Quiddity Higher Purpose Business, help for entrepreneurs, women in business, David Solomon

Women Forging the Future

I came across the following from Elizabeth Debold, Senior Editor of EnlightenNext magazine in an email promoting a virtual seminar they are holding, and I thought it was worth passing on. In part, it helps explains why I work with women to build Higher Purpose Businesses.

“When every woman learns to listen without fear to the voice inside her instead of smothering it, it may lead - perhaps even more surely than rockets into space—to the next step in human evolution.”

A powerful quote, isn’t it? It’s from an article that Betty Freidan (author and founder of the National Organization for Women) wrote for Good Housekeeping magazine FIFTY years ago - in 1960! She was writing to all of the educated, smart women who found themselves strangely frustrated and dissatisfied with their expected roles of wife and mother - and had no other life options.

Today we can’t say that - educated Western women have more freedom of choice than any women in history. The path of marriage and children that defined women’s identities and fulfilled their essential purpose for thousands of years but is now merely one option among many. 

But the vague sense that something isn’t quite right still persists with so many of us - even though we may have it all or have made powerful choices in our lives, so often we feel that something is still missing and we are still craving a deeper fulfillment.

Interestingly, research shows that as a gender, women are less happy today than their foremothers were before the 1960’s revolution. Whilst they have gained options, they have not necessarily found a new essential purpose that puts wind in their sails, empowering them to reach higher and challenge limits, to evolve who they are, and to become creative agents of lasting change.

Why? In a nutshell: while women have broken through one glass ceiling after another, the new frontier is busting the glass ceilings inside ourselves that trap our spirit, our sense of purpose and our deepest passion for and trust in life.

 Building a Higher Purpose Business is one of the many options open to women (and men!) to help achieve this.

If you are interested in finding out more about the seminar, here is the link: Women Forging the Future—Two Days of Myth Busting, Soul Strengthening, and Ecstatic Liberation (November 13 & 14, 2010) (FYI, I have no affiliation with them other than being a subscriber to the magazine)

By setting your intentions in advance you get to make more conscious choices

I used to think of intention as just a “big picture” thing. After all, it is your purpose, your life’s direction. Right? For sure!

But I very recently finished a programme of learning with Christine Kane and she suggested that it is very empowering to use intention in everyday situations – not just the big picture stuff. Even for small instances that might seem trivial.

So I have been trying it. Here’s my process:

Before any event or item in my day, I get clear about these 3 things:

1. Who I want to be in the situation

2. How I want to feel

3. My desired internal outcome

Why these things? I mean, they are all internally focussed. Why not visualise the perfect outcome?

Well I do that too. But haven’t you heard before that it’s not your circumstances, but how you respond to them that makes all the difference? Well I’m doing this process to get better control over my responses. And by doing it in advance I can step out of being a “reactor” and become a “creator”.

So here is my new mantra: My intention for this is………..

It’s not a perfect system, but I am feeling much better for making conscious choices about how I want to be.

Maybe it might work for you too?

It might also be worth checking out the Business DNA In-Depth How-To Guide on time management here: http://quidditybusiness.com.au/business-dna-in-depth-guides.html

The BEST EVER focussing questions you will ever ask yourself

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’…into the future 

Recently I sent out an email asking people what their top business issues are. I got quite a variety of responses but one issue kept coming up consistently – How can I get more time to do all the things I need to do?

 I wish I had the answer to that one! 

Well actually I do…sort of.

 At first I was tempted to start a discourse about the nature of time, reality, consciousness and “the matrix” – but although fascinating and worthy of discussion – it is a bit beyond the scope of this quick newsletter.

 Instead I decided to give you some “instant pudding” - something that you can use straight away. It is the best (ever) tool I have found to focus your thinking and actions, so that you are getting the best results in line with your vision and with the time you have available.

 I have searched for years and never found more than 168 hours in a week.

 Time can’t be accumulated. You can’t turn it on or off. It can’t be replaced. It has to be spent at the rate of sixty seconds every minute.

 Furthermore, in business today we are expected to produce more with less - better services, quicker response times, more products to market, increased sales, and better value for money. Managers and leaders in particular, are expected not just to plan and prioritise their own work but to be responsible for what their team do.

 And then there is the Catch 22 –

“The harder (or more) I work, the more money I make.

 And the more money I make, the less time I have to enjoy it.”

