He’s also a licensed acupuncturist who is currently the Chair of Professional Development at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, who teaches hundreds of acupuncture students how to launch their practices.

In the following interview, I asked him five questions, including “What are success indicators? When you are working with someone new, what tells you that they are most likely going to be successful?”

I loved his answer. I was also surprisingly touched by his answer to my first question. And surprised again at his answer to my fifth question. It’s a little less than ten minutes, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

I made this interview to go with the free learning series we’re currently doing. I just sent out the second lesson, but you can still get that, and the first lesson, if you register for the series.

The Second Lesson Wasn’t About Funnel Cakes

Funnel cakes are one thing, product funnels are another. I’ve really liked funnel cakes, at least before we were gluten-free.

I’ve never really liked the idea of a product funnel. If you aren’t familiar, a product funnel is the metaphor meant to communicate using an inexpensive or free first offer to get as many people into the funnel as possible. Then, you hit them with progressively more and more expensive offers.

It feels a little like a meat grinder. The funnel concept has the benefit of helping a business be profitable and more into momentum, but it doesn’t necessarily feel so great to implement it.

There’s a different way to approach this issue. We call it Sequence and Flow, and it’s your second lesson in this free learning series.

To get Sequence and Flow, and the first lesson, just click on the faucet:

I could always, always, without exception, top her stories. Which leads me to the first rule of life:

1) Never compete with a paramedic on gross-out stories.

I’ve never really been squeamish. And while I hold progressive political values very strongly, it’s been decades since my young and foolish teen years, that I’ve shied away from talking to, or learning from, those with different viewpoints.

Which is why I’m always confused by what people say to me.

What People Say To Me

“I know you aren’t going to like this, but military-type efficiency is what I’m talking about.” “Uh, I know you’re heart-centered so let me know if I’m talking numbers and strategy too much.”

“Uh, but I need to make money.”

It seems at least once or twice a month I have to give someone the speech, “Listen, you don’t have to be careful talking with me. I want to hear the reality of what’s going on, what you see, what you think.”

I know, I get it. I’m a spiritual teacher. I’m studying for my Masters of Divinity. People may perceive me to be in the realm of a rabbi or a priest.

I just get a little confused. When did “heart-centered” become synonymous with squeamish, or fragile?

I read in Good to Great by Jim Collins that Winston Churchill had a similar problem at the outset of World War II. He was worried that, because of his strong personality, people would just want to feed him good news about the war, that somehow he couldn’t take what was really going on.

So he did something radical. He created the Statistical Office as a channel of information whose only job was to tell him ALL the news, good, bad and terrible. And there was a lot of terrible news early in the war.

What Heart-Centered Is Not

Being heart-centered does not necessarily mean you are:

• Afraid of talking about money or profit;

• Too squeamish to talk about power;

• Scared off by references to some of the things that the military and other hierarchical organizations do well;

• Morally unable to be inspired by or otherwise learn from people with different beliefs or points of view;

• Addicted to cute kitten videos;

Well, okay. That last one went too far. If you’re heart-centered, you might be at risk for CVA (cat video addiction). But let’s put that aside.

While someone who is heart-centered might have reactions to some of things on that bullet list there, the reactions aren’t there because of the heart-centeredness.

In fact, reactions block access to your heart. You may decide to tithe a portion of your income to those who are homeless. People in reaction will do it without thinking, carrying an unconscious belief that they have to get rid of all the money that comes their way because it’s dirty.

Heart-centered does it from a grounded, calm place of generosity and sense of responsibility to share what one is given. Heart-centered also finds a healthy, balanced sense of how much is okay to hold onto.

Despite differences in our convictions and world view, I’ve been inspired by Christian evangelical and author of The Purpose-Driven Church Rick Warren. His books became best-sellers in their genre, he was making a lot of money, much more than he needed.

So he decided to reverse tithe. That means he gives away 90% and keeps 10%. I would guess that he is still comfortably a millionaire.

What Heart-Centered Means

Heart-centered is simply a commitment to love being your compass.

• Love is courageous.

I get scared at times, same as you. Heart-centered means a commitment to stop and get our marching orders from love, not fear.

