The Journey

Living With Intention

Written 2/24/07

Remember in my last post when I said Deanna Davis was a whole post all by herself?  I was serious and here's the post!

About a year-and-a-half ago I realized I was working in a job where I didn't have to think, I didn't have to use up all my emotional energy as I had with other jobs, and I was able to devote time to other pursuits.  It dawned on me that I could work toward becoming an active Virtual Assistant.  I wasn't sure how I was going to pull it all off but one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted someone to help me move forward as I plotted my course.

As luck would have it (no, I don't actually believe in luck but it's still a good phrase), a friend, Karen Wright, featured Deanna Davis in her newsletter at exactly the time I was looking for a coach.  I called Deanna and we talked and we both agreed we wanted to work together.

I started making intentions, creating business plans (not those huge business plans but plans for my business), creating lists upon lists, and generally putting things in order to have a business from my home.

You've already read what happened once I made the intention that I was going to have clients for my business so I won't repeat that.  Here's where it gets interesting. 

I have a blog that talks about my Virtual Assistance business.  In that blog I wrote a post talking about how wonderful Deanna is and the fabulous book she had written, Living With Intention, and linking to her site and having her book on my list of recommended reading. 

I had a few clients and I was making enough money that I was able to pay all my bills but I wasn't making much more than that.  I knew I needed a few more clients to make my business be what I really wanted.  One day I was sitting here, minding my own business, when the phone rang and there was a voice on the other end of the phone telling me he had seen my website and asking about Virtual Assistance and how it worked.

He and I talked for a few minutes when I blurted out (I'm not very good at being subtle), "Do you mind telling me how you found my website since I spent not one single minute on search engine optimization?"  He said he had read Deanna's book and had been totally taken with it and went looking for whatever else he could find about her.  When he did the search on Google, the very first link that showed up was my blog post where I had linked to her, named her a time or two, mentioned the name of her book, and had a link from her book to Amazon.  Apparently that's all it took for my post to rise to the top and when he saw it, he went and read what I had to say about Deanna and her book.  As he was looking at that post he saw other things about being a Virtual Assistant.  What happened then was the magical part.

As he told me, he had sold his business at one point because he realized what he really hated about having a business was doing the paperwork.  He worked for the company that bought the business and got to do most of what he had done before with his business except he didn't have to deal with the administrative part.  Of course he soon realized why it was that he had owned his own business rather than working for someone else and started thinking about doing his own business again.  He still hated the administrative parts of it, though, and wasn't quite sure how that would work out.  He had no more than thought that when he ran across my blog and website talking about how I could do the administrative part of his business for him while he did the technical parts.

We talked for two hours and, at the end of that time, we both knew we would be working together.  We had such a great connection that, just before we ended the call I said, "Would you like to know what I charge?"  It was so amazing!

That was all fabulous and it was definitely the Law of Attraction in action but it was also an indication to me that when I just let go and allow the Universe to take care of the details, things happen that look very much like miracles.

This man is now my biggest client and I can't begin to tell you what a joy it is to work with him.  I'd love to tell you who he is but I have a very strict confidentiality agreement with my clients.  I never tell anyone who they are, specifically, without their express permission and I haven't had the opportunity to ask this client's permission to share that with you.  Perhaps another day I'll do that.

The Secret

Written 2/24/07

Oprah has been having a lot of shows about the book and movie, The Secret.  Of course every time there's a show there's also an after the show that goes with it.  I've been watching lots of stuff about this (as well as having watched The Secret, too).

There were a few things I heard on those shows that had tremendous impacts on me.  One of them was talking about how we can be thinking we want something but asking the Universe for the opposite at the same time.  I first read about this through Abraham's teachings but I seem to benefit from frequent repetition.

I'll give an example of this in a little bit but when I thought this wasn't working (and of course it always works) there was something else going on that I didn't even realize.  One of the other people on one of those shows said that we can't receive the good things we want into our lives until we can be genuinely grateful for what we currently have. 

I knew that.  Yes, I knew it several different times in my life but I forget it every once in a while.  Here's how it worked for me most recently.

Almost five years ago I decided I wanted to be a Virtual Assistant.  I did a bunch of research and decided to take some training through AssistU.  I was working a full-time job at the time and took the training in the evening and did homework nights and weekends.  I calculated how many hours I had to bill each month in order to be able to quit my job.  I decided I could make the transition if I was very careful.  I won't bore you with the details but I had it worked out to a nearly scientific formula for how it would work.

I started looking for clients and what I was getting were, well, let's just say they weren't the ideal clients I had carefully written about in my homework assignments.  I got a little frustrated and I also had a nasty attack from my fibromyalgia and the next thing I knew, I wasn't doing much toward even looking for clients.  I had some other personal issues to deal with and I drifted away.

I decided it was time to do something different with my life.  I wanted to do what it was I had spent all that time, effort, and money training to learn.  To that end, I found myself a life coach, Deanna Davis (she's another whole story and I great and glorious inspiration to me), and started working towards getting clients for my virtual business.

This could get to be a very long story so I'll cut to the chase.  A little over a year ago I was working for a company who shall remain nameless that I referred to as a technological sweatshop.  I was making more than just about anyone else in my position and I was making a whole big $10.50/hr.  There was no insurance, vacation, or sick leave the first year.  A few weeks after my one year anniversary I was called into a miniature conference room and fired.  Again, this could become a very long story while I explain to you that I had no idea why I was fired (I didn't), how I had done nothing wrong (I hadn't), how I got unemployment even though I was fired (a sure indication that I had been fired without cause), but the bottom line was very different.

Deanna and I had set March 30 as my final day at my job.  I was fired on January 25.  I went home in tears.  I called a friend of mine, another Virtual Assistant, who (bless her) said something like, "I realize it's probably too soon for you to think about this right now but I'd like to suggest that when you feel better that you consider the possibility that this might have been a gift that gives you the space you need to grow your business.

Well, of course I hadn't thought about that but because she suggested it, I was able to get to that point very quickly.  I was able to be grateful for being unemployed.  I was able to be grateful for having been fired.  Before I knew what was happening, I had enough clients to support me and I no longer had to worry about whether or not my unemployment payments would last long enough to keep me from losing everything.

Where this long and meandering story has been going is this:  When I thought I had been thinking about wanting to be a Virtual Assistant, what I was saying was some variation of, "I really want to have clients because I really hate working here."  That goes back to what I was first talking about--that we may think we're asking for one thing when, in reality, we're asking for something completely different.  I was focusing on how I hated working where I was working and what I got was more of an opportunity to work at places I hated.  As soon as I became grateful for my circumstances (being fired) I was able to genuinely want clients because I wanted clients, not because I didn't want something else.  It was amazing how quickly my life turned around.

That led me to this place where I'm able to examine where I live, how I live, what I surround myself with, and tons of other stuff I never would have thought I would wonder about when I was busy getting from one day to the next at work.

How joyful is that?

Tea and Sympathy

I have the flu.  I'm not thrilled with this.  I'm not sure what's worse, that I've been sick all week or that I wrote all of the posts for the whole week last weekend and now I either have to let you know I pre-wrote the posts or not talk about the flu. 

We can talk about the flu later.  As I was writing this I realized I didn't know why I felt guilty about writing my posts in advance.  I usually work hard all week long and have a little more time available on the weekends.  Is there a reason I feel I should have done this differently? 

This, too, isn't really the point, though.  It's expectations:  my expectations of myself, my belief that I know what your expectations are of me, not to mention the expectations of the rest of the world.  There are several things that come to me from this.

I could just stop assuming there's a "right" way to write blog posts.  I could write my posts whenever I write them and post them as soon as that is.  I could explain everything to you.  I could just stop worrying about it and go about my life figuring out the important stuff in life.

I just had an idea that sounds like it works well for me.  I can post-date my blog post but then, at the beginning of it I can say something like "written on mm/dd/yy."  That way I don't have a ton of posts on a day or two and then nothing for a week but I'm not making it look as though I wrote them different days.  I think that's the part I don't like--that I'm misrepresenting what actually occurred.

Now that I have that out of the way, I can get back to the flu.  Here's what I discovered while having the flu:  I'm sad that there's no one around to bring me tea and crackers and put a cool cloth on my head and I'm so grateful there no one around to hover or ignore me or, worse, expect me to take care of their needs.  Interesting.  The final result, though, was that I was happy I could just sit around and feel awful without someone else being there to witness it.  For some reason I feel I have to "put on a good face" for other people.  Very silly but there it is.

I also get into this space where I feel I don't have the right to be sick--that somehow I'm personally responsible for being ill--no, it's worse than that.  I feel as if I'm bad for being sick.  I get upset that my clients might not like me if I'm sick (how silly is that?), I worry that if I don't do all the stuff I've committed to do that I'm somehow a bad person (again, very silly).  Anyway, I've been spending time thinking about that, too.

