How is it that trees grow up? Even when outstretched over bodies of water, they hang on and reach up. Mostly.

I love trees. They seem so wise, brilliant at stillness from so many years of standing there in the same spot. Do they get board? Do they converse? I believe so. With every waft of wind they somehow gain and share their knowledge.

What can a tree teach you today? Take a walk and listen. They just might be waiting for you to lean in.

An unexpected trip to a small town north of the big city merited a treat. Once I took my car in for the months-awaited inspection appointment, I felt a sense of accomplishment that was royally celebrated with, yes, crunch.

What is in that stuff, anyway?  All I know that after I take my inner artist out on a bit of a risk-taking, nerve-wracking adventure, she loves to have a snack, and nothing speaks to her sense of decadent splendor more than the brightly colored sprinkles of delight on a soft-serve cone. It’s not food. It can’t be. But she doesn’t care. It’s just plain fun. Add a wooden swing in the park on a new Spring day and she’s in heaven.

What’s “heaven” for your inner artist? Consider treating that little one in you to a bit of an adventure… and an ample treat.

What is it to let you hands do the planning? Somehow our finger tips can sense what goes where and what feels right. So often we go at planning as though it were a cognitive gymnastic event. We twist and turn and tumble our thoughts around until we don’t even recognize which way is forward.

Getting to witness and assist creative entrepreneurs map out their visions, values and voice for their business, the heart and body have room alongside the mind to make a balanced plan that resonates on so many levels. Seeing is believing, and first it can take some clipping and gluing. Here my client is literally making her new restaurant biz plan so tangible and touchable she can taste it.

Do you have a visual plan you can have and hold to guide your way from this day forth? Check out the next Right-Brain Business Plan workshop and get some clarity to step forward with confidence.

“Start with the end in mind.” But we know it takes more that mind power alone to run a creative business that really speaks to your heart. It is  not a linear process for sure. More like a winding mountain pass, we tack back and forth, watch for detours and look for signs that we are on the right path.

But how do we really know where we are headed? For some of us, the map naturally unfolds and our good next steps appear magically beneath our feet as we step. For others of us, not quite knowing the direction of those steps can keep us stuck in hesitancy or even frozen in fear of making the wrong move. We may meander, hoping we will get where we think we are going, or we may jump at opportunities that pop up like roadside attractions but turn out to be off-road distractions.

What I have found most helpful in my decade of doing business is to have a VISUAL plan that resonates with my heart like a homing device on a courier pigeon. “Oh, that’s the clear general direction of my business vision!” And, I need the concrete PRACTICAL details, information and specific actions that will actually materialize as profits, sales and effective service.

If you want to be better able to take forward steps with confidence AND resonance with the internal vision you hold for your business, join us for the workshop to make a visual plan you can hold in your hands as you navigate to success.

I say, “start with the end in mind and heart and hand” and work backwards so that you can really move forward!

Right-Brain Business Plan® Workshop
March 24, 2012  9am to 5pm
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Registration: $187
Register by 3/14 and get $20 off

Led by Amy Egenberger, a Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, life coach, artist and founder of Spirit Out! Coaching. Amy helps people tune into their inner wisdom in their work, relationships, art and home life to really ratchet up honest co-creative power.

My car has much to teach me. Last Sunday on Hwy 100, I was shifting up into 5th gear. So I thought.

The clutch had other plans.

My good red Saturn and I coasted to the side of the road. Even though my heart was racing and adrenaline pumping, I did have a sense that I was okay. I’m grateful for that. I managed to dial friends for help, and felt a calm come over me as they kindly helped me out. Even the state patrol officer who stopped was compassionate about putting a big orange check mark on my back window to mean “this one’s been checked on.”

Now that the new clutch is in and working well, I’ve been thinking about how it works. I’m no expert, but I do know that it’s got to go in for any shifting to happen. Since I’m in the “shifting” business, and I’m wired for metaphor, I started wondering.

What needs to disengage before you can get in gear with life? Usually people think of “getting your life in gear,” but I think life is actually tooling along perfectly fine and it is up to us to work the clutch AND shift as needed. If these two steps don’t work in tandem, we just get grinding gears or no real movement at all.

What do you think? When making a change for the better, do you find you need to “disengage” some old habit or pattern to free up the system for something new?

At any rate, I’m happy to have new awareness of how shifting works… and to be back on the road!

A couple of friends of mine started this idea and are opening the invitation to all who want to do it, too. Here it is:

Hello and  Happy New Year!!
The two of us will be having fun over the next 13 weeks, which will bring us through to the end of March. Every Sunday starting Jan. 1st we will be adding a new habit and removing a habit with the focus on our health. We decide for ourselves what habits they will be. We made a graph for our wall with four columns and the heading of “I AM” at each column.