• Love is powerful.

Many times I feel weak and ineffectual. Heart-centered means a commitment to return to our own center of love before acting, instead of trying to grab power through control.

• Love is flexible.

A critical deadline is missed. A detail gets dropped. Something totally unforeseen happens. Heart-centered means instead of marching forward blindly we check back in to see if love holds the rudder steady into the storm, or if it turns us onto a new course.

Squeamish is reactionary. Love is not.

You don’t have to be able to out-gross me, or anyone else, to be heart-centered.

Stand With Me

With the way things are going in this world, now is not the time to be squeamish. Despite what we’re reading in the news, despite what the Statistical Office is telling us, now is the time to stand up.

Every act of business can be an act of love. Courageous, powerful, flexible.

Are you in?

p.s. The Leap: From Struggling to Really, Truly Making It

We’re about to open registration for a maximum of thirty seats in our year-long Opening the Moneyflow program. At the same time, starting early next week, we’re starting a no-cost series on leap from struggling to really, truly making it.

Which is precisely what the year-long program will be about.

I hope you join us for one or both.

Click here to take The Leap No Cost Series.

Do you have inspiring stories of “no?

When is revealing too much, though? There seems to be a delicate balance wherein you want to know the person on the other side of the business is a human being, is real, isn’t a polished veneer of pseudo-perfection.

And yet you want to trust that person. You don’t want to really know how often the ball almost gets dropped, or how they might look after a sleepless night, no shower, with a baseball cap jammed on their head to cover up the wild flora of their morning hair.

In my studies in child development and somatic-based therapy, and boy does that sound formal, I mean I’ve read a few books and know some experts I’ve talked to, we’re hard-wired to pay attention to danger. Hard-wired.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why every single rube needs to rubberneck past the accident, slowing down traffic for thousands of people, it’s because we’re genetically disposed to do so. If you wonder why it’s hard to pull your eyes away from action movies, it’s because it’s a survival trait.

It comes from our history as animals on this planet. Before manicured lawns and automatic weapons, human beings used to sometimes get eaten by other animals. We’re wanting to know how to survive that, so we watch.

Why get all grisly on a business blog? Because the same dynamic functions in the reveal/conceal cycle. People want to see the mess of you, they ask for it, they clamor for it, and yet while it might get their attention, it won’t necessarily build trust. The survival brain of the people watching your car accident will be saying to themselves, “Gee, how interesting! I wonder if I would survive that?”

So when and what do you reveal? Here’s how I do it.

• I don’t share messes when I feel completely forlorn or overwhelmed or stuck. I don’t show the gory details of the car wreck.
• I often share messes while I’m still feeling the pain of them, after most of the blood has been cleaned up.
• I do share messes once I’ve regained a sense of perspective on the situation, a sense of how to resolve/work through/be with it, and when I can present the situation in a way that serves others.

No, I don’t have to show up as perfect. But I want anything I share to be expressed consciously in service to others, and not as an emotional/situational vomiting up of a mess. You shouldn’t have to clean up after me, I have a support system who can help me with that. And then I can tell you how I got through the mess.

Exception: If the mess doesn’t have to do with my core competency, I’ll sometimes share more. For instance, when I changed out the kitchen sink a few months ago and included snippets of my experience, the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, messed up the caulk job, and had to go back to the hardware store five times in the same afternoon is amusing, but doesn’t shake anyone’s confidence in my ability to deliver wisdom, insight and expertise in the realm of business-building.

Chris Brogan wrote about his flaws recently. Havi Brooks does it all the time. Best-selling author Jennifer Louden does, too. And notice how they reveal in a way that is educational, and maybe even inspirational.

Does this help? How do you do reveal/conceal in your own business?

And reading corporate mission statements that try to capture that sense of oomph usually fall way short. “It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructure as well as to quickly create principle-centered.. oy gevult put a pie in it!”

There came a point, a few years ago now, in my own learning that I got tired of reading business books. Instead I began to wonder “What have spiritual leaders done to effect change on a global basis?”

I started reading auto and biographies of folks like Martin Luther King, Jr, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Paramhansa Yogananda, Mohandas Gandhi, among others. And I started to see a pattern of spiritual transformation arise.

