Tag: The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness

Owning Your Greatness and Why It Matters

Owning Your Greatness:

The Write Synergies Path to Manifest Your Creative Vision

Birthing visions and clothing those visions in words: What an exciting path to traverse!

For Conscious Creators, change agents, thought leaders, and those committed to creating a global awakening of consciousness, aligning your heart — the inner fire and desire — with what you intend to create and manifest in the world, is absolutely crucial.   Without this inner alignment, all the outer marketing tools create anemic results at best.

At worst, they fall flat, and drag you farther from your goal because you are literally “losing heart.”

Starting today, is there some way to bring that inner heart-knowledge into alignment with what you intend to create in your business, book, or creative project?

One powerful process to manifest your creation and your vision is to follow your inner yearning. Listen to it. Get into a dialogue with your inner yearning.  I’ve discovered that one of the most effective ways of tapping that inner yearning and building the dialogue is using a gentle writing and journaling process. I’ve seen this process create miraculous transformations in my Yoga + Writing workshops time after time.

In one iteration, I call it, “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness.”  A guide and playbook to this process is my gift to you for signing up in the box at the top of the right column.

But what does this “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness” really mean?

Write Synergies is all about generating results greater than the sum of the parts using writing.  This can be a process of uncovering information, tapping into your essence, connecting with your inner voice or trusted source, as well as generating finished results.

Owning Your Greatness means just what it says. We each have gifts to give.  Those gifts are our greatness, often living quietly hidden and invisible for years — if not lifetimes.  After a time, the inner yearning to express those gifts becomes palpable, not to say painful.  When the pain or divine discontent gets great enough, that means it’s time to listen, to really pay attention, and make something happen in bringing your vision to life. It’s time to join yourself on that inner journey.

Many are being called in this moment to share those visions and gifts. In this profound shift and turning toward consciousness on this planet right now, all the deep gifts are needed. How do you have the courage to bring them forth, out of their long invisibility and into the light of day?

“The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness” is a process that gives you the chance to listen and write your own vision into expression. So many of us hold ourselves back! I know. I’ve been doing it for years.  We put on the brakes, slip into the invisibility cloak and resist having to fully step into owning our greatness.  Now is the time.  We are called to express our greatness and gifts fully.

Starting right now: Make this the year that you are Owning Your Greatness — and receive the commensurate results!

Add Accountability–Blog Challenge Post 19

On the Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness, the first step, awakening awareness, is an  inner movement. To balance that, the second step is an outer movement, add accountability.

Adding accountability is the step where we make promises (like dates and deadlines and word counts) and then develop the systems and support to help us meet the deadlines and keep the promises. By meeting the deadlines and keeping the promises, we are more likely to complete the project, what Seth Godin, in his book,  Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, likes to call “shipping.”  It means getting it done well enough and out the door. Without adding accountability, without a firm commitment along with a system of supports to hold us to our commitments, very little actually gets done.

Seven Ways to Add Accountability and Own Your Greatness

To add accountability, you’ll want to write out your milestones and trail markers. Then you need to share those markers in a public sphere, even if it’s just a one-on-one support system. Here are seven possibilities –  some of the proven ways you can write your list of commitments and grab some accountability. Use one or a combination, or  all seven.

1 Hire a coach.

2 Set up a one-to-one accountability peer partner.

3 Join or create a Mastermind group and then make your commitments within that framework.

4 Sign  up for a course — and do the homework if that will lead you to completing your commitment.

5 Gather a community around your commitment and make it a group challenge. (like our 30-day blogging challenge)

6 Have a deadline and someone expecting your work or project.

7 Make a promise in a public sphere. (to your client list, on your blog, on a radio  interview).

Adding accountability is a crucial step to Owning Your Greatness. Why? Because the promises to ourselves are the ones most often broken. What lies closest to the heart of the matter, what is dearest to your heart, is somehow the thing that is most often overlooked. Promises and intentions to create from our deepest gifts are too often forgotten or overlooked, and our brainchildren become like orphans.

