Author: Elisa Balabram Page 16 of 21

Making Decisions with the Highest Good of All at Heart

 Sunrise, photo by Elisa Balabram

When coaching someone on a meditation exercise, to help her decide what to do and what actions to take that would impact her business in a big way, I encouraged her to focus on choosing a solution that would serve the highest good of all involved. She questioned my advice, which at first was surprising, but I quickly thought about it and knew what she meant. Why would she even consider the highest good of someone else who could potentially hurt her business? Or what if the highest good for others meant that she didn’t get what she wanted?

Guest Bloggers: What you need to include in your blog’s guidelines for guest bloggers

In just the last few weeks, several women asked me how I managed guest bloggers on my other website WomenandBiz.com, and I’ve been recommending them to write guidelines. In case you are thinking of attracting volunteer guest bloggers to increase traffic and enhance your site’s content, here are a few items to think about and include in your guideline:

1-      About the blog and the categories that are available to guest bloggers

2-      Your blog’s target audience

3-      Typical guest bloggers and areas of expertise needed

4-      Topics/subjects that are most relevant to the readers

5-      How to submit articles (contact information, file format accepted, email subject line)

6-      The format to submit article, photo, bio or byline, contact information and site link(s) to be included with the article

7-      Minimum and maximum number of words allowed per blog

International Women’s Day – Celebrate even if it’s just for 5 minutes

International Woman's DayMarch is Women’s History Month in the USA, and March 8th is the International Women’s Day. In Brazil the day is celebrated with women getting flowers, chocolate, messages and being appreciated.

Here are a few recommendations to celebrate your day:

Nurture Yourself. I could give you a laundry list of things you could do to nurture yourself, but ultimately you know best. Ask yourself how can I best nurture myself today? And then set some time aside to do it, even if it’s just for 5 minutes.

Take inventory of where you are in your life. This could be a journaling exercise. After completing the inventory, ask yourself if you would like to make any changes. If the answer is yes, choose one step you can take today to pursue it, even if it’s just for 5 minutes.

Get together with a friend. I know, some of us are facing a blizzard, and it might be difficult to get together. How about scheduling to Skype with a friend instead of meeting face-to-face. You can be there for each other and send each other virtual hugs.

Self-Doubt: What to do when it settles in?

questionsSix Steps to Help You Shift from Self-doubt to Self-confidence

Let’s say you are launching your business: you wrote the business plan, you told your friends and family about it, you attended networking events and distributed business cards, you shared it on social media, and you placed ads on Craigslist, other sites, newspapers, and the phone isn’t ringing. Nobody is calling you for that one time free offer or discount you have to invite them to sign up for your program, buy your products or services, by a certain date. Actually the offer deadline has come and gone.

It’s natural to start questioning yourself, your talents and gifts. You may think that because it isn’t happening as your business plan projected, or as you envisioned it, it is not meant to be. You tried. You put yourself out there. Nobody has shown interest. The self-doubt settles in and you start asking yourself: ‘What’s the point? Why bother? Why would people hire me/buy from me? So and so has been doing it for a long time, why don’t they go directly to them? It makes sense that nobody is contacting me, they have other choices.’ Does this inner dialogue sound familiar? I’ve heard this from many clients, and I experienced it myself. Instead of staying stuck, you can take the following steps to shift from self-doubt to self-confidence:

Elisa Balabram interviews Catherine Storing, Chief Style Coach

I had the opportunity to interview Catherine Storing via Skype. In this interview she shares how her journey as a Chief Style Coach found her, how passionate she is about helping women find their image style, and she also shared her personal journey to embrace her own unique and authentic style. Catherine shares my view about the importance of self-love for women, and she inspires women to dress their best and show their truth inside and outside. She also shared women's biggest challenge when shopping for clothes.

[embedplusvideo height="365" width="450" standard="http://www.youtube.com/v/VyyOZpHGW-s?fs=1" vars="ytid=VyyOZpHGW-s&width=450&height=365&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=" id="ep1577" /]

“I believe every woman is beautiful, and deserves to look her best.” Catherine Storing, Chief Style Coach, Styling Women to the Top. To learn more about Catherine Storing, and her services, please visit www.catherinestoring.com.  

Valentine’s Day and Self-love

Thursday, February 14th is Valentine’s Day in the United States. In Brazil*, Valentine’s Day is on June 12th. Whenever you celebrate it, why not dedicate February 14th to self-love?

Either if you are in a relationship or not, you could choose Valentine’s Day to practice self-love at its best:

  1. Plan the day carefully but let go and allow for spontaneity to happen;
  2. Have your favorite fruits in the morning – and prepare a nurturing breakfast;
  3. Take time to meditate once or twice for at least 10 minutes on Valentine’s Day;
  4. Give yourself a box of your favorite chocolate;

Planting Seeds

I’ve been asked recently what is my coaching style, and I had to think about it for a while. It’s certainly a holistic approach, which incorporates business strategies with spiritual and self-love practices that I’ve learned on my own, through coaching others, through all the courses I’ve taken and books I read and through, at times painful, life experiences.

Furthermore, the key to my coaching is active and intuitive listening to what’s being said and to what’s hidden, and I plant a seed.  Then, if it resonates for them, I can help my clients nurture and grow the seed, which sometimes entails a new project, a different way to grow a project or provide a service, write a book, or a change of an old belief and pattern.

Collaboration and Co-Creation

Since last year, more than ever before, you probably have heard about the importance of collaboration, and how we can co-create and create win-win opportunities. I wanted to share with you more of how my collaboration with Jennifer Alhasa came about, so that you can start reflecting on the collaborations you can also create in your life and business.

Jennifer and I met early last year. We were both participating on the Tweet chat #spiritchat, hosted by Kumud Ajmani.*  We started following each other on Twitter and Jennifer suggested we meet for coffee. I loved the idea, and pretty soon we had breakfast in my neighborhood as she had a meeting close by and I had to go to Brooklyn where I was working at the time. It’s wonderful how we met by chance online on a Sunday morning, and it turned out that we had so much in common that the relationship grew into a wonderful friendship.

Letting Go of the Old

As we continue to grow into our true selves, we start shedding layers of our old selves, of things we held on to for too long, of old belief systems, of old patterns, of old. It can be scary at times, as we’ve known the old all our lives, we’ve behaved a certain way for years, and somehow it feels safe. But there is something special about taking the leap and going for it. The transformed you will feel more alive, powerful, self-loving and reassured. I certainly do.

How can we let go?

Facing the Truth and Pursuing Your Dreams

Have you ever felt frustrated by the number of years that have passed without you creating or pursuing your real dreams? Your dreams of someday launching a business, becoming an artist, promoting your music, writing and publishing a book, investing in your talents and gifts, and anything else you know you’ve always wanted to pursue? If yes, have you taken the time to go deeper within to uncover and discover why you haven’t pursued it?

We all have excuses, and it’s so simple to come up with a few: I’m too busy, I’m a procrastinator, I’m lazy, I don’t have time, it’s an expensive project, I’m always exhausted, I don’t have all the skills, I need to figure things out first, I have a lot going on already, and the list goes on.

Page 16 of 21

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén