Presenting Yourself
You may have noticed that I changed the page somewhat so I could display my new logo.
Logos are interesting. Sometimes they are really easy to think of and design. Some of them take much longer. A graphic artist usually charges at least $200 to make a logo for someone, and I can understand why. To be successful, a single, simple image needs to convey so much!
I have been lucky with my logos. For my real estate business where I sell and help people to find eco-friendly homes, I came up with this one. The name of my company is HearthFire Eco-Properties, and you can see how it all figures in. This one came in a flash of inspiration.
For the Druid grove I run, I came up with this one. The name of the grove is EarthLove Fellowship. This one was more of a description of the name. The inspiration came in the shape of the flame. Since EarthLove Fellowship is a grove of the non-profit organization, FoDLA, I used the same shape found in the FoDLA logo on their website (http://www.fodla.org). Here it is:
For Comic Zone, the comic book store I run with my two sons and partner, I must admit this one was my son’s creation. He is the comic book expert, and he is also the graphic artist in the family. I go to him with my ideas, and he makes them happen. 🙂 This is a typical comic book font, but done in an attractive way that makes us noticeable and tells everyone exactly who we are:
But by far, my favorite is my current logo for this site and for my coaching business:
This one took me months to create. It started out as a doodle of a dollar sign in a circle. Then I noticed how, if I shaped the dollar sign correctly, it would make the yin-yang symbol, a true symbol of balance. I knew I wanted the outline in gold, and I knew I wanted green in there, but that was as far as I had gotten for quite a while. Then one day, in a flash of inspiration, I drew the S part of the dollar sign differently, so that it split the circle into four parts. At that moment, I knew I had it. I also knew that the other color would be blue. So, what does this all mean to me?
First of all, I used the dollar sign as a symbol of prosperity, a commonly held perception in this country. But I made it with one line, not two. One line makes it look more like the world on its axis. And having an axis is very important to each of our worlds. We need to be grounded in the physical as well as open to the spiritual. The four quadrants are directly related to the four parts of the personality in Jungian thought – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual – and I use those four parts in my initial assessments, so that I can best come up with a game plan for any particular client to come more quickly into balance in wholeness. I chose the colors green and blue to again show the relationship between earth and sky, and also a subtle reference to the colors of the sea. If you look at the way the S is now drawn, it makes the diagram appear to be spinning in a clockwise direction. From research I have done on the swastika, a clockwise spinning swastika actually is considered good fortune, wisdom, luck, and love. It is often used in Siberian shamanism as a tool to give clients good dreams. (Incidentally, the counter-clockwise spinning swastika stood for power and might, and that is the tragic one with which we are more familiar.) Having the actual symbol created like a three-dimensional gold bar is another piece to the idea of prosperity. The crispness of the design and the lettering also point to the clarity of a well-balanced, focused life.
My son did a tremendous job of putting my ideas together into actuality. He is a free-lance graphic artist, and ultimately, he did all of the designs above, so if you need any graphic art work done, please feel free to leave me a message or contact him directly by email at andy@psychoandy.com.
A question of value
“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. ” -Gandhi
Let’s talk about values. What exactly ARE values?
According to Jerry Lopper on Suite 101, values are deeply held beliefs about what is good, right, and appropriate. Values are deep-seated and remain constant over time. We accumulate our values from childhood based on teachings and observations of our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and other influential and powerful people. (from: http://personaldevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_are_values_)
Can these values be changed? Undone? Done over? And is it even desirable to do so? Even more importantly, can you even identify your values?
If, as Gandhi states above, our values become our destiny, and we want a different destiny than, say, our parents had, then doesn’t it presuppose that we need to adopt new values?
I had to look very deeply at the values I learned from my family of origin and decide if I wanted to live as they did. For example, in our household, it was acceptable to interrupt each other, raise our voices, and rant, but that doesn’t work very well in a professional setting, so in order to be accountable for my own behavior with others, I had to learn a new value about self-expression. I had to learn what to do with my anger when I felt it, so that it didn’t spill out on others. Through therapy and affirmations, I have worked to change that value. I can express calmly that I am angry about a given situation, and if I need to, I can go somewhere and privately hit a pillow to discharge extra energy, rather than unleashing it on others. I now have a new value about the appropriateness of raising my voice.
Currently, I am living with someone who has different values of cleanliness than I do, and we are working together to find solutions. After attempting to live in a disorganized home, I found that my value of tidiness is one I would prefer not to change. However, I can allow him to have his own spaces that he keeps however he wants. And he has allowed me to have spaces that are kept sacredly neat. Some of our shared spaces are somewhere in between.
