Tag: Visionaries

What More Is Possible

What if I wrote a love letter to my Divine Audience?

Before I do, it’s time to acknowledge Jeffrey Davis of #TrackingWonder.  This is part of a mid-2015 challenge, #DareToExcel  #1of1 and number 1 is considering a #BurningQuestion. Specifically, “What burning question of possibility will influence what & how you create during the next 30 to 90 days?“  There’s one for me, above, and one for you, below.

Plus a bunch of bonus “What ifs…?” to play with as jump-starters for your own sacred vision quest.

About that love letter… It sounds something like the following.

 

My Beloved,

What if … the impossible really does take just a little bit longer?

Lean in here with me. Consider if that which looks impossible and appears unlikely, is the game we play to strengthen our ability to give birth to the Great Work that is ours to do in this great shared playground.

Sixteen years ago, at the beginning of July, I started a new chapter, leaving behind a corporate job in publishing. Did I ever imagine what has transpired? And how long it has taken to feel like myself, and finally to write from a place of interconnection, inner and outer, you and me, in community, with collaboration and with sacred solitude …

I sing to you, darling and beloved multi-faceted creator, as you inhabit the murky land of the crossroad, the tumbled place called the #ChaosOfReinvention.  There, seemingly in the void, your purpose, essence, your very BEING — all of these bump up against the DO-ing of your Great Work, the creative you, creating life as art and work as art in this world of a billion paradoxes.

You know you are here to make a difference.

How do I see you?

I see the difference you ARE making by showing up. It’s revealed in the poetry of your presence, your healing, your art-making, your art-full life of cooking and reading, children, beloveds, and fur-companions, writing, singing, meditating, dancing, dreaming, making home, building, nurturing, nourishing, flourishing in your full-sensory goodness.

You ARE the difference you came here to make. My deep joy is seeing you, hearing you, and amplifying the YOU that is coming forth as apprentice to the Great Work that’s also coming forth.  And all of it along a path of joy that’s both sustainable and sustaining — and no longer just out of reach.

SmallerDiveDeep

When something isn’t fully aligned, there is discomfort, even pain.

Finding a way to honor your integrity and deep compassion, your vision and joy and divine spark, your commitment to life in all its sacred interdependencies, has ignited a flame of yearning so powerful in your tender heart that you are compelled to address it.

Take a moment at this #InterDependenceDay to consider what is beyond the edge of your current vision. Beyond activating the vision, ponder what more is possible when you step into the knowing of what is calling to be created next, what longs to be born as your next art-full creation in the world.

If this is you, sweet and often solitary maker-of-art, ask yourself if the following are next up on your menu of life-as-art-making:

* Creating a new story

* Birthing the next version of your gifts

* Putting rooted resonance and strong foundations under visionary and paradigm-shifting new approaches and processes

* Cultivating your change agency — clarifying your purpose, why you are here, and how you are meant to change and bless your Divine Audience

* Authoring the next narrative to uplevel your and others’ expression in the world

* Fresh iterations of your purpose, message, art, and work in the world

The book of your gifts and infinite potential hovers nearby, accessible to you in the #MultiVerse. Reach out, grasp this fist full of shadows, and dream them into being.

You are one intrepid explorer. Here, one-by-one, a community of conscious co-creators assembles, finding nourishment and connection, sustenance like an oasis and clear spring for a thirsting traveler.

Like-hearted. Full-sensory. Healing-intent-focused. Sacred impeccability. Book-writing. Message-expanding. Co-creating a world that works for all. Co-creative and collaborative community.

Mar2015LightingThePAth

For I see in your story the fractal essence of my journey.

You are smart and multi-tiered, a complex, many-faceted, and deep-thinking visionary-creator on many levels. You are change-maker and shero, delving deeply into the inner energies, the emergent of what-is-yet-to-be. Determined to bring it forth and make the difference (finally) that you were called here for.

Rebel and trailblazer, purposeful and art-full, a dash of entrepreneurial crossed with maverick, a journeyer and healer, heart-infused, soul-based: You are someone who stayed well-hidden wearing protective coloration, navigating an uneasy alliance with parts that felt fraudulent, unworthy, not enough. And an outer world that didn’t get it (you) on so many levels.

