How Money Can Mess Up And Help Your Unique Genius
July 28th, 2009
For people working on discovering their Unique Genius, this quote is so perfect:
“Make peace with outrageous abundance. You are more likely to have a pure vibration and attract more abundance if you leave money out of the equation. But it isn’t because money is the “root of all evil.” It’s because it messes up your vibration, usually.”
– Abraham-Hicks
The quote is perfect because worrying about money too early in the process of finding your Unique Genius will distort it, and stunt it. Worrying about money (and status, and career) is why you don’t know what it is in the first place!
I wrote a blog post last year about while I knew PebbleStorm would make money sometime, I had no idea how it would happen: How will PebbleStorm [or insert your business here] make money?
This is the main reason why I tell people to keep their day job or some source of income while they work on their passion project part-time (as I have with PebbleStorm) – so they can be patient with how it manifests without needing to make money too soon. Having said that – at some point you have to start making money from it, to actually make the idea and company healthy and grow it – money is like oxygen to a business.
It’s like a child growing up – you don’t want them to HAVE to work for money when they’re too young, although summer jobs can be good experience. They can play with money and jobs, without ‘needing’ them. And at some point, say in their teen years, holding more serious jobs part-time or in the summers can also tune their business sense. You don’t want a 30 year old who’s never made money for themselves – that isn’t healthy either! The trick is helping them learn how to be comfortable making money without letting “make money” become their main goal, something that distracts them from finding meaning in their life.
Although there are parts of PebbleStorm that I’ll still do free while I experiment, overall I am now shifting it to a money-making mode (over the next six months), because that is what will stimulate it’s ability to impact people (both more people and in more ways).
So:
FIRST get clear on what you want to do with your life,
THEN find ways to make money from it.
You literally can make money from anything now because of the internet…once you get clear on what you want and your Unique Genius.
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Four Core PebbleStorm Programs Have Emerged
July 19th, 2009
If you haven’t seen the updated PebbleStorm homepage links at the top of the blog – take a look. It’s been really interesting leaving myself open to letting things evolve on their own, and then watching ideas and programs snap into place on their own!
The Programs & Roadmap
A) Feed Your Freedom “FYF”
I’ve found it’s almost impossible for people to access their Unique Genius if they are stressed because of either a lack of time/mental space or money. This program is designeded for professionals who want a mix of regular income ($5k-$10k/mo) and freedom (work just 1-3 days/week):
www.PebbleStorm.com/feed-your-freedom
B) Unique Genius
For anyone wondering what they want to do next, or what their life purpose is:
www.PebbleStorm.com/uniquegenius
C) CEOFlow Freedom: “Turn your employees into mini-CEOs”
This is for business owners/CEOs with employees, who are feeling overwhelmed and that her business has trapped you…more details on CEOFlow Freedom.
CEOFlow Sales: “Create predictable revenue (CPR)”
“CPR” here underlies all the other programs, because it’s hard to enjoy making money if 1) you aren’t making it, or 2) it isn’t predictable. This program for now is focused on sales coaching/consulting for companies who want to ramp up sales or make sales more predictable. The concepts will be a part of Feed Your Freedom as well, but in that case it’s about creating predictable income 🙂
www.PebbleStorm.com/cpr
CEOFlow Adventure
(Coming)…once you have money and freedom, why not some adventure and more fun? This gets your juices flowing and will stimulate ideas and your culture to keep your sales and inspiration going!
Unique Genius – Helping Yourself Through Others
Not coincidentally, all of this is the same path I’ve personally been on and will be on (did you know your Unique Genius is about solving your own problems, past/present/future, for others?). Yes, that’s my own roadmap above – I’m right at the beginning of the green area!
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14 Simple Ways To Inject Enjoyment Into Work
July 11th, 2009
PebbleStorm is about making work enjoyable in every way: what you do, how you do it, who you do it with… (and of course, how all that enjoyment translates into making more money more easily). So while the most important part of making money through enjoyment is discovering your Unique Genius and translating it into your dream business, there are ways to bring enjoyment into ANY job you have now.
