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Biz Advice for a Smashing Fall - and Prepping Now for a Truly Stress-Free Holiday Season

The first quarter of the year is the strongest selling period in most consulting businesses – organizations have budget and consumers are on fire with the New Year energy! – but the two months of Fall are a close second.  The crisp, clear air, after the heat, humidity and lethargy of summer, and the return of the school year, puts a sense of urgency into people’s lives.  They are ready to invest in themselves and they are ready to pour the financial foundation for the new year of business.  It’s an important time to pour on the effort for marketing, releasing new products (especially those that could be purchased or gifted for the holidays), and unleashing your creativity for cooking up the cool beans for the new year.

In addition to your ongoing marketing and product development, it’s not too soon to start having conversations with your spouse and family about setting new dreams in place for what the holidays mean.  If you start now to think of ways to tell people that you love them, without spending money, you will have that money to invest in your business, in your continuing education and in your children’s future.  I tell my loved ones, in detailed letters, exactly why I adore them, citing specific examples.  I bake and crochet up a storm.  Kids get one gift each, sometimes bought and always educational. 

Every year, I make a list of fun, new, magical things I want to ENJOY.  I sip eggnog and decorate enough to feel festive, but not enough to be a significant time drain.  I drive or walk to admire other people’s light displays.  I love, love, love November and December.  How lovely, how magical, how full of love and good cheer.  And no stress.  In my early November issue, I’ll include some tips for your business and your stress-free life.  For now, start thinking about what is truly joyful and what could potentially be eliminated from your Shop and To-Do lists.  You don’t need to do everything this year.  The Grand Canyon was carved over time by the relentless flow of water, and it may take a few years of relentless chipping away to transform The Stress and Broke Season into the season of love and joy – but you can do it.

 

And you deserve it.

Come explore the power and excitement of entrepreneurship in a series of classes.... www.soaringdragon.biz.

Key Components of HR Wellness and Motivation Programs: It's Not What You Think!

I was talking to a health and benefits manager about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. She is reading articles that tell her that only intrinsic motivations matter. But I know so much research that validates my instant-salivation when someone says $100 Amazon Gift-Card. So here's my take, in written form:

Extrinsic motivation is motivation that is focused outward, to the environment that the person is in. For example, you give people a $100 gift card or a reduction in their health insurance premiums if they get screened by their doctor and then talk with a health coach at least once a month, to focus on reducing weight, blood pressure or emotional stress in their lives - all factors that are known to lead to expensive illnesses. The person is taking action because you are dangling money (an external factor) or you are threatening them with a negative outcome (higher premiums).

Intrinsic motivation is motivation (desire) that stems from inside the person. The group increases the customer satisfaction by decreasing the fail rate of a product, and they do that because they are given more autonomy in their work and they are on fire to do a good job, because a good job reflects on their vision of themselves. They want to see themselves as Quality Performers, so they are internally-powered to think of new ideas and put them into practice. They take ownership of the result because they truly, deeply care (are motivated).

However, human beings are complex, and simple definitions don't model human beings very well. Most people take action or stop taking action, or shift their internal beliefs, because of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The most successful Human Resources changes include both intrinsic and extrinsic components. In the intrinsic example above, the professionals started to take more ownership of the final result (shifted to more intrinsic motivation) when they were given more power and autonomy to make changes; if the company just talks, or brings in a "motivational speaker," the results will not last, because deep desire isn't engaged by just talk.

One interesting result is that positive external incentives work more effectively than negative incentives. From a psychology perspective, consider that if you want people to change deeply ingrained habits, are they more likely to do so if they are cheerfully walking toward a reward, or are angry and resentful (you are increasing their premiums unless they comply)?

In the example of improving health outcomes, the best results seem to include both extrinsic factors (the positive financial incentives) and the addition of intrinsic motivation. The health coaches provide encouragement and inspiration, and the best coaches will stress the outcome of the changes: that the employee will be more likely to stay healthy for their children if they maintain a healthy weight and blood pressure. A strong desire to do the best for one's children is a common intrinsic motivation to get healthier.

Understanding that people are complex, that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations work best when both are active, and that carrots (positives) work better than sticks (negatives) can help guide a company to their true end goal - greater profits through more educated and trained, happier and more engaged workers.

For Entrepreneurs: More Income + Life Satisfaction from Strategic Self-Care

Hey, I'M super-busy.  I barely stop on a daily basis.  

Except that I know that stopping for strategic self-care IS my road to income and to life satisfaction, which is why I started the business in the first place, right?

You don't need hours.  With 5 carefully chosen minutes a day - 5 MINUTES daily - you can have a tremendous impact on your income and your overall happiness.

I've researched and chosen the 5 elements with the most powerful and reliable ROI (return on investment) for your time.  Focus on them, make a commitment to every day - and watch your life blossom like all the spring flowers all around us.


https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/strategic-self-care-for-entrepreneurs-the-5-daily-tools-proven-to-lead-to-lots-more-income-and-life-satisfaction

Is Integrity Obsolete?

“Yeah, cash is great.  You don’t have to pay tax on that,” Sally said.

 

I just stared at her, stunned.   “I report all of my income.” 

Now it’s her turn to look at me like I’m an alien lizard from Alpha Centauri, or clinically insane.  “I prefer cash for my international clients because it’s easier, that’s all.”  Now she’s looking at me with pity.  I’m really, really stupid, she’s thinking. Could be.

