Archive for the ‘Money and Career’ Category
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
 Women owned businesses have been the fastest growing segment of new start up entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m glad to see this as I’ve been a professional and an entrepreneur for many, (yes, many) years now.
I have found being an entrepreneur takes a special kind of courage and it can be an amazing platform to grow one up spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I can tell you story after story of the types of personal growth and expansion experiences that I’ve undergone that would not have presented themselves as dramatically if I had only stayed in the world of the job market.
Now job markets have their place for accelerating personal growth also – especially when they dry up as they are doing now! Our changing times are an opportunity to develop your courage and follow your purpose in developing your business platform to support your soul’s journey in evolving to your true potential.
Now, I want to touch on the biggest dragon that will need to be slain on this journey to fulfillment and empowerment; you may have guessed it, it is the issues that continue to haunt women and society concerning money. Money has been blamed for all manner of “evil”; in fact, people often MIS-QUOTE the Bible saying, “Money is the root of all evil”.
Actually, it said the “love of money” and here love refers to trust in or coveting – it refers to the true root of greed, selfishness and the belief in “not enoughness”. Do you know what this is? It’s FEAR – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality. Fear is the root of the perception of evil. Fear of lack, to be more specific and this lack covers everything from lack of love, security and even self-esteem – three fundamental human ego needs. I’m listening to an audiobook called, “Unleashing the Soul of Money” by Lynne Twist. The Universe always brings to me just what I need to explore and to solidify a lesson I’m undergoing.
In recent weeks, I have received many insights into my relationship with money. I’ll share a couple as it relates to the Soul of Money and business. As a young child, I always seemed to easily save and attract money. I never had fear about it; I just assumed I would have lots of it. I had a teenage experience however, that was full of drama, and ultimately, I made a decision; I created a paradigm that was based on a FEAR that money would not be there for me when I needed it.
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Tags: Career Transition, confident women, Self-Esteem, women empowerment, women in business
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Monday, August 30th, 2010
 Confidence is something that is invaluable in my life and business. I was an eye surgeon and entrepreneur for a long time, though confidence, true core confidence and a healthy self-image was not something that I actually possessed despite outward appearances.
I had bought into the lie that if I worked really hard, ignored my needs and just pressed on into the world of academics and achievement that I would feel good about myself, have plenty of confidence and happiness and live happily ever after.
Well, apparently this fairy tale lives on as I look around me and see women knocking themselves out and getting sick physically and emotionally from burnout and stress. I know men do this also, yet I’m specifically addressing women here.
Now that I’ve taken the time to go inside and learn how to eliminate the blind spots that were distorting my own self-image and limiting my true potential for business success, happy relationships and good health, I can see more clearly how to acquire the vision for my life that I always hoped for.
Now don’t misunderstand me, business and professional success is quite important to me, but now that I “know who I am” instead of believing the media and societal nonsense that there is something wrong with me or that I am deficient in who I am in some way, I can relax and have more energy and space to be my authentic self.
This authentic self, I call it the “Magnificent Me”, is separate from the sense of “self” that we form in our brains, the mental construct of “who we think we are” – The Mental Me. Science is now finally beginning to venture into this murky territory. It is not a black and white conclusion if examined like a math formula, yet the more we come to understand how our brain/mind create these identity stories, the more empowered we can be especially as women.
I find that we as women carry an over abundance of self-deprecation. We are constantly self-rejecting, rejection others, comparing, judgment and over doing. Men have far more testosterone than we do and can get away with over working more easily. When we over indulge in work and then turn around and try to seek love and approval by pleasing everyone but ourselves, our sexy, playful parts get neglected and we turn into “dull girls” (no offense ladies, “dull women” is just fine also).
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Tags: confident women, Feminine Power, Self-Esteem, Stay Healthy, Valencia Ray, women in business
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Sunday, August 15th, 2010
 Money and career success in general impacts our relationships, our lifestyles and even our health. All around us the workplace and business landscape is shifting. Being a former eye surgeon, I know what it means to invest a lot of time and effort at learning a skill yet, nowadays, there is no profession that is immune from change.
Job transition and entrepreneurship rates are rising rapidly, and depending on your perspective, this can be a “good” or “bad” thing. One thing is for sure – if you want to successfully navigate our changing times with your physical and financial health intact, you will need to consider opening your mind and become aware of what FEAR is – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality.
