There’s quite a few misconceptions about energy work aka “energy healing.”  Some people are afraid of it and consider it “of the devil.” Others say it’s “woo woo” and roll their eyes. Others find it mystical or perhaps intriguing. Then there’s people like me who see it as logical and scientific.

In my opinion we should take the mysticism and even the spiritual or “religious” element out of energy work. It’s not necessary to explain it and usually leads to more misconception than clarity.

We know from science that everything is made up of energy. We can’t see energy with our naked eyes, but if we have an electron microscope we can. Quantum physicists say that everything comes down to a small unit of energy called quanta. Everything is made of quanta – plants, animals, rocks, dirt, metal, air, and humans. Quanta are in all things and through all things.

As energetic beings, we have the ability to move, reroute, and manipulate energy. When a baby comes into the world, she moves her arms and legs. She’s moving energy particles in the process. When she becomes a toddler and walks from the couch to the coffee table to pick up her sippy cup and drink some juice, she’s moving energy. She’s affecting the energy in her own body, in the air between her and her goal, in the cup, in the juice, and now her body as it’s processing the energy of the juice.

As she grows older and wants to take piano lessons, she asks her father for lessons. Perhaps funds are tight, and he can’t get her lessons right when she asks. But she sets the intention of learning to play the piano, plunks around on the instrument’s keys in her living room, and continues to hope for the opportunity to learn. In a few months, her father gets a new client in his business and uses the increased income to enroll his little girl in piano lessons.

In the process the little girl has influenced her father, his business, AND the person who became his client. AND she’s attained her objective. Did her intention, desire and belief play into the client’s needs? Or the client’s ability to pay for the father’s services? How far reaching in moving energy is the little girl’s desire?

Can you see that we are born energy movers? It’s what we were created to do. There are many ways to move energy — perhaps as diverse as the individual, but all with the fundamental principles of intention, specificity, a request, belief in the outcome, acting, and letting go of the outcome.

The best analogy I’ve discovered for how energy moves is gardening / landscaping. Let’s compare your intention (or goal) to a seed. Some seeds grow and others do not. Some intentions lead to results, others do not. In addition to the clarity of your intention, your request, your belief, and your action, there are two other things you need — a good seed and rich, well-prepared soil!

If you had the choice to plant a bean seed in one of the following locations, which would you select and why?

• on top of a tree stump,
• in a nest of briars,
• in a grassy, weedy area,
• in tilled, good earth?

You’d choose the latter, wouldn’t you? Why? Because there’s nothing obstructing its growth there. It will have the greatest chance of bearing fruit.  The same goes with your intentions or goals. If you plant your intention in an energetic field of

• false beliefs,
• past trauma,
• negative generational patterns,
• doubt, fear, and other low-energy emotions

what will be the likelihood of your intention bearing fruit?

But what if you plant it in an energy field that has nothing to stand in its way? Now you’ll increase your chances of success and expedite the process as well.

That is what energy workers do. They move the obstructions out of the way and help you craft clear, concise intentions so you can then move forward and take proactive action toward the results you desire. They aren’t sorcerers or magicians. They can’t make you do anything, but they can help you clear the ground.

I live on a larger-than-average parcel of land which includes a field that leads to a creek. That field gets overgrown every summer. If I want to be able to walk to the creek, I have to clear the field. If someone tried to clear it by hand, it would take a month or more. With my brother-in-law’s old tractor, it would take about a week because he’d have to stop and fix punctured tires or broken blades on his attachments. One year I hired a man with a $75k John Deere tractor to clear 10 acres. It took him 2 hours in his air conditioned cab to wiz right over the property and clear it. It was fun to watch and got me results faster than anyone else ever had. I was happy to pay him the $500 for this service.

Cleaning up your energy field so that you can get to where you want to go is very similar. There are lots of ways to do it, but there are some people who have been trained and are equipped to get the job done in a faster, cleaner, more painless way.

I hope this little analogy helps you better understand what is happening when an energy worker helps someone. Just because the “dirt, weeds, briars and stumps” in the landscape of your energetic field are not visible to the naked eyes, doesn’t mean they are any less real, or any less debilitating. Those who know how to move them are offering a valuable service — just like the man with his John Deere tractor offered me in clearing my field.

For my birthday I treated myself to two things… a Kindle Fire and a Great Pyrenees puppy. I love these dogs. They’re so sweet-natured, beautiful and protective of their family.  I purchased Snow White aka “Snow” from a breeder in Athens, Tennessee on May 3rd. We’re crate-training her.

She had a rough couple of nights, but a friend said she slept by her puppy’s crate for the first couple nights and that helped. So my two younger boys agreed to camp out on the air mattress next to the crate for about 3 nights. Now she’s sleeping through the night without whining. And she’s doing quite well with her house-training.

Snow is a cutie-pie and she loves flowers … well, she loves to shred them anyway. That’s what this short little video is about… beware poppies! Snow’s on the loose!

I’d say the biggest barrier that holds people back from shining as brightly and brilliantly as they could is the fear of failure. “What if I mess up? What if I make a fool of myself? What if it doesn’t work? How embarrassing!” Fear of failure often masquerades as “Perfectionism.”