I admit to disappointment in my friend.  Professors Kohlberg and Gilligan developed frameworks to explain the levels of sophistication of our human moral reasoning, and doing whatever you can get away with is the level typical of a 3^rd grader.  Later in our development, we grow through understanding that general lawfulness makes everyone safer, on up to doing The Right Thing just because it is The Right Thing, from focusing solely on yourself through level after level until you arrive at the place where all living creatures are your siblings and the earth itself is your mother and father, and you devote yourself completely to the alleviation of suffering in the world.  Nobody gets to that summit but some folks get closer than Sally seems to be aiming.

Then there’s another colleague, who changed her email signature to “Amazon Best-Selling Author” a month before she even finished writing the dang thing.  Her reasoning: she had hired someone who guaranteed to make her book a best-seller (it only sold 200 copies), and thus she was just jump-starting what WOULD be true.  Except that she didn’t change it when she saw the sales results.  [Which were totally predictable, for a newbie author tackling a popular topic that had dozens of real bestsellers to compete against.]  I’ll bet that “I’ll make you a star” charlatan suggested it, but it was my colleague who did it, and still refuses to own her lie.

And she’s not alone.  Everyone who releases a print or even an e-book these days claims it as an “Amazon Bestseller” before it’s even on the metaphorical shelves.

I pity the real bestselling authors, who have their hard work and quality product cheapened because everyone (including me) who knows about the “Amazon Bestseller” scam, assumes they are lying also.  Except Ian Brodie, who does such good work, he doesn’t have to lie to impress you.  I’d be willing to believe that his book really IS the best seller in its category of e-mail marketing.

That’s something that my blow-hard pals don’t seem to understand.  If you cheapen the status of an Amazon bestseller because everyone with any level of thrown-together product is claiming it, then when and if you ever do achieve that real pinnacle, no one will believe you.  It’s a short-sighted strategy, based on the belief that the rest of us are too stupid to see the pattern.  We’re not.  So cut it out, already.  Work for your accolades, like your pre-iPad ancestors’ generations did.

My colleague – whose name really isn’t Sally and isn't even a woman – who thinks that integrity is something you turn on and off, is an example of the driving force behind so much cheating, on every  level, these days.  You tell yourself [and there’s always at least a tiny grain of truth in here] that you have been cheated, or the whole system is unfair and corrupt; this belief and the resentment it generates frees you from your moral imperative to being fair and honest yourself.   And then anything is possible.

Many people have a situational-cheater’s response to taxes.  Taxes are, as my anthropology students learn [see my YouTube channel Anthroisfun], the way that complex societies make sure that resources are redistributed.  In small groups of 20-40 individuals, as our ancestors lived for millions of years, until around 7,000 years ago, we shared our good and bad fortune on a daily basis.  No one hoarded; you shared the food you gathered or scavenged (or later, hunted) and no one went hungry.  If you made two knives, you gave one to your sister or cousin-in-law.  Once a money economy emerged, people could contribute coins instead of wheat and barley and goats, and still no one went hungry.  

Modern Western societies have become so complex, and so many of them,  including the USA, are unequal, unfair oligarchies, that the original purpose of taxing – to share food and provide for common goals like roads, medical care, education of the young, and defense against enemies – can be ignored, while you focus on the things you don’t like or approve of.  It’s impossible to have 330 million people agree on anything, including “the sky is blue.”  For example, in Seattle, the sky is actually varying shades of grey.  If we get a tiny patch of blue sky, we all go nuts and stop talking about politics for the duration of the blessed event.  My otherwise-admirable colleague could give you a litany of things that she refuses to contribute to, and thus is morally justified, in her own mind at least – maybe in yours – in pocketing cash that she refuses to share.

But taxes support children and disabled people, and I’ve been both. You have been a child.  If you are blessed to live a long life, you will be too old to earn a salary.  Taxes fix the roads, provide fire protection and libraries, and you need those things.  Taxes provide Sesame Street and Nova, the National Weather Service and Meals on Wheels; I’ve learned from the former and may live long enough to need the latter.  We all may.

 

I know how selective resentment can make nearly anything seem morally acceptable – and I am asking you all to become aware of it, too.  I have a class that brings people into connection with all the components of their ancestry (Meet Your Ancestors, launching on www.soaringdragon.biz/classes) including the noble and heroic.  These heroes are the parts of your DNA that you can tap into when you feel yourself getting up a head of steam around justifications for resentments.  A new class on Freeing Your Soul From the Poison of Resentment is debuting soon to give you tools for this.  

It all starts with awareness of what is really going on inside your thinking, and a commitment to listen to the better angels of your nature.  Deep breath and make a choice.  Pay your taxes, on all your income.  Give generously to those who have less than you do.  Realize what a hero you are for doing both.  YOU, my friend, are protecting seniors and children, and the disabled, and you are the guardian and protector of your community.  Be proud of yourself.  

And remember the Hindu scripture, “Do not despise your neighbors who are poor, for many poor people were once well-off.  And you may someday be poor.”  We’re all in this together, my friends, we truly are.

If we all learn how to call on our inner hero, regardless of the choices that the swamp around us makes, we will have a roadmap to creating a paradise out of this Earth that we have inherited. 

  Take a step on that path today.  Take another step tomorrow.  Repeat until the day you die.

Preventing Dementia and Cognitive Decline, Part 1 More Sleep

The key to getting more sleep is to carefully train your brain to the 8 hours that you need.  If you are currently getting 5 or 6 – or less – then you need to plan your evening so that you are asleep 15 minutes earlier than usual. 

Think of your evening as your prep for a big presentation before a live audience.  You hone your speech.  You prepare notes on cards or pages.  You check the lighting and the sound.  You breathe deeply to reduce nervousness.  You hit the loo 10 minutes before show time.  Well, it’s the same thing with sleeping.  You need to prepare. 

1)      Make sure that you get at least 20 minutes of exercise/movement every day.  It helps “tune” your body to better health on all levels of metabolism and circadian rhythm, as it improves your brain, and especially memory, function.