What I realized is I've been spending a whole lot of time thinking stuff that makes no sense at all.  I don't know where it came from but today it makes no sense for me so now I'm just going to assume my clients have had the flu sometime in their past and understand that working is really not a good idea and they want me to take care of myself.  Wow!  I just realized that I felt the way I did because I had employers who acted as if I wasn't really sick and that I was doing this to intentionally upset their routines.  Well, there you go--now I have clients who actually respect me and my integrity and know I will always give them the best I have to offer.

So today I'm beginning to feel a lot better.  I was able to go through a bunch of emails yesterday and clean out my inbox.  That felt so good, today I went through my task list and got rid of a bunch of that stuff, too.  It's very liberating to be able to "start over" with those areas of my life.  I like the feeling.

I will still probably not do much of anything for the rest of today or tomorrow, just so I can spend as much time recovering as possible.  I may do a little writing but I may not even do that. 

What do you do when you're sick?  Do you think about things differently?  Tell me what you think.

Finding the Passion

I haven’t actually reached the point where I know what my passion is but I find that while I have been playing my What If game (I posted about this earlier this week) little unexpected thoughts keep coming up for me.  I have tiny little glimpses of me sharing my knowledge with people.  That isn’t quite it—I see myself motivating people to have their heart’s desire.  Is this because I see so many people I’m interested in doing that or is it because it might be what I am passionate about? 

A thought popped up a few days ago and it did that again just now.  I was doing a creative visualization exercise a year or two ago.  I was instructed to envision myself in my ideal home (more about that another day) and I hear a knock at the door and when I go to answer it, the person on the other side is me 20 years from now (maybe it was only 10 years from now—I’m 56 and I think I saw myself about 10 years from now regardless of how far in the future I was instructed to go).  I’ve never told anyone about what I envisioned.  Why?  Because when I first imagined it, I couldn’t quite believe I could ever be the person I saw in my head.

What did I look like in the future?  This is the fun part—I saw myself wearing fabulous, flowing clothing.  I was wearing flowing pants and a silk blouse with a silk jacket over it—the soft, silky, flowing kind of jacket that goes down to about my knees.  They were all in muted jewel tones and felt luxurious against my skin.  The jacket, in particular, was embellished with couched fibers and with beads.  I wore several chunky hand-designed necklaces.  My hair was gray and short and absolutely adorable.  Oh, and I was a lot smaller than I am right now.  I was probably a size 12 or so—not skinny but comfortable and healthy.

I’m stalling.  This is still difficult to think about but it seemed so real.  I had just come from a conference where I had addresses hundreds of people.  They loved what I had to say and were gathering around me afterwards wanting to share their experiences with me.  I felt filled to overflowing with love and energy.  What struck me was how many times I have expended that same approximate amount of energy I came away totally exhausted.  In my vision of myself I came away feeling energized and excited.

Those people wanted to buy my books, wanted to sign up for the 3-day retreat I am going to lead.  They wanted to sign up for my up-coming seminar teaching how to make the life they have always wanted.

The only thing I don’t see is what it is I’m supposed to be speaking about, what the books are about, or what the content of the retreats and seminars are.  I guess that’s the reason for this journey blog.  I need to discover that and maybe a whole lot more while I’m at it. 

The What If Game

I was talking with my coach last week (have I told you what an amazing woman she is?  You need to see her site and read her blog—she’s amazing).  OK, so I was talking with Lynne and telling her about this amazing revelation about being tired of settling for things and how I had decided I needed to move to my dream apartment in Seattle and it hit me…I’ve been settling in every area of my life for so long I thought that’s how it was supposed to be. 

As soon as I opened myself to the possibility of my dream home I could open myself to other possibilities.  Lynne said, “Well, your work is your passion” and I realized it wasn’t.  It started out that way but it has grown into something I like and I enjoy and I’m challenged by, but it isn’t my passion.  I don’t know what my passion is in the world of making money.

The last three blogs have been about how I got to this journey I’m on.  Lynne invited me to play a different kind of “what if” game than I was used to.  I generally play that with things that might go wrong—what if I don’t have enough money?—what if I hate the apartment?—what if….you get the idea.  Lynne asked what might happen if I did the “what if” game with perfect outcomes.  What if my apartment is the one I’ve always wanted?  What if the things surrounding me are exactly what I want?  What if I meet fabulous friends there?  What if…again, you get the idea.

