How do you block yourself from financial success? What can you do to be more prosperous? Could a spikey green tropical fruit hold important answers for you? It did for this entrepreneur!
You are on your death bed and all your dreams have come true…
I have traveled the world. I’ve seen a lot of amazing places and met a lot of incredible people. I’ve experienced a lot of things that I never would have even imaginined. Everything from foods I never would have thought I would try to performers to meditation – a lot of experiences, a lot of sharing myself and experiences with other people. Teaching, for sure. Watching other people grow and blossom. Financially, having enough to have the freedom and have these experiences. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to experience passion in a lot of different areas of my life. Spiritually, physically, intellectually… I’ve had a very beautiful life. I feel very complete – more than satisfied, very content, very at peace, very grateful. Regarding our school, it’s grown so much! It has its own building, there are lots of teachers that come from all over, classes all over the world, there are scholarships for people who want to study. It’s a great place to work – people want to be there! It’s a family, it’s professional, it’s honest. It offers a place of safety and a place of nurturing nad growth and takes you to uncomfortable places in a loving way that allows you to grow and get past them. The staff handles things head on. The leadership handles things as they happen. There’s nothing stagnant; it’s always growing in the way things are done from a business perspective. It offers many different classes for people at many different levels. There’s something for everybody. It has the latest and greatest technology.
My worst nightmare is…
I have allowed myself to get in my own way. I have procrastinated. Now it is too late. I had a lot dreams but because of self doubt and fear and fear of self-judgment, I didn’t allow them to come to fruition because if I didn’t then no one could judge me! Maybe I sabotaged myself. Things were starting to get successful. I got scared, so I backed off. I didn’t teach. I folded to pressure to make money. I got a job back in corporate and I was miserable. I know how to make money in sales but am totally unfulfilled, stressed out, didn’t go anywhere. I worked seven days a week, had a boss breathing down my neck, wanting numbers. I paid the bills and lived up to societies’ expectations and standards, didn’t have time to teach. The biggest regret is that I let fear and doubt and fear of judgment by others if I went in a different direction from what others expected in terms of the classes I would want to teach and really speaking my voice and putting a face to the voice. With regard to our school, it went on to be very successful, but because of fear, doubt, and folding to the pressure to make money, I backed off. I’m disappointed that I didn’t follow through with that. I stay single for the rest of my life because I’m a pain in the butt to get along with. I was cynical about romantic love. I closed myself off from love, expressing it or receiving it. I didn’t pay enough attention to what I ate and didn’t get enough exercise. I got really huge…
If those feelings had a color (or colors), what would it be?
drab, like muddy between a kaki and a green….
Imagine that color filling the space in front of you so that it has depth, height, width, and aliveness.
Now watch that color swirl, congeal, and condense into a shape. Don’t make it take a shape, just watch it and say the first thing that you see or that comes to your mind: An animal? Object? Plant? What?
Round but spikes. It’s like a piece of fruit going bad…
Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor? It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are the shape that took form from your color and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!
Round, spikey fruit, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I was transported back to Hawaii. I’m on the floor of the jungle. There are a lot of decomposing leaves on the floor. I am in the middle of all of this. I stink!
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
My inside – no one knows this – is really vibrant in color. It’s almost like a fucia pink and really jucy. It tastes really good and smells really good. I know that’s what I am inside. I know what I look like on the inside but I can control what I look like outside. I can open up when I want or close up when I want. When I see someone walking by, I watch them. I’m quiet. They don’t know I’m there because I blend in with the jungle floor. If I think they are nice and worthy I’ll open up and surprise them.
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
I dislike that I don’t have the courage to stay open all the time. i don’t like the way my outward appearance looks. My skin isn’t as thick as it looks. I see that as a weakness. My skin needs to be tougher but over time it started to thin out.
(Character), you are in this person’s life experience, correct? They created you, right?_____ (Character), what aspect of this person do you represent or most closely personify?
Her! All of her!
(Character,) if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
I would take the skin off. I would just be the pink part in the middle. It’s vulnerable for sure. My protection is gone, but I’m juicy and people like the way I taste. I like to see the joy when they taste me and see me and they get close enough to see that I smell good.
