Posts in "make meaning" Category — Page 14

make meaning

The Art of the Little Win

You don’t have enough time to do it the perfect way.

It would take six years to write a novel at your pace. It will take six months to make a single painting with the little time you steal away.

The graphic designer you want to hire has a one year waitlist.

All true. All true. And yet.

Sometimes the answer is to just do it — to go for the little win.

You can go the Pinteresting route and take 8 steps to create a gallery wall in your house, or you can eyeball it and just start hammering.

You can make an editorial calendar for the next six months, or you can write a blog post and publish it today.

You can plan your whole year around the new brand or product or service or novel you’re going to create, or you can hammer out a first draft.

You can dream and scheme and ponder and consider until you’re blue in the face and you’ve exhausted every member of your immediate family with your plans, or you can show them what you did today.

You wrote 300 words. You mailed four letters. You wrote, designed, and scheduled your next newsletter. You decided to pay yourself with your business. (This article can help with that.)

Get it live. Get it moving.

There is virtue in getting it done.

There is momentum in progress, no matter how small.

There is untold energy in moving through fear, doubt, and uncertainty.

Pick up the hammer, the pen, the trowel, the tablet, the notebook, the camera, the tools…and begin.

Go for the little win.

P.S. Let’s find a way in to your creative work.

come alive, make meaning

This phrase blew my mind. For a whole year.

You know how sometimes, you’re going about your day and then one simple phrase changes the way you see absolutely everything?

Here’s the phrase that has kept me gobsmacked for the better part of a year.

Your first job is to receive.

It doesn’t seem like much, and it might even strike you as some kind of new-age-y bullshit. Hear me out.

This is coming from an internationally best-selling author, a lightning bolt of controversy who has his own TV show and enjoys the benefits of having Oprah on speed dial.

He’s not giving advice to push, to get out there and make shit happen, to take action and more action and even more action. He’s not saying, “Your first job is to hustle.” Or pray. Or wake up earlier. Or buy my $2,000 program.

Your first job is to receive.
To take stock of what you’ve already got
and truly accept everything as the gift it is.

Take in that compliment you’d normally deflect.
The cash a friend lets you borrow because you’re broke until payday.
His hand on your back. Her kiss on the cheek.

Receive the love notes left for you on the kitchen counter;
the kind words written by clients;
the snail mail that is meant to fill you up.

Let your best friend make you burritos for lunch.
Let them cheer you up.
Answer the phone and let ’em love you.

Your first job is to receive.

If you’re anything like me, this is an incredibly difficult process.

Year after year, I keep trying to give and give and give, but somehow not do the opposite: receive. It’s like breathing out without letting myself breathe in.

SPOILER ALERT: that shit doesn’t work.

When I let myself accept the gifts being offered — from a smile in line at Trader Joe’s to a lavish holiday gift — I’m better able to give when the time comes. (And man, am I giving great gifts this year.)

As the months roll on, may you learn to enjoy the process of receiving.

Crank up the tunes and dance.

Drink the wine you’ve been saving for a special occasion.

Enjoy those good tidings that are arriving in your mailbox.

Eat the damn cookies.

Give up the worry, the stress, the WHAT IF scenarios, and the constant planning.

Relax. Receive.

You’re here, you’re alive, and you’re gonna be just fine.

The Receive breathwork class will walk you through all I know about receiving (hint: I’ve had to learn a TON to be good at it!) and then help you clear your own blocks to receiving. Check it out here.

P.S. Seemingly unrelated, but 100% related: money blocks are complicated.

make meaning, sell more of your work

22 ways to ask for help

If you’re anything like me, asking for help is a tricky matter. You’re fiercely independent and don’t want anyone to think you haven’t got your shit together, or that you’re not capable of handling the challenges you’re facing at the moment. Only…people want to help.

Your partner wants to rub your back.

Your coworkers want to help plan the party.

Your sister wants to know when you’re in over your head, and your colleagues want to know how giving you a ten-minute tutorial can benefit your work life.

Only your brain is an asshole, so it says that OF COURSE NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, DUMBASS, and then you go about trying to achieve 7 weeks’ worth of activities in 7 hours because you are, in fact, a superhero.

What if you ask for help?

Even though it’s hard and it sucks and you feel the warm wash of shame when you admit you need it…what if you ask anyway?

In the spirit of asking for help, here are 22 ways to do the deed.

Would you be willing to ____________?
Can you teach me how to ____________?
I have ____________ and you have ___________, can we trade?
I’ve got free time to help you __________ if you could check into this: _____________.
Can you take a look at this?
In case of zombie attack, I would save you. Here’s how you can save me…
Do you have five minutes to hop on the phone with me?
This will be easier than talking to your weird uncle at Thanksgiving dinner: _______________.
Is it okay to call you/text you/come over later this afternoon about ___________?
If I help you __________, will you _____________?
I could use _______________ this week.
I’ve been trying to ask for more help lately, and so…
Would you mind ______________?
Remember how you offered to _____________? I could use that now.
I’ll give you ten bucks and a high five if you know the answer to this question. _____?
Google couldn’t help with this, maybe you can?
You asked if you could help and this is how.
Here’s what I need: __________________.
Given the choice between helping me and getting a root canal, I know you’d choose helping me. Here’s the situation: _________________.
I know you’d rather be on Facebook, but this will only take 90 seconds…
Respond to this e-mail for an Amazon gift card.
Help. Please. Now. Mayday.

