I’m reading a great book called the dip by Seth Godin.  

The subtitle is “A LITTLE BOOK THAT TEACHES YOU WHEN TO QUIT (AND WHEN TO STICK).” It inspired me to focus on the Life Lesson of “failure, frustration and incompletion” in Part 9 of our Life Lesson series.

We’ve often heard that if we quit, we will fail. In fact, it’s more about knowing what to quit and what to pursue that leads to success. Godin points out that the idea of the ‘well-rounded’ individual is actually counter-productive to success. Success requires laser-focus, clearly defined goals and expertise in just a few areas.

In college, I quit rowing crew to pursue my theater interests. I was good enough at rowing to train for nationals, but I wasn’t willing to put in the time it would take to succeed. I wanted to do theater more than I wanted to row. Turns out, my theater training has been invaluable in assisting the public speaking aspect of my career. That was a good quit.

Bad quit? I was very close to finishing a darn good book proposal a few years ago, got scared and tucked that baby away. Now, it’s time to bring her back out, finish her off and ship her out. “Creative u-turns,” as the author Julia Cameron calls them, sting. Ouch.

 “Do it, delegate it or ditch it” is a common phrase you’ve probably heard – but do you heed it? If you try to do everything, you will fail. If you do nothing, you will fail. It’s knowing WHAT to do that creates success.

Godin wisely points out that making the decision to be the #1 expert in your field, tribe, industry, ‘world’ is the first step toward success. Then you need to know when to ride out the intense period that follows beginner’s luck. This period, ‘the dip,’ is usually worth the effort – IF you passionately love and engage in your goal.

Ah, passion. A large part of my work’s mission is to help you get paid for your passions. Passion, it turns out, is a pretty big part of ‘success.’ And, ‘failure, frustration and incompletion’ are usually just signs that:

• You are NOT passionate about what you are doing;

 or

• You are scared about the visibility, responsibility, and/or consequences of success, so you back off and conveniently forget what you were aiming for.

Knowing the difference between disinterest and fear of success will allow you to confidently quit so you can succeed without feeling like a failure.

Coach’s Challenge: Get out a pen and paper and brain dump every unfinished task swirling in your brain. Then organize them by category: housekeeping, phone calls, emails, writing, bookkeeping, marketing, etc. Allow up to 12 categories.

Sort all the tasks into their appropriate categories. Now, for each task, ask yourself, should I do this? Delegate it? Or ditch it?

Then, follow your own commands. After you’ve done this housekeeping, look at your main business projects. Are you willing to quit the ones that seem like ‘good ideas’ but don’t stir your soul? Are you willing to quit to succeed? Let us know how it turns out!

Meantime, bring your questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, October 21 at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter.

GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!

“Where is the MONEY today and what I am going to GIVE in order to RECEIVE it?”

That’s the question you want to ask yourself each morning as you start your work day. Otherwise, you are likely to spend your days ‘busy’ but not ‘in business.’ There is a BIG difference.

To succeed in business, there are many, many principles you need to understand and implement. However, the most important of all is realizing that to stay in business, “Cash is Queen!” It can be easy to forget this with so many people, places and things vying for your attention.

You wear multiple hats as a business owner. But these are the hats to wear proudly throughout each and every work day:

• Chief Marketer: YOU MUST keep the marketing of your business in your control. YOU are the source of the message you send out into the world. This is your VOICE and your OFFER. It is essentially the emotional essence of your business being broadcast to the world. Remember, as I often say, “When your message is your marketing, selling becomes sharing.” YOU need to be the one sharing.
• Chief Creator: You are the person who oversees the OUTPUT of what your company delivers. What do you deliver, you ask? Transformational experiences for your clients and customers THROUGH your products and services. You determine the quality and substance of these products and services. Are they the BEST reflection of YOU and what your business stands for? Or not?
• Chief Rain Maker: Show me the money!!! Each and every day, I recommend you determine how much is going out and how much is coming in. Can you read your balance sheets? Do you even have balance sheets? If not, you need a bookkeeper – yesterday. So hire one.

I suggest you ask yourself this EACH and EVERY MORNING: “Where is the MONEY today and what I am going to GIVE in order to RECEIVE it?” (This applies whether you own your own company or you are an employee.)