I’m referring to psychological fear. When I wrote my book Empower Up and Play Big which introduces new cutting-edge brain science and practical ways to apply it into our everyday lives, it occurred to me that based on the way our brain works, if we are unaware of managing our attention, it is all to easy to create “stories” of fear of success of fear of failure.
These terms are tossed around loosely and often without much consideration as to what they really mean. From a practical point of view of learning how to “breakthrough fear”, I think it’s important to define what is the root issue in the first place. Fear of failure and success break down into the fear that there is a threat to either our sense of security, love or self-esteem.
If you are familiar with the chakra system of integrative health, you will understand that these are issues in the first three chakra levels, and even if you are not familiar you can still understand the point here, so stay with me. If these two fears are related to these three human needs, how do they play out? In essence “Fear of Failure or Success” show up in our lives as:
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Tags: Breakthrough Fear, Career Transition, confident women, Money and Career, Self-Esteem, The Confidence Doc, Valencia Ray
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
 It takes confidence to go out and network with people to build your business. Remember that confidence nor courage mean the absence of fear; no, you can have “fear” and go ahead and do what you need to do anyway.
If networking is new for you, or a skill that you never took the time to develop with intention, like anything else that is new and involves putting yourself out there, it can be intimidating at first.
Remember that growth is often preceded by discomfort; however, it does not have to be painful. Excitement can be uncomfortable also, so it just depends on how you are focusing – focusing on fear or confidence?
Are you expecting the best from yourself and others or fearing rejection? Even rejection is a mindset issue. Rejection can actually be like “water off a duck’s back” as long as you don’t take it personally or tie your sense of self-worth to needing the approval from others.
It just depends on the story you tell yourself ABOUT yourself and the meaning you give to the word “no”. This all being said, our attitude about “rugged individualism” needs to be evolved and updated if you are going to succeed in this new environment we are all finding ourselves in.
I think it is great to have motivation to step out of our box and out of our comfort zone to build our confidence. It also illustrates why it is so important to understand that our beliefs and thoughts need to be flexible and fluid if we are to live to our highest levels of possibility.
Just because something use to work, does not mean it still will today. I like the motto, “I believe what I believe – until I change my mind”. Your behavior and beliefs are not “just the way you are” – no it’s just the way you are behaving or being due to your thinking and feeling, i.e. beliefs. You have permission to change – if you give it to yourself.
While I think our times dictate development of our individual self, our boundaries and talents, it is a paradigm that includes meeting our own needs to grow first, SO THAT we are healthier and self-fulfilled in our service to others. It is important to nurture and grow ourselves as we serve others; the day of the doormat is also over.
If you continue to be a doormat to the neglect of managing your own energy, you are risking the development of disease in your body. This may sound extreme, but it is very real when you understand the mind-body connection and health. It is important to authentically connect with others and develop relationships, not just call up people when you need something.
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Tags: Breakthrough Fear, Confidence, Networking, Self-Image, Women and Empowerment, women in business
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Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
 Law of Attraction was presented to the masses of people popularly via the movie “The Secret”. I know this movie often receives a lot of criticism, however I’m glad that it opened the doors to the conversation of our role in co-creation. Of course the Law of Attraction is not simply “positive thinking”.
It is also not about becoming paranoid if you have a negative thought. (For the record, negative and positive are relative terms of judgment). The idea of positive thinking is not new, as there were many books written about it even decades ago.
It is very important to realize though that your thoughts do absolutely contribute to the “reality” that you experience and this is now science. If this still sounds like “woo-woo” to you, I have to tell you that you simply don’t know what you don’t know. In business and life, if you can make your life easier and more enjoyable and on purpose, why not learn how to do so? One of the main missing ingredients though is the energy of feelings.
You see feelings carry far more magnetic and electrical energy than thought alone. It acts as the glue that wires thought into the body’s nervous system and thus, cellular memory. Once we wire our brain, either with strong emotional response or through repetition, it goes into the subconscious mind. This is when you go on autopilot as far as the action or behavior that is wired is concerned.
This is fine if you like the response and it serves to help you experience your hearts desire. If you have all of the love, joy, peace and abundance you desire great – though we all know that circumstances in business and life are constantly changing.
