne Williamson spoke here in the San Francisco bay area this week.  She talked about asking the big questions in politics.  What are the radical questions, the ones a child might ask. Like why do 16,000 children die of hunger every day?  She got me looking at where I play small, hide my brilliance, and avoid the big questions.  What beliefs do I hold that allow me to  tolerate that death rate?  (someone else can take care of it; I’m too small). What is really hurting in my clients? (fear, despair, anger, doubt; needing to re-invent themselves as their “employer” rather than the corporation) Will I go there and address that pain for as long as it takes to heal and give its gifts? (I have done so.  I need to be vulnerable and strong, just like my clients). What’s small about my business and how I play the game? (When I’m one-one with clients I am willing to stand on the brink with them as they step into their unknown.  I don’t yet hold raw and vulnerable conversations with my audiences.  Now’s the time to step out and do that.) I choose out of this conversation to hold bigger conversations.  I will ask bigger questions of myself and my work and my clients and audiences, and stand for bigger answers and responses.  If not me, then who?  If not you, in your area of purpose and passion, then who?

Action
As I ask you these questions, I ask them of me as well.  What’s the next bigger arena that will call forth your greatness and use your purpose?  What’s your payoff for avoiding it?  What’s the price you and the world pay?  What story stops you? What is the first step for {!firstname}?  Take it this week.  If that step has you freeze, find a way to unfreeze.  Break it down into smaller steps, find colleagues, get a coach.

Thank you for your courage, purpose, passion, and your fears, concerns.  It’s all good.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’  Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to manifest the glory that is within us.  And as we let our light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” —Marianne Williamson

Do you realize you can declare that you have a clean slate at the beginning of the second half of the year?  I just worked on my 3rd quarter plan on  Eric Lofholm’s  sales protege call.  We’re at the beginning of the quarter.  It’s time to start fresh with the second half of the year. You may have done everything in your plan, or you may have veered off most of the time.   Give yourself permission to start with a clean slate.  Complete and let go of what you did or did not do up till now.  No amount of thinking, regretting, celebrating or sadness will make the future any better.  Just shake it like a tree, get all the apples out of it that you can to take with you into the future.  Those apples are the gifts of learning from the past six months.
Complete the past 6 months.  Use a ritual, declaration, celebration dinner, or whatever it takes.  Then breathe and let yourself become aware of what wants to be created next.

The next step is to assess where you are and picture where you want to be at the end of the time frame.  Do you want to be joyfully employed? Making another $10,000 or $100,000? Three sizes smaller?  Then work backwards. Who do you have to be to achieve those goals? What will you learn?  What results will you produce in July, Aug and September?  Each week? What will motivate you?  How will you handle breakdowns this time?  How will you keep your goals fresh in your mind?

Finally, make a plan.   Make it as detailed or general as you need to be successful.  For me, great detail just makes me crazy.  I like broad brush strokes.  For others, details are it.   The plan isn’t over until it’s on your calendar.

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion”. Thomas Hardy

Leave a comment – Did you declare a clean slate?  What is your planning process?

Idea #1 in the last blog was about you as a new and improved product.   Idea #2  is borrowed from sales; it is scripting.  OK, you might want to throw me out of your network for suggesting this, but hear me out.   The more people I talk to, the more I realize that my biggest challenge in making sales is your  biggest challenge in getting in front of people or having control of a call or interview.   My sales mentor, Eric Lofholhm says using scripts was the biggest boost to his sales than almost anything else.  I reluctantly started using scripts and found I was much more comfortable in presenting my services and asking for business.  Good people – sales scripts are noble, necessary, and are just creative, informative, and focused communication with an agreement and/or money included in it.  A script saves both you and the person you are presenting to time and energy – you have a clear direction.  Here are a few areas you might want to have a script ready to use:

1. When a HR person or recruiter calls you on Friday at 4 PM and you are not in shape to go through an interview
2. When you cold call an HR person,
3. hiring manager,
4. or someone about an informational interview
5. When you are asked a question in an interview that throws you off.  A one line mini script that gives you a moment to collect your thoughts
6. A script for each interview – the questions you’ll ask, the concerns you have
7. At the end of the interview – a powerful completion with what you say if you want the job, if you do not want the job, if you think you’d be better qualified in a different position….etc.