In other words, how much VALUE are you putting out into the world? The MOST money goes to the business owner who delivers the MOST value to the MOST people!

If you are NOT making money, it usually means ONE THING. You are being greedy with your gifts and not sharing them. It is necessary to DECIDE to share your gifts – and then start making OFFERS. By selling your products, you are being of service.

Now, here are 3 REAL REVENUE STREAMS you can begin offering in your business right away so that you can share your gifts and get paid BIG for doing so!

• Coaching/Consulting: Nearly every business owner I know has expertise that others will pay good money for. Are you offering a VIP Day, monthly coaching or group coaching weekends for your clients? If you are, good for you. Now, raise your rates. For the rest of you, start mapping out the following:
  • Do you enjoy working one-on-one, in small groups, with large groups or a combination of these?
  • What are your silver, gold and platinum package offerings? Always offer the highest level first to prospective clients and take away features as the price gets lower.
  • Set a monthly income goal and determine how many packages you will need to sell to meet your goal.
  • Now, get busy!
• Low-Cost E-Book: This is a GREAT way to generate leads and make some good money. This is a mini-biz-project, so be sure to schedule two- to three-hour chunks of time to get it done. Here are my suggestions:
  • Study the web sites of your ‘competition’ as well as the sites of people you admire for their skill and business acumen. Buy and download a few of their e-books. Study how the books are designed and structured.
  • Write your own e-book based on the research you’ve done using your original content. Be sure to use the words “We” and “You” vs. “I” and “they.”
  • Create a web page that sells the e-book for $47 or $97. Check out http://tinyurl.com/OnlineSuccessWithAliBrown for a GREAT example of how this is done and MODEL it with your content!
  • Make sure the web page is connected to your online shopping cart and also has a web thank you page that the buyer is re-directed to after buying from you.
  • Follow up with the buyer with a phone call, thank you email and your weekly or bi-weekly email newsletter!
• Weekend Live Event: One of the surest ways to make good money and create life-long customers is with a live event. If you’ve never done this before – start small with 20 to 30 people. If this is old hat, how could you change up what you’ve already done to make it fresh and innovative? Here are some ways to get started:
  • Get on the email lists of folks who consistently do exceptional live events. Save ALL of their emails so you can see exactly how they market to you. If they send you direct mail pieces, save those, too. Print out all the emails and lay them out along with the direct mail pieces to see the full marketing sequence. Now, create your own marketing campaign.
  • Select your dates and hire a meeting planner to help you coordinate the event.
  • Decide on your theme and content.
  • Create your event workbook, Power Point slides if applicable and daily schedule/outline.
  • Begin marketing to your prospects and clients.
  • Decide on the ‘up sell’ at your live event. In other words, what ‘comes next’ AFTER your event? EVERYTHING in your business should feed into the NEXT THING you are offering.
  • Study how to present your offer at the live event so you don’t forget to make the offer – as so many do… and end up leaving $1000s on the table!

I hope these 3 real revenue stream examples inspire you to offer MORE – and offer it NOW! Stay tuned for the EXACTLY HOW of implementing your revenue streams with a new course we’ll be offering later this fall!

Meantime, bring your questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, September 23^rd at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter. (NOTE: For regular and returning members, on your next billing cycle, you’ll be billed at ONLY $19.97! Unbelievable!)

GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!

“Follow your bliss,” said Joseph Campbell. I do believe that is why we are here. However, I don’t know about you, but following my bliss often means feeling some tremendously unpleasant feelings. Following my bliss is often terrifying, met with outer resistance or disapproval (not that I care much these days, but still!), and utterly, completely, indescribably uncertain.

At this web link, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bliss, bliss is defined as:

1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.

2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.

Spiritual Joy

That is what I seek in all things. How about you? I daresay, ‘spiritual joy,’ is my driving motivation. I find it most readily in long, rich conversations with loved ones and clients, dancing, sex, swimming, writing and hiking in the wilderness. Mountain biking works wonders, too. Oh, yoga does it… and yoga warms me up for sex and food, so it’s a triple-threat for bliss.

