Tag Archives: spiritual

Mandalas and zines and doing stuff just for the FUN of it

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For the past few months, I’ve been on a very serious mission to add more fun to my life.

I mean, I’m always on this mission but I’ve been taking it more seriously lately.

For me, this has involved doing things that I’ve thought about doing for a long time but just never got around to it.

Some of these activities were: camping, hiking in an old growth forest, apple picking, going to Storm King, fall foliage oogling and making things.

I love making things.

Designing, knitting, silkscreening, origami, cooking, drawing, jewelry…

There’s something special that happens when you witness your body having a direct affect on the object in front of you. Taking raw materials and utilizing your creative force to make a new thing out of it.

Something ONLY YOU can make!

One of the things I’ve thought about doing for a long time is making a zine. Like thought about since the 90s.

Zines are self-publishing at it’s finest.

And after endless requests to turn my mandalas into a coloring book, I’ve obliged!

I present to you…

This Book of Mandalas is for Coloring.

photo 2
The outside.

 

A real live, you can hold it in your hands, coloring book!

Comprised of 14 mandalas, made of black outlines, ready for COLOR to be unleashed within them, or outside them, there are no rules here.

This little booklet is imperfect and quirky and awkward and I adore it.

(You can buy one for $10 here. There are only 13 available. And that includes shipping.)

About the content: These mandalas are intuitive downloads that provide healing and clearing via encoded sacred geometric shapes when you look at them. When you color them, you are personalizing the experience to what you need to see and having your own intuitive download. It’s also very meditative, creative flow inducing and you know… fun!

 

photo 1
The inside.

 

So, the moral of this story:

Have more fun, do stuff you’ve always wanted to do and
for gosh sakes, let your inner creative anima out to prowl around
(especially the imperfect and quirky and awkward parts).

 

(PS – Creativity isn’t just for artists – we are ALL innately creative. Everything we do and say and are is creativity!)

 

Oh and buy the zine if you’d like to color!

I’ve also put together a more refined coloring book which will be available at the end of November – you can order that here. It’s $25 including shipping. And the first 20 people who order get a BONUS surprise! Might I add these would make a great holiday gift! 😉

 

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Why pretty graphics make a difference for your business (and how to make yours look good)

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gimmespace!

OK. I have a bone to pick… PLEASE STOP POSTING CRAPPY GRAPHICS!!

I know, I’m a total design snob.

Being a designer for 15 years will do that to you. I also just like to look at pretty things in general. I’m very sensory oriented.

But, snobbery and eye candy aside, there is good reason for this demand.

Back when I was a designer full time, my tagline was ‘Making the world a better place, one design at a time.’

There is so much truth in that sentence, regardless of who is making the graphics – you or a designer.

Pretty things make people happy and happy people do awesome stuff. They’re more creative and inspired and motivated to do the things that change the world.

And in the online world these days, awesome stuff is also what goes viral and gets shared all over the internets. And the stuff that gets shared millions of times IS WHAT CHANGES THE WORLD the fastest!

Whether or not someone has a trained eye for design,
they pick up on crappy looking design.

Except, the non-trained eye clicks away because they feel uncomfortable. And because they didn’t realize it was that distorted, pixelated image on your site that made them feel uncomfortable, they might think that… {GASP}… YOU make them uncomfortable.

Let’s just sit with that for a moment…

Crappy looking materials for your biz make people
project that crappiness onto you.

(click here to tweet that!)

Ew. We don’t want that.

The good news is that YOU ARE NOT CRAPPY!!

YOU ARE AWESOME!!

And there is an easy way to fix this… make your biz look HOT with badass images!

Hey guys, look at my mandala!!

Umm, it's kinda blury .................... AHHH, MY EYES! .................... OOOO! That's PRETTY!
gimmespace!

Here are a few simple tips for creating pretty graphics:

1. Handle image size in the proper ways.

Photos are not infinitely scalable or stretchable. They are made of tiny boxes called pixels and when you scale an image larger, the program you’re using has to guess what would fill the extra space you just made, which is why it ends up looking pixellated. Also, there can be a tendency to stretch or squish an image to make it a certain size.

To avoid this… use crisp, clear images that are large enough to do what you want with. Always scale the image proportionately – if you need it to be smaller, crop away!

