Our assignment for our final Ladies Who Launch incubator meeting was to write a vision for ourself. There's SO MUCH power in writing down your intentions. I chose to do the vision exercise by writing a news-style article about myself.
When I have clients write down intentions they want to manifest, I always suggest that they write as if everything they want is happening now.
So instead of saying...
"I will create a worldwide giving movement with over 1,000,000 members."
I'd say...
"I'm so thankful that today my worldwide giving movement brings over 1,000,000 people together in the spirit of generosity."
Since I wrote this as an article that is running in Entrepreneur Magazine I took a slightly different approach than usual. It was fun. I put a printed copy on my altar! I've already written myself a check for my $550,000 book advance. It's actually been hanging on my desk for about a year. I look at it every day and visualize what it feels like to cash that check.
If you've never done a written vision for yourself, do it today. And then spend a little time each day sitting quietly and reflect on how it FEELS to live that vision. As Abraham tells us in the Law of Attraction:
"AS I AM FEELING, I AM ATTRACTING."
MY VISION:
From one-woman show to fempire in five short years
Excerpt from an article running in Entrepreneur Magazine
Who says a fempire can't be built in record time? Cami Walker has proven it's possible to turn a solopreneur operation to a thriving global enterprise in short order. Today she is widely recognized as the world’s leading fempreneur expert. One thing Walker realized early in her ventures is that woman entrepreneurs want more than just profitable businesses—they want to give their gifts to the world and inspire positive change.
Breaking Ground Through Giving
Walker’s worldwide movement, the 29-Day Giving Challenge, brought more than 1,000,000 women and men together in just seven short months through the power of online social networking. People who commit to the challenge give away 29 gifts in 29 days and share inspiring stories and artwork about their experience. The online project was parlayed into a New York Times Best-Selling three-book series called, 29 Gifts for which Walker was given a $550,000 advance from Chronicle Books. The top-rated documentary-style reality show, 29 Gifts, has run on Bravo for four seasons and was just picked up for another three.
Transforming Pain into Growth
The 29 Gifts project were originally inspired by Walker’s triumph over Multiple Sclerosis, which is believed to be a chronic neurological disease with no cure. But Walker doesn’t believe that. She has been free of the often devastating disease for many years now and lives an active, vital life.
Thriving Through Service to Others
Today, Walker is sought out by launching fempreneurs for her unique gifts as a business intuitive. Walker’s combination of marketing expertise and clairvoyant abilities make her a potent partner as she helps clients plot their personal path to business bounty.
Clients flock to Creative Urge, Walker’s consulting business. She works with a select few women one-on-one, raking in fees of $1,200 per hour, and is one of the most popular inspirational speakers on the national circuit. Through her exclusive Creative Urge Partnership Program, Walker is now a 15% shareholder in over 50 women-run businesses. She provides ground-floor visionary expertise and start-up capital to help these businesses take flight and grow in exchange for minority ownership.
The Creative Urges Never Stop
Walker’s latest non-fiction book, Energetics of Commerce: How to turn up the frequency of your vision, was released earlier this year. Next for Walker is a novel entitled, Ghost Stories, which is a coming-of-age story about a San Francisco stripper named Deja, set during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. The story follows Deja’s personal quest to face the demons of her past and reinvent herself as a successful painter and loving single mother. Walker’s agent tells us the movie rights are already being shopped to studios, even before the final manuscript is complete.
A Settled Spirit
Walker says she finds most of her inspiration through her close connection with family and friends and through her spiritual practices. Walker currently lives in a sprawling beach-side estate in Santa Cruz, California with her husband and two children. The couple adopted their children, who are biological brother and sister, through the LA County foster care system in 2010. Walker’s husband, Mark Atherlay, is a voice acting star who does lead character voices for several top-rated children’s television shows and movies.
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YOUR CHALLENGE: I encourage you to give this visioning exercise a try! You'll feel completely inspired by what you write. Feel free to send a copy of your vision to me... or email me a link to it. I'm happy to read it and help you hold your intention. Your vision can focus on any area of your life where you want to see big change.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Every thought creates a form
Something one of my favorite teachers always tells me is that, "Every thought creates a form." I really need her constant reminders. Yesterday I found myself thinking some things about my husband that I know aren't creating the form he wants to see manifest. So today I'm practicing visualizing the success and happiness I know he wants to experience in his voice over and acting career here in LA. I'm so proud of him for taking the risk to come down here and participate in the savvy LA market. He really is playing on a whole new level and he's thrown himself into it with gusto... signing up for mentoring with a voice over master, joining an improv group even though it scares him, and signing on with an on camera acting agent even though his comfort zone is to stay invisible in a voice over recording booth. I believe great things are in store for Mark here. And for me too. We just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trusting that everything is possible.
Reflections on Letting Go
Today is Day 29 for me, the second time around. I must admit that this second cycle of giving has been feeling a little anticlimactic for me. When I look back over this month, the giving has become more routine. Maybe that's a good thing though because it is just part of my daily practice now and not something I put "effort" into.
I recall that the first month felt so deeply profound. I was coming out of several months of isolation, sickness and depression and this experiment is the thing that really turned things around for me. The small giving gestures were some of my first attempts to reach out and serve others after many months of feeling consumed by my own daily struggles with intense chronic pain, problems walking and daily states of panic over the crazy, unpredictable changes I was seeing with my body from multiple sclerosis.
When I reflect back on that time, it feels like the last 58 days are a miraculous turn around. I can now walk unassisted most of the time--no more cane. I'm able to stay in a positive and productive mental space most of the time. And while I am still dealing with pain and discomfort in my body, now I'm able to cope with it instead of rushing to the hospital for shots of narcotics or popping too many pills.
