What you want, wants you…..

My “Love your Biz” group coaching program just entered its 4th week and I am loving seeing and hearing the shifts my coachee’s are making. They are really making the choice to step into or towards what they really want to do. There is something so utterly and completely affirming and obvious about watching someone connect with what they really want, to be on purpose. It’s almost as if what they want,wants them too!

It raises the questions for me “Why do we wait so long ?” (why did I wait so long?). Why do we wait so long to let ourselves feel what we desire? Why do we wait so long to immerse ourselves in the joy of that? Why do we spend so much of our precious life doing stuff we don’t enjoy or becoming what others expect of us instead of becoming ourselves?

The answer to these questions is complex and multilayered and as unique as we all are. However there are some commonalities. A lot of what we choose to do is a conditioned response rather than a conscious choice. Many of us grew up with limits ” You can’t do that”, “you can’t always have what you want”, “money doesn’t grow on trees you know” “that’s not what girls do” “that’s not what boys do” “that’s not as easy as it looks” “you have to work hard to get what you want” “children are to be seen and not heard”

So we limited ourselves to fit the norm, to comply, to be accepted, to be loved. We learnt to put what we really desired on to the back burner until we literally forgot what it was altogether.

For some of us our fledgling desires were crumpled by off-hand comments from teachers, family members and peers or even squashed by outright teasing. This lead us to hide or disguise our special talents and heartfelt desires in an effort to fit in , be liked and accepted.

I remember being told at school that to have a career in Art or creativity, you had to be incredibly talented, the message I received was that I was “not good enough”. Believing I was not good enough not only denied me the opportunity to experiment and develop my creativity, for a long time I held the belief that I was not good enough for anything, relationships, friendships, to earn decent money, to have nice things or even to lose weight. It can be quite a journey to recover those fragile lost parts, to reclaim self belief. It feels scary and really vulnerable but for me choosing to take that journey has allowed so much more love, joy, creativity and satisfaction in my life than I could ever have imagined.

And now I get to do that for others. To gently guide them up the mountain of limiting beliefs towards clarity and new perspectives. To hold the lantern in the mine as we dig for the gold of true desires and uncover purpose beneath the layers po judgement, fear and hurt.

For me this is not work….it is an honour. it is an honour to support others to support themselves. To see them show up as who they are and receive the rewards of living on purpose. To discover that what they want, wants them too.

Uncovering desires can be hard work and it can seem impossible in the fog to even know where to start but if you want more, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there is more! There are 3 simple things that you can do today that will bring your desires and your purpose a little bit closer

Step 1: What did you love when you were a kid? What did you want to do when you grew up? Grab yourself a sheet of paper or a journal and start writing a list. Don’t censor yourself or try to think it through just write everything you remember down. These little gems of gold from you free spirited childhood days are a starting point to begin your exploration

Step 2: Allow yourself to play. Choose something from your childhood list and start to explore and play with it as an adult. Or alternatively if there is something you have been wanting to try that’s not on your list go do that! Do a workshop, watch a “how to” YouTube video, start a course or just experiment at home. Allow yourself some free play time each week to experiment with trying out things you wonder about or think you might like.

Step 3: Get some support, whether it’s a coach, a counsellor, a Facebook group or just a few like minded friends having a cheer squad, someone to be accountable to and someone to hold your hand when it gets hard is one of the most supportive things you can do for yourself. I can confidently say that I would not be where I am today if I hadn’t reached out to my coach for support and leaned on the support of like minded friends.

So make a start today! If not now, when? My greatest wish is for you to DO, BE and Have all that you truly want. It’s out there waiting for you!

If you would like to try coaching email pmcfarlane@clear.net.nz or phone me on 0274327601 to set up a complimentary 20 min call to see if it’s for you.

For the month of May I am offering 3 x 45 min coaching sessions for the price of 2 and I have just 3 spots left.

Why doing the Inner work of business is the key to your success

I had an interesting conversation with my partner after posting last week’s blog. Essentially he wanted to understand why I was posting about the masculine and feminine we all have within if I am a Business Coach. Shouldn’t my blog posts be more about business planning, generating start up capital or managing cashflow?

In a sense he is right, all of the financial components of a business are really important particularly in the start up phase and whenever you are moving to a new phase of growth and development. However I believe the personal factors are equally, if not more important.

Starting your own business is an incredibly challenging experience. It will put you face to face with your deepest fears and your strongest desires. You want, with all of you heart for your business to be a success in every way, but if you don’t take the time to work with the parts of you that become “frozen in the headlights” then it will always be a juggling act to keep your head above water.

