Late nights, sick kids and living your passion?

So Stephanie and I, mostly Stephanie, spent most of last night with our little Lucy who woke at some crazy hour complaining of a sore tummy…still. This is the third night in a row and the poor little thing was moaning with pain, it just breaks your heart. After Stephanie gave her an essential oil massage, some homeopathics and a large serving of of love she is settled back to sleep.

I was in a deep sleep when her pain began and the coughing started and I can remember trying to fight it. ‘I have to go to work in the morning and I’m already tired how am I going to cope’ I fought with myself. ‘If only she would go back to sleep….I cant do this’ I cried under my breath. In the case of children you eventually learn to give into what ever is going on and go with the flow of what is happening. In this way the outcome is always better. She feels more love, I feel more love and the whole event seems to heal quicker than if I continued to fight it.

This experience may just hold some hidden secrets to the manifestation of the things we desire. I am reading an interesting book at the moment on living your passion called The Passion Test. it is funny how this has been the main theme coming across my desk this week. In the book they had an interesting take on the manifestation process of intention, attention and no-tension. The part that interested me the most was the no-tension. Last night was a great example of applying no-tension, rather just allowing what was at the time. I know when I have been trying to achieve something, living my passion, building a business or working for success, that I often get so busy trying to make it happen that I inadvertently exhaust myself in the desperate trying. Sometimes we just need to go with the flow and follow the energy as it presents.

The energy of passion, which is the theme of my week, is about following the passion and allowing it to happen with no-tension. In respect to last night it was about following the love and passion I have for my kids and letting go to the process. Life is about how we engage with situations that present. Sometimes stuff just happens, a sick child, a cancelled meeting or the death of a friend, all of which happened last week. In these moments if we let go and have no-tension it becomes less about what is happening and more about how we are engaging with what is happening. We are allowed to feel and experience the event at a deeper level. Now sometimes we just want to run away from the event, as the pain seems all too great, as in the death of a friend, however if we do not face and feel our experiences these experiences become trauma in our lives. This trauma is then imprinted on our physical being and allowed to manifest.

Success in life can be measured by the level of engagement we have with life. The deeper and more fully we engage with life the more we get out of it. The same is true for our businesses or our career or our relationships. When we don’t like what we do or find little inspiration from it we begin to disengage. Disengagement from our career has a detrimental affect on our health and wellbeing.

The Gallup organisation has been doing a lot of research into wellbeing, especially career wellbeing. The definition of wellbeing is the ability to be happier, healthier and more prosperous. Gallup found that only 20% of people like what they do each day. A landmark study published in The Economic Journal found that our wellbeing actually recovers more rapidly from the death of a spouse than it does from a sustained period of unemployment. Proving just how important career is to our identity and our overall wellbeing.

Gallup also ran a study to determine the effects of engagement or disengagement at work on heart rate, stress levels, and various emotions throughout the day. They examined the difference between those that were engaged and those that were not. Now if your not engaged in what you do at present you may not want to read any further.

As you can imagine those that were engaged in what they did had lower stress levels, more relaxed heart rate, and felt happier throughout the day rather than just at the end of the day. When we work in a job that we are not engaged in our cortisol, which is the stress hormone, levels rise. This then leads us into the flight-fight response and an increase in anxiety. In the long term this can lead to depression and other physical illnesses. They found that people who were not engaged in their career are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression. Stress is also the cause of many other illnesses and diseases. On a happier note if you become more engaged with your career stress levels are reversed. What this shows us is just how important our career is to our overall wellbeing.

So engagement in what we do not only determines our success but also our level of health and wellbeing. So be inspired about what you do and if you’re not or can’t then find what you are passionate about and learn how to make money from it.

Being passionate about something drives us to engage with that something. It inspires us, makes us feel excited, gives us hope and motivates us to do more of it. Imagine for a moment waking up to a job that you are passionate about. How would you get out of bed? How would you feel throughout the day? How would you cope with difficult situations or obstacles?

I am lucky in that I get to do my passion every day, however the interesting part of the last weeks theme is that I realised that I could refine my passion even further. This refining is a bit like a magnify glass trying to start a fire using the sun, the more focussed we are the more likely we are to start the fire. The same is true for our business or career, the more refined our passion the more likely we are going to start a fire within. Passion is that fire, it is a feeling that starts in the belly and moves up into the heart and mind.