Where to find these crisp, clear photos? My favorite stock image site to peruse is veer.com.

OR

Use your own! I use my iPhone and she takes lovely pictures. Here’s a fun little course if you’d like to improve your iPhonography skillz. 

2. Use PNGs when posting on Facebook.

For whatever reason… Facebook makes JPG images with text look funky, whenever possible, use the PNG format instead.

3. Edit your photos.

An easy way to make your images look good is to edit them. You don’t need fancy editing knowhow or software to do this. Even though I’ve been a designer for 15 year, I just use my phone these days!

It’s easy to make any photo look more interesting with some filters and text. Here are my fave apps to use:

  • Instagram – Tip: If you put your phone on airplane mode, you can apply filters without actually posting the image to your feed. Go through the entire process of posting – the post will fail because you’re in airplane mode and will store your filtered image in the Photo Album. Then you can continue to play with that, sexy looking image in…
  • Afterlight – Has filters and some basic editing features. But I love it for the frames! They come come in all sorts of shapes – hearts, stars, every letter of the alphabet etc etc etc. Also has some fun options to add light leaks which can make your images more ethereal.
  • A Beautiful Mess – Use this to add text and doodles to your images! It also has some backgrounds to choose from if you just want to do
  • Over – Another text and doodle/drawings app. This one has loads of fonts to choose from!
gimmespace!
My photo + Instagram + Over
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4. Hire a designer

If you’re not artistically inclined and/or don’t enjoy making the arts, it pays off to hire someone to do it for you. Seriously, your bottom line will thank you in more time to do YOUR thang, less frustration struggling to make things look pretty and, well, keep reading…

BUT! Before you do ANY of this, you need to…

*** Find your brand STYLE so you can create unique, on-brand images. ***

Embodying the proper energy for your business makes your brand look sexy and your audience TAKE NOTICE!

Like anything, designs carry energy with them and the energy you want people to see and the energy your business is actually exuding should match.

You wouldn’t design materials for a university in the style of a preschool, right?! Well, the same thing is true for your business – people really pick up on the subtle nuances of what you put out there. The more cohesive of a brand image you create, the more magnetic your brand’s voice gets.

If people aren’t paying attention, how are you going to change the world?!

So yea…

1. Find your brand style

2. Make your brand LOOK as hot as it REALLY IS

3. Change the world

The end.

gimmespace!

Don’t know your brand style? Weird Heart/Wild Heart will show you!

And also, I’m raising my rates! I have a few spots left in each of my programs at the old rates and then they DOUBLE in investment – check it out here.

gimmespace!


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Selling for sensitive people

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I’ll be honest, I’ve never felt all that stellar at selling myself.
It’s always felt a little awkward and uncomfortable.

But the other day, that all changed.

This story actually starts back in January, when I was doing loads of Bring Out Your Weird Sessions every week. There was one woman I talked to, we had a great conversation, I told her about my program Weird Heart/Wild Heart, and then the high energy dropped. We chatted about it for a bit – she said she wasn’t sure why but her answer wasn’t a resounding YES! I told her to let me know if she ever figured out what exactly it was that was keeping away that yes.

A few months later she emailed me and said she had figured out… it was that I didn’t sound excited about the program.

Huh. Interesting.

And also confusing as heck because I am very excited about that program!! And it’s helped a lot of peeps organize their ideas, choose THE ONE to move forward with and make actual tangible progress in their biz. I know it works.

For the next few months, I didn’t really know what to DO with that piece of info, so I tucked it away. Until two days ago.

I was having a Bring Out Your Weird Session, we chatted for a bit, and then it came time to talk about my program. I decided to try something new… instead of waiting to feel out her emotions, I just launched into OVER THE TOP PURE EXCITEMENT! I amped myself up and got as excited as possible. I was excited, she was excited, and she signed up!

This might sound totally silly, it also felt a little silly, but it worked. I didn’t give myself a chance to be affected by any possible thoughts or feelings of the other person. (You’ll never really know what those thoughts and feelings are really about anyway.) I just tapped into how I felt the program could help her and went with it.

If you’re a super sensitive person, like me, then you know how easy it is to get overtaken by other people’s thoughts, feelings and emotions. But, I was so busy exuding my feelings about the program, there wasn’t room for anything else inside me.

