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What times in life did you embrace your fear? What demons turned out not to be so scary after all, once you faced them? How can you love your demons, your fears, and the things you "hate about yourself?" When I was 4, my mom made sure I never was an "evil character" for Halloween. Anytime someone I knew was going to be a "bad character" I silently winced inside cursing Halloween for celebrating evil. Why give our energy to that?! Anytime my son might ask to be a villain, I was a heck no to that and would steer him another direction. However, what you resist, persists. So when my 10 year old asks to be an orc from the Lord of the Rings I decide to stop "my control train." Just go with the flow. It didn't work at first. I still resisted: I decided I wouldn't dress up with him as I always had since the day he was born. I felt anxious and broody just watching Leo make Eli his war costume. Why the violence?! I would think to myself. I cursed the slave trade chocolate and candy. I could not relax and dreaded the night while still silently organizing a trick or treat with a few of his friends. As his friends arrive to trick or treat, in one moment, I give in. I simply decide to surrender. In fact, I'm suddenly inspired to create a costume in 15 minutes flat. Why fight against the tide? I play along. First off, my son's an awfully cute orc. It's all so meaningless to him--it's just a costume! Walking into my closet, I look at what materials I have on hand...a lot of white things. A cloud costume? Hmm...Every year we as a family have a theme. One year Eli was yoda, I was Padme, and Leo was Obi Juan. Another year he was a Kracken, Leo a boat, and I was a pirate. I look to Eli for ideas, "Who dresses in all white in the Lord of the Rings?" I look in the mirror--and a light bulb goes off as Eli says "Saruman the White--an evil wizard."  In that moment, everything clicked. I saw how my fear was killing off fun and connection.
How my fear was causing suffering. How my judgment was making no difference in having fair trade chocolate being given to children. I embraced my shadow. And just like that, something magical happened. Everything became light again. The evil character costume was just that--a costume. When we were done playing that part, it got tossed into a corner and disposed of. There wasn't any real threat. I saw how evil characters aren't real. They are funny illusions we create to have fun. I saw how fun it was to simply make a costume without assigning unnecessary significance and heavy energy. While I was trying to use my judgment to shield myself and family from evil, I ended up embodying fear--the very thing I wanted to avoid. By embracing my shadow, I was embodying creativity, light, and joy. What energy I embodied is what mattered most. Just like fear, your shadow side longs to be seen. Believing that at the core of any fear--is still purity or light--you can even learn to "love your fear" and embrace it. Even welcome it! Here's a quick litmus test: Who would you rather be around? Someone being light, fun, and joyful making a villain costume? Or someone silently judging and condemning you in the name of light? If in doubt of who you're being, simply tune in and feel your body. Do you feel more heavy or light? Contracted or expanded? Fear or love? As an entrepreneur, which way of being will attract the right clients? You guessed it. Here's a blog I wrote a year ago that still holds true today on Transforming Fear into Love that breaks down the 6 steps to transform fear into love. Back to the inquiries: What times in life did you embrace your fear? What demons turned out not to be so scary after all, once you faced them? How can you love your demons, your fears, the things you "hate about yourself?" Take a few moments to reflect and would love to hear from you! A wonderful song from a dear colleague sums it up best here. Would love to hear from you in the comments! What if you were able to get to the root of your own ego's misery and end any suffering? What would this inner peace of mind look like? Does sitting meditation for hours at a time sound daunting? It does for most and I started right where you are. Sure I could do longer sits of meditation at a retreat with no distractions or responsibilities. But whenever I came home, chaos would ensue. After hearing from my friend how great this ten day Vipassana silent meditation retreat was, it took my twenty years to actually commit. I could never make the time for it in my already full life as a mom and business owner. But I won a lottery seat eighteen months into the pandemic. The retreat is ten days of silence, 100% offline from your devices. Rising at 4am from the gong bell, you meditate twelve hours a day in stillness in bed at 9pm. On breaks you agree not to write, read, dance, exercise, make eye contact, gesture with others, or bring in any other spiritual practice--to give this type of meditation a fair trial in its purity and establish your practice. I shuddered thinking about whether I can handle this--yet was up for the challenge. While this may sound like hell for many, I got what I came for and much more.  Why I Came No matter how much I accomplished, I still felt empty. I’d feel a temporary “high” from the accomplishment as I returned back to real life. I’d create another vision board, accomplish it, then always be left wondering to myself “Is this it?” This was maddening. I should stay happy given how good my life was. How dare I feel ungrateful? Why couldn’t I experience the joy of being alive? Why was I so bored? I was at peace about death and wasn’t interested in going through the motions, experiencing the inevitable roller coaster of pleasant and unpleasant emotions, misery to joy, then dying. Simply being happy wasn’t enough of a reason for me to live. I wanted inner peace. To trust and surrender to my Highest Self, Source, God, a higher power. To feel the elixir of being alive--the preciousness of life on planet earth. To fulfill on my purpose to its highest expression, revealing my best path to express that in this lifetime. Basics of Attending a Vipassana Meditation Retreat First, you agree to a code of discipline for the duration of the meditation experience before applying that includes no killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, or substance use. At the start, you turn in your smartphone so you can remain 100% offline with no devices or anything to distract you. From 4am to 9pm you meditate in 2, 3 or 4 hour chunks at a time, with 1.5-2 hour breaks in between for meals and resting your body. On the breaks between meditations, there’s no gesturing to others, eye contact, writing, reading, journaling, yoga, jogging, other spiritual practices, or three meals a day. There is a vast beautiful meadow complete with frolicking deer and rabbits you can stroll around or eat your meals in. This design is so you can get established in the Vipassana practice and give this approach to meditation a fair trial. For meals, they are vegetarian (and quite delicious and nutritious!) served at 6:30am and 11am sharp for a precise window of 30-45 minutes. Dinner at 5pm is a piece of fruit with tea. The retreat is free, including room and board, and there’s an opportunity to give a donation at the end only if you received value. Your bedroom is spartan--a simple bed, shelf, and end table. Nothing else. You can take up to a five minute hot shower per day to help conserve water. You can ask questions to the teacher each day at noon or 9pm for five minutes. Every evening at 7pm, you also listen to a recorded discourse from Vipassana’s original teacher on how to master the meditation technique.  Results from My Vipassana Silent Meditation Retreat Impermanence I discovered impermanence. Impermanence was an intellectual concept and became an undeniable, “as lived experience” in my body. Experiencing impermanence in all ways was the source of my soul’s liberation. Discovering impermanence was also the root of my ego's misery. My longing to escape this world from boredom and feeling empty no matter what I accomplished or my clinging to feel bliss permanently was one in the same in different forms. I learned through my body how the mind is always in one of three places--clinging (wanting more pleasure and getting attached), aversion (avoiding what you don’t want), or ignorance (being unconscious of the source of your misery and stuck in reaction). All three roads of clinging, aversion and attachment lead to misery. I experienced this in my 100 hours of meditation. Now I realized that focusing on craving lasting fulfillment was entirely based on ego and was impossible to ever feel settled from that place. By practicing being equanimous, calm and unattached to either cravings or aversions, I found true inner peace that can last. Free from the bondage of the ego mind. Purification After the realization of impermanence, meditation now becomes an access to purify my mind, allowing me to master my mind’s reactions by rewiring my neuronal pathways and fixed patterns. I can clear out all reactive responses and triggers of the mind that gets created in my body, bit by bit, layer by layer, through every cell of my body. Instead of craving bliss or avoiding boredom, I can choose to fly free like a bird than react in ignorance. My two wings are 1) awareness in equanimity (non judgement, detached, seeing pain and pleasure as they are) as well as 2) feeling body sensations of physical pain or pleasure I’m experiencing in the moment. By feeling body sensations of pain and pleasure with an equanimous mind, this becomes my access for purifying all defilements of my mind. No longer must I rely on a person, place, or thing outside myself to access lasting inner joy and peace. Simply being the Observer, the Witness, to whatever is happening whether I like it or not is where I experience inner peace. In Summary Experiencing impermanence at the cellular level, I’m now settled in my life’s work. Rather than constantly try to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing that makes the best use of my genius, I’ve surrendered to and expect myself to constantly shift HOW I’ll play out my purpose: to liberate a leader’s soul expression in this lifetime. This allows me to finally experience the joy of being alive each time I am able to fall back into equanimity when all is awesome or horrible or anything in between. This is just the beginning. Establishing myself in this practice showed me it IS possible to rewire unconscious reactions in the human mind so that all thoughts that arise are pure. Whether scratching an itch at night unconsciously to judging someone silently to snapping at your kid--the root or these reactions dwell as a cellular experience in the body. By focusing your mind’s awareness on the body sensation, then practicing responding equanimously, you can rewire your neuronal pathways. If you want to learn how to get to root of your misery, end suffering, and experience inner peace no matter what life throws at you--learn more and attend a Vipassana Retreat. It could change your life. ******************* Anna S. Choi, Forbes Author, TEDx Speaker and Chief Energy Officer of Conscious Business Coaching, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, conscious coaches, entrepreneurs, and business leaders to prevent burnout and find peace in chaos through energy mastery. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she water birthed her son with no drugs and pursued energy mastery as a taekwondo martial artist, qigong yoga instructor, and certified Flow Consultant and Dahn Master with over 10,000 hours of personal growth, training, and development training serving hundreds of conscious leaders over the past two decades. If you're interested in finding peace in chaos, visit www.annasunchoi.com. How do you define success?
Whenever I ask my clients what their definition of success is, they give me goals of what they want to achieve. It typically falls into 3 buckets: more money, more time with family or themselves, and more freedom to travel to pursue other pleasures and passions. But if you pause and listen within, I invite you to take a moment to ask your heart: Where did that definition of success come from? What influenced you? Is that success dependent on something outside of yourself? These questions will help you get to the heart of what success really means to you. Here’s an exercise to help you define success: Close your eyes. Imagine you in your current life and business as it is today. Then one day, unexpectedly, you find out you have a life threatening illness. The doctor says “You have 3 months to live.” Assuming all your affairs are in order (with your will, life celebration planning, etc.) really feel what you would spend the last 3 months of your life doing.
The picture you see gives you clues to getting to the source of what success really means for you. Now open your eyes. Journal what comes to mind. Then allow yourself to inquire into the question “What matters to me? What is true to myself?” This may take you a few days, weeks, or months to contemplate. Keep journaling what opens up. Success from the Outside In Meeting hundreds of conscious leaders, whom the world would consider at the top of their game (they have billions, they’ve won multiple oscars, they have successful kids, etc.) I’m continuously surprised that a common thread among them all is that when they finally reach a pinnacle they’ve strived for--they feel empty. It feels just like it was a moment ago. They find themselves asking “Is this it?" Consider, their success is often defined by society or their ego, not their heart. Often your ego clings to various desires, wants, and past memories of success that don’t allow you to fully experience the present moment. You’ll worry, analyze and live in future dreams. Rarely will you be present for more than a few minutes at a time. Rarely will you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor as you rush to the next achievement that will end up feeling awesome for a split second, then empty again. Success from the Inside Out Rather than look outside yourself for success, define success from the inside out. Studies suggest that the biggest regret people have when they pass is not being true to themselves. When you define success as what’s being true to your Highest Self--unspeakable states of joy, bliss, and peace become possible. That’s what happened for me attending a 5 day silent meditation retreat. By the end, I unexpectedly fell in love with myself. Unlike experiencing happiness from a vacation, or the pleasure from escaping day to day chaos, this was distinctly peaceful bliss from the inside out. I was literally speechless because words would only distract from the glory I felt in the present moment. All I wanted to do was be with myself, please myself, nurture myself. I felt no craving, no desire, no wish for anything outside myself whether that was family relationships, possessions, accomplishments, or recognition. I felt at peace with death even if that were to happen the next moment. I was triggerless. It lasted for weeks, even after a jarring return home to chaos. It was the “being part of yet outside of the world feeling” that I’ve wanted to return to ever since. Now I coach my clients in discovering for themselves their own inner bliss in our work together as they grow their business. Once you’re clear on what success from the inside out looks like, you can now put into practice your definition of success in real life. The Opportunity of No Last year alone, during the pandemic, here are a few surprising places I’ve said no:
If I had defined success from the outside in, obviously I would have said yes to all three. By defining success from the inside the answer was clearly no. I knew that if I had said yes, that meant too many projects once, working late nights to meet deadlines, missing out on family time, and kicking myself for saying yes to too many things. However, in the short term, saying no felt scary. I worried I missed out on a huge opportunity. Instead, I trusted myself knowing I’d avoided a huge distraction from my vision that would ultimately serve me much better in the long run. For me, success is loving myself unconditionally, surrendering to my Highest Self, while experiencing joy in simply being alive in the present moment. Saying no in real life was the opportunity to tune into my intuition, take actions consistent with trusting my inner wisdom, and transforming FOMO (fear of missing out) energy into JOMO (joy of missing out) energy. 3 Ways to Know When to Say No It’s hard to know whether to say no to an opportunity if you have no clear methodology or approach. Here are a few ideas for ways to say no:
This set of 5 questions is from one my business mentors, Roger James Hamilton. Each time you need to make a decision, he uses this criteria before saying yes to an opportunity.
