A friend asked me how our new mangement consulting business will attract clients.

I sat back and thought, "How do I know that we are supposed to "attract" anyone at all?" 

For those like my friend who find business building and marketing exhausting, there is a spiritual school of thought that says, "It's OK. Stop trying and start attracting. You are a spiritual being and the law of attraction will have your clients find you." Well, yes, we all are more than just our bodies. Talk to anyone who has had a near death experience, like Anita Moorjani (video below).  But you can't unplug your personal plan and just plug in a new spiritual marketing plan.  I am not seeing this working for people.  And I'll get to what's missing in a moment.

Whether my techniques are old-school marketing and cold calling or new-school "attracting" it seems to me, the problem is: I am still working on the level of myself, Elese the human being using techniques to the best of her ability. It's as if we say, " I have tried marketing techniques, social media techniques, affiliate techniques, now I'll go for spiritual techniques."

We cannot substitute personal effort with spiritual effort.

In fact, I'm not sure there is any such thing as spiritual effort.  What do I mean by this?

I mean, I don't think we MAKE ourselves spiritual, and I don't think we have any role in making spirituality work on a personal level -- anymore than we make electricity work. 

To use "attracting" as your sales plan is just another technique, no different from traditional marketing, it doesn't work unless what is behind it is authentic. So if you are a coach, or a human services provider...

I believe you can't substitute any technique, spiritual or otherwise, for improving the base quality of your work. And the quality of your work is related to the depth of your own view of who you are and how you function.

Think of a magnet. A magnet does nothing to attract.  When the right metallic components are in range, the polarity takes care of itself. I think we love the idea that we make ourselves into great magnets through our work and then people just get attracted. No. You don't make your polarity. You ARE the polarity because of your nature.  Should you just stand there and radiate? Will they come?  Maybe. 

Or are you thinking that your job is to increase your polarity?  Well, it's not.  You job is to dance your dance.  You don't even need to go deeper in anything unless it is useful to you to not only be who you are but to have awareness of who you are. But, you are already who you are. You are already the base metal and so is everyone else.  Without your concept of who you are and your ideas about who you are, you would just simply be you.

So who am I and who do I think I am. Am I thinking of myself as someone who needs to attract clients?  Where are all the areas I tend to forget who I am and become afraid and insecure? What's underneath my insecure thinking?

When was the last time you really reflected on: Who Are You?

From who you think you are flows everything that you do to make yourself happy, everything you think you need or is missing, all your problems and all your concerns.  You are doing everything in your life right now based on your best guess about who you are.

I was raised in a Christian Science family and I was told from the earliest of ages, "you are not your body."  I never believed this, even after spending the first 18 years of my life dedicated to this metaphysical study.  So I do not expect that anyone, not you, not me, should take anyone's word for who you are.  Belief should not come into it. You cannot sit solidly on a belief. But inquiry can get us beyond who we think we are.

We are too quick to accept everything we think as a true and accurate picture of life and of ourselves.  We speak far too easily about ideas like "Law of Attraction," "ego" and "spiritual self" and have not taken enough time to investigate these beyond the level of concepts and pop culture.

Everything we do as humans is an attempt to remedy a life that is the direct result of accepting whatever crazy things we think and living them as true.

Most people I know (including me!) suffer at some point from some form of dwarfed or warped self-image. Most people simply try to apply this idea of "attraction" using their self-image. This image is made up of what we think of ourselves, but what is underneath it is actually what is most attractive about us.
 
At some point, if you are a coach and you are growing your business of service to others, the investigation into who is "Me" is a necessary investigation that has taken my clients and will take you through to the next level.

Forget attracting. Get to know yourself.

Many years ago, I was in a serious relationship and living with the man I thought I would marry. he had given up everything to be with me, moving from the US to the UK, leaving his job and even selling his car (he loved that car).  He arrived at the airport with a few personal items and carrying a promise: we would be together.  Forever, I thought.

This was not to be. And it was the greatest lesson in love I ever learned. 

After a year of living together and enjoying life together I noticed he was becoming irritable.  He complained about city life.  He felt like a foreigner. I jumped into action with everything I knew to show him the best sides of my city, my life and myself.

I thought, despite these little concerns, that we would marry and be together always.  I was deeply in love and as I looked at it from the bright side, it seemed we could live anywhere and do anything we wanted to. We'd work it out...

About 14 months after we moved in together, he sat me down one day in the living room. It was spring and grey skies were lifting. I had noticed that his mood had not.  He seemed to spend his days in the house now, smoking more often.  He had more complaints when I arrived home in the evenings -- some about me, but mostly about life.

As I sat on the floor he began, "I want to go home."

