A Full Moon in Virgo on Sunday - a good one for Butchers and Bakers and CandleStick Makers

Full Moon in Virgo on Sunday! This is the culmination of September's Virgo new moon.

With Virgo we have the archetype that holds the energy of "here is what I should be, here is what I could be and here is what I would look like if I got everything right" with the simultaneous thought "here is who I actually am" (warts and all, not that Virgos have warts, of course).

This tension of what is real and what is ideal is the fundamental tension of the Virgo archetype. 

Traditionally Virgo is the sign of the servant and healer. Virgo is also the skilled craftsperson - the archetype of being good at something, of taking the time to learn and do something well.

(when Martha says "it's a good thing" she is channeling her inner Virgo, which is probably her sun sign or sits in Venus, have to look her up)

So in Virgo we gain dignity and self respect from being good at something that is useful to other people.

If you were born with your sun in Virgo this is the basic way you process life, moon in Virgo; the basic way you experience your feelings about life and if your ascendant is in Virgo; the basic way you appear to others - the mask you wear.

(people who think Virgos are fussy or nitpicky are totally missing the point and also forgetting we all have Virgo in our charts - the Virgo message of things worth doing being worth doing well and the value of these things lying within their value to others is probably the exact paradigm that will get everyone who is out of work back to work now - it is no coincidence Virgo rules the 6th house of work and health)

The Virgo full moon reminds us that we will find right work. This right work may not be something we will be paid to do. It's not about the money. 

This is about being good at something that is valuable to other people.

It's not about having other people recognize our value - Virgo is the leg of our hero's journey that comes after Leo where we took center stage and got our applause. Virgo is the space where we release, at least a little bit, our need to be recognized. 

*I read in the Harvard Review this week that what women want from work is social respect and what men want is complex challenges. It made me furious  to realize this sexist blubber fit hubs and I exactly. I wanted to throw up and to run screaming into the night - I am just waiting for Sunday's full moon.*

At the time of the Virgo Full Moon we have this "how it is" vs "how it could be" itchiness manifest for all of us.

This is a very grounded full moon (even with our watery Pisces sun) and we are able to manifest the work and health stuff we have been working on more fully.

The full moon isn't a culmination moon exactly, although it does often bring the curtain down on some act in our story or open the door fully so we can see our next step. Think back to our Virgo New Moon intentions from September. It's a great time to take a big step toward something - the full moon reflects plenty of Pisces sun to light up our paths and will be supportive to physical action.

Lots of craziness and stress ahead in April- so enjoy this weekend. Time to howl peeps! xo all

why it's easier to build a business when you need the money, but not when you REALLY need the money

When I was in banking the banks in my county would bid annually on the county's surrogate account money. This was money the surrogate court was holding for people who had inheritances, lawsuits, winnings, etc when the money had to be held in trust for them for some reason.

One year we won the bidding war and our bank got to invest this money, which was tens of millions of dollars, and my branch got to open and service these accounts.

We quickly noticed no matter how much investment advice and money counseling we offered the people who were receiving regular payouts from inheritances and lawsuits, they (I don't mean anyone with mental or physical disabilities here) often did not make a move to move on with their lives until their money was completely gone.

Faced with monthly statements showing their declining balances, people still had to be dead broke with the sheriff holding an eviction notice at the front door before they could wake up to the fact these payments were over. It was time to get a job.

This isn't about laziness. Sometimes we need our backs against the wall so we have something to push off against.

It works the same when we are building a business. It is hard to build a business we will care about if we do not need money because every business requires us to do stuff we don't want to do.

But it is even harder to build a business if we REALLY need the money because our decisions will be skewed by the money - it's too easy to lose track of the fact our business has to be about the value we bring to other people before that value comes back to us in the form of dollar signs in our bank account.

So, I'm going to start a new series about money and our businesses next week.

And I will be back tomorrow with my take on the Virgo Full Moon we get to experience this weekend. xo all

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - tying this stuff into our business

I think people and situations come to us to play out in front of us the energy we are carrying. We can literally look at everything in our lives as manifesting the energies we carry. 

We carry this energy through our beliefs.

Changing our beliefs is at the root of changing how things are working in our life.

This is how good stuff takes us to more good stuff and bad stuff can lead us quickly to everything falling apart.

(especially if we have spent many years and probably many lifetimes creating keyholes for the belief that creates the emotion that feels "I am not safe" - this is the real meaning of karma - the reaping what we sow and repeating what we sow labeling of a feeling) 

This is why affirmations work for some people but not others. Speaking positive words and writing positive words and hearing positive words changes the space we occupy. But we can move out of that space very quickly

(think about how we can be in a great mood and then someone cuts us off in traffic and we get mad, instantly - unconsciously flashing to all the other times in our life where someone has gotten ahead of us or been faster than us or something has just come out of nowhere and put us in our place)

if that space does not line up with our beliefs.

I know makers who have literally put themselves out of business by following the advice to double their prices. Not because this is bad advice (although sometimes it is) and not because there aren't customers for their new price range but because they themselves didn't line up with their new prices!

(and I am not saying that people who make and sell more expensive items have different beliefs than people who sell inexpensive items, but if the earring fits ... )

So, to create more good for ourselves we are 1. telling our stories in the best way possible, 2. focusing on how we want to feel, 3. meditating and 4. celebrating - how does this stuff look within our business?

#1. We stop comparing our work to anyone else's work - we stop comparing our business to anyone else's business. There is not a competition going on here (and we would be comparing our inside to someone else's outside anyway).

We are all here for different things (and none of us are here to make jewelry or sweaters, trust me) - we have all been through different things - we all have different ways of looking at the world.

And the world we are seeing is manifested just for us based on the energy we are carrying.

I see the world through the lens of mythology. There was no way I would have ever given my mother the satisfaction of saying I Love Jesus, but I would have felt perfectly comfortable making her perfectly uncomfortable by talking about Athena and Lilith.

Myth is social instruction. It's story that gets handed down through the generations to teach us how to be good members of the collective. So, it's about teaching people how to behave or not behave which is why although I embrace it, I am also a little suspicious of it, too ...

(I have found the archetypes based on the myths to be as real as rain though)

We don't complain about customers, ever. It is really weird to me when people go on Facebook and complain about their customers. People who do this all the time are not doing themselves any favors. They will just be attracting, through their attention to these stories, more and more of these problem customers right into their businesses.

For the rest of us, they are doing us a favor because we get to feel how much we appreciate our own customers.

All business owners see the truth of this - we have all had that problem customer situation where everything goes wrong - first something happens and we ship late, then we realize something is wrong with what we have shipped, so we email the customer to explain and we call them Shirley instead of Susan. Ouch.

Everything goes from bad to worse. 

No doubt the customer is late ordering for the birthday of someone they don't even want to shop for - this energy lines up with our distracted energy, even if we have had 100 perfect transactions that day that didn't, and we have a catastrophe in the making. Of course, if we eventually handle this situation well, that extreme energy will flip to the other extreme and the customer will become a loyal buyer for life.

The key is to be languaging any problem as a problem situation never as a problem customer.

We are not dealing with a problem customer, since there is no such thing, just a problem situation or even better a challenging situation. This way of thinking makes all the difference to the final outcome.

We tell the best stories about our business. If we can't tell good stories- we just shut up.

#2  We focus on the feel good emotions. We make a list of how we want our business to make us feel - why are we doing this thing we are doing?

Our list might include : proud, organized, responsible, independent, creative, collaborative, abundant, etc.

We read this list everyday focusing on feeling the emotion - we can just make stuff up that we need to in order to feel these emotions - studies show our brains can't tell the difference.

#3. We meditate. If we go to the post office and find - surprise, surprise - there is no line and we are in and out - close your eyes in the car and sit for 10 minutes. Waiting for our modgepodge to dry? Good time to meditate. Downloading a report, printing labels, about to make an important phone call - tell your brain "I'm not going to need you for a few minutes, my friend" and shut it down.