And in the interest of full disclosure, this is one of my weakest links. I help other people and my clients with this all the time. It’s part of the process, but it is the part that I have the most challenges with. My own creative projects have been the ones that regularly get moved to the back burner. That’s what has been so delicious for me with the 30 Day Blogging Challenge. It has been a chance to create my own work within a framework of a community.

Adding accountability is how we can be there for each other.

As we move into the final third of the 30 day blog challenge, it’s a special time to thank all the fellow travelers in #blog30. The accountability of having this group, of making the commitment to play together, of carrying through together and cheering each other on, has been spectacular.  And it also seems an ideal venue for reiterating the importance of adding accountability. In our case, it’s been a process of writing to add accountability.

Follow the blogging challenge on Twitter at #blog30 and #mini7.

How Self Awareness Connects to Owning Your Greatness — Blogging Challenge Post 18

As you go through the process of awakening self awareness, you might ask, “What does this have to do with owning the gifts and greatness I came here to give?”  The exercise of awakening self-awareness as outlined in the previous post did not specifically tie back to the process of owning your greatness.

So where does that come in?

Usually our gifts are hiding in plain sight. Everyone else can see them, but we can’t. We are the fish in water. What does water mean to a fish? It is a given. So, too, our gifts are invisible to us because they are so integral to how and who we are.

We yearn to share our gifts, but we sense they are hidden. So there’s this yearning to express the hidden gifts. We don’t even realize that we can’t help but express them. We have been expressing our deepest gifts (and purpose) every living moment without even being cognizant of it.

So I recommend using this awakening self awareness process to listen to the yearning of our gifts to be heard and brought out into the world.  For all we know, the gifts are hidden. Why?  Because we are not conscious, not aware of how we are expressing those gifts. This process helps bring our gifts and greatness to our conscious attention, thereby healing the yearning.

The free guidebook with meditation — available for no charge when you sign up with your name and email  in the box at the very top of the right sidebar –  goes into more detail on this aspect of awakening self awareness.  The guide/workbook offers perspectives and exercises specifically around using our self awareness exercises for listening to the inner yearning to express our gifts, owning that yearning, healing it, and finally  taking steps to mindfully own and express our gifts and greatness in the work we do in the world.

It’s all there — the gifts, the greatness, the purposeful vision — patiently waiting for us to awaken to what is with us, within us, and has been with us our entire lifetime.

Post #18 in the 30 day blogging challenge from Connie Ragan Green.  Follow us on Twitter #blog3o

Writing to Awaken Self Awareness–Blog Challenge Post 17

The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness starts with Awakening Your Awareness. There are many paths to do this, many helpful ways to wake ourselves up. This particular path follows the trajectory of the written word as a way to get present with who you are right now, your Being in the moment and in relation to a particular issue that you consciously want to wake up around. (Or to put it another way, you want to shift your energy or boost the mojo or heal the shadow.)

So that this doesn’t become all floaty and ungrounded, start with your intention, identify the issue, then do brief five-minute timed writings answering the questions posed at the end of this post.

First, create an intention of safety and openness around doing this “awaken your awareness” process and following this particular path.  For example, you might start by saying, thinking, or even writing something like:

I intend to be fully present with this Awakening Awareness exercise. I am willing to allow the download of words onto paper, trusting the inner wisdom will flow from Source (the Universe, God, Soul, or whatever term you are comfortable with).  I will communicate with honesty and generosity, integrity and authenticity, and with the deepest and most profound compassion for the highest good for all concerned.

The wisdom lives within you, if you can just slow down long enough to listen. Writing in this focused yet open-hearted manner can tap into your remarkable inner resources, or, if you prefer, your inner connection to something greater than the “you.”

Second, select an issue (problem, challenge, question) that will be your focus for this Awakening Awareness exercise. It can be something in-your-face, what wakes you up in the middle of the night, or spins the wheels of your brain so you can’t get to sleep in the first place. Or, you might choose a smaller but annoying issue, something that keeps cropping up to bother you. As you write down the issue at hand, phrase it nonjudgmentally, as though you are simply an observer, curious about this particular situation.

Third, get grounded and present by taking at least three deep breaths, full inhales, complete exhales. Release all the tension, stress, judgment. Review your intention. Observe your issue dispassionately. From this observer perspective, allow your the words to come out in answer to the following questions. If no words come, then just write the question over and over. Or write, “I don’t know what to write.” Either way, just keep the pen moving. Something usually breaks free.  Write uninterrupted, no stopping,  for five timer minutes.

Give yourself at least five minutes for each of the following questions. See what appears. If all you get is resistance, then so be it.  If so, try this question when the process isn’t opening up: If you DID know the answer, what would it be? By keeping the pen moving, surprising things emerge.

The Questions for your Writing to Awaken Self-Awareness Reflection:

1 Who are you Being right now as it relates to the issue you have chosen?

2 Where are you right now, as it relates to the issue you are facing? (Where as in physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, creatively, financially, relationally, etc.)

3 What are you thinking about this issue right now?

4 What are you feeling about this issue right now?

5 What ELSE is present right now in your five-sensory present-moment universe? What is filling your five senses?

6 What is tickling at your sixth sense?

7 How might you place this issue (problem, challenge, question) into a larger context? What would that make it look like?

8 Why is it important to wake up about this issue right now?

There’s your start, your writing to awaken self-awareness written reflection, all done in less than an  hour, even if you give every question seven minutes instead of five. You might be surprised by what comes out in the flow.

7 Steps to Own Your Gifts and Greatness– Blog Challenge Post 16

7 Steps to Owning Your Greatness and Gifts and the Contribution You Came Here to Make!

What is it about touching on that sweet pulsing center of who we really are, what we came here to do, and stepping up into our magnificence that turns us into shy and retiring wallflowers? Why do we back pedal — fast — away from our heart’s desire and what we say or think or feel we most want? Why do we retreat double time when a little sliver of a spotlight heads in our direction?  “No, I couldn’t possibly put even a little finger into that limelight,” we resolutely claim.

Some say it’s fear of failure. We are reticent about taking our deepest and most precious dreams and passions and art and creations out there into a tough, cold, cruel, and harsh world. We don’t want our hearts broken — yet again — when our creations and messages don’t find a place in the marketplace of ideas and messages screaming for attention.

Others say it’s fear of success. We fear shining the very light that we came here to shine. We fear our brilliance because it might mean a shift in the status quo. Suddenly we are more visible than we ever have been before. And what if there’s positive response? What then? Do we  fear success and shining our light because of old programming and shame? Do we have a familiar comfort in the smallness?

No matter the cause, whether fear of success or fear of failure, we so often fail to act on our own behalf. Some advise big steps, giant strides, quantum leaps.  Such approaches are seductive and tempting — just make the leap. Such a process may work for some. For others, the very bigness of the endeavor becomes a recipe for staying frozen, for blocking, for sheer terror at the cliff’s edge.

Baby steps are what Julia Cameron advises in this classic collection of her three books, The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice. Baby steps can create new habits, literally new neural pathways that can create vast and positive internal shifts. But we have to take the time to put the new habits into practice. Over millennia, the Grand Canyon was cut through by the patient waters of the Colorado River. There’s visible power in that river channel. We are stunned by the breathtaking results. But in our lifetime, we don’t have the kind of time it took to carve out the Grand Canyon.

Perhaps there is a third way. Living on the “third coast” of the Great Lakes and their freshwater foam, in Chicago, roughly the middle of our country, I’m especially fond of alternatives, third ways, the golden mean of Greek philosophy, (and similar notions from Confucius and the Middle Way of Buddhism).  Mapping a confident path through the the impatience of taking baby steps and along the cliff edge of quantum leaps, I have developed a seven-step process for owning your gifts and greatness.

The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness requires a series of back and forths, alternating inner work, then outer work; inner, then outer. The inner journey work builds the foundation. But we live in the physical world. Without action in the outer spheres, little happens and our visions and gifts do not come to fruition. So consider the following seven steps (and the eighth, the bonus and result of following this path). And, although these are process steps, there are sweet results and outcomes by incorporating each one, so stay tuned.

