Here’s a fun way to effectively communicate who you are and what you do:

One of the quickest ways to connect with others is by sharing what inspires you.  When you share your passions with others your inspiration will inspire them and this creates a natural doorway for communication.

First Exercise (Approximately Five minutes):

Take thirty seconds to think about something you love.  It can be a person, an activity, a place, a book, a movie or piece of art…anything that comes to mind.  Now turn to the person next to you and take two minutes to share what you love with them and then ask them to share for two minutes what they love with you.

After you finish notice how you feel.  Has your energy shifted in someway?  If you finish speaking before others around you finish, take a moment to notice their energy level in the room.  Chances are you feel great, and those around you are feeling great too!

It feels good to talk about what we love and yet so often when we gather for networking – especially when it is networking related to business - we forget to share this aspect of ourselves or invite others to do so.

Second Exercise (Approximately Five minutes):

Now take 30 to 60 seconds to think about your business, in particular focus on something you love about the work you do. Then turn to someone new (preferably someone you don’t know) and introduce yourself: Give your name, the name of your company and your professional title and take one to two minutes to talk with them about those aspects of your work that you most enjoy.  Once you are finished ask them to take one to two minutes to share what they love about their work with you.

Have fun!  Don’t worry about communicating all the intricacies of your work, simply allow yourselves to focus on the joy you feel in sharing this aspect of your work-life and when you are both finished exchange business cards.  If you would like to know more, make a point to connect later.

How to effectively communicate who you are and what you do

Great networking is about connecting.  Be it personal or professional – the heart of successful networking is about building meaningful connections.  Those who network well understand how to engage with others on a personal level and connect with them on subjects that are meaningful to them.

One of the most enjoyable ways to do this is to pay attention to what others love.  Listen for their interests and ask them to share about their passions.  If you meet at a business gathering consider beginning a conversation with the question:  What do you love about your work?  If the person you are speaking with doesn’t happen to love their job, ask them what they do love and spend some time talking about this.  If they seem interested, share what you love.  Once you are able to connect on this level, feel free to steer the conversation more specifically toward work. Now, you are both more likely to enjoy this conversation.  If you failed to share the details of your work simply exchange business cards and suggest that you speak later either by phone or make plans to meet for coffee.

Too often in business networking we focus on simply communicating the nuts and bolts of our work and neglect to reach out to others from our heart – we forget to share our passion: what we love about the work we do.  Sometimes you only have thirty to sixty seconds to tell someone what you do – the proverbial “elevator speech” – and the pressure of time can cause you to stick to the basics.  In the moment it seems more important to say you’re a florist than to express your love of flowers.

Of course it is important to be able to clearly communicate the bottom line specifics of your work, but the truth is the reason someone will ultimately choose to hire you over someone else in your field is because of the connection they feel with you.  Sharing what you love is inspiring to others and draws them close.

Notice the difference in meeting someone who says “hi I’m Bonnie, I make floral arrangements for birthdays, weddings, funerals, proms and other special events,” and someone who introduces themselves by saying “hi I’m Bonnie, I love working with fragrant flowers and exotic plants, combining rich colors and textures to create unique bouquets that help people express feelings words cannot convey.”

In the first introduction you will have a pretty clear understanding about the specifics of Bonnie’s work, but you won’t really know anything about Bonnie.  You won’t have any reason to choose her over any other florist out there.  In the second introduction she has painted a mental picture of her work.  You now have an image of her surrounded by colorful plants and flowers joyfully creating floral works of art.  The next time you have an important event or want to express feelings of appreciation, love or sympathy you will be more likely to choose Bonnie because she has conveyed the love she feels for her work and you can sense that she is someone who pours love and joy into what she does.

The same is true of any profession.  When we take the time to tell others what we love about our work, it communicates volumes about our ability to bring this energy and spirit to our customers and put this love into everything we do.

Inspiration creates inspiration.  When people see what inspires you they feel uplifted and energized and will naturally be more open to anything else you tell them about your work.  Think about why you choose your profession – what attracted you to the field.  This is the juice that will capture the attention of others and this is what will help them remember you when they or someone they know needs the services you provide.

It is easy to overlook the importance of expressing your spirit, but this is really what others are looking for when they ask you to talk about your work.  Your values draw others close to you, and help them connect with and be inspired by the work you do.  When people feel your passion and understand your motivations they are naturally more inclined to want to work with you and help your business grow.