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
(Character), how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities: confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: At first it’s like a three; over time it goes up. Then it’s like an eight.
Compassion: 9
Wisdom: 8
Acceptance: 8
Inner Peace: 4
Witnessing: 9
(Character,) if you scored tens in all six of these qualities, would you be different? If so, how?
If I was all of that I would be a lot of things. I would be like a chameleon. I would change shapes – different things at different times. I would be like a wise woman, a big table of food – a big, huge feast! A mermaid, a huge fruit basket, a redwood forest…
How would ______’s life be different if he/she naturally scored high in all six of these qualities all the time?
If she did that she would go full out and not care what other people thought or what it would look like or if she did it right. All the fear would go away. Anything would be possible! She wouldn’t make excuses or procrastinate.
If you could live ______’s life for her, how would you live it differently?
She pisses me off because she has all these different things she could do and she sits on the fence a lot! She is wasting time and not making the most of what she has because she gets in her own way! If I could live her life I would step in and do everything she has been thinking and talking about. I would do them! She has the time, knowledge, and resources. She’s irritating!
If you could live this person’s waking life for him/her today, would you handle his/her three life issues differently? If so, how?
I would put one foot in front of the other and just do those things she is capable of doing minus all the mental bullshit. I would put together a “to do” list because she gets distracted easily, and start checking it off one by one. None of it’s hard. It’s all doable. None of it is reinventing the wheel. There is no excuse, from my fruit perspective.
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of his/her life?
My priorities would be to get the most done in the shortest amount of time from a practical perspective and then to experience as much as I can – to touch as many people with the technology and the internet in a short period of time. Stop hiding. So many people need what she has to offer!
Why do you think that you are in _______’s life?
To kick her ass! To remind her that she’s pink and juicy inside and a lot of people want to experience that…
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for ____ to imagine that she is you and act as you would?
Whenever she starts going into why she can’t do something or what someone is going to think if she goes forward. Self doubt or fear of judgment – she won’t care what anyone thinks!
How is this person most likely to ignore what you are saying to them?
Because she can be very stubborn. Sometimes she just tunes me out and makes excuses and puts herself into overwhelm and puts too many things in her plate so she doesn’t have to focus on those things she really doesn’t want to do.
What would you recommend that they do about that?
I would recommend that she stop and take a time out and go to her computer and start writing. Sometimes when she writes she can do automatic writing. I will come through in her writing when I can’t come through in her head.
______, what have you heard yourself say?
It’s time! It’s time to stop hiding. It’s time to stop putting emphasis on being right. There’s a theme that if I don’t try then I can’t be wrong. Then I can’t fail or not be successful because it’s out there in the future…
Fruit, you were talking about a level of commitment to your school…
If there was a number for that level of commitment for me, the fruit: eight or nine. This is an important, integral part of Dana’s coming out process. I think our school is a vehicle for Dana to come out without feeling like she’s out there by herself. This creates a vehicle for her to come out but not be out there all alone. If our school went away she would tend to regress. She needs it! I have more wisdom, but I know. She needs to get organized with her business plan and make it clearer. It needs to be in writing and not go about it haphazardly. She needs to get more serious. If she does that she will be successful. She needs to have more structure. She has the resources and the tools, she just need to do it.
Dana has no desire to have ownership or be owned. In the past she defined partnership as ownership. She’s redefining partnership as something other than owning or being owned, but wants to be a partner. Dana thought she knew what partnership was. Then she got married and thought she was a good partner but was told again and again that she wasn’t. Since that word has been used in a derogatory way she is sensitive to it. A partner to Dana is someone who is there unconditionally, who doesn’t judge, who is there spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. Who doesn’t judge others solely based on her expectations and loves you regardless.
If this experience were a wake-up call from your soul, what do you think it would be saying to you?
That I need to move forward, get organized, have some structure, goals, and write them down. I need to think more about what partnership means to me and get clearer so I can stop being wishy-washy.