Over the next few days, I will expand on these seven steps.

  1. Awaken Awareness
  2. Add Accountability
  3. Build Momentum
  4. Create and Implement
  5. Delight your People–your tribe/circle/audience/community/
  6. Embrace the heart and soul of your project, creation, and message
  7. Embody Excellence

Following the path through this process, one piece of the Write Synergies Vision Quest, you’ll arrive at the 8th step–your result, the bonus, outcome, and reason you are here: Living Your Legacy.  (I’ve talked about this before a bit. See related post at the link. And watch for more to come.)

Thanks once again to all the wonderful colleagues and conversations at #blog3o.


Linchpin’s Message: Own Your Genius and Live It

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

So asks Seth Godin in his latest bestseller, Linchpin. I could go on and on about it. In fact, I have pages of notes, quotes, and inspirations. His latest is an impassioned plea for all of us to recognize our genius and use it — specifically in the workplace.  There’s a lot in here that dovetails with the message of “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness,” of living your legacy and sharing your gifts with the world.

Seth Godin is speaking directly to the hearts of millions of dispirited working folk who walk around half alive most of the time because they thought their whole self was not welcome at work.

But stirring things up the way he does can be scary when so much in the work world is becoming commodified. (That old race to the bottom, lowest-cost goods and services achieved by finding the cheapest labor.) But some people and businesses manage to sidestep that commodification.

The story we’ve all assumed is that customers want the cheapest stuff. But maybe there’s a crack in that facade.  Don’t we see at least a few who are wanting something extraordinary in their customer experience as well? Some customers even seem willing to pay for that something “extra,” the unique and human, the creative, the “art.”

Seth Godin highlights that something extra as “emotional labor,” (from the work of Arlie Hochschild) and points out that this “emotional labor” may be the one thing that we are most suited to  provide. We are potentially geniuses, due in no small part to the emotional labor, the connections we make, the tenor of our interchanges when we allow our brilliant selves to shine. Yes, we have to come out of hiding and invisibility.

The “emotional labor” that we put into what we create becomes the basis of the art of our lives and work, the basis of the new maps of the territory that are so needed, the much-needed emotional connection in the exchanges of our work lives. Sounds good.

BUT for the Resistance. The heart of the book, the longest chapter, and the one Seth Godin actually “begs” his readers to read, is “The Resistance,” running 49 pages. Why do we regularly and systematically fall back to the old, seemingly “safe” habits of invisibility, of not standing out? He attributes this problem to what he terms “the lizard brain,” that has seen to our survival as a species for hundreds of thousands of years.

And this is exactly what we don’t need to do now. The lizard brain is leading people down the wrong path — the path of busywork, of doing what doesn’t matter, and not producing much of anything that does matter because we are so intent on keeping our heads down and staying invisible.

Seth Godin has trained himself to ignore the “lizard brain” and “ship.”  “Shipping,” in this context, is getting the work out there. I’ve been in business for myself for a decade now.  It’s moderately easier to “ship” as a solo — Getting the client work done and out there. It’s also somewhat easier to stand out as a solo and harder to hide. It’s much easier to take Seth Godin’s message to heart, because as solos, we are our own team. We have to create the gifts and the art, the indispensability as we serve our people, our “Tribes,” a term I’ve embraced from Seth Godin’s previous book of the same name.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

The publisher I worked for (before my foray into the entrepreneurial life) published some books from Seth Godin’s original book packaging company, eventually some by Seth Godin himself.  This decade-old connection reminds me that we in corporate businesses and entrepreneurial ventures alike have been holding our collective breaths, waiting for permission to show up fully.  We’ve been hiding out. Someone has pulled back the curtain on Oz. And it’s time to stop hiding.

Revel in the gifts of insight, the art, the perspectives that Seth Godin shares in his most personal book to date. The message ties back beautifully to one of his blog posts, “You Matter.”  Read it. It’s powerful. I mentioned this post in my blog earlier too.