2)      Make sure that you aren’t eating a heavy dinner less than 3 hours before bedtime.  When I worked in a corporate job, and stayed late at my desk, I had dinner in the office fridge, then came home and had a 100 calorie snack before bed.  That snack stabilized my blood sugar for sleep.  I still do the 100 calorie snack.

3)       Stop thinking about business, politics, doing Facebook, or anything else serious or potentially upsetting (no email!) for at least an hour before bed.

4)      Two hours before sleep time, use Dump the Garbage or a similar tool from Take Back Your Lost Heart or 101 Stress Busters.

5)      Sometime in the evening, HAVE FUN, something that engrosses you and genuinely brings joy – which passively watching TV doesn’t, usually.  101 Stress Busters has lots of ideas. 

6)      If you feel resistance to sleep time rather than joy, take a deep breath or five, and see if you can hear the “I don’t want to go to bed and you can’t make me!” voice.  The more it sounds like a 3-year old, the closer you are to Reality.  This is the part of you that will keep you awake until it gets some fun – and no amount of substitutes (alcohol, sweets, TV, you name it) will really satisfy.

7)      Develop an unvarying Go To Bed routine.  Unvarying is important.  You want your brain to get programmed to wind down as you go through the routine.  I cover this in the Kick Weight Loss to the Curb class and will cover it in my newsletter.

8)      If you have a spouse or partner who snores, insists on watching TV in bed (a VERY bad idea, because it associates the bed with TV, not sleeping, to his/her brain) or in any other way disrupts your sleep, sleep somewhere else.  If they want to sleep with you, then they have to SLEEP in the bedroom and do other things elsewhere.  For the last 3 years, hubby has had to get up at 3:30AM and of course, goes to bed much earlier than I.  So we have slept apart on commute days and together on non-commute days.  If your partner doesn’t love you enough to put your needs ahead of their desires, then you do what you need to do to take care of your health and safeguard your mental acuity. 

9)      If you find your sleep disrupted by trips to the bathroom, stop drinking in the evening.  I can’t drink anything after 4PM myself.  I gathered data for 6 months before I came to the latest I could absorb fluids before I had night-waking troubles.  For most people it’s 3 hours, not 6, so see what it is for your body.

Our bodies change and shift over time, usually gradually – elders have more trouble staying asleep because brains get poorer at releasing enough melatonin, and the over-55 set gets less exercise, for example.  If it’s relatively sudden, first check any changes in medications; have you started or stopped anything?  Then think: are you eating differently or taking/stopping a new supplement?  

Check with your doc or pharmacist (the latter are easier to get time with), to see if there is a known sleep disruption associated with the chemicals involved.  Supplements are less safe than prescribed drugs in the sense that there is no quality or purity control imposed by a government agency focused on our safety, but assuming the pills really are what the label says, the pharmacist can tell you what is known about effects of the supplement.  

And then there are hormones of menopause and perimenopause (starting anytime after age 43, on average), which are known to wreck sleep for a while.  Absent any of these known reasons, sudden sleep changes warrant a medical visit.

Kick Dieting to the Curb: Get and Stay at Your Healthy Weight – Forever!

https://soaringdragon.leadpages.co/kick-dieting-to-the-curb-get-and-stay-at-your-healthy-weight-forever/

6 Key Principles for SUCCESSFUL, Permanent Health Changes

If you want to make changes in your life - and who doesn't, in January? - keep some principles in mind:

**  Choose small, reasonable goals that you

** Commit to - with your whole body and sou.

** Have a deep and compelling reason, and keep that reason at the front of your mind.

** Have a Commitment Buddy, and choose that one carefully.  Use your journal as your commitment buddy if the perfect person isn't available.  Check in every day for the first 21 days.

** Embrace deep surgery to replace internal resistance,through hypnotherapy.

And #6:  Take a no-nonsense, aggressive stance on eliminating the health impact of stress.  This will give you better sleep, weight loss, less internal resistance and higher income, especially in the small business world.  If you want more money, you want more sleep and you want de-stressing.  Full stop, no excuses.  You aren't more important because you are busy,busy.  It's not a badge of honor.  It's a badge of Dumb Choice.  Make a different one - with my help.

Here is the expanded video version.   www.soaringdragon.biz

The Book-Creation Hacks Are Life Happiness Hacks, too

Creativity is a powerful guide to transformational change.  I’ve been writing for publication since way before the Berlin Wall fell, before Bill Clinton was elected President, even, and I blush to confess, the thrill never goes away.  My latest baby is just as much of a thrill as the second; 101 Stress-Busters for Energy, Joy and Healthy Longevity will hit Amazon and everywhere outside of Ashland, Oregon [we’ve got it already], at the end of January. Nothing is ever as soul-stirringly wonderful as seeing your name in big letters ON THE COVER OF A BOOK for the first time.  When the Library of Congress asked for a copy, I drove to D.C. so I could see how many Representatives and Senators had checked it out.  Answer: 12. Oh. My. God.

Lying collapsed in my usual post-creation heap, it occurred to me that the Best Practices for writing a quality book is strikingly similar to Best Practices for living your quality life. 

1.       Know what the end goal is: what outcome do you want for your readers; what outcome do you want for yourself, either on a business or personal level?  Keep these answers on a card or a sheet of paper whenever you sit down to work on your project.

Keeping an eye on the prize, a reminder of the ultimate goal, helps keep you from being swayed by the emotion of the moment, or someone who has “hooked” an unresolved childhood issue that you are not consciously aware of (needing attention; needing to show you’re best; needing to be appreciated; needing to have more income that anyone else in your social orbit, etc.).

