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Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
What Entrepreneurs Know About Abundance
Welcome back!
“Entrepreneurship is the recognition and pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources you currently control, with confidence that you can succeed, with the flexibility to change course as necessary, and with the will to rebound from setbacks.”
Bob Reiss
Do you want to create abundance in your life? The single best strategy to do that is to become an entrepreneur. Why? Because the mindset and actions of entrepreneurs are the same mindset and actions that produce abundance.
“Entrepreneur” is one of those umbrella terms that can cover a range of meanings. In essence, an entrepreneur wants more out of life and is willing to do what it takes to have it. An entrepreneur is a dreamer, but dreamers are not always entrepreneurs. The primary skill of the entrepreneur is to imagine what doesn’t now exist, and to take actions to create it.
“Entrepreneurs are always up to something.”
Joel Roberts
It’s true. Entrepreneurs are always “up to something.” Talk with an entrepreneur and you will hear some big plan, some bold idea, some powerful dream to create something that doesn’t currently exist.
“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
Peter F. Drucker
Compare someone who buys lotto tickets each week with the hope of striking it rich with the entrepreneur who sets out to create a profitable business. One hopes for an outcome. The other takes action to create an outcome.
Of the two choices, acting to create wealth has vastly greater probability of success than hoping to win a jackpot. Certainly, people do win jackpots, but the odds are miniscule. And the sad result is that many lotto winners end up worse off than they were before winning because they have no idea how to handle the money.
Years ago, there was a TV show called “The Millionaire.” Each week, a rich man sent his assistant out to give a million dollar cashier’s check to someone. The point of the show was to see how the money changed the recipient. It was usually not for the better.
When my adult son first watched the movie, “The Secret,” he objected to one dramatic episode. A boy wants a bicycle. He hopes and dreams for the bicycle and spends time gazing excitedly at a picture of the exact bike he wants. And then he sees the bike in the window of the bicycle shop with a “SOLD” sign on it. The boy becomes upset and gives up hope for the bicycle. After a period of despair, he again focuses his hopes and dreams upon receiving the bicycle. Throughout the entire episode, he does nothing but dream. The episode ends when the child opens the door to find his grandfather with the coveted bike as a present. We last see the boy riding off happily on his new bicycle.
The episode is meant to demonstrate that happy and excited thoughts focused on a desired outcome will result in getting what you want. In the language of “The Secret,” the boy “manifested” his bicycle as a result of his concentrated positive thoughts and feelings.
My son contrasted this story with his own experience. When he was in middle school, he wanted a Go-Kart. We said he could have one if he earned the money for it. So he went out and offered to work for people in the area. He raked leaves, swept driveways, and did other odd jobs. In a short period of time, he earned enough money to buy his Go-Kart. He manifested his Go-Kart as the result of concentrated intention and hard work. He has commented more than once in the years since that we did him a great favor by encouraging him to work to buy his Go-Kart rather than to buy it for him. It taught him that he could have what he wanted by taking focused action to get it.
“Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputations on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”
Victoria Claflin Woodhull
I don’t mean to dispute the possibility that people can manifest what they want to have by concentrated thought. In a world of quantum possibilities, the mind is a powerful creator. I do mean to make the point that entrepreneurs are much more likely to get what they want than dreamers are, because dreamers merely dream, hoping for an outcome. Entrepreneurs act upon their dreams.
So many of the stories addressed to children use magic as a means of manifestation. Fairy godmothers wave magic wands, genies grant wishes, boy wizards recite magic incantations. Children also learn about Santa Claus with his flying reindeer as the great wish fulfiller, a giant rabbit who brings colored eggs and candy, and tooth fairies who exchange baby teeth for cold, hard cash. As a child, I even learned to wish upon the first star I saw at night. I had no similar instruction in how to turn my wishes into reality by creating an action plan.
During elementary school, as a child growing up on Cape Cod, I was involved in a summer children’s theater. I had some small acting roles and did some behind-the-scenes work. During the production of “Peter Pan,” I sat in a theater box to the upper left of the stage and did sound effects. One sound effect was to jingle little bells for Tinkerbell.
In the story, Tinkerbell drinks poison and is dying. Peter Pan calls out to children everywhere to save her life by believing. Peter addresses the audience directly and claims that if there aren’t enough children who believe in fairies, little Tinkerbell will die. At that point, the audience gets involves and wishes Tinkerbell back to life. My part in the dramatic moment was to jingle the bells louder to show that Tinkerbell had been restored by the fervent wishes of the children.
