Join the 30-Day Blog Challenge!
Join Me with Soft Sell Marketers Association!
Connect on Facebook
Spark It With Danielle LaPorte
Connect on Facebook @ Networked Blogs
Dreamhost Green Web Hosting
CAT | Writing
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”
–Marcel Proust
What makes you “see with new eyes?” In late June, I returned home from a week-long retreat just a short couple of hours’ drive from home.The retreat, in a beautiful, sacred space, was filled with radiant and divine people. It was a magical time out of time.
(And did you know that yesterday, July 25, was Day Out of Time Day, courtesy of the 13 moons, Mayan calendar?)
So from this June 2010 time out of time retreat, with people I’d never met, and yet who became like long-lost family to me, I hesitantly returned to my ordinary reality. But I returned with new eyes that saw the blessings in my life for what they were: true gifts of support in every way.
Somehow when I returned to our cozy house and expansive, lush garden, I saw what had been there all along in a totally fresh, and yes, radiant, way. Where we’ve lived, rooted, for more than two decades, shines with a renewed vigor and magic, visible through my newly polished eyes. I said, while on the retreat, that I lived in a Shangri La, although in the middle of urban Chicago. When I came home, that is indeed what I experienced.
In seeing with new eyes, I strive for maintaining consciousness, for appreciating the blessings, for stepping into each day as a gift. It is easy to appreciate. What is harder, at least for me, is to take the mindful action steps necessary to expand my presence within this holy, sacred space of my life.
Several weeks after my return from the retreat, we (husby, teenage son, et moi) ventured to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a preserved segment of Mother Earth tucked in between heavy smokestack industries on both sides. Lake Michigan was still cold, but the day was hot enough that the chill felt refreshing. I spied hawk flying over the beach twice, bent on some mission. The smell of pine tickled my nose as we walked along hot sands to the dune succession trail boardwalk through the preserved wild lands inland from the beach.
Counting my years along the shores of Lake Michigan, I realize it has held my heart for more than three decades, as I bask still in her flowing and liquid magic, a grateful acolyte to these central waters of Mother Earth.
I’d love to hear how you are seeing with new eyes. Take a look into your own life, your own backyard or treasure closet. What do you see when you look with new eyes? Where can you gain renewed energies from looking anew at what is familiar?
My friend and mentor Susan Castle is leading another magnificent, eye-opening retreat, this time within the sacred space of Sedona, Arizona. I’ll be there. I’d love to have you along! Retreat spaces are very limited. To learn about Susan and this opportunity for learning to “see with new eyes,” I invite you to step into her circle. Click here to learn more.
I wish you Abundant Blessings that are available when you are willing to see with new eyes.
Warmest regards to you,
from Bobbye Middendorf,
the Write Synergies Guru
Intent — pure, heart-based intent, when it’s for the highest good of all — is the royal road, the holy, the divine, the seat of power and energy. Seeing intent in action is to experience the miracles of synchronicities and synergies.
Intent, when it’s put in writing as is my wont, can be the engine that drives momentum and action in the world. Yet with words from the heart, such intent remains connected with the higher source, the sacred. In this way, with the power of intent, the creation and the connection to the audience together embrace the greater character of the sacred. Words on the page can create sacred space if placed with intent. That, at least, is my intention.
Write synergies, powered with intent for the highest good, for the healing of Gaia, Mother Earth, becomes sacred intent for bridging the gulf between our creation-from-the-heart and the people the creation is here to serve, those for whom it is our contribution. Such writing with intent becomes the bridge of light between creation and community. As such, it build synergies.
When I came into the Dreams Alive circle years ago, I didn’t have any inkling that I would be so transformed so many years later. These sacred synergies and the realization of their deeper implications will likely be a theme for a good long time.
Lake Geneva, WI — Just across the Wisconsin border from the greater Chicago area’s suburbs, the spring-fed Lake Geneva beckons summer vacationers into a delicious playground amid idyllic small towns and groves of 100-year-old trees. Dotted along its 26-mile circumference, resorts, summer homes, conference centers and camps abound. A public path circles the lake, so that all can enjoy its pleasures close-up.
