Happy Wednesday! At least, I hope it’s happy!
A surprisingly subtle but incredibly important thing that many heart-centered people in business struggle with is sovereignty.
By “sovereignty” I mean knowing that you are the boss, that you run the show, that you get to make decisions and order things the way you want it.
Why is it so hard? Because most of us have only had bad, and if we’re honest we’d call them toxic, models of authority and power. And no one wants to be that.
But the answer is not to turn away from authority and power. Because your clients need you.
I made a short video, only 3 1/2 minutes. Take a breath. Slow down. You’ll be on your way in less than 4 minutes, and this piece is very much worth it.
Did the analogy land for you? How is your relationship to authority, power, Sovereignty? Your clients are waiting for you to be strong in healthy ways. They don’t want you to lord it over them, but they do want to trust you…
In sovereignty and love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
p.s. This time next week…
This time next week we’ll be starting with the first live call of The Heart of Your Business.
9 weeks to being a millionaire! Nope… sorry… that’s insane.
However, in 9 weeks I can help you make strides in healing your relationship to business, help you understand the terrain you’re in, help you deeply get marketing in a way that your heart is happy with, and for you to see clearly the terrain you need to cross to have a successful business.
In other words, I can get you set up to be happy, successful, grounded. I can’t get you there in 9 weeks, no one can, but we can get you going in a way that feels solid, practical and real.
All at a price that you set. Pay-from-the-heart pricing, meaning you tell us what your heart wants to pay.
Check it out. Join us. I want to see you fly!
The Heart of Your Business.
10 Responses
Really beautiful Mark and very useful. I know we covered this in the Foundations programmes and just hearing it again helps me to remember that my connection to the Divine is first and foremost and from there I can share with clients and be in my authority without feeling badly about being the ‘boss’ so to speak.
This video also came with perfect timing as later today I need to deal with an issue that someone hasn’t paid me in many years and after listening to the video i now can remember that I can stand up for myself as a sovreign being and deal with the issue from there!
Daniela- so great to hear from you- and so glad the timing was so dead on. 🙂
I love this idea that we are a conduit for God/the Divine/whatever you may call it.
The more I return to this the more I recognize my sovereignty.
The hotel analogy is a good one.
A quote I heard recently was “Who are you to dim your light?” We all have gifts, experiences, knowledge and passions for a reason.
Thanks for the reminder.
June- you are so welcome! I’m so glad it landed for you.
Just caught up with this. Very relevant to where I have recently come up against two situations in organisations I have been interacting with where, as the client/participant, I have not had a good experience.
In one situation the MD did step in and exercise sovereignty and resolve the situation, but just today I’ve had some further dialogue with him about an issue of not wanting to be over controlling as the management and allow people (independent distributors in an MLM company) the freedom and autonomy to run their distributorships and build their teams in their own way. But paradoxically those who are given autonomy and freedom can then use that to be very bossy and controlling within their own teams. I think your insight into how people tend to reproduce what they have experienced in their education, in employment, or from their parents, is very relevant here.
And then in the other situation, which has remained unresolved, as I do not have direct access to the business owner and can only interact with his team, it also resonates when you say about people reacting to their past experiences by avoiding taking up a position of authority. I think this could well be the case with this individual, based on what he has publicly shared about his own background where he rebelled against authority, and has stated that he ‘hates rules’. So he delegates and outsources the tasks he doesn’t like to his team, with the result that they then take on the authority role, as they’ve actually fed back to me that there are ‘rules and guidelines’ they have to strictly adhere to.
And all the while he continues in his own published content to talk about how we all ‘create our own reality’, completely ignoring the whole issue of power and control. In this instance, somebody else within his company clearly made a judgement about me and a decision that I had absolutely no say in.
And at the same time he has been publicly exploring the meaning of a recent dream where he is going on stage and performing and then comes off stage only to discover he still unprepared because there are more lines that he has to learn, and what this might be telling him about his business. The very obvious thing being he is neither writing the script or running the show!
So it seems like the wisdom of his own heart may be trying to communicate to him about the issue of sovereignty, where he is just performing but doesn’t even know all of the script.
So both these scenarios illustrate, I think, the issues that you are talking about.
And in relation to my own sovereignty – aside from the fact I probably need to focus more on creating my own realm, rather than being in somebody else’s, I can learn from this experience of being on the receiving end of what happens when team members have too much of a free reign – or where, as you say, it actually results in abandonment and lack of guidance, so they revert to the model of just following the rules.
The meaning of dreams and the messages they can convey is a subject I also find fascinating, and have done some work myself in this area. So I’m curious to know, from a Sufi perspective, whether dreams are considered significant as a way in which the heart, or even the divine, may be communicating with us.
So interesting, Merlina! What an exploration! In terms of dreams, some Sufi lineages work with dreams- my lineage does not do that, and so I have no training or experience in working with them in this way.
Sometimes I’m uncomfortable being ‘the boss’ but I’ve come to realize that it’s usually when there is a problem with a teacher (staff) that needs to be addressed. (some perspective I gleaned from the sovereignty call will help with this) Most of the time though I LOVE being in charge of this business. I love opening the doors every morning and welcoming people into our space. Knowing how I want people to feel guides everything that we do as a team, it starts with me. Coming from a job where the owner and I often butted heads and didn’t see eye to eye on things it is very refreshing to have this freedom to do things ‘my way’. And I don’t feel bad about it because my way is inspired by joy and caring and the desire to serve. 🙂
Susan! Yes! So glad you have this experience, and take such obvious joy in it! I love it!
I’ve had trouble with being the boss. I didn’t like to be treated special or made to feel different because of my position. In some ways this has helped and in some ways this has hurt me in the way that I ran my department or team. Nowadays I am my own boss and I’m now seeing that and wanting to own the power that I have within me. I’m not sure how to do that yet, but I feel being able to own that would help me to become successful in my business.
Emily- I so hear you… so many people struggle with this. Sovereignty is such a deep lesson, and one of my favorite things to teach about spiritually, because people so thrive with it.