2.       Have a project plan with checkpoints.  Have a chapter by chapter plan.

You know in your business life that checkpoints are vital to spurring effective action. They give you a clear idea of where the project is on the road to completion.  They give you accountability.  Don’t over-plan to avoid having to actually write, but do make sure that you have a step-by-step plan with specific checkpoints. 

In books, it’s a chapter or a page.  In other aspects of your life, what are the checkpoints?  When I bought my fixer-upper, I started with a list of serious problems.  I started checking them off and then I made a list of the remodels that I would need to have the floorplan work for a healing center, a family home and a separate pet area.  Not everything was clear from the start.  The amount of money and renovation I would need to turn the garage into the Hobby House, heated and cooled with moderate amounts of $$, was not clear to me when I started.  In fairness, I could have anticipated more of it, but the first two lists were so overwhelming, I very sensibly put the garage into the Much, Much Later category and didn’t give it another thought for two years. 

3.       Have a reward that you really want for completing every checkpoint, with extra rewards for completing on time.

You know this works.  You do it with your customers – reward the behavior you want.  Well, darling, your human brain works just like theirs.  So get those rewards prepared.  Want to lose weight?  Virtue ain’t its own reward, not in the first 30 days.  Have non-food rewards.  I, for example, will do nearly anything for a $100 Amazon gift card that I can use to bankroll my video habit.  I also salivate over, and will finish a chapter for or eat kale for, smaller rewards.  We all have things we want.  Don’t let yourself have them until you hit a checkpoint and see how your foot-dragging around clearing out the garage disappears. 

4.       You’re not writing a book; that’s a terrifying concept.  You are writing one chapter.  When you’re really tired and want to quit, but you’ve made the choice to push on to some checkpoint, then you are just writing this one page.  Just one page.  You can do that. 

You’re not losing 35 pounds.  You are cataloging all your calories for today, and doing a 10 minute intensive cardio routine on the DVD from the library.  Do both of those things and you can have a lavender tub soak (or Grantchester episode) tonight.  Do it for a week and you can go to a Sounders game.  Small steps get you to the finish line; grandiose plans flop in 6 weeks.

5.       If you get a brainstorm, something that really takes control of your brain and makes you want to shout “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to the uncaring walls or silent moon, write your brainstorm down in as much detail as you can, then take a deep breath and look at item #1.  Does this storm make the end goal or outcome work better?  Or does this storm point to a different outcome?  Take another 5 deep breaths [yes, it’s Tool #2-1 from my book; keep reading].  Perhaps meditate or do a card reading or ask Sarasvati or another incarnation of the great I AM for advice.  Do you really want this new outcome more than the old outcome?

I had an original chapter plan and I had a different title, because I had a different end goal.  Then I had a brainstorm that took my breath away and the book is entirely different.  When you are tempted away from a life goal, the same procedure keeps you on the best path for you.  Instead of following blindly when your limbic system gets hijacked by someone who touches an unhealed childhood wound or an unexamined childhood dream, you stop, get your pre-frontal cortex (your thinking, logical, clear-sighted brain) to give you a 2^nd opinion and let the two opinions become reconciled into a clear-headed decision, something that you will be proud to own for the rest of your life.  If everyone did this, the marketplace would be a very different place because most sales ploys rely on manipulating and amplifying the “I’m not good enough” beliefs hidden deep inside us.  If we had our PFC’s integrated with every limbic system business decision, we sellers couldn’t hid our lack of steak behind a smokescreen of sizzle.

Some of my changed life goals over the years have included dumping losing business ventures instead of “refusing to quit,” an emotional stance that caused several entrepreneurs that I know to lose house as well as business in the dot-com crash and then more in the Great Recession.  “I’m Not A Quitter” is a limbic system response, based on “quitter” shaming from childhood or adulthood, and not a clear-headed choice based on receivables, cash flow and the local and national economy. 

Every once in a while, I really, really want to do something, and no matter how hard I try, with all the skills of a transformation coach and healer, I cannot fathom why.  If it’s not dangerous to me, emotionally, physically or in any other way I can see, and it isn’t taking my life on a new and destructive path, I let myself do it.  I let myself say “Yes, I’m a spiritual healer,” when I didn’t consider myself one, just because someone I really respected asked me to – and stepped into a completely new income stream, and an additional self-definition.  It’s also why I climbed a mountain and then jumped – with the guy who actually knew how to fly the dang thing.  I knew the physical laws that allow lift and I had my will updated before the honeymoon trip, so there I was, for a millisecond, falling straight downward off a mountain.  And then lift kicked in and away we soared, high above Queenstown, New Zealand, soaring with dragons as I had always dreamed. 

6.       Self-care every day, no matter the deadlines, is your lifeline.  If you don’t eat healthy, exercise and take time to rest and recuperate, you will NOT create a quality product.  I know, Handel wrote the Messiah in six weeks, but let’s be real: He was a genius, he had been thinking about something like it for months, and he had a servant to make him healthy meals and remind him to take his daily constitutional.  This is the Magic Formula for a healthy life, too.

Let me connect you to a world of solutions.  While you’re waiting to buy your copy of 101 Stress Busters, take action to make 2017 the year when you knock some of your pain-points out of your life forever!  A free Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch, a real session) will give you tools that you can use to knock at least one of those “pains” out of the park – forever.   Do you like to Do It Yourself?  My blog and free classes are the place to start.  Are you ready for your major Pain Points to – poof! – be gone?  Sign up for a Getting Unstuck session (free, not a sales pitch), and watch one of them disappear.  Then sign up for a comprehensive program and ditch the big ones, too.  Do you like to learn from classes?  Comprehensive beta classes will be launching in January.  Sign up to be a beta-tester.  At www.soaringdragon.biz, it’s all about solutions, not hype!  You deserve more than quick-fixes that won’t last. Link to me and let me connect you to a world where problems get solved - forever!    

