In “Working with the Law” Raymond Holliwell talks about the Law of Receiving.  He talks about giving your substance where it can do most good, and about specific behaviors that would indicate you are out of harmony with the law.

One such behavior is delighting in something that is received for free.  He asks, “Do you look for a deal or a bargain?” and “Does it make you happy when you get something for nothing?”

These thoughts are out of harmony with the belief in the abundance of the Universe, and that you will receive exactly what you need when you need it. It’s operating based on fear.

I’ve seen this recently. I received a free bonus with a program I purchased.  It wasn’t really something I would have bought and paid for on my own and I was a bit uncertain about accepting it because it wasn’t something that was really in alignment with my current set of priorities, even though it was great.

But it was FREE.

And we are trained to be excited about stuff that is free in our culture.

You SHOULD take something free, right?  It’s like a lucky opportunity, right?  When will you ever have the chance again, right?

Or, perhaps it’s out of alignment.  In my case I attempted to talk myself into believing that it was right, and I resisted outright saying, “I don’t want this free thing.”  Energetically that behavior was coming from fear… “maybe I SHOULD take it.”

Rather than just say no, I took it, but without real energetic commitment on my part.  It was a bad idea.  The whole thing became steeped in fear and scarcity based energy, and didn’t work out very well.

Scarcity Thinking is the Root of Fear

Scarcity thinking is the root of all fear-based decisions.  There is not enough to go around, I am not enough if I don’t do this, etc.

I write this article from Juror Lounge 100 at the Denver courthouse.  I’ve been traveling pretty extensively recently, and I could definitely be in a scarcity thought-process around my time, and resenting jury duty.  I’ve chosen to embrace the opportunity to experience a part of our society that I’ve not experienced before.  I’m staying positive and looking for what’s right about the fact I was selected for this part of the process (and powerfully intending on not spending much more time here!)

Many people have offered me ideas for ways to get out of jury duty and talked about how ‘it’s not fair’ and because I’m self-employed I shouldn’t have to go.

Where is that coming from?  Is there a belief that self-employed people have a scarcity of time and money and should be pitied over their J-O-B-holding counterparts?  Why would I want to buy into that idea?

Taking something free because it’s free is rooted in fear and scarcity as well, and fear begets fear.

Regret is a Form of Scarcity

We could say that I might regret my decision not to say “no” to the free thing.  In Truth I took it because I didn’t want to regret not taking the opportunity.  The definition of regret is:  feeling sorrow or remorse for an act, to think of with a sense of loss.

Why would we worry about the loss of something in the past?  Because we don’t believe that there is an abundance of opportunity in the future.  The moment we notice ourselves entertaining thoughts of regret, we must catch it and stop it in the act.  Instead, ask yourself, “Of what am I now aware that will help me to make a different decision in the future?”  Own the new awareness and release the regret, it never serves you.

Make a Decision and Make it Right

Early on in my business I invested $15,000 in a coaching program.  The program was a group program that did not include individual attention.  I felt crazy for making the investment.  I’d never done anything like that in the past, and I wasn’t making anywhere near that in my business, so I was somewhat terrified.

But my gut told me it was the thing I needed to do (I couldn’t sleep the night before making the decision).  And I went for it.  And I never for an instant looked back.

OK, maybe for an instant or two I would think, “Shit, can I really make this money back?”  Then I would let it go.  Immediately.

Any time I was with others in the program who began talking about how they weren’t getting what they needed, I either declared that I was or I walked away.  I refused to buy into any conversations about regret about the decision, or not honoring my commitment to be all-in.

The people who talked about the problems with the program, who focused on regret… many of them didn’t complete the program because they didn’t make the money, and some are not in business today.

I made the decision and made it right – with no doubt that I’d make the money back.

What if You Go Out of Resonance?

What happens if you made a decision to participate in something, and you either evolve and grow and it no longer resonates for you?  Or, if you recognize you made a decision out of fear and scarcity, and you can’t align with it?

Pay for it anyway.

If you are in business and you have signed a contract, honor the contract.  Period.  It is not a sound business practice to not honor your agreements.  Just do it.

I have participated in a program in which I paid for the entire program, and only took advantage of part of the program.  I could get my undies in a bunch about how I didn’t get the full value from the program, or force myself to do all parts of it even though they aren’t parts that are aligned for me.  But the Truth is I got exactly what I needed from the program.  I made the decision and made it right, and participated powerfully on my terms, and the terms of the contract I signed, with no regret.