I, too, have walked the path of trying to do practical things and gaining no traction. I see you and know the heartache of dreams untended because the siren songs of distraction became overwhelming. Or dreams tended that don’t bring themselves out into the world.

Here are some of the “What ifs … ” to consider

I ponder these for me, for you, for all of us called to the path of purposeful messenger, change-maker, sage-hearted evoutionary. These “What if …” questions are the coin of the realm for the Creator. Examine these “What ifs…” and tailor them to your own inquiries.

 

* What if the creating you’re called to do now or next, whether it’s writing, authoring, art-making, book-creation, blog-building, curricula-writing, speaking, even marketing, can carry the energetic essence of the healing imprint you’re here to offer?

* What if the stuckness was simply a message to yourself about connecting in with all levels of your being in the most perfect timing for your essence to come forth?

* What if you could connect with a gentle yet spacious container for creating your book (or web site or speaker’s sheet or …?), in a creation process deeply connected with your inner psyche, your gifts, your sources of guidance? And finally come out with the words that connect deeply to the heart of your people, words you didn’t even know you knew?

* What if you could bring mind, body, spirit, heart essence and soul-purpose all to play together at your creative table?

* What if you connected with a foundation of purpose, magnified mindfulness, amplified your conscious intent, in partnership with a guide through the depths of creation process that is calling to your yearning? And then bringing it all back out into the manifest world?

* What if you could magnetize your very being into deep and purposeful alignment with your change-making vision for your creation?

* What if you felt both free yet supported, liberated yet in safe and sacred partnership to create from that place where you allow your wisdom and the process to have its way with you?

* What if your process for connecting your story with the heart of your people and their yearning nourished you and them?

* What if engaging with your people was a sacred trust?

* What if surrender and trust were your watchwords?

* What if you really surrendered and really trusted?

* What if it IS really finally SAFE to bring your sage-hearted creations into the light of day?

* What if you could do what you do in a co-creative and collaborative container, while being seen into the YOU you are here to be?

* What more is possible if you bring it alive through the magic of “What if…” and it is so?

Are you willing to breathe into what more is possible? Can you entertain the possibility that the impossible might indeed be possible with TLC and a re-frame?  How about holding a new, shiny “What if…” in your heart of hearts that yearns to believe the impossible only takes bit longer?

Divine creator, you, consider these. Explore. Inquire. Hold the infinite possibility that you are right now strengthening your ability to give birth to your Great Work, whatever is yours to do. And don’t do it alone!

I’d love to connect for a conversation if that seems like a fun next step. Email me at jasbjm(at)earthlink(dot)net to inquire about setting a time for conversation.

 

You are loved, and you ARE love!

Bobbye

Bobbye Middendorf, Poet of Pure Potentiality, is your visionary (yet grounded) guide, a combination sounding-board and wordsmith.
Bobbye Middendorf, Poet of Pure Potentiality, is your visionary (yet grounded) guide, a combination sounding-board and wordsmith.

 

P.S. Or consider joining me for a deep immersive creative vision quest on the train journey playshop from Chicago to Albuquerque. Read more at the link and contact me at jasbjm(at)earthlink(dot)net to learn more.

 

 

 

Your Values: The Key to Living with Power and Purpose

Knowing and living your values is a foundational step if you are a messenger, visionary, thought-leader, and make-a-difference change-maker. Join a community of change agents at The Gathering to tap into the power and purpose of values.

Values work is potent. There’s great richness in going deeply into the foundational building blocks of values as part of the inner shift we are here to usher through in our work and with our clients. Working with values is the first step if you, like me, care deeply about making a significant difference in the lives of your clients, and so, by extension, inviting that big difference to show up in the world.

It’s most effective when values are shared, and so building community around values is one of the great challenges we face in co-creating a new society and the upgraded institutions needed to serve it.

I have been called into a hugely productive partnership and collaboration with The True Purpose Institute. Their “first Wednesday of the month” tele-seminar, called The Gathering, invites change makers in all arenas to come together to learn and strengthen the inner game that will make us more effective in the change we are here to support in the world.