What else?  Write some here in the comments – even some samples.

You can download a free audio on sales from Eric Lofholm here  (https://m269.infusionsoft.com/go/7sec/Nancy) It will have many ideas you can transfer to interviewing, setting up interviews, and organizing yourself around presenting yourself as a service or product rather than an employee.

Get out of the box here, and borrow from other industries to find new approaches to the job search.

New Packaging

Amp Up Idea Number One: As the entrepreneur of your life (you must look after you, the days of the long term corporate job are gone with just a few exceptions) part of your job finding process is to package  yourself.  Most companies put out a new and improved version of their product every few years (or sooner for software!).  What’s the new and improved you?  Amp up with a product overhaul.

What is your core product?  Consider what you love to do, the part of your work that makes your heart sing and the time fly by.  What is that?  Why do you love it so?  Why would an employer be lucky to have you – what benefits will they receive from buying you?  If you were to look at all of your skills, how does a combination of them enhance your core product?  In what new ways can you combine them in order to come out with the new and improved you?

You can take courses to add a new skill.  You can get a group of supportive colleagues and friends, and brainstorm up new job descriptions that combines some of your interests and skills in new and improved ways.   You can take your so-called shortcomings (”too old”, “too young”, “too long out of area”) and flip them into assets (”experienced”, “longevity”, “energetic”, “coachable”, “out getting other experience to bring back to this area”).

OK, let’s hear about some new improved you’s!

Miracle in the Sun

Over the last several weekends I’ve planted 70 flowering and vegetable plants.  I watch their brilliance emerge as leaves and flowers, created out of the raw materials of earth, air, and sunlight – it’s so amazing!  Every plant draws on the same materials.  So where do these little seeds get the green, yellow, pink, purple and blue?  I have to go to the store to buy those colors.  How do they design rose petals, cherry blossoms, tomato leaves and their aromas, all from the same materials?  And soon the most fantastic brilliance of all will emerge- round, red, ripe tomatoes; crisp green beans; orange, green, and yellow squash, all full of sugars, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. What intelligence in the soul of a plant! Each has its own unique emerging brilliance.

People have unique brilliance – each uses the same raw materials of food, water, sunlight, air.  Each of us processes these materials through our set of genes, beliefs, desires and talents to create our own amazing lives- full of grace, beauty, challenge, and hardships.   We are such powerhouses of change and transformation – food, water, and oxygen are transformed into bodies that are tall, short, blond, dark, light, muscular, frail, and smart in a variety of ways.  Ideas, beliefs, thoughts, morals, values, and vision are transformed  into art, buildings, software, mathematics, plastic, pollution, walking, cell phones, games, swimming, driving, war, peace, acceptance, intolerance……!  What a masterpiece!  What a kaleidoscope of expression, of brilliance.  What creators we are.  The caterpillar metamorphasis is astounding, yet we do even more astounding transformations every day!   Celebrate your brilliance!

I met today’s topic three times this week.  I ran into my dear
friend at Home Depot where I was buying yet more flowers,
vegetables and soil amenities. What a chance meeting.  Her form of
creation is the business she runs – bringing out the brilliant
marketing in solopreneurs.  She shared that she realized she could
not continue to create from the old ideas and inspirations, even
though they were less than a couple years old.  She had to create
from who she was now, what she was learning now.  Always generating
from here forward.

Then Sue Walden wrote the same theme in her ezine.  She was
preparing to do her one day workshop, “Living Beyond Your Limits”
in the UK and found that she did not have her folder and handouts.
She said,  Why not re-create it?  Times have changed and I am not
the same person I was when I designed it 2 years ago.  I wonder
what it would look like now?  She did re-create it and it’s better
than ever.

Finally, Patrick Ryan wrote about change in his mon thy ezine,
“Awakened Wisdom”,  He says the way things are tend to stay the
same, homeostasis.  Change needs to reckon with that force – not be
deterred.

