My Sufi sheikh’s business medicine

One of my clients asked me a question about hope, because I was going on and on about it… 🙂 He mentioned that there is a teaching about hope that links it to attachment and thus suffering.

Sufism has a different perspective, and it has to do with a different understanding about hope – and that there are two kinds of hope we’re discussing.

This is really relevant to how you approach this year, and is directly about what my Sufi sheikh called “medicine for the heart” so let me dig in.

The Two Kinds of Hope

One kind of hope is an escapist fantasy hope. This is where you dream that in the next 12 months somehow, inexplicably, miraculously, your business will be doing 3-5 times more revenue than it’s doing now, without any bumps. It will as if you’ve been transported to an entirely different reality.

While this does happen to some people (as I write this, the Powerball lottery jackpot is something north of $950 million), in this I agree with my client and his sources: don’t attach to this kind of hope.

However, there is a more grounded hope that is available. The simple cherishing of yearnings that things can improve, they can get better, in real, measurable ways.

To not embrace this kind of hope is to perhaps risk indulging in despair, or at least feeling stuck in the feeling that nothing can ever change.

Not true. It’s just false.

Asking versus accepting

Related to this is the question as to whether you should ask for what you want, or whether you should surrender and accept what you’re given. There are solid cases to be made, spiritually, for both.

Here’s the kicker: both are true, at different times and in different ways.

I’ve learned through Sufism about what is described as the 28 Stations of the Way, where different heart-stations are described in terms of your progress. In some stations the medicine is to be humble and silent, just accepting everything that comes to you.

In other stations you are supposed to ask for what you want and need.

No station is permanent, you move through them. What is the perfect medicine in one station is what will stop you in your tracks in another. You need to be alive to what’s true and real in your heart.

Given this, I want to encourage you, if you feel open to it, to ask for what you want in your business, to cherish your hopes.

What to do

Take some time in your heart to name 2, or 3 or 5 hopes that you have for your business this year. Make sure you are really connected and grounded in your heart and body, because we’re not looking for escapist fantasies. These are hopes that may be a stretch, may be slightly unreasonable (or totally reasonable), but you can -feel- them in your guts, in your bones, in your heart.

What’s more, is to let your hopes be concrete. If you’ve ever worked with us on our Heart-Centered Goal Planning, then you might know we’re big fans of connecting with qualities like Love, or Generosity, as an anchor for goals, and not being as attached to physical outcomes. Physical outcomes are important, but by fixating on outcomes you can get caught in your ego’s will battling reality. Not so surrendered or nourishing.

Here I’m talking about something else. Because it’s a hope, and not a goal or a strategic project, I want to say that it’s useful to think concretely. You can hope for 30% more income, or a significant increase in your client base, or to finally have a website that you love up and running.

So connect with your heart and name your 2 or 5 hopes. Write them down. Put them somewhere.

Then, schedule 15-20 minute dates in your calendar on a quarterly basis to review them. Not to workshop or process them. Just to reconnect to the hopes you cherish.

With hopes cherished and recorded, ahhh… such a more nourishing way to move into action.

What hopes are you cherishing? I’m going to share the hopes I’m cherishing in the blog comments, I hope you’ll share yours, too.

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Do you cherish hopes about your finances this year?

Hopes for a change in financial circumstances can easily turn to despair because so many people have had their financial situation remain roughly the same for long periods, sometimes years. Sometimes generations.

I want to give you the support and tools to understand and heal your finances, and to being able to nurture realistic hopes for changes that you can see and feel this next year. Our best way of doing that is through the Heart of Money.

So, I hope you’ll join me, and over 500 other people, for the Heart of Money Transformational Journey starting in less than a week.

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