This Wednesday, 5 June, is the call that focuses on Values.

It is part of the True Purpose Institute monthly “Gathering” calls, and is being offered in partnership with the Barrett Values Centre. I invite you to join us if you can. I urge you to sign up to receive the recording, even if you have a conflict with being on the call live.

Here’s a bit about the “inner requirement” for knowing and living your values as change makers.

~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

When wielding great power, you must be guided by
clear principles that ensure your actions are in
alignment with your purpose. As Mahatma Gandhi
said, “The means are the ends in the making”!
How you go about creating transformation is every
bit as important as the transformation itself.
Moreover, the values you choose must be consistent
with the world you are creating. This ensures that
your actions will continually model and reinforce
the new paradigm (assuming your behavior aligns
with your values, of course!)
~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

Below is the link to sign up to receive the call-in details about The Gathering calls. There is no charge for the call, though there is a place to “pay it forward” via a True Purpose Institute-affiliated nonprofit.

The Gathering for Change Makers offers a year+ of monthly, high-level change-agent and inner-game strengthening conversations and community calls.

Here’s the link to sign for to get the call details (and also get access to this call recording as well as past and future call recordings):

http://Tinyurl.com/bjmTPIGathering

 

To sharing values in community!

Bobbye

Honor Your Dream. Give It Words.

Yes, there it is: Honor Your Dream. How long has it been in hiding? How long have you maintained the silence? How long have you felt “on the verge” of expressing it, yet always pull back at the last minute?

So here sits your challenge: Give It Words.

Does that feel threatening? Scary? Exhilarating? I acknowledge you for even considering that it may be time to open the closet door and dust off the dreams so you can clothe them in words to bring them forth. 

One of the hardest tasks in the world is to tell your own story.

 

Especially for those of us called to make a difference in the world — to transform, to do something that hasn’t been done, to create anew — bringing forth our message is a doubly challenging endeavor.  The typical models just don’t fit.  It’s discouraging.

 

Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time trying to create your messages, to shape your marketing, to put together web sites or speaker sheets or articles,  blogs or books. You long for your words to reflect the truth of the potentials and possibilities that are bubbling up inside you.

 

And yet, you haven’t captured the essence in spite of giving it your best effort. Your words are falling short of saying what you really want to say.

 

  • But how to put it into words?
  • How to articulate the ineffable?!
  • How to say it so the most perfect people “get it?”

 

How can you express what you do with authenticity and put it out there in words so that your most perfect people hear your message? There’s the rub.

 

Even as an experienced writer/marketer, I’ve faced the challenge of saying what I do so that people “get it.”  And when they don’t,  that hurts, especially when you’ve put your heart into saying what you do and it just doesn’t connect.

 

And it’s not only the message. It’s your WHO: your people, tribe, community. Once the message is ready to be shared, you face  the challenge of putting it in front of your most perfect clients, so they will be able to say, “Yes! That’s me. I want some of that!”

 

For those of you sharing messages of transformation, take a minute to feel into what it might be like to have a partner, a believing mirror, someone who “gets it” and can help you put words around that vision  you’ve been hiding for so long.

 

As writer, creation coach, and vision midwife, I help visionaries with the words and writing that bring forth the stories, wrap your gifts in words, and give shape and substance to your visions and dreams.

 

Especially if you are a woman in the best half of life — whose true gifts have been hidden or are only now coming forth — really take in the possibility that you might be able to express your stories and still feel safe. Feel heard. Feel embraced with understanding…Be held in a sacred container of conversation, content, and creation.

 

What would it feel like if you experienced your visions and messages coming to life in words?

Wouldn’t that change everything?

To open a conversation that just might change everything for you, please send me an email at bjmiddendorf(at)gmail(dot)com.  Give me the 100-word synopsis of your story and dream to make sure this is the most appropriate fit for you and bringing forth your dreams.

Everyone who responds will receive my BEEing Presence Plan Kit for Messengers.

 

 

5Cs to Live Your Legacy in Words

More than What You Leave Behind, Live Your Legacy in Words

I’ve written about living your legacy before.  It’s that important.  The following action points are part of an upcoming booklet of experts sharing insights on “defining your destiny,” a project coordinated by Paulette Ensign, the  undisputed queen of the tips booklet.