Now, many years after my brief career in theatrical sound effects, I look back on Peter Pan as one more way that the adult world teaches children magical thinking. Maybe it is all part of the wonder of childhood and maybe it is all harmless stuff. But I am not convinced. The common denominator in all of these fantasies is to instill in children the idea that if you only find the right magic spell, the right genie, the right wizard, the right fairy godmother, do the right things to please Santa, then you can have what you want.
Such magical thinking does not end with childhood. When we get older, we can substitute hope in winning the lotto, hitting the jackpot, or buying into the latest biz-op as the way to get rich without doing anything beyond hoping.
“The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and an actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.”
Robert L. Schwartz
In contrast, successful entrepreneurs do what my son did. When they want something, they do something about it. As a result, entrepreneurs are more likely to create wealth than any other group of people.
What is the connection between creating abundance and being an entrepreneur? Both require a similar mindset. At the heart of both is the desire to have more. Abundance is also the direct result of a creative process. Abundance requires focused action toward your dreams rather than a passive hope that someone will leave abundance on your doorstep.
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D., Publisher of “Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter.” http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com
kalinda@abundantlyalivenow.com
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Your ZigZag Path To Success
“Living systems require setbacks to flourish.”
Bob Pratcher
Do you ever get frustrated with your progress? Do you tell yourself that every time you take three steps forward, you then take two steps backward? Do you identify the backwards steps as setbacks and failures?
What if backwards steps are not failures at all? Would it make a difference in how you feel about your efforts if you knew that the pattern of “three-steps forward and two steps back” has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the way that all living systems work? What if going backwards is not a sign of failure, but is absolutely essential to progress?
This is the claim of Socionomics theory, which turns all kinds of conventional wisdom on its head. For example, socionomics claim that people are not in a bad mood because the stock market is down. Socionomics claims the stock market is down because people are in a bad mood. In other words, human emotions create the motion in the stock market, not the other way around.
According to this theory, “Living systems require setbacks to flourish.” If this statement is true, it is a radical reframing of the “three steps forward and two steps back” pattern. It means that your setbacks are not personal failures. When you move three steps forward and two steps back, you are following the essential pattern of the all living systems.
If you read success literature, you will often see setbacks identified as tests of perseverance. The socionomics insight is deeper than this. Your setbacks are not signs of failure, and they don’t occur to test your character. They are simply part of the dominating patterns underlying human systems.
Instead of treating setbacks as personal failures on your part, what difference would it make for you to see setbacks as essential to your success? What if the secret to success is regular setbacks, not because setbacks strengthen your character to persevere, but because growth requires periodic pulling back?
Consider how often pulling back is necessary to gather strength. The archer with the bow needs to pull the arrow back to give it power to move forward. Muscles work only when they are contracted. The contraction of the muscle is the pullback that gives you strength. Martial arts teach pulling back as a way to gather energy. Using the energy of the pullback is the source of power.
Did you see videos of the devastating Southeast Asian tsunami? Before the tsunami wave hit, the water pulled back. Children ran out to gather exposed fish. And then the water crashed back in an enormous wave, swallowing up everyone in its path. The pullback of the water increased the strength of the wave itself.
And so, what if setbacks are not really setbacks? Socionomics identifies “three steps forward and two steps back” as the recurring pattern of all living systems. Why would you be exempt from experiencing the same zigzag pattern?
Abundance is also part of a pattern. Abundance does not come in straight lines. The root meaning of the word “abundance” refers to an overflowing wave. Just as waves ebb and flow, abundance comes in waves, with steps forward and steps backwards.
What would happen if you renamed your setbacks as pullbacks, and saw them as part of the universal process of gathering strength to propel you forward? Not because the setbacks build your character, but because the pullbacks consolidate your energy and gather strength? What difference would it make for you to recognize that both success and abundance follow a zigzag path?
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D., Publisher of “Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter.” http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com
kalinda@abundantlyalivenow.com
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The Diet And Money Double Whammy
“Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.”
Gail Sheehy
If you are like most people, there are two fundamental areas of your life you want to change. You want more money and less weight. Yet, for many of us, our lived reality is the opposite: we have too many pounds and too few dollars. My question for today is: What is the connection between too much weight and too little money?
“You can never be too rich or too thin.”
Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
The Duchess of Windsor-a very rich and very thin woman-once made the comment that “you can never be too rich or too thin.” If this were just the mindset of one woman, her words would be a footnote in history, suitable for trivia games. But her words express the predominant mindset of our era. To be successful-especially for women-you need to be thinner than you are and richer than you are.