If you say no to any of the first 3 questions, it’s a distraction (off course) or disruption (slows you down). Now What What are decisions that you’ve said no to in the past you would have said yes to? How did that pan out? Did you regret or let go? Did new opportunities arise? Whether in business or life, consider that each decision you say yes or no to alters your future trajectory, creates new connections, ideas, and learnings that otherwise would not have happened. You only have so much time left on planet earth. Choose wisely. By taking the time to define success from the inside out and knowing what to say no to, you’ll establish your true north to make decisions with more ease when opportunities arise. You’ll uncover the opportunity no can unexpectedly bring. Keep testing your true definition of success from the inside out the next time an opportunity comes your way and build the muscle for living a life true to yourself. It’s worth it, I promise. I’d love to hear what your definition of success from the inside out looks like for you and what happened when applying it to real life. Please add your comments below. *** Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com. Ever wonder if you're actually following the right path?
A trio of teenage girls passed away in my spiritual community from a car accident a few weeks ago. I didn't know them personally. It's moments like this I stop and ask myself this same question: Am I living my life to its fullest? Or playing it safe? Am I following my heart or my head? Last Friday, I had such a moment. I was on a call talking to Amber, a book launch expert about my book. I haven't even been public about the book. What if I don't finish it? What if it flops? What if it distracts me from my business? It's all been said before. Yet for the past year or two, there's been a yearning DEEP WITHIN to simply write, write, and write some more. To vlog (video blog) and share my life and what I've learned. Being an author didn't tie in neatly with my strategic business plan. Or tie into my 2021 business goals or make money for a future marketing campaign. So the book became a side project that "made no sense revenue wise" and was my pet passion project I wanted to do for the sake of just feeling the joy of writing. As Amber and I start brainstorming the book content, I start sharing about my 16 day road trip. I can feel my energy growing, my face breaking out into a smile. "There would be 10 hour days on the road with no wifi! In that silence--with nothing to distract me, I ended up composing my first song. My voice lesson teacher who's an ACTUAL musician said it was like...a legit song! Like a good one. It felt Divine Inspiration flowing through me. I started with a catchy tune that came from within. Then it grew into lyrics, the chorus came--and boom--created my first song "You are ok." As I bashfully complete sharing the joy it was to write that song (my head saying "Get back to business!) I mutter with a slight smile quickly saying "So yeah...just as a side note." Amber interrupts me saying "No, Anna! No! It's not a side note. It's THE note!" I swear to you, my life flashed before my eyes. I saw a series of scenes playing music, moving my body, being a digital nomad going on a global tour speaking to thousands of schools and organizations. I felt the freedom my business was to grant me when I first began. It was never to build my business into a money making empire. Never. As returned to The Note, I realized my own blindspot in my business. I had given up on centering my business in what brought my joy after a number of failed attempts. So I created the next best thing. A business I enjoyed that had moments of 100% fulfillment helping clients and knew would serve people making a great impact. I know that sounds awesome still, but there was something missing. Throughout the whole frickin pandemic, I never figured it out. In fact, I circled back to the same "goal" that didn't quite resonate even after a year! While I became more aligned, still hadn't struck the right chord or Note quite yet. The Note being what made my heart sing. The Note being what naturally aroused my aliveness within. This message is dedicated to The Note. The Note that threads throughout all our lives and is the energy line that lights you up with resonance. The Note gives you courage to free yourself of what others thinks. The Note allows 100% of the real you to show up publicly, boldy, with no apologies. The Note harmonizes away, shedding layers of all the should's: Don't write that! That could offend so and so. What will people say? You may not have a name for The Note. You may be satisfied with what you think The Note may be. You'll know when you find The Note because there's a vibration you cannot deny. A high level frequency that penetrates to your heart and soul whispering to you "There is no turning back, Anna." The Note presences your soul, surging in your veins to finally take that leap you were meant to take. What's The Note you've been pushing aside "as a sidenote" in your life? I offer this inquiry for today. Discover your Note. Ping me what you discover by replying back. Look in the mirror: Do your eyes sparkle with the joy of being alive? If you were stripped away of everything that brings you joy and left with absolutely nothing--would you be a hot mess or quite elated in bliss? Here's the before and after shot after a 3 day Unstoppable Joy course with 1000 conscious human beings around the world. Can you tell the difference?
It's subtle. In the left shot, I'm artificially creating a smile. My eyes are a bit more dead. In short, my joy was dependent on the outside. In the second shot, my eyes sparkle a bit more. I'm experiencing joy from within--shining out. For years, I've searched for that missing "note" I spoke of in last week's email. The sparkle inside that lights you up no matter how dark it gets. If you want a never ending energy source for lighting up your life--here's my very vulnerable sharing on my joy journey. When I was 18, I "had it all" on every possible level: a good family, respect from peers, leadership in the school, a strong church community, scholar athlete, winner of many awards, and a hot boyfriend. Yet I STILL FELT EMPTY!!!! It was crazy making. It's not like I could go complain "my life is too good" so I kept quiet. I just kept searching and searching for what was missing. I even wrote a children's book "Aida and the Duke of Doubt" in a vain attempt to answer that question so little ones wouldn't have to suffer with this longing for something more that never went away. At the time I concluded, if you focus outside yourself solely on making a difference for others--you can forget your ego self and feel fulfillment. While that can still be the case--it didn't fill that empty hole. (Mind you this was after being asked to leave the leadership team of my church because I was teaching the "mountain" theory of may paths to God...and at 22, left the church and all that I knew that had given me purpose yet still felt empty) I tried a gajillion personal growth trainings for nearly 2 decades. Had MASSIVE transformations in every area. Again, obtained everything on my "vision board" again and again. But there comes a point where you stop caring about accomplishing more. The game gets old. You wonder "is this it?!" Cause think about it, you accomplish a new experience. The it gets normal again. You accomplish again. Then it normalizes. You accomplish, it gets old, then eventually you die. In the course, I suddenly realized how I'd been operating: If I had more travel, then I can have joy. If my husband Leo and I are more intimate, there would be more joy. If my son Eli listens well or laughs, I'd feel joy. If I put music on and dance, I'll access joy. Yet, travel, music, family--you name it!--all rely on looking for joy from the outside. The missing note? Joy comes from within. Joy is a choice. Joy has no reason. I leave you with some inquiries: How often do you feel joy? What gives you joy? Is it outside yourself? What does joy from within feel like? What would being a joy generator for no reason look like? Try looking in the mirror again: Do your eyes sparkle with the joy of being alive? If they don't, that's ok. Meditate on the questions above and listen to your heart. Quiet the noise from the outside. One thing I can promise: Is the day you can say "YES!"--without a doubt--"My eyes ARE sparkling!", is the day you'll experience a deep unconditional love for yourself in the face of all your imperfections, mistakes, and messiness. Tears will stream down your face from an inexplicable joy. I love you. Thank you to everyone who responded to my last email--how wonderful was that?! Please, share your thoughts by simply replying back to this email! Or comment in this 7 minute Unstoppable Joy video I recorded RIGHT in the moment after the weekend...  ***
Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com. As the future remains unknown a year after the pandemic (and consider the future has always been uncertain), have you noticed a shift in how business is being done? The last two decades I've focused on social enterprise, socially responsible, business, conscious business, being a changemaker, etc. As new trends and nomenclature emerge, has anything really changed since the pandemic? Is a new business paradigm emerging? Below are business trends I've noticed have magnified during the pandemic:
No judgment or shame on the old paradigm. Truth be told, I've used the old paradigm. I was trained in the old paradigm as a new entrepreneur. It took a solid year for me (and counting!) to trust myself and my own inner wisdom and wean off the tactics I've been taught from many online programs and experts that no longer served. Can't tell you how many times I've invested thousands in a program, only to find when looking "under the hood" that these 7 figure, multi 7 figure companies were in the red!! These 7 figure companies weren't in the red because of the pandemic. They are because they are in the old paradigm--focusing on new sales and churning new clients versus delivering on customer care and renewals. I admittedly used to be wowed by big revenue numbers in placing my trust. Or wanted access to their network. Now I just don't care. I want to do business that I trust because they care, are competent, and have my best interest in mind. (Pro tip: If you simply ask "what percentage of customers renew with you?" you'll learn a lot! I strive for 50% or higher. Some companies are less than 15%. This *can* be a sign of customer churn.) What's even more fascinating is that small, teeny revenue businesses actually can profit the same or MORE than these huge companies...! Knowing all this, you might sometimes feel like you're the only one who cares in standing for a world of peace. Well, you're not alone. Our company has made a huge migration of our online Community of Conscious Entrepreneurs off Facebook to a more conscious platform on Mighty Network. A community free of becoming addicted or comparing yourself with others. A community where you won't be subtly led down a rabbit hole to be profited on. A community where your brain won't be unconsciously manipulated. (Here's the brain science of how social media platforms are designed intentionally to exploit human weakness ie. inciting fear or rage to want you to share, or spread misinformation because it's profitable but toxic for creating division, etc.) It's time to take a stand for the love of humanity. As the future of business shifts priorities from solely the bottom line at the cost of human well-being, our planet, and focusing on what matters most in our life, what actions can your business take to become more conscious? How is your company paying attention to leaving a digital footprint that positive impacts the world ? What companies do you support in using their products and services? Are they conscious? Does that matter to you? Vote with your click. Vote with your dollar for the world you want future generations to be born into. Their lives depend on it. *** Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.  The Social Dilemma: Is Social Media Helping or Harming Your Business? For many of my business clients and conscious entrepreneurs--social media is simply accepted as necessary for business. The question is, how do you measure whether social media actions are working? And even more importantly, how does being social media impact your energy and mental health? In other words, beyond basic ROI of financial return (which frankly, many clients have very poor results after pouring thousands a month hiring experts), what is your ROEI (return on energy invested) and ROTI (Return on Time Invested)? But after watching the 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma, it shifted my entire paradigm of what we are actually dealing with. After many months of how to navigate the social world consciously as a conscious business, I’d like to share my best practices. But first, some context of how we came to be. Warning: this is a total spoiler alert of The Social Dilemma! The Social Dilemma  The Netflix documentary drama “The Social Dilemma” interviews many founding and former investors, execs, and software engineers of Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter who share their experience of grappling with the unintended consequences of features they built like the “infinite scroll” that caused enormous growth in users--but at a cost. With the rise and power of (thus far mostly unchecked) Big Tech companies like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube these companies are facing a responsibility and moral dilemma of how their algorithms impact human behavior, human futures, and our society at large. Age of Surveillance Capitalism One of the experts interviewed in the film is American author, Harvard professor, and social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff who coined the term Surveillance Capitalism. Surveillance Capitalism "unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data [which are] . . . fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. . . . [these products] "are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets."[3] In other words, there’s a whole new market that trades and traffics in selling your human behavioral future. Meaning, Big Tech social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and Google, are not really in the business of selling your data to advertisers. They are selling your future behavior or predictive pattern of your future “click behavior” to groups, causes, and content that has now shown can have unintended consequences OFFLINE. Marketing has entered another realm, where software engineers are literally being trained in psychology classes by the company, with unanticipated impacts that essentially hack your subconscious to quietly gather data on your every behavior online--how many seconds you pause, how long you scroll, which emoticon you use, and most importantly--what you click on to then inform, influence, and feed what you’ll get served up. But not just to buy--the complex algorithmic AI (artificial intelligence) now can inform who you’ll become and actions you’ll take offline. This unchecked power is what is now informing legislation like Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act. What This Means for You  As a conscious entrepreneur, please know that your online social media habits affect you subconsciously now when you’re offline. This is simply what is so. There’s no finger to point or blame. The challenge is complex. In a world of big data, while unintended, it’s a bit like the story Frankenstein. A scientist creates artificial intelligence called Frankenstein that turns into a beast or monster that takes on a life of its own, where the scientist can no longer control it. Like Frankenstein, initially software engineers were simply doing their job innovating features like the “like button” or “infinite scroll” who had a good intention to help the world. But the AI now has a life of its own collecting so much data each nanosecond, that it’s hard to stop. The part to pay attention to as a business owner is the unintended consequence of shifting your offline behavior by what you consume online, based on what avatar (customer identity) the AI predicts you’ll fit based on many factors such as where you live, and all your other click behaviors. As Chamath Palihapitiya, one of the former VP of Growth at Facebook in the movie acknowledges in a later interview: In 2017, many of us have grappled with the unintended consequences of the products we've built. Social media platforms in particular have been used and abused in ways that we, their architects, never imagined. Much blame has been thrown and guilt felt, but the important thing is what we as an industry do now to ensure that our impact on society continues to be a positive one. How do we stay “conscious” online? 5 Best Practices to Stay Conscious on Social Media So now what? 1. Vote with your click. Stay conscious online. The less you mindlessly scroll and instead cautiously and carefully choose where you click next, you give yourself a shot of having more control of what gets fed to you online. 2. Get in and get out. Be clear what you want to accomplish then close the platform. Set a timer if you think you’ll be tempted to stick around longer. Do NOT get stuck in endless scrolling. For example, I have an objective when I go on social media for my business. I plan my post, publish and schedule the post, then only answer comments in my community that I am to nurture. I am picky with which notifications I choose to respond to. 3. Filter your friends and content. Who you friend or not, what posts you like or not, what ads you click on or not, all impact your social media feed and “recommended” ads or posts. I only friend people after checking out their profile. If they are life-giving, positive, inspirational--I friend them. If they frequently share and spread posts that are political, religious, or anything that enrages one way or the other, I ignore or delete the request. If you see a sponsored ad, you have the option to stop seeing ads by clicking the little X in the corner. When I experimented with clicking on them (out of curiosity of how other entrepreneurs did their ads) I noticed I got more of them through retargeting. This is where once you click and ad, Facebook “retargets” you by serving up that same ad or a variation. When I clicked out of all sponsored ads in my feed, I get no ads in my feed. 4. Don’t watch or share news from social media. Find your news from unbiased journalism. The Social Dilemma shares how misinformation, or fake news, spreads six times faster than real news. Watch out for seemingly credible looking posts with visual charts or nice graphics citing statistics that incite anger or rage. Pause and ask yourself: Does this post show both sides of an issue? Am I feeling angry and want to share this? Do I feel more empathic and loving and expansive now? If you’re left with a “them vs us”, realize your subconscious just got hacked. You’ll be easily manipulated to then spread and share that likely fake news designed to evoke anger and rage. Instead, find a credible journal newsworthy source that shares all sides of a topic like AllSides which gives readers a cross-partisan view of world events. Good journalism leaves you with empathy for all sides and not a black and white right or wrong, “them versus us.” Take back control of your brain and emotions. 5. Call or text a friend directly to connect. Use technology to love people, not divide them. If chatting publicly on social media isn't going to be interpreted in the best light possible--pick up the phone. Have a real conversation with the opposite side. Before the pandemic, I avoided talking politics or religion with friends and colleagues. Since the pandemic began, I've had over seven hard conversations with friends and colleagues who voted differently than me. I simply listened to understand. Learn more about How to Transform Fear Into Love here. How I’m shifting my Business Practice  In addition to following the practices above, I really had to rethink my online marketing strategy. Namely, with Facebook--where I’ve invested countless hours building a business Facebook group called the Community of Conscious Entrepreneurs. Personally, I've had a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I was someone who posted daily and frequently on FB “for business” so others could “know, like, and trust me” using it to document life’s milestones, wins, big news, and to feel good. I justified any concerns about privacy, censoring, or addiction by using the platform “for good” with live yoga classes, sharing music, food recipes and more. Not gonna lie--the dopamine rush of getting 150 likes in a few hours for a post felt great. In those moments, my concerns of "comparisitus" (comparing my life to others and feeling bad when I was struggling), getting addicted to getting more likes, or living my offline life thinking “How will I capture and post this event on FB?” didn't matter. But after watching the Social Dilemma, when you’re up against a team of brilliant engineers who day in and day are contributing to building and creating a super complex, ultrasmart AI logarithm that might even know you better than yourself, I had to get clear on WHY I’m using social media beyond “for business exposure.” My real why is to build a community of conscious entrepreneurs who use business as force for good and measure the quadruple bottom line of people, planet, profit, and presence. For the last 2 years, I searched for a platform where I don’t have to worry about privacy or worry about my every click behavior being tracked to sell me ads or feed me down a rabbit hole that enrages me offline. I’m migrating my Facebook group to Mighty Network, a platform that’s actually private regarding your click behavior, delivers your posts to everyone in the group (versus the algorithm dictating it), and isn’t designed to addict or hack your subconscious. This platform is an actual tool that’s non-addicting. You choose when you use the tool, versus feeling withdrawals if you go offline and having to check your phone. Tristan Harris, the filmmaker of the Social Dilemma and Founder of The Center for Humane technology--provides other ways to be more conscious online.
Check out their full list here: https://www.humanetech.com/take-control In Summary By learning to stay conscious online, you’ll better navigate and discern the noise out there to tune in to what really matters for you in your life. The Center for Humane Technology summarizes it best:
As long as social media companies profit from addiction, depression, and division, our society will continue to be at risk. Imagine a world built on human technology that operates for the common good, strengthening our capacity to tackle our biggest global challenges. Vote with your click. Go offline once a week. Connect to people, to nature, and to yourself. Each moment you choose a healthy choice, the world is little brighter from your choice. Choose wisely. Our society depends on it. ***** Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.  Can you believe it's been about 1 year since the pandemic began? Here are questions you can ask yourself that allows your brain to focus on leveraging this "unprecedented" event towards your own vision and goals: 1. What learnings are you grateful for? 2. What became possible or what new dreams became accelerated? 3. What new habits have you developed you that want to keep no matter what? 4. What business practices will you continue or drop moving forward no matter what happens in the future? Learnings Our family has a very clear sense of what's enough in how much time we spend Pre-pandemic was always overbooked and not enough while 6-9 months into the pandemic was way too much. Experiencing what a healthy boundary looks like. I've experienced the rhythm of slowing down from my ultra fast life. I know how to slow down and cycle with natural rhythms versus always on go like before. While things have sped back up, I know how critical the slow down is to the power back up--allowing way more clarity on what to simplify, discontinue, or start. Our family revamped our home space. My son's bedroom moved to the family/guest room while we created a new classroom/second office. That move worked wonders in personal space. We built a covered deck and an outdoor "kid cave" under the deck that was warm enough for those long winter, rainy days to still get outdoor playdates in. Finally became much more of a chef creating vegan creme brulee dishes, sourdough bread from scratch, and more. Cooking is not only healthier for me (ate out way more before) but gives me a zoom break and physical way to be present. Let's my brain rest. Dreams For us, our dream to be 100% geographically free and snowbird 1-3 months became possible. My husband Leo's job is now 100% remote for good and we were glad to say goodbye to a daily 3 hour commute on a ferry to Seattle! This allowed us to take major experiments remote working from his home on Stuart island for 3 weeks. Locally, boat rides and nature excursions can give as much a sense of adventure as travel while still being in community outside. We also tested which places we'd snowbird to 1-2 months a year to recently taking a 16 day road trip to visit the southwest while remote working for 3 of those days. When countries open up again, we're looking at taking 1-3 months to live abroad in South Korea to learn Korean and do an upcoming book tour. Habits While painful initially and still a roller coaster, testing every possible scenario of homeschooling with two full time working parents--we've finally found a homeschool rhythm that works. Both parents are way more available on weekends to be present with Eli our son, so we’re starting a Saturday-Tuesday, 1-2 focused hours, with long afternoon, outdoor playdates. Then we naturally do life school all the hour times of the day (cooking, chores, allowance, etc). It's been humbling to "unschool" ourselves off the typical school system and realize how learning is happening *every moment.* Life is school. Business I've learned how to market 100% online than rely solely on in person and speaking events--but integrate movement, dance, and creative experiences to prevent zoom fatigue and isolation. While I've determined to stay 100% virtual (enjoying a national clientele), I can still integrate in person events when that's available as needed. SummaryIf you take time to reflect on these questions, you might surprise yourself with how resilient you've become.
