These situations all involve boundaries.

In every relationship, boundaries are what make it healthy and functional. Business is the same; you have to know who you are and who you are not, what you will do and what you will not. You need to know how to set, reset, and negotiate boundaries. Boundaries serve to keep your business functioning smoothly, and keep you from burning out.

Don’t underestimate how hard setting boundaries can be. A plan helps.

The clearer you can become internally, the more solid and clear you can be with your clients. I suggest writing down your boundaries in a “Boundaries Plan”.

Here are some examples of business boundaries:

• My minimum project fee is $2000.
• I customize Wordpress blogs, but don’t work with other blog software.
• I’m not open to trades at this time or I only take on one trade client at a time.
• I see people for a minimum of six visits.
• I fix bugs in my software free for six months and then charge my normal hourly rate of $X.
• You must notify me 24 hours in advance to cancel, otherwise I will charge you for the session.

Your boundary plan can include more subtle boundaries as well.

• I will turn down clients who want a rush job; my project turnouround time is 4-6 weeks.
• I will turn down clients who ask me to sell myself to them; I let my work samples speak for themselves.
• I will gauge where people are in their process and suggest X if they are not at least at stage Y.
• I won’t work with people who communicate only via phone or who can’t provide a written spec for their project.

Your boundary plan can also include boundaries you make between your business and your life, such as:

• I don’t work on Sundays.
• My max client load is 3 active projects.
• I won’t answer the business phone line after 6pm, or if I’m eating lunch.
• I don’t do trade shows.

Some people will test your boundaries. Most just won’t know where they are until you tell them.

Most of the trouble people get into is not actually from someone pushing their boundaries. It’s the fear that comes before you even set them. That fear can keep you from spelling them out clearly enough to be understood. It can also lead to defensiveness when you state them–which muddies the water and makes people uncomfortable.

Sometimes people will push, but I’ve found that the stress and awkwardness of that is directly proportional to how clear you are in yourself. If you can stay neutral when you communicate your boundaries, then they will nearly always be respected.

Writing them down and really owning them for yourself will help you stay neutral and communicate them clearly without defensiveness or other sticky energy.

For tricky boundaries, create procedures and policies that you lead clients through.

When I did web design, I had a “Designer’s Readiness Checklist”. It outlined everything people needed to have in place before they contacted me. Then I had a worksheet people filled out that asked them key things about their project. In essence my boundary was, “I don’t take on strategy or organization, I just do the design part”. What my clients saw was a clear procedure they were led through that helped them get organized and think strategically.

My clients appreciated the structure and it served to weed out clients who were not organized or didn’t yet know what they wanted.

For in-person situations, practice your replies.

I spent several years learning how to say no to people who wanted to work with me but I didn’t for whatever reason. It was really hard for me, and then I got really good at it. What helped me the most was finding the right wording–the kind nobody can argue with and I didn’t have to explain:

After reviewing the details of your project, I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. I recommend …

I had a few different wordings and list of recommendations for different occasions and I kept them stored as snippets in my email program.

Another area I practiced was not giving off-the-cuff project quotes over the phone. If someone asked how much they thought I would charge I would give my standard range (the same one listed on my website) and say I would have to review their project in more detail before I could give a more accurate quote. If they pressed, I would state that I made it a policy to not give quotes on the phone because I know from history that they are not accurate.

When you use the word “policy”, people usually get the hint. If you say in some way, “This isn’t about you, this is for everybody”, then it becomes much harder for them to take it personally.

Pay attention to queasiness, dread, procrastination: these can indicate a need for a boundary.

The more aware we are of what is going on, the more we can do about it. If you are not aware of your boundary, your unconscious will follow its usual patterns–procrastination and avoidance. These are not usually very clear or effective, and take a lot of energy.

Sometimes you have to find boundaries from the outside in. For example, I learned to notice that if I had a client inquiry email that I was procrastinating for more than a week on replying to, that meant that I probably didn’t want to do the project for some reason that wasn’t immediately obvious to me. Procrastination became an indicator to check in with myself , validate that it’s perfectly OK to be choosy, and make a decision that worked for me. (This was a much better strategy than letting it sit there for another week and have my subconscious struggle with it while I started to feel guilty about not getting back to them.) I learned to notice the early warning signs that I was feeling uncertain about setting a boundary, and then just get it over with.