On June 22, I was heading into the third night of my retreat with the Dreams Alive and Relax-Online partners, Paul Bauer and Susan Castle, along with their Hawaiian friend and co-leader, Keahi. We convened a sacred circle of like-hearted fellow-travelers on a path of growing ourselves, our consciousness, and our ability to flow from the heart with whatever life tosses in our direction. (Think curve balls.)
On Solstice Monday morning, three of our heart-full friends departed, making our intimate group even more so. During the week-long retreat, I entered deeply into the magic of the moment, a serene setting and powerful teachers moving internal energies that have been stuck seemingly for lifetimes.
I’ve gotten myself off schedule for the blog challenge. I realize that I didn’t even finish editing the post that I automatically posted on Father’s Day. I cringed when I saw that it had published. “Oops,” I thought.
Lesson: Make sure you’ve completely cleared /cleaned the post before you schedule it!
Trying to put this retreat experience into words is a challenge and beyond. The transformations are so profound that to write about them somehow diminishes the power in the moment. Words that embody the essence of the experience simply can’t do it justice.
For pragmatic business people, doing personal growth and development work at deep levels like this is both crucial and yet seemingly impossible. It appears to be the opposite of practical.
Yet I suggest that this process of finding the essence of your life purpose and clearing the obstacles that have kept you from living fully into that purpose is among the most practical and foundational work imaginable. It opens the door for the right business relationships to grow from the rooted heart of who you are and why you are here.
The retreat was all-consuming for seven delicious days. The internet connection was something that, if used at all, had to be mindfully approached. Although it was available, it was not convenient and ever-present.
So, I got off track. I didn’t manage to pre-write the posts either. This is coming to you a week after I wrote it. I want to express my appreciation to each of you for your love and support.
From my heart,
Bobbye Middendorf
The Write Synergies Guru
Writing has been my lifetime path, vocation, avocation, and the way I’ve processed everything that happens. While not everyone is on this same path, I love the idea of living a legacy, and in this case, leaving a legacy with your words. Sure, actions speak louder than. But you can create things with words that will live in a different way.
[Side note #1: What I talk about here is writing. I save a draft of the post and see that my daughter has left me a mother's day video link. So, yes. You can use this same process if you record audio or video, if those are your chosen forms. Or do all of it. The technology is here to serve you, not vice versa!]
For mothers, fathers, and others who want to begin to write a legacy, I suggest following five simple steps. Don’t make it hard for yourself. Give yourself credit for every little bit. Be kind to yourself in this, and it will show up in all sorts of unexpected ways and places.
Your regular practice will enhance your results. It will show you things from a different perspective as well as creating your legacy in writing. If you can do five minutes daily, great. If longer, great. If not daily, great. This is an open-handed, open-hearted, and flexible companion. It’s not one more thing to do, then beat yourself up for not doing.
[Side note #2: OK, if you have been with us in the #blog30 challenge, you KNOW the power of the daily practice. Need I say more? And maybe your blog IS part of your written legacy. That is fine. You don't have to have something extra. Well, maybe you do, but don't beat yourself up about it. Just write that little something extra to give the kids the context.]
1 Love the process.
You’re doing this for love. Start with that. Always start with that, no matter what you write (or film or record or dance or cook). Center yourself in the love you have for who you are writing to. Love yourself as you write, and love the loved ones who are the intended recipients of your legacy. Even if they are people you have never met.
2 Wake up.
It helps to be fully present in your body and with yourself. Make a commitment to follow through. Set your intention to record some small bit of your life — times, work, emotions, thoughts, questions, answers — in this way. Give it your full attention when you are doing it. Bring your body with you into the process.
3 Observe.
Start wherever you are. It often helps to get grounded in the physical world as part of your practice. Like the incomparable Geoff Hoff advised recently, bring in details from all your senses to make the surrounding environment come alive. Experience my kitchen and the Minneola, above. That’s just one small example.
