Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, moms-to-be, grandmothers, aunties out there!

When I thought about what I wanted to share this week, I asked myself “what do I NOT want to share?” instead. What feels just too revealing? So here it is.

Last week sucked – for no particular reason, I should add. But there were tears, a general out-of-sorts feeling and it wasn’t a lot of fun.

But, as I’ve learned to do in such times, I did some inner work, spoke frankly about how I was feeling with a friends and I asked for help. Once I did, I felt better pretty fast.

That said, I’m tired of the whole entrepreneurial rose-colored glasses thing. The impression and perception that everyday is all sunshine and unicorns, so I’m here taking a stand for the reality and the truth.

Just like all things, some days are good, and some days aren’t. Running our own businesses are hard some days, and can feel downright yucky.

Then I thought, how could I give back and support another entrepreneur who is struggling or frustrated, and feeling yucky?

So, I opened up a few spots for folks who want to take a good, hard look at what’s going on in their business and want to know how to start turning that boat around.

Sometimes taking an honest look is all that’s needed to shift everything!

Lots growth and expansion for me and my business recently, and with it the discomfort of going beyond what’s comfy and into the land of “stretchy-growy.” Video being a big part of that, and funny thing is, I’m finding making these a ton of fun now.

I find that to be the case most of the time. Whatever resistance I have, whatever scenarios I’m imagining that are scary or unknown, it turns out to be easier, better or more fun. Though, I do my best to remember that, it’s still a wild ride on the inside.

Often, this time of year, we are reflecting on our year, where we wanted to be and looking ahead to the clean slate of the new year.

While I am very introspective, I also had to learn how to slow down and actually celebrate, acknowledge and applaud my growth, successes and “wins.”

Naturally, given my enthusiasm and energy, I’m inclined to only “sort of” acknowledge my progress: “Wow, that worked out well! OK, on to the next thing!”

But I’ve learned that a crucial part of creation is celebrating how far I’ve come, and deliberately letting go of the things in my life that no longer serve who I am now.

“Celebrate your accomplishments so thoroughly as to burn the bridges of who you were before,” is how Brian Regnier put it.

The idea here is to so completely acknowledge our growth that everything we do going forward will be from this new vantage point. That the old will be left behind and from that new horizons and new possibilities are now both conceivable and achievable.

From this new place, each of us has the opportunity to recreate anew – to envision and imagine what we want in our lives from an entirely new place.

Even if you don’t feel that you have accomplished enough of your goals this year, I invite you to look at the micro-changes, the baby-steps, the starts and progress you have made this year.

Those “small” accomplishments combined to create a massive difference, and more importantly, if we acknowledge our baby steps by focusing on what IS working rather than what is not, we create more room for the bigger changes to come too.

Here is a simple exercise to help you celebrate your accomplishments this year:

• Write down everything that you are proud of this year, every little and big thing.
• Trust what occurs to you and get it out on paper so your subconscious mind can begin digesting all you have done.
• Then, answer these questions either in writing or out loud with a trusted friend:
  • What is possible for me now?
  • What can I see for my life now?
  • What do I want my life to be like now?
• Now, with these new possibilities written down, brainstorm your New Year’s resolutions or 2015 Goals and Intentions.

The point is to set our goals and intentions from where we are now, not where we were a year ago. I find this exercise really helps me to lock into my consciousness how far I’ve come and how much I’ve grown.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes for you! I can’t wait to hear.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my Thanksgiving post. I received a flurry of “I feel the same way!” and “Me, toos.” It seems I struck a cord, and for that I am once again grateful to get to do what I do, because part of it is stretching myself to articulate the uncomfortable and messy stuff we all go through as entrepreneurs.

I do hope those in the US enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Now, as we move our attention to the full-on holiday season, I am going to be bold and ask:

This year, will you let yourself off the hook for the holiday season?

Will you go easy and do your best to avoid putting pressure on yourself to do the holiday a certain way and/or have your house look and your cooking be “just so”?

SO much is going on, and a lot of it is fun and festive and feels good!

But then there is the to-do list that goes on for days, cards to address and send, presents to buy, wrap and send or hide, meals to prepare and cook, and packing for travel and trips. It goes on and on.

After noticing how I felt getting ready for the holidays several years ago, I implemented a policy for myself. I call it “No Adding.” By that I mean that I plan out the month of my parties, errands, deadlines, travel – everything – and then make the mental decision to not add anything else.

A few years ago during the week before Christmas, a colleague told me that he had just scheduled a regular check-up with his doctor. I was incredulous, wondering, “Unless you are sick, why would you do that?!? You could just as easily have the check-up in January.”

Since all the holiday prep and celebrations go on top of the usual day-to-day busy of work, life and family, I avoid adding other stuff that can wait until January. Or, if it’s an opportunity to go have fun, I’ll assess if I need to not do something else or whether I want to carve some extra time out for “nothing time.”