This was revolutionary for me.  Oh, she also said to use the 17 second rule.  I could hold an intention for 17 seconds (the amount of time someone has decided it takes to make an intention real or something) but no longer than that.  She said (and I think she’s right) that we tend to start trying to control things when we think about them too long.  I’ve been doing this and I have had some amazing results in my life because of it.

I had the thought, “What if I were surrounded only by things I love and adore and want in my life instead of stuff I bought because it was cheap or I could make do or to fill a space in my heart?”  I looked up at the top of the bookcases I can see from my chair and wondered what I was doing with most of the clutter up there.  Most of it was stuff from yard sales that I thought would look good with what I already had.  I like wicker and bamboo and such so I bought baskets of all varieties.  It turns out I don’t like most of them.  I got them because they were baskets, not because I liked them.  There was also a plastic vase I had received flowers in that I kept just because it was a vase and I couldn’t bear to throw it away.  I can do that quite easily today.

Then I looked at the books on that bookcase and realized there were books in there I would never, ever read.  Why was I keeping them?  Just because I had purchased them and so I had to keep them because I might read them someday.  Good grief! 

I started thinking about the clothes in my closet that I never wear but keep because there’s really nothing wrong with them and I might wear them someday—no, I won’t.  I thought about the fabric in my sewing room.  I have more fabric in there than I could use up if I never bought another piece for the rest of my life.  What in the world am I doing with all that fabric?  I looked at the couch that was given to me by a very warm and loving woman when I didn’t have one and needed one and knew it wasn’t the one I wanted.  It will be a wonderful addition to someone else’s home but not mine. 

I’ve been doing this for days.  I’ve been wondering why in the world I felt I had to have all this stuff.  As I go through my books I’m still keeping books I may not read but I have time to get rid of them another day.  The point is that I’m lightening my load.  I’m eliminating things from my life that were there only because I felt the need to surround myself with stuff in the hopes that it would make up for not having what I truly wanted.

I’ll keep you posted on the cleaning out process.

Seattle--City of My Dreams

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to read the previous post to catch up with this story. 

One day I was talking to a friend who still lives in Spokane and she asked if I had ever considered moving back to Spokane.  When I thought about it I realized I like Spokane a lot better than I liked Bremerton (I may tell you that story another day) and I considered moving back there.  I told a friend here about that thought and he said he would encourage me to “test drive” Seattle before moving back to Spokane.  SEATTLE!!!!  Why in the world hadn’t I thought of that?  I was going from somewhere I didn’t really like to a place I wasn’t thrilled with but I liked better than where I was.  And just a ferry ride away was the city of my dreams.

After I realized I didn’t really want to move back to Spokane—I was just considering it because I didn’t really like where I was and Spokane was a place I knew was fairly comfortable—it was so obvious what I needed to do.

For the entire time I lived here (and that’s more than three years) I told people my dream would be to have a loft within three blocks of Pike Place Market and a view of the water.  That’s a pretty specific dream but there it was.  It was as clear as day in my mind.  All of a sudden I knew what I had to do.  I had to move to Seattle—it was time—I could do it.  This was no longer a dream, it was a certainty.  The only things I didn’t know were the exact apartment I would have and the date of the move.

I did a quick search on the Internet and found an apartment just 2 blocks from Pike Place Market with a view of the water.  It’s not a loft but I was told there really aren’t any lofts in that neighborhood and that was really the least essential of all the dream qualities. 

I’ve been talking about this apartment and this move as if it’s a done deal.  It’s as if the Universe is moving everything around to fit my very own dreams.

The Journey Begins

I was talking to my coach. Lynne Morrell, the other day.  She’s a truly amazing woman who has helped me clarify a lot in my life.  She also has an awesome blog.  Anyway, I was telling her about how I came to discover where I needed to live.  I was going to tell you more about this whole journey thing but I think I’d rather tell you the story about where I want to live because it’s great lead-in to why I started the journey thing.

This is a kind of long story (most of my stories seem to be kind of long) but without the context it just doesn’t mean as much—at least that’s how I see it.  I love to know details so I tend to tell stories with details.

A detail that may not be critical to this story but that may have something to do with it is that I have never lived anywhere more than two years in my entire life—seriously.  I’ve lived in the same town, I’ve even lived in the same building a couple of times, but in those cases I moved from one apartment to another.  Anyway, I’m a bit of a gypsy but I never felt like it was because I liked to move so much as it was because I was never “home.”  That was in my adult life, of course.  I had no control over the moves I made as a kid.  Anyway, there’s that little piece of things.

