Thank you, Max Simon*

I am a burgeoning entreprenuer.  Having written that, I suddenly feel like looking up both words. I will.

Burgeoning:   to begin to grow, to put forth buds, shoots; to flourish.
Entrepreneur:  a person who organizes and manages an enterprise, usually a business, often with considerable initiative and risk.

Perfect. I am an entrepreneur.  It's true.

Business was almost a dirty word to me for years.  To choose to be successful at business meant sacrificing all that mattered to me: my values, my creativity, my trust of others, my vulnerability and sensitivity.

It was obvious that to be too sensitive was a detriment to being good at business.

So I renounced everything that had to do with success in the marketplace—money included.

The cost of earning money was just too high.  I might not have been able to say it, but unconsciously I believed I had to sell my soul in order to have money.  I chose my soul.

Of course, money didn't follow.  How could it?  My beliefs were an invisible barrier.

Fast forward through the decades, outgrowing the charm of shopping at Goodwill while growing three children, two careers, a body of unpublished poetry and books, and fewer gardens as life's demands thickened, including the summons to raise a son with special needs.

Meanwhile money continued to be sparse, but always enough to feed us, keep a roof over our heads, and wheels on the road.  Nothing to complain about, especially when I thought of those I imagined deprived by my having.

Now I know (well, I know theoretically; I should say I believe) that there is enough and one person having does not deprive another.  In fact, it can work the opposite way.

Just like my inner wealth, shared consciously, can enrich my brothers and sisters, so can my outer wealth.

I am getting that to be an entrepreneur (what is being referred to as a heart-centered entrepreneur) is to engage with both currencies: inner and outer wealth.  From my politically correct, self-righteous posture of money being evil, simplistically dividing the world into the haves and have nots, I would have accused such talk as rationalizing having money at the expense of others.

How radical then to be at this threshold that is not only about changes in my perspective but in my life's direction, as well.

I am embracing that I do not have to choose between love and money, service and selfishness, creativity and business.

I am getting that business can be a vehicle of transformation, mine, that of the people I serve, and our world.  Ho, this is big news.  Big News.

What I thought was needed to be good at business is not what I have to adopt: dog-eat-dog competition; falseness; joyless self-sacrifice; mistrust; the constant fear of losing it all...and more.  Hallelujah! 

God bless my dad and others like him who did what they believed they had to for the sake of their families—and, of course, their egos.  (I, too, live in the glass house of my ego, so forget throwing stones.  I am grateful to be seeing through my ego's transparent walls to other realities.)

So to come around to what prompted this post. (Please forgive my rambling.  Though I would be foolish to say it won't happen again.)

I am a burgeoning entrepreneur with a whole huge flock of butterflies in residence in my belly.

Every time I go to take a decisive entrepreneurial action, such as sending out my first survey (my self chosen deadline for doing so more than a month ago), I become so nervous, you'd think I was jumping off out of a plane with an untested parachute.

But I am committed to putting one foot, one action in front of the other.  I am building a new enterprise one brick at a time.

I am allowing myself to be a beginner so that the sage within, the wise, life-ripened woman can have a vehicle through which to share her loving wisdom.

There I said it.  I am creating a business that is a vessel in which to carry love, beauty, respect, inspiration and more into the world.  That's not a bad thing; it's a gift.  I come bearing gifts.

And the part about being paid for the gifts?  I am opening to that.  What if money is a form of energy?  No rationalization there either.  What if I no longer shun money, but instead I open—as if money were love coming to meet me as I approach with love?  Love meet love.

I am a burgeoning entrepreneur putting forth buds.  One day I will open fully, my particular fragrance emanating as naturally as the fragrance of the brilliant hot pink peonies in full glorious bloom today.



*It was a coaching session with Max Simon that challenged me to take imperfect action, which includes writing imperfect posts. More about Max (http://bigvisionbusiness.com), imperfect action, and my budding entrepreneurial journey in upcoming posts.  I will be posting here until my new website, blog included, goes live. Soon.  Stay tuned.