Taken together these twin beliefs are a double whammy. They are also a guaranteed recipe for failure. This formula means that you can never be successful, because you can never reach that magical point of “enough.” No matter how thin you are, you can’t be thin enough. And no matter how much money you have, you can’t have enough money.
If you start with the idea that you are neither thin enough nor rich enough, you start with the idea that YOU are deficient. There is something wrong with YOU and you have to fix it.
We live in a therapeutic age and are used to identifying ourselves as problems to be solved. And so, we start out to look for the hidden cause of our problems. When the problems and issues concern money and food, the whole matter becomes a tangled mass of opinions, judgments, false promises, and failed resolutions. How many diets are there? How many ways to make money? And so, determined to fix ourselves once and for all, we look for a solution, resolved to make it work this time.
“I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills. Know what happened? I ate faster.”
Joe E. Lewis
But the diets don’t work and the get-rich-quick schemes don’t work, and so most of us reach the point of being both fatter and poorer than we were when we began. This is not the way it was supposed to work. What happened to getting thinner and richer?
With topics as complicated as money and body weight, I want to focus on a single critical idea as one step toward liberating ourselves from this double whammy of never being thin enough or rich enough.
The root of failure for many of us-no matter what you set out to do-is contained in the belief that whatever you are, whatever you have, whatever you do, it is not enough.
The only way to move beyond this double whammy is to stop trying to solve the problem of what is wrong with you. Instead of trying to lose more weight and make more money, you change your mind about what who you are. Instead of measuring success by measuring body weight and money, you liberate yourself from the idea that YOU can measured by pounds and dollars-or kilos and euros-or any other set of measures. YOU are not measurable.
“No Money Limits” does not refer to an unlimited quantity of money. “No Money Limits” means that you are not limited by money.
Kalinda Rose Stevenson
With this mindset, you stop trying to fix something “wrong” with you, and start to liberate yourself from value judgments determined by limitations. There is a qualitative difference I am attempting to identify here. Your goal is to liberate yourself from the idea that your worthiness can be measured by pounds and dollars. That is the real problem with a statement that you can never be too rich or too thin. It implies that until you reach a point that you cannot reach, you will not be worthy. This is the ultimate no-win situation.
I come from a background of teaching and preaching in churches and teaching in theological seminaries. For many reasons, I don’t do either one any longer. If I could identify one single reason why not is it this: The Church spends too much time telling people what is wrong with them and not enough telling people what is right with them.
I am convinced that what is “wrong” with most people is that they don’t know what is right with them.
I am currently writing a book about the connection between Christian beliefs and money. It is a huge topic and I have many opinions about the matter. Many of us have been taught such confusing messages about money. “Money is evil.” “Money corrupts.” “The rich will never get to heaven.” In fact, money is a tool of human intention, to be used for good or evil, as you intend. But the money itself is innocent.
If you start out on a diet and money-making plan-whatever plans you use-convinced that there is something wrong with you that you have to fix, you are setting yourself up to fail.
“The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you’re off it.”
Jackie Gleason
If you start a diet with the idea that losing weight is going to make you thin enough to be worthy of love-even from yourself-the diet will fail.
If you set out to make money, all the while holding the belief that money is evil, your money-making efforts will fail.
A much better way is to start with the idea that you are already worthy of living an “Abundantly Alive Now!” life, no matter what you weigh and no matter what amount of money you have in the bank.
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
Charles Dickens
This difference goes back to the critical distinction between solving a problem and creating what you love. With the mindset of a creator, you can choose to create a healthy body and more money. The diet plan then becomes a matter of loving yourself beyond the limitations “too much” weight imposes upon you, and your money-making plan becomes a means to liberate you from any limits in your life caused by “not enough” money. Why not choose the self-loving mindset of a creator?
This article was originally published November 7, 2006
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2006-11-07.htm.
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Why Resistance Can Be Your Best Friend, Part II
“Objection is when I say: this doesn’t suit me. Resistance is when I make sure that what doesn’t suit me never happens again.”
Ulrike Meinhof
“Just do it!”! Nike made this imperative its slogan. From a grammatical perspective, “Just do it!” is a complete sentence. What is particularly relevant is that an imperative is a sentence without a clearly defined subject. “You” are the implied subject of the imperative, but “you” are not specifically named.
When it comes to resistance to any type of imperative-especially the orders you give yourself-the identity of the missing “you” is the critical element to decide whether resistance is your best friend or an enemy to overcome.
The truth is that “you” are more than one “you.” There is the conditioned “you” who you does what you are told, wants to please others, and obeys orders. There is another “you.” This “you” is the authentic “You.”
