Step #4 – Prosperity

Next step, Prosperity.   Well doh, of course prosperity is one of the keys to feminine success!

What does it mean to prosper?

“Pro-Spere” in latin means: Hopeful and full of possibility; Success and Thriving

Having come from a long term corporate background in Australia as a commercial designer, I know all about those models that we all grew up with.  You know, go to college, get a great education, then, get a job!   And jobs I got.  Great ones actually.  I loved working for the top five architectural firms in the country and working on projects for the biggest telecoms, banks, attorneys and accounts.   It was super cool to have $M1 to spend on each floor of an office building (that would be $M2 now!).  It was great to project manage such large and important projects and people.

Now in this job model, you get a great job, you work hard, you get promoted, you climb the corporate ladder, and along the way you get paid more and more.  Or you move from job to job to up-leveling yourself and getting paid more and more.  I did that.  I’d “promote” myself into a new job at a new firm every few years.  Every single time I negotiated a newer, better, more highly paid contract.

And after 13 years of doing this I became a consultant to the same firms…and got paid even more to do the same thing that I was employed full-time to do!  How awesome is that….I could smell the freedom.  I now worked for myself.  I got paid a lot more per hour and took time off when I wanted.

I think this is where my serial entrepreneurial spirit was born.   MY business, MY time, MY clients and paid well for my expertise.  Sounds pretty good right?  Well, yes, there was no catch here.   Or was there?

This felt like freedom. 

 

For a while.

The catch was not that I could not control my life better as a business owner.  The catch was the way I was doing it.  I had transferred the way I worked as a corporate woman into how I ran my business.

From “man-mode”.

I knew how to work hard, produce and keep my clients happy.   However, I was doing this in an outdated work-life model that frankly left me compromising too much of myself.  I was compromising my energy, my time, my femininity and relationships to name a few things.  I was really delaying my life and all of these things into some uncertain future when, then, the belief was I’d then have time to give to these things.

And frankly,  on top of that I was hitting some sort of inner glass ceiling that was limiting my ability to really thrive.

When I started a meditation school 15 years ago, I wanted to apply my ability to run a business to a life whereby I wanted to serve people.  Making more and more money then and now still doesn’t motivate me.  My purpose motivates me.  That is, to help women run successful businesses from feminine values.

The glass ceiling is something that was coined back in 1979 and is defined as:

The glass ceiling is the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.

However, for so many women business owners the glass ceiling is experienced in the form of internal limits in your own business (read: self), and you find yourself working harder and harder and not cracking that damn inner glass ceiling.  And you believe that if you just work a little harder for a little longer it will pay off eventually.  But every time you make a bit more money, get a bit more cash flow, big bills and expenses hit you and you bounce on back down again.

This is what I call the Inner Glass Ceiling and it is part of the inner game of business for women that must be addressed if you want to get the results that you are looking for.

It is my observation that one of the big keys to cracking your inner glass ceiling has to do with getting in alignment with your purpose.

For women entrepreneurs the inner glass ceiling is a mix of unseen forces that effect you personally,  instead of those imposed by a corporation.  Things held unconsciously inside you.  They are all internal.  It can be a combination of beliefs about yourself, family and peer expectations, comparison with others in your field.  But ultimately it is about your relationship to your own value.  i.e. the one that you don’t admit to deep inside yourself.  This is the big one that you need some mentoring and support to help find, deconstruct and overcome.

It is the combination of the right mentoring and community that is how the inner glass ceiling gets cracked.

If there is one thing that I know from my own experience, your business is a reflection of you.  That is, how you value yourself, how you see yourself as compared to others, how much you seek to be visible or not, how much your really want to serve and how big you want your impact to be.  Your business WILL reflect you back to you.  And you don’t know what you don’t know.  This is where some of the best stuff has been revealed to me by my coaches and mentors. 

If you are not getting the results that you want in business, then you need help or mentoring to see where your unconsciousness is.  And, boy was this one true for me.  This is where I needed coaching to help me see things about myself that I couldn’t see.

So, to get to real prosperity you have to arrive at this combination of cracking through your inner glass ceiling which is your earning power as well as  getting into alignment with your purpose (in combination with the other feminine success keys).  When you have done this, it is like taking the brakes off your Ferrari!

And then, nothing will stop your big vision, your big calling and desire to make a big impact on the world.

When you have done this, it is like taking the brakes off your Ferrari!

…well, I live in the Bay Area, so perhaps taking the brakes off your Tesla!  But you know what I mean.   When the brakes are off it is because you really know your purpose, then all of the energy and fuel that you pour into your business will allow you to move forward freely.  The experience becomes that the universe gets behind you and you find yourself being put in front of the right people, your perfect clients,  promoters and partners.   Alignment and magic then become the order of the day!

If this isn’t happening right now, it is because you are weak on one or more of the 7 steps to feminine success.  Be honest with yourself,  look hard inside yourself and discover where both your strengths and weaknesses are and take steps to get help to up-level on those steps.

I’ve been an avid people watcher my whole life.  People with a big sense of purpose and who want to make a big impact on the world are often those who are stuck most around making money,  and those that have money are desperately wanting real meaning and purpose in their life.

Don’t you think it’s time for those with big hearts and callings to make money and become prosperous so that they can become the movers and shakers of our world?

Lastly, but definitely not least.  In Lynne Twists book “The Soul of Money” she references Buckminster Fullers work in the 1970’s where he stated:

“This is a world that can work for everyone with no one and nothing left out, and we have the power and the resources now to create a you AND me world rather than a you OR me world.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

To access an experience of true prosperity we have to first get to the experience of enough, and to do that we have to be willing to let go of a lifetime of scarcity’s lessons and lies.

Here’s to your juicy feminine successful business and cracking through your inner glass ceiling!

The next essential step in the 7 Step Feminine Success Formula is that of Presence.