Definitely don’t use this in a manipulative way, if you’re not actually excited to work with someone, and don’t think you’d be a good fit, let the person go on their way. Taking on clients that are not your ideal doesn’t work out for either of you in the long run!

But, if you are excited to work with them, for christ sakes, SHOW IT!!! And show it in an amplified way!

So, I’m interested to hear what you think! Will you try it? Does it resonate??

Tell me in the comments.

And if you aren’t actually excited about your programs, then it’s time to look at that and find something that totally blows your mind/rocks your sockies right off! (Btw, Weird Heart/Wild Heart is magic at guiding that discovery process and I have only TWO spots left until the end of August! At which point, I will be raising the investment, so if it’s in your mind, get in on it now! Go sign up or fill out this form and let’s chat)

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Being yourself and doing what you love can change your life

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I have a little story for you!

You may or may not know this, but I’ve been drawing lately… a lot.

And all this drawing has added a whole new dimension to my business.

I’m telling this story for two reasons: 

1. To share with you how finding a creative practice you love can be life altering.

2. And to show you exactly what rocking your WEIRD can do for you!

 

<3 Love letter to you and me mandala <3

 

It started in earnest last fall.

Well, technically, I’ve been drawing since I was a wee child (we all have!), took lots of art classes while I was growing up and then majored in art.

When I graduated from college, I became a graphic designer. All of my creative energy went into designing all day and I stopped making art for myself.

Over the past few years, though, I’ve been doing more consulting and less design and last fall, I started to feel like something was missing.

I wasn’t really sure what it was, but I knew that I was feeling burned out…

Being an entrepreneur is really hard sometimes!

It’s stressful to constantly be exposing yourself to the world and if you’re like me, you’re not very good at ending the work day at a reasonable hour because there’s always more you ‘could’ be doing.

So yea, burned out.

When you’re burned out, all you wanna do is chill out and relax and enjoy yourself.

It turns out it can be surprisingly difficult to relax and enjoy yourself when you feel like there’s a lot to do. The guilt monster immediately showed up, throwing all kinds of profanity in my direction.

But that was the whole reason I had gotten myself into the mess of feeling burned out in the first place.

I was also having quite a hard time remembering what I *actually* liked to do for fun!

So, I decided to go way way back in the archives… to childhood!

I knew I liked to hang out in nature… so many, many walks ensued.

And while I was walking, I found a playground and rediscovered the swings, so I added that to my list. But, it turns out that adults without kids aren’t really welcome in playgrounds anymore so… that was just sort of awkward!

I read some of my fave books as a kid.

These things were all successful at helping me call up that glorious feeling of freedom and curiosity.

And then I dug out the art supplies…

It started with a few handmade cards and some futzing around with watercolors.

I liked it because I could make whatever the heck I wanted without having to think about pleasing anyone. It was all in the name of feeling good.

Over time, I noticed that I had naturally started gravitating towards making art whenever I was feeling overwhelmed by other things in my life or feeling creatively stuck and scared in my biz. I’m pretty amazed that in a matter of a few weeks, art making had officially been inducted into my subconscious as a tool to use to take me from feeling ‘UGH’ to feeling ‘WEEEEEEE!!!!’!!!!

 

This one is about sacred geometry.

And then my friend Mariah Neeson sent me this video on how to draw a mandala.

And EVERYTHING JUST EXPLODED!

I had always been very intrigued by mandalas but was way too intimidated by their intricacy to try drawing one (it turns out it’s insanely easy!).

Suddenly I was a drawing maniac. I couldn’t WAIT to draw everyday!

And then something really interesting happened… I noticed that what I was drawing completely reflected whatever was going on inside me – whatever I was struggling with, or celebrating, emotionally or mentally ended up on the page.  Of course, I later found out that Carl Jung touted the mandala as a representation of the inner self which explained a lot.

 

Drawing as play!

 

Every time I drew a mandala, I discovered something new about myself or solved a life problem or transformed a crappy stressed out mood into a calm one… and in the rest of my life, I saw huge changes!

I started accepting and loving myself more, expressing myself more opening, I launched a passion project, I grew the ovarios needed to state what I wanted and needed, transforming several important relationships in my life and so so many other things.