Every now and then, my father and I have these deep philosophical discussions. During one of these, he helped me realize something about myself. I do NOT believe in failure! When I look back over my 22 years in business (which I’m celebrating this month), I see no failures. None. Sure, I’ve tried things that didn’t “work” the way I’d hoped.  But even the ideas that didn’t strike it big and even the “less-than-perfect choices” were valuable learning experiences.

This is how I see it… you try something, it doesn’t work the way you wanted it to, so you tweak and adjust until you find the combination that clicks. Life is one big laboratory of learning. And owning your own business is one of the richest laboratories of all. Feedback on whether you’ve found the right combination reflects swiftly in your bottom line. Because profits are such a tangible thermometer, you have a lot more incentive to tweak until you get it right.

Yet, there’s one other ingredient you need for this philosophy to work — Determination! I never, ever quit. In my vocabulary, QUIT is a four-letter word. I might realize an idea, method or system isn’t going to work, and lay it aside. But giving up on my business is not an option!

There are no failures, only experiments. These experiments all have a purpose:

• They may teach you what doesn’t work. So you can tweak and adjust.
• They often give you new understanding, knowledge or skills.
• During the experiment, you  may pick up a new friend, colleague or mentor.
• Experiments build on each other. You start to see patterns for what works, what doesn’t.
• Some experiments give you more compassion and empathy for others.
• In the end, they give a richness and depth to your character.

Combine determination with adaptability, and the laboratory of business is a grand adventure!

I’m thrilled to announce the arrival of “Trust Your Heart: Building Relationships That Build Your Business.” If you’re ready to mine the gold in your relationships, this book is for you.

Contributors include: Connie Ragen Green, David Perdew, Ellen Britt, Kendall Summerhawk, Kirk Duncan, Lisa Rae Preston, Nancy Marmolejo, Shannon Cherry, Adela Rubio, Ally Piper, Christine Gallagher, Cindy Rushton, Dr. Linda Miles, D’Vorah Lansky, Eileen Voyles, Felicia Slattery, Dr. Joseph Peck, Kathleen Ann, Lou Bortone, Mari-Lyn Harris, Rhonda Hess, Ronda Del Boccio, Terri Zwierzynski, and Therese Skelly.

Be sure to sign up to be notified when the book is released AND get your FREE copy of “Mining Relationship Gold” here.

Can you hear me celebrating? Today is a fantastic day, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Why am I so excited? Let me explain…

If you’ve seen me speak, heard me on video, or read my blogs in the past three years, you know I’m a raving fan of the STEP into Destiny core-passion test.

This cutting-edge program, created by my amazing friend Lisa Rae Preston, reveals how to read the brain patterns of others in a way that helps you understand them powerfully.

In fact, Lisa Rae shows you how to crawl inside someone’s head and see exactly what’s going on in his/her thought processes.

As a member of the research team behind STEP, I was privy to discoveries as they happened. And I’m thrilled to tell you that Lisa Rae has just launched her new STEP program which details exactly how to read others like a book.

It’s been life-changing for me. I use STEP every day to connect deeply with my family, colleagues, and clients.

That’s why I’m so over-the-top excited to be the first to share this cutting-edge information with you!

You won’t want to miss out on this. I promise you your life will never be the same!

If you have a message to share with the world, consider being a part of my Light the World Group Mentoring Program coming up in May.

Many of us have been sharing our messages with the world and have seen some success, but then hit a snag where we feel like we’re being tested on the very thing we’re teaching. It almost feels like going back to square one. Why does this happen? If this has happened to you (or is happening to you). You are not alone. It’s all part of the what I call the “Light the World Process.”

Did you know there’s an actual process one goes through to light the world? It’s true. It’s predictable. Knowing where you are in the process helps you navigate more proactively toward your goal of impacting the world with the message, love and light God is sharing with others through you.

Step into your destiny as one of God’s chosen light-bearers! This brief video will show you how…

I’d love to hear from you and where you feel you are in the process and your experiences.

Have you ever come up with an idea that seemed so incredibly imaginative it filled you with an inexpressible joy?  Yet, the time, money, resources or connections weren’t there to make it happen yet.  This is common for inspired creatives. It can make you feel very frustrated to have such an amazing vision, yet know that you don’t have what it takes to bring it into reality yet.

Don’t despair. There’s something a bit prophetic about these inspired ideas. They set the stage for what can be in the future. Almost like a seed planted in the mind, an inspired idea goes into the ground and begins gathering everything it needs to become a full grown tree.

Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden on old bridge - from Atlas Shrugged Part 1

There’s a scene in Atlas Shrugged where Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are standing by an old bridge in front of her freshly laid railroad track. Dagny knows the bridge needs to be replaced with one made of Rearden Metal. Then it would last another century. But her designers tell her that it’s too costly. Not only that, the designs they come up with are antiquated and do not adapt to the lighter, stronger metal’s capabilities.  She decides to just reinforce the existing bridge with Rearden Metal and hope it lasts for another five years.