Set boundaries early and often. And don’t hesitate to renegotiate.

When appropriate, work your boundaries into your website and client emails. Don’t assume people will know where they are, and don’t get offended if they assume a different boundary: just educate them in a calm, neutral way. Usually their response will be, “Oh, I didn’t know!”.

And if you forget or slip or are just having a bad boundaries day (stress can cause us to get weak about our boundaries), it’s always OK to say, “Hey, I apologize, I made a mistake when I said …. What I should have said was ….”.

Your boundaries are yours alone–they are what fit you.

Every industry and culture and family and human grouping in general has standards of behavior, and most people tend to assume they are shared. If you don’t share them, feelings of being wrong can get in the way of asking for what you need and setting up clear expectations.

It doesn’t matter what works for someone else, or what someone else expects. What matters is what works for you so you can serve your clients and stay happy. Get really honest with yourself–what do you need to feel nurtured and healthy in your business? What do your clients need to know so your work together goes smoothly and serves you both? It’s OK to ask for that.

Outer boundaries stem from inner boundaries.

Before you can clearly state to another what you want and need, you have to validate and own that your needs and wants are OK. If you don’t have that internal validation, you will not be able to communicate clearly to others.

If you struggle with this, invest in self-care, and evaluate your beliefs about what you have the right to ask for and expect from your life. Is it OK to be 100% happy and satisfied with your life and your work? Or does that make you selfish? What do you really believe, and does it support you?

Having clear boundaries will save you money, stress, and time.

Having a good niche is the first step in finding perfect customers: it’s the attractor.  Boundaries are the other side of the coin. They redirect the “not a good fit” customers and make it clearer who your ideal customers are. They provide your business with integrity and keep everything running smoothly. And they take care of the human vessel that is making all of this happen.

Boundaries also make your business more appealing, because you come across as professional, “together”, and have some structure for people to interact with. Think about interpersonal relationships–we are all wary around someone who is not clear on their boundaries. The same is true in business–the more clear, communicative, and neutral you are about your boundaries, the safer your clients will feel. They’ll know what to expect, and be able to make clean choices.

What kind of boundaries do you need to set?

Part of why I created my own business was so I could spend long stretches of time doing my own thing. Alone. No contact with people, not even email contact. Not even Twitter. Perhaps especially not Twitter.

I really prefer a few in-depth friendships to small talk, and I struggle with a perceived expectation of availability or consistency or constant productivity online. “Show up and be cool.” Every day. Ack!

I recently joined the Third Tribe private forum, so I posted about this pressure I feel to be social and engaged and productive online – Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc more than I might actually want to. I say “might” because I’m still sorting out my “shoulds” and comparison jackals from my fears from my true desires.

Through the discussion I think I’m beginning to discern some points to work from:

1. Become aware of the difference between a natural need for alone time vs fear of being rejected publicly, both of which could show up as not wanting to be social or create content online. The former needs acceptance and permission to log off, the latter needs…whatever you personally do to work through fears.

2. Find (or create) the size of room you like to talk in. That could be a small core group of Twitter friends or the world stage. Or some combination of both, and different conversations in each. Find the conversations you naturally want to keep up with. Think of blogging etc as “keeping up your end of the conversation”. You may not always want to, but you know that it works best when you are engaged on a fairly consistent way.

3. “Shoulds” indicate standards or expectations. Notice them and then become aware of what naturally works for you. Release comparisons between yourself and others–all they create is unnecessary pain. Appreciate their uniqueness and appreciate your own uniqueness.

4. Let yourself change as your needs and interests change. Give yourself complete permission to find what works for you.

This blog is a “room I like to talk in”. And thinking of it that way makes me feel warm and fuzzy about it, rather than seeing it as a constant “should”.

Your marketing formula works hand in hand with your clearly defined niche to create a flourishing business.

Your marketing formula is unique to you and your business.

The problem with a lot of marketing books and workshops is that they are just one person’s formula. It’s understandable–that person made it work really well for themselves, now they think it will work for everyone. But it won’t necessarily (but it might). Why?

