When you decide to set a new goal for yourself, how do you do it?  Do you sit down and make a list?  Do you write out an affirmation?  Do you simply think to yourself one day while you’re in the car “I need to do thus-and-such” and set out to do it?  Whatever your method, you can have a higher degree of sticking to your new goal if you include as many of your senses as you can to help you along.

There are several ways of doing this, and most of the methods I know work pretty well.  One that is popular right now is called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).  EFT is often used to change our emotional reaction to a certain situation.  For instance, if you get nervous speaking in front of people, you can learn to use EFT to say affirmations and tap yourself on specific points of the body.  EFT is nicknamed “tapping” because you actually do tap yourself repeatedly at specific spots as you are saying the sentences you construct about your goal — the change you desire.  I’ve used EFT more than once and if it is used consistently, it has worked for me.  To learn more about EFT, you can contact my friend Annie Wills, at Full Circle Coaching.

I’m going to give you another way to involve your senses and make your new goal stick, though.  It is often called VAK, which stands for Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic.  I like VAK because it is another way to become an embodied entrepreneur.  Simply put, that means that you are engaged in your work with your heart, soul, mind AND body – and you are sure to be quite successful if you can achieve that!

So, to set a goal and put the power of VAK behind it, here’s what you do:

1. Write your goal down.
2. Close your eyes, and ask yourself “what will you see that will let you know you’ve attained your goal?”  Even better, you can give this question and the following ones to a friend and ask them to walk you through this and answer to her, out loud.  Take a breath or two, and see what pictures you get, what you’ll see when your goal is met.  You will probably get more than one vision.  Open your eyes, and write each of them down.
3. Again, close your eyes and ask yourself “what will people say to you once you’ve reached the goal?”  After you’ve recorded your answer (or had your friend record it for you), try asking yourself “what will people say about you once you’ve reached your goal?”  And finally, ask what you would say to yourself when your goal is reached.  Record your answers, or have your friend do it for you.
4. (This is my favorite part!)  Now, close your eyes again.  Ask yourself how you will feel when you’ve reached this new goal.  Really take some time to let this sink in, and see what feelings arise in you.  Once you have a good strong feeling going, ask yourself about the color, shape, texture, and even the temperature of that feeling.  Finally, ask yourself where the feeling is located in your body.  Record all your answers.  Don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to really get into the feeling of reaching this goal.
5. Finally, ask yourself what belief you could state about yourself that will help you get this goal.  For instance, if you want to lose weight but always snack at night, could you create a belief about yourself that you are able to easily turn your attention from eating after 8:00 PM?  Work on this replacing your current belief that it is “impossible not to eat” or “I must eat because I get too fatigued, too bored, or too scared  not to eat at night.”  In other words, replace your negative self-talk with a positive belief in yourself as someone who is capable of doing what you want to do.
6. Be sure to ask yourself if you foresee any reason NOT to reach this goal.  If you secretly think that being thinner will be bad in some way you will not reach your goal until you have put that belief to bed.  We almost always have a secret reason that we don’t want to do what we say we want to do.  I say I want to improve my auditory Spanish skills, but secretly I don’t want to put in the extra half hour a day to do that.  So, of course, I don’t!  Bring your secret reasons up into your consciousness, and you’ll go a long way to helping yourself get that goal.

The point here is to create a framework around you that helps support you in all your senses.  If you have a goal to grow a rose garden, you can close your eyes and envision the layout, the sunshine, the colors, and the smells for sure.  The more you can embody your goals, the more you’ll be able to make it stick.  Let me know how it works for you.

• It’s no fun to pay attention to weekly income and expenses.
• It’s no fun to carve out the time needed to work on my business, not in it.

The truth is, your business will flourish the more you weave fun into it.  When we look forward to learning something new rather than thinking it will be overwhelmingly difficult, we create energy toward our own success.  When we hold our work lightly, it feels much less burdensome and hard.  We end up with a more positive energy toward the things we have to do.  We all know this, but when it comes to our work we sometimes tend to forget it.  We think we have to labor at our work, or keep it separate from our fun.

Dread has no place in your life as an entrepreneur.  You didn’t set yourself up to be the boss of you just to feel dread toward your work, did you?    One way to handle feeling too burdened or overwhelmed is to make sure you inject some fun and things you truly enjoy into your business.  Tiny pleasures or large ones, they all help you succeed in your work.

Here’s just a small example.  I’ve always loved the color turquoise, so to inject a little bit of fun into the work of updating one of my websites, I used it and asked Facebook friends what color to pair it with.  I ended up with a dynamic combo of my fav turquoise paired with peach.  I love it, and I had fun I had pulling it together.  (You can check out the result at suepainter.com.)  How fun it was to read the other day that turquoise has been named “color of the year.”