Here’s one piece of the pattern that has to do with vision.

Your Vision Must Actually Be A Vision

So much of what passes for a vision is not something you can actually, y’know, see. Like with your eyes. Imagine a theatre stage, could you vision be produced on it?

Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech typified this type of vision. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”

Sure, there’s metaphor there. But it’s a vignette. People sitting down at a table together. You can see it. The people of that era (today it might be great-grandchildren instead of “sons”) could probably think of actual living people who could, in some idealized world where that vision was achieved, sit down together and have a meal.

Can you see your vision? What’s the setting? But before you go sketching it out, there are a three more points to consider in creating it.

1. Who Are the Players?

Who is involved in your vision? For Dr. King, it was the offspring of slaves and slaveowners. For Mother Theresa it was the “poorest of the poor.” How about you?

2. What conflict or struggle did they have to get through to arrive on this stage?

For Dr. King, they had to overcome racism and bitterness. For Mother Theresa, to see Christ alive in the poor, people who weren’t poor had to see the poor literally as God, to serve them in humility.

What conflict, struggle or reality are your players needing to overcome? Note that it may only be held implicitly in the vision.

3. Is it simple enough to happen at a very small scale, and then scale up by being repeated?

The problem with really big visions is that they can be very far out in the future, seemingly unattainable. And it’s hard to celebrate successes when you’re not there yet.

On the other hand, every time Mother Theresa cradled one of the dying poor in Calcutta, and gave them hope and food and shelter, her heart lit up with joy.

She wouldn’t rest until all the world’s poor were cared for, and yet she could honestly and beautifully celebrate each time an individual was cared for.

Is your vision like that?

Heart of Business’s Vision

My simple vision is for you, as someone doing important work in the world through the vehicle of small business, to experience each act of business, marketing, sales, systems, as an act of love.

I celebrate each time someone gets that their marketing can be an act of love. That writing a sales page for their website can be an act of love. That a sales conversation, that implementing a system, can be an act of love for everyone it touches.

And I’m not resting until there are so many of us that know and live this truth that the economy changes to one based on love.

Your Turn

What’s your vision? What’s the stage, who are the players, what’s the conflict, and is it simple and small, yet scalable?

And does it set your heart on fire?

Tell me about it below in the comments

p.s. Needing to Set Your Business Heart on Fire… with love?

We have two practitioners, Jason Stein and Yollana Shore, who are amazing healers and business teachers who are ready to roll up their sleeves and help you implement practical love in your business that makes you a profit and helps to change the world.

With a few clients completing, there are a very small handful of client slots opening up between the two of them.

Check out the Organic Business Development Program here.

Larry is a remarkable person (as is Robert, I’ll be interviewing him soonish.) Through his consulting firm, Willeman Strategyas Partners, he basically functions as a Chief Financial Officer for small businesses that aren’t quite large enough to have their own CFO. Okay, that’s sounds as exciting as watching grass grow.

Here’s the exciting thing: every single one of his clients, every single one, survived the recession and the majority of them actually grew in the last two years. This is in Oregon, one of the harder hit states with 10+% unemployment. He’s helped many of his client firms expand their impact tremendously, while making their owners millionaires in the process.

If you’re reading this blog you might not be in a position to hire Larry, since most of us in the HoB tribe are self-employed or have a micro-business. But what he has to say about managing costs, developing a business financially, and the role that heart and caring play in the numbers is something you need to hear.

We spent about an hour talking through three areas:

Open your heart and have a listen. How often do you get to hear advice from a stunningly successful chief financial officer?

[audio:http://www.heartofbusiness.com/Audio/larrywilleman.mp3]

Right-or-option click to download.

And if you do have a small to mid-sized company, take a look at Larry Willeman.

What big questions would you ask if you were able to spend time with a big-hearted, super-successful CFO?

The Short Story Version

Kate resigned. We went into emotional turmoil. Big insights and learnings. We’re reconfiguring Opening the Moneyflow slightly, including beefing up the DIY program. I’ve also pushed the early-bird deadline to next Monday to allow for the emotional reality of being feeling disoriented and emotionally “all circuits busy” for a full week.

