Spiritual awareness: Looking for “the way”

Often, when I start working with a new coaching client, they are looking for “the way.”  The way to get more clients, the way to feel more confident, the way to less overwhelm, the way to take better care of themselves or even the way to accept credit cards from their clients.

And, I remember when I hired one of my first and most expensive coaches, I hired her to learn the way, her way, to get new clients.  I paid her many thousands of dollars and did not learn the way.  I learned the hard and expensive way that asking to learn the way is not the best question – for anything from getting new clients to improving my yoga to cooking a delicious meal.  The way is different for every person.  My pricey coach’s way was not my way.  My way is not your way.

An effective approach to finding your way involves:

  • setting a clear intention: getting new clients, improving yoga or cooking a delicious meal
  • noticing where my excitement and energy is as it pertains to that intention
  • following that excitement, energy
  • course-correcting as the excitement and energy shifts and I get new feedback
  • Staying aware of the intention, the excitement and energy and the feedback until I have reached my intention

The trick to this far more effective approach involves not being swayed by thinking someone else has a better answer for you than you have for yourself.  By following your intuition, instinct, knowing, excitement and energy in each moment, you will always have the very best way for you.  If you try to follow someone else’s way, even a way that worked brilliantly for them, you have veered from your own unique compass.

Once we begin to recognize that following a formula is far less effective than being fully present in the moment, we begin to tap into the pure magic available to us in that moment.

I would love to hear your stories of following your way in the moment . . .

 

Self acceptance: For the love of simplicity

In the past week, I’ve had two people tell me about business opportunities that excited them.  They wanted me to get involved because both of them involve network marketing.  One involved a coaching product and another a health product.  The products interested me.  And, I’m looking for additional revenue streams that complement coaching to share with Thriving Coaches.   

Yet the complexity and vagueness of the business model turned me off.  If I don’t understand, how can I share it with anyone?

And, then I realized that I needed to just walk away.  

One of my core values involves simplicity.  Maybe others enjoy complexity.  Those business opportunities would be best for them.

And how beautiful is that?  No one has to be wrong.  I gravitate to what is simple and clear.  Someone else gravitates to what is complex and intricate.

I love having my core values guide me . . .

The more I grow personally and the more I support my coaching clients in their growth process, the more I notice that the most powerful thing we can do to creat our most fulfilling life:  unabashedly love and accept ourselves.  The more I live from my strengths, core values and quirky passions, the more I love my life and fill my own cup.  And, then I have more to share with those who’s lives I touch.

What a beautiful, clear compass to guide me . . .  

Spiritual clarity: From the abundance and beauty of hollyhocks

Recently, I heard my spiritual mentor, Michael Beckwith, say, “Supply is infinite and invisible.  Money and things are not supply.  They are evidence of supply.  Just like an apple is evidence of supply from the apple tree.  Picking an apple does not represent loss of supply, just as circulating money doesn’t represent loss of supply.”

I know that what he says is Truth.  And yet, I sometimes find myself behaving contrary to what I know.  Even though I absolutely know there is an infinite supply of apples or pears or cucumbers or whatever I need in this moment, I may hoard or ration or worry about eating the apple.

As I drove to the grocery store today – to get more apples, of course – I noticed the most exquisite, red and pink hollyhock flowers growing in a neighbor’s yard.  As I enjoyed their abundance and beauty, I had to laugh to myself as I realized that those hollyhocks do not spend a minute hoarding, rationing or worrying.  They simply grow into the very best version of themselves that they can with the resources they have in each moment.  Ah, that our human lives could be so simple and grace-filled . . .

That is my desire for us today: that we allow ourselves to be “as the lilies of the field, toiling not . . . ,” that we allow ourselves to be as the hollyhocks of my neighbors yard and to receive the grace and bounty of infinite and invisible supply without hoarding, rationing or worrying . . .  

Affirmative prayer: Radiant Drop of Oneness

Today in yoga class, I heard my teacher say, “This is not about pushing more, but rather opening into . . .”

Ah, such is so much of life when I notice myself trying harder and pushing more rather than simply surrendering and allowing. In those radiant moments when I truly know that I already am everything and that I already have everything that I seek, then I have nothing to seek. I can simply take a deep breath and relax into all of the love and abundance that I am!

Radiant Drop of Oneness

I am a radiant drop in the
ocean of oneness.

I am one with God.
I am all that God is.
All I desire and need is mine,
easily and effortlessly –
as I am willing to receive
the love and abundance
of me, of the ocean of oneness.

I am one with God, with good.
I am all that God is.
I am a radiant drop in the
ocean of oneness.

I am love, power, beauty and mystery.
I am love, joy, peace and hope.
I am love, brilliance, health and wealth.
I am love and abundance.
I am God expressed.

I am a radiant drop in the
ocean of oneness.

Affirmative prayer: Today I am willing

Thy will, not my will.
I am willing to be willing . . .

Breathing out my limited notions.
Breathing in Your expansive reach.

Breathing out my attachments.
Breathing in Your absolute abundance.

Breathing out my resistance.
Breathing in the fullness of Your allowing.

Breathing out feeling stuck.
Breathing in Your ever-present flow.

Breathing out feeling separate.
Breathing in the Oneness of all energy.

Breathing out feeling alone.
Breathing in reaching out . . .

Today, I am willing to do Thy will . . .