I guess I had felt something coming.  Recently our discussions about the future and marriage had got very sticky. I felt I was pushing him. A bad feeling was growing in me. Something was wrong. In my usual haughtiness, I assumed something was wrong with Him.  

"Back to San Diego?" I inquired.

"Yes..."

Well, that seemed a reasonable thing.  He had lived there for years and we met there. My mother lived there.  It sounded like a good plan for us, but somehow I knew he wasn't talking about our plan.

"...I am leaving in July on my ticket and I don't want to plan to come back."

As each word landed I felt the ground rumbling under the pounding hooves of large oncoming herd of buffalo.

Now being an American in the UK has challenges.  allows you only so much time in any one sojourn so the sand in the hourglass is always dribbling. You cannot work and you have to leave regularly in order to renew your visa.  You can also only renew a tourist visa a limited number of times. If he were to come back after his current ticket was used, we knew it would be the last time and we were aware of the dangers of marrying under pressured circumstances. (Small detail: he hadn't asked). We could both live in the States, however, so we had talked about moving. My head was swirling.  Maybe that's what he was talking about...

He was looking at the floor.  This was something more.

I asked questions. Did he want me to come with him? Would I come later? Would we try living there for a while? Live in both places?

His answers were sad and clear. He could go live with a friend who had a room. I probably wouldn't like that place.  Also, he didn't want to have any more possessions. Only the minimum needed to live.  He would live a life "off the grid."

"Does this plan include me?" I asked, anxiously.

"If you can live that way," he replied still looking down.

A life "off grid" he explained would involve living only with recycled and found items, buying nothing new. He would get furniture or anyting else he needed off the street.  But he didn't expect to need that. Sleeping rough in his room would be fine. A computer and a few hangers would hold his life. Enough consumer items have been made to fill a planet already, he would have no part of encouraging "them" to make more.

My head was exploding in two directions. First, I felt accused of being some kind of reckless consumer. I felt frivolous in my choices, the amount of clothes I owned, my spending on food and entertainment.  I felt as if a great finger of shame was pointing at me. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was starting to feel sick.  My stomach had sunk to the floor. Tears were burning my eyes. He had planned this. He had already thought it through. ohmygod.  For some time!  He knew exactly what he was doing and how much he would budget. It was all worked out. I was not being consulted. I was being informed.

He was leaving me.

In the months that followed I did little else but cry and cry some more. I was hurt, betrayed and I felt pitiful. "The one I love who I thought loved me, is leaving me."  I begged to understand how I could fit in to this plan.  Could the plan be modified. What about this? What about that?  I got angry the more I realized I couldn't fit in.  I yo-yo'd between grief and fury. I settled for despair.

The one thing I did not do, was act like someone who loved him.

It tooks months to see beyond the pain to the lesson I would eventually find.  OH, the pain! I was sliced and diced. I could hardly eat. I was sleepwalking at work and when I wasn't actually sleeping I was crying. I woke up crying, I showered crying, I sat on the toilet crying.

As July approached and my once-lover, not-future-husband packed to leave, I had found some self-help books and leaned on friends to help me get through this major life event.  But my suffering was intense and at Heathrow airport his parting words flattened me. What I longed to hear, "I can't leave you, let's figure this out somehow," fluttered through my hopeful heart as we shared a coffee and watched the clock in silence.   Then we stood up, walked to the gate, he hugged me, ticket and passport in hand, he whispered, "I made a mistake.  I wish I had made love to you one last time."

And then he disappeared into the security check and the crowd beyond.

Zombified, I walked to the car. Called a friend. Pretended like I felt OK and drove home blind with tears.

Some while later I found myself transferred to the US with my job and living in San Diego. Briefly my lover and I reconnected and I had a revelation that showed me everything I had been unable to see.

My revelation was this: I loved him, but I actually didn't know what love was.

You see, when I arrived in San Diego I began to notice a happy man living exactly as he wanted to. He was enjoying the life he had made "off grid." It was everything he had hoped for and more.  He had a great life. For him.

The terrible truth dawned on me:  that day of his revelation in my living room, I didn't want him to have a great life; I wanted him to want me.

THAT was all I cared about.

This is not love. 

To love someone is to want what they want for themselves. To love someone is to want them to have their happiness. Even above you.  

I realized that if I had truly loved him I might have sat on my floor that day full of curiosity about the life he was planning and interested in his happiness and his joy. But No. I was thinking "What about ME?" and "How can you leave ME!" and "Oh, my God, there goes MY life down the toilet!" Selfish Elese. I didn't give a shit what he wanted.  I didn't care.

Thinking what I did seems perfectly normal and completely understandable when you get a shock. The problem came when I mistook it for love. I even thought my bad feeling came from the fact I loved him.

It did not.

