I’m writing from St. Louis, after attending my niece’s Bat Mitzvah, the first of the next generation in my family to become a teenager! Just watching the years spinning by, evidently.
I’m going to make this short, so I can spend more of this last precious day with my parents, my sister, and her family.
The question I want to pose is: how can you tell if what your business needs is spiritual healing, deepening your connection to your heart and to love, and clearing away old blocks and patterns, or whether you just need some business know how, steeped in spiritual truth, of course.?
I ask because I’ve seen people spend a crazy amount of time, energy and money doing healing work on “issues” that really just needed to be resolved through learning some simple heart-centered marketing techniques. The healing alone without the learning would never have created the breakthrough.
I’ve also seen people consume a tremendous amount of business information, shelling out untold amounts to learn business skills and strategies, but never getting anywhere because they remained stuck in some emotional, spiritual, or family/generational dynamic that needed healing.
How can you tell which one you need? I often use my intuition and experience to make the call with clients, but there is a simple assessment you can use to figure out what would serve you best.
The name of the assessment is rather technical, but don’t let it throw you. It’s called the “Try one, then the other.” assessment. 🙂
I don’t mean to swing wildly back and forth from day to day, or hour to hour, “spiritual-healing-business-development-spiritual-healing-business-development…” Instead, notice where you are most comfortable. Are you most comfortable doing emotional/spiritual processing, and uncomfortable facing business learning? Or are you most comfortable going through course after course learning business strategies, but not implementing any of it?
Whichever one you are most comfortable with, and probably have done more of, try the other.
Struggling to make the income you need, and have been doing all kinds of healing on your “willingness to receive”? Maybe there’s nothing terribly wrong with your willingness to receive, and you just need to learn how to do marketing and sales in a way that makes sense to your heart and to the clients.
So take a marketing or sales course (like our Momentum Course). See what happens.
Have you been trying and trying to make your marketing work, shifting up strategies, working extra hard, pushing, pushing, pushing? Maybe you are trying too hard. Maybe you aren’t as open to receive as you could be. Perhaps it’s time to stop learning, stop working, and do some spiritual and emotional healing. Let yourself process through the stuff that may be blocking you.
Spiritual healing doesn’t always work like magic, meaning you do a healing, and the money just falls from the sky. More often you notice that an unconscious pattern had you doing and saying things that were turning people off, pushing people away, instead of just letting them come to you.
My general philosophy is to start on the business side. I teach someone something. If it works, if they take to it easily, then great! We go to the next business thing.
If instead, some reaction comes up, then we stop and doing healing work. Once that’s clear, we move forward.
In Sufism we don’t do spiritual healing just for the heck of it. Okay, we do do spiritual practice just for the heck of it, because it feels so good. But the underlying philosophy is that yes it is for our own heart’s journey home. And, at the same time we strive, similar to the boddhisatva philosophy of the Buddhists, to be engaged and of service to the world. A quote in the Sufi tradition ascribed to the Divine says, “I love those of My servants most, who are of most use to My creation.”
This means that a tremendous amount of Divine love arises spontaneously, organically, from being of service in the world. If our hearts are hurt, blocking us from serving effectively in the world, then spiritual healing can bring us relief. As we heal, we feel inspired and free to take steps forward in service.
I’m curious to hear from you, what’s your intuition with any current struggle you’re having with your business? Do you think it’s a business development issue, or some persistent block or pattern in you that needs healing? Let’s inspire each other with our stories!
Peace,
Mark
6 Responses
Hi Mark, I really love this post. It’s something that I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing with for ages … and last year when I did Momentum course, I realised that a lot of it is business knowledge gaps.
Now that I’m getting a lot of those pieces in place with Opening the Moneyflow, it’s time to switch back to the spiritual side of things, and let the two work together. I’m so grateful that the yearlong course deals with them both 🙂 And particularly for your experience and wisdom in both!
Erin- Exactly! So glad to see your progress with both as well! It’s beautiful to witness.
Great distinctions, Mark, between the two connected poles. Ditto to Erin’s comment “let the two work together.”
It’s been considerably helpful for me to stay in action in the world, to put my heart, my spirituality into life, to not be stopped. For those fearful parts of me it can be easier to sit back, meditate, and purify my inner world —all good, mind you! Don’t mean in any way to dismiss that. Yet, fear doesn’t only get purified on the inner level. I’ve needed to remap my inner world by taking steps in real time, engaging with life, with people and finding out that my projections don’t have to be my perceptual lens,
it’s been critical for me to have practical applications of my heart’s journey in the world. I have found writing blog posts to be a reflective avenue for that as well as translating my inner walking into hand holds for others who are on similar paths.
Looking forward to the new offerings! Thanks for guiding the way.
Deirdre- great to see you here! And I agree with you wholeheartedly, that action is part of the spiritual path, and can be such incredible balm to the heart.
Hey Mark – such a good question you pose, and one I’ve been meditating on the last week as I add energy intuitive healing work to my counseling/coaching work. Anymore I think that for spiritually inclined path walkers, who constantly grow and contribute through their business work, there are always both business smarts and heart healing edges ahead.They often dovetail or have synchronous surges when we’re leaning into the next risk or growth curve. And then there are those skills one must master, esp. creatives and healer types, to do that left brain organization and planning piece – so you’re not dancing in circles in the office all day (though great for break-taking). To know what focus is needed, I use a combo of intuition and tracking. For the first, there are signs there’s a block that’s up (and these days you don’t have to hang out there forever, just use heart and soul tools etc.). Then from the tracking end – weekly accountability reports can show that – “Oh, that item’s been on the to do list, but isn’t getting done – what’s up with that?” – as an assessment option. Structure helps me stay effective in my daily dance, and that spiritual practice is critical too. Right and left brain – healing and action steps – can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em, ; ). Thank you and enjoy the family time!!
Denise- I love your description of the balance- and you using both intuition and accountability tracking tools. Beautiful!