So there I was… drawing my daily mandalas and loving it! (my handle is @poodlecat if you’re curious to see them – or you can look at the Instagram album on my Facebook page)

And other people were loving it, too! Any time someone would email me or call me, they’d bring up the mandalas and how much they were enjoying them. I was really surprised by just how into them people were!

So I decided to package up all the stuff I had been exploring through my daily mandalas into a drawing workshop to see if other peeps would want to experience (and re-experience) just how effing awesome drawing is!! And thus Be Drawsome! was born.

And it turns out that all kinds of people, artists and non-artists, are super excited about drawing!! WOOHOOOO!!

 

Letting go of old crap.

 

Something that’s been there all along but that I had no clue would transform me and have such an impact on the people around me. So there you have it, the 10 month process of seeking, playing, discovering and sharing a deep part of myself.

The lesson: go after what makes you feel good,
enjoy the heck out of it and share it with others.
Be your weird self and you will totally changes lives!

 

 

 

 

If you’re curious to explore drawing, would love to have you in the latest Be Drawsome! Workshop! Check it out here!

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My existential crisis and remembering who I really am

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This week has been ROUGH over here at Mara Belzer HQ.

If only there were some place we could order a dropper full of confidence and clarity! Take 4 drops 3x a day and you’d be set 😉

Mine would probably be made from the energetic vibration of the tears my three year old self shed five lifetimes ago when that dog bit my foot and I ended up with a marking on my first chakra.

Alas, being an entrepreneur is super painful sometimes and blocks can be tricky. And the only thing you can really do is just wade through the thoughts and feelings while attempting to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.

For me that means calling on my arsenal of friends and coaches and handholding otters so I don’t float out to sea.

AND completely getting away from my business and doing fun stuff until I am *actually* having fun.

Yesterday, between fits of hysterical crying, I went to my storage unit to look for some watercolor paper. I’ve been nomadic for the past two years so looking for stuff in there is like sorting through a time capsule.

I found my old sketchbooks from art school. They reminded me that I’ve had a propensity towards the weird since… forever.

gimme
snail watching tv
Here's a drawing I did of a slug watching tv.
house cat
Here's my interpretation of a house cat back from when I was really into house music. Over on the left you can see evidence of my obsession with label makers.
gimme

I also found the snakes which you can read all about in my post about the snakes.

gimme
Snakes!
gimme

This trip down memory lane helped me see that my life is much bigger than any existential crisis.

Life flows in waves and sometimes when you’re at the bottom of the wave, it’s hard to remember that pretty soon you’ll be back on top of the world, having a grand ole time, and feeling stronger for that dip.

gimme
Here's my three year old self from this lifetime enjoying the heck out of toothless smiles and nature.
gimme

Ok, so… the next time you find yourself in an entrepreneurial rut, you have permission to take a break and do something that reminds you of who you really are.

Because you are SO MUCH MORE than the number of clients you have or amount of dollars in your bank account or number of likes on Facebook.  <– click to tweet that!

You are amazing with or without.

gimmespace!


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Are you rockin’ your shit?! like really really?!

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OK, so I have a confession…

I LOVE all this Harlem Shake madness!!

Here’s one of my faves:

One person rocking their own little dance while a crowd could care less… baseline drops and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!!

Everyone getting down in general CRAZINESS!!

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YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

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I see it as representation of how our inner world should look.

When you come up with something you want to do in your life, something that would require you to muster up all your courage to JUST GO FOR IT… are you there for you?

Like really really there?

gimmespace!

Do you sit in the audience, ignoring this part of you that wants to break out and BE THEIR WEIRD SELF?

OR…

Do you SUPPORT YOURSELF with every cell in your body to just ROCK THAT SHIZZ?! Get dressed up in all your various facets of awesomeness and lose your shit in the best way possible?! YOUR GLASS CEILING SHATTERED INTO A MILLION LITTLE BITS !!!!!

OR…

Are you looking at that piece of yourself that wants to break out with lots of eye rolling and disgust – getting super annoyed with their shenanigans?

Well, it’s time to support yourself.

Because if you want people to rally around you in the outside world… if you have a thing you wanna make happen… you gotta get down with you, first.

You have the world’s blessing: Accept yourself. Support yourself. ROCK THE EFF OUT WITH YOURSELF!!!

gimmespace!

(ps – And while you’re at it, rock the eff out with other people too. It’s quite contagious!)


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When you have too many ideas and it’s hard to choose

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Does this sound familiar?!

It’s Friday. All week, I’ve been thinking about how I need to write a blog post. I put so much pressure on myself to write the post that I don’t know what it should be about.

I’ve written ten different posts in my head. Brainstormed a few, but none of them are zinging me. Even right now, I’m trying to ‘trick’ myself into writing a blog a post by doing a journal entry. It feels forced.

I’m always exploring… what are the perfect conditions to blog under?!

I like to feel fired up. Scratch that, NEED to feel FIRED UP! If I’m bored, will other people be bored, too? It’s definitely boring to write about something you’re bored of.

Arg, I totally don’t feel like writing this. I’m not feeling particularly inspired this week.

I feel under pressure. Pressure does not equal creativity. And excitement.

And yet another week has gone by and here I am, wondering what the HELL I did this week aside from stress out. {insert dramatic sigh here}

This is idea overwhelm!

It’s one part tons of ideas, one part self-doubt, one part fear of success, one part purposeful distraction and a dash of arm flailing.

So. What do you DO in the midst of idea overwhelm?

There are are many ways to get past it but in the the end, and they all involve making a decision and taking some good ole action!

The other night I opted for the walk away and do something fun instead option. This involved going to an art show where two fire eaters ate fire off each others nipples and then going to this mindblowing BBQ place in Brooklyn with the roomies where we proceeded to eat ourselves into a meat coma.

And the next day – BLOG POST. TA DA!

So, why did this work?

When you’re stuck deep in the clenches of idea overwhelm, you can’t see the big picture. And when you can’t see the big picture, you get mired in the details and can’t make a decision.

Maybe you don’t have all the info, or are afraid of making the wrong one or aren’t being honest with yourself about what you want vs. what you feel like you *should* be doing. But when you’re super close to it, it’s hard to see what’s really going on.

But, in order to get out of idea overwhelm, you have to make a decision and move forward with it. Because not making the decision equates to continuing to hold yourself back. <– click to tweet it!

So, do what you can to make that decision… table it (if you do this, really walk away from it!), get some perspective with a break for FUN, journal, talk to a friend, hire someone to help you (if this is your jam – I can help – let’s chat!).

If you’re worried about making the wrong decision, there are very few things in life you can’t recover from – meaning, there aren’t really wrong decisions. You will end up in a new place with new options and if something is meant to be, it’ll come back around.

Tell me in the comments, what’s your go to way to get out of idea overwhelm?

Big hugs and happy choosing!

gimmespace!


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16 things to try when you aren’t getting clients

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I’m not gonna sugar coat this,
IT BLOWS when the clients are nowhere to be found!

You’re worried, you’re stressed and and sadly, the easiest thing to do – getting frustrated and angry and sad – doesn’t really seem to do the trick when it comes to moving things forward.

Nope, it’s time to do some troubleshooting to figure out what the hay might be going on.

Here’s 16 things to try when business is slow and all you wanna do is help some folks and pay the bills:

1. Give up! Ok, so you don’t have to GIVE UP, give up. Just give up the struggle.

Let yourself off the hook. Get out from under all that pressure you’ve been putting on yourself to SUCCEED at the numbers game. Close the laptop, take off the headset and go do something that has NOTHING to do with work. Woo alert! When you give up, you’re getting out of your way and giving the Universe/God/Goddess (or whatever you believe in!) a chance to work some magic in your favor. Even if you don’t believe in this, just give it a chance, you might be surprised at the results!

2. Are you having FUN?! No one says to themself, ‘gee, I’d sure love to find a coach who’s miserable and hating life!’ People want to hire people who are happy and having a good time. Work fun into your daily routine.

3. Are you feeling desperate? Get yourself to a place of feeling FULL and SATISFIED. Do whatever it takes. Even if you only have three days until a bill is due, a new client could come into your life in a matter of seconds or minutes. You just never know.

4. Change your measurement of success. If your success is based on the numbers game (number of clients you’ve got or dollars in your bank account), you’re likely feeling pretty crappy about yourself when those numbers are low. The uber competitive, capitalistic, age of the individual has left us tying our worth to numbers. It doesn’t have to be that way. You get to make up your own definition of success and tell yourself whatever story you want about what it means.

5. Are you being consistent with your marketing? Consistency is so so important. People encounter so much every day, they aren’t likely to remember you unless you’re reminding them frequently that you exist and what you can do for them.

Creating content also reminds YOU what you’re all about and what you can do for people. And keeps you creative, fired up and evolving.

6. Does your business exist in your head? Sometimes, it might *feel* like you’re doing a lot of work for your biz because it’s always on your mind, BUT, if that’s the only place it is, nobody knows about it! If you’re always contemplating your ideas, or running them by people for feedback, but never taking action to make them real, it only exists in your head.

Get those ideas OUT of your head!

7. Are you embarrassed to send people to your website or sales page? Do you hate the name of your program so much you never want to say it? Do you have a hard time talking about what you do? This WILL create a huge block in the flow of your biz! If you hate what you have out there or clam up whenever someone asks what you do, and secretly don’t want anyone to see it or ask about it, then they won’t. It’s that simple.

Love all the pieces of your biz and yell about it from rooftops! People get excited when you’re excited!  <– click to tweet it!

If you can’t do this, you need to take a look at whether you’re *actually* into what you’re doing.

8. Do people understand the value of what you’re offering? Do they get what you can do for them and what’s in it for them? If people don’t get how what you can do for them will make their lives more awesome, they aren’t going to invest in it.

9. Are you barking up the wrong tree? People buy what they WANT, but not necessarily what they NEED. And, they have to be ready for it. If someone says no or not now, move along and find people who are ready for what you can do for them. Get off the crusade of trying to convince people they need it. They very well might but you can’t force them into it.

10. Are you being the person your clients need to be in order to by your thing? Our clients mirror us. So, if people aren’t buying, for instance, take a look at your headspace and actions to see if you’re exhibiting this same behavior.

Are you holding back in some way and not wanting to confront a personal demon? Are you sitting on decisions or telling yourself you can’t afford something? Are you worrying that hiring someone won’t help you with what you need?

All of these thought patterns will attract other people with the same ones. Take the risk or leap you want your potential clients to make.

11. Are you hiding? Are you saying what you want and how you want to say it? Do you have pictures of yourself on your site? People buy when they feel connected. They want to see your face and hear your personal story.

If you said ‘yes, Mara, I am’ to this one. Ask yourself again – AM I REALLY BEING MY WEIRD SELF?!! Take a risk, I promise people will NATURALLY be drawn to you when you’re being your self, no matter how WHACKY that is!

12. Is the language you’re using approachable and understandable? Write how you speak and use words and phrases your clients ACTUALLY use to describe their woes. People will be all – YES! THAT’S SO ME!! Stay away from generic jargon that everyone uses but can mean different things to different people. Step into your power… become your authentic self… you get the idea 🙂 Get original and honest with your copy!

13. Is there a tricky mindset at play? Will having more money or more clients be in direct conflict with a hidden belief you’re hardboring? Here’s two I’ve uncovered in the past year:

  • Having more money would mean I would have to make decisions about certain things in my life. Decisions I didn’t want to have to make. So, keeping myself broke was keeping me from having to make those decisions! Convenient, right?!
  • Having more clients would mean being responsible for people and potentially letting them down.

Ask yourself: Who would I have to be to make money? What would having money mean?

14. Work on your money story! There’s so much packed into this one. We all have a past with money that dates back way farther than we can remember. Do some work to help you dig that up and get to know what’s going on there.

If you’re broke and always telling yourself you can’t afford things, you will continue down that path unless you change something. Try making a tiny shift in how you look at money. ie – Pay your bills with gratitude and appreciation by making a list of all the things this service enabled you to do. Or, look at not buying something as a choice rather than because you can’t afford it. It’s likely that you could sacrifice your rent to pay for something you wanted but you would rather have a home than a $500 pair of boots. That’s a choice! Feel empowered by your priorities instead of controlled by them.

15. Get rid of something! I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ – well, that shit is damn true! Try it out and watch what happens. It doesn’t really matter what it is… actual stuff, using a gift certificate you’ve been saving, cleaning out the fridge. Just do something and get it off your to do list. This creates flow where things are blocked.

Just be aware of what’s coming your way. Sometimes we’ll get sent something we don’t want as a test to see how committed we are to our true goals. Stay strong and hold out for the thing you really want!

