This is a guest post by Heart of Business Alumni Community Member Sue Kearney. She runs MagnoliasWest, helping you with personal branding, logo/marketing design and web development.
I’m a lifelong spiritual student and practitioner. In the last ten years, since I’ve been working with women as a coach, my commitment to spirituality has deepened in many ways.
Yet, I’ve found myself keeping some of my more arcane sacred practices veiled from my business interactions and offerings.
In the last year or so, as I work more and more with my own heart-centered business coach, and study with teachers who live and work with transparency, I have come to realize that it’s time for me to step out from behind the veils.
What held me back from an open expression of my spiritual path?
Although I am not looking to enroll anyone in any of my spiritual paths or practices, I carried around a fear that some revelations might be too big, too woo-woo for people to take.
I was operating under a belief (that I no longer think is valid) that my business offering and my spiritual path should be separated. No overlap. With walls and moats between, please. This was because I simply didn’t know—hadn’t seen, hadn’t imagined—that there could be a way to bring my open-hearted most loving spirituality into my business in an integrated way.
I thought that my coaching and design clients would resist and misunderstand suggestions to deepen and broaden their connection to spirit.
Transparency
I have always talked about having a big toolbox full of practices. Now I’m upending my own toolbox and sharing with you the spiritual awesome that makes up what I deliver from my heart in my work.
- I am a High Priestess in a women-centered spiritual tradition. In this role, I facilitate women’s spirituality. I create and lead rituals. I support women in intentionally blessing and marking life’s transitions: births, deaths, partnerships, business ventures, new homes and offices, childrearing and child-releasing. I usher women into relationship with the Goddess, with she of 10,000 names.
- I am twenty-one years clean and sober. I am a sober woman who knows exceedingly well what it’s like to be driven to obliterate consciousness 24/7, and who also knows what it’s like to let go of those destructive behaviors and change every single thing about herself and her relationship to life. Slowly. One day at a time. Because I’ve been there, I can hold space for balance and moderation in the lives and workings of my clients, and support all efforts to liberate one’s self from addictive behaviors.
- For more than twenty years, I have not incurred any consumer debt. This means I spend the money I already have—I don’t use credit cards. As a cash-based woman, I am a resource for women who are ready to make a change and back off from our culture’s emphasis on over-spending and having more and more and more things.
- I pay attention to astrology and I am a student of divination. As such, I bring reminders of rhythms and flow to women who are struggling with what is happening now.
- I am an active participant in my health. I have a network of practitioners from various disciplines whom I use as part of my self-directed efforts to live long, with fitness and ease. I am a champion for anyone who wants to take a stand for her own health, who needs support in resisting our culture’s passive approach to health.
What you can do to free yourself from limiting beliefs and to express the full juicy spectrum of yourself in your work, in your business, in your life?
- Be open to new and different possibilities and practices. Continue to learn. Expose yourself to teachings that are practical, and spiritual, and heart-centered, and useful. Have a nice variety in your toolbox. Integrate what works into your life, and change them up as you go—use what best suits you in this moment, in this day.
- Make time for practices that fill your container and put your heart and soul back in everything you do. The first time I took a business course that included meditation in the material (thanks Heart of Business!) was a big ah-ha! moment for me. Of course! Duh! There is so much value in the practices that restore and repair and renew our hearts and our consciousness. Without it, all the good work we put into our business lands in a leaky container. I did some gentle experimentation. I brought meditation into some of my coaching calls, and it resonates so powerfully with my beautiful clients! A few minutes of meditation establishes groundedness and purpose where a client might have been feeling scattered. It also changes the tone of the client meetings, and is a powerful antidote to pettiness and stress.
- Be gentle with yourself, get support, don’t do it alone. Set conditions of enoughness. Your ideal may be to meditate for ten minutes, seven days a week. Or go to the gym five days a week. And then what happens when you skip a day? Here’s how to avoid getting harsh with yourself: lower the bar. Free yourself, let five days a week of meditation, or three visits to the gym, be enough! Get support for yourself: Enroll a friend as a meditation buddy, or a walk partner. Or hire a coach, someone with whom you can roll up your sleeves, and dive deep into your business, your work/life balance, and the full expression of your juicy most creative self.
Sue Kearney is Chief Inspiration Officer at Magnolias West, her coaching, branding and web design practice. She is a dancer, DJ, artist, and a maker of kombucha, sauerkraut and herbal medicines. Sue is a student of astrology, tarot, and a practitioner and facilitator of women’s spirituality.
She offers a Self-Love Coaching program, as well as a Brand Refresher Review. Contact her at Magnolias West.
20 Responses
Sue, I can relate to this. I can so relate. I’ve had conversations with Mark about this and I honour his willingness to provide us all with the space to share this issue with each other.