The formula that works for you has to be both something that will actually work for your niche, and something that will actually work for you. Here is a Venn diagram showing the relationship:

When you hear about any new method of reaching people or staying engaged with them (like newsletters, ads, Facebook, SEO, Twitter), it helps to ask yourself these questions:

1. Would this reach my ideal clients where they are? Do they look for services that I offer in this way? (for example, do they use Twitter?)
2. Is this something I would enjoy engaging in on a regular basis? (For example, do I enjoy Twittering? Can I see myself doing it consistently?)

Know yourself.

Don’t create a marketing formula that is not really you. You won’t keep up with it, or if you do, you’ll become slowly unhappy and resentful.

I was in a marketing class once with a guy whose regimen is to spend an hour every day calling and keeping up with new and old contacts. It works great for him. It would never work for me. And that’s OK.

Do not beat yourself up or compare yourself to anyone else. It doesn’t matter what works for someone else. It only matters what works for you. Because in reality everyone is different, and there is no better or worse way of doing marketing. There is only what works for you and your business.

You don’t have to market to the whole world. You just need a sliver to have a good business.

Part of the fear that leads people to scattershot marketing (trying a new thing every week) is that there are so many people that could benefit from their services and they want to reach them all.

Don’t go for everybody.

I know it’s tempting to say “But everyone could benefit!” but here is the reality: if you try to do that, your business will struggle and you won’t serve very many people at all. Your perfect customers are people you can reasonably reach given who you are. Even if a lot more people could benefit.

Here is an example from my web hosting business.

First, my Venn diagram:

I like marketing that I can set and forget–that doesn’t involve a lot of ongoing maintenance. I am easily distracted with new projects and don’t like having to keep up with things. So that goes on the right of the diagram. On the left there are potential clients that could find me on Google. And the natural overlap is to do search engine optimization and  make a site that is informative and lets people sign up online.

Now as you can imagine, there are a ton of people I’m not reaching. But that’s OK with me. I don’t want to have a giant company, and I’m guessing you might not either. My lifestyle goals are the most important to me, and having a smaller company works better for me (and, not coincidentally, for my customers).

So here’s what this looks like:

I have also created listings in various places like Green America to reach some of these other folks. But by far the biggest source of new customers (besides referrals) are from Google. It’s a formula that works.

Another example is a side project of mine which is a website about beading. Because it is a hobby site I don’t have a lot of time and energy to put into marketing. So the only way I market it is through SEO. I did create a Facebook and Twitter account, but only when I had automated feed content to put into it–I don’t use it to chat with folks. SEO works because lots of people search for beading patterns and such. Does it reach everyone who might be interested? No…but it reaches enough to give me a healthy AdSense check each month. It works for me and my business.

Here’s how to get started:

First, list all the potential ways you might reach people:

• Google/SEO
• Facebook
• Twitter
• newspaper ads
• fliers
• door hangers or coupons
• networking
• referral relationships with related businesses
• niche magazines
• blogging
• press releases

Research and ask your colleagues for more ideas.

Then start noticing which you are more drawn to. Do you like forging relationships and keeping up with people? Joining networking groups and going consistently might be a good fit. Facebook might be a good fit too. Do you like the phone? Or are you more of an introvert? If you don’t like going out and networking, but you are fine with learning technical stuff, try SEO.

Ask yourself this key question:

Which of these am I drawn to learning more about, working with, and really mastering?

Every single marketing method is going to require time, patience, and a willingness to learn and experiment. So pick one you want to spend that time learning about and devoting time to. Find the one that seems like a natural fit for you. Which might even be partnering with a person or service who does the marketing while you run the rest of the business.

Next, find out if there are enough people who use these methods to find the kind of thing you do to give you the number of clients you want.

Finding this out can either mean experimenting – running an ad for awhile – or doing research. For instance, you could use an SEO tool to figure out if anyone searches for the keywords you want to use (or use it to find the keywords people do use), or you can ask colleagues in similar-but-not-competing businesses what their experience has been.

Find your thing and stick with it.