The sign of a great book: Like a jazz combo, lots of improv and riffs flow from the central starting point.  That’s a big part of the gift that Seth Godin has made to us at the beginning of this new decade.  In his own blog and those of his circle and tribe, the ideas continue to flow, to be refined, discussed. We experience the concepts in motion, with people taking action, mobilizing around the insights to bring them off the page and into the office, taking things further.  It’s his gift, and it’s a big one. Get the artifact  — the book Linchpin — and enjoy the gifts. Don’t forget to continue the conversation.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

( If you click, you will be taken to the book’s Amazon page where I, as an affiliate, will get a small referral percentage if you purchase.)

More full disclosure: I was among the early recipients of the book to review in exchange for a donation to the Acumen fund.  Admittedly,  I’m late in “shipping” this commentary/riff/review.  But I hope that won’t stop you from exploring the gift that Seth Godin is offering. It’s high time we bring our whole selves to our work, and truly give our gifts and own our greatness.

Writers: Smart Start Tips for 2010

Writers, what’s on your list for 2010?  Is this the year you will complete the book, start the novel or memoir, really put your writing self “out there?”

Beware of trying to do everything at once—or biting off a big project only to see it fizzle before it ignites!  Many experts recommend that you make changes slowly and work to make positive habits a permanent part of your life.

Try this!
Select your top writing or other creative project.  Commit to make small but consistent progress toward a mini-goal.  Consider a doable “page a day” to build momentum on your book. (Many days, you’ll continue beyond a page!) If you want to, use the comments here at Write Synergies Copywriting to report on your progress.

You’ll experience permanent shifts by creating new habits in your writing process.  By creating do-able positive new habits, over a period of 2-3 months, you’ll see progress.  Think of these as baby steps to reach that mini-milestone you’ve identified.

Yes, you do need the big vision goal as the powerhouse and ultimate destination. But tied to that, you need daily do-able actions. These can be most effective when you take a “process” approach. As Dan Millman once said, “A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.” With writing, this is more than just a truism.

When you have solidified those habits and made progress toward your milestone, pick the next item to address or create a new mini goal in an area you are already working on.  (A blog? A regular ezine? Fiction as well as nonfiction?)

Then repeat the process of introducing simple, do-able steps that will help you make the changes (and your progress toward completion) a permanent and ongoing part of your life.  You are installing and creating new long-term writing habits that naturally lead to your desired results.

By developing new habits that inch you toward your writing goals, you are on the path to be able to share your gifts and greatness.  This is the journey we are on together, “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness.” Safe travels!

Owning Your Greatness in 2010

Owning Your Greatness in 2010:

The Write Synergies Path to Manifest Your Creative Vision

For Conscious Creators, more so than for most, aligning your heart — the inner fire and desire — with what you intend to create and manifest in the world, is absolutely crucial.   Without this inner alignment, all the outer marketing tools create anemic results at best.

At worst, they fall flat, and drag you farther from your goal because you are literally “losing heart.”

To start 2010, is there some way to bring that inner heart-knowledge into alignment with what you intend to create in your business, book, or creative project?

One powerful process to manifest your creation and your vision is to follow your inner yearning. Listen to it. Get into a dialogue with your inner yearning.  I’ve discovered that one of the most effective ways of tapping that inner yearning and building the dialogue is using a gentle writing and journaling process.

I call it, “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness.”  A guide to this process is my gift to you for signing up in the box at the top of the right column. But what does this “The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness” really mean?

Write Synergies is all about generating results greater than the sum of the parts using writing.  This can be both a process of uncovering information as well as generating finished results.

Owning Your Greatness means just what it says. We each have gifts to give.  Those gifts are our greatness, often living quietly hidden for years.  After a time, the inner yearning to express those gifts becomes palpable, not to say painful.  When the pain or divine discontent gets great enough, that means it’s time to listen, to really pay attention, and make something happen in bringing your vision to life.

“The Write Synergies Path to Owning Your Greatness” is a process that gives you the chance to listen and write your own vision into expression. So many of us hold ourselves back. We haven’t fully stepped into owning our greatness.  Now is the time.  We are called to express our greatness and gifts fully.

Make 2010 the year that you are Owning Your Greatness.