If you are the type of person who views contracts and agreements (or jury duty) as things to get out of, that is the energy you will bring to your business and your clients.

Love making your payments, be empowered by your decisions to make and spend money, and don’t spend time spinning in doubt and regret.  All that says is that you don’t think your time is better spent being of service and making more money, and I don’t think you want to believe that!

I am the first to say that moving past where you typically stop requires a ‘come to Jesus’ sort of moment.  To decide to change your life will always come with a brief (or sometimes more than brief) moment of panic as you break through your fear.

If it doesn’t, you’re probably not upleveling yourself enough.

That said, it shouldn’t cause you to feel like crap!  In fact on the other side of an aligned decision (which in my world often means putting down a ‘burn-the-ships’ type deposit on something) there is freedom.

True, peaceful, freedom.  Not a “oh-thank-God-someone-will-save-me” idea of freedom, because that doesn’t exist.

Yet too many people make decisions from that place.

Much of the coaching industry is built on decisions made from that place.

I have made decisions from that place.  I learned a whole lot from it, but it didn’t grow my business.  I have worked with clients who have made a lot of those decisions from a place of fear, and in their work with me finally get to tap into who they really are and what they love… what works about them.

Cycle of Proving in Action

I watch it happen.  A perfectly capable, confident business owner puts themselves in a situation to learn, without a clear awareness of who they are and what they are there to accomplish.  They learn all of the latest tools, tactics, and trends that they COULD be using to grow their business.  And they forget who they are and where they are, and the current skills and resources they have that work for them.  They lose track of everything they already know and all they have learned before that day, and they turn themselves over to the person in front of them to give them an answer to who they should be.

And they start to think they need it all right away, and feel bad for not having it.  They forget that while organic search may be dead, and paid search may be where it’s at, learning how to buy paid search will make no difference because… they don’t even like their website!

They want to prove they are good at that this thing called business, that they are enough, and they create an agreement that they are not enough if they don’t have paid search.

The Hype Can Win Out

A guru paints a picture of hoards of people being led right to you!  And you think you need that right now.  But you don’t, you wouldn’t know what to do with them if you had them!  It’s not a problem to learn paid search.  But aside from taking your precious time, here is where it really doesn’t serve you.  If you buy into the idea that you are somehow doing it ‘wrong’ if you don’t learn it right now.

In any given day in a business seminar you could learn HUNDREDS of things you’re not doing at a level of excellence:  Search, social media, email marketing, webinars, videos, follow-up, networking, finding speaking gigs, converting your audience to paying customers, sales, website copy, design, business cards, taglines, guest blogging, etc., etc., etc.

We always need to learn and grow as a business owner.  But the moment you buy into the idea that you are not enough because you’re not doing these things, you are sunk.  Energetically you just became the insecure provider trying to sell something.  And when you make a decision to get support from a place of feeling inadequate and hoping someone – some program, some technology, some guru who knows more than you – can fix you, you are confirming the energy of inadequacy.

Every decision has an energetic consequence.  

Love begets love, and fear begets fear.

Don’t buy into it.  

You can move past your leading edge of growth, and I am a huge proponent of getting the right support for you to help you do that.  And it will feel scary.  But getting support doesn’t need to make you feel as if you aren’t enough to begin with.  The best business decisions come from focusing on creating more of what you love, and focusing on the good within you and your business, and getting help to grow your unique genius.  What we focus on, grows.  Buying from fear grows fear.

The best thing you can spend money on is something that will teach you how to think, and how to make decisions that are in Alignment with the Truth of who you are, not ones that make you doubt all of the ways in which you are successful already.  Own your value, damn it, and choose and invest from there!

It’s happened to me countless times. I go about my life and my business (or my job back when I was in a job) and I’d make decisions and float along on the trajectory I set for myself. These days it’s a trajectory I really love. But then it happens nonetheless. I’ll hear someone say something that absolutely lights me up. Or I’ll hear someone say something that absolutely fires me up. And I’ll get one of those moments of crystal clarity.

Kinda like the one I got back in my corporate job when I observed how people had a tendency to present the opinions they knew were popular rather than the ones that were real, and I saw that the world would be a different place if we all stopped pretending.

It happened to me again recently when my friend hesitantly advised me not to share something that I had discovered with the casual, “girl, what if you’re wrong?” This got me FIRED UP about Truth and the importance of trusting those fleeting moments of inner knowing no matter what anyone around you thinks. I gave birth to my new mantra “believe yourself and no one else” and launched the Truth Summit to explore the topic.