And I’m asking for a do-over of the November 18 call on You’ve Got Six Months: Go! I was way gummed up emotionally, and it wasn’t my most inspired call. So I’m adding content and redoing it this Thursday.

What Really Happened

Monday, November 15 was one of Heart of Business’ quarterly full-day strategic review meetings, where we look at everything, question what we’re doing and connect in with guidance about moving forward.

One of the big realities we were facing is that despite our growth and development, Heart of Business isn’t large or complex enough to warrant a full-time operations person plus a part-time virtual assistant. Although for the past two years we’ve had record revenue and many big months in a row, we haven’t had record profitability. In fact, we’ve had some interesting cash flow situations because we did that thing growing companies do–grow our costs along with our revenue.

The operations position, a role Kate Williams has filled the last two and half years, has been an incredible boon on many levels, implementing systems and oversight and consciousness at levels of the business we hadn’t looked at before. It’s been amazing. And with her help we’ve broken through revenue ceilings, and implemented all kinds of things I never did on my own, such as adding practitioners, bringing in legal help to clarify our relationships with people, and many other critical things to running a more complex business.

And, with all of that in place, it was now time to shift our attention elsewhere. We asked Kate to shift half of her hours from operations to running a new project we want to dig into.

And she resigned.

Not Exactly Like That

It was a long meeting. We talked about many things. The resignation came late in the day in a surprise announcement. Even Kate was surprised, saying she did not come to the meeting with any intention of resigning. (Although my wife Holly admitted to a quiet intuition over the last two days, “Kate is leaving. Huh?”)

Her announcement came in a moment when Presence filled the room and she just felt she had to speak the truth as it came to her. As she said what she had to say, there was the shock of the announcement, coupled with a big exhaled breath from all of us as the truth was recognized.

It was a courageous thing for her to speak her truth, and courageous for us all to accept it.

It wasn’t totally out of the blue. There had been a thread over the last two years of Kate questioning whether this was really her work, as she had spent previous years in various positions supporting other people. She is such a tremendous facilitator, teacher, coach and councilor, that she really needs to be doing her work, and not just supporting someone else, like yours truly, in doing their work.

Also, I’ve had a steep learning curve as a team leader over the last three years, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve noticed that my key weakness in leadership is my desire for harmony and to be liked over truth and productive conflict. So my desire to be liked by Kate, and others on the team, as well as my desire to have everyone “taken care of” had me miss several key decision points and instead just “going with the flow.”

Through my work in my masters program I’ve been reclaiming my sovereignty in this new environment, as has Kate in her own heart-work, and truth just becomes much easier to see when everyone is committed to seeing it.

Oh My God–The Emotional Storm

As you might imagine there has been a rollercoaster of different emotions for all of us. I’ll talk about mine, since that’s who I am.

I told Kate that the first feeling was one of relief, of a truth recognized. There was also the relief of recognizing all the ways I had given myself away, a feeling of freedom regained. It’s not an entirely fair way to describe it, because no one took my freedom away, but I had abandoned it in my desire to copy some unknown ideal of how I should be as a leader.

Then came the sadness and grief, of course. Kate and I have a daily relationship of working collaboration. That’s going to stop suddenly in about two weeks. It’s like a relationship break-up, especially since we continue to be on such good terms with each other. It’s not like anyone did anyone else wrong. Just the truth emerged, it’s time for her to go and it’s very sad.

Anger. You can’t have the grief process without anger, and it’s definitely my least favorite emotion to express. But, yes, anger. “You’re quitting at the end of the year, in the middle of enrolling our six-month course, and we have to spend all this time and energy on the transition? And you didn’t do it before now, so I could’ve reconfigured Opening the Moneyflow to account for the reality of our team now?” (I did make changes–I detail them below.)

Ahh… anger… By definition it’s not rational. Now was the perfect timing, and it’s what had to happen. And anger came up. It doesn’t stay for very long, but little bits of it waft around. Fun.

Withdrawal. Although it’s not an emotion, I notice that I’m preparing for the transition and have withdrawn some. I’ve been consulting with Kate much less about the business.