We all are attracted to people who are passionate, take the late Steve Irwin, now there was a passionate human. His passion attracted millions around the world, which lead to his amazing success. Take Richard Branson as another shinning example, another passionate individual who has reach extreme success. Passion is not only good for our health and wellbeing it is good for others wellbeing. People want to be close to those that are passionate and hence will tend to engage with and buy more products from those types of people.

So the moral of this story is to find your passion, learn how to live it and then keep refining it until the external world shows you the success that living a passionate life brings.

Remember your health depends on it!

Next week I am going to let you into the secret of how to find your passion, engage deeper with your passion and live a passionate life. If you cant wait until then give me a call at www.intrinsicsuccess.com.

More Lessons from Planet Earth

Even as I write this the lessons from last week, and it was a big week, are drifting off into the depths of my psyche. I remember it had something to do with the father wounding and the constant battle over the years to heal this wounding but last week a new insight appeared.

I had some confronting meetings last week that lead me to a realisation of the importance of emotional intelligence in business and in life. I had always known that my father was emotionally void and distant but I did not realise the depth to which that disease had afflicted me, until last week. Confronted with a situation where I had not lived up to expectations with tasks I had agreed to do, in a new business partnership. This greatly effected both of my partners as they where waiting on me to do what I needed to do in order for all of us to move things to the next level. Now I had real honest reasons why these had not been done. Business and making a living got in the way, but this was not the issue. My partners are both coaches and have a deep understanding of the human psyche and helped me to realise just how far I am from being able to connect my extrinsic world and my intrinsic world. 

The extrinsic world is the face we all put on when we go out into the world, and the intrinsic world is that deeper knowing self that would seem to be very fragile and hence why we don’t lead with this part of the self. When they expressed there disappointment and frustration at the situation I found myself getting angry and upset. Angry that they did not understand how difficult it had been for me and disappointed that i had let people down. This led to the realisation that the centre world of the entrinsic, as I have now termed it, is the most important part of self to understand. Now this maybe easy for a lot of people, however as I looked out into the world in pain, anger and frustration, I realised that it is void in much of our community.

This confronting meeting led me to the understanding that what people really want is to connect with the true self of others. In that I mean is that part of you that is the expression of whom you really are, vulnerable, scared, seemingly delicate and fragile. It takes a great deal of internal honesty with yourself to be able to express this fully to others. You see I have been trained to be a pleaser, anyone else with that affliction? My pleasing gene is so strong that it will over ride my true self, my real desires and place the feelings of everyone and everything above mine. It also leads me to be less honest with myself about what I can and cant do and what my true desires are. If I did connect to that honesty it may not be possible to live out the genetic desire to please. On the extrinsic side, the outer world, I am very honest however on the intrinsic side I sacrifice my honesty to myself so that I can fulfil the pleasing gene. 

So now what? It is one thing to have the realisation and another to integrate it so you can live it out in the world.

How do we break free from seemingly genetic patterns and subconscious subscripts handed down to us from generations past? The secret may lie in the entrinsic part of ourselves. There is a physiological side of the human body that is always trying to place the body in a state of homeostasis. That is our bodies attempt to balance our internal processes of things like hot and cold. This entrinsic side of ourselves is our homeostatic self trying to balance the inner emotional world with the expectations of the external world. So the secret may lie in our connection to our entrinsic or emotional, feeling self. In that sharing our true feelings about what is going on for us may actually help us to break free from these habitual patterns regardless of whether we found them ourselves or whether our parents and their parents handed them down the line.

Feelings in business, now there is a novel idea! 

So what am I feeling at this moment and what are the fears and hesitations that appear as I attempt to connect with them. As always the key is engagement, so if connection is the intrinsic identification of our feelings then engagement is the action to which feelings are expressed extrinsically. Sharing the fear, the hesitation that we may upset another or not please versus the desire to show the world that we are strong is not easy. It takes courage to live from the heart, but isn't this what makes life worth while?

I think writing a blog is a good way to over come some of this, as long as there is honesty and to the most part I am attempting to do just that. It’s not easy, it is not free from fear but it is cathartic. How will everyone take it, I don’t know, all I can do is be as honest as possible. Now this is not always going to please others. In fact it may often disappoint, but it is much better to disappoint upfront that to let down later on.

So how will connecting to and engaging with your true self, that inner world of emotions and feelings help you and your business? I believe we as a human race have a desperate desire to connect and engage with the true self of others, to know people at a deeper more real level. Let’s face it we all have fears, phobias, habitual patterns we are not proud of and those dark things hiding in the closet. I think when we engage with others at the real level of the entrinsic self we open up the ability for others to 'get us' and therefore employ us. I often talk about engagement as the most important thing in business and maybe in life. As the more we engage with anything the more successful we are likely to be. So what would happen if we engaged in the entrinsic self and opened up and shared the truth of our lives?

