“Don’t put the key to happiness in someone else’s pocket.” ~ Author Unknown
He talked about his first year in business how he was not making enough money to live and so he used his credit cards to tide him over until his business started making money. We shared about how many people would have quit 6 months into this kind of stressful situation. He said with a smile that he knew that if he kept going, he was going to be successful, he had faith. He is now planning on moving back to Ethiopia because he knows with the money he has saved he will have many opportunities and he can also make a difference in his country.
Recently I was getting a ride to the Seattle, WA airport by a car service and the man that was driving me was the owner of the car service. He was from Ethiopia and shared about his journey of moving to a new Country and building his business. He had a joyful Spirit and was so grateful for everything he was able to achieve with his company. He shared that many of the challenges he experienced along the way allow him to feel even more grateful and appreciative now.
He was a joy to talk to and I can see very clearly what had created his success was his consistent positive attitude that allowed him to persevere and I am sure opened even more opportunities up to him.
How do you stay consistently happy in your Holistic Business despite the challenges you may face such as:
-Not having enough clients
-Having a workshop that isn’t filling
-Launching a program and not reaching your expected numbers
-Having your VA quit on short notice
-Having a client back out of working with you
-Struggling with cash flow
I remember facing one of the biggest challenges in my business and I had a family member find out about it and she started saying things like “What are you going to do about this? How can you continue when this has happened? How are you going to make it? She was frantic and reminded me of the story of Henny Penney who lamented about the “Sky if falling”. I responded and shared “Everything is going to be OK, I have a plan to address this and I KNOW everything is going to be amazing and so much good will come from this”.
It was in that moment seeing her response that I knew if I went into the same energy that she was in, I for sure was not going to make it. I knew that my maintaining positive expectation and my happiness was the ONLY way to handle it and create even greater levels of success from it.
Here are my favorite ways of staying Happy No Matter What in Your Holistic Business:
#1. Stay in Positive Expectation- Trust that what is happening is a perfect Divine Unfolding that is leading you to the manifestation of your dreams. You can look at what is happening and in the moment think “Oh my gosh this is a disaster, how will I reach my goals with this happening!!” I always like to use the analogy of transporting spiders outside. Did you ever have a spider in your home that you lovingly tried to transport outside? Well the spider gets very distressed and thinks it’s world is falling apart when in reality it is just being transported to ultimately where it wanted to go anyway. I believe that is what it is like with us. The so called challenges that feel off track for us, may be just the key movements that need to be made to guide us to our ultimate desires.
#2. Stay open to Divine ideas to handle the challenge you are facing-Your Spiritual Guidance is with you every step of the way as you build your Holistic Business. Divine ideas are trying to get through to you to help you. A key to hearing these Divine ideas is to quiet your mind. Divine ideas are like a whisper and need silence for you to hear them clearly. Quiet your mind to get amazing guidance of how to handle your challenge. This also has the added benefit of helping you not feel so alone!
#3. Reach out for Healthy, Positive support- When we face a challenge it is easy to withdraw and isolate. This gets us stuck even more. It is important to reach out for healthy support. Healthy, positive support is from people who are positive and are also taking risks to create the Holistic Business of their dreams. You do not want to reach out for support from other Holistic Practitioners who are struggling and not making effort to grow and expand in their Holistic Business.
#4. Know that your Happy state will allow the best solutions to come forward–Years ago when I was creating the Joy work that I teach in my Certification Training programs I was working as a Holistic Psychotherapist at a Native American Tribe. One day we had a meeting to come up with a solution for a challenging issue with our team. Because of my study of joy I knew that if we started the meeting in a more joyful state we would be able to come up with a higher quality solution in a shorter amount of time. I suggested that we start the meeting by telling jokes to raise the vibration. Everyone was game to do that, so we spent 5 minutes telling jokes and laughing. Then we moved into discussing the issue at hand. Amazingly we were able to come up with a fabulous solution in 10 minutes. Which left the rest of the time allotted for us to tell more jokes. So, from now on when faced with a business challenge before you try to come up with a solution, get happy first before you work on solutions!
#5. Stay focused on your End Goal.-Have complete faith that you will achieve the goal that you want to achieve in your business. It can be your goal for this year, or the ultimate goal in your Holistic Business. Whenever I am faced with a challenge in my business I close my eyes and think of my goal in my business and move into the feeling “This goal that I am moving towards is a done deal and this is just a blip on the radar that has no impact on the final outcome”. I always believe our dreams are always complete in Divine Mind and if we stay focused on that truth, there is really nothing that can keep us from being happy in our business!
I like the idea of starting a meeting with light-hearted fun. It can be used with ourselves, one-on-one as well. As you found, it opens up the senses to more possibilities because the low energy blocks have dissipated. The bottom line is trusting that we can find a workable solution, maybe even a better one than originally planned. I have found this is invariably the case because we are forced to be more creative.