With everything, I want it to be a conscious choice, so if you really, really want to go, by all means go!

Just do so with the honest assessment that you have perhaps now overscheduled yourself. You may need to cut back on another activity and / or may need to add some rest and rejuvenation time into your schedule.

If we were all to let go of the “deadline” aspect of the holidays and with it the pressure to be perfectly prepared, we’d all have a hell of a lot more fun.

We’d be more in the moment, and truly enjoying time with family and friends – which is the whole point!

So will you do it? Will you let yourself off the hook? Drop me a note and let me know!

In these days before Thanksgiving, when we think about being grateful for the abundance in our lives, I want to share something deeply personal with you.

Owning a business, especially a “heart-centered” business, is not for the faint of heart. It takes guts, perseverance and courage. Sometimes it is scary, putting myself “out there”, day after day. After all, those of us with our own businesses must get up and stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone every day.

You may be thinking, “Of course!” But I don’t just mean the focus and guts, perseverance and courage required to put ourselves out there externally: to market, sell and serve.

I also mean the internal work and effort that may not be as obvious to others but in fact, requires digging deeply into ourselves to find the strength and focus we need to go out in the world, attract the right clients and help them succeed.

I have learned that a big part of the “work” is actually internal. I have also learned that as we grow into our own voices, and as we expand and get out there more, there will be tests.

By tests I mean failures, stumbling blocks and big, fat, life-altering lessons. And they are extremely uncomfortable. These stumbling blocks, these “stretchy-growy” moments, can sometimes last for days.

It’s as though the Universe, while acknowledging my growth to date, is still asking me, “How much do you want it? Are you willing to turn yourself inside out and look at every part of yourself – the good, the bad, your strengths, your weaknesses?”

I have learned that this is what it takes.

Since a heart-centered business is the expression of who we are on a very personal level, and since we have already chosen to integrate our heart and our heads and to do so in the public eye, our inner and outer selves must match. We must be “in alignment.”

To illustrate, let me tell you about last spring, when one of these big tests came along that brought me to my knees. I mean this both metaphorically and literally.

After realizing something was definitely “off” in me and my business that was showing up in my sales, I began to look inside myself and turn over every “rock,” asking myself, “Do I want this? Did I choose this piece of myself consciously?

Many of the rocks I turned over I did want to keep, some of them being my gifts and the best parts of myself. But some of them I decidedly did not want.

Some of them were beliefs I had adopted from someone else, and others were completely ALL mine and totally out of sync with who I want to be.

It was also during this time that I, for the very first time ever, learned to pray, literally on my knees.

Up until then, while I had developed a consistent meditation practice some time ago and was always happy to receive prayers or be part of a prayer, I had never really prayed for myself.

“I began a conversation with God” is how Elizabeth Gilbert put it in Eat, Pray, Love, and I think that is a very apt way to put it. Within a few weeks of beginning to pray, I noticed day to day life and business just started getting easier. I felt more centered and grounded, and my sales increased right away.

Having been conditioned all my life to value the intellectual and the logical, just sharing my story with you now makes me feel very vulnerable. I still have a lingering bit of fear that I won’t be taken seriously if I declare my spirituality so publicly.

But there it is! Between the inner work I did last spring, and my new-found connection and conversation with God, business picked up.  Better still, I now have a new appreciation for accepting the spiritual side of me and letting it help me maintain more consistent alignment of all that I am.

The habit of conversations with God is not a one-time-only fix. It has become part of a consistent daily practice that I use to help me stay in sync. But I have made a start and it is making a difference in both my inner and outer lives.

So what I am most grateful for this year, is that I get to share this part of my story with you. That while I meet great clients and cool colleagues, all the while I get to be ME – thoroughly, unapologetically me.

Here I am cheering for Penny Lane Crull as the Emcee for the simulcast video feed at Lisa Cherney’s 6 Figures on Your Terms event. 

What makes me truly grateful is that the more open, spontaneous, authentic and vulnerable I am, the better my personal relationships and my business are.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

P.S. If this sparked something in you, I’d love to hear from you. Simply hit reply and drop me a note. <3

[Structure Supports Flow]

It breaks my heart when I see it. Missed connections, missed opportunities to help and collaborate.

What I’m talking about is what people say in answer to the knee-jerk and narrow question “What do you do?”

Typically, most people will say something along the lines of “I do hypnotherapy,” “I’m in finance” or “I’m a business coach.”

Notice how it’s “I do” or “I’m in” or “I am”? It’s ALL focused on what the person does, not how the person solves a problem as a service for someone else.

Beyond, “That’s nice,” or “Cool,” there isn’t that much to say. I always try to follow up asking for them to tell me more, because I’m genuinely curious, but most people aren’t like me in this regard.

Usually, then I hear about their certifications and training, way before it’s time. I’m left knowing little more about this person than job title and credentials.