When it comes to business networking, what matters most is effectively communicating who you are, while educating others about the specific work that you do.  Making a meaningful connection does not require a long stretch of uninterrupted conversation.  What is needed is an understanding of what is important to others – listening for what inspires them and speaking to this, or to connect by sharing what inspires you, or both!

The next time someone asks you what you do, pause and think about what you love about your work; then make a point to share this.  Don’t be surprised if they lean in closer.  When you share your passions with others your inspiration will inspire them and they will naturally want to know more about what you do.

Fear of failure is one of the greatest challenges on the path to success and is a common companion for small business owners - especially during the early years of building their dream.  The best remedy for transforming this fear and freeing yourself from the grips of failure consciousness is redefining success.

Too often when setting out to realize a dream - be it designing a successful business or creating a fulfilling partnership - success is narrowly defined by achieving the end result. The path to realizing the dream gets little acknowledgement and is mostly looked upon as a series of duties one must perform in order to enjoy the prize.  But what if the real treasure is found along the way?  What if the joy and happiness you seek in the fulfillment of your vision is in the day to day steps you take to get there?

This is what we discovered when we set out to transform our life and marriage seven years ago.  Our hearts and souls were longing for something more but we didn’t know what that something was. We needed to shift our perspective, to look at our life through a new lens, and we discovered that the best way for us to do this was to start having more fun.

You can’t create a beautiful vision when you feel burdened, and you definitely cannot achieve one if you are exhausted and burned out.  If you want to tap into what is possible for your life and find the energy you need to fulfill your lofty visions you need to create an internal and external environment that is conducive to inspiration and receptive to your dreams.

This can be simpler than you think.  For us this meant - first and foremost - making time for play.  When you engage in playful activities you free yourself from the burdens of accomplishments because the objective of play is to have fun.  For adults (and sadly some children) this goal can be a little uncomfortable and take some getting used to. For those of us who feel that every moment in life should be focused on productivity, it is helpful to remember that twenty minutes of hearty laughter is profoundly restorative to our bodies, hearts and minds.  Think of the last time you laughed robustly with a friend, sides aching, tears streaming down your face…and remember the deep quality of peace, joy and fulfillment that permeated your being when you stopped.  Perhaps this experience is unknown to you, if so it’s not too late.  Joy is alive in the center of your being and when you make an effort to find this joy the pathways for getting there will begin to open before you. 

We started small, setting the intention to have more fun and choosing something easy that we could jump into right away.  Our first step was to take something we enjoyed - going to coffee shops - and find a way to make it feel more special and fun.  We decided to bring games with us and to order special drinks (the kind with silly names you don’t make at home) and immerse ourselves in playing cards and board games like gin, backgammon and cribbage. 

We could have done this at home but that didn’t feel as fun; we needed to make playing an event: to do something with the specific intention of having fun.  Soon we made it our mission to find the best coffee shops for playing: those with great light, comfortable chairs, good music, nice décor and a friendly staff.  It was a great past time and definitely part of our commitment to have fun.  We made it our weekend adventure to head out to different towns and scope out the local coffee shops.  It was like treasure hunting, we looked up towns and followed maps to find new places to hang out and play games.  Once we had a handful of favorites we made appointments with each other to go there and have fun.

It truly was a simple pleasure, quite cost effective for the amount of pleasure it brought, and something else happened we hadn’t expected: our playful attitude was contagious.  Without fail whenever we went to a coffee shop and quietly set up our table with games and settled in to play others would find their way over to us.  Some would stop by to watch us play on their way in or out, ask questions about the games, and express appreciation for the fun we were having, and some would wish us luck - “may the best player win”.  The staff would light up when we came in and enjoyed asking us who had won the days round.  It was astounding to see how engaging a little bit of play could be, and how inspiring our play dates were for others.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we weren’t the only ones that needed to lighten up a bit.  In our fast paced world filled with daunting to do lists, adults, (and sadly more and more children) have lost the ability to play.  Having fun is truly a lost art form and yet the very foundation needed to build a joyful and successful life.

When having fun became part of our definition of success the new life our hearts were longing for began to take shape.  Playing games together led us to other activities we enjoyed: concerts and plays, bike rides and walks; these led to travel and inspiring conversations with strangers and the discovery of what we love. 

We found our passion in the midst of play, and rekindled the flame of our love in our adventures to have more fun. Simply setting the intention to increase our experience of joy led us to have more fun, and the time we spent playing opened our eyes to greater possibilities for our future and gave us the energy we needed to pursue them.

This commitment to enjoy the journey has become a foundation for our life and work, a guiding principal in everything we do, and because of this we have not only been able to accomplish great dreams but to enjoy the process of realizing our achievements!