4 Record.
Just write. Write with your mind on what you are doing. Write with love. Write with exquisite detail. Write your questions. Write the answers to questions not even asked yet. Write your dreams – daydreams, night dreams, siesta dreams. Even if you don’t know where you are going with the words or exactly what you want to say, if you approach it with love in your heart, awareness in your mind, full senses attuned to your environment, and gratitude for the process, no matter what specific words you say, your intentions will shine through with clarity.
5 Cherish with gratitude.
Bring a full heart to the process and express gratitude for every step, every nuance. Make it gratitude a constant companion on your journey.
10
Marketing According to Tolkien
5 Comments | Posted by Bobbye in Synergies, Writing, marketing
I originally called this post “Writing and Weaving Your Marketing Bridge,” because that follows the theme of several of my posts so far during this 30 day blogging challenge. Instead, I want to give credit to the source of my inspiration. This is also a post in the occasional series “Wisdom from unexpected places.”
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 
To get there, the men, hobbits, and a dwarf (along with the elf in the Fellowship) must cross a cold and rushing river on two strands of hithlain, the uncanny strong rope woven from all that is beautiful and loved by the elves.
Not sure I could have done it! But picture that bridge of two thin ropes, seeming not much stronger than a spider’s gossamer, created with the immense love reflected in the quote below.
More wisdom from unexpected places, something I want to share from this book. Consider this quote, spoken of the elvish cloaks, gifts to the Fellowship travelers, “Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”
That is what to aim for, writing and weaving your heart and light into the message that will make the connection between your creation and your community. It may be as thin as the elvish rope, but it is made strong from the essence of your heart woven into the words.
That’s marketing, and it’s using words to weave the bridge out of all that you love. It’s at the heart of Write Synergies: The Words that Bring Heart to Your Marketing and Soul to Your Business. These are the Write Synergies you need to generate results, (communications, connections) greater than the sum of the parts.
Wouldn’t writing from the heart be helpful here with this marketing task? And is there a way to make writing bigger, expansive enough to encompass these Cs?
*Your Creation
*Your Commitment
*Your Community
*Your Connections
*Your Communications
*Your Content
Is there a way to put some juice into the words, to get results that are bigger than just word + word, greater than the sum of the parts?
Tomorrow: You do what you do, you do what is yours to do. But how do you put your particular gifts and magic and greatness into the words to build that bridge?
“Love is the continuous birth of creativity within and between us.”
–John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
On the near side of the bridge, where you are looking across and seeing your circle or community across the gap of where the bridge needs to be, there with you, on your side of the bridge, is your creation.
How is it doing? How is your book coming? How is your business thriving? Are the paintings being painted? Are you teaching the classes, connecting with the clients, creating from the heart?
Does your creation have your full commitment behind it?
Yes, it’s two more Cs for the near side of the bridge. Are you creating your creation, your creative project? And are you fully committed to creating it and imbuing it fully with your gifts?
Fully committing to your creation means nurturing it with love, with passion, and with dogged determination sometimes.
I just watched The Road
Somehow the sense of commitment to his child, even in the midst of a flat, colorless and sometimes horrific world, is the level of commitment that we too are called to bring to our creations.
We create out of love, because creation is the nature of love. We commit to create, then we love and nurture our creation into manifestation. The act of creation strengthens us, as creators. It strengthens our community. It draws forth the creation itself, as it sings into the world something new.
Have you measured your commitment to your creation today?
“I’d really rather just be doing the work that is mine to do, practicing my art or craft or therapy or career or profession. What is all this about marketing?!”
I’ve heard variations on this phrase for years — starting with the authors I worked with at the publishing company that employed me. They saw marketing, at best, as a necessary evil.
Now that I’m a free agent, hiring out to write and market and coach and strategize with and for my clients, I regularly come across writers, artists, healers, coaches, therapists, designers, attorneys, entrepreneurs, and even bankers who deeply dislike (hate?!) marketing. They see it, at best, as a necessary evil.
These are perfectly capable people who seem baffled when it comes to marketing. They tap fearfully into the seemingly endless supply of variations on “marketing.” There’s corporate marketing, database marketing, SEO marketing, LOA marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, MBA marketing, marketing trends, marketing research, marketing segmentation, branding, Superbowl marketing, direct response marketing, B-to-B marketing, B-to-C marketing, and we haven’t even touched advertising or PR, which might be included if you talk about integrated marketing or its longer-winded cousin, integrated marketing communications.