Regarding finances, I grew up in a home where we never had enough, and the value was on getting by on less. This is not a value I chose to keep. Yet, neither am I overly materialistic. I had to find my own balance, where I have the comforts I choose, the lifestyle I value – and not one that is about keeping up with the Joneses or doing without.
Each value needs to be identified and examined to see if it will lead you to your destiny.
Are we in control of our destiny? It all starts with a thought….
Ice Breaker Speech
Recently I joined Toastmasters. For those who don’t know, Toastmasters is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people to be more comfortable and competent talking in front of an audience, and honing communication and leadership skills.
I’m usually pretty comfortable talking in front of people. From my high school days when I was active in the drama department through corporate training, teaching many different personal growth courses, and leading public ritual, I’ve had a good amount of experience in front of an audience. However, there is always room for improvement!
I want to do more than present information to a group of people. I want to inspire large groups to do what they need to do to transform their lives. This is one of my next big personal goals. Toastmasters is a step in that process.
Within the past couple of weeks, I made my first speech in front of this particular group. I was SO nervous! Yet, I was prepared, knew what I was saying, and delivered the speech rather effortlessly. In fact, I even won the Best Speaker award for the day!
The best part, though, was that I got some good pointers on ways to improve, and that is, after all, my aim. I look forward to the next speech.
What steps can you take to challenge yourself to move you closer to being the best you that you can be?
Secrets of the Heart
There is a place inside of my heart that is my secret place. It’s where I retreat to when the world gets to be too much. It defies description, but I can be there in an instant, simply by turning my attention to it. 
As soon as I am there, I can feel the connection with spirit again. Peace flows over me and a sweet gentleness curls up the corners of my mouth into a wise smile. I see the world anew. I notice things, like the new leaves on the houseplant across the room, or the orderliness of the sacred objects on my hearth, and I feel appreciation for those little pleasures, with a knowing that these are what really matter in the great scheme of things.
When I work with people, I take a wholistic approach, and therefore work with individuals in different ways, depending on which aspects need balancing. I can help people set goals and then work out a game plan to achieve them. I can help people to deal with their emotional issues that have kept them stuck in the past. I can help people to change the way they think about things, as a new perspective can change one’s life. But my favorite work is helping people to get in touch with that secret place in their heart. We all have it. We may not all remember how to get there, but it’s there.
There is a theory in chiropractic that all subluxations (vertebrae out of alignment) can eventually be corrected with an adjustment to the first two vertebrae, the atlas and the axis, that our bodies want to be healthy, and so when these two are corrected, the others eventually adjust themselves back into place. Similarly, the secret place in the heart is the place to start to correct all of the other parts of one’s life.
However, just as it is sometimes necessary to adjust a lumbar vertebrate to get relief from acute pain, so is it necessary to address the parts of our lives that are crying out for attention the loudest. Once the crisis has been addressed, then the work of the heart will help to prevent further imbalances.
The best part is, when one learns to connect with the heart, even the greatest challenges don’t seem so bad.
Lies, lies, all lies!!!
Our minds are full of lies. And we believe them!
When we were very young, and just learning about the world, our imperfect parents instilled in us an imperfect world view which we still carry around with us. This world view, to a great extent, is composed of lies that we have come to believe as truth.
When we accept that our worldview may be composed of lies, we can set about changing those lies to be something that would serve us better.
Tonight I discovered that there is a little girl inside of me that is still working very hard to please her daddy, who is impossible to please. Daddy said that we should never lie, that we should always tell the truth. And yet, what is truth, really? So much of what we believe is “truth” turns out to be someone’s opinion that we agree to accept.
Let us recognize that our perspectives are malleable, and let us create new ways of looking at our worlds, at ourselves.
Some possible new ways to see things are:
People make the best choices that they can make in any given moment
All works to serve greater growth
There is no such thing as failure, only feedback
Every behavior is useful in some context
People respond to their maps of reality, not reality
If what you are doing isn’t working, do something else
If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it
Do any of these bring up resistance in you? Take a look at that. It very well could signify a place that you are stuck. If that is the case, just suspend your very firm belief for a moment and entertain that some of these may be more useful. You may just find your life shifting for the better.
Things that don’t suck
For over a year now, I have kept a gratitude journal. Every night before I go to bed, I write down at least five things for which I am grateful. I find that this practice puts me in a great state of mind just before sleep.
Recently, some friends of mine have started a daily practice of making a list of “Things That Don’t Suck” as a way of keeping a more positive attitude amidst all of the ways that we could perceive life as being not so good. There are four or five of us doing it now, and I hope it grows to be many more.
Personally, I have loved reading their entries. In those moments when we are grasping for a silver lining, we find that the simplest things can do it for us. I am noticing things I often take for granted, such as the way my three cats all come running to greet me when I walk in the door, or the fact that my partner made me breakfast again.