#4. Celebrate the good stuff - don't wait for the good stuff to happen. This is about being, not doing. Celebrate the good stuff that is coming and the good stuff we already have. Last night I celebrated my bills.

(yes, those things I used to toss on the backseat of my car and forget to pay)

I celebrated life's belief in my future earning ability. I celebrated my ability to stay open to new avenues and new ideas for abundance. I celebrated the business I have built here based on my collaboration with the companies I am now paying.

I wrote the checks with my favorite pen, used the magical new Harry Potter stamps

(yes, I request my post office order me the special stamps collectors get and then I use them)

thanked the electric company for my lights and the cable company for my beloved internet and celebrated with a vanilla soy candle and 2 episodes of Downton Abbey.

I have some astrological happening to post about - hopefully I will get that post up before the weekend. xo all

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #4 celebrate the small stuff

Creating and celebrating the good stuff presents more and more opportunities to practice gratitude.

If we could practice gratitude at all times - we would be a superwoman who made our desires manifest almost instantly. If you do not believe this, practice feeling gratitude as often as possible for a while and see for yourself what happens.

It's not possible to feel grateful without feeling good.

We can feel grateful for feeling good (ie things are going our way, our bodies are healthy, etc) or we can work from the even more powerful space of feeling good by way of feeling grateful.

So, let's say we have made the decision to eat healthier and then - we eat a doughnut.

(why is spell check not allowing me to spell this glazed devil "donut" - I guess donut is just a dunkin' thing - how have I forgotten this?)

But let's say before we decided to eat healthier we would have chowed down on 3 doughnuts.

Well, we know from science that beating our self up is not a good thing. If we personalize our feelings and beliefs we are investing them with too much emotional power and our brain will be flooding our body with neuropeptides on the search for cells with keyholes labeled "I screwed up".

(this is what karma really is - the belief we put on that emotion so we can be sure we reap what we sow and so we can be sure we repeat what we sow - our beliefs create both)

Once we start feeling grateful for the little things we once called "not enough" ie - "I'm so grateful for the willpower to stop at one doughnut, YAY FOR ME" - we will know we are doing enough because we are choosing to feel grateful.

Quantum science (and spirituality) tells us that giving  and receiving are really the exact same experience - they are just being viewed from two different perspectives. It's the same with all kinds of contrast.

We can even find gratitude in things we previously would have labeled "yuck" because it is the "yuck" we don't want that teaches us what we do want - this is a planet where we evolve from contrast after all. We get to make our own rules with this.

Now the step after feeling grateful is to feel great (full of great actually) - so we celebrate it. 

It's best if we have someone (or a whole lot of someones) in our life we can opening brag about ourselves to - without having to apologize or toss in statements of humility. Humility can be a good thing, but for this exercise we are giving humility the boot (grab your Uggs and give him one of those drop kick corner moves we learned in soccer). If we do not have this someone, we can totally brag to ourselves, or our pets, I brag to Olive. 

When I started this blog I planned to document the growth of my business along with the growth of my puppy. But I started thinking that no one would want to read about all the good stuff that happened - that I would be bragging. I thought it would be funnier to write/whine about the "bad" stuff and it was and so I did .. until I found myself looking for stuff to whine about and then more and more whine-worthy stuff started happening to me (I tried to think of this as wine-worthy stuff - since I need the corks and all, but it got harder and harder) - I realized this was not a good thing for me to be creating.

I have found a good way to celebrate is to make myself a list of rewards (3 hours at the library, 2 episodes of Downton, a movie in the middle of the day, the beach for 3 hours, a long soak, etc)

and celebrate the thing I am grateful for.

We are totally allowed to trick our self with this stuff - this isn't about earning rewards.

(school's out folks)

This is about choosing to celebrate what we are grateful for.

When my daughter was little we had all kinds of celebrations that we no longer have. Just last month both hubs and my birthdays passed almost unnoticed (by us - this isn't about other people - we were sick at the time, but we told ourselves we would party later and now we are 30 days later and still haven't celebrated). We need to take celebrating seriously if we want to see some serious results from it. I am ordering the party hats.