I have to mull on your words some more, but I want to recognize that you’re not alone on this journey. I’ve struggled for YEARS in understanding if my faith should be merged with my business. Finally, I took a bold step earlier this year and decided to go where God was calling me to go. I now make no excuses. None. And my tribe is gathering around this. It’s been a humbling experience, but rewarding. Sue, I applaud you for no longer making excuses.
And, Leesa, I’m excited you are going to be adding to this conversation in May!
I can’t wait to see how your community responds. I know the responses are what will help me expand and grow. Can’t wait!
Leesa, thank you! The community of heart-centered business owners…well, we support each other so deeply and profoundly and beautifully in landing in the center of our most true selves. So nice to be freed from those self-imposed constraints.
Love and light,
Sue
What stood out for me is not to do this alone. I’m rebuilding my tribe and it’s been wonderful to see who’s coming out to support and be supported in this new paradigm. Very freeing.
Sue, you wrote this for me, right? ;-). Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as I step out more publicly to meet and network with people in my local community. Actually going right now to join a large nearby Chamber of Commerce, a first for me that feels like a valuable next step in visibility and connection. And I find more and more of the spiritual healer I am is creeping into other work I do that’s supposedly more “mainstream.” People looking to us for healing, support and deepening authenticity deserve as much of ours as we can share. Thanks for a great post…
Of course I wrote this for you, sister in spirit!
I love what you wrote, that the people with whom we work deserve as much of our authentic selves as we can share… Love it!
Love and light,
Sue
Yes, thanks for echoing that. And I just had a lovely experience of it at the local Chamber of Commerce office, where I had a chance to get real and go deep in a pretty short amount of time with two of the folks there. Usually I lay low and back off in real ‘business-y’ environments — I’m so used to being with the left-of-center crowd. But this is part of my mission, to ‘de-woo-woo-ize’ breathwork and meditation and energy balancing techniques so people can just get past their own resistance and move to a state of being they crave and need!
The de-woo-woo-ification of heart-centered business!! Love this!
Oh, Sue, such wisdom. For so long, I never even considered using my spirituality and everything else I am in my work. It never once occurred to me that if I wasn’t using my WHOLE self, I was cheating myself and those I was supporting of something very special. My disability and other experiences are part of who I am, and my right people need to find that in me. Blessings.
Lana, thank you so much! Powerful insight; I’m so glad you shared that.
Love and light,
Sue
So beautiful to read this today. The past few nights in my meditation, a voice kept saying- Bring more of yourself in every interaction, more of you. It is a beautiful thing to decide that there will no longer be separation of self in the many roles I play as a woman, business owner, friend, daughter, etc… I was like AHA- I still have flashbacks to conversations I had in meeting rooms last year, finding the strength to interject with an opinion, lead with a declaration. Inside hoping that no one was still thinking, oh that Kid. TO own ALL of me, my age, my experience, my religion, the energy I wish to be present at all times, etc. with no apology is to release fear and become truly free. I find that my authenticity has attracted the most generous caring and inspiring community and I am grateful when I see those unsubscribe from my list that just don’t get me. I made a decision that I want all of my relationships to be loving, inviting, uplifting, authentic, and equal…and I am so glad to have witnessed this community, infused with the gentle reminder of self actualization, transparency, generosity, and contribution. We are all on this journey together…Sue thank YOU for lighting my path with your wisdom….and Mark to have the good wisdom to recognize the same light <3 Namaste. ps. Sue- gosh Sue, There are SOO many reasons here I am attracted to the work you do- THANK YOU for sharing all of who you are. I will be in touch 🙂
Erika, I’m so glad we’ve found each other!!!
And thanks for your loving words.
This: “I am grateful when I see those unsubscribe from my list that just don
I love the blog that you wrote..I am really inspire while reading on it..Thanks for sharing with us..
Hi Jared, I’m so glad you were inspired. Thanks so much!
Love and light,
Sue
Beautiful post, Sue!
I can so relate. Years ago I decided I was tired of hiding, of being my grandmother’s idea of “proper.” Over time I have become pretty open about my opinions, beliefs and spirituality.
Lynne, that’s so powerful! Thanks for sharing how this landed for you.
Love and light,
Sue
Thanks for this post, Sue.. I’ve been on a journey this year, trying to change the way I think, to free myself from my limiting beliefs, blogging about the journey. Yesterday was a real low point, when I received a letter from my dad in which he basically said he thought I was stupid. I refuse to be limited by his opinion of me. It’s never been true and I’m not going to let it dictate to me. Thank you for your post, it’s helping me on the journey.
Love and light.
Vanessa, what a powerful message! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment… Good for you for rejecting any limits imposed on you by anyone.
Rock on, gorgeous!
Love and light,
Sue
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