But an odd thing happens, as I open and open to the spiritual joy, my heart sometimes feels like it’s breaking. My pet theory is that my recognition of bliss now – a bliss that I did not see, feel or recognize even 10 years ago – is a lot of years of just being ‘okay’ with life coming to the surface to be acknowledged. Tolerating the intolerable. Giving up my passions to please someone else. Doing things to ‘fix’ an untenable situation. Thinking that if I just ‘give more,’ problems could be erased. Well, this is my deal. What’s yours? How do you hide from bliss?

I don’t think I knew bliss was there… until I started to feel the sheer grief and agony of it not being there. By acknowledging the lack of bliss, the empty hole inside, I made a space to say ‘yes’ to things that at least brought me some pleasure. And the more I let out the pain, the more space was created.

It fucking hurts like hell but what’s the alternative? Pretend it doesn’t? Pretend that SPIRITUAL JOY can be bought at the mall or in one weekend at a workshop? Hmmmm…  (And if my saying ‘fucking’ offends you, I can’t say I’m sorry. I love the word. It’s fun to say it once in a while – it’s very gratifying, even blissful. I don’t have any desire to stop cussing. It’s part of my bliss.)

Extreme Ecstasy

What’s curious is that I feel this nearly every day. I’m feeling it right now writing to you. Probably because I just wrote an extreme swear word for the first time in my newsletter! My goody two-shoes Catholic hangover is showing! But there it is. Ecstasy emerges from the unknown – thinking, feeling, being, doing the unknown.

As we move to our edge of discomfort, our real self begins to emerge. “Who am I anyway?” This life, for me, appears to be about finding my real identity. And here’s the kicker – it keeps changing! There is no ONE identity. It’s about staying true to the self that keeps emerging out of my soul, the self that seeks freedom in a flower and ecstasy in white bread dipped in dark green olive oil. The self that didn’t know how much love she could feel until she wept the agony of all the love that never was – never acknowledged, given, received, felt. But always there, waiting. Love waits patiently for us to wake up and feel. Feel Her presence. Feel His presence. Feel them merging inside of us – the Goddess of inspiration and the God of action, working in ecstatic harmony, merging and separating in the infinite dance of creation.

Salvation

Bliss saves. Bliss is the way, the light and the truth. Why choose to be miserable? Some say, “Your life isn’t about being happy, it’s about serving God.” Hmmm… so God – whatever that means and I have no idea in this context as it is a loaded, loaded word – ‘God’ creates so we’ll serve him? I can only think a harem-owner came up with this concept. What if we serve the ‘God’ within? What if we see ourselves as emanations of infinite intelligence? As we serve our goodness, our greatness, our highest self, the liberation, the salvation is automatic and everyone around us is lifted up by our extreme happiness.

I have little use for any belief system that tells me that I am one step removed from knowing my true self, that my true self is in service to something I neither understand nor connect to. It’s like worshipping a foot stool because all the villagers said it has magical powers and thus, must be tip-toed around and worshipped. That’s about what most our beliefs amount to. Give me evidence – scientific, emotional, and in my own body. Feeling my life, experiencing my life – MY LIFE, MY WAY – now that is to know Spiritual Joy, Oneness with All. And perhaps that is what is meant by the word ‘God.’

Oh, if you want bliss – and this is just my not-so-humble opinion, it’s unlikely you’ll ever taste it if your beliefs cause you to fear who you are or to feel shamed about the very things that make you human.

It still crops up everywhere. “Oh, tantra – it’s not just about the sex.” Of course it is! That’s what we want… to feel God in our bodies. “It’s not about the money, the food, the romantic relationship.” YES, it IS. We are in a material world. When we surrender to the bliss of the material, only then do we find transcendence. Some marry God but their experience is no doubt one of physical, emotional and spiritual ecstasy. The moment we stop apologizing for wanting to devour the world whole and her pleasures, the whole world opens to us… and in that, we come home to the greatest ecstasy ever known – SELF LOVE.

Self Love is Salvation.

I felt it every day, all by myself. And you do, too. Now, how about some more that?!!!

By the way, I love you and saying that fills me with extreme happiness.