I’m withdrawing partly out of respect for her and not wanting to involve her with something she’s not going to be around for. It’s also partly for me an exercise in regaining my own sovereignty.

One thing that happens as a business gets more complex is that decisions become harder to make, because there is so much more information and so many more people to consider.

In my attempts to be a collaborative, open-door leader, I notice that there are many places where I’ve abdicated my responsibility to make decisions. I’m taking that back, and the result is spending less time in meetings and discussions.

Don’t get me wrong. I will continue to collaborate with Jason, Yollana, Susan and other team members of Heart of Business. I love the working relationship that Kate and I developed. And I notice the difference between that and just avoiding decisions.

The best way for me to do that right now is to reduce how many things I bring to consult with Kate or anyone else.

The Lightning of the Business

Another piece of relief was related to the lightness of the business. As I said, we’ve had ten straight years of growth, and we busted through some big revenue ceilings this year. But the business had come to feel heavy, and I believe it’s because we took on an infrastructure model for a business that is much larger than ours, and doesn’t fit what we’re doing.

We needed to focus on infrastructure and systems for a time, and Kate did an amazing job with it, but to create a permanent position focused entirely on that called “operations” means that we missed the timing to change focus to other strategic areas. A permanent titled operations position means I went on autopilot and stopped asking when the time was to shift.

My friend, the best-selling author of Predictable Success and consultant Les McKeown, who has personally been involved in 42 different startups, nailed it perfectly in the chapter on Whitewater. He specifically warns against creating an “operations” position separate from everything else at the stage of business growth we’re in. Although I had read the chapter, it didn’t sink in. I re-read that chapter last week, all the while slapping myself in the forehead repeatedly.

To be kind, Les did say that often businesses have to make that mistake for the founders/leaders to develop the muscle and skills to lead a more sustainable organization later. And that’s evidently what I did. Check out these bulging leadership muscles.

What Happens Now?

Kate is staying with us through the middle of December to support the current Opening the Moneyflow course with which she has been so intimately involved, as well as to help set up next year’s Moneyflow. And, of course, to help effectively transfer all of what she does.

Of course a tremendous boon is that Kate is superb at creating systems and training people on them, so we’re in a great position. Susan is going to easily and without any bumps pick up the majority of what Kate was doing, and I have just a few additional bits and bobs for other people to pick up, and even one or two that I really need to pick up myself.

We are not going to rehire for her position, so please don’t send us resumes. We have all the team members we need in place right now.

Do-Over? Changes to Opening the Moneyflow 2011

With Kate no longer with us for next year, I want to make some changes to the Moneyflow program starting in January. These are not major changes, except for the DIY program (which is getting beefed up), but have more to do with how to handle capacity so we can take care of everyone really well.

First, I want to re-do the You’ve Got Six Months: Go! call I held November 18. Although I covered the material I wanted to, it was one of my least inspired teaching moments in a long time. I held the class just a few days after Kate announced her resignation, and I was gummed up with all kinds of emotions. Because I wasn’t in the position to make a public announcement–all three of us were still reeling and trying to figure out the details of what it really meant–I couldn’t talk about it with you.

This meant I wasn’t really that was present. I got off the call and said to Holly, my wife, “Well, I botched that one.”

You deserve better than that. So I’m going to re-do the call, but change the content. Not entirely, but there are some teachings I want to share from my learnings these past three years that have to do with teams, leadership, and developing a truly sustainable business at a higher-level. By a higher level, I mean one that brings five figures a month in consistently for years on end.

Click here to join us for the call. If you registered for the previous call, you’re still registered. You probably already have the new call-in information, time and date to you in the “already registered” email.

Other Changes to Moneyflow

There will be no changes to the Core program with Jason and Yollana, since all the structures and support remain in place for them to hold the groups they have. Their groups continue to fill up.

The Premium program is changing simply in terms of numbers. I’m limiting the number of participants to an absolute maximum of five, and I might cut it off at four, rather than eight. Which means there’s really only one spot left (maybe two, if you really are the right person for it and I can’t say no.)