I would *love* to hear your thoughts and reflections in the comments! --- ***** Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.  Recently spoke at the Seattle Chamber's NW Elevate Series on "The 5 Secrets to Reclaim Your Energy!" I was so surprised with the response to this poll: What is your current energy level? The poll results? Not one attendee answered they have high levels of energy. Not a single person. Yet nearly half of the sixty attendees responded they had low energy and struggled to maintain energy through the day. It hit me hard how much folks are struggling. Check out the results below:  I figured others are feeling this way as well. Here's quick way to identify the source of your energy drains using the ENERGY POWER checklist below. The more energy leaks plugged, the more you can feel energized. The intention of this checklist exercise is to bring awareness to what is happening. Simply read the question. Tune in to your heart. Then answer authentically. Don't worry about scoring, or getting as my yes's as possible. Simply answer as honestly as possible. At the end, pick 1-3 areas you can start shifting today. ENERGY POWER CHECKLIST BODY POWER: 1. Are you getting quality sleep? 2. Does what you eat make your body sing? 3. Is your core and gut area warm throughout the day? 4. Do you regularly move your body (let's not even address exercise yet!) throughout the day? HEART POWER: 1. Do you smile throughout the day for no reason? 2. Do you feel light and expansive (versus heavy, tight, constricted) in your chest? 3. Do you know how to name the emotion of your feeling, focus on your heart within, and breathe deeply? 4. Do you allow unwanted emotions like irritable, anger, sadness, anxiety, rage, embarrassment, disgust, judgement to energetically flow through you and pass? MIND POWER: 1. Do you do one task at a time, fully present? Multi-tasking includes not just doing two things at once. It also includes doing successive actions in a row quickly with no break or switching rapidly back and forth between two tasks. 2. Are you able to relax and quiet your brain on demand in a moment? 3. Do you go offline completely at least one day a week to recharge? 4. Do you eat a meal sitting down, slowly and mindfully without doing anything else? (versus scarfing down leftovers in 5 minutes standing up before you run to the next meeting while listening to a podcast) SOUL POWER: 1. Do you wake up happy? 2. If today was your last day to live, would you be ready to pass away? 3. Do you have no regrets? 4. Do you feel you're fulfilling your highest potential in your day to day life? All too often, the boundless energy reserves available as children get sucked up through layers of stress over the years, leaving us depleted like an empty cup.  Once your natural energy depletes, it's like an empty bank account that you now have to borrow energy then from your body--accelerating your aging process. Instead, by noticing and bringing awareness to these energy drains, you can consciously replenish and recharge yourself, feeling higher levels of energy in your day. *********
Anna S. Choi, CEO and Founder of Conscious Business Coaching, TEDx Speaker, and Forbes Author, is committed to elevating humanity's consciousness by empowering high achieving, six-figure conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders to prevent burnout while scaling their company. As a broke art major with zero experience or connections, she started and sold her first financial planning business grossing six figures by age 25. Burned out from the hustle and grind, she pursued energy mastery since 2014 as a taekwondo martial artist, body and brain yoga instructor and educator, and flow consultant now helping her high achieving clients grow in flow through energy mastery. If you're interested in growing your business with balance not burnout visit www.annasunchoi.com.  With so many global and national events happening each day while dealing with the pandemic, no matter what you believe, it's become difficult to stay in a bubble without feeling the impact of what's been happening lately. In my work with business clients --they are already dealing with life stresses of caretaking elders, not seeing their family more regularly, or being triggered by the news and unable to focus at work. This is causing higher levels of emotional stress than they are used to managing and looking for ways to stay grounded while also taking care of their well-being, growing their business, and taking a stand for what they believe in society will create a better future for all. Let's take the following situation - a family member voted differently in politics or doesn't acknowledge or believe in the same reality as you. This divide can be healed by first going within to face and embrace your fears, then having tough conversations and creating your stand in the world. But first, it starts with you. This is the vast majority of work. Remember, no amount of "conflict resolution" or "communications" training will make a lasting difference unless you're at peace with yourself, able to face, and even love your fear. If you consider the world’s chaos on the outside is a reflection of the inner turmoil within--you’ll begin getting to the source of the chaos in our world today. Let’s begin and make friends with fear. Here's an executive summary video version of this blog as well: Step 1: Be Willing to Face Feeling the Fear  What is your relationship to fear? Rather than thinking intellectually about it, let's look to your body to tell you. Just like numbers don't lie in a business, your body's reactions don't lie about your subconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions on a matter that causes your reactions. To understand your default narrative on fear, picture any current event, relationship, or daunting task in your business that brings up fear for you. Then simply observe what first words, feelings, or body sensations popped in your head and write it down. Do the following exercise:
Step 2: Allowing and Accepting the Fear  After you face the feeling of fear, you've almost already accomplished the next step of allowing fear. Allowing or accepting fear doesn't mean you condone the fear or that you think the fear is ok or even good. Allowing or accepting the fear is simply being with the fear, allowing it to exist, and accepting that it's there at all. To do this, you must be neutral as you tap, observe, and watch yourself as if on the outside looking in. Fear can even be reduced down to a particular set of feelings, thoughts, and body reactions; then humans labeled fear to describe that experience. Perhaps your heart races, your mouth goes dry, and you're anxious, and your head says, "stop!" or get angry. That collective experience is now called fear. Whatever version of fear you experience, take a deep breath. Take another deep breath and keep taking deep inhales and exhales as you continue being with fear, noticing your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Step 3: Picture Fear Like a Little Monster  Picture fear like a little monster who just wants love. Imagine you're sitting at home when suddenly the little monster - Fear, shows up at your doorstep, knocking on the door. Seeing it's the little monster - Fear, your initial reaction is to ignore the door knocking. But fear keeps knocking louder. You say to the door, "Fear go away!" but the fear simply knocks more loudly and is getting angrier. The more you resist, the more fear starts banging loudly on your door, wildly shouting obscenities. This is like what's happening in our world. We cannot continue to ignore the fear that lives in the hearts of many in our country that may have different or opposing beliefs. We must first be willing to face feeling the fear then allowing the fear. If you continue to ignore, get angry at, or whatever other reaction in your unique response to fear is, the little monster will keep growing inside you until it rears its head and leaks out while you're with a client, and something happens when you're sitting at dinner with your family, or just walking outside. Having the courage to feel the fear and be with it anyway by simply practicing feeling it and breathing through it to relax your body is something you should be proud of. Because you are building a muscle of handling fear constructively in a healthy manner. If you've made it even this far, you are far ahead of the vast majority of humanity, which is SO worth celebrating. Take a break, and enjoy yourself, relax, and treat yourself. You can hang out practicing just these steps for a while until some basic mastery is attained. Then you can move on to the next stage. Step 4: Connecting to the Fear  Once you can see fear like a little monster who wants love, next you can connect to the fear. You can talk -much like a mom or dad would talk to a child throwing a tantrum and doesn't know any better. To connect to your fear, presence it again by imagining the situation, the person, or the challenge you face. Breathe deeply as you notice your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations arise. Once in a fairly neutral or calm state, now ask your fear "What's your message to me?" or "What do you want to say to me?" Now your job is to listen. It's likely you'll have lots of automatic responses from fear, saying some form of "Pay attention to me!". Simply listen. You might also journal some notes. Step 5: Thanking the Fear  Now that you've allowed fear to say it's peace, it's time for you to acknowledge the fear for the role it's playing. Whether that's teaching you a skill you otherwise wouldn't have to learn or building a muscle that needs building--you can ask questions like:
Automatically when you inquire and explore a question, your brain eagerly wants to find an answer. You might have automatic answers which could be valid, and I invite you to wait patiently and listen. Take notes of what replies you receive. Thank the fear for being in your life. Step 6: Embracing the Fear  Now that you've connected with the fear, got an understanding of where fear was coming from, and perhaps learned some new perspective or insight that wouldn't' have been possible had you not cared to ask questions and been courageous to face the fear in the first place, you're now ready for the next step. Embracing fear is very much like giving fear a hug. Now that the fear isn't a threat (in essence, you didn't treat fear with more fear to feed it), give the fear some love. You will often find love is MUCH more powerful than fear and has the power to transmute the fear into love. You might discover that fear was just the monster clothing on the outside, and on the inside, fear at the core is light and love. It's as if by loving fear, you are reintegrating, or unifying the yin and the yang, the polar opposites into one piece--true unity of dichotomies. You can make a motion of hugging yourself or any other gesture and/or sound of relief once you've integrated and come to terms with the fear in a very loving, positive way. Anytime that particular flavor of fear comes up, you can simply smile and say: "oh hey! I love you --there's nothing to be scared of." Then embrace the fear into your heart of shining love--not in order to get rid of, exterminate, and disappear the fear. That's just a disguised way of fighting the fear through fake love. You must authentically in your heart FEEL an expansive sense of openness to truly embrace fear. You'll know if it's fake love by simply checking your heart rate. If your breath is shallow, or you feel constricted or contracted energetically in anyway --fake love. But if you feel relaxed, expansive, triggerless, and open--then you've just had a moment of enlightenment. Now What? Apply these Steps in Real Life  The game from here on out is to continue more instances of embracing fears as they come up. As you get more fascicle and powerful in building up your muscles, you'll likely be able to handle larger fears. This simply means fears may never go away--they simply have less charge, less grip as you continue building your ability to embrace fear. Journal your progress. Make a note each time fear comes up. Run through this sequence of being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing, accepting, connecting, thinking, and embracing the fear. In the beginning, it will take effort, and once you practice this, it can get easier and faster. Know that your fears will just get bigger, so the game is to have big enough fears worth having. When fear is a word like "the," and you have the power to choose how you'll be with fear or not--that's the point of this conversation. Many times, you may choose to react to the fear with more fear. That's ok. Give yourself grace and space to continue making mistakes and practice. The act of giving yourself grace IS doing this entire sequence in a moment. It doesn't have to be hard. It's not a linear path. It's simply bringing an awareness instantly into the moment. What's Possible: The Future is In Your Hands Right now, we face unprecedented times. While you make a tune out that overused word, it's accurate and worth tuning back in.
Consider these times are an opportunity, a spiritual test of radical, unconditional love. By being willing to face feeling the fear, allowing and accepting fear, connecting to and thanking the fear, and embracing the fear is essentially practicing unconditional love. Embodying unconditional love requires a life of mastery, and it can be easy, instantaneous, in a moment. Making peace with yourself and others begins with you. From there, you can take the next step of interacting with others where fear may come up and practicing the same sequence. Imagine a world where instead of fighting fear, resisting fear, ignoring, or running away from fear--we look forward to uncomfortable conversations. We know it's the only way to truly unite as humanity on this planet, making war a notion of the past as we create a more peaceful society. It all starts with you. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. *** If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.  Humanity is at a tipping point in the transition from the digital information age to the transformation impact age. Are you feeling trapped in the rat race at work or the hustle and grind of business? Do you feel like a machine trying to work harder and smarter yet still exhausted? Consider what worked two years ago, let alone last year, is now becoming obsolete. How do you navigate the noise, the chaos, of the day-to-day? Defining Chaos Chaos has many forms. On a personal level, chaos might look like dealing with separation from loved ones, an unexpected diagnosis, or a sudden job loss. On a day to day level, chaos might look like trying to get on zoom to present while your child suddenly throws a temper tantrum or is joyfully making loud bizarre noises. Or texting 2 people at once while cooking a meal, listening to a podcast. Or scrolling through your social media feeds, being triggered by the news, reactions, or comments. Chaos can also be internal. Chronic headaches or body pain, feeling underlying anxiety, or the mind that never shuts up right before bed. Sometimes the chaos can be good things in life. Like the growth in your business you can't keep up with, so many passion projects you're overcommitted to, or being addicted to achievement fulfilling vision board after vision board, yet still missing peace of mind. What if you could create moments of peace in your day to day chaos?  I became obsessed with this question, pouring over every and peace training, becoming a taekwondo student, yoga instructor, Energy Master, and business coach helping high achieving conscious entrepreneurs and business leaders in burnout focus their energy as they grow their business. I've gleaned and distilled down all these energy practices into a few I want to share with you to easily access peace in your chaos. You'll get to practice and experience these interactive exercises, directly together, right there in your chair. Before doing so, first, you have to accept the chaos.  What is your relationship to chaos? Are you someone who:
Accepting chaos means surrendering the illusion of control--that life has always been uncertain and always will be. Once you accept the chaos, you can allow the chaos. This looks like facing fears, pain, or other unwanted emotions like anger, loneliness, disappointment, or embarrassment. When you don't face your fears, there's an impact to your body. Suppressed or overly active emotions can impact your organs' ability to function. For example, if you get angry, it floods your body with stress hormones, increases your blood pressure, which makes your liver work harder to filter higher volumes of blood. Practice One: Allowing the chaos  Now, let's directly practice allowing chaos by facing unwanted emotions or physical pain using a method introduced to me by a Mind-Body Coach Uma Sangvhi, and former Stanford neuroscience researcher. Ready? I invite you to close your eyes, scan your body from your head to your toes. 1. Where do you notice tension, pain, or unwanted emotions? 2. Ask yourself, where is that pain located? What color? What shape? What texture? What movement? 3. Now go to another part of your body that feels good or neutral, or you can imagine one of your happiest memories. How does it feel? Warm, tingly? 4. Saturate every cell in your body with that energy of that feeling. 5. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, what color is the pain? What shape? What texture? What movement? 6. Repeat this exercise going between what feels good in your body and letting that feeling wash through your body and noticing your fear or pain observing it's shape, texture, and movement. Now you can open your eyes... When I do this exercise with clients, many people often experience shifting the shape or color, sometimes disappearing it all together. Some are even able to transmute the painful body sensation or unwanted emotion into a healing energy. The result of getting rid of that energy is less important than you being able to practice observing or watching your fears rather than react to them. Don't focus on the result. Focus on simply being with what is. Practice Two: Moving Meditations  Now that you've accepted the chaos allowed the chaos, now you can move through the chaos. The moving meditations are based on the work of Ilchi Lee. He met with the UN Ambassador of El Salvador, a small Central American nation plagued by civil war, poverty, and gang violence. Ilchi Lee took that training into schools, training teachers to share these moving meditations with their students. There was such success in kids creating peace in extremely chaotic situations--it spread to other schools that seven years later, one four four schools from El Salvador's entire education system uses these moving meditations. Inspired, I created a local scholarship fund through our local Kitsap Community Foundation, providing this training to teachers to lead these one-minute meditations in class with students. Imagine our next generation of leaders learning to access peace in any chaos--transforming communities one school at a time! Let's experience a couple of these one-minute moving meditations now. One Minute ExercisesTake out both hands as fists, knuckles facing out. Take out your thumb pointing outside on the one hand. And pinky, on the other hand. Now switch. Your brain's right and left lobes are integrating, relaxing your brain, helping you focus. This is a favorite for kids before taking tests and can be used anytime you face chaos. Now, we're going to exercise our intestines! Place both thumbs on your belly button, palms flat on your belly, just resting. Then suck your belly button towards your spine like a sit-up crunch. Breathe normally. This exercise is called intestine exercises because it's literally exercising your intestinal organ. We often exercise our muscles, how often do we exercise our organs? *Your gut is called your second brain because it operates independently from your brain and spinal cord, containing 3-5x more neurons than in your brain. Over 90% of the serotonin, often dubbed the "happiness hormone," is created in your gut while only 3% is produced in your brain. The water up fire down principle is about creating a balanced energy circulation. Often we have hot heads from thinking a lot (fire energy) while our guts are stiff and cold (water energy). By bringing "the fire" energy in your head down to your core and bringing cool "water-energy" up to have a calm, cool head-this allows for proper energy flow and circulation that can support your immune system as you raise your internal temperature by 1 degree. You can do this in a check out line, driving, or sitting at your desk anytime. Can you feel the heat? Great work--now you can rest. Moving Meditations throughout your day brings your awareness from outside yourself into your body to generate peace in the chaos. Now that you've accepted allowed, moved, your body is now primed to receive and listen within. Listen Within  Listening within your body's wisdom requires being aware of and feeling energy. Energy comes in the form of light, sound, and vibration. Energy comprises the building blocks of all matter, from the stars to the oceans and mountains, to your body, to microscopic atoms invisible to the naked eye. Energy includes your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Now let's experience how energy feels. Shake your hands like you're screwing a light bulb in. Great! Now clap 10x. Rub your hands together to create friction and heat. Now slap your hands up and down like this. Pause and feel the sensation of your hands. Do you feel a tingly sensation or heat or magnetic sense? That's energy. Imagine a big bright energy ball between your hands. Focus your awareness on the space between your hands. Where your mind goes, energy flows. Don't forget to breathe. As you inhale [breathe in] expand your energy ball bigger, as you exhale, contract the ball imagine the ball growing brighter. Inhale...and exhale….take a last big inhale...and on the exhale Bring the energy ball into your heart. Imagine and feel that energy permeating to the rest of your body. Now ask your heart: What is my message today? Listen within. Whatever message you get is perfect. You can now open your eyes. And you can let that message ground you for your day in any chaos. You can give that energy ball anywhere -your brain, core, or to someone else. You can ask yourself, "What's my message for today" to not just your heart; you can ask any organ, or pain, and listen within to generate peace anytime in any chaos. In conclusion So far you've accepted the chaos, allowed it, moved with it, which has set the foundation to be able to more easily listen within and generate peace -accessing an abundant, limitless source of peace no matter what chaos hits. If you forget all those principles, just smile--that's the shortcut to generate peace! [There's lots of science behind the benefits of smiling.]  A colleague of mine is a Neurologist Physician working in the ICU, who is often present at the time of passing for patients in his line of work. When asked…" What have you learned during this time?" he said, "Well, there are good deaths and bad deaths . . . Bad deaths are when a family refuses to speak to each other and burdens the staff with having to communicate separately with 3 family members for updates. At the time of passing, the family misses the final moments of their loved one's life. On the other hand, good deaths are when the final moment is approaching; I'm holding up the phone on speaker with the patient and their loved one on the phone. The family often says the same kinds of final words, "I love you. Don't worry; we've taken care of that thing for you. You know- that one thing you always wanted me to do? I did it. Thank you, I love you. At the time of passing, there's so much love, so the entire staff feels it. And it ripples out to the rest of the whole hospital. At that moment of death, there is so much peace." Death is likely one of the biggest types of chaos a human will face. If you were to create peace in the chaos of death, who would you be right now? As humans, before our precious time on planet earth passes, each moment, you have an opportunity to shine your light as bright as possible, unleashing your brilliance. Our chaotic world could use some more peace. You've now experienced choosing to generate peace in any chaos. When you choose to become a source of peace for our world, world peace is possible. What will you choose? Watch the full TEDxSIL talk HERE on Finding Peace in Times of Chaos and let me know in the YouTube comments what opens up for you. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com.*** If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation. Resource: *Microbes Help Produce Serotonin in Gut, April 09, 2015, <https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/microbes-help-produce-serotonin-gut-46495#:~:text=Although%20serotonin%20is%20well%20known,made%20in%20the%20digestive%20tract.> Today is the US election day. Regardless of the outcome, will you be like this or this?
What future will you create?What a perfect opportunity to practice being bright and choosing light over being anxious. It's easy to be bright when all is well in the world. But how do you be bright when you feel stressed or weighed down by what's happening in the world? One way is simply to not watch the news. Turn all devices off. Go be with your family, spend time in nature, or meditate alone. However, shutting things out entirely may not address an essential skill to learn given humans, well, must interact with other humans one way or another. It misses the opportunity to build up your ability or muscle to be with the hard things in life powerfully--to surf in the tsunami of life. What if you could be your greatest hero and face the fear head-on?  And yes, even love the fear? Often, our fear comes in the form of a friend or loved one with opposing views or beliefs. While one method is simply to avoid triggering or taboo conversations to maintain the peace, what if you could use it as an opportunity? What a superpower that could be! Consider that 1) every human share the experience of being human 2) we all live on our precious planet earth, and 3) we live in a world with many diverse beliefs and behaviors--allowing, facing, and embracing fear is an essential skill in today's world. How else will we learn? Here's a simple exercise to help you stay grounded when anxious, stressed, or fearful of another with seemingly opposing values. Staying Grounded when Stressed or Fearful  1. Move your body. Do a soul-nourishing movement of your body, yoga, or workout to clear out and purify any stagnant or toxic energy that might be stuck inside. 2. Close your eyes and get into a sitting posture. Take a few deep breaths in and out. 3. Now imagine a bright sun above you pouring down energy and light on you, filling up your whole body. 4. When you charged up energetically, notice who comes up in your imagination. If they are someone that triggers you, picture that person or thing you "hate" you "can't stand" in front of you neutrally. 5. Now smile and breathe allowing them there. This is the first step of allowing and accepting the fear the way it is and the way it's not. **IF YOU MAKE IT THIS FAR THAT'S GREAT!!** If you feel you have more energy to give continue on; otherwise, rest and begin again the next day to continue building that muscle. 6. Imagine or feel energy pouring into them and send them love and light. Notice how your body, heart, and/or mind feels. Often they will open up and you will feel lighter. Bonus: Once you've mastered this exercise by doing it at least 5x without getting more upset by the end, you can actually attempt to have a loving dialogue with someone of the opposing view. Or not--it's most important to work with your own fears first.  If you do choose to have an actual dialogue, I'm not going to lie--it can be highly triggering having done it many times myself for the character development of unconditional love.
However, for me, once I energetically recovered from the initial conversations...I was proud and had more courage to start another conversation. I'm always surprised in the end, how we actually share a lot more in common than I realized. When they don't become "the other" and dehumanized, I become the fear itself. When I'm able to dismantle the fear, I'm left in a deeper inquiry of what really matters in life and where will I focus? What will you choose today? And every moment? To be in fear and contracted or in love and expanded? Your body won't lie. Just put your hands on your belly or chest, and despite what your mind may be rattling off, if you have deep breaths--you are grounded. Now is the time to practice this skill of allowing and accepting fear--to embrace the fear. Regardless of what happens in the world, you'll be equipped with an essential 21st Century skill, unconditional love. THAT is a superpower worth cultivating for years to come! *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six-figure earning, overachieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation.  Business leaders have many challenges right now, including dealing with uncertainty, keeping and growing their businesses, keeping up with sales, and retaining jobs. The global pandemic pushed many companies to their limits and inevitably changed business dynamics--creating much disruption in our personal and business lives. The continued safety measures made remote working and remote learning the new normal. But now more than ever, we have so much uncertainty and stress to deal with. Parents are trying to raise and homeschool their children while working a full-time job and taking care of their households. I am not an exception---I have a nine years old, and we started school in the last couple of weeks. That’s how I found so many parallels between being a homeschool parent and teacher while running a full-time business. Here are the three critical assets that I think any business leaders should adapt:
1) Being Agile Agility means being flexible and adaptable. In the beginning of any new role in your business or personal life, you might not know what to do. The same applies to the pandemic. Once it started, no one knew what to do! This leveled the playing field whether you were a multi-million dollar business, a startup, or anything in between. On top of that, with constantly changing variables, you cannot make assumptions when planning ahead. As frustrating as that may be, that’s where you have an opportunity to transform by approaching your business with a beginner’s mind. You are free to innovate rather than cling to past based approaches that no longer work in today’s business environment. Consider the economic impact of the pandemic has already been made. It’s not that it’s coming, the impact is simply unfolding from what’s already happened. In other words, the next billion dollar companies have already taken off in this climate. We can accept the current reality and catch up or hope the past ways of doing business can return. You can focus your thinking with the attitude of "what can I create from here?" “What is the opportunity I can take advantage of in this current reality and where we are now headed?” Let's take homeschool as an example. Our son was in public school, then he went to private, and now he’s homeschooling. When the pandemic hit, we were forced to homeschool, requiring us to be constantly agile with the changing circumstances. With both of us remote working at home, there were times we all three needed to be on zoom. To accommodate sound barriers, at one point my husband in the bathroom for a conference call or on the balcony outside. We became agile with creating innovative working environments, by being flexible with our new schedules, creating new responsibilities in managing the house. Every few days, we’d reflect on what was working or not. We’d be flexible on changing the daily rhythm of our schedule, then adapt from there. We couldn’t plan too far in advance without having tested what worked and iterating from there. How do you stay agile while also planning ahead? The Importance of Planning In business, most of the clients I work with don't have quarterly plans or business plans. Actually, they don't have ANY plans. They are like, "let's see what will happen" attitude. But a plan is your guide, your direction, your map. It's a must-have for ANY business. If you don't know where you are going, then even the smallest obstacle can result in a major disaster for you and your business. Think of time as a spectrum. In the beginning, it is "let's see what sticks." The experimentation phase (that we all faced at the beginning of pandemics, within our businesses, our lives, and in homeschooling) has to happen. Then you start to see patterns settle. The variables begin to get smaller. With fewer variables, you can now start to plan further out. Still, your planning should be adapted to the new reality and should be different from what was done pre-pandemic. You have to choose to plan and commit to that plan in a very rough time-frame and then adapt from there. There is a constant battle of how much planning is too much, and you have to find that balance for yourself. The fastest way to find balance is by experimenting. Instead of sitting and thinking, “Is this too much?” “Is this too little?” --just do it! Just start planning, and as you go, you can correct your actions accordingly. Companies with an agile culture can more easily embrace and adapt to change, can turn uncertainty into opportunity, and grow while other businesses fail. At its core, being agile is all about expecting and managing change. Change is inevitable, and being agile is a method for flowing with change, rather than resisting it. 2. Unlearning The number two key asset that a business leader needs today is unlearning. In home schooling, there are many unspoken rules like no school on weekends, a 5-7 hour school day, sitting down and working on memorizing knowledge you may or may not use later on, and so on. The same thing applies to business. Unspoken norms are to work 40 hours a week, to sit down all day (if you have that type of business), work 8 hours in a row with just a lunch break, etc. You must unlearn these norms to create what actually works. Notice when you act from what you should do versus what is doing right for you. So, as far as unlearning, simply notice your patterns of thinking that restrict you. Now, is the perfect time in your business to see those patterns that limit you and release them. As an art student, I remember drawing a wall, and the art teacher asked us what colors the bricks were, and we all agreed the bricks were red. But the teacher disagreed. And he made us look through a whole, and we were shocked- the bricks were not red but purple. Astonishing! The color was in front of us, but we couldn't see the reality because of our pre-existing patterns and beliefs that we saw through. The same applies to our lives and business. By unlearning pre-conceived rules of the business, you’ll begin to see innovative ways to serve clients and create new services right in front of you. Simply notice the pattern of your preconceptions that limit you. Once you’re aware of the unwanted behavior, you can release it and operate in a different world. 3. Storytelling The third key asset business leaders need today is storytelling. Let me give you an example. For homeschooling, if I tell my son: "Do your homework!” or “Come here, and finish this lesson now!” is he inspired to take the action? Unlikely! But if I start reading a story about the lesson, he naturally stops what he’s doing and listens attentively. Research shows that messages delivered as stories can be up to 22 times more memorable than just facts. Why is that? Consider storytelling engages all of our five senses. Stories help the brain relax as you are whisked away into another world. Stories are easy to digest and remember when sharing other people. This increases customer referrals. Stories create more memorable marketing messages. It evokes not just the prefrontal cortex of the brain, but the limbic system or “feeling brain.” In ConclusionSo, to sum up, the three key assets that every business needs today are:
1) Being agile. Plan with flexibility and adaptability. 2) Unlearning. Pay attention to your patterns that impede your growth 3) Storytelling. Evoke all 5 senses to create a memorable experience people can share. By utilizing these three critical assets for today’s business leader, you’ll better manage the tsunami of chaos by learning to surf the wave. You’ll unleash your brilliance to help others unleash theirs. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. If you are on a path of making a better version of yourself, you can also read other blog posts that I have published HERE. Or you can contact me, and I will be glad to talk to you and discuss how we can improve your situation. Resources: https://www.quantifiedcommunications.com/blog/storytelling-22-times-more-memorable While the world may pull you in many directions and introduce distractions, how can you cut through the noise to stay focused on taking action on what truly matters for you?
