You may not know this about me, but when I’m interested in something, I become a master researcher. I want to know all about it. I troll the internet, research people who have and are doing what I’m interested in, learn their stories and map their successes and challenges. I read their blogs and books and learn what experience has given them to share. I find the information inspiring, like a bolstering catalytic force that strengthens my YES and helps me move forward feeling encouraged and connected to a pool of similarly inspired people.

So this past year I got interested in people who are successful in their particular area of focus.

For example, what’s a painter who makes $200,000+/year doing that’s different than one who makes $40,000? Especially if they more or less spend the same amount of time painting.

Although I focused on people who do all sorts of things (painting, music, counseling, writing, photography), and by NO MEANS consider one’s income to be the only measure of success, I found the same thing across the board. There was 1 magic formula everyone I learned about did and a few other things I found that were pretty darn similar.

The magic formula is so simple it’s like duh, I knew that already but clearly we don’t all know this otherwise there’d be more ROCKING IT and less HOW DO I MAKE THIS WORK? in people’s lives. It boils down to this: You have to fully and consistently show up for what you’re doing.

I don’t mean you have to slave 7 days a week. Nobody I learned about did that. In fact, from what I could find, every single one of them has a consistent schedule they keep to and really show up for, and with the exception of a few type-A folks, this schedule looks like WORK when you’re set to work and DO WHATEVER (except keep working) when you’re set to personal time. And, deep breath for you night owls, the majority of people’s schedules began at 6:30 or 7 in the morning, many of whom use this morning time for art and get to business around 10ish.

So what would it be like if you actually, whole-heartedly SHOWED UP for your life? What if you gathered all the energy you spend in doubt, questioning, confusion, or disorganization and harnessed it into engaged creation and action? Imagine how rocking your business, creativity, relationships, etc. could be if you really showed up for them. It’s potentially like you could walk into a whole different life!

When I was in Hawaii last month my honey and I, both artsy entrepreneurs, got to talking about the obviousness and simplicity of the magic formula and decided to create an experiment we’re doing now through Summer Solstice called The Show Up Experiment. Perhaps you’d care to join us?

The experiment is this: We’ve each set a certain weekly work schedule for ourselves that’s considerably more than what we’ve each been doing but that’s still totally realistic. During “work hours” we’re only going to work on the 1-2 main dishes in our creative-business lives and everything else will happen outside of those hours.

Simple. Clear. Easy. Do-able. And way more organized and efficient than trying to cover every base every day… which we all know is a form of sabotage as it leads to everything being done half-assed and you feeling frazzled and exhausted.

I’m super excited about this experiment and what fantastic possibilities will come of it (fingers crossed!!) so I thought I’d share it with you because maybe, just maybe, some part of your life is calling for a Show Up Experiment as well??

We needed strengthening with creativity and business, and perhaps you do too, but maybe your life needs attention with health or relationships or __? Whatever it is, I can say with certainty from my semi-obsessive researching of the past year, that IF you have an area like this, you’re RIPE for a Show Up Experiment and NOW’S a great time to create one and step into it. Seriously, do it! You have nothing to loose and everything to gain. Carpe diem!!!

ps. Showing up is The Foundation of the magic formula, but it wasn’t the only thing. So the “few other things I found ” will come in next week’s post. Stay tuned!

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Here’s an entertaining and illuminating dose of cause and effect inspiration to give you a BOOST!

I’m on the Big Island right now in the middle of a 3-week vacation… a treat I don’t think I’ve had since the 90s when Phish was delicious enough for me to leave my digs for this extended of a time. I’m glad I had solid, road trip fun in the 90′s but going over a decade without a decently long vacation is CRAZY, especially when I soooo enjoy cultures, like Spain or Italy, that truly enjoy life and take time off to revel in it and play… like get 4+ weeks off a year in addition to the entire country taking 5 weeks off in the summer. That’s living, right?

This past week I’ve been in Volcano with my honey, who’s building a cabin here. He hasn’t built a home before and now that he’s got the foundation and platform up, he’s run into a design roadblock because there are SO many options of what he could build and his mind is swimming with possibilities.

So a few days ago we walked down the road and met up with a man named Kenneth who’s a master carpenter. On the particular road we went to, Kenneth’s building or completely remodeling several cabins and homes and they are GORGEOUS. The difference in the design and energy of the places he’s built from what is typically built is like night and day. So, naturally I was curious about him and once we had completed our house design discussion, I started asking him about himself and how he learned carpentry so well. He said a lot, but the big take away, like ding-ding-ding are you listening? Life is speaking to you!!, was this:

If you can visualize it you can build it. Building is just one board at a time. If you can see it ahead of time, then you more or less know what to get and you can pull boards out of a pile, put them up, and the vision happens. Of course you’re going to make changes along the way, but if the main vision is there first, the changes will be fine.