On Day 1 the first time around, I was in a very shaky financial position. The medical bills were piled up. A lot of debt had accumulated from our move from San Francisco to LA and several months of my business being stalled. Thank God my husband's voice over business was stable. Thank God I receive some disability payments--what a gift that those benefits exist. Thank God for my parents, who helped us out with the gift of a sizeable loan at next to no interest. Thank God for the sudden rush of new business that started to roll in for me seemingly out of nowhere right at the beginning of my first week. And thank God I've felt well enough to work a little bit the past two months. Today the money picture is looking manageable and I feel hopeful that the debt will be cleaned up without a lot of stress. My husband and I have been visualizing a couple of big, national campaign for him, which would allow us to pay everything off immediately.
All of this change is a direct result of the shift in my thinking and energy created by the challenge. I shifted my focus onto what I had to offer others... the areas I was living in abundance, which increased the value of my thoughts. The more I focus on this abundance, the more positive things I see flowing into my life.
This isn't surprising to me of course. I have long studied the principles of energy, law of attraction and the likes. I have a proven track record manifesting my dreams over the past 15 years of this study. But just because I understand and know these principles doesn't mean I always make the choice to put what I know into practice.
This is a common issue for many of us--making the connection between what we KNOW and what we DO.
I'm actually in it right now around food. I recently made the decision that I want to cut several substances that I KNOW don't serve me out of my diet for good... not just for a month or two for a cleanse, but as a permanent lifestyle change. I even recruited my husband to cut the same things out of his diet (for him only for a month so the food I don't want to eat isn't in the house). He's been doing great with the changes, but I have been struggling every day... holding on for dear life to what is familiar to me by sneaking out of the house to cheat at restaraunts.
If I tell the truth about why I haven't changed my behavior, it's because I'm afraid of getting well. Deep inside I know these diet changes, combined with a committment to regular exercise (another current struggle of mine), have the potential to put my MS into remission. But what happens then? The past two years of my life have been devoted to "fighting my MS." If I give up that fight, what will unfold? It all boils down to my old fear of letting go completely... of trusting that I'm being watched over and cared for every day of my life and that I will be more than OK if I chose to surrender and trust in that great force we call Spirit or God.
My gift for the day is to practice trusting the force that made everything out of nothing. Every time I catch myself thinking or doing anything that isn't in alignment with that trust, I will repeat the following mantra until I believe it in that moment.
"I am bathed in the light of spirit. I am trusting God."
I recall that the first month felt so deeply profound. I was coming out of several months of isolation, sickness and depression and this experiment is the thing that really turned things around for me. The small giving gestures were some of my first attempts to reach out and serve others after many months of feeling consumed by my own daily struggles with intense chronic pain, problems walking and daily states of panic over the crazy, unpredictable changes I was seeing with my body from multiple sclerosis.
When I reflect back on that time, it feels like the last 58 days are a miraculous turn around. I can now walk unassisted most of the time--no more cane. I'm able to stay in a positive and productive mental space most of the time. And while I am still dealing with pain and discomfort in my body, now I'm able to cope with it instead of rushing to the hospital for shots of narcotics or popping too many pills.
On Day 1 the first time around, I was in a very shaky financial position. The medical bills were piled up. A lot of debt had accumulated from our move from San Francisco to LA and several months of my business being stalled. Thank God my husband's voice over business was stable. Thank God I receive some disability payments--what a gift that those benefits exist. Thank God for my parents, who helped us out with the gift of a sizeable loan at next to no interest. Thank God for the sudden rush of new business that started to roll in for me seemingly out of nowhere right at the beginning of my first week. And thank God I've felt well enough to work a little bit the past two months. Today the money picture is looking manageable and I feel hopeful that the debt will be cleaned up without a lot of stress. My husband and I have been visualizing a couple of big, national campaign for him, which would allow us to pay everything off immediately.
All of this change is a direct result of the shift in my thinking and energy created by the challenge. I shifted my focus onto what I had to offer others... the areas I was living in abundance, which increased the value of my thoughts. The more I focus on this abundance, the more positive things I see flowing into my life.
This isn't surprising to me of course. I have long studied the principles of energy, law of attraction and the likes. I have a proven track record manifesting my dreams over the past 15 years of this study. But just because I understand and know these principles doesn't mean I always make the choice to put what I know into practice.
This is a common issue for many of us--making the connection between what we KNOW and what we DO.
I'm actually in it right now around food. I recently made the decision that I want to cut several substances that I KNOW don't serve me out of my diet for good... not just for a month or two for a cleanse, but as a permanent lifestyle change. I even recruited my husband to cut the same things out of his diet (for him only for a month so the food I don't want to eat isn't in the house). He's been doing great with the changes, but I have been struggling every day... holding on for dear life to what is familiar to me by sneaking out of the house to cheat at restaraunts.
If I tell the truth about why I haven't changed my behavior, it's because I'm afraid of getting well. Deep inside I know these diet changes, combined with a committment to regular exercise (another current struggle of mine), have the potential to put my MS into remission. But what happens then? The past two years of my life have been devoted to "fighting my MS." If I give up that fight, what will unfold? It all boils down to my old fear of letting go completely... of trusting that I'm being watched over and cared for every day of my life and that I will be more than OK if I chose to surrender and trust in that great force we call Spirit or God.
My gift for the day is to practice trusting the force that made everything out of nothing. Every time I catch myself thinking or doing anything that isn't in alignment with that trust, I will repeat the following mantra until I believe it in that moment.
"I am bathed in the light of spirit. I am trusting God."
Thursday, May 8, 2008
New Favorite Tool
My new friend MJ recently introduced me to picnik, a handy online image editor recently. It's my new favorite thing. MJ also has a great solution that helps small business owners get a basic website up in just a couple hours. Check out hutdogs quicksite if you're looking for a simple starter home on the web.
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