Until next time, may you bliss out on how amazing you are and how much you have yet to discover about your beautiful, gorgeous self!

My world-class business manager, Cindy Gallo

So, would you like a business manager that anticipates your needs? Organizes your office (and your life)? Can manage web sites, online shopping carts and lots of customer inquiries? A business manager who creates so much business, that you have to start paying her commission as an act of appreciation? Oh, yeah, EVERYONE needs a Cindy!!!

Since we’re not hiring out ‘our Cindy,’ I’m going to share with you EXACTLY how we attracted Cindy into our business and how you can do the same.

First, Mark, my husband, and I sat down and discussed our ideal business manager. We listed his/her qualities.

Then Mark crafted a job posting to put on www.craigslist.com.

Here’s how the listing read (feel free to ‘swipe’ and modify for your Self!):

Craig’s List Help Wanted

Husband-and-wife-entrepreneur team seeks personal admin assistant that is motivated, reliable, responsible and organized and that wants to excel in their own life and is looking for a long-term commitment. Our business is growing rapidly and this is an excellent opportunity for growth in pay, responsibility and additional commission-based income above hourly rate (or salary).

Our business consists of Dan Kennedy-style online and offline information marketing with related workshops (in town and in other states) and public speaking engagements. We are also real estate investors, so an understanding of real estate paperwork requirements would be helpful.

Knowledge of 1ShoppingCart (or other similar shopping cart software), autoresponder setup and delivery, email marketing, ezine delivery and shopping cart data base management will greatly affect pay rate, as will a basic knowledge of website programming.

Great opportunity for rapid advancement in pay and responsibility with commission opportunities for up-selling products to existing customers. Some travel is essential for help with our out-of-town workshops and speaking engagements where you will be our personal assistant (all travel and expenses paid).

This is a positive, energetic and FUN business and we are looking for someone with a personality to match. You will work with us at our home (moving soon, location not yet determined). You will also work virtually with other team members in other states and some work from your home is also possible.

Must have your own car and be willing to do errands around town such as make deposits, pick up office supplies and mail, etc.

ESSENTIAL requirements:

Good communication skills and a cheerful disposition
Have own laptop computer with relatively current software
Typing and word processing ability
Understanding of Microsoft Outlook or similar
Understanding of database management
Understanding of Power Point and Excel spreadsheet setup
Faxing, filing, answering phones
Dealing with customer service issues
Scheduling appointments
Mailing out customer kits

$_____ to $_____/hr to start, with opportunity to advance rapidly to FT salary w/benefits

We then received nearly 50 resumes!

We dumped all the ones that were unrelated to our requests or had typos.

I then found Cindy’s resume and thought, “This woman is PERFECT!” BUT it said she lived in San Diego. Hmmmm… we live in Tucson. Mark called her and found out she was moving back to Tucson after being away for a while. Lucky us!

Now here’s the kicker: Cindy was the ONLY person we interviewed. We liked her and hired her immediately with a 90-day probationary period as a 1099 contractor. She sailed through with flying colors and then we hired her as a salaried employee. Our bookkeeper handles the tax payments and paychecks for our employees.

Now Cindy needs her own assistant! So we’ve put her in charge of hiring someone to help her, using the same process.

However, we improved the process to make it simpler, by adding this instruction as a ‘test’ to the job posting:

“If you would like to be considered for the position, please send a typo-free cover letter and resume. Let us know why you think you are perfect for this position in your cover letter. Send both documents via FEDEX to this address: The Hand Analyst, Inc., 7320 N. La Cholla Blvd., Suite 154-515, Tucson, AZ 85741 by this date____________. No emailed resumes or phone calls accepted.”

That request weeds out all the looky-loos and brings you only seriously invested candidates for your job opening.

Here’s to your success finding ‘your Cindy’ because “everyone needs a Cindy!”

I’ll tell you what I really think. I think that many popular human beliefs are bunk, child’s play, even foolish. Beliefs we take for granted now – a round Earth spins around the sun, invisible germs cause illness, the music industry must adapt or die – were once laughed at as fantasy. Question EVERYTHING.

This is what I’ve come to understand, for myself, about belief. Since you can believe whatever you want, why not foster beliefs that honor your Highest Self? Why not cultivate thinking that says “yes” with curiosity rather than shutting something out because you can’t make it fit inside your worldview?

I’ll give you an example. Recently, I had dinner with some new acquaintances. We were discussing what to charge in our businesses. One of the women, a passionate yoga instructor, bristled when I suggested that her financial pinch was likely due to undercharging, and in many instances, giving her work away for free or nearly free.

She began defending her pricing, explaining to me that the economy, the neighborhood her business is located in and the clients themselves simply couldn’t sustain higher prices. Her voice grew tight and angry.

Bunk.

What she was really defending was her desire to stay small and safe in the world she knew.

To find more desirable clients willing to pay more desirable prices, she would have to drop the external explanations for her financial challenges and expand internally into a new concept of herself.

In other words, this talented teacher and healer needed to find the inner KNOWING of her own value and worth, then be open to receiving its reflection back to her in the form of ideal clients, more money and more joy.

Her financial expansion actually depends on her capacity to expand her awareness of her profound and needed value in the world.

At some point, most of us come to the realization that our beliefs either expand our consciousness (and opportunities!) or contract our soul to the point of alienation, stagnation, boredom, apathy, frustration, even rage or depression.

In my late 20s, I had to reach the point of questioning the usefulness of my own life – and damaging my health, relationships and self-esteem in the process – to realize that I had to make a radical shift in my thinking, in my conscious awareness, in order to get out of my self-imposed (and frankly, self-indulgent) exile.

I resorted to prayer and asked, “God, Universe, Higher Power – whatever is out there – if you show me my Life’s Purpose, I will forever be your humble servant.”

Two weeks later, a young woman named Terry-Linn showed up at my door and explained, via my palms, that my Life Purpose is to be a “Successful Spiritual Teacher and Business Owner with a Special Message for the Masses.” Um, okay.

I didn’t stop crying for about a month after that session. But I decided to ‘believe’ this concept about myself and my purpose on the planet. What IF what she told me was true? What could it hurt to believe it? My own self-concept wasn’t getting me any traction forward.

My life began to change in subtle and dramatic ways. Subtle: I started eating better, my chronic bronchitis cleared up, the negative ‘friends’ dropped away. Dramatic: I quit my job, got a business loan, started a business, took a road trip called “Hands of America” that funded my travels around the U.S. and was actually making a good living doing something I LOVED – reading hands.

I found wonderful friends, had amazing adventures traveling to new places and discovered something that had once been a foreign concept to me – I was okay. Could it be that the magnificence of the Universe lived in every cell of my body? Could it be that I was expanding like the Universe, coming to know myself through education, experience and ecstatic creative expression?

YES. My belief system had changed and I was completely transformed with it.

I’ve since come to ‘believe’ that negative thinking is not of the Universe. It is a natural consequence of nature wanting to protect our precious flesh-and-blood body, but beyond that, is unnecessary. I’d go so far to say, that today (it could change tomorrow – when I discover something else!) I believe that our TRUE LIFE PURPOSE is to love, enjoy and create in order to fulfill the Universe’s desire to expand through our expanding consciousness.

As YOU expand your self-concept, you literally shift the consciousness of the Universe. How cool is that? Now THAT is a belief I can get behind.

So, today, I leave you with this:

YOU are gorgeous and blessed. You’ve been given the perfect physical body, mind and spirit to create exactly what you came here to create. And what you came here to create is exactly – and ONLY – what YOU WANT TO CREATE. You have the total power to DECIDE. You have the total power to BE. ONLY YOU. The entire Universe lives inside you. As you see and declare you own magnificence and worthiness, never again will you question your right to be joyful, blissful and expressed. You are here now to learn, love, and most of all, live it, live it ALL, full out, no excuses! What are you waiting for? BE, DO and HAVE what you really, really, really want right now.

Why?

I want my consciousness to keep expanding! I thank you for loving yourself. And so does the Universe.

Bring your Life Purpose and Life Lesson questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, September 23rd at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter. GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!

Sometimes your Life School, whether it be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service, is also your Life Lesson. This data is derived from your fingerprint patterns.

What does this mean?

