Is your Heart in It? 5 Ways to know

“When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible. Unknown. Have you ever met anyone like this person who has tapped the ‘deep well where passion lives’? They have that quiet energy, that charisma that tells you that they have found the secret. They are living in a place where knowledge, skills and talent are all working in perfect harmony, passionately pursuing their dreams. Have you met someone like that? Are you someone like that? It’s wonderful to be in their presence isn’t it? Their energy just makes you smile.

Knowledge is the stuff that you learn. Skills are the things you learn to do. Talent is a God-given gift that you have, and can harness. When all three are working in concert, you have found your passion sweet spot. You have found what you were put on this planet to do; what indelible mark you are to make on others in this world. It’s magical to find that zone.

How do you know if you are hitting that sweet spot? Five things will tell you:

You are good at it. You like it. You are energized by it. You are propelled to do it. People are blessed by you when you do it.

It takes hitting all five of these things to really know you are in your passion place. There are things for which you are skilled, but they may not give you energy. I have never liked chess. My brother loves it. Guess which one of us is good at it?

In many cases, you like something because you are good at it; but, not always. Sometimes you are good at something but you don’t enjoy it and it doesn’t give you energy. I can write grants, but I don’t love writing grants. So, it is a skill to rely on, but not one for which to build my career upon. I love facilitation. I am good at it, and I get energy from it. So, I do it as much as I can.

I think that the most important thing on the list above is that people are blessed when you do it. Nothing makes you feel more satisfied than knowing that you have helped and blessed people with your gifts, talents and service. That’s what propels you to do it. Knowing that it doesn’t just make you feel good to serve with your gifts, but that your service benefits others.

“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.” - Unknown

P.S. The Heart: passion for your work is one of the body parts that will be worked in the Leadership Anatomy Woman’s Retreat: The Body of Skills you Need to Bring your Dream to Life; November 17-21, 2010 in the Sonoma Valley of California. For more information Click http://bit.ly/IY8Cp.

Redwood Sisterhood to Host Unique Retreat for Women Who Desire to Bring Their Business Dream to Life

Redwood Sisterhood to Host Unique Retreat for Women Who Desire to Bring Their Business Dream to Life

Real Estate of a Dream

It's tangible, it's solid, it's beautiful. It's artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.- Every day, you'll have opportunities to take chances and to work outside your safety net. Sure, it's a lot easier to stay in your comfort zone.. in my case, business suits and real estate.. but sometimes you have to take risks. When the risks pay off, that's when you reap the biggest rewards. Donald Trump.
My mother owned a real estate agency when I was a teenager and young adult. My first job was with that company and I learned a lot from my mom and that industry that is still relevant to me today. I got to thinking today about real estate and dreams and found some metaphorical similarities that I wanted to share with you.

Does your dream have property? You make your dream more real when you have something tangible, touchable about it. Do you have a website? A product that you can touch? An office location? Any one of these things show that you are serious enough about your dream to have invested in some actual property.

Does your dream have sweat equity? If you are working hard, putting your heart, blood sweat and tears into your dream, then you are serious. All of that work will come back to you. It is your sweat equity into your business. When you put hard word into maintaining a real estate property, it comes back to you in increased financial value. The same is true of sweat equity. Keep working at it and it will come back to you.

Is your dream a sought after commodity? Real estate increases its value over time. The properties that increase in value are those in prime locations that are in excellent condition. They are desirable, sought after commodities. Listening to your customers and offering exactly what they say they want will increase your dream businesses value over time.

Do you love your dream enough? People that love their properties invest in them. Do you love your dream enough to make the necessary investments in it and in you to make sure that it not only survives, but thrives? Keep learning so that you can fuel that passion and be able to overcome adversity. Keep reminding yourself why you had this dream in the first place. Are you and your dream worth it?

‘Owning a home is a keystone of wealth.. both financial affluence and emotional security.”’- Suze Orman. So, is bringing your dream to life!

Bring your dream to life in November. Check out the Leadership Anatomy Retreat in California http://bit.ly/IY8Cp

Practice Strategic Listening

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life...When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ...Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.” Brenda Ueland

Twelve to fourteen years ago, I was part of a major collaborative project. We were trying to get 24 individual nonprofit agencies to become one integrated system of services. It was a survival intervention. These small nonprofits were losing their funding and they needed support and an infrastructure to stay alive, so linking them together to make them stronger was the plan. People were afraid and resistant to say the least. The project was listening boot camp for me. I think I learned more about listening in those two years than I had my entire life up to that point.

Did you know that you learn more about yourself by listening to others, if you really try? If you aren’t careful, you can miss the best stuff. Here are some of the things that I learned from that experience:

People hear what they want to hear. We all have a way of filtering out the stuff we don’t want to hear, or just missing the parts that are not familiar to us. One of the strategic marketing assignments that we gave the leaders of the small nonprofits was to go out into their communities and interview key stakeholders. They were supposed to ask a few questions. What is your biggest frustration? What service that doesn’t exist now, would you pay to see developed? And how are we doing and how can we improve our services to you? Do you know what happened? In nearly every case, the leader came back with the message ‘We are OK and they want us to do what we do already’. Really? Seriously? We did some more training, sent them out again and this time they heard some different messages. Those second round interviews lead to the development of 84 new services and $5.4 million in new service revenue. Were the answers different the second time? Probably not. The leaders just heard them the second time.

It takes multiple washings. You may have heard this old trainer’s adage: Tell your audience what you're going to tell them. Tell them your message. Then tell them what you told them. If it’s bad news, then repeat. You may need to send your message 7 or more times for people to hear it. The tougher the news, the more often and the clearer you need to send the message. So, if it takes multiple washings to send a message, it’s going to take multiple washings to hear a message too. Ask them to tell you again, paraphrase to make sure you heard them carefully.

People fill in the blanks with worse than the truth. Truly listen and respond to fears and concerns. If you don’t know something, saying you don’t know but you will find out is a more comforting message than leaving people to their own assumptions. The biggest mistake you can make is to not address a fear that you hear. Meeting people where they are validates that you are listening. You can’t move someone forward without meeting them where they are first.

People will like you if you listen to them. Liking is a key principle in persuasion. People tend to do things for people that they like that they won’t do for people that they don’t like. When you truly listen to someone you are relating to them. Relating makes you more likable.

"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." Oliver Wendell Holmes. Practice strategic listening.