She stands at the bridge with Hank Rearden who tells her it won’t cost as much as she thinks to do the job right. He shows her pages of sketches and mathematical formulas and explains how his vision of an innovative bridge made of Rearden Metal could span the gulf and last another century.

Hank,” she asked, “did you invent this in two days?”

“Hell, no. I ‘invented’ it long before I had Rearden Metal. I figured it out while making steel for bridges. I wanted a metal with which one would be able to do this, among other things. I came here just to see your particular problem for myself.”

Notice that the vision of the bridge came years before Hank Rearden ever invented Rearden Metal. That vision, planted like a seed in Rearden’s mind, led him to the invention and accumulation of everything he needed to make it a reality. Dagny’s need became Rearden’s opportunity to see the fulfillment of his vision.

Success is when preparation meets opportunity.

So hang onto those visionary ideas. Don’t discard them. Don’t let anyone tell you they are impossible. In time, as you take action, everything you need will be brought forward to make it a reality.

It’s funny that what some people find romantic, others find boring. Inspired creatives (who are often Potentials in the STEP Into Destiny test) are wired a bit differently than others. I believe our deepest craving is to be understood at a level where our joy resides. Perhaps everyone craves to be understood at this place. The challenge for Potentials is that perhaps only 10% of the population will ever be able to truly “get” what brings us joy. Hence, we’re ever searching, but rarely finding someone who gets us at this core place of joy.

This scene between Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged is a classic illustration of a “romantic scene” between Potentials. It may be that you’d need to be a Potential to truly appreciate it though…

Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged

They stood at the window, watching silently, intently. She did not speak, until another load of green-blue metal came moving across the sky. Then the first words she said were not about rail, track or an order completed on time. She said, as if greeting a new phenomenon of nature:

“Rearden Metal…”

He noticed that, but said nothing. He glanced at her, then turned back to the window.

“Hank, this is great.”

“Yes.”

He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatness, knowing that it is understood.

She said, “When I think of what that metal can do, what it will make possible…Hank, this is the most important thing happening in the world today, and none of them know it.”

“We know it.”

…

“They spoke of the metal and of the possibilities which they could not exhaust. It was as if they were standing on a mountain top, seeing a limitless plain below and roads open in all directions. But they merely spoke of mathematical figures, of weights, pressures, resistances, costs.

She had forgotten her brother and his National Alliance. She had forgotten every problem, person and event behind her; they had always been clouded in her sight, to be hurried past, to be brushed aside, never final, never quite real. This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.

This was the way she had expected to live — she had wanted to spend no hour and take no action that would mean less than this.

She looked at him in the exact moment when he turned to look at her. They stood very close to each other. She saw, in his eyes, that he felt as she did. If joy is the aim and core of existence, she thought, and if that which has the power to give one joy is always guarded as one’s deepest secret, then they had seen each other naked in that moment.”

My first 4-leaf clover

When I was little, my best friend Ruth and I used to sit around on the grass after church hunting for 4-leaf clovers. Ruth seemed expert at the task and found several of them. I, on the other hand, don’t recall ever finding a 4-leaf clover. It seemed so impossible, like looking for a needle in a haystack.

This afternoon, I went outside to shoot hoops with my 10-year-old. I found him sitting in the grass looking for 4-leaf clovers. We shot for a while and then I decided to take a break and stood, inspecting a patch of larger-than-normal clover.

My son plopped right down and almost instantly found a four-leaf. He explained that it’s genetic.

“What? It takes a genetic ability to find them?” I teased.

“It’s in the root system,” he announced with the authority of a seasoned botanist. “If you find one, you’ll find more.”

Encouraged by his observation, I sat on the grass. Within a minute or two, right there in front of me was a four-leaf clover! The first I’d ever found on my own.

Was it because I thought they were hard to find that I couldn’t see them before? Did I find one today because my son shared his clover-theory and instilled the belief that it was not only possible, but also likely since he had just found one?

How significant of a role does expectation play in “luck?”  I tend to believe it could be quite significant. What do you think?

I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: (Centennial Edition) and am enjoying it very much. I can relate in many ways with the heroine of the story, Dagney Taggart. Dagney’s a workaholic. At the end of a particular long day, she steps outside, exhausted and looking for something to refuel her.

Her work was all she had or wanted. But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still. Then she felt the wish to find a moment’s joy outside, the wish to be held as a passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness. Not to make it, she thought, but to respond; not to create, but to admire. I need it to let me go on, she thought, because joy is one’s fuel.

She had always been — she closed her eyes with a faint smile of amusement and pain — the motive power of her own happiness. For once, she wanted to feel herself carried by the power of someone else’s achievement. As men on a dark prairie liked to see the lighted windows of a train going past, her achievement, the sight of power and purpose that gave them reassurance in the midst of empty miles and night — so she wanted to feel it for a moment, a brief greeting, a single glimpse, just to wave her arm and say: Someone is going somewhere…”

I love that passage because I can relate to Dagney. I find immense joy and happiness in my work, but there’s something magical in watching someone else succeed, observing another’s creations, knowing there is majesty elsewhere on the planet. I think that’s why I love promoting people so much and why nature is the air I breathe.