As I was reading through A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson I found myself, in her chapter on work, reading a guide to the new paradigm of online business that we are a part of. Our human brains need these constant reminders so that we remember our main goal, our main purpose here, to live as fully, as true to ourselves as possible.

A guide to growing an authentic lifestyle business

Below are 10 quotes that particularly stood out for me when it comes to our reasons for starting, and motivation for continuing with, our freedom based, online businesses.

Along with each quote I’ve posted a question for you to ponder. The purpose of the question is to inspire simple questioning into where you can go deeper into your freedom based business as a tool for authentic living.

1. “The key to a successful career is realizing that it’s not separate from the rest of your life, but is rather an extension of your most basic self.”

Question: How do you live your brand message on an every day basis?

2. “When you break a business down it comes down to offering a commodity. When you infuse purpose and wanting to use your abilities and passions for the benefit of others, this is when it becomes a life’s work. This is when it takes on meaning and a purpose bigger than ones own personal gain.”

Question: What is the change you want to see happen in society? What tool for greater freedom do you share and teach?

3. “We study up on how to run businesses, not stopping to think about why we’re in business except to make money.”

Question: Why do you do what you do?

4. “We can’t fake authenticity. We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we’re trying to be special rather than real. We’re pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same.”

Question: What’s your personal story, how did it lead you to the work you do?

5. “When our goal is making money, creativity becomes distorted.”

Question: Where are you ‘shoulding’ in your business? What do you need to pull the plug on? What do you need to let go of? What would make you feel more free in your business?

6. “When we’re working solely for the money, our motivation is getting rather than giving. The miraculous transformation here is a shift from a sales mentality to a service mentality. Until we make this switch, we’re operating from ego and concentrating on the things of this world rather than on love. This idolatry casts us into alien emotional territory, where we are always afraid. We’re afraid of either failure or success.”

Question: What’s your personal breakthrough, that thing you wish everyone could feel?

7. “A big person is not someone who never falls down. A big person is someone who, when they fall, does what it takes to get up again.”

Question: Where are you caught up in ego procrastination? What’s the next step you need to take to get you where you want to be?

8. “No job really has any more potential impact on the planet than any other. We’re always impacting the world in which we live, through our presence, our energy, our interactions with others. The question is, what kind of impact are we having?”

Question: What are you really in the business of? What is the feeling, the transformation, the quality that your lifestyle business represents and helps others achieve?

9. “There’s no higher art than living a good life. An artist informs the world of what’s available behind the masks we all wear. That’s what we’re all here to do. The reason so many of us are obsessed with becoming stars is because we’re not yet starring in our own lives. The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed at you: it radiates from within I used to feel like I was waiting for someone to discover me…Ultimately I realized that the person I was waiting for was myself.”

Question: What is it, who is it that your freedom based business allows you to be more of? Where does it allow you to step further into the full expression of who you are?

10. “It’s much easier to dream about point Z than to actually move to point B.”

Question: What have you been putting off? What do you know you need to do to move deeper into to embody and create that lifestyle business?

 

What’s your favourite freedom based business motto?