Back in my first business seminar I remember looking at the person leading the program and thinking, “he does what I do… only he’s doing it in a big way and I’m just thinking about doing it!”

The moments of crystal clarity require being truthful with yourself about what is calling. That deep longing to be like the man on the stage was a moment of clarity about who I wanted to be in the world, and I let that clarity drive me for the following 2 years with him as my mentor and role model.

If you love reading my stuff. If it lights you up, and makes you think to yourself, “she’s right” and “that’s what I do!” you are probably right. I am serving to reflect back to you the Truth about who you are at your core. Then the question becomes, will you act on it? Are you willing to put your Truth out there? And are you willing to get help to crystalize it?

In my Inner Alignment Intensive last weekend, we had a small group of courageous entrepreneurs look deeply at who they are, what they do, and what they believe, and place a true value on that. The dynamic in this room is carefully crafted to allow people to see themselves reflected in the others in the room, and those they encounter during the program’s excursions.

The people that pissed them off let them know about parts of themselves they haven’t healed, or parts they have that they are longing to share. The parts that lit them up, or stirred envy within them, represent parts of themselves it was time to step into, claim their genius in that area, and begin to charge for it.

They would have never known any of that if they had stayed home.

We must engage in life to know what we truly believe, the stuff we believe so deeply and passionately that it will catapult us out of bed and move our results forward by leaps and bounds. We must give ourselves the moments of crystal clarity that will shape our ever evolving brand, our latest campaign or offering, or the soap box message that can’t wait to be televised.

Are you willing to speak your Truth and watch how it lands?

Watching how it lands doesn’t mean looking to see if people like it. Some of the good stuff will piss people off. I had countless interviewees in the Truth Summit mention how as they became more of themselves, some people got upset. That’s how it goes. You want to speak what you believe is your Truth and look to see how it lands. You’re not looking for approval, you are looking for how it lands for you in your gut as you speak it, and you looking for whether the right people step up, either in support or with ruffled feathers, to make some change in their own life as a result of the Truth you speak.

Don Miguel Ruiz said, when you lose the human form (meaning the old stories that your ancestors taught you about being human), “you have the opportunity to choose what you believe according to your integrity…. You can use the your attention for the second time to base your story on the truth instead of lies.”

I love that he says, “believe according to your own integrity.” Only your personal integrity can tell you whether something is Truth for you or if it is a lie based on the reason you are personally on this planet. How you see yourself reflected in others, and how you feel and respond to them, will tell you exactly where your integrity lies if you let it.

Will you let it?

By Karen Fagan of Feel Amazing Now

Hands up to all you rebels! I used to be the world’s biggest rebel and now I am a refined rebel.

Simply put, a refined rebel is a powerful woman who only rebels to fully expand her life, relationships, business, sensuality, well-being, wealth, etc. She rebels in a way that completely enhances every morsel of her life. Rather than rebel; rebel in such a way that hurts her life, keeping her exactly where she doesn’t want to be as in broke, struggle, overwhelm, overweight and unhappy.

The moment I created the transformation from a rebel to a refined rebel is the exact process that upleveled my entire life and business. It’s the exact reason why I am in love with my life and run a multiple six-figure company. Lori, I want you to have anything you desire so read and apply this rule a okay?

I used to say, screw the rules (all of them).

Especially if I didn’t “feel like it”. You know just not feeling like it. I don’t feel like doing (fill in the blank).

I would procrastinate.

Tell myself that certain things didn’t apply to me.

My mindset and who I was being definitely needed to be refined. How I was behaving was not aligned with how people behave who had what I desired.

Then one day I woke up and realized my inner rebel was causing less than desirable results. I noticed the following:

• I’d take way too long to get things done.
• Not getting things done made me wonder if I really had what it took to do what I desired most.
• I’d sit there and know what I needed to do to advance my life and business but I didn’t.
• I needed a coach but resisted someone telling me what to do.
• I would get caught up in the “how” which only paralyzed me. It was my excuse to not take action and go do something else – usually that something else didn’t move me any closer to my goals.
• I was not productive.
• I was resistant.
• I was afraid.
• I was not happy.
• I would procrastinate, get distracted, and do the things my inner rebel told me to do.
• I was broke.
• I was struggling.
• I ate too much sugar.
• I was miserable.
• I realized my inner rebel was not working for me. Honestly, my inner rebel was screwing me over and keeping me exactly where I didn’t want to be.