Well, your Life School is the foundation of your ‘magic purpose pyramid:’

Your Life School foundation is where you learn through trial and error the necessary skills to navigate the potholes, gremlins, and creepy crawlies at level two of the pyramid: Your Life Lesson. Your Life Lesson is your shadow, your nemesis, your ‘I just can’t get rid of it’ issue.

AND your Life Lesson is the breakthrough to your life. If you MASTER your Life Lesson with equanimity and grace to the best of your ability, you are granted an all-access pass to the top level of the pyramid, the penthouse suite – Your Life Purpose!

Sometimes your Life School and Life Lesson are the same, meaning your Life Lesson could be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service.

Today, we’re going to look at the School of Wisdom as Life Lesson. If Wisdom is your school and/or Life Lesson, pay close attention. If not, just be aware that we all deal with “wisdom” issues at some point in our lives.

The School of Wisdom is about using what you know, about taking action by accessing all of your inner resources and learning through both understanding and experience.

Folks in the School of Wisdom tend to swing between two polarities. One is inaction and indecision. The other is reckless action, usually initiated to break the inertia caused by the former condition of fence-sitting.

Each Life School is related to a different part of the human experience: School of Peace (Body) = feeling safe in your body and on the planet; School of Love (Heart) = expressing what you feel fully and experiencing unconditional love; and School of Service (Spirit) = connecting to the Divine and being an expression of presence in all you do by learning to serve your Self first so that you can serve others.

The School of Wisdom is the realm of the mind but more specifically, the aspect of the mind that allows us to make decisions and then take ACTION on those decisions. The element associated with the School of Wisdom is fire. Fire represents movement, change, blazing a trail, initiation, beginnings and transformation. The goal is to get ‘out of your head’ and into motion, to move your hands and legs of fire and make your mark in the world.

The Core Fear for the School of Wisdom is the fear of making a wrong decision, hence the indecision and waffling. The upside of this fear is that folks in the School of Wisdom tend to be great analysts, engineers, lawyers, contract specialists, strategists, financiers and planners of all sorts. Any type of work that requires heavy analysis, investigation and fact checking utilizes the typical skepticism, scrutiny and sometimes-cynicism of the typical ‘Wisdom’ student.

The downside for Wisdom students can include fixation on particular Catch-22 problems that seem to have no resolution, repetitive negative-thought patterns, and relentless anxiety and agitation. Whereas folks in the School of Peace tend to deal with a more visceral, body-based panic when up against their demons, School of Wisdom folks deal in anxiety, followed by emotional shutdown and backed up by a persistent line of reasoning that may, in fact, lack a good deal of reason.

If you need someone to help you come up with a good strategy, a School of Wisdom member is usually a good candidate. And if you’re in the mood to be driven crazy by a repetitive argument that cannot be won (School of Wisdom folks specialize in mind riddles), engage a Wisdom School student.

The breakthrough for you if Wisdom is your test is learning how you make decisions and then using your own system to MAKE DECISIONS and ACT upon them.

For example, perhaps when presented with a new opportunity that requires a quick decision, you:

• Scan your body (School of Peace) for any physical symptoms or sensations;
• Then check in with your heart to see how you’re feeling (School of Love) and
• Then ask yourself, “Does this opportunity help me more fully express my Life Purpose in the world and be of Service?” (School of Service)
• Finally, review your diagrams and lists and check your facts.
• Now that you have all of this information, on the balance of things, what is your conclusion? DECIDE.
• Now take action on your decision.

Once you have made your decision, I recommend you don’t look back and just move forward. Doubting our decisions after we’ve made them is incredibly debilitating to our self-esteem and ability to stay on track.

As you begin to trust your decisions and take action with more certainty, you are going to notice what works and what doesn’t. Life isn’t about making the ‘right’ choice, but learning from the choices we do make so we can make better choices moving forward. The more you are able to commit to your decisions and put yourself at stake for something that really matters to you, the less anxiety and the more joy you will experience.

Two books I highly recommend for those on the Wisdom path are Power vs. Force by Dr. David Hawkins and Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute www.arbinger.com. Both books are lucid and compelling investigations into the sometimes-twisted workings of the mind and how the mind can be your road to emancipation or enslavement.