Scattershot marketing doesn’t work. You will create much better results when you find and consistently apply a formula that works. Even when you are looking for your formula, you need to stick with each thing you try for awhile before trying something new. So start with your favorite and devote consistent time and attention to it for at least six months to see how it works for you.

In the first few years of your business, you might have to spend considerable time figuring out just what fits you and works for you on a consistent basis. Think of it as an investment. Once you have it in place, you can rely on it as a steady foundation as you work on the other areas of your business.

Write down your plan.

My final piece of advice is to create a written marketing plan. It’s one thing to know what you like to do and what works–but the results come when you keep up with it and build on your results. Running a business demands so much each day and it’s easy to lose track of things that have to be done a little bit over time regularly, like many marketing strategies.

Another reason to write it down is to have it in mind when you are writing web copy, articles, and posting on forums or Facebook–or when you are considering the lastest social media invite in your inbox. Do you really need to join? Your plan will remind you of what methods you are strongest in.

To make a plan, just write down what your core strengths are, what your marketing formula is, who you are trying to reach, and what you are going to do each day, week, and month to build on your results. Then put those activities in your calendar. Also mark a time to revisit your plan every so often to update it.

Your plan doesn’t have to be elaborate and have charts and graphs – it just has to remind you of what you are going for. Mine are always just one page. As always, there isn’t one right way to do it–the right plan is the one that works for you and keeps you motivated and on track with what you are doing.

There is often a voice that says something like, “I need to beat myself up to keep myself on track. If I don’t, I might become lazy or worse and then I’d REALLY be in trouble.” So you whip yourself more and are afraid to stop.

It doesn’t help. And here’s why: fear and constricted energy like this squeezes the connection between you and your Source of creative, juicy, aliveness energy down to a trickle.

Fear and forcing limits your creative thinking and spontaneous excitement, which is exactly what you need to get where you want to go.

It can be tempting to think that if you just punish yourself enough, you’ll get the thing done.

We see examples of this kind of thinking everywhere–there are plenty of movies of self-hating, drunk artists and insanely driven executives, where the implication is that all this pain and torment was somehow necessary to produce extraordinary results.

I think this is B.S. And I really wish they’d stop making movies like this.

I believe that everything truly beautiful and good comes through us, not from us. It is inspired. To be inspired, you have to keep your channel open. And keeping the channel open is entirely the domain of self-love and self-care, not self-abuse. It’s about relaxing and letting it happen–letting is an opening, allowing energy, not a closed-down, forcing energy.

When we can really own that we are beautiful and good, that’s when we start to create in ways that are beyond our own skin–we allow ourselves to become part of something larger. For co-creation to happen, we need to stand up and be proud of who we are, and also give ourselves a break and let ourselves be human.

If you are in the habit of driving yourself with fear, it will take practice to change your brain pathways.

The first step is to fully get on board intellectually that it is better for you and more productive to love yourself and trust that creative solutions will arise naturally.

If you have any doubt about this, mindfully start to just notice in yourself how you feel when you are nice to yourself and give the creative process time and space vs. mean and berating yourself about what you have done wrong or haven’t yet accomplished. Study yourself and see for yourself if this is really how you want to be with yourself.

One thing that helped me identify with this new concept of allowing was to think of nature. Flowers and trees grow on their own schedule; yelling at them does not help. Nourishing them helps them grow fuller and stronger…and, they still need time to reach their own potential, which they have within them the whole time.

When you are sure you want to create a new relationship with yourself, then it’s time to practice, practice, practice shifting your attention and thoughts and consciously relaxing and letting yourself be where you are.

You can practice by putting “and that’s OK” at the end of every internal sentence. For instance, “I can’t think of a clever thing to write here…and that’s OK”. See how that relaxes you and lets your creative channels open and a new solution presents itself. So it’s a combination of mindfulness, trying new things, and seeing what works.

Start playing with creating processes where you actively ask to receive guidance outside yourself rather than looking only to your own brain to come up with a solution every time.

Try journalling – ask a question, and then open your heart and mind and write an answer.  Or let your mind wander…see what comes through. Or write down what you want an answer to on a card, hide it under your pillow, and see what solutions present themselves over the night or the next few days.

The key is to let go of the question, and let the solution come through….without pushing or forcing…and trust the timing of your internal rhythms and nature.