One of the enduring human questions is why people are different. Is it a matter of “nature or nurture.” Are you a simply a product of your genes or your environment? Were you born a blank slate or were you born with innate talents, gifts, and purpose? Or to put it in technological terms: Were you born a blank disc, a preformatted disc, or a preloaded disc?
Although people have argued these questions for generations, it seems overwhelmingly likely that each of us is a combination of genes and experiences. Most parents will tell you that children demonstrate unique temperaments and personalities, even before birth. To continue the technological analogy: Each of us was born a preformatted disc rather than a blank disc or a disc with the content already preloaded.
What happens when you try to play a disc with the wrong format for your player? It won’t play. I have an old CD player. Sometimes, it won’t handle CDs recorded with newer technology. The CD player and the CD are simply not a match.
And this is the problem with imperatives such “”Just do it!” The real question is: Which “you” is being addressed? It is the authentic “You” or is it the conditioned “you”? who does what you are told? And which “you” is giving the order?
These distinctions might seem a bit complicated to sort out, but that is exactly the point. It’s one thing to resist when someone else tells you to “”Just do it!” It’s when you are telling yourself to “Just do it!” that the situation gets tricky.
This when it is critical to ask which “you” is giving this order. Are you telling yourself to “Just do it!” because the “you” who wants to please thinks you “should” or because your authentic self chooses to “Just do it!”
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”
Carl Gustav Jung
How can you tell the difference? The answer is: Resistance. Resistance to an imperative is a clear sign that your authentic “You” is refusing to do what your obedient “you” insists that you “should” do.
Let’s get specific. Let’s say that you decide to invest in real estate. You go to seminars, you buy courses, and you intend to get started-but you never do it. You tell yourself, “I’m too busy,” “I don’t know how,” “I don’t have enough money.” You tell yourself to “Just do it!”, but you don’t do it. What is going on here?
Here are two questions to help you determine whether your resistance is your best friend or your worst enemy. I have asked these questions to many people-students, coaching clients, friends, even myself-and have seen people discover amazing insights that move them beyond their own resistance to doing what they claimed they wanted to do.
In this example, the first question asks: “Why SHOULD I invest in real estate?”
You write down: “I SHOULD invest in real estate because…….
And then you write down all of the reasons why you SHOULD “Just do it!”
After you have written down as many reasons as you can why you SHOULD invest in real estate, you are ready for the second question.
The second question asks: Why do I REFUSE to invest in real estate?
You write down: “I REFUSE to invest in real state because……
And then you write down all of the reason why you REFUSE to “Just do it!”
Whether it is investing in real estate, writing a book, losing 25 pounds, learning skydiving, or anything you claim that you want to do, these two questions are extraordinarily powerful tools to get to the root of resistance.
Everyone can always answer the first question about why they “should.” When it comes to the second question, most people protest. They say, “I am not refusing to do this.” They always have good reasons why “I can’t,” but are very reluctant to even consider that the real problem is “I won’t.”
But if you ask this question-really ask it-and probe until you find the answer, at some point you will discover that the real reason you are not doing whatever you claim you want to do is that your authentic self is refusing to do it. Somehow, this thing that you are commanding yourself to do feels like a violation of your authentic self.
“The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
And this is why resistance is often your best friend. Resistance is the guerrilla tactic of the authentic “You.” The real you-the authentic “You”-is rebelling against doing what you “should.” Somehow, doing this thing that the conditioned “you” is trying to force yourself to do is incongruent with the real “You.”
Resistance is the result of a conflict between “I should” and “I refuse.” And this is where we return to the theme in Part I. Resistance avoids the pitch, whether the pitch comes from someone else or whether it comes from your conditioned self. In either case, the imperative to “Just do it!” violates the authentic “You.”
When prodded and pushed to do what it does not choose to do, the authentic “You” turns into a two-year old having a tantrum. The more the authentic “You” is pushed to do what it does not choose to do, the more resistant “You” become to doing it.
“Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.”
William Hazlitt
The fact is, “You” will not resist an action that is consistent with your own values, gifts, talents, and sense of purpose. “You” will resist when you are being pushed to do what “You” don’t truly choose to do. And this is the reason why resistance can be your best friend. Resistance lets you know when “You”-the authentic “You”-is missing from the imperative.
This article was originally published October 31, 2006
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2006-10-31.htm.
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http://www.nomoneylimits.com/partnerforprofitsebook.htm
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Why Resistance Can Be Your Best Friend
“The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.”
H. G. Wells
Why is it so difficult to change? When you decide that you are going to make a change in your life, why do you find it so difficult to follow through? Why do you keep falling back into old patterns?
