This month marks one year since the official launch of Restoring Power. Whoo hoo! For close to a decade before that, I was a business consultant & coach but after an opportunity to reevaluate my work, my life, my offer to the world, I went back to my roots and am now doing different work all together. Work I love. Work I am meant to be doing. Hallelujah!

It takes a while for one’s business identity to shift, I’m learning. In the last four or five months alone I’ve had at least three requests to do my former consulting work and at least three or four requests for referrals (to other people) for the work that I do today.

Then, I came across this blog post I had book marked from the fabulous Naomi Dunford and realized… perfect. Take a gander and see what you think. Maybe you’ll even play along and write your own?!

The gist? Let people in on the nitty gritty of what you do. No fancy marketing language or spin. Just straight up answer the questions she poses. Make it easy for people to know who you are what you do.

Here’s how to play (in the exact words of Ms. Dunford): 

Go find a cup or glass. Fill it with something.

Copy the questions below into some kind of document.

Stare vacantly into the distance for a while. Check Twitter a couple times. Take the laundry out of the washing machine before it starts getting moldy.

Answer the questions and put them onto your blog with some kind of introductory information.

Click publish.

Eat some cake.

So… here I go. Cuz, you know, I like cake.

What’s your game? What do you do?
I am a counselor/coach/healer type. I work with individuals and couples and groups; mostly women but I love my men. I work:
- in private sessions in my NE Portland office
- 6-8 week evening group sessions
- 3-day organic healing retreats in the woods

I’m interested in people restoring their personal power and being free. I do this by either helping to heal a traumatic past or by supporting them in telling the truth about things they may not want to tell the truth about. I help people understand their shadow side, their dark side; their lower selves. Why? So that they can live in their wholeness- their light, their dark, all of it. We all have a dark side; when we hide it, we only are living half-way, feeling numb or depressed and wondering why. Accessing our dark side allows us to be free, powerful and authentic.

I use Somatics (the idea that the body holds our history and is a living intelligence, in fact, it never lies), along with more traditional types of “talk therapy”, and lastly I occasionally use my intuition and Reiki (energy work)– all to support the overall outcome for my peeps.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?
It took me a long, long time to realize how lucky I am here: I love it AND I have a knack. A gift even. Since I was little, I was helping people get free. I just had to do much of my own personal work to really, fully own it.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?
My clients tend to fall into two camps. They are either strong women/leader types or creatives/artists types. Sometimes both. Occasionally neither.

The people who love my work are people who
- feel they are missing something in the way they are living/experiencing their life
- feel anxiety or panic more than they want to
- are having difficulty being related in the way they want to (boss, colleages, lovers, friends)
- feel sad, numb, or depressed but not sure why
- want to increase their personal power and effectiveness

What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers? (*Reminder: these are Naomi’s words, not mine)
While I have a lifetime of learning ahead of me, I’m really good at what I do (it’s taken some maturing and time to be able to say that). I know this because I’ve done my own work with therapist/healer types and I know what’s out there. I’ve trained with and collaborated with some of the best of the best.

Most important though, my clients have said these things:

- I worked with a therapist for 10 years and I didn’t get at half the stuff we got at in your retreat.
- I’m 45 years old, I’ve done tons of personal work, leadership trainings and yet I never had the
experience of healing the really deep stuff and feeling free until my work with you.
- I just got–in 5 sessions with you–what I tried to get for 5 years with my last therapist.

So, yeah. That’s cool. And humbling, to say the least.

So, why else? Well, I’ve done my work. Once I was interviewing therapists–I interviewed about six total– and I was shocked to learn that the majority of them had been practicing over 20 years and had never seen a therapist themselves. What the ? Is that weird or what? Nor had they looked at their own dark side, healed their relationship with their parents (yes, we all get to do some level of this at some point), or assessed the impact of their super strengths or challenges. Me? I’ve done all that and then some. And I don’t plan to stop. It’s a way of life for me. No joke.

Lastly, there’s nothing I can’t be with. I have an enormous capacity to hold anything; working with people and their dark sides, I’ve seen and heard more than you could probably imagine. By grace, I really get humanity at a very deep level. It’s an honor that I am grateful for every day.

What’s next for you? What’s the big plan?
I love my work. I love my sessions, groups and retreats. I plan to keep doing more of the same there.
I want to be a mama. I’m on that journey. I’ve already learned so much about patience, love, surrender. I’m ready.

Last but certainly not least, in a really big, big picture sort of way… (can’t believe I’m going to write this outloud- gulp), I feel I’m on a path to being a spiritual teacher of sorts. I was reminded recently that the Dalai Lama prophesied it would be Western Women who save the world. If I’m walking my talk, that means it’s not just all those other western women out there (wink); it’s me too.