As you experience more and more that this allowing and receiving works, you will start to be able to really rely on it, and the need for the self-criticism will fall away. After all, that voice is just looking out for you…it’s not bad or wrong, it’s just missing some vital information: that you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. The Universe is supportive, and when you open yourself to receive from it, the answers show up.

Write a credo, a manifesto. Why are you in business? What matters to you?

And then demonstrate it.

For example, let’s say you do massage.

You credo might sound like this:

I believe massage should be empowering. People should feel completely at ease to speak up and ask for what they want during their massage. It’s THEIR time, and it’s most beneficial when they give feedback, know what they want, and ask for it.

Your stand could be anything, but it has to be you. It has to be something you truly believe.

The best credos make you cry. Or expand inside. They feel vulnerable and real.

You don’t have to share the credo itself with anyone. It’s for you. It’s what gives your business heart.

When you have it, then you can demonstra

te it through your website content and processes. For example:

I believe massage should be empowering. Before our first massage together, I’ll have a short form for you to fill out that asks you your preferences—do you like feedback about your muscles as I work, or do you prefer a quiet no-talking space? Do you prefer light pressure or deep? Which body parts would you like me to focus on?

Feeling unsure about disrobing, tipping, etc? I created this FAQ specifically around the questions people are often too shy to bring up.

You can also share your credo with your designer. Make all the parts of your business reflect it. Build y

our brand around what you truly believe.

Be a bigger presence by being different—and expanding on that difference.

Write articles about your stand. Make

your business about more than just getting customers and getting paid. Make it about saying something. Make it about changing the world in some small way that you care about.

For our massage example, start with the question:

“How can I help my customers feel empowered during their massage with me?”

Then expand the question:

“How can I help everyone on the planet feel empowered during massage?”

“What information might help people feel empowered during massage? How can I provide it?”

“What articles might I write that would help transform people’s relationship with massage?”

When you take a stand, you become part of something larger—the larger truth you are standing for.

Your presence becomes larger and more attractive, because you are not just you—you are part of that truth. You are part of an inspiring, cool thing. That makes you and your business attractive.

Bonus: you get more inspired about your marketing. You’re not just selling yourself anymore. You’re being a stand for healing the world in a way that matters to you. There’s a lot of energy in that.

All good. Really.

But you MUST take care of your human ‘vessel’ to do this. That means self-care, self-love, self-nurturing, etc. It means resting, eating nourishing food, having fun, being nice to yourself, and meeting your human needs.

The vessel can’t be full of holes.

If you are running yourself ragged or neglecting your human self, you are just not going to be effective in your mission.

There’s no way around it.

We are here on this planet in human form, and that form has to be respected, honored, and care for or it will not be functioning like it could. Your vessel-ness will be ineffective.

The idea is co-creation. The “co” part matters–half of that is us, the human half. That half matters. That half needs the structure, the nourishing, the health, the time, and the self-love to really show up as half of the equation.

And the Divine half? That is there, that will always be there. It’s through honoring our human selves that we create the conditions where we can be present to that Divine presence.

So if you want to be a conduit for truth, healing, and beauty in the world, get a good night’s rest.

Say no to overwork or busy-ness. Say nice things to yourself in your head. Pay yourself first. Take the time to make dinner and call a friend. Be a friend to yourself. Wear sunscreen. Floss. Create beauty in your workspace and your home. Take a walk and take in the sights, smells, and sounds. Slow down. Stretch.

These things are the foundation and support for everything else you create in the world. They are the structure within which God/the Universe/Spirit/Source can do magic, create miracles, and heal. They matter.

We often live with daily emotional and spiritual scarcity. We don’t feel like enough.

We don’t feel good enough. We haven’t got enough done. We aren’t accomplished or important enough. We don’t feel like we are enough.

This scarcity runs through every sector of society. It infects us with doubts and stops us from pursuing our dreams and enjoying the dreams we have created.

It pushes us to achieve, overwork, and pretty soon we don’t have enough sleep, enough downtime, enough non-business social contact. It’s a constant nagging feeling of trying to catch up, trying to earn our place, trying to be good or do good.