Love loves that the other person loves what they love and leaves them free.

There are still many, many ways every day that I forget this lesson of mine.  I still am fully capable of trying to shape the lives of others for my own selfish reasons, whether it is my family or my friends.  And of course, it remains a challenge in any relationship too. I'm a human so life has it's variety.  I continue to fail to be happy for other people's choices and to judge them.  I continue to fail to leave people to their own devices, to bless them, to honor them and to continue on my way without still feeling some tug to intervene.

When I am at my most clear, I see that the intervention needed is for me, not for them.

But my personal folklore about Love has shifted.  Most of the ways we all talk about love and what it looks like are simply sentimental and untrue. A piercing look into our love relationships may well show us, not the faults of the others, but the dark places in ourselves. We can refuse to step into these places at our peril. The danger being that we continue to experience love as nothing more than a form of pleasurable self-interest that comes with a sting in the tail the moment we don't get what we want.  

I learned a hard but beautiful lesson and sometimes I need to remind myself of it.
Bruce de Marsico said in this article To Love is To Be Happy, "you only fail to love if you get unhappy."

I know that I can

• be happy with another person's choices -- though I don't have to share them
• be happy with their predilections and habits -- though I don't have to indulge in them
• be happy with their lives as they see fit to lead them -- even when that does not involve living with me

Love has only one face and very simply, we know it by a feeling of love and happiness.  To know that face we must stop trying to choose happiness for others and choose it for ourselves.  Only then will we finally meet the other person as who they are and perhaps we will find they are as flawed and as lovable as we are.

My postscript. 8 years on...

Now and again I run into my ex and I see clearly we wouldn't have worked out as a couple. We've very different lives. Now I can appreciate him and that he gifted me this lesson.

Thank goodness for him.  Thank goodness he had the strength to remain steady in his conviction instead of submitting to my misguided and misdirected will.  What a mess of a compromise we would have made!  Each trying to love one another at the cost of our happiness.  I love that he is happy. I love to spot him from time to time riding his bike, smiling from the saddle of his free and unencumbered day.  His life is not for me. And it is perfect for him.  
 
I Love that. 

I've spent the last two days in hospital at the bedside of a friend, while he recovered from his own death.

I was recovering from his death as well, as it happened in my dining room.  He was chewing gum and singing one minute. Barely breathing the next.

My neighbor and I did our best to keep him alive while the ambulance angels arrived, thronged into my living room and whisked the grey-faced body to hospital as quickly and calmly as only they can.  You've never seen people moving so fast take things so slowly!

Two days later in the Intensive Care, he was musing on being lucky to be alive. 
"Good thing there's no brain damage," he said, barely able to speak after the tubes and lines were removed that had kept him alive for a day.
"I'll be the judge of that," I quipped.
We laughed.
The recovery had begun.

His journey to recovery will be whatever that turns out to be: the body healing, the mind recovering full equilibrium, and who knows what else may come to him.

For me, I can already tell you two odd things have shifted. Both point to something bigger.

Everything I've eaten today tastes sweet. Water tastes sweet. Soup tastes sweet. My mouth tastes fresh.  Odd. Not unpleasant, but odd.

I also walked into my closet and realized I could be rid of half my clothes.  No problem.

Only days before I was on a mission to clear out anything I don't wear. As all girls will know, there is always a moment of truth to be had when you are deciding to "throw" or "not to throw."

I was having some trouble letting go of a few pieces that, although I hardly wear, cost me more than I'd like to admit. I was hesitating and stammering and frankly, attached. I think I felt a bit foolish getting rid of them.  I felt even more foolish standing there now looking at what only days before had seemed so important. The "I might need this one day!" attitude had left me.  I had no desire to see these things hanging on the rail for another year. 

The logic that keeps closets all over the world filled to bursting, is a curious one.  I've talked about it in my book in the chapter on Wants, Desires and Addictions and how "so much of our wanting is fused with our self-esteem and personal identities."  As happens so often, I come back to my own words.  "Once we know how long we have to live, our desire to experience life intensifies."

These things I have do not constitute Life.  Life can only be experienced. It cannot be owned.

As I returned from hospital today to my closet I couldn't imagine that only 48 hours before I felt so attached to pieces of clothing. I knew I would easily let go of this and more.  In my mind's eye, I saw my closet full of things I love to wear, not things I can't bear to throw out. 

It is very strange all the little ways I learn about myself. 

As I considered all the things that would now be leaving my home forever, I felt an intense desire to get back to my own life's work.

It is often said that our personal beliefs are what limits our potential. As I thought about this, it appeared to make a belief sound very solid, and by contrast potential sounded a bit ephemeral and abstract.  But is this really true?

What are beliefs? What is Potential?  How do they relate to one another ...