Three years ago two friends and I were talking about the difficulty of single women of a certain age and income level to have a home of their own, how hard it was to be able to afford it and to then be able to care for it.  The fantasy we created was a group of women getting together to purchase a house together to combine their incomes into one large income the way a two-income household did.  In fact, we talked about the three of us doing that very thing.  We talked about whether we would stay in Spokane, Washington, where we currently lived, or if we wanted to go somewhere else.  One thought California might be nice and another wanted to move to Western Washington where she had a son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.  I didn’t particularly care where it was as long as it wasn’t any colder than Spokane in the winter and preferably a little warmer.  The one friend backed out.  She wasn’t quite ready to make that major a move.  The other friend and I continued with our plans and since she wanted to move to western Washington, that’s where we looked.  Originally I thought we wouldn’t be able to afford anything here because I knew Seattle had much higher housing costs than we had in Spokane.  I was told that living on the Kitsap peninsula, just a ferry ride away from Seattle, was still affordable.  Living in Seattle had been a dream of mine since the first time I saw it in 1993. 

We found a house in Bremerton (just a ferry ride away from Seattle) and bought it.  Actually, my friend bought it because my credit is a little rocky.  Besides, she owned her house outright and was able to pay for her half of the house in cash.  I paid the entire mortgage as my half.  That’s getting into more detail than this story calls for so I’ll just stop there.

I’ll pick the story up a year later when the friend decided she had some financial problems and sold the house.  I moved into an apartment less than 2 miles from where the house was and continued my life.  That was over two years ago. 

To be continued.

The Secret

Did you watch Oprah the other day when she had a bunch of Law of Attraction people on there talking about The Secret?  It was really very exciting.  I mean, the Law of Attraction stuff has been around forever and many of us have been working with it for years but it has now hit the mainstream in a big way. 

Even though I’ve been working on the whole Law of Attraction stuff for years, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I really started “getting” it. 

Nearly 15 years ago I heard about a web site for this totally weird woman who channeled spiritual beings.  In other words, these people were dead.  What I read was interesting but I just couldn’t quite go there—I mean, really, channeling?  The funny thing was that a lot of what I read kind of stuck with me and rattled around in my brain for the next 10 years or so.  Then a friend asked if I had ever heard of Abraham and I said I thought I had a vague recollection of taking a look at it many years before.  She shared a CD with me and it brought some of those memories I had up to the surface again. 

I still wasn’t quite ready for it, though, because I thought about it every once in a while but did nothing about it.

Almost two years ago that very same friend (she’s a REALLY good friend) send me the book Ask and It Is Given.  It’s an Abraham book and I think it’s safe to say that it may have changed my life. (It's listed in my book list--I strongly recommend it.)

I could write for hours about this.  I think I want to wait, though, until I have a couple of thoughts a little more well-formed.  In the meantime, you want to learn more about The Secret and more about Abraham.  On the Abraham site you can download the free audio I heard.  I got mine on a CD for the cost of shipping and handling but they give it to you free if you want to download it.

The Beginning

I have a couple of other blogs but those seem to be sitting their stagnating.  Both are about businesses—one that I already have and one I’m trying to have.  What I’ve discovered, however, is that I love both of those businesses but neither of them is my passion.  I want to have a life’s work that I feel passionate about.  I’m done settling for crumbs.

This blog is a direct result of that thought combined with a conference call I was on last night about articles and ebooks.  I know, what a strange place to discover this blogging experience.  Here’s what happened:  a woman was having trouble writing articles because she has ADD and low self esteem but is a highly skilled and well trained therapist who was searching for what she wanted to do with what she knew but didn’t know which way to turn.  It struck me that she could do a blog about her journey—about discovering her worth, about learning how to cope with ADD, about finding her passion.  It wasn’t until this morning that I realized I was telling her what I wanted to do.  I wanted to journal about my journey to find my heart’s desire.  I wanted to share my journey with you.  I wanted this amazing part of my life to be an inspiration to other people.  Perhaps one day it will be a book or the basis for a book but right now it’s simply a place to share with you my own journey in the hopes you will find something that makes your journey more fun, more interesting, more fulfilling, more anything. 

You can agree or disagree.  You can love or hate what I write about.  You can think whatever you like but please share your thoughts with me through comments.  I can’t even imagine doing this in a vacuum.  There’s a way you can email me if you don’t want to share your thoughts publicly. 

Come join me on this journey.  Help me discover my path.  Watch where I go and see if it’s somewhere you would like to travel as well.  It may be a bumpy road but I can guarantee it won’t be dull.  Many things can be said about my life—“dull” is not one of them.