So if your current situation is not expanding you to your next level of purposeful evolution, you may want to consider the following keys as you consciously intend to use the Law of Attraction to affect change. This list is not intended to be inclusive; I just want to point out 3 important yet common mistakes that are made when attempting to consciously shift in areas of your business or personal life.
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Tags: Career Transition, confidence women, Law of Attraction, Self-Esteem, women empowerment, women in business
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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
 Self-image is one of those words that if you pay attention, stirs up a lot of discomfort for most women. When I talk about “low self-image”, it stirs up avoidance for many because it is one of those words that unconsciously triggers embarrassment because of the stories we connect to admitting it.
This can actually be a trap, because since we are so conditioned to reject ourselves, especially women, if we refuse to look at our feelings honestly we will never be able to release the stories about our self-image that are holding us back.
They are only stories, as there is really nothing “wrong” with you. What you think and what you do, is not the same as WHO you ARE. At our core, our Authentic Self is “powerful beyond measure”. Unfortunately, if we don’t peel away the “cataracts of the soul” as I like to call them, these stories, we will stay blinded to our true potential and we will tend to continue to believe that we can’t be as successful as we could be.
I am now free of the identity story that “something is wrong with me” or that I am not “good enough”. I suffered through life unnecessarily believing this for most of my adult life. Now that I’m free of it, it is much easier for me to change, take risks and have the confidence to throw off the opinions of others – just think about it a moment.
As women, we are bombarded with comparison of ourselves to other’s standard very early in our childhood and it only gets worse as adults. The media is constantly telling you to change something about yourself and it profits greatly off of our insecurities. Men of course, are not conditioned in these ways to reject themselves.
Just notice the ratio of the references to the image or self-esteem of men compared to women as it relates to the need to “improve” something and you will see implied deficiencies in women far, far exceed those made for men. What is self-image and why does it matter in business? We cannot rise above our self-image and stay there in peace.
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Tags: Confidence and Self-Esteem, Self-Esteem, Self-Image, women empowerment, women in business
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Monday, July 5th, 2010
 Career and business is the vehicle by which money flows into our life for the majority of people. You can find people who work 80-hour weeks, two jobs and may even beg, borrow or steal to get it. Here’s the essential question; does money make you do it?
It’s like the old Flip Wilson comedian who use to say “The devil made me do it” (by the way, devil is “lived” spelled backwards which is the way we often think about money in the first place). Money is often at the root of marital problems, particularly when there’s a shortage of it, social status and quality of healthcare and lifestyle.
People are blatantly in a love-hate relationship with it and to the degree that you are unaware of your unconscious beliefs about money; you can sabotage your business and relationships success as well as run your health into the ground. The idea that money is “bad” is one reason why many women entrepreneurs struggle with achieving the level of business success they desire, yet they really want to have more money to provide for their families and yes, go shopping without getting into debt. Why is this? How did money get blamed for what we choose to do with it?
Notice the keyword here: choice. The catch is, to the degree that you are aware or not is the degree to which you can manage money in a healthy, abundant manner. Money cannot tell you what to do with it, and it cannot “make” you do anything. The issue is that we project our values and beliefs onto it and then use it accordingly. If we believe we are “good people” and money is “bad”, then we will tend to either struggle to attract it, or lose it almost as fast as we receive it.
If we think we are unworthy and that only “lucky” or “good people” have abundance, then we again, will manage to keep money out of our lives. Then there are the “but what will they think about me if I have it” stories. These are linked to our perceptions that others will reject us if we have more than they do. What about power? We are taught that money is power, yet those who secretly feel internally insecure are often the most likely to hide behind their money or strive to maintain “power over” others with their money.
So, money makes them do this, right? I say “wrong”.
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Tags: Career and Money, Confidence, Self-Esteem, Women and Empowerment
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Friday, July 2nd, 2010
 Career Transition seems to be at an all time high and it is only going to continue for many people as the world as we’ve known it falls away and evolves to the next version of expansion. I proactively chose to listen to my inner wisdom and evolve into the next version of my purpose.
You could also call it career or whatever suits you. Just as the Universe continues to evolve and expand, so do we as we are a part of our grand universe. We can either focus on the figment of our imagination known as our past or we can embrace the inevitable change that we are faced with now. Why do I say “inevitable”?
If it has shown up, then it is already here – so it has happened. We suffer when we resist what “is” or refuse to change our perception about these “facts”. Remember, your reality is based on your perception. If you see the glass half full or half empty – you are right!
I have come to make friends with change. Sure there is some change that I only accept and then there is some change that I am outright enthusiastic about. At the very least, my goal is to stay present to what is and while I may have preferences, I do my best not to get attached to having to have things just a certain way or trying to micromanage my world.
This is what surrender is; it does not mean that you have no preference and just take what is handed to you. It just means that you in this moment weigh your options and make a conscious choice in the present moment to shift in your inspired direction. Then, whatever happens, you notice it, and adjust. Inner peace for me is rooted in my awareness that there is more to life than meets the eye.
From a practical point of view, I always thought that I would grow up to meet interesting people, travel the world and be a lifelong learner. Ironically, as I became a young adult and chose the “safe” and socially acceptable path as the physician, little did I know that ultimately it would start to evolve into a career that boxed me in to a limited way of being.
While I enjoyed it very much overall, ultimately, I found myself not growing very much as between being crazy busy and loaded with responsibility, I also was only meeting other ophthalmologists or physicians in my small little niche. My only reprieve was when I went to my husband’s business dinners. Well, ultimately, as my guidance led me on, I listened and followed.
Was it scary? Some days it was. Am I glad I sold my practice and moved on? Yes.
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Tags: Career Transition, Confidence, Self-Esteem, Women and Empowerment
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Monday, June 28th, 2010
 Career transition is quite common considering that many people are searching for more meaning in what they do, or by sheer necessity, they have to make some hard choices. Why are they so hard? Life is really meant to be enjoyed, not one week of drudgery after another.
I heard someone I know say over the weekend how much she dreads Mondays because she hates her job and her boss. This is no way to live. So why is it such a common problem? At the core of the matter is mindset. We don’t know what we even want as our soul’s desire is often buried under a ton of “shoulds”.
Do you know what you really want? Have you even asked yourself this question? I truly understand where this fear comes from as I have had to muster up lots of courage over the years to arrive to where I am in life and that is still constantly changing. My secret?
I felt the fear and moved on through it, while at the same time dealing with the stories that were creating the feelings in the first place. I’ve learned to make friends with change and feelings. I also discovered that there is a little known secret to how thoughts, feelings and emotions wire our brains and our nervous system.
Yes, we are “spiritual beings” having a human experience, yet if you don’t understand the practical implications of how to manage the greatest “supercomputer” on the planet – your own brain and mind – your spiritual power cannot manifest into form – at least not the form you want.
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Tags: Career Transition, Confidence, Money and Career, Self-Esteem, Women and Empowerment
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Monday, June 14th, 2010
 Career transition has money and career on many women’s minds lately. Since many women are sensing the change in the air, I’ve heard several comments about using this time of workplace instability to “find your bliss”.
What I’ve noticed is that often it is believed that if you “just do what you love”, you will be successful and your hobby will morph into a business that can take the place of your job. It would be nice if all we had to do were “build it and they will come”.
Nowadays, this is not even the case and what is really not likely to happen is that you will suddenly find yourself with a thriving business by simply following your bliss. No, what you are going to have to do is have a vision and a plan in place to put structure to your bliss so that it can take form in the marketplace.
This I know for sure, as I currently am following my bliss and I’ve had to take lots of action to turn it into a business. When I was a practicing physician opening a brick and mortar office it was obvious. Starting an online business or building a speaking or coaching business is no different in that you still have to know where you want to go and put structure around your ideas to bring it into manifestation.
If you do not, your bliss is going to stay a hobby. It is easy for people to get confused when they hear already successful people say things like “don’t worry about the money, just do your bliss” and assume that the well known successful one just became that way by showing up. If it were that simple everyone would just follow their bliss and watch the employees, programs, education and training and all other support just show up.
While I would not suggest you ever “worry” about money, (it’s a great way to stay broke or stress out trying to get and hang on to it – worry is a form of lack consciousness), the truth is, you are going to have to take action and do some planning. So, what are some things you need to consider as you consider leaving that job you hate or if you have been laid off?
Here are some things I did as I decided to continue to grow and move on to my next career adventure:
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Tags: Career Transition, Confidence, Follow your bliss, Life Purpose, Money and Career, Women and money
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Women owned businesses have been the fastest growing segment of new start up entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m glad to see this as I’ve been a professional and an entrepreneur for many, (yes, many) years now.
