My last blog post, The Magic Formula + The Show Up For Your Life Experiment, lit more people’s fire than I could have hoped for, which is fabulous! In case you haven’t read it, the short story is I researched a bunch of people in various fields who rock their businesses and creativity to learn what they were doing that created their flow and success. I found The Magic Formula they were each tapped into was simple: They showed up!

But, like I said at the end of the last post, showing up is the main thing they all do, but it’s not the only thing I saw that they had in common. Here are a few other things I learned from my observations that I hope you can experiment with putting into play to experience greater flow, fire, and success.

1. Be passionate about what you do + do what you’re passionate about.

Being self employed +/or a creative means you’ll work a lot. More than 40/hours a week, likely. But it often doesn’t feel like “work” – it feels like what you WANT to be doing… when you’re passionate about it. Call it zest, fire, spark, commitment, pluck, or whatever you want – the people I observed had it in spades and it clearly radiated through them, into everything they did, and kept them going when the other guy had called it quits. It also has an undeniable magnetic appeal that attracts because it inspires.

2. Support others + give generously.

We’re in this game of life together and no matter what your offering is, at its core, it’s here to support others. The people I observed GOT this and gave abundantly to their audiences which had a further magnetic effect pulling people towards them. They were in touch often, shared what was inspiring them, revealed what they were up to, passed along things they were learning, shared their mistakes, offered deals, gave away free business information, made forms and questionnaires they’d created available, celebrated those they worked with and for, and, bottom-line, were generous in who they were being.

3. Know when you’re working and when you’re not.

Being your own boss is a lot like being in school where you always have homework hanging over your head and you’re never 100% free. There’s always something more you could be doing or creating so you need to decide when you’re working and when you’re not. I covered this in my last post, but these people have schedules. Most are up at at it by 7 and have clear routines that help them be efficient, productive, and balanced. So, that said – when you’ve committed to work, WORK. Have a plan ahead of time where you know what you’re going to do and get to it! You’ll be so glad you did because when your personal time comes, you’ll feel satisfied and freed up to enjoy the other parts of your life that feed you.

4. Get organized.

There are 2 sides to every business. One is the service or product you offer. The other is the admin/marketing side. No matter how great your service or product is, if you slack with your admin work (contacts organized, emails replied to, newsletter list, be in regular touch with your clients, etc.), your offering will only go so far. The people I observed had rocking back-sides to their business flow and having those systems in place is a lot of what set them apart. It made their clients feel well cared for and it freed up their energy to focus on the other parts of their business. So, embrace the details because being disorganized scatters your energy and hinders your ability to move forward.

5. Don’t be lazy.

You can be the most talented, beautiful, or smart person in the world, but if you’re lazy, your endeavor won’t have the energy it needs to fly. The people I observed are committed and ON IT in a way that truly blew me away and made me realize I have – cough cough – been unconsciously lazy in my approach (hence, The Show Up Experiment). Like it or not, the truth is that creation, which encompasses every aspect of life, is work. So whatever it is you’re passionate about bringing forward is going to require you to work hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s hard work.

6. Get the support you need to do what you do well.

Outsource what you’re not good at. For instance, if creating a marketing plan makes you want to run for the hills or if being scattered or feeding into doubt are traps you fall into, get a coach. If doing admin work puts you into overwhelm, get a part-time assistant or ask a friend who’s good at this what they do and try it for a period of time. Nobody I observed ran a 1-person operation. They all had help. And, often times, they had a lot of help. We’re not meant to do this thing of living alone.

7. You can’t keep milking the same cow.

If you want to expand your business, widen your audience. Everyone I observed consistently found ways to reach out to new groups of people. Networking and collaborating with other similarly focused folk works well. As does being active in community organizations and on social networks. You don’t have to employ every marketing tactic that exists. Pick a few that you like and put your energy into them so that your circle widens through doing things you enjoy.

8. Produce, produce, produce + keep going.

I was amazed by the prolific output and stamina of the people I observed. This was one of the pieces that inspired me to take a closer look at these folks in the first place as we all have the same 24 hours but, clearly they were doing something very different with their time than I was. That said, not everything they created or initiated worked perfectly but they kept showing up, kept creating and kept going… and more often than not, within the sheer volume of what they created, they’d stumble upon a thread of inspiration that did lead to something new, innovative, and wildly fulfilling. And, what was inspiring, is that many of them shared this process with their fans so we got to see that their lives aren’t laced with magic, it’s just that they give more time and energy to their creations and, as a result, more opportunity for inspiration.