Most of the time, these “I” statements stop the conversation dead, or more accurately, prevent a conversation from starting.

When I watch these conversations fail to get off the ground, the polite side of me thinks, “Oops, another opportunity lost.” When I am in a feistier mood, I yell to myself, “You’re doing it wrong!!!” (Just like in the movie “Mr. Mom” when the Dad is driving the wrong way in the school drop off lane and gets yelled at by the school traffic cop.)

Why does this matter?

First of all, without a structured framework focused at the very beginning of the conversation about what clients can do or be with a product or service – the benefits – what is shared tends to fall flat and it’s not “sticky,” memorable and intriguing.

The following article does a fantastic job of simply explaining the whole “benefits vs. features” thing you may have heard about, but not really fully understand.

People Don’t Buy Products They Buy Better Versions of Themselves

This is an excellent graphic from the article that illustrates why articulating the benefits is so powerful:

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the product or service you offer is the only key to your relationship. What IS key is how your product changes the client’s life, relationships or bank account.

Remember, that’s the person who can now do rad stuff because they met you.

Call it relationship capital if you want, but it’s the difference between your education or credentials being seen as your bragging, or being evaluated by a potential client or partner as a key data points in building trust and credibility.

Try this out, and while you do, notice how you feel and what you think when you witness this kind of conversation – at events, parties, back-to-school night, yoga – wherever.

Let me know what you discover – drop me a note at sarah@sparklingresultscoaching.com.

[Structure Supports Flow]

Some days are just a little more trying than others, a little funky, a little “off”, you know? Life happens, upsets occur – we all have days like this.

I figure they are part of the ebb and flow of life. I was not always like this – events would throw me off and it would take a little while to get me out of my upset.

Instead of hoping for “perfect” days (ha!) all the time, what I strive to do is shift out of the funk and back to feeling good (or at least neutral) as fast as I can.

For a small upset, this could be a few minutes or hours, and for bigger upsets, a couple of days.  While I absolutely believe in honoring my feelings, I want to do what I need to do to “reboot” myself so I avoid being off balance for very long.

When I notice I’m feeling off, I begin my own reboot sequence, a structure created to support my feeling better as quickly as possible.

Here’s what I do, so you can give this a try:

1. Notice IF and WHEN we’re feeling off – it could be big, or a low grade feeling of “something is not quite right.”
2. Look inside to see what may be upsetting us, and figure out what needs to happen to reboot ourselves.
3. Identify a handful of ways we can choose from to help us shift into a more positive state of mind.
4. Have an immediate reboot plan you can do in 5-10 minutes, and a longer one you can come back to later for bigger upsets.

Some of these reboot ideas may seem obvious – “here we go again, talking about exercise” – but often what is obvious become so because they work.

Some ideas to quickly reboot yourself – and add your own:

• Call a friend, someone who always makes you feel good, even if all you talk about are day-to-day things.
• Laugh about something – find a video online that always makes you laugh.
• Dance – this works, too – it goes without saying, dance to your favorite song.
• Meditate in whatever form makes you comfortable. Even sitting in silence and thinking calm thoughts can work.
• Take a walk / exercise – remember that as over-used this advice is, it works!
• Do something fun that you enjoy – only you can decide for yourself what is fun for you.

This is a fantastic structure to support our shifting out of upsets and feeling our best as much as possible, regardless of the ups and downs.

[Structure Supports Flow]

You’ve probably noticed that I talk a lot about creating new habits, new good habits, I should say. This is because good habits play such a big part in changing the things we do by default subconscious programming.

If we are not consciously choosing our habits, we can be sure that we are being run by some that are doing us no good.

An article has been making the rounds recently about a man who used his password to his computer to change his life, bit by bit. He chronicles how, over the course of two years, he changed his password regularly to reflect his new habits and goals.

Each time he did, he achieved exactly what he wanted to – starting with “Forgive@her” in order to forgive his ex-wife, and then to asking a girl out and getting then engaged.

There are several reasons why this practice is so effective. The repetition of having to enter the password several times a day, every day, is a powerful way to pay attention to and focus on establishing the current new habit.

Anytime the old habit sneaks up, it’s only a matter of a short amount of time before the password will need to be entered, and we’ll receive a reminder or reinforcement of the new habit.

Since the new habit is constantly in our thoughts throughout the day, it’s also easier and faster to get back on track, should we slide back into the old habit.

I was inspired by this article, and have adopted this practice as a structure to support my own new habits. For the first time ever, my computer settings now require me to enter a password every time my computer goes to sleep.

So, at least a dozen times a day I am being reminded of the new habit I’m creating and my attention on it doesn’t waver for long. 

If you’d like to check out the entire article, you can find it here: https://medium.com/@manicho/how-a-password-changed-my-life-7af5d5f28038

I encourage you to give this a try if it feels right to you – it’s a powerful structure to add to your toolbox.