At heart, it’s a spiritual scarcity.

The only true source of abundance, of the feeling of OKness deep in our bones, is in our connection to Source/God/etc, whatever you call it.

Spiritual scarcity means your connection to Source/God/etc is cut off or blocked or has just atrophied through disuse.

It doesn’t matter how much money or security you have, if you don’t have this connection on a daily basis, you will feel not enough. It’s just the way we are built. We can’t be fully satisfied except through that internal connection to Source.

When you try to create outer abundance, but you are doing it to shore up your inner sense of scarcity, it won’t work. Not really. You’ll create more and more evidence that you aren’t really worth it.

The only way to truly heal is to:

1. accept your faults, accept your neediness and mistakes and all your feelings and pain
2. let that connection to source grow anyway

Our connection to Source is the most abundant thing in the Universe. It never goes away. It does not judge, it does not withhold, it does not punish, it does not care who or what you are. It’s there. It’s there and you can access it at any time. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to deserve it. You don’t have to pay it back. You just have to accept it.

All you have to do is ask (and let in the response).

The hardest thing for most of us to do is ask for help. To truly admit that we cannot make it on our own. We cannot do everything. We cannot make ourselves feel OK. We just can’t. We rely on something outside of ourselves. Humans are never truly happy until they feel part of the larger Universe and feel they are in tune with it and here for a reason. We simply cannot be happy as islands.

When we try to do it on our own, it’s out of fear. What if we ask, and there’s nothing there? What if there is no answer? What if you open up your heart and then get burned? What if you find out that the world is an empty screaming void after all? What if God wants you to do something you don’t really want to do?

I can’t really answer those objections. Except to say that it’s not like that. Those objections come from a consciousness of fear. Accepting grace comes from a consciousness of love. When you are in that space, the objections no longer make sense.

And it’s kinda beyond words. But it works. Sincere prayers are answered. The answer comes, somehow. I’ve seen it happen over and over. If you pray to win the lottery, it doesn’t work. But if you sincerely need help and pray for help and hand it over, help comes.

But don’t stop there.

Praying only in emergencies is like staying at the Ritz Carlton and sleeping in the bathtub.

Many people, even ones that don’t “believe in God”, will pray when they are panicked. And they get solace from it. But then they go back to their “normal lives”. The ones with the nagging sense of not-enoughness.

To live a truly abundant life, you need to depend on Source.

That means recognizing that all abundance received from the Universe is received through this channel.

Receiving from Source/God is a blueprint and basis for every other kind of receiving.

The outer world reflects the inner world. Your material abundance depends on your spiritual abundance. It all starts inside.

And that’s where you start to build that connection.

How?

It’s a muscle. You exercise it. You change your mind, you change your stories, you change your beliefs. It’s a habit, a practice.

The bottom line is that it’s a choice.

You allow it to happen. You allow yourself to be enough. You allow yourself to feel OK. You allow that feeling of scarcity to disperse. You stop clinging to it. You find that inner stream of OKness and you nurture it and feed it. You find the things and people that help it grow. You choose every day, who you want to be and what you want to believe. You set your sights and you start walking.

Being OK with yourself in this day and age is a radical act.

It’s worth it. You are already OK. You are already enough. Believe it, feel it, choose it.

And the money?

When you know you are enough, when you know the Universe is on your side because you truly belong to it, it becomes a much bigger game than just making money. It becomes about living as a vehicle for Divine purpose.

And when that’s the game? The money figures itself out. Or you get what you need to figure it out. It works, somehow.

Not that you still don’t have to do work in the real world. It’s still a 50/50 proposition. “God helps those who help themselves” and all that. But it’s easier and it flows, and you have a source of support you can rely on. This isn’t about magic. This is about true support. We are truly not alone in our journey. We don’t have to make it on our own. We are here as part of something larger. And understanding that changes everything.

I know a lot of people don’t like “The Holidays”. They get depressed, or overwhelmed, or burned out, or just hate the whole thing.

I get it. I have my share of family drama stories and I could bitch about a lot of things.

But I’ve realized that I don’t have to do any of it. And what I do can be entirely up to me.