The Most Wonderful Mistake of My Life...

I’m going to say a word and I want you to respond with the first words that come to mind.  Ready?

Ready…  set… MISTAKE

Now, if your mistake is a real ethical failure on your part – you betrayed your spouse’s trust, you cheated or lied in some other way – do the Ready…. Set again.  This article is for the merely boneheaded, not  for times when you betrayed your own soul.  [Forgiving the Unforgiveable by Flannigan is the way to go on this serious stuff.]

Did you immediately think about a mistake from your past?  Of course you did.  Know that If you remember it as a mistake, you haven’t forgiven yourself for it.  If it popped into your mind, it has been, in its own teensy or not-so-teensy little way, dragging you away from having compassion for yourself. 

I’ve been working on the self-compassion issue with clients this year, as I see it as the cornerstone of most of the rest of what I do.  For all the “Oh, I wish I had taken the other road” times of life, you end up with better choices in future if we do the deep work with me that gets you to wrap yourself in compassionate forgiveness and move on.

I’ve just been pole-axed by a blinding “aha!” that I have to share.  I KNOW you all that at least one of these “mistakes” from the past.

So come with me on a journey.  I’m teaching a class and answering a question about some subject-specific vocabulary – and I realize that I am explaining the Latin roots of the word, which entirely explains its function.  Everyone is amazingly impressed.  And the staggering reality hits me:  I have been a whiz at science terminology, including human anatomy [taught it at the college level for years], and a whiz at English vocabulary AND IT’S ALL BECAUSE I STUDIED LATIN IN HIGH SCHOOL.

Latin??  Yup.  Latin. 

No, I wasn’t at seminary. 

I dug in my heels and refused to listen to guidance counselors or any other adult who tried to tell me that I needed at least 3 years of a foreign language to get into college.  [Turns out they were right as far as that goes.  My two years of German got me the snooty-disdain treatment from some colleges.]

What in hades was going on with me?  Just me picking an unusual form of adolescent rebellion?

Not really.  What I did was fall in love with a guy who had died nearly two millennia earlier.  That’s right.  I was crazy-mad in love with Hannibal of Carthage and all things Punic.  In addition to book after book on Carthaginian culture and the 2^nd Punic War, I also insisted on learning ancient Punic and Latin.  I couldn’t find any Punic classes anywhere but graduate schools, which weren’t available to a 15 year old, however nerdy, but my school did have a classics track with Latin language.  So there I labored for two years, slogging through the Gallic mud with Gaius Julius and his castra ponere and castra movere.  [Caesar was constantly pitching camp and then moving camp and leaving two cohorts behind to guard the impedimenta, the baggage train.]  I would have committed total academic suicide and taken a 3^rd year of Latin but instead of military Latin they switched to Ovid’s love poems.  Yuk.  So I trundled off to German, and my self-study Russian.

Of course I consciously knew, through all the decades of my life since high school, that the Latin study had made so much of English and science much, much easier for me than it was for my cohort, but it wasn’t until today that I understood down to my elemental DNA that Latin had been a very good choice, a valuable choice and NOT A MISTAKE AT ALL.  Really, truly, madly, it wasn’t a mistake.  It smoothed my path to my eventual career.   It enriched my class this week. 

It was such a small thing, but watching that judgment dissolve away to nothingness, to be replaced by shining sunlight, reminds me yet again that even the most positive of us, even someone like me who is dedicated to blasting through others’ barriers and bringing them more productivity, more happiness, more of whatever matters most to them, is carrying a Marley’s chain of regrets. 

Today I let one of them go, with a laugh.  God bless Latin.  And bless all of your mistakes that you have not yet realized were not so bad after all, and all of your non-mistakes that have smoothed your way through life in ways you’ve never realized or acknowledged.  Pour gentle compassion on them, hug the younger you that made those choices. 

And I still love Hannibal and all things Punic…..

..........

Want to clear away the boulders that are standing in the way of your goals?  When Hannibal’s army was stopped on an Alpine pass by a big boulder, he had his men build a large bonfire and when the stone was very hot, they poured vinegar on it.  The stone cracked into smaller pieces that could be moved, and the elephants, horses and soldiers could get back on their way to destiny.  I can blast away your boulders, too!  Sign up for a FREE Getting Unstuck session to get your transformation started. Victoria@soaringdragon.biz.   www.soaringdragon.biz

Joy in the Midst of Sweat and Trees and Irises

Close your eyes and visualize "joy." 

Did you think about vacations or chore-free, work-free time?  X-rated subject matter?  

Most of us do.  After all, if you have too much work and chores and responsibility, you DO need respite from it.  You can - and I and my clients do - carve out time in the day to meditate, exercise, Reiki, pray - whatever your daily practice of Self-Care includes.


Of course, there is another road, one that we rarely choose.  So let's take a stroll down the Road Less Traveled By and see - it might make all the difference....

My husband took a week of "vacation" time and has been at my healing center in Ashland Oregon, getting megadoses of healing work, enjoying time for art  - and spending 4-5 hours/day in heavy landscape improvement (planting trees and bulbs) and repair.

I was out there with him, of course, mowing lawn, collecting acorns and running to the hardware store for more poles, deer netting and whatnots, along with backup vocals on the tree-planting.

*I* was feeling pretty sorry for myself, truth to tell.  Five hours/day is a 2nd shift, and you all know how much fun that is!  Parents, raise your hand and sound off.  Two-job wage-earners or job+college folks, groan in unison.

But Rick wasn't going down that road.