My suggestion: Test out these 5 Cs to bring your legacy alive. Use words. Write it all down. Document your process for yourself and others.

1 Center —

Begin by taking a deep belly-expanding breath or several.  Focus on your heart-center.  Listen for your internal wisdom and directions from inside.  Write them down!

2 Contribute —

From that breath-centered mindfulness, focus on the deepest gifts you are here to share.  Who are the most perfect recipients of your gifts?  Write down who you are here to serve and the gifts you yearn to offer.

3 Create —

Hold in your heart both what you are here to offer and who you are meant to do it for.  Envision what it looks like when those two come together, with results for the highest good.  Write that down.

4 Connect —

Bring your inner connections and ideas into conversation.  Invite your most perfect people into your sacred circle with powerful words and intent.  Connect and LISTEN.  Write down their words, what they want.

5 Commit —

Write down the specifics of your intent and commitment to create, connect, and contribute.  It’s your map for living your legacy.  Build it day by day with conscious actions — to make the difference you came here to make.

World-changers, writers, authors, visionaries, and conscious creators partner with Bobbye Middendorf, The Write Synergies Guru, to clarify their healing messages. If you’re ready for results greater than the sum of the parts, if you need the right words so people “get it,” if you want to make the difference you came here to make, then connect with Bobbye to live your legacy in words and “Write to Sell Without Selling Your Soul.”

Grow Content AND Relationships

A guest post over at Problogger.net recently commented, “Treat the blog … as a promotional vehicle for an actual business. This isn’t to say all you do is pimp your products. On the contrary, you provide really great content in order to build the relationship up with your reader. However, you do it with the aim of converting into a sale of your own product.”

With the opening bell of the 30-day blogging challenge convened by Jeanette Cates, Ph.D., it’s important to consider the attitude and approach our blogs are taking.  Every blog takes a somewhat different approach, and certainly they are designed as one piece of our businesses.

So, while this is true, that the blog is a promotional tool, it seems to me much more than that.  We sell ourselves, our clients/customers, and our content short if making the sale is the sole focus. While we are in business, it’s also important to create an appropriate space for relationships to expand and unfold.

Blogs are perfect places to share value and build community.  For me, the part of the quote that does hit the mark is, “…great content to build relationship with your readers.” Marketing, in particular soft sell marketing, is all about making the connections and building the relationships in a respectful way.

Ultimately we are not serving our perfect customers and clients well if we don’t move into meeting their needs  by selling our products/services in the spirit of serving them.  Maybe that’s why the line, “…you do it with the aim of converting into a sale…” somehow rubs me the wrong way. It doesn’t hit at the nuances of care for your perfect customers that I think is a critical ingredient, especially in my market of visionaries, messengers, authors, writers, conscious creators, soul-preneurs, and healers.

As a solo professional, the “product” at the moment is me–and the services I provide to help visionaries and conscious creators get their messages out to their perfect customers/clients.

But as a writer, the blog is also a place for developing book content and other creative solutions for people– who may “just” be readers of the blog. It’s designed to give my own perfect clients a taste of my philosophy, values, and style.  They can get a sense of whether it’s a “fit” to consider working with me in a more in-depth way.

So this blog focuses on publishing content in the service of relationship-building, which is itself the foundation  of marketing. It’s also a place for people to learn and gain value even if they don’t buy something right away.

To fully serve people, the next step is to sell something.  At the same time, I  am committed to the importance of publishing remarkable content as a way to build relationships.

Writing as Healing — Blog Challenge Post 27

Several years ago, two separate teachers informed me that I was a healer. “But I’m a writer,” I said. “And without a doubt, you’re a healer,” they both insisted. I was surprised. At least in this lifetime, I’ve stayed as far away from the healing arts as I possibly could, except when I insisted on natural, unmedicated childbirth with midwives. Twice. I credited my long-time meditation teachers, Rosita and Sandy at Arche International, with giving me the inner knowledge and training to make such feats possible. Them and the Bradley Method.