Now it’s true that I had a head-start. My family is a lot less tradition-based than most. I grew up celebrating Solstice, not Christmas. I also don’t have kids that go to public school and demand Santa Claus and all of that.

But still. I live in the world. And I don’t participate in things I don’t like. And you don’t have to either.

But beyond that, I try to create what I want. Which I think is the more fun, enjoyable, and exciting thing to do. Rather than just protesting and griping and resisting, or bowing out.

Because holidays can be fun. They can be sacred. They can be rejuvenating. They have a purpose. A life-giving, holy purpose.

The word “holiday” is short for Holy Day. But what does that mean to you?

I think I look at holidays differently because of my stint with Wicca.

Wicca is all about making up stuff that works for you.

Wicca celebrates eight holidays that most people have never heard of–and because you are consciously choosing to celebrate these days outside of the mainstream, a lot of emphasis is placed on the reasons behind holidays.

Holidays mark the passing of time and bring awareness to it. They are about the turning of the seasons, the flow of life, taking time to pause and notice, acknowledge, and celebrate that we are alive.

And since Wicca is full of people who wear capes and make up their whole damn religion–they make up whatever rituals they want to use to celebrate. Sure, there are traditional things–May poles at Beltane, etc–and they borrow a lot from history. But mostly they make stuff up.

The essence of Wicca, to me, is that we can create our relationship to the Divine, the one that works for us. The one that speaks to us of magic, mystery, and meets the deepest longings of our heart to know the Divine, to know ourselves, and to know each other.

I bring that idea to holidays.

They are my holidays. They don’t belong to anyone else.

They are about my relationship to the season, to my family, to my friends. They are about what I want to celebrate and notice this year.

Holidays are what we make them. They are for us.

It’s hard to do this in a culture that has a lot of prescriptions–and perhaps your family does too. But to the degree that you can make your holidays about what you want to get out of them, you can reclaim the original purpose and enjoy them again.

Yesterday I hosted my first Thanksgiving ever, at my brand new condo. My brother and his wife and son came (Wow. Five year olds have lungs. And stamina.)

When my brother gave me a hug and congratulated me on my first Thanksgiving at my home, and my new homeownership, I felt this deep relaxation in my body. I felt happy. I felt proud. I felt deeply seen and celebrated. And there was something about it being Thanskgiving that really meant a lot to me.

There is something we deeply need in holidays. It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about taking time to pause and notice what is special about life.

And that is something we don’t do enough in our culture. We go from one task to the next, one accomplishment to the next, one project to the next. We don’t stop and say wow, look how amazing. Let’s just sit here and be happy about everything that we’ve done and everything that is awesome about life right now.

And we need that. We really, really do.

I get that holidays can suck. But they don’t have to. Reclaiming your autonomy is the first step.

The problem with “The Holidays” is not the celebration itself. It’s that the human needs that holidays meets have been obscured and forgotten through generations of encouraging anything-but creativity and autonomy and true connection.

Holidays have lost their center, for a lot of people. They have become about expectations and standards and overwhelm and doing a lot of stuff you hate or don’t want to do but feel you have to do because people expect you to do it and you don’t have a choice. Blech.

There is no way to get in touch with Divinity, and community, play, and creativity, if you are coming from I Don’t Have a Choice About This.

Holidays were designed to meet real human needs of community, acknowledgment, sharing, play, and celebration of life.

But our expectations, and our dread of them, make meeting those needs impossible.

So, reclaiming your autonomy is the first step. And whatever helps you do that, I support.

Even if it means you skip holidays completely for a few years. Or skip the family part. It’s up to you. Do what you need to do, to stop participating in life-denying expressions of holiday-ness. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Autonomy is a hard thing to reclaim, it really is. It takes work and courage to say no to things people want you to say yes to. And it might be too big of a leap to go from wherever you are with holidays to making up a whole new way of doing holidays for yourself.

So, start where you are.

But I would encourage you to, in some small way, find an avenue to make something about “the Season” about celebrating your own connection to your essence, to the Divine, to the mystery of being alive, and to noticing how far you’ve come in the last year and how awesome you are.

Celebrate what is Real and True.

Maybe this year it’s about making up an Anti-Christmas. If that is where you are at, that is what you can celebrate.