We certainly talk about beliefs as solid things.  We need to get over, overcome or leave them behind us. We sense they limit us, and we speak and act as if they were both within us and "out there."

It is funny how the more we see beliefs as limiting, in the way, or something to deal with, the more important they appear. And the more real.  But are they? (See the radio show on Thought Ruts). 

In my experience, beliefs are not solid things. They are just thoughts. A thought never hurt anyone all by itself. A thought never hurt you either. Even the feeling of a thought never can hurt you.   Even if you have been believing or thinking something for a long time and no matter how many other people agree ("The earth is flat!") look and see, is it really anything more than a passing idea?

We are quick to consider our thoughts and beliefs as "truth." But it does not make them so.

Potential is something you have inside you.  Think of it as untapped ability.

A horse may not ever in the whole of it's life jump a fence, but it certainly has the potential, or the ability to jump.

Potential is not what you think you can do, it is what you use to do what you decide to do.

I can't pack a parachute properly. My potential to do so lies in the innate intelligence I have to learn anything.

Potential is a very interesting things to consider, because it is not a belief. It lies behind what you think and believe, as permanent possibility.  Only its expression can be limited by what we think is possible.

In fact, anyone believing certain things to be true about themselves will conceive of their potential and their possibilities in a particular way. If their thoughts are limiting, that sense of limitation and the feeling of constraint is a real experience in the moment, but not a permanent truth.  And, more importantly, it doesn't change what potential is.

You cannot tarnish potential just because you see yourself as limited. But you can experience yourself as limited.

Your potential is a power.  It is an unseen force that is expressed very differently in each of us in beautiful, unique ways.

What happens to your ideas about your own potential when you think of potential as a power?

What happens to your ideas about change when you think of beliefs as solid?

On this note, it's interesting to remember that even matter is not solid.  Modern quantum physics says an atom does not have a nucleus made of "particles" in the way it was once thought. 

Energy in the nucleus, electrons, can express in forms of waves or particles. It depends. (See Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). So even matter, although it's hard to grasp this, is not that solid.  And since electrons can express in different forms, that means the core of an atom is actually potential.  

Just like the core of you.

As I write this I am preparing the last live broadcast of my show "A New Way To Handle Absolutely Everything" on Contact Talk Radio (iTunes podcasts will continue)  What lies ahead, I'm not entirely sure. 

I must admit, I have always been a great big know-it-all. And a planner. I like to think I have a future, some influence over it, and that I know something.

The truth is, I don't.

Only the other day I was about to state one of my opinions as "fact" when I  caught myself.  As I pulled back I noticed I quieted down inside and settled into  the nicest feeling of not being a somebody.  I remembered how important it used to be to me to know (or to not look like I didn't) and to be seen as having authority.  It's amazing, isn't it, how life is hard enough and yet on top of that we have the full time job of managing our image of ourselves!

I've learned so much about this and have relaxed much more into my authentic self in recent years.

In "101 New Pairs of Glasses" I included quite a few chapters on releasing this kind of strain and my favorite is the chapter on mystery. In it I advocate for the art of not-knowing. I'd like to remind myself of this message today

How do we listen and just let it become clear as we go?

Are we able to just rest in the fresh scent of the unknown and see what happens?


I'd like to share this piece from the chapter on mystery, mainly as a reminder to myself how valuable it is for me allow mystery to be here as I take each step...

"The desire to know, or worse, the desire to look like we know is a modern plague. In one fell swoop it destroys listening, understanding, cooperation and learning.  It undermines peace of mind and peace amongst nations.

Consumed by our desire to know, or not admit that we don't, we finish other people's sentences, we hate people we have never met, and we cling to things we have long outgrown.

Living in the world of familiarity our lives are choked off by the smallness of our ideas.  Crowded in by the known we become selectors instead of creators. The death of curiosity is surely the birth of the ego, as children give up on being explorers of wild imaginings and doodads without names and become regurgitators of facts. 

Our lack of curiosity leads directly to our unwillingness to fail and spreads from there to our unwillingness to try - because we already know.  We know too much. And what we know isn't worth learning.

To allow wonder and mystery into your life is to suddenly find yourself in weightless spaciousness.  We work so hard to fuel personal creativity, business and product innovation, but we would automatically have all of these if we added just an extra dash of curiosity to our daily vitamin supplements.

Imagine not knowing your boss, not knowing your children, not knowing yourself - being totally open.  You'd listen closely. You would see new and amazing things. You'd discover the people you live with are people you've never met before. In the freshness of the moment you would unable to locate that familiar feeling of disconnection.

You would see into how your world is constructed. You'd gasp to realize you are much bigger than you ever imagined. 

You'd lose your fear."

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