"I love working on THIS earth," he said, leaning on a shovel for a short rest-break.  "When I do THIS work, I am working for myself, for my future."


Working for myself, for my future.  Isn't that what everyone who is working hard on a degree or certificate is doing?  Isn't that what everyone who is earning a living, and maybe going the extra mile for a promotion is doing?  Isn't that what we entrepreneurs are doing?  

If we take a long, slow deep breath, close our eyes and talk it over with our spiritual guides or inner wisdom, won't we hear the same Truth?  

All this work, all these "chores" are labor for myself, for my future.  And who doesn't want a happy future?


Email me at victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  You deserve to start working on your future today!

Want the Fast Track to Getting What You Want??

Playing with my cats earlier today….

Orono (a Maine Coon, natch) knows how to play Bat At the Cat Toy. She has lots of fun leaping and pouncing, and she knows that the fun is prolonged when she simply “counts coup” on her enemy, leaving the toy available for an immediate new game. The challenge is in the doing.

Gabriel, alas, finds the subtleties of Orono’s strategy perplexing. For him, the name of the game is catch that bird-substitute, hold onto it with jaws of steel, give it a neck bite and drag it off one’s lair and gloat over your victory. I have seen him shake his head – a feline ploy to help snap the prey’s neck. Sigh. His insistence on refusing to catch and release means that every time he catches the toy I have to wrestle it away from him before any of us can have any more fun. (If I don’t wrestle it away, he shreds it in too-authentic predator style.) He cannot hold on to his gettings lightly. He doesn’t share anything; he treats every treat as though it will be his last. He never lets go. He does not believe that if he lets go that he will ever get another shred of prosperity again. All evidence to the contrary will not shake him.

We all know people like Gabe. They snatch. They hold on to their possessions and the people in their lives with a death grip. That approach, they think, at the deepest, unrational limbic system where humans make most of their decisions, will allow them to be financially, professionally and in all other ways happy.

Funny thing is – exactly the opposite is true. Avoiding extremes of fiscal extravagance and unconsciousness, of course, if you keep a light hand on the reins of your life, you can feel nuances and changing circumstances and have a much better chance of staying on the sunny side of the street. When you are desperately trying to control someone or something, your hands get hard and insensitive; you can’t feel the nuances any more. Batting at your fun (or your sorrows) allows more fun to come in to your life. Desperately grabbing onto every shred of fun and refusing to allow the positive energy to circulate in the world guarantees that less fun will come your way – you are a dead end and energy wants to circulate.    

If that’s too fanciful, here’s the more concrete version: if you touch all the things and people who come your way with a light touch (not grabbing like Gabe), if you are not desperate to get the business or convince someone of something, if you are not convinced that you can manifest any and every outcome your desires can conjure, you invite people to come closer. Open, welcoming arms, open minds and communication without needing a particular outcome is more likely to give you what you really need, in a day/week/month/year/life. If you stop trying to manifest and just go about your work in the world, stopping to say “thank you” for whatever shows up, whether you label it as “Good [I got what I want]” or “Bad [I didn’t get what I want],” then you have the magic formula for a happy life.  Regardless of whether you got the million-dollar income or the wonderful spouse, you will be centered, content, happy, with dozens of friends who just adore you, because you are life-giving sun, pouring joy into everyone else from your own limitless supply.

Another fish will be along in the universe’s own perfect time.  

Go to Soaring Dragon. 

How to Make Changes; How to Vanquish Fear... Brene Brown and Eleanor Roosevelt

An excerpt from my 2017 book, Red State, Blue Heart, a memoir of my years in North Carolina….

HE WAS ENORMOUS!! THE SIZE OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER!! Well, maybe a pocket battleship. He came at me with vicious intent, a blow glancing off my skull and then he landed on my computer keyboard just as I hit the Publish buttom for my last night’s blog. I screamed (of course).  He attacked again and I screamed again, remembering to cover my mouth this time. He landed on the keyboard again.  The rational part of my brain (not doing much at the moment) would like you to know that he looked almost exactly like a (slightly) smaller version of the Shadows on Babylon 5, and I have my ex-husband the entomologist’s voice in my head telling me that most bugs are female, so I should say “she.”  

Notwithstanding the fact that she was the size of a house, I draped a towel over her and got her out the back door, but not without several false-starts and enough blood-curdling screams to bring my neighbors running. [Nice to know I have backup when I need it – god bless Southerners!]  So – what’s the point here, besides don’t invite me to a restaurant to eat chocolate-covered multi-legged creatures?

1) There are a lot more bugs in the moist and humid Southland than in the dry climates I live in now, and some of them are ENORMOUS and using all of their persistence and brain power 24/7 trying to get into my home to terrorize me. [I also need to work on my paranoid tendencies, yup.] Native Southerners have been laughing (mostly good-naturedly) at me for over three years. Laughing at one’s neighbors did not end with Jane Austen in 1815. It’s still good, clean fun in the 21st century. Y’all in non-southland states who are laughing at me right now – quess what? As global warming continues, the bugs are moving northward. Ah-ha!

2) fears are frequently not in proportion to the actual threat. Oh, yes, this is the big one. It’s fun to laugh at people who have exaggerated fear-responses to bugs and wasps, but the reality is that all of us have exaggerated fear responses to something – and it is usually more social/interactional than related to bugs and snakes and mousies, oh my. I work with people in career transition, people who want better health and vitality, and people in other kinds of transitions, many of whom stall part of the way through their way to where they say they want to go. Lots of reasons on the surface. They all add up to – at some point, fear takes over and no amount of encouragement or inspiration from others can counteract that internally-generated fear. My terror when confronted by a non-woman-eating insect is ludicrous.