Forget time management. It's about managing your energy — not your time. How do you master your energy? Here's a simple exercise to get started: 1. First, get clear on the current reality of your energy patterns. Download a free app like Toggl where you can track activities offline from one activity to the next. At the end of each activity, your job is simply to record whatever activity you were doing. Be neutral and notice if you are judging yourself. Another free app is RescueTime. Once set up, RescueTime will track all the places you visit online in the course of your day. In my experience, the combo of Toggle and Rescuetime gives you the most accurate snapshot of the activities you’re investing your energy into. It can take one or two days to get used to tracking each activity. Initially, you may find it too hard to enter each activity as you do it. Just try experimenting and see if you can get into a rhythm where, at the end of each activity, you click stop activity and start again — this forces you to then determine what you’ll now be focusing on. If you can persevere through the learning curve that comes with activity tracking, it’s worth the insight gained. If you have any resistance to tracking using the apps, you can always journal your main activities throughout the day or use a Microsoft Excel sheet to track every thirty minutes with a timer. While manual tracking tends to not be as accurate to reality, any method will do as long as it fulfills the purpose of the exercise to track your activities for a set number of days. Many of my clients expressed how, in just a few days of tracking their activities, they are more present and able to stay focused in their business and in life. See if you can do it for seven days in a row. I think you'll be surprised even after two to three days of tracking what you’ll discover. 2. Next, reflect on your energy patterns. What activities drained you? Which activities energized you? Put a minus sign by activities that were draining and a plus sign by activities that gave you more energy. Notice if there are any other patterns for your sleep, eating or exercise habits. Sleep is often an area clients struggle with. They can’t sleep deeply, get enough sleep or be consistent with bedtime. Here are some bedtime exercises I recommend by author and mind-body training expert Ilchi Lee that help quiet an overworked brain: Rollbacks: Sitting down, pull your knees into your chest and roll backward and back up. Focus on massaging your spinal cord. Make sure you have a carpet or mat to cushion your back and be gentle on your neck. Do 10-20 repetitions to warm up your body. Toe-Tapping: Next, lie down on your back with your legs down and arms by your sides, palms up. Bring your heels together and tap your toes, rotating your entire thigh and leg as you touch your big toes. You’ll generate lots of heat in your legs, bringing all the distracting thoughts in your brain down to your core and legs. Sleeping Tiger: On your back, raise your legs in the air, making a 90-degree angle with your knees and flex your feet toward you. Lift your arms in front of you, flexing your wrists, so your palms face the sky. Picture the soles of your feet and palms of your hands like an energy antenna, feeling around for energy until you can find a relaxing place. With each breath, imagine breathing through the soles of your feet and palms of your hand, accumulating hot energy into your core. Hold still in this position for one to two minutes at first, focusing on slowly inhaling and exhaling like a balloon. Eventually, you can gradually build up to holding this position for 10 or even 20 minutes. All of these exercises are like taking an energy shower at the end of the day, clearing your brain of all its thoughts and to-do’s, relaxing the mind and integrating your brain with your body before bed. 3. Write down any learnings, awakenings and observations in your journal. You’ll naturally discover insights into how easily distractible you are, how much of your day is dictated by your environment or how you have very little rest built into your day. You take it to another level when you capture what you’ve learned on paper. This helps your brain solidify what is being learned by having to articulate your thoughts, then integrate that thought with writing on a page. Now you’re meaningfully connecting your mind and body. From your learnings, choose at least one new energy habit to experiment with, such as going to bed earlier, creating a grounding morning ritual or moving your body for one minute each time you get up to go to the bathroom. Then, track your new energy habit. Utilize a bullet journal method of drawing shapes and coloring them in when habits are completed. Or simply write the habit out on a piece of paper, put the days of the week across the top, and mark an "x" for each day you complete the habit. Business leaders manage what they measure and measure what matters. When you take the time to build new energy habits, you can more effectively manage your energy day to day. Focusing solely on productivity and efficiency at all costs is not as relevant in today’s times, as it fails to integrate the whole human. When you manage your energy — instead of time — you start treating yourself as a whole human being. You become more conscious, more present and focused on a more fulfilling journey. This article was originally published in Forbes.com *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. What if you could find peace in any chaos?
Day to day, you might deal with many triggers to your survival brain, unleashing a host of emotions, thoughts and body sensations each minute that can feel chaotic or out of control. What does chaos look like to you? Is it getting stressed scrolling through social media streams on conflict-ridden current events? Getting constantly interrupted by your kids on a video call while sharing space with your partner who is also working from home? Or trying to make many decisions in the face of the unknown? Chaos often shows up internally. Maybe it’s a dull, throbbing headache, stiff neck or tight back. Or maybe it’s your constantly running mind that never shuts up, analyzing what happened or what needs to get done the next day right before bedtime. It may be impractical to take time off for a 10-day silent retreat or meditate for an hour, let alone 15 minutes. Here are three quick, simple ways to find peace in chaos in any moment: Moving Meditations We often focus on exercising our muscles, but what about our organs? With your legs shoulder-width apart, gently use your fists to tap two inches below your belly button, and imagine the vibration going into your core or “gut.” This is a major energy center in your body where life is birthed, and it is also known by some as the second chakra. Close your eyes, and relax your mind. Focus your awareness where the vibration is on your energy center. Where your mind goes, energy flows. Energy travels as light, sound or vibration. This exercise utilizes vibration to help bring your awareness back into your body’s core and center. After 100 or so taps with your fist, now suck your belly button in to your spine, similar to a crunch standing or sitting up. Keep pumping. This is called intestinal exercise. Now that you’ve used vibration through tapping, you’ve brought your brain’s scattered energy from outside yourself back into your body, drawing downward to your gut. Intestinal exercise helps you keep your focus centered on the gut and heat up your core. Typically, we have hot heads and cold guts. By reversing this improper circulation using the “water up, fire down” principle, you can bring the “fire” in your head down to heat up your core, and bring the cold gut energy back up to your head for a calm, cool mind. By exercising your intestines, you're pumping fresh oxygen, increasing blood flow, better absorbing nutrients and processing undigested waste to achieve the proper “water up, fire down” circulation. You’ll know you have proper energy circulation if you heat up, sweat or form saliva in your mouth. Master Your Emotions Other exercises can really allow you to master your emotions by embracing the “bad” or unwanted emotions like anger, sadness or jealousy. This practice takes five minutes or less and keeps your focus on observing the emotion rather than becoming or identifying as the emotion itself. There are many exercises, but here’s a sample of one exercise that has proven very powerful with my business leader clients. Close your eyes. Scan your body from your head to your toes. Where do you notice tension, pain or unwanted emotions? Ask yourself, “What color is the pain or unwanted emotion? What shape? What texture? What movement?” Now imagine one of your happiest memories. Who’s around you? Where are you? What songs and smells surround you? How does it feel? Saturate every cell in your body with the energy of that happy memory. Now go back to the pain. Ask yourself, “What color is the pain now? What shape? What texture? What movement?” My clients who practice this are able to shift their unwanted feeling’s shape, color, movement — sometimes disappearing the unwanted emotion altogether. The more you master your emotions, the quicker you’ll be able to develop your emotional resilience as a leader. Listen Within The final exercise to access peace in chaos is listening within. Simply close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and ask your heart, “What’s my message for today?” Continue asking and listening. Often, the response is simple in just a few words. You can not only talk to your heart, but any organ, or area of pain, as well. By tapping into your own inner wisdom to listen within, you’ll get very aligned answers to decisions you need to make without having to question or regret the decision. The more you practice, the easier your body and heart can communicate clearer messages, and the more power you’ll have to simply notice your thoughts, feelings and body sensations passing through, rather than getting lost in them. Mastery Requires Practice Before you can experience peace, it’s critical to bring your awareness from outside yourself into your body. Then bring that energy down from your head into your core. You've now aligned your body, heart, mind and soul in just a few minutes. By focusing inward, you’ll build your inner guidance system more strongly to guide you through uncertainty. You'll be the calm in the eye of the storm, no matter how chaotic it gets inside or out. You can choose the most aligned response each moment. When you have the courage to practice these moments of peace of moving meditations, mastering your emotions and listening within, you will not only find peace amid chaos; you will become a source of peace in the chaos of our world. By embodying peace in any chaos, you can access an abundant, infinite supply of energy to serve your team, your customers, your stakeholders and, most importantly, yourself. This article was originally published on Forbes.com here. *** Anna S. Choi helps growing, six figure earning, over achieving, conscious business leaders--who are exhausted meeting the demands of their day--prevent burnout as they scale their impact. They want to build habits for staying happy, energized, and focused to perform at their optimum given the demands, complexities, and uncontrollable environments that suck up their energy. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com. Does vacation ever feel like more work — where you need a vacation from the vacation?