The truth about manifesting dreams is that it takes time; how long is different for everyone.  No matter the length of the path you travel, all those who have achieved great success personally and professionally agree: how you travel on your journey is what sustains you and really matters in the end. 

Remember this and make a point of expanding your definition of success to include cultivating joy along the way. Celebrate every effort made, find time for relaxation and play, and soon you will feel the fulfillment of your dreams manifesting every day.

Relationships are mysterious.  Each one reflects the complexity of our humanity and the vast nature of our soul. In his book “Soul Mates” Thomas Moore says that our soul has its own reasons for entering relationships and that often we are not aware of this purpose when we enter them.

Viewing relationships from the perspective of soul allows you to open to the Divine mystery inherent in your connections in life and listen for the opportunities these relationships provide. Sometimes you meet someone and feel certain they have come into your life for a reason, while other times your connections may make no sense at all.  You wonder why you have certain friends, ended up in your family, or landed in a particular community. 

Is it possible that your soul chose these relationships on purpose for the lessons they provide?  If you look at relationships on the surface level it is tempting to evaluate them based on how easy or difficult they are and designate them as good or bad accordingly.  If they unfold as you want them to with relative ease they are judged as good and if they present challenges, heartache and end poorly or drag on for eternity you deem them as bad.

Your soul however does not view relationships from this perspective.  The soul is not concerned with life being easy - the soul’s interest lies in experience.  How long a particular connection is sustained or bumpy the journey through partnership may be, is less important to your soul than how you embrace the experience your relationships provide and allow your heart and mind to be shaped by them. 

Your connections with others will draw you out of your self and invite you in unexpected ways to enter life more fully.  Sometimes through grief, sometimes through joy, relationships knock on the door of your heart and ask you to open up.  They stir passions, awaken desires, reveal strengths, highlight limitations and continually urge you to explore the unknown depths within. 

Sometimes the invitation in relationship is a push from your soul to be known.  Those connections in life that challenge you very often provide experiences for illuminating your deepest values and beliefs.  Backed into a corner you may respond assertively and through this action understand yourself more fully than you had before. 

When you have been trespassed against you know instantly what your boundaries are.  How you respond to this knowledge depends on many factors – how skillfully you enter conflict, what sense you have of your self worth, and what the circumstances you are in will allow.  But whatever your response may be, the conflict of boundaries offers you an opportunity to see yourself more clearly and invites you to be known.

Being seen in the world, allowing others to know who you are, requires vulnerability.  It takes a strong sense of self worth to open yourself to the possibility of love and the potential pain of rejection.

Those of us who were denied deposits of love and appreciation while growing up, or had our self worth stripped away in destructive relationships, tend to guard ourselves defensively against the possibility of future injury.  Life is lived behind a castle of self protection guarded by deep motes, thorny bramble, and expertly trained snipers stationed at the ready upon our castle walls.  Only the bravest of the brave would dare attempt to find a way in - leaving us “safe” from attack and deeply lonely longing for human connection and support.

It only takes one terrible experience of someone trying to rob your goodness to make the decision to live your life hidden from future harm.  After such an experience, it is natural to want to fiercely protect yourself from injury (this is a sign after all of self worth).  Unfortunately the castle approach is one of over-protection and will keep you from connecting with other loving souls, and deny you the rich blessings these relationships offer.

Many self help strategies focus on perfecting the castle of self defense, teaching you how to keep those who would hurt you out of your life.  This of course is good; the only problem is they often don’t tell you how to open the castle gate for those worthy of entrance when you want to let them in. 

Self love and discernment - an ability to stand in your own value and clearly identify those who are capable of loving you and celebrating the gifts you have to offer the world, are the keys needed to unlock the castle door and make room for the love you long for and deserve.

The “Guidelines of Soulful Communication” and the Circles of Intimacy Diagram are ideal tools for cultivating loving, supportive relationships in life.  They provide a process for establishing a safe harbor in your interactions with others which allows space for differences and offers guidelines for skillfully navigating conflict with an open heart. 

You begin with understanding your own perspective - clarifying what you think and feel, want and need, and then turn your attention to focus on the thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs of others.  By holding the attitude that you or others are not wrong for whatever you may think, feel, want or need, you are able to safely explore each view point and find solutions that attend to your deepest needs.

Deep within each of us is a desire to be seen and understood – valued for who we are and appreciated for the gifts we bring; utilizing soulful communication and the circles of intimacy paves the way for this experience and provides the tools for connecting with the soul’s of all those we are in relationship with.