When I look around me, I see all of us running away from little bugs who loom enormous in size and power, in our imaginations. Our brains are wired to respond to fear, as a way to keep us alive in a predator-filled environment. In today’s world, it is primarily social “death” we fear, an interpersonal attack, with words expressing judgment, condemnation or contempt. We unleash these weapons on each other to show how powerful we are [not realizing that it actually demonstrates just the opposite, to someone who has a strong sense of their own power], or to [benevolently] try to protect each other from what we see as dangers [because, of course, they are all-knowing and all-wise, godlike in their own perceptions and 100% know what the future will bring], or for gain [promotions, a date, you name it].

Most of what we are afraid of is not really the size of an aircraft carrier. So, what “bugs” have you been afraid of? Sure, you’re not screaming loudly enough to bring the neighbors running.  Maybe you have been shutting yourself down before you ever really consider certain options. Maybe you let them start to surface before you thrust them away, unconsidered.

A big source of fear in our lives is What Will [People in general or a Specific Person] Think? None of us like to admit that we crave approval, but nearly everyone does nonetheless. We hold ourselves back from achievement to avoid being criticized. We hold ourselves back from the possible failures that would propel us light-years ahead in personal growth, because we are afraid of the I Told You So and the amorphous Feeling Like A Fool. Well, I am here to tell you that actually acting like a “fool” is the least foolish thing you will ever do in your life.

It’s sometimes painful, when you are walking a pristine path without a trail, but it is in those moments that you are most truly alive, most truly in touch with the DNA and the person you were born to be.  Lots of people think my bug freakouts are funny; some consider them shocking, and try to induce shame in me for being so "weak," because I am "so strong and capable the rest of the time."

As Brene Brown would say, “Nonsense!” 

As Eleanor Roosevelt tells us, you gain courage from every time you stop to look fear in the face and don’t back down.  After a while, you can’t be frightened by anything.  You tell yourself, “Well, I lived through these horrors, I can live through the next thing that comes along.”  Eleanor conquered her extreme shyness and became a wonderful public speaker and fearless advocate for the powerless, one scary confrontation at a time.  Some of them turned out to be tiny insects when she confronted them, other fears stemmed from real danger.  But she built her courage muscles, step by step, and so can you.  And so can I. 

Your homework assignment for next week: 1) consider some of your fears as possible bugs, annoying but not life-threatening, 2) come running if your neighbors scream, and 3) put up plastic sheeting on your windows. It not only cuts heat/cooling losses and lowers your fuel bill, but it also keeps the damn wasps out.

Contact me for your FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  Victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com

Are you laughing yet? No? It's OK, I'll come back in 5 minutes......

Online personal ads consistently say “Sense of humor,” and some studies of who gets called and responded to suggest that we do, indeed, care about this characteristic in our potential mates. 

Makes sense, too.  Try this logic chain:

·         Someone with a sense of humor is likely to take the small things lightly.  A genuine sense of humor is inconsistent with dramatics, and

·         Laughing is good for your health and

·         Laughing makes you attractive.

 We are biologically programmed, from earliest neonate to elder, to respond to a smiling face with an answering smile.  If I can get myself honestly laughing on the date, it not only means that I am having a good time, it also means that I will appear more attractive to you.   [Chimpanzees and gorillas know that a human smile means positive intentions, so it must go back at least 15 million years.]

Humor is a real asset in life as well as dating, for all three reasons.  Call up funny videos on You Tube or Facebook.  Flush the cortisol out of your body with short breaks to laugh.  Allow those tense muscles to naturally relax.  Your brain will clear, solutions will pop into consciousness and you’ll actually notice that the sun is shining, or you’ve got some blessed rain, and you’re alive.   You’ll take a deep breath and remember that it is very, very good to be alive, and loved by the universe and probably quite a few people and other animals.  You’ll take another breath and the whole day has shifted on its axis.

Pretty good ROI on 2 minutes of laughing, wouldn’t you say?

Want High Income, Recession-Proof Career, Deep Soul Clearing + Huge Positive Impact on Your Health?

And it all comes from the same FUN activity!

Whatever your career or business and your satisfaction level with it, I am sure that you remember your parents and high school guidance counselors pounding the "You have to go to college" message into you.  You might also recall the disdain all these fine folk expressed, overtly or merely through tone of voice, for the blue-collar workers.  Their jobs, because they work with their hands, were being offshored, but you - with your shiny new BA (or MA) - were a knowledge worker.  YOU were golden.  

Fast forward some decades.  Sure enough, the good-paying blue collar jobs of the Midwest were offshored and the sorta-good-paying factory jobs of the South were taken over by illegal immigrants.  Huge transition from fathers being able to support their families to fathers stuck in permanent unemployment, with no unemployment help, or re-employed at much less $, no benefits.  A world of constant anxiety, no security and no self-esteem.

Sounds like your guidance counselors, parents, pundits, everyone really, was right.  If you want money, security and good health (from lack of stress and from access to medical care and quality food), then you need to go to college.  Case closed.

But......  what about the people who listened to that advice more recently, with college costs having skyrocketed?  Huge education debt that is acting as an economic and personal sea anchor, preventing young people from buying homes, starting families or even moving away from their parents.

Compounded, of course, by the end of that lovely fantasy that knowledge work can't be offshored.  It was always logically true that knowledge work is the easiest to offshore.  No new factories to build.  All you need is a cheap call-center or a wired world where everyone from accountants to radiologists can do their work with a Hindi, Chinese, Vietnamese or Mexican accent.  Not to mention Hungarian.  My own work of deep transformational healing can be done from anywhere on Earth with a high-speed Internet link.  And not just by highly-skilled and experienced healers like me.  There are companies in the Puget Sound area who are hiring minimally-trained health coaches and hypnotists to work in crowded call-center environments at minimum wage!  Obviously, the quality isn't going to be as high as what I do with my academic degrees, certifications and years of experience, but this is exactly what has been happening to most of the knowledge-worker occupations.