Time to step up.

Let’s reflect, shall we?
A while back I hosted my first Salon in over 6 years- the first Salon ever for Restoring Power. The topic was community and partnership. I opened, as I usually do, with about five to ten minutes of my recent and personal reflections on the topic then I put out a questions to the group: “What words come to mind when you think of community and partnership?” My two words were vulnerable and gratitude.

The community of disconnected women…
As the voices, thoughts and opinions of the women in the room opened like a fine bottle of wine, what became clear was that regardless of the amount of perceived support we have in our world (friends, church, facebook, google, classes, healers) or the more stability (marriage, kids, steady home life, steady work), women are feeling LESS CONNECTED and more isolated than ever.

The masochist part…
From wanting my new business to be successful to living with some level of expectation given the work I do, I am trying to navigate my way through this crazy life in a way that is not only authentic but vulnerable. Why on God’s green earth would I SEEK OUT vulnerability, you ask? Excellent question. The answer is NOT that I am a masochist (at least not in this case anyway). I have said for years that true power lies in vulnerability, grace, courage. That real power is the absence of force. And while I think I’ve done a pretty good, great job at practicing and embodying what I talk about, in the recent past I’ve been hit with a whole new level of learning in this domain. This new level of learning is way vulnerable. Way deep. And way good. It’s making me be a better wife, friend, and practitioner. The vulnerability is making way for my own mastery. I know, cool, right?

What Don Draper and Regina Perata have in common…
What’s vulnerable to one person is not necessarily vulnerable to another. I’m okay with looking bad, I’m GREAT at asking for help (I love it even, because of the growth it brings me), I can receive material gifts or service gifts like a champ. And I can nurture, love, and support my family and friends until the cows come home. But when it comes to allowing others to really contribute deeply, steadily and emotionally to me, on a heart level – well, I run for the hills faster than Don Draper pours his bourbon on a hard day at Sterling Cooper. What do you run from?

Walkin’ my talk…
I’m grateful (ahh, the second word from the Salon) that I chose (and still choose) my work. As I continue to do deeper work with my clients – ask them to look harder, closer into the dark side where it can be scary- I am called to walk my own path right along with them (regardless of how much work I’ve already done this lifetime). There is no rest for the weary; I believe we are called to embody our work at deeper levels as we evolve. And so… I am.

What’s your occupational hazard?
While I sometimes abhor these “occupational hazards” of being a healer-type, I am grateful the work itself demands and calls for me to continue developing myself. I can’t imagine a world where “I’m done” or I don’t “look and see” or worse, where I ask others to do work I’m not willing to do. I love living in a world where the journey ain’t over till it’s over.

And scene.
What words come to mind when you think of community? Partnership? What is your occupational hazard? What and where are you called to keep learning? Think about it. Where do you want to grow? Where do you want mastery? THAT is precisely the place to get vulnerable. Go on, jump in. You know you want to, you masochist you.

Victim is in our blood. It’s part of our humanity. Natural, even. Inescapable according to psychological and spiritual guru, Carloyn Myss. Carolyn says that we have 12 archetypes we embody for learning and growing in our lifetime. Four, she says, are set in stone and the same for all of us. The Prostitute, The Saboteur, The Child, and, you guessed it, The Victim.

The Victim is not bad and wrong, contrary to how we think of her. We love her. She serves a purpose. Helps us get vital needs met, helps us get what we want. The problems come when we pretend we aren’t two-stepping with her, pretending we aren’t letting her run the show at times. The problems come when we are in denial of her presence and power in our life.

I’m an entrepreneur and most days I love the thrill of showing up to my own office, doing the work I’m both good at and passionate about. But some days, I wanna chuck it all out the window and say “Sayonara, sucker”, bake like a lizard in the sun, crack open a cold beer and read fashion magazines while laughing out loud with my Poker Gals until my belly aches. On those days, I have to talk myself into showing up. Even though I know being a solopreneuer comes with things I don’t always like, and even though I choose my business, and love it, on those days, I still fall Victim to it: I lose a little power in exchange for more immediate payoffs, like procrastinating, sympathy, avoiding responsibility, or whining (which, let’s face it, sometimes feels really good).

Of course we don’t want to work some days. Maybe even a lot of days. In a row. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s just be out about it, shall we? But that’s not what we, as a society, are practiced at. No sir-ee. Instead of telling the truth about our needs/wants/complaints and actively working to meet them in a powerful way, it’s acceptable to use the Victim full tilt (and then pretend we are not because after all, we are mostly self-actualized, right?).