Maybe it is about Rest for you. Being in the winter, in the season of rest and fallow-ness, creating down-time and relishing it, hanging out in the deep earthy spaces in your soul, letting yourself be there, acknowledging that winter is a slowing-down, turning-in season.

The point is: it’s your holiday. You can make it your own. You can make it about meeting YOUR needs for celebration, connection, community, creativity, and acknowledgement. In the way that works for you.

Healing is the process of grieving and accepting this pain and change, and integrating the information into our lives in a way that supports our growth and wellbeing. Healing is an opening-up process. The ultimate goal is to reconnect you to the flow of life.

Our resistance to pain and change blocks this flow. Our ability to adapt to change, and to grieve pain and loss, determines how much we will be able to taste life as it unfolds before us.

The stages of grief

If you look at the five classic stages of grieving, there are four stages of resistance/contracting/”inner war”, and then one stage of healing/expansion:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

And that’s OK. This model was developed for dealing with death, which takes our bodies and minds some time to adjust to. It’s OK to take however long it takes to go through the grief process. But in each stage, one can hold in mind the idea to open up and to be kind to oneself (this supports opening up).

I believe that all change requires grieving on some level. Our bodies and minds naturally attach to things and it’s up to us to develop the ability to move through change and transformation gracefully.

Acceptance is not resignation

Resignation is a form of closing-down. Acceptance is an opening-up. To cultivate acceptance means practicing opening our heart when it wants to close.

Being open-hearted requires skilled self-protection

Pain is always an opportunity to open up more; but this requires skill, not just ambition. Being a pain junkie will not transform you. It’s being able to learn from pain that helps us to grow.

To do this requires inner and outer boundaries. If we open our heart when it’s dangerous to do so and if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will get hurt more and shut down again.

Part of cultivating acceptance and open-heartedness is developing the skills to protect ourselves in healthy ways. They go hand in hand. Our mind is not going to give up its shutting-down behaviors if it doesn’t have any sense of trust that we can provide protection for it any other way. You have to earn the trust of the scared parts of yourself by learning to care for them well.

Re-parenting

If your family did not teach you grieving skills, or adapt well to change, this is something you will need to learn and coach yourself through.

But it’s well worth it–developing this “grieving muscle” gives you a strength and inner resilience that keeps you steady and centered throughout everything that life brings.

Or the other side: a skilled artist decides to work at a cafe to have free time/brain-space to pursue art. They never build up enough money to buy a house they long for and always feel like they are scraping by.

Some people make compromises like that and are OK with it, but I’m here to say you don’t have to.

The idea that these two are in opposition is a culturally reinforced myth.

It takes skill and planning to create a vehicle (like a business) that lets you have all the security and all the freedom that you want, but it is possible.

But first you have to believe it is.

Why your brain is afraid of creativity

First, we have this cultural story, lots of them, about “starving artists”.

Then, we have our brains. They are hard-wired to want to, uh, eat. Not starve.

So if you feed the average brain this cultural story about “starving artists”, what is it going to want to do? Not be an artist!!

And that’s not bad. That’s it’s job. There is nothing wrong with fear. It’s just important to examine it and correct the stories that it’s based on.

Stop believing the stories are predictive

The stories about “starving artists” range far and wide and cover many types of professions. There is a lot of fear behind them. And a lot of real people played out these stories.

But that doesn’t mean that YOU will, or that it ALWAYS happens that way.

Our brains have a way of making our stories come true. So what story do you want to live? A creative person who always struggles with money? A financially secure person who is never quite satisfied? Or a person who has defied the odds, and created a way to make a good living that supports their deepest creative yearnings?

Feed your brain something more useful

Find some new stories. Find people who have the lifestyle you want – BOTH creative and financial. Find people who didn’t listen to that story, didn’t give up either need, who had a vision for more and followed it.

The beautiful thing that happens when you really believe this is possible – and that neither energy has to be sacrificed for the other to come to fruition – is that these two powerful energies – the will to survive and the will to be creative and free – they combine and become the will to thrive. And harnessing that combination will give you the power to create a life that you truly enjoy.

(This post inspired by Sarah Dopp’s post Feed the Freak)