Have you ever thought that you have understood something only to find that you learn it again on a deeper and more profound level? Well it happened to me recently. Finally (I hope) I have got the message - Stop Doing and Start Being. Now I'm going to start by talking about business but even if you have not got a business read through to the end because what we are exploring is relevant through out all of life.
What happened was that I thought I'd get going and do some marketing. I decided to offer one of my programs free of charge to everyone of my LinkedIn contacts - all 783 of them. If you'd like it just drop me an email and I will send you the link. I wrote personally to everyone I knew well and also sent out a personalised email to everyone else. Guess how many people took me up on the offer? None. Yep you read that right - none. It was then that the penny dropped - just stop doing. At that moment I came up with the idea of inner marketing...
Doing is fine if you are coming from the right place inside. Doing is fine when you are in alignment with what you are trying to achieve. Doing, just for the sake of doing does not work. Doing with an unclear motivation also does not work. And this is true in business or if you are wanting to achieve something in your personal life too.
To be in alignment with what you want to achieve, first you have to do some inner work. You need to take care of your inner state, both mentally, emotionally and spiritually. You need to feel good.
When I sent out those emails I was caught up in wanting make something happen but from a place of lack. I wanted to increase my mailing list because it was a requirement for a possible opportunity with Hay House - and part of that was a mailing list of over 4000. So when I sent out the email I wasn't in a place of generosity, I was in a place of need. And what did I create? More need. Instead I needed to come from a place of fullness.
That's where the idea of inner marketing came in. For anything to be successful I need to create that feeling of fullness, ease and happiness first. I need to take care of my inner feelings before I put anything out in to the world.
Now this can be true of business but equally it can be true in our relationships or how we interact with the world outside of ourselves in general. I know in my relationship if I am not coming from a place of fullness, happiness and ease then my relationship will reflect that back to me in crankiness, short fuses and misunderstandings.
Since my ah-ha moment I have been focusing on me and how I feel. Now that may sound like an odd kind of marketing but I have seen in the few short weeks that in fact it has a huge difference as to what shows up in my world. And once I got myself into a good space (I just wrote god space - and that's true too) everything began to have a completely different feeling.
It stopped feeling like I was trying to push the water up the hill - 'cos believe me, I really was. It stopped feeling like the world was conspiring against me - and I could laugh about the 783 emails. I started to enjoy everything in my life - even the stuff I need to do like scheduling tweets or LinkedIn posts all with the intention of doing so - without the energy of doing.
So how do you do, without the energy of doing? Watch for what comes unsought in your world. Nowadays most mornings at some point in my meditation I get an insight as to what to focus on today. Today it was about creating a group retreat at the end of the year. Yesterday it was about taking some time out and enjoying the sun on the balcony. Tomorrow I have no idea what will come to heart (not come to mind). And that's the key - it about being present in life every day. Responding to that inner prompting. (it is obviously a Freudian typo day - I just wrote promoting - is there such a thing as inner promoting? Maybe.)
When we are quiet enough, when we are following our joy or our bliss as Joseph Campbell famously wrote, when we stop doing and start being, when we are as nice to ourselves as we are to others as May the Thoughts Be With You's wonderful illustration reminds us, then and only then can we hear the inner prompting. And then life shifts.
So inner marketing is both about taking care of your happiness, tearing up the To Do list that is terrorising you and listening to the inspiration that is available to you all the time - if you choose to listen. It is about making how you feel your number one priority - always. It is about making the time to stop and visualise what you want to experience in your life, and, more importantly how you want to feel. Because how you feel creates your results. It is about doing from the space of being.
Once you do make how you feel your number one priority it will have a knock on effect throughout your whole life. Your work, be it your own business or if you are employed, will benefit. Your relationships both with your partner if you have one and your friends and family will shift too. When you bring a happy, fulfilled, easeful and joyful you to the table - whichever table you go to - it has to reflect that back to you. And you simply enjoy your life more.
Photo reproduced with kind permission of May The Thoughts Be With You