Many of my clients share how what vacation provides is more about the experience vacation represents: being relaxed, peaceful and free of pending deadlines, mounting pressures, expectations or responsibilities. In other words, time freedom: the ability to do whatever you feel like doing, whenever you want, with no consequences. Here are three time-tested ways you can create time freedom every day. 1. Create a morning ritual. What’s the one thing that nourishes your soul each day? Consider that the first half hour when you wake up is the most critical time to train your brain toward nourishing habits in that half-conscious state where your brain is transitioning from theta to alpha waves. Pick a moving meditation or mindful exercise that will purify all the stress, toxins and tension from the inside out. Start with just a seven-day challenge to do that one thing each day, track your progress and write down what you notice and observe in your body as a result. Avoid picking something you want to fix about yourself or that you "should" do. If you find value at the end of seven days, I recommend continuing your journey to 14 or 21 days, whichever is more motivating. If you found no difference after seven days, pick another one thing that nourishes your soul each morning. After 21 days, you can take a break and pick one new thing that nourishes your soul — or continue to 49 days, then up to 100 days. Know that if you skip a day, you start over. No judgment, no attachment. Just start over. You must do it consecutively to truly experience the change and be able to effectively evaluate whether or not to continue at the end of your challenge period. Doing so will allow you to stop reacting to your head chatter, judgments, doubts and other emotions. Instead, you'll cultivate experiencing calm during the chaos of the unknown and unpredictable. 2. Create a midday ritual. Lunchtime is a very easy, natural time for us to take a break to nourish ourselves. If possible, try to go outside in nature to experience being part of the greater whole. Being outside lets us connect with ourselves on a deeper level, allowing us to remember experientially that our problems are small compared to what the entire cosmos is up to. Here’s what I recommend as a guideline to create your most effective lunchtime ritual, one that will make a world of difference, even if your ritual is just 10 minutes long: • If possible, leave your phone at your desk so you won’t get interrupted by incoming calls or notifications. • Experience gratitude looking at your food. Reflect how the sun helped grow the plants, which then grew from the earth, which then got harvested from humans and packaged, shipped and delivered to your local grocery store so you could conveniently eat this meal right now in a short period of time. • Chew slowly (ideally 30 times), and mindfully pay attention to your five senses. • Enjoy breathing and being alive. • In short, do nothing. Just be. I’m continuously surprised by how 10 minutes of rejuvenation allows me to have relaxed concentration and experience time freedom for the rest of my day. 3. Create a bedtime ritual. Pick at least one thing you can do every night that has you going to bed with a smile or connected to your heart, or that can create a really good dream. Like the first 30 minutes of your day, the last 30 minutes are equally as crucial to programming your subconscious mind. This is your time to design your life intentionally rather than by default, watching the news, answering emails or getting work done. It’s no surprise business owners can’t shut their brains off right before bed or first thing in the morning. You are the one training your brain that way. Give yourself time to transition again from the beta wave state of your brain to lower levels to ensure your body can rest deeply and reset for the next day. Here are some ideas for bedtime rituals: • As a family, share “acknowledgments” for each other and yourselves. Have each family member take a turn. This practice does wonders for feeling connected and managing emotions. Be sure to also include in your acknowledgment ways of being. For example: “Son, I acknowledge you for being joyful and light, especially in the way you helped your friend stay positive at camp today.” • Read a soul-nourishing book. • Toe tap. This acts like an energy shower to cleanse your emotions and thoughts from the day. Simply lay on your back in bed and tap your toes together, with your pinky toes tapping the bed 100 to 500 times while taking deep breaths in and out like a balloon. Doing so allows you to shift all the hot energy accumulated in your brain down to your feet and legs from the oxygen flow and blood circulation — allowing your brain to drift into a more relaxed state. In Summary Creating a simple, rejuvenating ritual each morning, midday and night creates microcosms of time freedom, relaxation and peace. Ten mindful minutes three times a day will go far and have lasting effects on the quality of your day-to-day life. The key to growing your business starts with investing in your mind, body and spirit first. Intentionally creating the vacation experience of time freedom allows you to be in flow for your day, balancing your ego-based “I am my accomplishments” self with the self that simply is perfect the way it is. This article was originally published on Forbes.com As our global economy shifts from the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the age of digital information, to the Fifth Industrial Revolution, the age of transformational impact, you and your business must evolve your consciousness within to stay competitive and relevant in the marketplace.
I’ve noticed in my work with growth-minded, conscious entrepreneurs, however, that two major pitfalls become barriers to looking deeper within. You cannot find peace amid chaos until you avoid the pitfalls of “being busy.” Pitfall 1: The 'hustle and grind' way of life has become the norm. The hustle-and-grind culture can often be thought of as inevitable (or very hard to overcome) to be able to meet the demands of the customer, stay competitive and grow. But does it have to be? As a conscious business leader, you might know you need to work smarter instead of harder and longer. Yet are you in reality? If you’re like most, you might still find yourself running the endless “rat race” or the treadmill of long work hours, as a cog in our global economy, unable to escape. You might believe that growth must come at a cost to your health, family time, social life or something else. So you give up trying to “have it all” and accept sacrificing parts of your life, while continuing to struggle in some mythical work-life balance concept. Even vacations become stressful from having to catch up when you return. However, you always have a choice to opt out of the hustle-and-grind culture. Once you do, you must face yourself. You may be tempted to fall into old habits watching others around you “succeed,” and you must trust in yourself that it’s possible to have sustainable spiritual and financial growth by slowing down. Only after you embrace the chaos and messiness, have the courage to slow down and trust in the unknown can you start to practice finding peace amid chaos by simply being with your thoughts, emotions and body sensations. Pitfall 2: You’re unclear what being present means. When I ask clients “What does personal time look like?” they list off basic everyday activities like showering, exercise or maybe traveling to visit family. I often have to ask again, “Besides daily activities, imagine you’re not worried about anyone or anything else, and there are no deadlines or nothing to make happen. Then what would you love to do?” I get a blank stare. I continue pressing. “What nourishes your soul?” At this point, clients share some long-lost hobbies they never have time for. Then I get a mountain of reasons why they can’t justify doing those things they love. No staff, no time, having to serve clients or be out of business, etc. Are you creating time to be present in your life as opposed to being in many places at once, reacting to life’s many curveballs, always thinking about the next thing or worrying about what happened? What does being present feel like for you? What would you be doing or not doing? What body sensations or feelings come to mind? What if you put your own nourishment first on your to-do list? Then had a trusted advisor or colleague who can hold you accountable to making sure nourishing your soul is number one? Crisis As Opportunity There’s an opportunity when a crisis hits, whether it’s a global pandemic, losing your staff, the loss of a loved one or getting diagnosed with a disease. It wakes you up to what matters in life. It forces you to reach within and face your inner turmoil. Crisis is the perfect opportunity for transformative growth — to test yourself, face your fears and experience being calm in the storms around you. Crisis is the time to practice peace whether through morning rituals, moving meditations or mastering your mood. Until you go beyond knowing crisis is an opportunity as an intellectual concept to experiencing or feeling crisis as the one and only opportunity for transformative growth, no amount of meditation or doing more actions will make the difference. In Summary Don’t be like the boiling frog during uncertainty, where, slowly over time, you find yourself still constantly working, having no time to think about nourishing your soul. Working on top of a busy, distracted, exhausted soul now only deepens that habit post-crisis. The number one skill you need to master is managing your energy from the inside out to find peace amid chaos. It’s during a crisis that you can develop the courage to face the layers of emotions, previously ignored, now bubbling up. By learning to navigate your inner world effectively, you’ll strengthen your innate power of resilience, embodying being a peaceful leader amid the chaos. You’ll learn how to harness the power of being present in the now, trust yourself to navigate through uncertainty and experience being peaceful amid chaos. This article was originally published on Forbes.com here. Why I love working with conscious entrepreneurs is because they are willing to be uncomfortable, take risks, fail, find their voice, and innovate ways to impact their communities and beyond. As conscious entrepreneurs, you have an opportunity here to demonstrate real leadership in the face of the chaos. The last two weeks I've been deep diving into learning about the Black Lives Matter movement. Being silent in my business was not a message I was willing to convey. The entrepreneur traits of being willing to be uncomfortable, take risks, fail, and find their voice are what's needed to lead the way in supporting the Black Lives Matters Movement. Here are 4 entrepreneurial principles you can use to support #BlackLivesMatter: 1. Commit to taking a stand. What are you committed to? What's your why? How does engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement align with your values in your life and business? For me, my mission is to empower the next generation of leaders to cause a tipping point in humanity's consciousness. I cannot do that if such a large majority of humans in my country and neighborhoods are getting shot because the color of their skin. I also cannot do that if there are scared folks committing the acts of violence. A change of consciousness must first happen. I committed to showing support and taking a stand (literally!) by attending a peaceful protest (outdoors with masks staying 6 feet apart).  I was petrified to go out for many reasons: Would it be dangerous for my son? Would there be too many people not adhering to 6 feet apart? How would I be judged? Feeling the fear and going anyway, I came away empowered in unity with mostly white people showing support for black lives and native lives. It was moving, encouraging, and what had me find courage to continue engaging to the next step. 2. Listen to who you're serving. For me, this was understanding the world of African Americans sharing their stories of what it's like to be black in America. For others, it might be helping facilitate conversations with privileged people who feel shame and are stuck. Rather then get stuck in the echo chamber of my head of shame and guilt for not knowing, not having taken action earlier, or defending myself--I started learning and listening to those most impacted. I came across Cory Buckner, a black medic and former cop in Kentucky who had a viral post (166,000 shares!) and after looking him up was inspired by his wisdom when I white friend asked "What can we do about this?" and he simply responded, "Listen to listen, not listen to respond." Inspired by this simple yet powerful act to listen, I created this post Listening is our most powerful access to peace highlighting his voice. I researched how black people are dealing with this, reading news articles of a black man going behind the line of armed police giving out hugs. Or how when a white cop got separated out from this group, a group of black men protected him from the mob just because it was the right thing to do. This led me to want to engage more actively. 3. Implement the learning. I needed to orient where I was in the big picture of racism. So I took a white privilege checklist to find out (I'm Asian American yet often feel white growing up in all white communities). My husband is a white man and my son is mixed. I scored a 6/20 points, my husband 20/20 and my son 18/20. I then took an overall privilege test (covering race, gender, religious freedom, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation) which scored higher at 51/100, my husband at 87/100. This provided me a baseline to realize what privilege I do have that I can use to support the Black Lives Matters Movement. Now we are listening to these 3-5 minute poignant, moving stories by Amber Ruffin, Comedian, Actress, Writer and the first African American woman to write for the Seth Meyers late night show. So enlightening. Now our family watches them each night (after vetting out age appropriate stories for my son) and share learnings at the end. Learnings thus far *Being silent on the matter communicates "institutionalized racism is ok" and certain lives don't matter *I am overall privileged and can use that for good by simply listening to listen, not listening to respond *This is another historical moment in history distinct from the 1960's protests where what used to be ok and ignore no longer is ok or being ignored, and real change is actually happening as long as the momentum of what's happening (murders of black people for being black who often are innocent bystanders, in their own homes being treated as if they are thugs, etc.) 4. Go public sharing what you’ve learned. You have an opportunity to find your voice by sharing your learnings. After the peaceful protest, I felt good as a mother and as a community member. But then went through another roller coaster of emotions of whether to post about it. I asked permission to post the picture from my fellow conscious entrepreneurs who attended the protest, crafted the post, then clicked "publish." I conquered my fears that the post might be ridiculed, torn apart, or trolled and posted it anyway with love. The response was overwhelming in support. Feeling more confident, I then posted publicly on the privilege checklist findings (another moment of truth in being out there) knowing it could trigger folks. Instead, I conquered another fear head one resulting in the most delightful dialogue ensue thereafter on race that opened up many more hearts and minds. I've discovered my part in the black lives matter movement: to "listen just to listen, not listen to respond" and to foster real dialogue where all voices can be heard with love and respect. Summary As a conscious entrepreneur, you can integrate business principles to make a difference in the Black Lives Matter movement. Commit and take the leap. Do your research by listening and asking questions to the needs of those impacted, implement your learnings, then go public sharing what you’ve learned. I've been moved by fellow entrepreneurs the last two weeks who have been willing to take consistent action with their values around Black Lives Matters. I hope you will join me in standing publicly for your values, respecting those who believe otherwise, and continuing to demonstrate support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, we can elevate humanity's consciousness one conversation at a time. **** Anna S. Choi, Conscious Business Coach, empowers the next generation of global leaders to focus their energy and find peace in chaos. By age 25, Anna was able to triple her net income and gross six figures but was totally burned out. Now she helps business leaders grow in flow, igniting a Presence Movement to elevate humanity’s consciousness. If you're interested in gaining focus, clarity, accountability in a like-minded community, learn more at www.annasunchoi.com  In honor of Blackout Tuesday and Black Lives Matter, I took my 8 year old son to the protest in our small town of Poulsbo, population 10,000. We had over 1000 people turn out to support, it remained peaceful, and yes, everyone wore masks outside standing 6 feet apart.