Often I encourage my clients to plan personal retreats to work out their stuck places and to work on their business planning.  These are fun despite being productive.  Go where you’ve been wanting to go, or return to a place you enjoy.  Not only does the prospect of a trip create a welcoming energy, you are so easily able to work on your business rather than in it, getting away from the day-to-day routine.  Go by yourself, or pair up with another entrepreneur who also wants to hammer out some work.  You can weave breaks into your day, walk on the beach, get a nice dinner, shop.  But for the most part, you are giving yourself uninterrupted time to invest in your business.  Don’t sabotage yourself by making this a family vacation, either.  It’s not – it’s for YOU.

You can also form a small Mastermind group with people you truly enjoy, and meet by phone or in person to help each other with business issues.  Make it fun – meet over a good bottle of wine, take a walk, whatever you enjoy.  For a while last year, I did this with another entrepreneur by meeting her to water walk and swim together.  We’d do that, then get into the warm therapy pool and stretch both our bodies and our views of our businesses.

Do you have staff or employees in your business?  In nice weather, try meeting outdoors with a picnic lunch.  Just think about ways to bring joy and pleasure into your endeavor.  You’ll benefit both in your spirit and your bottom line.  Think easy-peasy, not hard.  Think mastery, not failure.  Think simple steps, not big overwhelming project.  You didn’t put yourself in business to feel fearful, down or out.  You put yourself in business to serve others and create a world of work that meets your income and lifestyle wishes.  Fun will help you get there, even in small doses!

(c)  Sue Painter

Entrepreneur Number One (we’ll call her Melinda) has been in business a few years now but finds herself unwilling to face the new skills she needs to learn in order to handle the big growth that could come her way.  Eventually, the pain of not looking became stronger than the pain to look, so Melinda booked a day with me, fearful though she was.  One of the costs of her waiting was that her energy, enthusiasm, and belief in her business success had flatlined.  Melinda had taken on some debt to grow her business, but then because she felt guilty about the debt and didn’t really want to face it, she’d failed to keep up her bookkeeping and had no idea where she was in terms of sales, expenses, and accounts receivable.  Her guilt drove her to describe herself as “in debt and making no money.”  Yet she really didn’t know if that were true or not.  As we talked about this, her emotions came to the surface and she realized that constantly telling herself that she was in debt and a failure had drained her faith in herself – a far greater cost than actual financial debt.  Melinda needed to step up and act like the successful entrepreneur she is.  In her case, that means getting a weekly cash flow statement from her bookkeeper, keeping her pulse on her true operating costs, and letting go of trying to do everything herself in a wrong-headed effort to save money.  As we developed a comprehensive list of business systems that Melinda will put in place, she came up with an idea that not only would save her own staff production time, it could easily be a product that she could sell to others in her industry.  This one idea will more than reimburse Melinda for the day she spent with me – and more to the point, with sales to others she can probably erase at least half of her debt.  Melinda paid dearly for putting off this day – in energy, self-doubt, overhead that was increasing because it wasn’t being watched, production time for her staff, and a missed opportunity to sell to others. 

Entrepreneur Number Two (we’ll call her Amy) mentioned to me that she had been wanting to go on a personal retreat to do business planning for a long time.  “How long,” I wondered out loud to her.  “Six months, at least,” she replied.  Amy’s willingness to let everything else come first before she took personal time for herself and her business came close to costing her the chance to more than double her income.  It’s not what you will SPEND on your personal retreat, it’s how much it costs you to remain in the same place and fail to take action for moving ahead.  Amy tole me that she wants to hit six figures in a year.  She has the capability to do that, but not if she doesn’t change her mindset and her business model quickly and drastically.  For instance, one reason she has put off going for a 3 day personal retreat is that she doesn’t want to lose work that in essence pays her about $25 per hour.  But during her “business makeover” retreat time, she can easily generate ideas and plans that pull her up to an average hourly fee of $100.  Until she plans it, that higher hourly fee won’t happen, and neither will her six figure income.  It COSTS MONEY to stay stuck.  Doing what you have always been doing is only going to get you the very same result you are getting now.  So, if you want a different result in  your business, take the time for that personal retreat.  Set your goals, make your plans, and get on down the road.  Your bank account will thank you in the end!

(c) Sue Painter

No matter what our preferences and beliefs about these two changes, each brings opportunity to look at ourselves and how we react to large shifts in the environment around us. Our habitual reactions to change and the behaviors we exhibit at these times have enormous impact, not just on us personally but also in our businesses. Here are ways to benefit from changing times.

• Honor the departing person

No matter whether I am very glad to see the person go or not, it benefits me to take stock of what that person has accomplished or failed to accomplish, the traits I admire or truly detest, the strengths of the person, and the weaknesses that caused the change to occur. Noticing and reflecting on these things teaches me to see good in all beings, to be aware of my own hot buttons, to dissect for myself what I am drawn to and what repels me. Knowing these things strengthens me and helps me to navigate both personal and business relationships with more honestly and clarity.

• Acknowledge that change opens the door for new possibilities

Even when the situation causes anguish, anger, or sadness there is still a different energy and a different situation that absolutely WILL bring new possibilities to all parties – even the departing one! The trick is to step back from our attachment to what we wanted. So long as my energy is bound up in holding on to my preferences and desires, there is little energy free to see the opportunities and possibilities embedded within the change. If you think that there are NO good opportunities in the new order of things, it is a sure sign that you are clinging to your wants. Sometimes, we cling to our point of view for or against the change very strongly, talking about it and trying to prove our point of view over and over again. Often, this is a defense against feeling and letting go of the strong emotions we hold toward someone or something. Our energy is stuck until we are willing to let go.