I have come to define healing in the broad terms my teachers must have meant. We are all healers at some level. It is that underlying healing intention that I uncover and magnify with my perfect clients, both in our conversations and in writing projects.  The transformational visionaries determined to shift this hinge-historical moment in a positive direction — the conscious creators, heart-based venturers, soul-preneurs, soft sell marketers, the healing visionaries and authors with intentions on a planetary or systemic level — are indeed weaving the healing with every word they (we) publish and client they (we) interact with.

My colleague in the 30-day blog challenge, Kazi (on Twitter as  @50andFit) recently wrote about entrepreneurship as path to self-healing. It’s a post full of common sense and practical tips. Kazi said, “…ensure you get the personal outer and inner cultivation you need to remain healthy and on top of your game. Your attention, time, energy and creativity are all aspects of your Chi. Your Chi is your very life force. It is the very basis of your health, wealth and wisdom.  If you allow your chi to diminish, you allow your life to diminish.”

Like Kazi, I advise care of the life force, the Chi. For my tribe, writing is the very means for that inner and outer cultivation and balancing of Chi. Writing is a way of strengthening the inner, of mining the inner gold of your own thoughts and feelings, many times discovering what you think and feel as you write. One client (who never really liked writing much even from school days) reported that she discovered things about herself that she never knew when she put herself into the process of writing.

From this inner cultivation and strengthening comes the outer development and presentations of our messages and our creations. The outer manifestation of our creation and its outreach message are all the stronger by being forged from the inner fires first.

Words and writing are the tools for the personal inner healing journey. They are metaphysical and alchemical agents of change. They are also the tools for manifesting written creations (books, blogs, brochures, articles, e-courses, even tweets); and they are the raw materials that go into creating the message that will then connect to the people who need to hear it.

Remember: Your creation, book, project, or venture cannot begin to do its healing of the heart of the world until it is out there, full and strong. YOU have to be a strong enough vessel from the inside out, without cracks, to bring your creation all the way into the world. You have to be healed and strong enough to go on helping it grow into the full flowering of the message and healing it is here to do.

Oh, yes. Words are powerful. One colleague recently received a serious wounding by words. Others came in and used words, attempting to mitigate and transform the pain, using their love in words as healing. Writing is healing when healing and wholeness are the intentions.

#Blog30 on Twitter.

Delight Your People — Blog Challenge Post 22

What will it take to bring spine tingling delight to your people, your perfect customers, clients, to your tribe, circle, audience, community, readers, viewers, listeners?

Following this Write Synergies Path, we’ve traversed the inner path of awakening awareness. We’ve added accountability, built momentum (inner and outer) for your foundation, and we’ve talked about creating and implementing.

But who is it all for? And how can you create your vision in such a way that it really resonates down to the tippy toes of your perfect people? People talk about niches, of not trying to serve the whole world. But that often feels, in particular for the heart-full soul-preneurs, visionaries and thought leaders who don’t want to leave anyone behind, that they are being forced into a box that they’ve worked so hard to get out of, the smallness box.

You don’t want to leave anyone behind, and you resist forcing yourself and your message back into a tiny, ill-fitting box.  Reflect back to your own experience working with people. You know there are certain people who are more fun to be with, people with whom it’s hardly “work” at all to serve them, to offer your products.  These are the people who need to “hear it from you,” as Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman like to point out. (You also know in your bones that there are people for whom the whole thing is just an uphill climb. Those may be the clients who need to hear the message from someone else, not you!) The people who can only hear it from you: This is the essence of a niche — your tribe.

There’s something compelling about the basic idea of like-attracts-like, the law of attraction. In the coaching I’ve had with Jan and Alan, co-authors of  BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing , and with their BEEing Attraction work, this like-attracts-like principle leads to a “trick” question. You ask, “What makes my perfect customers/clients tick?”  As it turns out, it’s probably the same thing that makes you tick.

Hmmm. So in essence you are creating your business or program or service that addresses a singular challenge or obstacle that you have somehow successfully dealt with for yourself. The delight comes, on your customers’ side, when they so totally “get it” that you “get them” and their obstacle. They see themselves reflected in the words on your site or that they hear in your teleseminar or in your conversations. They know that you have a deep understanding, not only of the pain of the obstacle, but also the solution to release that pain. That is the beginning of the delight. And there’s more.