P.S. I know asking for help is The Actual Worst. But. How many lights on your dashboard are blinking?

get your biz off the ground, make meaning

It’s time to do cartwheels in your underwear (and other business dares)

Your best moments will feel like doing cartwheels in your underwear.

Free, light, a tad scandalous and entirely life-giving.

Your best moments will feel like the rules don’t apply.

Like you’re flying. You’re unstoppable. You’re entirely alive.

The challenge for entrepreneurs lies in making more best moments through your business.

Not in merely making money to fuel faraway vacations,
but in making your ordinary reality feel like a faraway vacation.
That rich, that deep, that light.
That life-giving.

Not in using time away from your business to fuel the relationships that “matter,”
but in making relationships that matter within and through and around and
because of
your business.

Not in drawing a firm line between work and play,
but in blending the two to create something new
that no one has ever seen before.

Your challenge lies in making more best moments through your business.

In choosing to override the defaults that say business is for making money,
and life is for making meaning.

Your challenge lies in dancing with making both money and meaning through your business — one feeding the other in a crazy-ass dance to the beat of your choosing.

So choose. Today.

What lives just below the surface, dying to rise? Let us see it.
What are you afraid to give birth to? It’s time.
Which parts of yourself are you sure the world cannot handle? Show us.
Where are you terrified of taking your business next?
Because you know it will require more of you than ever before?
Because you might just end up feeling like you’re doing cartwheels in your underwear?

Choose. Today.

Begin shaping your next best moment.

and

please

invite us to do cartwheels right alongside you when it’s time.

P.S. Calling to the Deep leads pretty much directly to cartwheels.

figure out what you want, make meaning

Business is a spiritual practice. (Lemme explain.)

Business is a spiritual practice.

There, I said it.

Business is a spiritual practice, requiring as much devotion, faith, hope, love & doubt as my belief in God. (Sometimes more.)

Even though my first memory of being moved by the divine happened at age eight. I wept in front of the Eucharist, deeply and self-consciously, in the third pew of a quiet Catholic church.
Even though I’ve responded to altar calls throughout my teens, being saved and saved and SAVED.
Even though I’ve read plenty of books about Judaism and Buddhism.
Even though I’ve rejected religion wholesale for over a decade, only to be broken open all over again at 32.
Even though I’ve found my inner guides, my spirit animals, and my psychic abilities, too.
Even though I’m seeking and seeking and growing and shaping my spiritual beliefs into little sculptures of light that keep me going every day.

Business is still the most spiritual thing I do.

When I wake up in the morning, I have to believe someone cares about what I’m doing. And why I’m doing it.
When I’m dreaming up new projects, I have to have tremendous faith in the process of bringing each one to life.
When I don’t feel like creating, I have to trust that the inspiration will come when I engage in the discipline of doing.
When I answer e-mails, I have to practice devotion to kindness, grace, and patience.
When money is tight, I have to trust that it will come.
When money is abundant, I have to remain focused enough to stay the course. To keep working and building and growing.

I have to have faith that this — all of this, every minute of this business thing — is worth it. Is building to something higher, stronger, better, deeper.

Spirituality and spiritual practices, religious rituals and devotion to God are unquestionably spiritual.

But consider, for a moment, that the practice of bringing your greatest talents to the world — and being rewarded for doing so — is the most spiritual work you can do.

(It’s so much easier to float on the surface. To do the busy work, to distract ourselves from our greatest gifts, isn’t it?)

When I say business, here, I’m not talking about dreaming up a three dollar product that you have manufactured in China and that you don’t give a shit about, bringing it to a worldwide audience to make a small fortune and retire to Fiji.

I’m talking about building a business by mining the depths of your soul.
Building an enterprise by waking up, showing up, and chipping away at your life’s work.
Though high tide, low tide, and all manner of life circumstances. Through waves of creativity and those days when you don’t feel you have an ounce left to give.

Business is a spiritual practice.

That’s why it’s so crucial to ask questions. Hard ones, deep ones, ones that hit you right in the gut.

If you’re having trouble earning, where are you fearful of letting others see your talents?
If you’re giving your work away for free, where and why do you fail to value what you do?
If you fail to celebrate your achievements, where do you need to cultivate gratitude? (And quiet?)
If your business doesn’t feel the slightest bit fulfilling any longer, what needs to shift?
If your devotion to your business is waning, which changes need to happen?
Which mental furniture needs to be moved around, refreshed, or donated in order to keep mining way down there, in the deepest darkest depths of yourself?

You already know the answers.
WE already know the answers, each one of us.
Our only job is to admit the answers to ourselves.
To get quiet, to let truths fall like atom bombs on the paths we’re walking.

And to take the next step. Into the mystery, with faith and hope and love and our ears tilted toward the divine for a whisper.

Because, contrary to popular belief, business is a spiritual practice.

P.S. This blog post inspired my book entitled Calling to the Deep: business as a spiritual practice. It’s dope AND it’s pay-what-you-can priced. Check it out here!