Adding Enjoyment To Any Job
Most of us don’t even know how to make our little daily tasks enjoyable. It can be simple! Whether or not you enjoy your job, coworkers or career…there are ALWAYS ways to add some enjoyment back into it every day – it just takes practice. Here’s a slide from a past webinar with a few simple ways to add enjoyment and fun into your work:
Winning Enjoyment Points & Gold Stars
People need to train themselves to make work enjoyable, just as they need to train and practice the guitar, cooking, meditation or better communication in a relationship. A simple way to help yourself play with this is by giving yourself “10 Enjoyment Points” whenever you enjoy something at work. Even better is if you’re posting it on a wall with others! It’s a form of awareness training. What do you enjoy at work during the day? What makes a meeting, phone call or presentation enjoyable vs. painful? Whether you’re the one hosting it or an attendee? This is about shifting your awareness and perspective.
Sample goal: win 10 Enjoyment Points every day. Start small – babysteps!
Try to catch yourself in the moment next time you find yourself enjoying work. Give yourself a gold star if you want! (A client literally does keep gold star stickers handy so that she or her employees can give them to each other as in-the-moment rewards/reminders).
How Enjoyment At Work Can Change Enjoyment In Life
As you get better at learning how you can enjoy work…you’re retraining your mind, so that it gets easier to enjoy whatever you do in life! I’ve noticed that it’s much easier for me to have fun in any situation once I learned how I can make work more fun in any situation 🙂
More Blog Posts/Details On Enjoyment Points From PebbleStormers
- Katrina Wong (Katchme blog) has a great post about Enjoyment Points here: Winning Enjoyment Points
- Erin Halling (Happy Surprises blog) has a whole category on them…Erin’s posts on Enjoyment Points.
The Best And Easiest Way To Make Work Enjoyable
Do “it” (whatever ‘it’ is) with someone you like, whether you’re creating something together, or creating your own things separately.
My Weekly Meetups
I often meet up with friends here in Santa Monica for working sessions that might be on a common project, or we might have different projects. My current favorite haunts tend to be Whole Foods Venice, Novel Cafe on Main Street, and Urth on Main Street (although I actually prefer Urth on Melrose, because their outdoor seating isn’t as crowded).
For example,Mondays at 10am I’m meeting with a few friends for an accountability session, Monday afternoons are usually a working session with Onna or others, Friday afternoons a session with Carenna Willmont…etc.
It’s more effective if each different meetup has a specific purpose: “produce stuff”, “brainstorm new ideas”, “accountability/planning”, “shoot the breeze/serendipity”…anything you want. All are equally as valid, as long as you all know what the point is.
Practice Makes Perfect
Learning how to make daily work enjoyable is easy to forget! Which is why it takes practice, and why playing with enjoyment with others makes it easier (you’re reminding/helping each other). Keep practicing! You’ll find that it gets easier in time.
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Your Work + Adventure Suggestions?
July 6th, 2009
Lowell Winer (a very cool guy starting a very interesting happiness-related tech company) and I were talking about going someplace adventurous to work from for a couple of weeks, as some of us did last year in Kauai:
More Kauai pictures on Facebook
We threw around some ideas. and I think the middle east came up at #1 (Israel, Turkey, Egypt). Here were some others…
- Kauai/Hawaii
- Buenos Aires
- Bali
- Spain (especially Seville, Barcenlona, the beaches)
- Vancouver (I’ve heard it’s great, but I’ve never been)
- Madagascar (this would just be adventure, not work…I still want to go!)
- Where else would be fun to combine work and adventure?
Even though I’ve been to places like Buenos Aires (Pix from my 5 weeks there Dec-Jan 09), Spain and Bali (some pix), those were alone, without people who also intended to work, as we did in Kauai. By the way, another reason I want people to make money through enjoyment is so that I can have more traveling and adventure partners 🙂
I tweeted out a note (which automatically is copied into my Facebook status) with the middle east idea, and got back a bunch of responses from people who loved Turkey…
Where would YOU want to go? (Comment below!)
Who wants to come when we figure it out?
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