More than even the solution to their problem or a way to address their challenge, what they most appreciate is your Presence, loving them and their problem, loving offering the solution, listening for their particular nuances.  Developing Presence in your own way, your authentic content and presentation and voice, creates a dramatic result, a Presence you can share with your customers. By taking the time to develop yourself on this inner path work, you have more to offer the people you are here to serve, and you will be serving them at an even more profound level.

Your Presence — in your words, in your articles, blog posts, videos, audios, in your conversation –  is a source of delight to the people who need to hear it from you. It is the deep listening that you bring to your client interactions. It is the deep understanding and empathy that you have for the challenges they are going through.  It is your authenticity and the love that you bring to heal the pain of the obstacle, problem, or challenge by offering your services and products as solution. And at the foundation of your products and services: It’s you. Your Presence, honed to a crescendo of power to be totally with your clients, meeting them wherever they are on their path.

Delight is a pale imitation of what they will really feel when you, your Presence, is completely in the moment with your clients.

As my mentors, Judith and Jim say, “It’s all in the connection.” Developing your Presence is the path to creating the connections that matter.

Connect with our 30-day blogging challenge on Twitter at #blog30

Create and Implement

Create and Implement: Sounds simple. And it’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? If you are a visionary author, writer, messenger, thought leader, or conscious creator with a mission to heal, the idea is to get the work (and its healing results) out there into the world, to start serving the people you came here to serve.

I just read a review for a creativity process book over at Amazon, and there are now comments on the comments. One of those subcomments really struck home. Do these creativity process books help you take action on making your art (whatever it may be)? Or does the process lull you into endless loops of reflecting on the process?

It’s a fine line, I think. Because the inner journey, as discussed in prior posts, is important to building a strong foundation for the outer expression of your work and gifts and greatness in the world. But at a certain  point, it’s time to just do the work, to build the house, write the book, call the clients. How can you use these “process” approaches to launch you into the doing of the actual work (art) you came here to do (make) — and not as an excuse for endless procrastination and preparation?

Note to self: Is this a potential danger of the Write Synergies Path work that I am creating? How may I structure this “process” so it’s more about moving my people forward with doing whatever is the important work/art/creation/venture?  How do I prevent myself and others from falling into the thrall of something completely impractical and tail-chasing as an excuse to avoid the work of creating?  How can I make sure there is practical traction?

My personal challenge IS in doing my “own work,” whatever that may look like. It looked for a time like poetry. And for time it looked a lot like collage/assemblage. Then photography. Now it seems to want to shape itself into a book. Or several. And collaborating with visionary thought leader clients to support and mentor them in creating their most important writing projects.

This post, “create and implement,” is really all about encouraging you in the doing of your work. To do full justice to “create and implement,” it really calls for more detail than a  single blog post here.

You ask, “Do I just start creating?”  Yes. Sometimes you just start. Sometimes, instead, the creation “starts” you–its call is so persistent that it seeps out of your pores and your pen or across the keyboard without your even being full aware of it. This is the luscious process of what I call “divine dictation.” Something comes out, flows out the pen and onto the page.  I know I wrote it, but I don’t have a clue where it came from. These are the moments of the gift. It’s important to grab the gift moments, treasure them, and build on them. They are the gold.

Then there are the other moments, when the engine is cold and it’s tough to start. These are the times when the “Just do it,” motto comes in handy. Times that call for the admonishment to be willing to write what Anne Lamott calls, the “shitty first draft.” Get something out there. Pen to paper even when you don’t really “feel like it.” (And here, a perfect time for acknowledging the gift of the 30 day blog challenge, to get stuff done and out in spite of resistance, procrastination. So thanks #blog30 community!)

Remember: It’s a stronger house with a foundation, and it’s a stronger creation when it has the grounding and foundation of having done the inner work first, tapping into the vision and building on your authenticity, gifts, and greatness.

Be grateful for the gifts and moments of golden flow. But keep on writing (creating) anyway, even if you feel like you are plugging along up a steep incline. Think of the view when you get to the top. Just make sure you are climbing the right mountain!