• Honor the new person

Even when the person is one you don’t like and have not supported, it’s much more beneficial to you to build relationship with the person than to hunker down and refuse to deal. The new person has both good and bad points, same as the previous person and the same as you. Getting to know the new person gives you insight into what these good and bad points are and how to most effectively work together. Assume the positive – that the relationship will be beneficial to you and to the other person. People in new positions are sensitive to how others are reacting – if that person feels your support and interest at the outset, you will set a good foundation. In time, having built on what you can, you might even be able to influence their beliefs and behaviors – perhaps the very ones you do not like! Honoring creates openness and possibility.

Taking stock of your reactions, beliefs, and behaviors during times of change strengthens you and provides the best framework for moving forward. Doesn’t that sound like a good way to help your business thrive?

• It’s an act of courage to consider closely your current life and work, asking yourself what is working well and what no longer feels right. It’s much easier not to look, to go along in the path one has already created, staying in the comfort zone. The downside of the comfort zone is that it doesn’t create much in the way of forward movement – it’s more like marking time, marching along in place. Over time, vague feelings of dissatisfaction or longing may arise, telling us it is time to sit and feel our way into the future. If we put aside these feelings, they will most usually lurk inside of us, gathering strength and coming out in stronger ways – anger, illness, self-sabotage. On the other hand, if we allow and even encourage these feelings, they can be helpful messengers, giving us strong clues about what we need to change or let go of in both our personal and professional lives.
• Letting go is an act of courage, too. Get this: for the new work to succeed, what is not working must end. Trying to create something new while at the same time expending the same level of time and energy to keep up the old will end in failure every single time. It is a subtle form of self-sabotage. It gives us the message that we are not quite committed to the new, want to hedge our bets by hanging on to the old while we see if the new will work. This is a costly and unwise action. It perpetrates a lack of total commitment to what we want to create, making manifestation of the new much harder than it needs to be. It keeps alive self-doubt, a surefire way to fail. Manifestation is nothing more than full commitment to what you envision. If you let go and step forward, you set in motion the energy that supports you in creating what you want.
• Clear vision, a vision that has energy and good vibe, will sustain us when things seem blocked. Clear vision comes from taking time for ourselves, creating the quiet, unfettered space to ask what is working and what is not, what we have not yet done in life that we really truly have a deep desire to accomplish, what are stuck places in our personal lives. Clear vision creates an energy of allowing things to happen that take us where we want to go. We create this vision by stating dreams and desires, leaving aside the many “yes, but” statements or the reasons why we cannot do what we see. Clear vision is freeing, not clinging. Clear vision holds the best for one’s heart and mind. It isn’t hampered by what others think or want us to do. It feels unburdened.

Here are five questions that I use when I do personal retreats with my clients. Set aside some October time and find your own courage to create something new for the upcoming year.

1. What secret hope or dream do you have that hasn’t yet seen the light?
2. What tasks are on your plate that you really dread to do?
3. What one thing would you take off your calendar if you could?
4. What one thing needs to change in your personal life – just pick one thing from the laundry list in your mind.
5. Are you willing to block off time for something new next year?

Answer these five questions and see what new vision arises. See how your energy feels. You may just find that you have found the courage and clear vision to let go, creating and manifesting something new.

• You need to go on a personal retreat!
  

Yep, that’s right. One way to radically change your thoughts (which we know affect feelings, which in turn drive your actions, which then become results) is to give yourself a change of environment. Why?

• Chances are you are hanging around people who are not positively supporting you right now.
• It’s a good bet that you are tired of “thinking about it,” whatever the issue is.
• Your routine of daily life currently is not supporting your moving ahead. In other words, you are stuck in a rut.

Here’s the five-step action plan for you:

1. Go alone, you don’t want to have to serve anyone but yourself right now.
2. Pack your briefcase with the materials you need to work on the stuck place.
3. Take along at least one new book you’ve bought but have not read (it can be a business book or fiction, doesn’t matter.)
4. Give yourself a minimum of three days (that means four nights away, no cheating and taking a half day at either end for travel).
5. Set an intention to rest, recreate, and let your mind wander.
   

Now, go make a reservation someplace and get gone. If you are harboring negative and guilty thoughts, remind yourself that you are the shepherd of your business and your soul, and right now for whatever reason they both need attention. A friend of mine, Annie Wills, calls this “radical self care.” I call it a good reason for some extra time at my own favorite place, which is anywhere with an ocean view.

Say “recreate” with a slightly different emphasis and you’ll realize it is re-create. You need to re-create something in your work, and in yourself. That takes a little time out. No reason to feel guilty about that, is there?

Let me know where you go and what you got accomplished. Send a picture, even. I won’t be surprised at the positive changes, but you might be!

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