I don’t know about you, but I’m SO OVER tiring myself out with trying to move things forward before I’m clear and/or when they’re not flowing. I’m not promoting dragging one’s feet, but running around being busy just to feel like you’re doing something before you’ve officially sat your arse DOWN to get clear seems like the continuation of some horrible game we had to play in school or at jobs with type-A bosses where the whole game was to “look busy” instead of “be present and purposeful”. Blah!

Clearly this is one of Mercury’s messages to me right now as it was honey to my creative ears, and if you’re reading this perhaps it is to you too. So let’s all sloooow down a bit and take the time and have the focus to create and land our visions. When that’s in place, creation flows… and as we all know, creative flow RAWKS!

More and more I find myself doing business coaching. It seems I really have a knack for applying my creative, analytical, and intuitive skills to other’s projects and inspiring-encouraging-supporting them to take their work to the next level of development.

So it’s fair to say that I have tricks up my sleeve and today I’m going to let you in on one of them.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel!

A lot of what you’re going around in circles with on your business creation process is something someone else has already figured out and is doing well. In fact, it’s probably something many people have figured out how to do well. So, why exhaust yourself when you can learn from them?

One of the top assignments I give to folks I work with when they come to me with an area they want to develop that they feel stuck with is to research 3-5 people who already do well what they want to develop, take what resonates from what others are doing, and try it on for a period of time.

This works for broad topics like getting a general understanding of how someone has succeeded in a business you’re considering moving into. And it’s just as effective for learning specifics like how to create a great but simple logo or how to stop loosing leads and move prospective clients through an organized process that leads to completed work you both feel good about.

And the proof’s in the pudding. People who resist doing this typically come back to our next session right where they were but feeling more annoyed because they “don’t know what to do”. Folks who do take this project on usually come back with lights in their eyes excited that they now see a way, or many ways, that had previously been hidden from them.

Despite whatever you may’ve been told from the so-called “no pain, no gain” style of wisdom, life doesn’t have to be hard. Creation and business don’t have to be baffling. And exhaustion and overwhelm are not required counterparts to your creative and business growth.

But our minds like to make things complicated and whoever you’ve been up to this moment is so deeply used to the type of mental patterning that’s lead to your particular way of thinking about and approaching life that you don’t even question it. In fact, you probably think your approach is working. But it isn’t if you’re going around in circles, wondering about the same thing repeatedly, or feeling overwhelmed or frustrated.

So part of making dreams real is whipping out your pragmatism sword and slicing through the circular thinking, helplessness stories, and distraction/sabotage habits that keep you stuck and dropping some step-by-step action into your life so you can move yourself forward.

Ready?

Great.

Here’s exactly what I might do with you in a session that you can now do on your own to empower yourself.

Start with getting clear. What do you want to work on? Usually folks come to me with 1-2 main goals and a variety of smaller areas of focus that support their main goals. Write it out.

Then research 3-5 people who are rocking what you want to develop and let them be your mentors. Read their website content. Delve deep into their Facebook page if they have one. Read their blog. Watch their videos. As you’re doing all this, take notes on what you find (like make a list with bullet points). You’ll probably find it incredibly inspiring and all sorts of ideas and possibilities will flood into your mind and get your creative juices flowing.

Take what you’ve learned and create a step-by-step plan. If, theoretically, we were in a coaching session and I gave you this task, I’d ask you to come back to the next session with your organized finds and then we’d create a step-by-step plan for you to work these new pieces into your life. Having a coach assist you with this is nice, like beyond nice, but you can unquestionably be your own coach – you just have to keep your pragmatism sword close and bust it out anytime you find yourself going in a direction other than forward because that’s a big part of what we coaches do.

Keep it simple, clear, and realistically do-able. When you’re making your action plan, keep one eye on the horizon of where you want to go and the other on the simple here/now steps. For instance, instead of saying “make a new bio video” break it down into the steps needed to do this, of which there are probably at least 5. It’s easy and satisfying to complete a little step and it helps you gain a sense of forward movement. On the flip side, feeling overwhelmed and stuck is often a byproduct of people not breaking down their goals into small enough bites to feel do-able. So, take the time to get organized enough that you can both define what you want to create and the smaller steps it takes to reach each of your goals.

GIT-’ER-DONE. Having goals and being filled with immense creative energy is fantastic, but when are you going to do all of this? I can’t say it to you any more straight than this: If you want a new result, you have to do the work. This is the moment where ideas and inspiration become action and discipline and commitment separate the dreamers from the creators. Which do you want to be? Almost everyone says a creator but when push comes to shove, carving out and committing to the time it takes to actually DO the work is the place I most consistently see folks struggle. But let me break it down for you like this with a slice of my pragmatism sword: creation is like exercise – thinking about it and doing it lead to really different results but they bizarrely take very similar amounts of energy. So if you really want to be a creator, which if you’ve read this far you clearly do, drop your excuses and distractions and SHOW UP for your life’s creation work on a regular (daily) basis and you’ll soon be on the horizon that was once off in the distance.