You see the limiting factor in your business is YOU. Your confidence, your self-belief, your need to be seen, heard or loved, your fears, your emotional wellbeing, your ability to trust. All of the parts of you that need your attention will get triggered as your business goes through the stages of growth and development. The work of addressing your needs and your fears is as crucial as getting your financial forecast right.

For example, if you don’t believe in yourself and what you are doing this can translate into customers that challenge you, question what you offer or who choose not to use buy your products or services at all.

Your fear of failure can limit your confidence in taking steps that will grow your business exponentially.  Your need to be perfect will stop you from taking crucial steps and will also hold you back from taking on staff when you need to.

In any part of life, our outer world reflects our inner world so to really succeed, to really create work that sustains us financially and fills us up on an emotional and spiritual level we need to step up to the plate and do the inner work.

The inner work is not easy, in my experience, working with, understanding and moving through fear is more challenging than any degree program I have participated in. But it also reaps the greatest rewards.

When you make a commitment to yourself to take care of your inner business you free up your energy for more joy, creativity and satisfaction in your working life. You allow yourself to enter the holy grail of living your purpose. Work becomes a place where you can truly be yourself without fear, without filters. From that place it becomes much easier to grow a business that aligns with who you.Your energy and motivation to complete tasks and take action on the ideas that will grow your business becomes effortless and that is the true recipe for business success. From the place where your inner world aligns with your outer world, that’s where the magic happens.

So when things in your business aren’t working or you are feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or exhausted then, as my partner so eloquently puts it, some “tree hugging” is in order! It’s time to look for support to do the inner work, it’s time to look within.

As a Business Coach I work primarily in the area of emotional and spiritual alignment. Together we walk the inner journey of uncovering the parts of you that are missing in your business with the goal of creating a sustainable business that you love.

If you feel you need support to do the inner work email pmcfarlane@clear.net.nz or phone me on 0274327601 to set up a complimentary 20 min call to see if coaching is for you.

For the month of May I am offering 3 x 45 min coaching sessions for the price of 2 and I have just 3 spots left.

The Kenny Rogers Principle

Yesterday I was preparing a session for my women’s business group coaching program and I was exploring our tendency to judge our personality traits, strengths and weaknesses and default behaviours as either good or bad. We can spend a lot of time berating ourselves for rushing in to quickly or for always procrastinating. We compare our creativity or our ability to get stuff done with someone elses and 9 times out of 10 measure ourselves as being not good enough. But this is not necessarily the case, even our most challenging qualities that gets us in to trouble the most can be superb strengths if we play our cards right.

You’ve got to know when to hold em and when to fold em!

In the context of my coaching work we were diving into business creation. My passion is supporting others to create businesses that they fall in love with. Businesses that are both sustaining from a financial perspective and also on a spiritual and emotional level. To create work that fills you up, gives you a sense of connection, allows you to be completely yourself and is deeply personally satisfying, is living your purpose.

This type of business requires really intentional creation. In the initial “seed” stage it asks us to be very connected to our feminine energy, to use our qualities of creativity, imagination, vision, to be receptive and open to what emerges. This is how we create from the heart and birth a business that is aligned with our values and purpose.

However we need our masculine energy and traits if this seed idea is ever going to grow into a flourishing business. Once we have that seed beginning to shoot its time for action, for doing for rational and logical thinking and to make things happen.

Whether we are male or female we all have masculine and feminine traits within us and will naturally act from our strongest traits. My personal style in my working life has always been more on the masculine spectrum of striving to achieve, ticking off goals and targets and getting things done. I have had to learn to balance this with creativity, love, imagination and vision to find work that was able to meet my deep need within for something that felt more soul filling for me.

Which brings me to the Kenny Rogers principle. Just like in his song The Gambler we need to know when to hold em and know when to fold em. The key is to know when to work from your feminine aspects and when to work from your masculine aspects.

To do this we can ask the question “What phase of my business am I in? Do I need to create, generate new ideas, nurture or germinate a seed of something new? Or is it time for action, goal setting and making things happen?” This way all parts of our personality are valued and accepted, we have a deeper connection with ourselves and our work.  We also get the best use out of our strengths and the opportunity to use and develop forgotten parts of ourselves which are often the parts that need to be included for the work to be soul satisfying on a long term basis and allows us to feel connected to our purpose.

This way we always hold the best cards!

Which cards are you playing today?

For more info on my group coaching prgrams and 1 on 1 coaching check out my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Paulamcfarlanecoach