Four Success Challenges for Soul-based Entrepreneurs

Let’s look at why this hero-ine’s journey can be so fraught with challenges for folks like us. Even when the soul work peace is copacetic, other life challenges can rock your boat. Let me know if this resonates . . . You can email me for a complimentary strategy session if so. The more I clarify my mission, the more I’d like to help with yours. 

Bill Griffith’s comic strip philosopher Zippy’s quote, “Are we having fun yet?” became so iconic it is featured in Barlett’s Familiar Quotations. For the soul-based entrepreneur, that type of question would examine about four complicated areas before getting simplified to the question, Are we satisfying our soul mission with ease yet? Ha ha. Excuse me if my chuckle seems a bit forced – this heroine’s journey can sure be challenging to master!

Well, aren’t you glad it wasn’t boring and so simple it’s over already? That would be no fun, now, would it? Still, lest we spend too many more years flailing and upping the Prozac, I’m going to name four areas one needs to master to reach the happy dance place of Yes, I’m doing the soul mission. Plus I’m happy, I’m balanced, money’s wonderful, and I’m having a good hair day.

Now that happy dance of soul work success has more steps than 7 lifetimes of T’ai Chi training, so … don’t feel bad if you’ve been more like the wallflower in that dance club. It’s more than we’ve ever attempted before, to have all these pieces working together.

In other lives, we just had to survive a few decades, or have babies. Now we’re asked to do all that, plus bring our genius and money together, and have sophisticated discussions and good lovin’. Yep it’s a big job, and all eyes are on us now. No pressure though… I’m sure Zippy would have a nice reframe for that last bit. Well, I guess he has already, hasn’t he – the all-encompassing, Are we having fun yet?

Let me know if you think I’ve left anything out of this hike of all ages. Now, keep in mind, these four areas are in addition to all of the chop wood, carry water, change babies/put them through college/have a great sex life, and stay fit and eat healthy stuff. All of that’s just assumed. Right, I know. Okay – here goes.

1) Keeping the soul mission / creative spark alive

Yep, this is the one that took all these lifetimes to hone to it’s current light-filled jewel. Oh jeez, I’m wheezing here, thinking of all those past lives we were so skillfully thwarted from our soul art skills. And none too gently – wars, famines, plagues, early deaths, losses too huge to manage, insanity, jealous competitors, star-crossed love relationships that broke our hearts and left us in heaps of unmotivated protoplasm, and other mayhem. Of course, there was always that mindset challenge – more on that later – of believing you could do it, that your soul work was good enough, that you weren’t angering god or man by putting your beauty out there, etc.

The gift you now hold XXXX took lifetimes of pain and struggle to become what it is now. And yes, this life will ask you to not only keep clarifying and honing this genius – this life will ask you to integrate many more pieces of balance and skill and earthly money power with that precious flower.

So whatever brilliant whisp of your soul’s breath is still with you, be it on oxygen tank or IV, take a moment now to salute it with high honor. Give yourself and this soul candle a bow. And know that it is your job, whatever it takes, to keep that sucker alive and breathing, for just a little while longer. The end game will be having this baby thriving and shining – keep that in mind when the going feels more like torture akin to the middle ages. It’s probably just a flashback.

2) Business training

I’m sorry to break this to you, and yes, the gods must be crazy. But unless you have the ability to farm this out, and hire excellent teams right away (i.e., mucho capital), most soul gift holders will need to learn business savvy. Oh dear, and if ever there were a maze that could outsmart and quicksand-cement-shoe the most brilliant adept, business training is it. You can get lost for lifetimes here! Plus, you might need a day job in the meantime. Oh, right – didn’t even mention this in that list above of the OTHER things you’d need to be doing while you master soul money work.

The good news is, business training is just another brand of soul wizard training. Need to work on communication skills? That will be come apparent soon enough, as will the need to tweak clarity of intention, fearlessness with money, articulating your soul’s gift and the way it helps others, and showing up over and over again to your next big step in completing your soul genius’ journey.

This sentence from Ralph Blum’s, The Runes of Runes, comes to mind:

A lot of hard work can be involved in a time of transformation. Undertake to do it joyfully. (Yep, sometimes that one’s easier said than done with business school. Just give it the old college try, if you can.)

3) Mindset wizardry

Do you like Harry Potter and other mystical adventure stories? Well XXX, the life you will step into, once you’ve chosen the soul gift money journey, will blow the roof off Harry Potter. Creation is all about mindset, just ask God (see this issue for instructions on chatting with the divine). And changing your mindset from let’s say oh, a starving artist, to say, a thriving rock star… well, it’s basically defeating what’s his name… the one who can’t be named – Voldemort – over and over again. Sorry, and yes, there is lots of repetition in this journey – supposedly we learn well with that over and over again thing.

The cycles of this healing dance started long before birth. Interesting that your birth will often name the main themes and issues you’ll face in your unfolding, in full storybook mode. In your creative process, in your expansions and ceiling raising, you’ll face these issues – over and over again. Birthed with drugs and forceps, fell on your head, mom was asleep? No problem. Part of this path is reprogramming all difficult births to well supported, well breath-coached triumphs of emergence. This is where every belief and fear you have about you, or the world, will get healed. We have to undo a lot of past, and present, life trauma with this one.

Is life or business a struggle? Is it always something that’s got you stuck, as Gilda Radner would say? It is nigh impossible to have money and love? Money and meaningful work? Hit a big WHOA when you start to step into more visibility, power, success? That’s all mindset stuff. Sure makes the story interesting and dramatic, eh? And in the mystical adventure called your life’s work, there are always frontiers of learning.

4) Integrity gap closing

Similar to mindset work but looking more at the big picture of your life and lifetime history, integrity gaps are those places you’re not being honest or living up to full soulhumanhood in the day to day functioning. Now the thing to avoid here is blanket generalizations – such as, all smokers or overweight people or chocolate obsessors or porn readers are out of integrity. Nope, it’s not that simple – one man’s vice is often another man’s virtue. This planet is an experiment in excessive diversity and big ambiguity for THE ONE WAY FOR ALL, if you hadn’t noticed.

Each of us knows or can guess what area of life is out of balance. Success may elude you until you plug the holes in these gaps. Plug one gap up and sometimes the next one raises it’s hand. Our healing themes of our creation/healing cycles repeat themselves and show up in many manifestations. Kind of magic, the way that happens.

Sometimes you must regress to more ancient ways of coping, say comfort eating and weight gain, to get through a particularly hairy creative passage, or success expansion with your business. Once through the birth canal of that anxiety-producing ship wreck, you can once again pick up the fitness/food regime. Yes, the ideal is full blown balance without regression, but there are priorities to manage, and many times you do the best you can. Every soul has a master plan, thank the fairies… It just may not always be apparent to us, while we’re hanging on for dear life.

AND A DEAR LIFE IT IS

We may not call it one from the hammock files when we share the stories and mead around the campfire after this life. There may be many tales of white-knuckle journeys, many vessels lost to the storms. So keep in mind, it’s a constant juggle of a journey. Remember Zippy’s question amidst all of yours. Hold in heart and mind what the essence of success would look like for you. Sometimes it’s s imply keeping the gift alive, or living in balance with the day job and soul hobby for now. You get to define success, and what soul rockstardom looks like for you.

Blessings on your soul business,

Denise