The DIY program has the most substantial changes to it. First of all, I want to acknowledge the term “Do It Yourself” can sound inspiring to some, and daunting to others. Because of that, we’re actually adding more support to the DIY level, without changing the price.

Three changes to the DIY:

1. We’re accepting no more than 20 people into the program, instead of thirty-six. I know the team we have can support that many people.
2. The DIY participants will have a chance to write a check-in each month, and get a written response from us here at Heart of Business. You will report on your progress with your personal business development plan, challenges you are facing, successes you’re having, things you want feedback on and other questions you have.While the program is such that we can’t give in-depth line-editing or feedback on writing, what we will be able to do is review things like websites and sales copy and give you our impressions of what’s working, and our top 1-3 recommendations of what you can do to improve it.
3. The check-ins will be scheduled to be due before the monthly DIY Q&A call. This is so you can write your check-in, get written feedback, and then ask follow-up questions on the call for clarity.

Because of all this, we’re pushing the early-bird deadline back. It was supposed to be today, but oh boy way too much was going on emotionally. So I’m pushing it back to December 6, a week from today.

Get your applications in, and we’ll get you moving in the new year.

What’s Next?

Through the grief of losing an amazing team member, I’m feeling re-inspired. I’m excited by all the possibilities that are coming up.

I do know some projects that I’m very inspired about: a year-long Remembrance Challenge, including virtual retreats. The Paradox class, that’s been itching to be born. A redesign of our look.

I’m also feeling vulnerable. I know there are a lot of learnings and realizations that will be bubbling up. I’m going to be showing you behind the curtain as much as possible.

No one likes to hear these things. But if you run a business, you need to hear this kind of feedback with an open heart and mind. The trouble is that often the person telling you is upset or affected in some way, and so isn’t always the most diplomatic messenger.

But the message is important.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill created an entire intelligence division just to deliver unedited news on how Britain’s effort was going in WWII. He didn’t want anyone painting a happy picture on it, because he needed to know how badly things were going in order to make good decisions.

Similarly, business author Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, an amazing business book I recommend everyone read, details how the best companies spent about five minutes celebrating accomplishments, and long hours looking for what’s broken, bad, not working.

Your task: cultivate the ability to hear negative feedback without it undermining your basic sense of confidence, faith and optimism.

It’s that combination of faith, optimism and the hard truth of what’s not working that will move you so quickly.

So… how are you at handling it?

The other camp, which has overall tendencies for being the woo, encourages following your heart, guidance, listening to Spirit, being in the flow.

I won’t say these two camps picket each other’s storefronts, but it can cause some tumult in your own mind. When it comes to your business, how do you move forward? Do you bow your head and follow guidance or do you stand up straight and make powerful choices?

A Story of Choices Gone Awry: $142 Million to Lose an Election

It has been said that making a bold choice moves the fates in your favor. Unless the choice is a wrong one.

Our recent elections here in the United States showed some individuals making some big bold choices. For instance Meg Whitman, former eBay chief executive, spent $142 million of her own money (Her own money? Holy God, how can anyone with a fortune that size think of that as her own money?) on a campaign to become governor of California.

A big, bold decision by any standard, she committed herself in a very powerful way. And lost. To someone whose campaign spent less than one sixth of what she did.

Big, bold choices may indeed move energy, but not always in the way we think. In this case, it stopped Ms. Whitman in her tracks.

Similarly, I’ve seen small business owners make huge declarations, ‘I’m going to quadruple my business this year and eventually become the dominant force in X industry.” Check back in with the same bold declaration maker a few years later and they are working for someone else.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s just that the big, bold choice didn’t really do what they thought it was going to do. Making a choice doesn’t guarantee an outcome, which might leave you a little cautious with your big, bold choices.

So clearly, guidance is what you want to go with…

A Story of Guidance Gone Awry: Waiting and Waiting

Less dramatic than the governorship of California, but not less painful for those involved, is the “waiting for guidance” problem. I’ve spoken with very sincere people who had started businesses, but hadn’t really taken them forward in any significant way because they were “waiting for a sign.”