So here is the actual reality:  A college degree is no longer the passport to the middle class, a road out of poverty and a road out of just-getting-by, that it used to be.  That equation is dead.  Unless you have a college degree in something immensely crucially essential and in demand, and which pays well, you may be feeding your mind, but you are wasting your money if you go anywhere other than the least expensive public college you can find.  [American Public University, entirely online, is very cost-effective, and I recommend it as one of a handful of quality for-profit colleges.]

Guidance counselors are still playing the "college for all" song.  So are all the "mean well" politicians.  But that is not the road to follow.  If you have someone in your family who is wondering how to get:

* Solid, steady income that cannot be offshored, ever, and which no recession will ever make a dent in AND
* a huge positive impact on your health because you have that steady security, and you can choose to either run your own business or work for a company AND
* the satisfaction of creation with your own two hands, 

.... then, my friend, you need to get them an apprenticeship in one of the eternal trades: plumbing, auto tech, electrician.  There are a few others, like chef and HVAC, that I can highly recommend, as well as craftsman carpentry.

Don't recoil in horror.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Enquiry Into the Value of Work (Matthew Crawford) sounded this alarm some years ago.  In my work with clients, I sound off on the value of creating things with your own two hands, as much as possible throughout the day, as the road to better physical health and to peace of mind.  The anxiety-stilling impact of doing creative work - anything from building a bird house to painting, coloring or crocheting - has been documented in medical studies as well as psychological.  The more you can create over the course of a day, the less tempting baby-back ribs are, the less self-control you have to exert to not eat dessert, the less onerous and more joyful exercise and movement becomes, the less interesting alcohol and tobacco addictions are, and the more "Damn, I'm GOOD!!!!" experiences you have in the course of a day.

Because I will assert to you with no equivocation whatsoever that the clothing you make yourself makes you feel like a queen, the doghouse you create yourself makes you feel as powerful as the Emperor Akbar and the book you write from the heart, or the paint you swirl on a paper or canvas is as sweet to your eyes as a priceless Turner.  

It's as close to the godly act of creation as we mere mortals ever get.  You need that fabulous feeling.  You DESERVE that fabulous feeling.  You can get that fabulous feeling.  

And when your grandkid the plumber arranges for you to never have a 4 hour wait for a stopped drain again, that feeling is priceless, too!  

Start today!

_______________________________________________________________________

Know what else you deserve?  You deserve to have all that procrastinating that you just can't figure out end too.  Every single time you waste time on Facebook instead of making progress toward your deeply felt dreams, you deserve better!  Every single time you decide that you will never succeed at what you want, you deserve better!

Accept my gift of a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch), and discover exactly what has really been holding you back or stopping you from achieving the life you really want.  Visit me at www.soaringdragon.biz, and we'll schedule your free session.  You need more than just "motivation" and inspiration.  You are plenty motivated to get what you want!  You just lack the specific tools to get back the barrier.   And I am very, very good at blockage-demolition!  www.soaringdragon.biz    victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com

Step Forward from Intention to Action!

I just finished an interview on sharewisdom.tv, on Marianne Marlow's show Conscious Conversations. Marianne was my mentor when I was learning hypnotherapy, and now she is starting a new TV show!

My segment (from 20 minutes to 40 minutes of the hour) continued her theme of taking action. We have to step away from the thinking about it phase to the taking action. You don't want to race off a cliff in an excess of enthusiasm, but after you have done serious and analytical as well as intuitive searching for info, you need to put steps in your calendar and start SOMETHING.

[Or call me for a FREE Getting Unstuck session. This is not an offer for a sales pitch. I will get you through your first, starting step - the hardest - on your road to your goal!]

If you enjoy Marianne's content, some more wonderful free content on the same subject of taking action in my YouTube channel humanbio4everyone. Lots of encouragement as well as specific steps! Go for it!

And the funniest part of it is that until 30 minutes before airtime, I thought that it was a radio interview! [I was a last minute addition to the show, so some details fell through the communications cracks.] When I got a checksheet telling me about lighting, backgrounds, etc., several very genteel and ladylike expression fell dulcetly from my lip as I dashed into action. How appropriate for the theme of the show!

Earrings and lipstick, because my mum always said you can walk out the door for a meeting with the Queen with just those two. Eyeshadow because I didn't have time for makeup. No time for my truly spectacular, gorgeous wardrobe. So I had my tv debut in a denim dress and fabulous earrings. A tan in place of professional skin products. My hair all which way from a hair-wash 30 minutes earlier. If my philosophical framework is wrong and there is a humanistic deity in charge of events, all I can is that he, she or it was splitting their sides laughing.

How do you take action?

1) Start with the overall goal and break it down into specific, small, discrete tasks to get you to the first milestone. Forget about the rest, just focus on the first milepost.

2) Choose the easiest task on the list that doesn't depend on an earlier step and do that. Feel yourself moving! Cheer when you get it done!

3) Pick another easy step. Don't agonize over which one. Just one easy one. See you your muscles are unknotting as you are in Action?

Keep moving until you get to the milepost. Celebrate.

Name the next milepost and create steps. You're in motion. Just keep going.

The minute you feel resistance, stop. Meditate and ask your unconscious mind to tell you what it's really about. If the answer doesn't come, call me for your Free Getting Unstuck session and I'll get you moving again. [Not a sales pitch, remember.]

www.soaringdragon.biz 253-203-6676