I am noticing that we are recognizing the positive in a previously perceived negative; for example, instead of saying, “Only one more week of vacation left,” we are reframing and saying, “Still one more week of vacation.” What a difference.
Another observance is an awareness of the little pleasures – the taste of a certain flavor of ice cream, the color of the sky just before a storm, time to oneself amidst an otherwise busy life.
All of us tend to list our accomplishments. We all love the feeling of accomplishment and feel grateful when we have succeeded in our endeavor, whatever it may be. I suggest that we set ourselves some smaller tasks each day so that we can experience that feeling of success. After awhile, we build the habit of success and the larger tasks seem less daunting.
Today I found myself listing the lesson I learned from a difficult situation. Even those things that suck have a gift that we can take away with us to use again and again, if we but take a moment to find it.
Go ahead. Take some time each day to make a list of things that don’t suck. It will change your life for the better.
Loving what you do
I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate. –George Burns
Every day I get motivational quotations in my email. This is one that I received today, and it struck a chord with me.
For much of my life, I succeeded at jobs I didn’t like very much. I wasn’t left with a feeling of joy. Every day, I was left with a feeling of relief when I could put the work down. Oh, I paid the bills. And I was able to do many other things on the side that were more in alignment with my passion, but I wasn’t really fulfilled.
I would play tricks on myself – tell myself that what I was doing was important for this reason and that reason, tell myself that I was making a difference by doing the work I was doing. But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t what I yearned to be doing.
In my heart of hearts, I have known for many years that my true work is to help folks find their own heart, and then to help them find the path that would lead to their dreams. Oh, the paths are many and varied, and can change in an instant, but when someone knows the sound of their heartsong, they can follow it relentlessly, wherever it leads, and know that they are on track by the joy and gratitude that they feel.
I don’t always achieve my dreams, but I always, always grow when I walk towards them. And one of my best dreams is to help others to do the same.
Letting go of dreams…
If you’ve been following my blogs, then you read my last entry about the little bird and the 16-plex. Well, when I ran the numbers, it just didn’t make sense to buy the property, so reluctantly, I passed on that news to the appropriate parties. I find myself wondering about that little bird now.
I continue to sift through the many deals that are flooding the market right now. There are so many opportunities!
And yet, I know, for every opportunity, there is also someone who had to give up a dream and forge a new path.
I think back to the many dreams I have had to let loose for one reason or another over the years, and I realize that dreams are there more to lead us and motivate us, to make us stronger, to keep us reaching and growing. Without a new vision of what could be, we wouldn’t strive for more.
My dreams are like little pieces of psychic art that I have created, still floating around in consciousness somewhere. I can follow the path that they have led me down. Sometimes I take an old dream and modify it to fit new information. Sometimes I hold on to a dream, knowing it’s just not yet time for it. And sometimes I find myself in situations where I dream whole new dreams, which often lead me in new and exciting directions.
Let your dreams lead you into your tomorrow, with faith that they are transforming you even as you take the next step towards them.
Little bird
Yesterday I went to visit a possible new property. It’s a 16-plex, and it’s a reach for me to go for it. Reaches are good – they challenge us to further growth.
We are still looking at the numbers to see if it would be a good deal, but at first glance, it looks to be.
The property is deserted and in disrepair. Many of the doors are open, so access to the units was easy. I was surprised to see that everything hadn’t been stripped, although there were used condoms around, so I knew that the building was being accessed and used. That’s actually a good sign, that everything hadn’t been stolen, even though folks obviously had access.
The way it was situated, there is a center courtyard area around the two-bedroom units, and as soon as I entered that area, I heard the screeching of a grackle, and then saw a baby bird (most likely a grackle given its color and markings) on the ground. I realized that the grackle was trying to keep me away from the baby, and I knew if I had touched it, the baby would be killed.
As I looked around, I saw that three of its siblings had died at the base of the tree before they had even developed feathers, and at least two eggs had been broken on the ground. I wondered if they had been forced from their nest or if they had simply fallen and not been able to survive. I looked at this new little life bouncing around the base of the tree and I wondered about its chances of survival. Would those grackles feed it and spare its life? Or would he be yet another tragedy of the times?
I debated whether I should try to catch him and take him home, but I knew I didn’t have the skills to do so. In the end, I left him alone and prayed for the best.
I am leaning towards buying that property. Oh, they say we shouldn’t buy from our hearts, but that little bird was an omen to me; even when all appears destroyed, there is a life longing to be lived. The building deserves a new life, and I can provide it.
And so, my heart has already decided. Now to see if the numbers say what I hope they will.
WHOLISTIC PROSPERITY 