January 1st: My husband’s habit that he wants to remove is slouching. So under one of his columns he wrote, “I AM sitting up straight” (we state it as a positive affirmation). I wrote that “I AM Gluten Free” for my habit of giving up eating wheat. He and I both have added “taking daily vitamins” for our column of adding a habit. We will keep these ‘habits’ for the next 13 weeks and since it only takes the body/mind 3 weeks to form a habit, we will have created new healthy habits by the beginning of April.

January 8th: We will again individually decide a habit to remove and one to create. All the while keeping the habits already in play.

We wanted to know if you would like to join us? We can keep our habits to ourselves or share them with each other, it’s all about having fun and thinking about bringing in a Healthy Focus of Energy to our daily walks.

Much Love and A Happy Healthy New Year!!

How could I resist?!  I’m in. The first habit I want to remove is the habit of piling things on my dining room table. How can I really eat healthily if there is stuff on the table?! I created a New Habits Chart to post on my fridge, and wrote “I am putting things away.” I added “I am smiling each day” as my new habit.

If you believe that “old habits die hard,” then what do new habits do?

I  believe that old habits fall away with ease when we turn our focus of energy on what we are creating instead. Creativity loves the fun of choosing something new.

We’ll see what I choose next Sunday. Maybe it will be the habit of sitting at the table to enjoy my meals!

Have fun with it, and share your new habit “I AM” statements here if you like.

There is much talk of fear these days, and most of us have personally experienced getting caught up in the vibrations of anxiety that stories in the news seem to perpetuate. At the very least, we can sense the uncertainty in uneasiness in the air.

So, what is the antidote? There are shelves of books offering answers and sure-fire solutions. Bumper stickers and clever quotes passed around on social media offer seeds of insights that seem to flicker on and off like fireflies on a dark night. The truth for me, however, is that it is a practice of awareness, inquiry and creative discovery of deepening our experience of inner peace.

This poem I wrote 10 years ago today offered some wisdom good for today.

Ribbons of hope woven on faith
Stronger both ways, most fear held at bay
Though doubt seeps its way, finding cracks between
Fabric holds fast, stranding life come what may.

To see more of the 365 Doll Poetry Collection that is being posted daily, check out http://spiritout.com/365blog

Color inside the lines. That’s what I advocate. That may sound counter to what other say to encourage creativity, expansion and out-of-the-box thinking, but the place to bring our real creativity is in drawing the lines in the first place.

If we choose the rebellious path to set our default setting to “outside the box,” we are still being held captive to the box by allowing it to dictate where we color. Why not be more discerning? Maybe “the box” or lines we are given do actually work in some way. The question is to be choosey and to dive into the quest for our own lines.

Sometimes when I paint, I put the color on first and then the lines appear in my mind’s eye so I draw them in. With colored pencils, allowing the point to draw its lines on the page makes for fun spaces to color in.

So, let’s hear it for coloring inside our own best lines!

I love that we have a holiday dedicated to gratitude. A good reminder helps lift the vibration of my perspective on life and reset the default settings on my attitude to thankfulness. I’m appreciative of this beautiful polish to my path, like a natural red carpet lining each step with gratefulness.

I’m not from the desert. But, in April of this year I spent some good solo time on a spot of land in the Mojave Desert that welcomed me like home.  How fortunate am I?  Those hot sunny days and cold moonlit night changed me into more of me,  in the springtime among the blooming cactus plants, and this fall I got to return.

Not sure if I could find the same spot out there in the wide terrain where each of my fellow vision questers and I first sought out to find a solitary place to do our inner vision work.  Releasing residue of unfinished business, opening to new insights and possibilities for moving forward with more clarity, we each came back transformed for the better because of our desert experience.

In ways seen and unseen, deep positives shifts occurred and the earth, the critters, plants and rocks like these welcomed, witnessed and mysteriously played with us.  I felt that this spot of land would remember me. Would I recognize it? A few weeks ago I set out to find it again and I let my feet lead.  My mind said, “Isn’t it over there more?” pointing to the east. My feet kept walking to the west. “Maybe we’re already there,” said my heart that can remember the visceral experience in memory without need to return but longed to anyway. My feet kept walking. Soon I knew I was close, but which ridge was it?  All the trees seemed so similar.  How would I recognize the exact plants?  My feet stopped.  I asked aloud, “Where is my spot?” My body turned slowly and I saw a rockscape to the north.  Oh, yeah!  There were rocks to the east of my spot. One ridge over and I was there. Home. Jubilant and grateful for the return visit.

What landscape calls to you?  Where do you feel most at home?  Perhaps it is not where you are from, but instead is a part of this beautiful planet that seems unfamiliar until you listen and welcome its wisdom.