One of my favorite quotes on this from the amazing Chuck Close:

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

9. Shine bright + be your unique, amazing self.

If prolific output initially attracted my attention to these people, what HELD my attention was their vibrant energy and the unique and disarmingly real way they shared themselves. For instance, instead of trying to be impressive or “together”, they were, by and large, humorously transparent about their own lives while being focused on giving to others the wisdom their experience, successes, and failures have afforded them. And they each did this their own way, sharing the best of what they had to offer such as vulnerability, humor, warm-heartedness, sassy wit, or fiery encouragement to others to follow their passion. Regardless of their style, what they shared was REAL and people could sense that. A line I’ve heard many times from Chase Jarvis is: Don’t be better, be different. And, from what I saw, this really is one of the keys to success as you can’t succeed being someone you’re not.

10. Own yourself.

Humility is one thing, insecurity is another. You’ve gotten this far with your gifts and passions because you’ve got innate skills and life experience that’s helped you develop your wisdom. Whether your wisdom directly relates to where you’d like to go or not, own it. It’s a big part of what makes you different and valuable in this world and because it’s unique to you, other people will benefit by you sharing it in the ways you feel called. Every person I observed drew from their inner well of wisdom and while they each had different strengths and chose to express themselves in different ways, they shared what they had and inspired those around them to live more fully. And this, beyond whatever actual service or good they provided, was perhaps their greatest offering and most potent key to success.

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!

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 an easy enough thing to have happen.

You want to live passionately and you start to pursue a dream. In fact, maybe you’ve already started and are in the throws of nursing a sweet gem of fulfillment to life. I hope so.

Regardless – you start chugging along with your dream and there are all these things to do, create, experiment with, buy, learn, and follow up on and suddenly you’re busy with the work of your pursuit. Damn, there’s kind of a lot of it.

So much, actually, that soon enough you start feeling like maybe this isn’t so much fun. Why’s there so much work to do? I thought passion was supposed to be fun and all this work stuff isn’t fun. One, two, three more glances at your to-do list and you cross the line into the overwhelm red-zone and soon your many vices take on a new glimmering appeal. Lost in the haze of whatever it is you do to distract yourself, you can’t remember why you’re doing all of this anyhow and ego puts the finishing touches by smearing some self-defeating and/or confusion-inducing questions into your mind and you’re officially lost with Vaseline on your lenses.

Nice!

Not that I know anything about this.

Yeah… right.

So it’s easy to speak from ample experience when I say that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to passion-dream-manifestation is clarifying what success looks like to you and what being a successful ____ (fill in the blank with whatever your passionate dream is) looks like 3, 5, and 10 years from now.

I mean, that’s the whole point, right? You want to experience fulfillment. So clarifying what this is for you is your North Point – a shining star guiding your way through the maze of choices and slashing through the gazillion distractions we face each day.

So here’s the simplest thing you could do to help yourself.

Write out in detail what being a fully successful ___ (your dream) would look like for you. And then write out what you’d like this to look like 3, 5, and 10 years from now.

From here, take the 3 year version and back it up. What steps do you need to take to get from where you are now to there? Be really incremental with it. If developing a body of work or learning a new skill is part of that, then you know what you’re doing for the next 6 months. But what then? Break it down.

Then put what you wrote someplace you can see it.  Perhaps on the wall above your desk or on your fridge.  And, if you’re more of a symbolic sort of person, take what you wrote and make a collage or image that says it all and put that up, along with what you wrote.

The beauty is that when you have this, then you know what you need to be doing right now. It’s clear. And when you’re faced with choices between x, y, and z, you can look to the 3-year North Point and decide if x brings you closer to that or puts it off.  Being busy for the sake of being busy does NOT mean you’re being productive for your dream. But being busy with a clear focus and purpose DOES.

So on that note, I’ll say one other thing. A lot of things that look like they’re taking you towards your dream aren’t. I call it faux-productivity. For example, If you want to be a musician, you need to practice. Period. You just do. There’s no two shakes about it. So a faux-important thing you may be seduced into doing before you can get started is cleaning your room, well how about the whole house, and getting the perfect cup of tea, and oh it would be good to get outside for a minute, Nature’s always inspiring, and so on. Sometimes you may need to do these things, but most of the time you don’t.  You just need to pick up your instrument and play. You can get to the rest of that if it’s really so important later.

Isn’t life great? You just got a free coaching session! What abundance. Now get to it!