I’ve been working Emerging Brilliance for 10 years now.  I’ve made
incremental changes over the years – and I am very different than I
was 10 years ago in my business.  Yet it feels like a bigger change
is upon me.   I asked myself, what if I close it down and let my
expression in the world re-emerge?  What would show up?  The first
thing that showed up is, “you can’t shut down!”  “You’re branded,
you’re established.”  “Keep it going the same – you’re too busy to
change.” The thing that is persisting, in this case my business,
really does have its own inertia of existence.  Yet what wants to
emerge now that has no room to exist while I busily continue
business as usual?   What old programs, ideas, services are
persisting?  What brilliance is waiting to bloom and just needs
some sunshine and room to grow?

Action
Take a look at your own life. We’re in a time of upheaval locally,
nationally, and globally.  Change is upon us.  What changes are
calling you forth, are demanding attention?  What is it time to
end?  To begin?   Who do you need on your team to make the change
happen?  Who do you need to be?  What’s stopping you?  Great!  Now
take the most inspired, appropriate action to allow and embrace
this change.

Nancy Montier
www.emergingbrilliance.com
Nancy@emergingbrilliance.com
510-886-7374
19053 Helton Street
Castro Valley, CA  94546

I’m not saying anything earthshaking when I write that happiness is a choice and it doesn’t come from outside as much as the advertisers and transformation gurus want us to believe that it does. “Buy this sexy car; great hair color; get your lashes thick, long, with no clumps and then you will be happy. Get the relationship, the promotion, the wealth, the fit body, then you will be happy.” Our culture and language habits make happiness appear to be achieved by accomplishment or product. This is like people believing the sun revolves around the earth because that’s the evidence. Happiness doesn’t revolve around things or accomplishment. Things and accomplishment revolve around happiness and joy. Watch babies learn to walk. They don’t deprive themselves of happiness until walking is achieved. In fact, they’d take a lot longer to learn if they weren’t happy. I was doing sit up/ crunches yesterday and I didn’t feel all that happy so I didn’t feel like doing them. Then I decided just to laugh as I counted out my allotment of crunches, and it was easy to laugh! It was contagious and kept itself going and lifted my mood for the rest of the day! Hah! I didn’t have to buy a new car, get my hair colored with the latest and greatest, lose that extra weight, or solve global warming. In the moment, in the present, in the now, we can choose.

According to my friend and Law of Attraction Coach, Noelle Sharp, ” …You ALWAYS get back what you put out; NO EXCEPTIONS!” So put out joy, fun, whimsy, glee, laughter, chuckles, jubilance, happiness, smiles, giggles, jokes, cheer, ecstasy, playfulness. Noelle is the happiest person I know – she watches her thoughts and nearly always allows the thoughts that feel good, and discards the thoughts that don’t. She does this in the midst of challenges that would put many of us on a downward spiral of despair because we forget we can choose.

What on earth good does it do to dumb down our joy because the world is in a pickle, a spouse is mad or we haven’t succeeded in that goal yet???!!! Eric Butterworth writes, “At the very time when we need more light, we reduce the flame of jubilance, and walk in darkness.” How that applies to today’s time – let’s turn up the flame of jubilance, my dear friends! That will turn YOUR economy around!

To turn up the flame find one small thing to be grateful for – and then another. Also, we can recall and talk of successes and what works. Simply smiling or laughing changes your energy.

“One of the great discoveries of human unfoldment is that happiness and joy are not effects, but causes…The happy person is forever encountering things…to vindicate his happy spirit.” Eric Butterworth

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
Helen Keller (1880 – 1968)

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.”
Roy M. Goodman

“When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.”
Nicole Kidman, in The Scotsman

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”
Eykis

Action
OK, go ahead and laugh. Make up a belly laugh. I was struggling with writing this article – so I just started laughing. Much easier to have ideas flow in a joyful mood. I also invite you to see if you can make others happy. Notice if it’s their choice or you can force it on them. Just “don’t worry, be happy” this week.  And tell me what you discovered, OK?
Peace,
Nancy