I wondered what it was going to take to turn things completely around.

That was the moment I refined my inner rebel. I got honest that something needed to change. Then I created one powerful rule that when applied will shift everything for you.

Funny, a rebel creating a rule, right?

This rule is called the 7-Minute Rule: It’s so simple and so profound. It’s the one rule that channeled all my rebel energy into really positive, juicy, successful and productive energy.

How to apply the 7-Minute Rule to Your Life:

When you are faced with something to do, that by doing this will advance your life, well being, business etc. forward than all of sudden you find yourself not doing it! You perhaps may have overwhelming feelings and you start to doubt yourself, tell yourself you can’t do it, question your abilities to make it happen, find yourself feeling like you don’t want to do it, feel too tired, or unsure. Especially use this rule if you hear yourself say “I think…I will do this tomorrow”. Tomorrow never happens, trust me on this one!

Here’s how it works. You give yourself permission to do the task for only seven minutes. If after seven minutes you still don’t want to do it, you stop. It may look like this:

You want to exercise but don’t feel like it. You put your exercise clothes on and head out to the yoga class or gym, walk or run and if after seven minutes once you start exercising you don’t want to or still don’t feel like it you stop and you freely give yourself permission to stop. It won’t happen – mark my words, you will keep going.

In seven minutes you can warm up to anything. Trust me on this one.

If you know making sales calls to prospective clients or making calls to get booked speaking gigs will be the exact thing to accelerate your income but you just don’t like it or feel like it or you don’t know what to say or who to call. Apply the seven-minute rule ~ just start calling. Same for exercise just start moving your body. Just start.

Here is the magic of this rule. The transformation always happens in the decision. The decision of applying the seven minute rule to your life takes you out of the not doing. Once you start doing, mark my words you won’t stop. Why? Because inside you are truly doing what you want to do! Nothing feels more amazing than actually doing all the things we say we want to do! Yes, if you want to be in great shape, increase your sales, up your speaking. etc. The only struggle is deciding not to start and listening to the monkey mind or allowing yourself to turn your back on the exact thing you said you wanted. If you just allow yourself seven minutes then all that will be a non-issue.

Negative emotions are a clue. The best way to make a shift from feeling any negative emotion such as frustrated, crappy, overwhelmed, or doubtful is to apply the seven-minute rule and just start. You are one decision away from shifting into the unstoppable, positive energy flowing and getting a whole lot done!

Apply the seven minute rule that will rock your world!

I’m a big fan of education. I love to learn.

That said, you are not your education. You are not the letters behind your name. You are not even your roster of client success stories. All those things, if you have them, have brought you to this point and they are valuable.

But let’s talk Truth.

You don’t need any of that to make you valuable. You just need to recognize your unique point of view, for which you have a lifetime of training!

There is a view of the world that only you can see.

Dancer Martha Graham said it like this:

There is a vitality, a life force, and energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

Your view is like a seed planted within you and it has caused you to observe the world in a particular way for the whole of your life. You may have gotten degrees or certifications or jobs that have supported that point of view (even if they felt like a ‘wrong fit’) but either way, your view of life has been honed for as many years as you’ve been on this planet.

If you can harness that in the way you package, price, and communicate about your services, you will be absolutely creating tremendous value for the clients who need you most. I have no doubt. You would not be on the planet with that point of view if there were not people who need exactly that!

I’m all about aligning with your Personal Truth. My mantra that you won’t find on my website, but keeps me grounded in what I help my clients to do is this: Believe yourself and no one else.

See, I’ve had a lifetime of experiences that have made me doubt myself and pay attention to everyone else. Between growing up around alcoholism, needing to keep a close eye out for people’s moods and actions to stay safe, and a sequence of doubt-planting experiences (I even recorded a video about them), I have developed an ability to see when people are operating from doubt and fear. I’m also really passionate about it.

What skills have you developed, either through your painful experiences or your peak experiences, that your client can get only from you? What is the mission in your business that they can get on board with only through your unique point of view? That is what makes you marketable, and that is what makes you a premium provider of what you do.

If you’re having trouble seeing it, or your “What if I’m wrong?” doubts are getting in the way, join me at the Inner Alignment Intensive so we can get you believing yourself about what matters to you in your business, and charging for it.

http://www.inneralignmentintensive.com