16. Do you really want to be doing this? Are you really actually excited about it?! Get prepared for this one because the answer might be NO. And that’s OK.

What would you rather be doing instead? Is it a different offer or whole other business altogether? Be honest with yourself. Even if you don’t know how to make the switch right now, you will figure it out. You totally deserve to be doing something you love and getting to be YOUR WEIRD SELF. Believe it.

Tell me, which one(s) resonated the most with you? Do you have any specific things you like to do when you’re feeling all blocked up in the client area?

gimmespace!


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Is your business built on SHOULD?

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For the past 3 days, I’ve been trying to finish this blog post.

Not THIS blog post, but a different blog post. Yesterday, while in major procrastination mode, I went perusing through my collection of half written blog post drafts and I discovered that I have tried to write that post on several different occasions from different angles.

Wow.

In addition to the time I spent writing different versions of the post, there’s the all the time I spent thinking about the post. It sounded something like this…

“You should write that blog post.”

“You need to finish that blog post.”

“Why aren’t you writing that blog post?”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU NEVER DO WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING!!!”

Again, wow.

If I have to berate myself into misery to get the thing written, it’s not going to come out in an open and expansive way. And people don’t connect with things that don’t come out in an open and expansive – they just aren’t all that enjoyable for anyone.

I mean, do you march along thinking to yourself…

“I’m dying to pay to work with someone who is all tied up in knots, creating out of misery,.”

“I’m looking for that person who is having a horrible, depressing, not fun time in their biz. I bet they can help me!”

“I want the person who is hiding their true self from the world and offering something they aren’t all that into.”

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say ABSOLUTELY NOT! You want to hire people who are excited and happy and inspired, right?!! Well, your clients do, too.

There’s no reason to be unhappy in your business.

Sure, some things are less fun than others. And yes, sometimes, you have to do the unhappy to even know that you aren’t into it.

And of course, even the things you *want* to do will make you uncomfortable for certain reasons like getting outside your comfort zone and pushing past blocks.

But, it’s important to establish the difference between the *shoulds* – the stuff you’re forcing yourself to do because you think you have to – and the *wants*…

The stuff you REALLY REALLY LOVE.

The stuff that just flows out of you and makes you all warm and fuzzy and giggly and smiley.

The stuff that makes the world feel like this magical place where everything makes sense.

So, what’s up? Is your biz built on the *shoulds* or the *wants*???

Do you want to gouge your eyes out every time you think about that lead you need to follow up on or that shopping cart you were going to set up or that program you haven’t gotten around to launching?

Sheesh! Give yourself  break.

You are totally allowed to trade in the *shoulds* for the fun stuff! <– tweet this!

gimmespace!

p.s. If you don’t know where *should* stops and *want* begins, get in touch, we can get you sorted. There’s no reason to struggle, that’s probably a *should* talking, too. Only 24 hours left to take advantage of getting the Own Your Weird program AT 50% OFF!


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Leverage your special breed of WEIRD in your business!

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Do you know your idiosyncrasies??

They might be pain points from your past… things you got teased for, shamed over and generally embarrassed about.

But here’s the thing, you aren’t a kid on the school yard anymore or vying for love from your parents.

And the good news about that?

You have permission to CELEBRATE these qualities. 

That’s right, you can stop hiding them and instead, LEVERAGE them to serve you.

This is the foundation of bringing the weird out in your biz.

Lemme show you, here are a few of my idiosyncrasies and how I’m leveraging them in my biz:

  1. The unique and WEIRD. — I help people celebrate their weird (this is getting meta!)
  2. Fresh ideas – millions of them! — Creative brainstorming for branding and marketing strategies
  3. Getting REALLY excited about things — Providing encouragement, cheerleading, accountability
  4. Being really sensitive — I use my intuitive gifts to help people dig out the root of what’s going on
  5. Spirit animals — Stay tuned, this is coming soon!
  6. Geometric shapes — I’ve been a graphic/web designer since 1998
  7. Talking in funny voices — General entertainment and laughs

So, what about you? What are those qualities you (or others) have deemed too weird for public?

Make a list. And then, do a little brainstorming about how you can leverage them to your advantage.

Share them in the comments for bonus points!!

gimme space!

OWN YOUR WEIRD!!

gimme space!


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