There are more ideas for celebrating HERE.

Up next part 5 - how to tie all this stuff into our business (yes, I sometimes remember this is a business blog) xo all

more reasons you should be meditating - plus sex advice, parenting advice and something sticky hits the wall

 

I was going to move this series on to 'celebrate good times'

(and if I just put that awesome Kool and the Gang song in your head .. you're welcome .. and if I didn't, here it is)

but I think I need another post about meditation. Because some people read the words "you should be meditating" and what they hear is "this is one more thing you need to do, why aren't you doing this - you loser you".

(and now that I write "this is one more thing you need to do" I am thinking about sex. If you are married as long as I am Dear Reader you might remember a time - maybe when your kids were little, maybe when you were working a lot, maybe last week -  when sex was the last thing on your mind, but maybe it wasn't the last thing on Mr. Reader's mind - and of course, this scenario works equally well in reverse, if you, Dear Reader are the Mr. Reader.

It sort of felt like one more thing someone wanted you to do when you just wanted/needed to go to sleep. And Mr. Reader would get annoyed or resentful because often men get mad instead of sad. 

Well, if you are lucky enough to still be together many years later this whole thing might have reversed itself on you - which is actually kind of cool in a way because Mr. Reader gets to experience how it feels to have one more thing someone wants him to do when he is exhausted and learn that he actually wasn't being rejected at all and you get to see that his annoyance was actually hurt feelings and understand that yes, in fact, you were rejecting him because that is exactly how you feel now. 

Not that this ever happens to hubs and me, of course, but if it happens to you and especially if you are in Act 1 of this little play, it is something to think about; a new way of thinking about what the other person is actually experiencing - just don't think about it while you are meditating.)

Back to this meditation message - it can be annoying. I get it. Because when I am meditating I can't believe I ever let my practice slip ... and then I let my practice slip.

I don't think that will happen this time though - I think my practice is really sticky this time. It's meditate or medicate this time.

(remember those things we threw on the wall as kids and they slithered down the wall, sticky like that - and if you are thinking I mean slinkys, I do not mean slinkys, I mean the sticky, gummy things not the metal spiral things but if you were throwing your slinkys against the wall - you really need to be meditating, so listen up)

One of the ways you will know you need to meditate is when you start doing some really inefficient unconscious meditating.

This is otherwise known as "spacing out".

You drive to work and do not remember those last 11 miles or you find your car keys in the freezer next to your wallet or you intend to drive to the post office and end up 5 miles past the post office before you realize what you are doing.

If you are absent minded, spacey or confused - get yourself to a meditation cushion now.

You are full. You need to release all the stuff you are carrying; the stuff that has glommed onto you from other people and plenty of your own stuff, too. Meditation will release this stuff for you. I promise.

(someone recently said to me "I keep releasing, releasing, releasing, when do I get to keep anything?" Ha! She cracked me up - then I said "Oh really, what exactly have you released?" And she proceeded to tell me about the closets she'd emptied and the attic she cleaned out. And I said, "Great!" then I said, because I know she is very vocal about her grown son making choices she does not agree with, "releasing is also about letting go of trying to control people and letting go is about accepting other people's choices" - she got quiet, then told me she had some more closets to empty ... which is OK, of course, everything in its own time - this is a process and creating physical space is always a good thing.)

HERE are 20 more reasons to meditate.

Nemetona is the Celtic Goddess who protected ancient ceremonial sites. We can connect with her energy to build an altar in our home; a little place of retreat and refuge for yourself ....

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #3 necessary stillness

I have meditated on and off since high school. I think the times I was meditating I was more awake. 