Spending time in meditation or prayer, they didn’t want to make a choice that wasn’t in “God’s will” or was otherwise potentially disconnected from Divine guidance. So they waited and waited. And waited.

Clearly they needed to make a powerful choice…

Understanding the Nature of Choice and Guidance

You could make an argument that Meg Whitman’s choice wasn’t really a “powerful choice” if she had the money and just decided to go for it. You could also make the argument that those passive business owners weren’t really listening to guidance.

Without claiming secret knowledge of their internal reality, I would suspect you might be on to something. It has to do with the nature of choice and of guidance.

From the perspective of Divine knowledge, where we are not separate from the Divine, and that everything is given existence, enlivened and moved by Source, choice is an illusion. If we’re not truly separate, individual beings, then how can we make separate, individual choices?

From the perspective of the human being, understanding ourselves as individuals moving and acting in a physical, 3-D world, we are not witnessing or experiencing the true Unity and Oneness of the Divine. Therefore, any intuition, guidance or messages we might receive are going to be filtered through that more limited perception and so won’t be pure, absolutely unfiltered Word of God guidance.

If we can’t truly make choices, and yet we can’t access complete guidance, where in the heck does that leave us? I mean, I’m just trying to run a business, dude, and take care of my family and my clients.

The Middle Way

Every moment reality is being created anew by Source, and so potential for your business unfolds further in every moment. But only if you engage with it.

Yet, if you make big choices purely from your mind, you risk losing the sense of what is unfolding. At a minimum, you’ll feel some sense of “oops,” and at the worst you’ll waste $142 million dollars on a failed venture.

My tradition of Sufism teaches that living for an extended time in extremes leads to problems, so it recommends the middle way. The middle way is absurdly simple and straightforward, as the middle tends to be. You are probably already doing some aspect of it.

Do this: set aside a reasonable amount of time, ten minutes, an hour, maybe even a full day, if you’re feeling a lot of nervousness or stuckness around some aspect of your business. With this time, do spiritual practice.

Don’t ask questions. Don’t do processes. Just sit in meditation, or prayer, or Remembrance.

Then look at the situation you are facing and make a reasonably-sized choice. Notice I didn’t say a “reasonable” choice. You may end up making a totally bizarre and unreasonable choice.

But you don’t want the scope of your choice to outrun your sense of what you can see. Take that choice forward.

Then repeat.

Guidance is About Whims, Choice is About Following Them

It’s become a cliché that the voice of God is a “small, still voice” because it’s true. Divine knowing, connection to Source is rarely received as a thunderclap. When I taught at the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism, I told students to “follow your whims.” I only felt confident about that advice because of how much time they had spent polishing their hearts.

The Sufis talk about the heart as an old-fashioned mirror made of metal instead of reflective glass. Metal mirrors require polishing to maintain the reflective surface. Without the polishing rust sets in, slowly obscuring the surface.

Spiritual practice does that for your heart, allowing it witness and reflect more of the Divine truth. If you spend some amount of time in spiritual practice, then look at your heart, trust what you get, and take a step forward.

It can feel tricky balancing between confidence in your heart’s guidance and remembering that that guidance is imperfect. This is where the “reasonable scope” I mentioned above comes in.

By keeping your choices reasonable in scope–not choosing to take on the world, but simply taking on the next project–you can feel confident with what your heart showed you. Then you polish your heart another time with spiritual practice, look again at your heart, and step forward once more into your heart’s whim.

Then, I got shy- what in the heck do I talk about on video? I’ve been writing for decades, and I feel really comfortable expressing myself in writing. But, video? Brave, new, un-edited world.

I had just had lunch with my buddy, David Billings, aka Mr. Sparky Firepants. He is a top-notch designer (he’s worked at Nickelodeon among other places), big-hearted, and for the moment his family lives with a bunch of Alpacas. You should hire him now before his rates go up, or he becomes an Alpaca farmer full-time.

At lunch he asked me a question about what makes the difference between someone who makes it, and someone who doesn’t. Here’s about a minute and a half of my thoughts on that.

There’s more to it than that, but hey, it’s a start. So, you like? More video? I’m resisting the urge to apologize for the bad lighting, and all the other imperfections that I’m seeing…