Last week we focused on the topic of making money doing what you love. With so much fear about work and jobs around, it felt important to address the practicalities of how “money = love” works.

Here’s a summary of the list we created together on the call. The call included both people who perceive themselves as accomplished at the money = love challenge, and people who are still figuring it out. Here’s what we came up with:

1. Challenge/mistake: Attempting to jump directly from work being struggle to work being joyful.

   Best practice: Establish a daily practice of experiencing joy in your work. Gradually build your experience and faith in work being joyful.

2. Challenge/mistake: Listening to nay-sayers.

   Best practice: Surround yourself with people who support you following your dreams. Limit time with people who detract.

3. Challenge/mistake: Listening to experts.

   Best practice: Remember that you are the best expert on what is right for you. Develop trust in yourself to know, to discern, to choose what is right for you. Then consider expert advice.

4. Challenge/mistake: Thinking success is going to just ‘happen’ or an event will make or break you.

   Best practice: Making money doing what you love is a faith journey. Any one event is merely a stepping stone along the way. Remember this type of success is about walking a path of love and joy – ongoing.

5. Challenge/mistake: Looking for physical evidence to ‘prove’ your success.

   Best practice: Feeling the flow of love and joy is a precursor to physical evidence. Focus on the joy and love first, and the evidence will come.

6. Challenge/mistake: Surrounding yourself with other successful people, but feeling ‘less than’ and riding on their coat tails.

   Best practice: Be the leader of yourself and know that you are the source of the joy and love that will determine your success – now.

7. Challenge/mistake: Thinking of success in limited ways, such as only considering $ indicators.

   Best practice: Think of success as an ‘abundance bucket’ that can show-up in an infinite variety of ways. Let go, be open to being surprised at the variety of ways wealth can show up!

8. Challenge/mistake: Expecting the path forward to be linear and logical.
   
   Best practice: Think of a windy path or 100 different tacks that you might take. Those who are wander are not lost. Nothing is ever wasted. Don’t try to make sense of the path and you’ll be fine.
9. Challenge/mistake: Finding security in a well thought-out plan.

   Best practice: In the path of joy, security comes from knowing that you don’t need to know, and trusting that all you do need to have is clarity about the next step you’ll take. Get good at sorting through the noise related to your next step – use your heart as the filter. When you know your next step, move with confidence.

What do you think? What has been key to you making money doing what you love? What challenges are you facing now?

“As the new consciousness emerges, some people will feel called upon to form groups that reflect the enlightened consciousness. These groups will not be collective egos. The individuals who make up these groups will have no need to define their identity through them.

Even if the members that make up those groups are not totally free of ego yet, there will be enough awareness in them to recognize the ego in themselves or in others as soon as it appears. However, constant alertness is required since the ego will try to take over and reassert itself in any way it can.

Dissolving the human ego by bringing it into the light of awareness – this will be one of the main purposes of these groups, whether they be enlightened business, charitable organizations, schools, or communities of people living together.

Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness. Just as egoic collectives pull you into unconsciousness and suffering, the enlightened collective can be a vortex for the consciousness that will accelerate the planetary shift.” (A New Earth, page 126 – 127)

The IAM Learning Community is on a path of enlightened consciousness! We are an energetic vortex of pure, positive energy!

Tolle describes our intention almost perfectly:  we are here to transform the way we work (careers) and live so we can all be our best. This intention includes health, wellness, following our callings – in business and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Tolle’s use of the word ‘ego’ is confusing. We prefer to call what Tolle is talking about ‘drama‘ as way of bringing lightness and non-judgment to those parts of us that are trapped in scarcity and fear. I do believe that shining the light of awareness on drama is what allows enlightened consciousness to flourish… and this is also an intention of our community.

We like to say:

Drama Happens
Struggle is Optional
Let Your Brilliance Shine!

So be it!

