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Lesson #4: It’s an Inside Job: Do the work

Illumined Life With Love

Be the kind of person someone wants to date, be friends with, and work for, it’s all the same.

I’ve learned that I need to do the work: I’m the one I’m working on. Every relationship, job, opportunity or loss is an opportunity to work on me.

Back when I was single in my 20’s I seriously considered being a Catholic nun and imagined a life without a partner in marriage. What people don’t always realize is that even as a nun/priest/monk or single person, you’re still in relationship. I worked for a Catholic organization so I saw up-close, from the inside that religious life is not just happy people living together doing service cheerfully like the Flying Nun or Sister Act (which is what I wanted it to be and why I seriously considered it, at least as a young person). 

So being the kind of person who someone wants to be around is still pretty crucial, and especially when you’re team building, dating, selling, or creating a service or product that you sell.

But more so when you are. 

The most important relationship I know to work on is with myself. 

Do the work

In Angela Lauria’s book, Make ‘em Beg to Work for YOU,  she shares a story of going to now 2020 presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson’s workshop about 20 years ago. Ms. Williamson shares this powerful exercise (I was also a fan back then):

Imagine the person you want to marry. Picture everything. Their clothes, their voice, their job, their values, their education, their body, their laugh. Spare no details. Make the vision as clear as if this person were right in front of you. Then, once you have that image crystal clear in your mind’s eye, ask yourself: “Would they date YOU?”

If you want a team of rockstars who are taking total ownership and treating your business like they would treat their own, then you have to be the perfect 10 that your perfect 10 would want to be with.

Lauria, Dr. Angela E. Make ‘Em Beg To Work For You: 7 Steps to Find, Hire, Manage, Reward, and Release All-star Players to Help Make your Dream a Reality . Difference Press. Kindle Edition. 

This is just one example of how being my best self serves the business I am creating, the people I want on my team and work with, and the people I serve (illumine’s audience, illumine’s advertisers and partners, my yoga students, etc.). It also is where I start with better relationships with my family, husband, friends, and larger community.

I’ve been a self-help junkie for most of my life, and will continue to be one. I will seek out coaches and mentors, therapists and transformational that challenge and change me because know the rewards will be experienced in my personal and professional life.

Read more:

Lesson #1

Lesson #2

Lesson #3

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