We are afraid that if we are out with our Victim—out loud, out of the closet—her needs will stop getting met. In my case above, maybe I need a little rest and I know all the reasons I can’t have it so I complain about it in a very clever way. I leak my upset, lightly joking about how I’m working 9 days in a row and there is nothing to be done about it (enter Victim). Most people are good and kind so they respond with sympathy or agreement. Ah, agreement. We love agreement even more than sympathy. But I’ll leave that for another blog. Even cleverer, through my complaining, I actually get to procrastinate, put off the part of work I dislike thus getting my needs met covertly. Smart, right? I’m afraid if I tell the truth about how I just want to complain or not work or whatever- that I’ll have to be responsible for changing something, or getting off something, or quit whining (which, if you remember, can feel really good).

Funny humans we are, to boot, we like to think our complaint is a really good one, an uncommon one, and super justified…impossible to fix or solve. “Yea, but this is different”, “I just need to bear with it”, “That’s just how it is, this client is special”, “Nothing can be done and it’ll be over soon (heavy sigh)”. We like to think we are unique. Truth? Our complaints are not unique or impossible. In fact, our complaints are actually boring and ubiquitous when you get right down to it (insert your own laughter here). Trust me, I’ve listened to them for over a decade now (including my own). And as for impossible, just about anything is possible- you just can’t see it inside that victimy-context that you don’t know (or believe) you have. Except you do. We all do. It’s in our blood, remember?

Next time you hear even the tiniest peep of the Victim knocking on your subconscious, let her out a tiny bit. Crack the closet door and let in a speck of light. Bring her out into full view in all her glory.

Consider your Victim is here to help you get what you need.
Love her up.
Then ask yourself:
What I am not telling the truth about?
(I don’t wanna!)
What would be the most embarrassing or shameful thing to admit right now?
(I just want to complain, it’s actually feeling good and I’d like to milk it all day if I wouldn’t be found out).
What need or want is not getting met?
(Rest? Being heard? Being alone? Collaborating?)
How could I simply be “out” about my wants and needs?
(Maybe I’ll tell so-and-so. Maybe I’ll make a request.)
Or, my personal fave: What am I being a brat about?
(Me? A brat? Ha!)
Yeah. Sit with that.

Then again, there’s always the alternative: Leave the damn bitch in the closet with the door locked and chained, milk the perks of sympathy and avoiding responsibility for all it’s worth and make everyone in your life, including you, miserable all the while pretending it’s all a “normal” part of life.

Oops. Was that my out-loud voice?

What’s looming over your head today because you “don’t feel like” doing it? A networking obligation? Dry cleaning to pick-up? A conflict to face with a coworker or employee? Financials to reconcile?

We all know what it’s like to “not feel like it.” But when it affects our commitment to the job, our team, our family, our business, we’ve got to understand the impact it makes and reconnect with what got us to commit in the first place.

Commitment is, by definition, made up of the actions that support it. We stay faithful, we stay married. We do the work, we keep the job. We perform as a leader, we grow our leadership role (and, hopefully our team or our company). If we stop the actions that make our commitment alive, it dies, and what we’re left to deliver are empty promises. Yuck! This is where we kick in the emergency generators.

How to do that? Keep your word. Generate from your promise, not from your feelings. Consider that your feelings (i.e., “I don’t fee like it”) are irrelevant to your actual commitments. Think I’m harsh? Ask a marathoner if they “feel like” waking up and running 10 miles every morning. In the dark. In the rain. In the cold.

The Practice – Take inventory of where you’re disconnected and reconnect to your commitment.

Take inventory

Consider these things:

• Where did you make a promise that you are not keeping? What is the cost of that? To you? To others?
• When did you stop “feeling like it?” Where did you make your feelings matter more than your word or your commitment?

Reconnect

Think about what you care about—the marriage, the business-building, the company mission. Acknowledge that you broke your promise and then recommit, or revoke the promise and offer new terms of what you CAN do (always keeping your well-being front of mind).

• Ask someone to remind you why you committed. Set reminders yourself…like a weekly meeting, a regular date night with your partner, or alarms on your mobile phone.
• Enlist your team: own that you are disconnected and enlist their help in getting re-involved in your shared purpose. It’s amazing how much energy being inspired will drum up naturally.

Engage

• Consider where you are failing, and then SHOW UP right there. Just for the sake of showing up.
• If you still can’t do it, do it anyway. Integrity and energy get restored when you live into what you said you were going to do.

Think about your commitments and GENERATE your action from that place. Go do it! Say “so what” to your feelings and surprise yourself by creating something you have not created previously. After all, the bonus in completing what we were procrastinating far surpasses the malaise of procrastination. You have my word.