What struck me about our conversation was how people coming from very spiritual perspectives can be uncomfortable with language like ‘making things happen’ and practical topics like ‘making money.’ Similarly,  people coming from practical perspectives, especially financial, can eschew language such as ‘being as a way to create value’.

I believe now is the time for these two perspectives to come together.

Think about it: How often have you seen the practical entrepreneur who acts without regard for matters of the spirit and heart – that becomes a callous, shallow (and not very effective) doer? Or the spiritual devotee who reads, and reads books, but isn’t investing their beliefs into practical endeavors?

Doing without being, and vice versa, results in a life lived without courage and risk taking. Both extremes are hiding out in ’safe houses’ of tradition – either focused on ivory tower intellectual pursuits or seeking safety in the daily grind where doing is the caffeine of the high achiever.

How about doing that is inspired by our being? That is infused with our creative passions and sense of purpose?

How are you living your live by both being and doing?

Have you ever had the experience of just know when something is right and then you dive in 100%? That’s what happened to me.

Six weeks and one day ago, I had a conversation with George Tran (www.socialmarketingman.com) that catapulted me forward what feels like light years.  I was talking with George because I was frustrated with the Learning Management System (LMS) we were using to deliver IAM Career SMART!.

The old LMS felt like a lemon. It worked ok – we were trying to make a go if it – but we couldn’t seem to get traction. Ok, honestly, we didn’t try very hard. We released the product on the old site, had a lukewarm response, and then I asked myself where I was holding myself back.

My honest answer to myself: I didn’t feel like the LMS was a solid platform on which we could build our business and I wasn’t feeling the love from the people providing the LMS. As a matter of fact, my experience with them had gotten to the point that I was weary with every interaction with them. Not a good sign.

Enter George Tran. In one 1.5 hour conversation I was lit on fire. I saw how everything I had been working toward with the IAM material could be supported by his Social Sam platform. Our values of abundance, living life in beta, being real and transparent, building relationships with people, giving people lots of access to information and free help – plus purchase when people were ready -  was supported by this product. I also discovered a word to now use when describing IAM: a movement.

From here things just came together. Now, I’m feeling really grateful for the ‘old LMS’ experience. We learned a ton about what we wanted – and what we didn’t want. We are grateful for the incredible functionality available with our new system, and for the multiple people supporting the system and the many, many positive customer service experiences we have already had. George likes to call these ‘wow’ experiences. We’ve been wowed.

So, we’ve gone from lemons to lemonade, and we’re savoring and enjoying the lemonade more than you can imagine!

You can checkout our new site at www.iamlearningcommunity.com. We are waiting for a credit card processing bug to be fixed, and then we will launch to a core group of what we’re calling Seed Members – people who will help us launch and found this community.

Check it out … if you are a hummingbird, I know you’ll enjoy! (Watch the video on the front/home page and you’ll find out what I’m talking about…)

I understand though. I’m feeling grateful that my husband has a nice safe job at the university here in Chapel Hill. At the same time, we’re not looking at his job as secure. Instead, we’re looking at what work we both can engage in that will sustain our interest, will challenge us to learn and grow, and that will prepare us for the changing demands of the world.

I feel like jumping up and down about job security because I know for sure that there is no such thing. But what’s the alternative?

In the IAM Next Steps lesson, we introduce the idea of the sustainable career path – not looking at a job or other external resources as the source of your security but instead two things that we think are much more powerful:

1. Knowing and trusting yourself to be the creator of your experience.
2. Being on a solid path of learning and growing so you evolve with the times.

Simple. Easy. Yes! And no.  The challenge is to shift our focus from what’s ‘out there’ which is seductive, and dramatic to what’s ‘inside’. We can’t possibly be prepared for every possible scary event. We can be resilient, adaptable, kick-butt creators of our work and life … a little bit more and more everyday.

So how about it? What would it take for your career to be sustainable? To be secure from within, inspired (rather than terrified) by what you see happening around you?