Are you intimidated yet? Are your palms sweating? Is fight or flight kicking in? Maybe this is why you hate marketing. Where are you in all this foreign-sounding gibberish? Where is your heart? Where is your gift? Where, even, are your people?
At the most fundamental level, for Conscious Creators, soul-preneurs, world-changers, visionaries, healers, and others in the soft sell marketing community, it really is all about your people. It’s about you and your community and connecting the two. We can talk about marketing without even going past the letter “C.”
Marketing is all about your Community. You can call it your circle, your clients, your customers, or even your audience. You can even go past “C” and call it your tribe. It’s all about your people. Well, what about them?
Marketing is all about Connecting. Connecting is a two-way process. You connect with them, and they connect with you. How do you connect? From my perspective as The Write Synergies Guru, I’m partial to making the connections via words.
But connections come in every sensory variety. Music connects. Visuals connect. Paintings. Sculpture. Movies. Architecture. Movement connects. The healing touch of massage therapy connects. Even the tantalizing smells from your local cafe-bakery make a connection.
Marketing = Connecting + Communicating. So you make this connection, and from this connection you communicate. As with connecting, above, all your senses have their ways of communicating. But unless you’re right in front of the bakery or the painting or on the massage chair, the actual connection is tough to maintain. Distance isn’t a friend for these ways of communicating.
That’s why words as a medium (though imperfect) can paint the sensory details in a way that makes the communications possible over long distances and across time and space. Words can connect. Words can bring alive the connections across the world.
Words may be stories (Jeanne Kolenda is a master at stories with a purpose.) or metaphors. Words may be how-to or checklists. Words make up the books, the info products, the blog posts, web sites, brochures, business cards, press releases and even the 140 character tweets that are the currency of our communications.
Words weave the background texts of our lives. Words, both spoken and written, are how we communicate!
You mean marketing is just about talking to people? In the broadest sense, yes. That’s exactly what marketing is.
Connect with your Community by Communicating your Content. We prefer, all things being equal, to do business with people we know, like, and trust. How, in this digital marketplace, do we learn to know, like, and trust strangers?
The bakery cannot communicate its smell across the city to connect with bread-lovers in another neighborhood. But our words, imbued with meaning, with the content of our expertise, shared appropriately and clearly, focused on helping our people address whatever issue they face, packaged in a way to be useful, our words can communicate valuable content.
Marketing is that remarkable bridge, weaving together you, your heart, your creation. It weaves these “Cs” of Community, Connection, Communication, and Content into your message and beams it to your people in a way that they can hear it, can take it in, can process it. Suddenly the two-way span back and forth across your bridge is open.
They walk across the bridge to you. You meet them on this bridge constructed out of words that communicate your content and connect with your community.
4
Build a Bridge from Your Vision to Your Tribe
12 Comments | Posted by Bobbye in Tribe-Building, Writing
How do you connect your venture, creation, business, project, or book — your brainchild — to your perfect audience, tribe, circle, or community?
You need a bridge. You need a strong bridge that weaves together:
~the heart of your vision, its benefits, how it will change the corner of the world you are intending to change.
~the authenticity of your voice, the integrity of your heart, the power of your soul manifesting through your intended creation and its message.
~the clear expression of how you can solve the problems or help your people overcome the challenges or deal with the issues you address.
~the longings and yearnings of those people who can only hear it from you — your tribe, your community, your readers, your clients.
~the words that create the connections, the written words that weave all these elements together so that all the pieces stand together as something brand new and stronger than any one of the items alone — i.e., synergies.
You can build the bridge and chart the path across the gap between your vision and your tribe. And sometimes it’s nice to have a guide to show you the way.
I call myself The Write Synergies Guru. Why guru? I made it up, though I have a genuine, if tenuous and academic, South Asian connection. I took Sanskrit at the University of Chicago for three years.
So did I choose this name just because of a connection with one of the most ancient, sacred languages?