I have an amazing job that I am so grateful for as I get to connect with people like this on a daily basis. However it also gives me the ability to hide from myself as it is always about the other person, so in essence I have set this up beautifully so that I can continue the patterns of the genetic self. Well I wonder what would happen if this changed?

What would happen if you changed?

So with the all the fear and phobia that this blog may disappoint some of you planted firmly on my sleeve I post it for all to read....

Here's to honesty with the self...cheers.

Play from the front foot!

So here I am sitting on top of Mt Buller, the wind howling, the rain bucketing down and the temperature at near winter ranges and you ask why? As a volunteer of the Mt Buller Ski Patrol every now and then we are asked to assist at the National Mountain Bike Championships, and this is the weekend. These bike riders are some of the most committed, courageous and fearless individuals I have met. There is pretty much nothing that will stop them except for the loss of a limb or a comma in the case of the last event in Hobart.

These unique individuals spend most of their life on a bike, some 300km plus a week riding, $8,000 plus for a bike and that's just the start. Here is a great example of engagement in what you are doing, without this level of commitment and engagement in what they are doing there is no chance of success.

When I started Intrinsic Success I was enthusiastic, excited and passionate, then life happened. A few stormy days, a bit of heavy rain and a cold winter chill, which lead to a few knock backs, not reaching the success I had hoped for as soon as I had hoped, and then there were the family issues that are all a part of being a Dad. At some point during the middle of last year I had became complacent, lost and a little disheartened resigning myself to be comfortable but not abundant. The business had been flying but now it was doing just ok by all outside measures it was returning what most might call a good living. However complacency had set in which lasted until the realisation that I could not grow a truly abundant lifestyle spurred on by the fact that we had to move our son into private school so I now had the responsibility for his wellbeing.

It was actually here at Mt Buller where I turned things back around. I was riding a ski lift with a vey good friend of mine who is the owner of companies such as Car Sales .com and I was discussing my troubles and how hard it was finding work and getting myself going again. He gave me some wise advice, "it sounds like you need to stop bitching and start pitching". Interesting, stop bitching and start pitching, I thought to myself I don't bitch or complain I've been working hard, putting in the hours what did he mean? After taking a good hard look at myself I realised that I was doing a lot of peddling but not going anywhere. I realised that I had disengaged from my business no longer doing those things that needed to be done to get the work and do the stuff I love to do, coaching people and business to be, do and have more success. I realised that I needed to find the courage to put myself back on the line, to make the calls, spread the word and get out of my comfort zone and make it happen.

That was eight months ago and since then I have tripled my clients plus, had two amazing individuals sign on board to become Intrinsic Success coaches and help me to build the business and now for the first time I can see the true potential of my business. One might say that I have now opened up to the horizon of possibilities and wow what possibilities.

So have you become complacent, are you peddling but not going anywhere fast, are you not putting it on the line, putting you on the line? Where are you hesitating to make the calls, go to the meetings, take up the speaking opportunities? As I put it with one client last week, where are you not dancing on the tips of your toes, playing from the front foot?

As a tennis player and having played pennant competition tennis for Kooyong Tennis Club, I was taught that you need to play from the front foot on the tips of your toes. If you watched the Australian Open you may have seen players dancing on the tips of their toes waiting to receive a serve. Flat-footed players are slower, not as prepared and not ready for whatever opportunity may come to win the point. In a business it is no different, playing on the front foot on the tips of your toes allows you to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities. There are an abundance of opportunities out there if you are willing to put it on the line and truly see them. Playing on the front foot allows you to make it happen and be prepared to take advantage of those golden opportunities that will come your way. Be fully engaged in your business and in your life. Be prepared to do whatever it takes to make it a success, and most importantly keep peddling even when it seems all up hill as this is all part of running your own business, all part of life.

So the message here is to play from the front foot, be dynamic, ready and excited to hit the next ball. Get into action and be prepared at the start of each week to go out and create the opportunities and be ready to take advantage of them. Reconnect with the reason that you started the business in the first place; realize the importance of your work for you, your family and the planet. Dig deep and find the courage to put yourself on the line and do those things that need to be done and most of all keep peddling. I am always amazed at how fast things can turn around when you get your heart, heart and soul aligned and in action to manifest abundance.

So are you ready to make it happen?