When you are working with one foot in a more conscious, spiritual, and aware world, and another in a project or business of some kind, it becomes really vital to your own health, energy and soul to make sure your actions are coming from a place of integrity.

It would be lovely if business in and of itself was conscious, spiritual and aware, but it’s only just beginning to change more towards this, and in the meantime it’s up to you and me to honour ourselves and our businesses or projects and do things differently!

I’ve compiled a list of some of the most common ways you may be blocking the natural energy of your own life and business. All of them are about releasing energy; it is quite amazing the extent to which human beings hold energy back, or at least try to. Go through the list, tick off the ones that apply to you and then read on to discover how you can begin to let them go.

Energy Blocks:

• illness of all kinds, small or big
• tension
• not coping with potentially stressful situations
• being crabby
• being inappropriately angry
• going off in a huff
• sitting on top of something you know needs to be expressed
• blurting out what you think in inappropriate situations
• having a strop
• insisting on being right
• refusing to listen and hear another person’s point of view
• being stubborn
• being consistently disorganized
• Keeping on going to your own pity party
• Focusing on what you haven’t got
• Wishing things were different, without taking any action

And there are no doubt lots more – if you know one of yours that’s not on this list add it in the comments below!

So here’s 3 specifics to help you on a daily basis with these energy blocks:

1. Forget the reward mindset – do the thing you really want to do first.

When I recommended this at a networking meeting recently, there was horror on almost everyone’s faces. Comments such as

I couldn’t do that! I’d never get anything done, ever!
I’d just spend my time doing what I love and not get to the other things

Oh my goodness! I’d feel much too guilty for that

There was only one lady who had a thoughtful look on her face. ‘Mmm’, she said, ‘that means I’d have to trust that I would eventually do the thing that needed doing, whether I liked it or not.’

And that’s true. This pointer is all about how much you are willing to trust yourself. If you are heavily into the very common belief that says ‘you need to do what you dislike first, get it out the way, and then you can get onto what you love doing’, then you’re in the reward mindset. Which is not surprising as that’s the way most of us have been brought up, reinforced by the educational system in the West, and reiterated by the business culture.

But Wild Wisdom says do your work or business, and your life, differently.

In this case it means being willing to turn the reward system upside down, and give yourself the reward first, thereby releasing huge amounts of energy which you can bring to the thing you didn’t want to do.

Yes, it is risky! Yes, you will have to try it and see what happens! Yes, you might fall at the first fence – but I doubt it. It’s much more likely you will have a go and discover all sorts of things about yourself that you didn’t know.

I first discovered how much this way of living and working suited me when it was snowing one Monday morning, many years ago. I really wanted to go out and play in the snow, not be tied to my computer doing what needed to be done by lunchtime. My mind said – ‘get the work done first, and then reward yourself by going out in the snow.’ My heart said, like a small excited child, ‘Snow! Snow! I want to play out there now!’ – and this time I heard it. So by 9.30 am I was out in the garden playing, and I’d had enough after an hour. Returning to my desk, and the work that needed to get done, felt fine. What’s more, I completed it within plenty of time (even though I had started over an hour ‘late’). So you see – energy is released that often allows the completion of what needs to be done in a much shorter space of time!

2. Educate yourself about marketing and then throw much of it out the window.

Goodness, is this sacrilege? There are so many ‘gurus’ out there telling you exactly what to do to get your message across, to sell more, to be more successful, to make more money, to get more clients. They often have useful information to share. Plus they often have very tempting programmes or products to sell.

I’ve spent a lot on quite a few of these, studied with some of the biggest names in the online sacred marketing business, like Mark Silver, Bill Baren, Kendall Summerhawk to name but a few.

And I still come down to the bottom line – learn what you need to learn and then adapt it to your own market. But not until you have taken time out, checked in with your heart, and can make a decision that is not based on an emotional state. Because decisions based on emotions may be fine – but they’re often rooted in fear, which is likely to cause havoc further down the line.

So it is important to learn, but it is also important to value what you already know.

Not because you know better; not because what you are being taught doesn’t apply to your particular market; not even because everyone should value what they know.

But because if in the long run you don’t listen to your inherent wisdom, you will be out of integrity with yourself which can cause all kinds of problems.

And remember you can only listen to your wisdom to the extent that you do! You may even make decisions thinking you are being wise, only to discover years later that they weren’t that wise after all! You cannot know for sure – but you can give yourself every opportunity to listen to the still, small voice within, and then to act on its’ instructions.

I know about this, because I learnt a lot about buy to let property and how to invest in it; and then, in a rush to buy in case prices went even higher (this was at the height of the property boom) I got an attack of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and bought 2 properties. I thought I was doing exactly what I had learnt, but I missed a few crucial pieces of information, and the most important was taking the time to really quieten down, release the excitement, and discover what was wanting to be heard.

I’m now paying the price in the form of considerable negative equity and challenges in renting. A hard way to learn this lesson – and all because I obeyed the experts, and forgot that the only person who can be an expert in me, is me.

3. Move towards feelings you don’t like, rather than away from them.

I used to encourage people to feel their feelings, actively. And you may be someone who doesn’t easily connect to what you are feeling, in which case learning to feel is really important. But it can often be your feelings which get in the way of you creating a life and business of ease and grace. Why? Because the amount of time you spend resisting whatever you feel is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend suffering.

This means that the longer you ignore what is really going on, the more you keep your head in the sand, the further you push away a niggling feeling under the surface, the more likely you are to be having a bad time – simply because you are resisting.

Imagine that a feeling, say fear, comes knocking at your front door. You know it’s fear, you can feel the stirrings of anxiety, you desperately want to keep the door locked, the lid on, to tie the battens down.   The very last thing you want to do is admit there is any fear there at all, let alone let it in.

And yet, this is exactly what needs to happen. An emotion is there because it has a message for you. You don’t need to open the door wide and invite it to stay for ever. It won’t anyway, as the one thing guaranteed about feelings is that once they are felt, they move and change.

However, my suggestion is that you open your front door wide, and open the back door at the same time. The feeling can then come in, be felt, and flow easily through your house and out the back door, having delivered whatever message it has.

I learnt this well in relation to anger, and I learnt it from my late husband, Philip. He was brilliant at approaching me when I was obviously angry. The anger would be coming out in irritation, being a bit spiteful, short-tempered maybe. Instead of retaliating in kind, or ignoring me, he would (literally) walk towards me, asking what was really going on underneath. For my part, I was willing to look under the anger to the message it had, and to admit that. In these moments, the anger would dissolve, the issue would come to the fore, and we would be walking in tandem once more.

Instead of retaliating in kind, or ignoring me, he would (literally) walk towards me, asking what was really going on underneath. For my part, I was willing to look under the anger to the message it had, and to admit that. In these moments, the anger would dissolve, the issue would come to the fore, and we would be walking in tandem once more.

Invitation: On the next Monday morning, if you’re feeling resistant to what needs to be done, do something you would really love to do first instead. Be kind, keep it small and simple, like me going out in the snow. I dare you!