For me, the key is in the term “sacred.” Because the work I do involves creating a sacred vessel around my clients and our conversations. Drawing from the deep and sacred roots of Sanskrit, I place myself firmly in a lineage of teachers whose work touches on the deep inner fire. Drawing out the soul of a client or their project and sharing it in words is a sacred trust.
I have taken “guru” as part of my public persona, not to attract mindless followers, but rather to invite into my circle and sacred space mindful, visionary people who are committed to becoming ever-strengthened in their own mindfulness, awareness, and consciousness. In essence, those who want to become their own gurus and their own best teachers, reaching out to exactly who or what they need as a resource in any given moment. They themselves become the sacred vessel.
But have I erred in taking this name? After all, many so-called gurus seem to have earned the bad rap they mostly receive these days. Guru means teacher in Sanskrit, or revered one, and that “revered” part is probably where things get dicey. Teacher, by itself, is pretty innocuous as a title, even in Sanskrit. That doesn’t give the term “guru” a free ride necessarily. I guess you just have to be mindful and discerning in choosing the gurus you hang with.
On being your own Guru
The following quote gets at the essence of my point: “You are your own teacher,” Mr. Gumucio said he was told. “You are responsible for your own experience.” This quote came from the New York Times story at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/fashion/25yoga.html?ref=style via a twitter reference by @zenpeacekeeper.
That quote, “You are your own teacher…You are responsible for your own experience,” is really at the root of being your own guru. It means being aware and mindful of your own experiences and what you need.
So in creating this post, I was intrigued to find my good friend Michael Toms at New Dimensions Radio has a show on exactly this topic: Michael has interviewed Jeff Brown taking about “finding your own inner guru.” You can check out the replay at http://www.newdimensions.org/flagship/3340/jeff-brown-finding-your-own-inner-guru/source: (It’s free till June 9. After that. it’s just $1.99 for an MP3.) I am a donating member of the New Dimensions Global Broadcasting Council. Your support can help keep this national treasure of recorded wisdom going.
I admit it. I’m a book person. (Yearbooks in school started my publishing journey. Then working in corporate book publishing for ~20 years. Then freelancing for a variety of publishers, ghostwriting books, marketing books, writing press releases for books, helping people with web sites about books, coaching people about their books… Finally focusing on creating my own books. And all the while reading and buying still more books. Maybe lightening my load soon when I get my new iPad. We’ll see…)
In fact, I may be a book-a-holic. Yes. There it is. Out there in public. One of my “drugs of choice” is books. My husband despairs of my book piles that threaten to topple over. Our house my not really be sturdy enough to house my existing library. (Clued in about this by those funny cracks that seem to keep appearing…)
During my childhood, summer was a time to fall deeply into books. I’ve also been an avid re-reader, revisiting stories that resonated with me time and again. “So many books, so little time,” is a phrase that was tailor made for me. How about you?
Simultaneously to reading comes the writing. Or vice versa. In fact, there are real synergies that grow in a process of reading and writing. Each one feeds off the other.
Many people are interested in bringing more ease and authenticity into their writing. They long to be purposeful with their messages about their businesses and projects and creations and ventures. One of the ways to find your authentic voice is to practice writing, ideally in a public sphere like this blogging challenge, where you will be able to tap into a zeitgeist and community of like-minded others and to receive feedback. You’ll be both reader and writer here.
In addition to writing, reading can be a powerful way to embrace and test your writing. One summer, I went through the letters of Virginia Woolf — volume after volume. Yes, that summer my friends from college received letters from me that unconsciously picked up the tone and flavor of VW’s letters. You can’t help but learn from your reading. It’s what nourishes your soul and heart and voice and mind.
So I want to acknowledge and thank the folks at Flashlight Worthy Books on Twitter as @flwbooks for sharing this link. It inspired my blog post (as books are wont to do) and offers windows to “see with fresh eyes” in ways to rethink and revisit your own writing process.
“7 Great Titles for a Writer Digging for Inspiration”
And welcome to the second 30 day blogging challenge for 2010. Follow the fun on Twitter at #blog30.