This is the world that we live in today. The only way out of this loop is to stop being busy and start being productive. And there is a lot that can be done in regard to how we handle the challenges of our time challenged life.

In about 1986 I read a book by Alan Lakein called How to Manage Your Time and Your Life. Why can I remember this so clearly? Because it was from this book that I learned the best time management / time allocation tool I had ever seen – bar none.

Lakein suggested that you should always ask yourself 2 questions:

What is the best use of my time right now?

Is this contributing to my progress?

This literally became my mantra and allowed me to always be working on my highest priorities. In fact, I had them written in every day of my diary (I used paper back then!) so I saw them possibly a hundred times a day. As a result I became incredibly productive and achieved a great deal.

 Over time, as my vision has become broader and more holistic, I have added some key additional questions:

What is the one key thing I will complete today that will move my world forward?

If this is the ONLY thing I get done today, will that make me happy?

Is this serving my highest values?

Is this contributing to my higher purpose?

Am I doing what I want to do, or am I just being busy?

Am I avoiding what I know is important by creating new stuff to do?

These questions have taken me about 20 years to learn (I know, I know - I’m a slow learner!). But, now I use them all day, every day. They are programmed into my phone to remind me (hourly). They are printed out on a sign right above my computer screen.

As a result, I now focus on the things that are meaningful to me and uplift me, rather than responding to other people’s agendas. In other words, I am spending my time the way I want to.

 I know this strategy sounds almost too simple, but why not try it for just one week and see how you go?

 What would you rather be doing? Make a conscious choice now…

By the way, did you recognize the line at the top of this post? It’s from the song “Fly Like An Eagle” by Steve Miller and the Steve Miller Band (1976).  You can check it out here – be warned though – it’s hard to get the song out of your head!

If you like these questions it might also be worth checking out the Business DNA In-Depth How-To Guide on time management here: http://quidditybusiness.com.au/business-dna-in-depth-guides.html

Sometimes you have to have a spring cleaning

Often, the way to manifest your intent is more about the things you remove from your life than it is about the things you add to your life. It’s about discovering what’s creating obstacles in your life flow - then removing or releasing those obstacles.

When you remove those blocks, then life force, creativity and abundance can flow freely to you and through you.

This week I’m exploring the process of creating new pathways in the mind - creating new thinking habits. 

This is about exploring the space that gets created when you no longer revert to old habits, patterns and mind-numbing negativity. It’s the space that gets created when you aren’t filling your head with virtual junk food – complaining, worry, self-hatred, TV – just to have your head filled with something! Once liberated, that space is fertile territory.

This will take more than a week, but starting is a good thing.

I’m having a “love-hate” relationship with my mind

I love my capacity to think, to process complex concepts, to solve problems.

And I am building a business.

WHACK!      (That’s the sound of a 4 x 2 block of wood hitting me across the back of the head)

Yesterday I met a guy who has essentially the same business building tools as me but in 5 months has done a LOT more with them. Why? The main difference is that his total attitude is “GET IT DONE”.

Hey, it’s not that I am a procrastinator or have “paralysis by analysis”, but his sense of urgency puts me in the shade.

He hasn’t just taken action, he has taken massive action.

Yes, I have taken a lot of action, but I have also thought about it a heck of a lot.

It instantly reminded me of a book written by Michael Masterton called Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat.

Michael Masterson has built several dozen companies, all of which are very successful. His first company didn’t do that well, and from there he also learnt what not to do. He says that anybody and everybody in a new company should be spending 80% of their time on selling. However, most entrepreneurs do the opposite of spending 80% of their time on selling. If you’re not doing it, you’re wasting time, energy, effort and resources because that’s what it takes to create a successful company.

He says that it doesn’t matter what sort of expertise you bring into a new venture - whether you are a numbers person, a people person, or a systems person - to be truly effective in a startup you must become your business’ first and foremost expert at selling. And there is only one way to do this: invest more of your time, attention and energy into the selling process. The ratio of time, creativity, and money spent on selling as opposed to other aspects of business should be something like 80/20.

Michael Masterson says it very clearly: if you’re not even selling it yet – don’t think about making it better! Think about how to sell more of it.

As a perfectionist, I know how it feels to have 10 ideas to make something better even before it’s released to the market, but (DOH!) sometimes you have to realise that it’s the last thing you should be doing. It’s not about making something better, but about selling something, selling a lot more of it, making the sales process better, and then improving it based on what your customers say.

So what am I going to DO about it?

Ready. Fire. Aim.