There is no simple answer to this question, because change involves so many factors. It’s something like playing the game of “Pickup Sticks.” I don’t know if children still play Pickup Sticks in an era of electronic games, but it was one of my favorite childhood games. You dump a pile of colored sticks on the table, and then attempt to move them, one at a time, without moving the other sticks.
I’d like to pull out one stick from the pile-the stick called “resistance”-to ask the question: Why do we resist change, even when it is something we claim we want, even when the proposed change would be “good for us?”
Often, resistance is labeled as a problem. Resistance is the enemy to overcome. We have all heard that claim that “What you resist persists.” Maybe this is true. And maybe the secret to change is to overcome our own resistance. Or maybe the situation is not so simple.
The idea that we are resisting what is “good for us” is a clue that maybe things are not what they seem. Maybe resistance to change is a way to protect ourselves against manipulation.
“The history of liberty is a history of resistance.”
Woodrow T. Wilson
Every day, we hear from people who claim to know what is good for us. The messages about what it “good for us” come from our families and our friends. The messages also come from a barrage of advertising, including floods of emails telling us that we must jump on the latest promotion to buy a book, join a program, or attend a seminar.
Dave Lakhani, in his book, Persuasion, makes the point that the difference between persuasion and manipulation is the intention of the one doing the pitching.
Our lives are filled with sales pitches. Soft sells, hard sells, it doesn’t matter. We are being told again and again, “I know what is best for you.” And what we have all come to understand is that much of what we are told is “good for you” is outright manipulation. Most of us have become very wary of sales pitches disguised as genuine concern for our wellbeing.
“The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.”
John Dewey
It’s no accident that we use the word “pitch” to describe an effort to sell. It’s World Series Time again. Although I rarely watch professional sports, I sometimes watch baseball during the playoffs and World Series.
“A pitcher will never be a big winner until he hates hitters.”
Early Wynn
At its core, baseball is a duel between the pitcher and the batter. The pitcher intends to throw balls the batter cannot hit. The batter attempts to hit the balls, despite the pitcher’s effort to throw unhittable balls. Behind the windup ritual and the game of signals with the catcher, the pitcher is engaged in an elaborate game of manipulation. The best pitchers are the ones who can trick the batters with an arsenal of pitches designed to defeat the batter. What you see is not what you get.
“Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down. It made me more determined. I wouldn’t let that pitcher get me out. They say you can’t hit if you’re on your back, but I didn’t hit on my back. I got up.”
Frank Robinson
Pitchers can throw fast balls, changeups, sliders. The ball that seems to be heading straight across home plate suddenly drops into the dirt, and the batter swings mightily at empty space. Or the ball that seems to be outside the strike zone suddenly curves across the plate. And sometimes, the pitcher throws a perfect pitch straight across the plate. The pitcher’s intention is to have batters swing wildly at balls and not swing at strikes.
All too often sales pitches are the same as baseball pitches. They are intended to manipulate us into doing what is not in our own best interests. And so we have learned to distrust pitches and those who do the pitching. In other words, we have learned to resist being sold.
And while the World Series is on, we are also in election season, being assaulted on a daily basis with pitches about candidates and propositions. Right now, in California, anyone who turns on TV is assaulted with an endless series of ads about various propositions on the November ballot.
The State of California sent out a 191 page “Official Voter Information Guide.” 191 pages of fine print, outlining proposed laws, written in legal language that make it impossible to understand exactly what the laws are supposed to do.
Experts claim that the average adult reads one book a year. And yet, this non-reading population is supposed to read a 191 page legal document. Meanwhile, special interest groups are spending millions of dollars to run ads for and against these propositions.
Most voters have learned by now that the propositions themselves are an exercise in manipulation. They are not what they claim to be and do not benefit the people they claim to benefit.
So, in addition to pitchers who throw curve balls, politicians who spin the truth, advertising pitches that claim to know what is best for us, we also have families and friends attempting to persuade us to do whatever they want us to do. And except for the baseball pitchers, all of these pitchers claim to have our best interests at heart. At least in baseball, you know that the pitcher is trying to strike you out.
“The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked.”
Napoleon Hill
From this perspective, resistance to change is a way to protect yourself from manipulation by people who claim to have your best interest in mind, but in fact care only about getting something from you. In the face of such pitchers, your own resistance is your best friend.
This article was originally published October 24, 2006
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2006-10-24.htm.
Find out how partnerships can be the fastest route
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http://www.nomoneylimits.com/partnerforprofitsebook.htm
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