You just got a killer free coaching session! See, life LOVES you:) Have fun moving forward, shining bright, and being a creative rock star with this!

It’s in the name. Right there. Inviting our generosity. Reminding us what a gift GIVING is! Luring us out of our shells of familiarity and calling us to e x t e n d ourselves to people and the world around us. And to feel welled-up with gratitude for having opportunities to BE our generous, loving selves.

That’s how we could choose to approach this time of Thanksgiving – to see it as an opportunity to open our hearts to life. And life is certainly profoundly generous with each of us. The heaps of blessings that pour into our lives every day is practically beyond the scope of comprehension. So how beautiful that we have a particular day to honor this divine abundance that we get to call life.

I’m all for the receiving the nourishment of life through the pleasure of eating, but I think the direction we’re being guided to move in is to open our hearts to life, and not just to gorge ourselves silly;)

But sometimes we’re hesitant to be as generous and giving as we truly want to be. We fear that the person we’re extending ourselves to won’t reciprocate or recognize our action so we hold back.

But the point of giving isn’t to get a response that validates our power and goodness. The point is that through the very act of giving we validate ourselves through generating and living the positive energies that express our true nature – love, generosity, joy, etc.

Whether you get a response from your giving or not, people ARE picking up on what you generate. They can feel you, even if they can’t quite put words to it. I mean, just think of how many times a 5 minute or less interaction with a positive person has literally turned your entire day around for the better? And then how many people you affected because of your brightened energy?

The positive ripple effect is so great, you’ll likely never know the full impact your generous spirit has on the world. And that’s completely ok because the reward has already come to you through getting to have the opportunity to be the generous, giving, wildly loving being you are.

So take a risk this week and be unusually generous in a way that helps you grow your heart a bit more open. You know what you already feel comfortable doing – what’s beyond that? Perhaps…

Tell someone you know how much they mean to you and why. Have a nature ceremony in the woods or on the beach giving thanks to the Earth for all Her abundant care. Spend time with someone who would find it sweetly meaningful to be with you. Go to you local bus stop, grocery store, seniors home, or public transit station and make music, art, or share your creative spirit in some way that gives people a boost. Wrap your arms around yourself and tell yourself how much you love yourself as you look in the mirror!

There is no greater gift you can give than that of your shining spirit… and there is nothing that will make you feel better than to give this.

So much love to each of you this ThanksGIVING!!

I’ve drunk deep of the Life is FOR Us Kool-Aid and am fully on board with the perspective that everything that happens is to support and aid us.

But, depending on which filter we’re perceiving life through, it doesn’t always appear that way. But that’s on us to change how we look at things, not what we’re looking at.

Take, for example, my two sweet friends who have been staying with me for awhile now as they’re looking for a place to live. They’re incredibly diligent in their search but, so far, keep getting turned down. Their feeling, because they understandably want their next place to appear, is that this is frustrating and disappointing. My view, because I’ve been in their shoes several times, is that the right place already exists for them and WILL come… it’s just not available yet.

We all (myself fully included) do this: we want things and we knowingly or unknowingly create expectations based on what we want and when and how we want it. But guess what? The great mystery has it’s own way and timing.

So, what if it IS all happening perfectly? What if the person who dumped you is creating an opening for unknown blessings, empowered discernment, and something so much better to come. The weight you gained is giving you an opportunity to re-stoke your fire through doing some new physical activity that’s more fun than what you’d been up to before bringing increased joy to your life. The boss who keeps harshing you out is there to inspire you to follow through the business idea you’ve been putting off.

You get the picture.

Lemons… Lemonade.

So let’s say that you’d rather not feel so stressed, tense, and/or anxious about the circumstances of your life. What are you going to do?

The model most of us were shown was to live like fear-based control-freaks doing our best to manipulate for what we want while hoping others still perceive us as easy-going enough to be likable.

Yeah, that’s worked out real well.

In the life’s conspiring FOR you school of thought, you could try rolling more like this…

When you get present to the various things in your life that you experience stress about, what if you stopped for a moment and noticed what expectations you’ve been holding that are creating your experience of stress? It’s can be hard to acknowledge, but the stress you’re experiencing comes from you and the beliefs, assumptions, and stories you’re choosing to live inside of, not from life. So what if you then made a bold move and let your expectations go?

The only way we’re each going to be truly happy, in that deep contented soul swooning kind of way, is when we stop pushing and manipulating and meet life on life’s terms. Life’s the leader and we’re the followers. Anyone who’s done partner dancing knows this dynamic is really satisfying – but it’s definitely not graceful or fun when both people try to lead. Someone’s got to give, and when it comes to receiving the magnificent beneficence of life, it’s our turn to soften.