Bring your Life Purpose and Life Lesson questions to our NEXT Life Purpose Master Mind TeleClass on Thursday, August 19^th at 5 PM Pacific. For NEW MEMBERS ONLY, the first month is FREE and the new investment is $19.97 a month thereafter. (NOTE: For regular and returning members, on your next billing cycle, you’ll be billed at ONLY $19.97! Unbelievable!)

GO HERE to get onboard. Our BRAND NEW Life Purpose Master Mind site will be up shortly! Join the hundreds of members who are committed to living their Life Purpose FULL OUT in 2010 and BEYOND!

Sometimes your Life School, whether it be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service, is also your Life Lesson. This data is derived from your fingerprint patterns.

What does this mean?

Well, your Life School is the foundation of your ‘magic purpose pyramid:’

Your Life School foundation is where you learn through trial and error the necessary skills to navigate the potholes, gremlins, and creepy crawlies at level two of the pyramid: Your Life Lesson. Your Life Lesson is your shadow, your nemesis, your ‘I just can’t get rid of it’ issue.

AND your Life Lesson is the breakthrough to your life. If you MASTER your Life Lesson with equanimity and grace to the best of your ability, you are granted an all-access pass to the top level of the pyramid, the penthouse suite – Your Life Purpose!

Sometimes a person’s Life School and Life Lesson are the same, meaning their Life Lesson could be Peace, Wisdom, Love or Service.

Today, we’re going to look at the School of Service AS Life Lesson. If Service is your school and/or Life Lesson, pay close attention. If not, just be aware that we are all moving toward Service. Why? Service is the alpha and the omega – Service with a Blissful Heart is WHY we are all here. Our unique Life Purposes are HOW we serve. For example, if your Life Purpose is Public Impact in the Healing Arts, THAT purpose IS how you serve.

To be a Master of Service, you must first Master Serving Your Self. Otherwise, you will begin to feel resentment. Resentment is the core challenge emotion for folks in the School of Service.

A wonderful book about the Service journey is Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Siddhartha is one of the names for Buddha. Siddhartha gave up being a prince to become an ascetic only to then dive into the deepest depths of his own feelings, regrets, challenges, and peak experiences through pleasure. In the end, he found life by a river. He connected with nature as he connected with his own inner nature. It is a heartbreaking and beautiful story about allowing life to come to us, rather than chasing after it. For all we need is truly inside of us.

If you feel resentment, there are two things you can do to fill your cup. My dear friend, Orna Walters, describes it this way: “You are the cup and the saucer. Fill your cup to overflowing so that you always give from the saucer – never from the cup. What’s in the cup is YOURS.” One way to fill the cup is to honor your appetites for nourishing pleasure. It could be an afternoon of solitude, a visit to an art gallery, a new pair of shoes, some body work, a mini-vacation, a long vacation. What service do you need to fill up your cup? (Note: Service folks typically have five-star taste. I suggest you honor that while still honoring your spending plan, of course.)

Secondly, to keep yourself ‘serviced,’ you need to make requests for service – from others. Service folks are notoriously unskilled at this task. That’s right – ASK. Ask for more help on the committee, ask for someone to help you move your household belongings, ask someone to honor your boundary, ask for pleasure and ask for peace. ASK for all you need. But be sure to state it this way: “May I make a request?” Then make your request, gently and calmly. Watch the world begin to serve you and your resentment fall way.

Let’s face it – if you aren’t good at receiving service, what’s going to happen when you give lots and lots of it without receiving much back? That’s right – you’re going to be pissed off. That resentment taints your work in the world. If you show up to pitch in at the soup kitchen and you’re in a foul mood, this being your eighteenth commitment this week, um, don’t do anyone any favors, okay? Stay home.

As you fill your cup and make requests, you manage your resentment. You begin to feel served. This helps you cultivate a sense of gratitude and appreciation. From there, you can access a state of inner bliss. The GIFT of the served service individual is enlightenment, the great lesson of the heavens: BE HERE NOW. As you see that the Universe is supporting and servicing you, your capacity to serve others expands. As you see the Divine in your Self, you see the Divine in others.

Namaste. “I bow reverently to you.”

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