(it may seem like it is harder to live our lives awake until we think through the alternative : we are asleep and life wakes us up - not like a mother who whispers "rise and shine sweetie" - this mother throws open the blinds and yanks the blanket, tumbling us out of bed and on to the cold hardwood floor, she doesn't even offer up a boo-boo kiss, she just strides out of the room - life is one tough love mama ... ouch)

My usual pattern is I get busy with work and outer stuff (trying to control the stuff I can't control, but I seem firmly committed to not understanding this) and stop meditating. I lose my connection to the big picture. I lose my connection with myself (which is the same thing). Then something happens to wake me up - something challenging happens. Almost always something that slows me down; sometimes something that stops me in my tracks.

Then like the prodigal son I come back.

Meditation is a practice. It's not something that works for other people, but not for us. It's like exercise - it can't work for us if we don't practice, but if we do practice it can't not work for us.

Stillness connects us to our higher self/the Universe/God/the Goddess (pick your comfort zone) - not that we are ever not connected, but sometimes the connection gets foggy.

I also find that stillness allows me to let go of refined flours and sugars. This sounds like a physical thing (and it is partly), but it’s really about vibration. Nothing fogs things up so fast as white flour and white sugar. The first thing that happens to me when I fall off the wagon and stop meditating is I start eating this crap again. I am sure this is a fear reaction to life requiring more of me. It is easier to just play small.

Over the holidays, I was listening to Decisive - the Chip and Dan Heath book about better decision making. It was very good, but made me wonder if they would have come to a different conclusion about the true value of intuition if they had been working with people who meditate regularly.

This is not hard stuff. It is not easy stuff either.

Dr. Wilder Penfield (is this the best name ever?!) is a famous Canadian neurosurgeon. His research discovered the brain's sensory and motor cortex and more. During his studies he found the area in our brains where decisions are carried out. He got very excited. He thought he would next discover the part of our brain where decisions are made. He never found it. Instead, he found there is no part of our brain where decisions are made.

So, how is this possible? We know we make decisions every day, every minute of every day in fact. Apparently our brain and our body are amazing tools for executing decisions, but not making them.

There must be a nonphysical "us" that does the decision making (this is a really powerful thing to know if we beat ourselves up over taking the 'wrong' action and if we are continually searching for that magical set of actions that will make everything work) - this is the part of us we get to meet when we meditate.

Get yourself a timer/stopwatch app for your phone or Kindle, an egg timer or just set your oven timer (start with 5 minutes in the morning and work up to 20 minutes once a day or 15 minutes twice a day - by the time you are up to 15 minutes, you will want to do this twice a day, trust me).

Dedicate a space to this. It's a practice and you need room to practice. Get yourself a yoga mat or sit in a special chair. Make the practice a ritual. Light a candle, darken the room. I have a space in my bedroom and I open the bedroom window while I make the bed to bring in some fresh air. Then I close the window, light the candle and just do it. When you get centered every animal in your house will be climbing all over you - ignore them. If you have young children, you will have to get up before them or they will be drawn to your stillness like a magnet (or a magnetic locket - warning shameless plug ahead - have you seen this). 

I think you can do the Chopra 21 Day Challenge anytime or go to Hayhouse and find a guided meditation you like or go to YouTube and click around until you find something you like. If you are already meditating there is a great 7 Steps to Rebirth meditation by Doris Eliana Cohen.

Most days I just start with relaxing my toes and work my way up to my head - saying to myself "my toes are relaxed", "my ankles are relaxed", etc ending with "I am relaxed" then focus on my breathing until my timer goes off. When thoughts intrude I just let them float away. Some days I do guided meditations.

The more we practice the better we get at listening to our gut and instincts. We will fool ourselves into doing things that make us feel badly much less often because we will be more in tune with our beliefs, our true nature and how we really feel.

We won't be saying stuff like "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up" or "I could have what I want if I could only figure out what I want", anymore. This kind of foggy energy will not be available to us - we will start getting clear (the clarity may not immediately or ever really answer these questions, this is a practice and a process after all, but the thing we should be doing right now will become clear and that's all we need anyway).

So, we are telling our stories in the best way possible, we are focused on how we want to feel, we are meditating ....

next up Part IV - the value of celebrating