The Soul of Success Vol. 1 • August 18, 2005Welcome to The Soul of Success!Greetings, dear friends, and welcome to The Soul of Success International On-line Community for Women. It is with great joy that I send you this first issue of The Soul of Success e-newsletter, which you will be receiving twice a month. In this Newsletter:
For more information, please visit us on-line at thesoulofsuccess.com and jenniferhawthorne.com Message from Founder Jennifer Read Hawthorne
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet there is the famous line: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” But so often, we don’t have a clue what it means to be true to ourselves! We’ve been utterly and completely conditioned to say “yes” when we mean “no,” to listen to our heads instead of our hearts, and to put everyone else’s needs ahead of our own. So in the coming months, we will talk about who we are on the inside—and how to discover what’s true for us. When what we do on the outside lines up with who we are on the inside—then, and only then, will we really experience balance in life. Feature Article: How Can We Find Balance in Life?Is the quest for success wearing you out? We women may be from Venus, but in our desire to have it all, we have been spending way too much time on Mars! We have bought into the idea that success is about the bottom line, financial achievement, status and winning. We have looked to our relationships, our salaries, our achievements and our possessions to define ourselves and measure our success. And we have mastered “doing.” We have become skilled at working full-time jobs, all the while managing our homes, our families and our primary life relationships. But at what price? Personally, I reached the point where I had to admit that my level of “doingness” had evolved into full-blown workaholism and was threatening my health, my family and my sanity. I first set out to master the material world years ago when I attended a seminar called “Yes! To Success,” an intense three-day program where I learned how to set goals (daily, weekly, monthly, one-year, five-year and lifetime), how to manage time and how to “dress for success.” I still find many of the techniques I learned then to be valuable tools for managing life today. But somewhere along the way something shifted inside me. Going over my goals once or twice a day in the hope that I could somehow make it all happen, I began to see that activity like this was mostly about “doing,” often characterized as a “masculine” quality. And about three years ago, the effect of this approach to living started to become clear, when I found myself frustrated and dissatisfied with the person I was becoming. Despite having done a great deal of “work” on myself, I was still critical, judgmental and controlling, I didn’t like my husband, and I spent a lot of time pretending that he was responsible for my unhappy state. My body hurt all the time. Instinctively, I felt that if I were to find balance in life—that elusive thing most women in our society are struggling to find—it would have to be by culturing whatever was the opposite of masculine drive, energy and focus: the so-called “feminine” aspects of nature. I began talking to women and collecting their stories. And my discoveries were both surprising and life changing. I discovered themes like honesty, self-love, intuition, intention, forgiveness, integrity and surrender—principles more about “being” than “doing.” Humility, faith, courage, self-expression. Twenty-seven principles in all that express the innate and authentic power of the feminine—and enable us to discover the true soul of success. Don’t get me wrong; I care about money and success in the traditional sense. But these days, I find that I care as much about other things—like spirituality, passion for living and trusting the never-failing guidance of my heart. I don’t want to lead a mundane existence. I want to feel that most of what I do is meaningful, and I want to explore new territory all the time. I want everything I do as the outer expression of my life to reflect who I am on the inside. I believe this is the only way we can truly have balance in life. I also believe that most of us want to return to a more balanced way of living. We want a new barometer of success that includes inner experience. In fact, we hunger for inner riches along with outer ones, and we feel ourselves poised to break through to a different and deeper experience of success in our personal and professional lives—success that includes a sense of peace, freedom and deep fulfillment. I want to be in the world in a new way. In the coming weeks I’ll share with you the stories of many of the women I interviewed in my quest to find balance. Please, come with me. Adapted from the introduction to The Soul of Success: A Woman’s Guide to Authentic Power, Health Communications, Inc., copyright 2005 Jennifer Read Hawthorne.Q&ADo you feel that your life is balanced? What does or would balance look like to you? Send your 100-word answer to: jennifer@jenniferhawthorne.com. I’ll summarize your answers in the next e-newsletter. Today’s TipWe are so used to “doing” that sometimes we forget the value of just “being.” Our culture teaches us to look outside ourselves for validation and answers, and to define success in terms of financial achievements, position, status and power. The constant striving to be good at everything—from parenting to business to artistry—can leave us worn out. So until the next newsletter, try taking a minimum of five minutes every day—to do NOTHING. That’s right—just sit with your eyes closed and notice what happens. Maybe you’ll fall asleep. Maybe you’ll notice lots of thoughts at first, then fewer thoughts as you start to settle down. Maybe your breathing will slow down. Whatever happens, just notice. Noticing what happens on the inside is the beginning of learning how to live from the inside out. Next Issue: The Power of IntentionIn the next newsletter, we’ll talk about the difference between intention and goal-setting, and the critical role intention plays in our lives. I’ll share the story of how Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul came to be, and the role that intention played in its rise to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Contact UsYour feedback is always greatly appreciated. Please e-mail us at info@jenniferhawthorne.com The Soul of Success is a free bi-weekly e-newsletter published by Jennifer Read Hawthorne, copyright 2005. The Soul of Success respects your privacy and does not give out or sell our subscribers’ names and/or e-mail addresses. To UnsubscribeWe send e-newsletters twice a month. Please feel free to forward this to anyone you know who might be interested (friends, family, students, etc.) and invite them to subscribe to our e-newsletter. If you have received this email in duplicate, please email us: info@jenniferhawthorne.com |
“Nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone.”
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The purpose of this newsletter is to explore ways to find balance in life, as well as ways to be successful that are different from traditional approaches like goal-setting and time management.