Decided to go public and share our experience. Here's an excerpt of the Facebook post: Teaching my 8 year old son the lessons on race this week. He is mixed, so people won't question him as much not knowing what to ask. How Asians are a privileged minority race. How white privilege looks even though he's mixed. Like how he can get a bandaid that matches his skin. Or find a movie where the lead person looks like him versus a supporting role. Or not have to worry about representing a whole race by your individual actions. Or not have to overcome predetermined narratives (negative or positive) that come with your race when having a conversation. How it's hard for his dad who's a white male to even know what he doesn't know. That we are all doing our best. That if he were a little black boy, I'd have to give him a totally different upbringing to protect him from racism that he will likely never be forced to deal with. Like people clutching their bags or getting a feared look when you just walk down the street. I once was going to hire a black man who had an extraordinary commitment to building the social enterprise system that I met at a national conference, had won several grants and demonstrated major leadership in the community in the face of being formerly incarcerated (wrongfully and an over the top prison sentence). All he did was zen out in prison learning all he could to be a better person making the most of it. The day we were supposed to do a phone interview he texts to cancel. I call to find out that his cousin just got shot in his neighborhood. Under 30 years old. I said go be with your family...and it was then that I realized my privilege in not having to deal with major trauma all the time around you to get ahead in life. As my mexican friend said, "Imagine 2 pools to swim in. One is chlorinated, clean, and easy to swim in. The other is not just dirty, but filled with knives, junk, crap. Try swimming in that. That pool is the pool we didn't get a choice to swim in that every day we must swim in to thrive in life." Here's what I have done as a parent to educate my son.
So he has hope for what is also happening now in speaking out. So he stays informed and acts versus stay silent. So we both learn and listen to an unheard narrative functioning as one human race. #LessonsForPeace #BlackLivesMatter #BlackoutTuesday ***** Anna S. Choi, Conscious Business Coach, empowers the next generation of global leaders to focus their energy and find peace in chaos. By age 25, Anna was able to triple her net income and gross six figures but was totally burned out. Now she helps business leaders grow in flow, igniting a Presence Movement to elevate humanity’s consciousness. If you're interested in gaining focus, clarity, accountability in a like-minded community, learn more at www.annasunchoi.com  I was recently asked by Forbes to give feedback on several questions readers are asking as part of the Forbes Coach's Council.
While not all of these will be published, here are my thoughts on the most asked questions today. Q: What's the first step you recommend business leaders take when faced with a challenge they've never experienced before? Why is this key to tackling this new issue? A: Ground yourself first. First and foremost, breathe. By taking a deep breath in and out, you become more present to handle challenges coming your way rather than react to circumstances. The only way a leader will be able to effectively lead is when you embody presence, being like the eye of the storm, calm in the midst of chaos. Q: Indecision has no place in a successful business, so it's key for business leaders to hone their decision-making skills. What's one specific strategy leaders can use to enhance their decision-making skills, and why is it effective? Answer: Check with Your 3 Inner Advisors When faced with a decision, check with 3 inner advisors, your intuition or gut, logic, and fear. If you get a no from gut or logic, do not move forward. If you get a yes from your intuition, a yes from logic, and a loud no from fear, that means saying yes to that decision will be a hard transformation and in the right direction. That is where you'll develop your true long term trust in the unknown. Q: What is the key to keeping your branding tone-appropriate during a crisis? Answer: Stop selling, start servicing First, take care of your existing customers asking them what they need now. For new customers, market research what new problems they have today. Stop selling old solutions for today's times. Be sensitive to customer's being less willing to spend but offering lower level pricing or payment plans. Then offer a ton of value for free, providing resources, truly being of service during this crisis. Q: How would you advise business leaders to project calmness, bravery and empathy during a crisis? Answer: Self Care is Top Priority The only way you'll have an overflow of energy reserves to lead your calmly is if your nurture your well being first. This looks like double downing on your well-being practices such as a morning and evening rituals. Ensure the first thing you do each morning and lat thing before bed nourishes and purifies all the stress and toxins accumulated in your body like going into nature, breathing, etc. Q: In difficult times, how might you recommend businesses get creative about finding new revenue streams to diversify their cash flow? Answer: Ask the Market Interview, poll, market research existing customers and clients what are their challenges and don't assume without asking. Be high touch and call them directly versus mass emailing them. For the vast majority of businesses, do NOT try selling yesterday's problems and solutions for today--it won't apply. Be open to pivoting to a new offering aligned with where you're headed post crisis. Would love to hear from you on whether this made a difference for you! Please comment below. #inthistogether Stay tuned in for more inspiration and empowerment by connecting to our Community of Conscious Entrepreneurs private FB group where you can view more awesomeness under the Units section on the left side at a time most convenient for you. ****** Anna S. Choi, Conscious Business Coach, empowers the next generation of global business leaders to focus their energy, create more time freedom, and find peace amid chaos. She’s igniting a Presence Movement of quadruple bottom line based companies who care about people, planet, profit, and presence. As a broke art student with no money, connections, or experience, she built and sold her first business, InsideOut Investing, a socially responsible financial planning practice, tripling her net income and grossing six figures by age 25 but was burned out and looked for ways to grow with ease and flow. A decade later, Anna helps her clients unleash their business brilliance, by replenishing and refocusing their energy, scaling their community impact. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com  With the global pandemic shutting down schools, I suddenly found myself with an 8 year old trying to now home school and run my full time business, while dealing with the emotional disappointments of a cancelled vacation to show my son the Grand Canyon and visit Grandparents in Arizona, TEDx cancelling their live event to 6000 viewers for which I was selected (a dream come true), and cancelling an event I spent 2 months promoting and was projected to make income for the next few months. Not to mention, after spending a quarter honing down on various marketing strategies to focus, I decided to double down on live speaking engagements, hiring a coach for several thousands to train me on selling high ticket programs from the front of the stage--which, well, wasn't exactly going to happen now. Yes, I freaked out. Felt loss and disappointment. Wasn't clear how or whether to pivot because frankly, virtual webinars just aren't the same kind of impact as speaking to a room of real people.
On the flip side, my coaching business has always been 100% virtual, my remote team members were cool with lowering hours, going project by project for commissions, and I was able to cut down to a very lean overhead. As a mom having worked full time from home the last 6 years while traveling 9 weeks out of the year for business and personal adventures to Tibet, Nepal, and India--and now with a husband sharing "office space," I definitely honed my time and project management know how. I realized that I've weathered the 2008 recession in my first business as a financial advisor and coming out strong to sell my business for double it's worth gave me courage this too shall pass. The good news is we are all in this together. Without further ado. Here are 3 Ways to Be Happy Working Remote from Home to help you create more rhythm and flow at home, where you will learn how to utilize health, home environment, and home schooling to maximize your daily energetic flow while staying safe and healthy serving your clients and those you love. Please comment below with any take-aways or learnings. ****** Anna S. Choi, Conscious Business Coach, empowers the next generation of global business leaders to focus their energy, create more time freedom, and find peace amid chaos. She’s igniting a Presence Movement of quadruple bottom line based companies who care about people, planet, profit, and presence. As a broke art student with no money, connections, or experience, she built and sold her first business, InsideOut Investing, a socially responsible financial planning practice, tripling her net income and grossing six figures by age 25 but was burned out and looked for ways to grow with ease and flow. A decade later, Anna helps her clients unleash their business brilliance, by replenishing and refocusing their energy, scaling their community impact. Learn more at www.annasunchoi.com Consider life has always been uncertain, in constant transition, and constantly changing.
However, with the global pandemic, stock market crash, closed schools, banned travel, and cities or countries going into lock down mode with physical distancing, life's uncertainty is now in your face. It's difficult to go anywhere, do anything, or talk with someone without touching on this topic of how you're faring in these uncertain times. Institutions and systems from which humans have operated are no longer relevant as old models are breaking down and new models are already in motion to set the new norm for the next decade. Yet, now more than ever, is the perfect time to rise up and start to examine within yourself of what matters. Here are 3 steps to transform crisis into opportunity. 1. Assess How You are Dealing with Fear There are four ways human beings typically face fear. None of them are better or worse, just different variations of response. Typically we can relate to more than one response. In the last two weeks, which of the following responses did you experience? Fight: People who fight might be fighting reality by denying there's any problem, talking about how people are freaking out unnecessarily, and maybe even making it known that this is all temporary. You might fight the facts by turning off the news, or not bothering to research the numbers and data, and just call all of it fear mongering without preparing for the long term future. The other way to fight is literally on the ground, providing relief and aid to hospitals, school lunches, doing food drop offs and more. You are exhausted by the end of the day but keep fighting through it, living in the short term telling yourself, I'll make it. I can survive this. Flight: You take all the news to heart, paying heed, and reacting to the situation by running away, overstocking on supplies or masks just in case, with your attention mostly on you and your family needs, feeling panic, and maybe even getting sick from the stress. You prepare and are upset with anyone who doesn't prepare the way you have. When you talk with others, you might even spread the fear emotionally. But you can't help it, you're in panic mode. Freeze: You are stunned by what's happening and continue to watch and observe taking no new action. You simply wait it out trying to survive the situation. You suffer silently and are not in communication. You don't seek answers, new actions, and simply watch everything around you. This too shall pass, expecting things to go their normal way hopefully in a few weeks. Flow: You feel afraid and face it by realizing the magnitude of impact of what's happening and immediately start preparing life for the short and long term. Yes, you're human and still have emotions to manage from others around you and within, and you keep allowing fear to be without trying to deny, fix, or indulge in it. Your are clear this is the opportunity of a lifetime to leverage as a leader who will stay calm in the eye of the storm and take actions now for both the short and long term. Now, honestly assess yourself in the last two weeks. Did you fight, flight, freeze, or flow? Perhaps a mixture of all of them or some of them. Ask yourself is that the response you want? Be sure to acknowledge and have compassion for yourself and your response. This will help bring your consciousness or self-awareness up a notch. If not, what kind of response do you want and what are new actions you can take to align with that response? 2. Take new action. While no one has a crystal ball, the data from World Health Organization is pointing to that this new normal will last for another 4 months optimistically if not 18 months to 2 years realistically. Don't bury your head in the sand. Some possible actions as a business owner or entrepreneur might include:
3. Embody certainty through magnifying your presence offline first, then online. People follow confidence and flow towards certainty. Now is your time to shine. Yes, you'll need to quickly determine what you are now offering, package, price, and market those offerings. More importantly, you'll need to create your daily practices to stay grounded and embody the confidence of your new direction. By focusing first on your day to day energy management and double downing on your own well-being, this will be the natural fuel for you to shine from the inside out to develop strength and courage for reframing your business to then sell online. Here are a few ways to ground yourself day to day while physical distancing:
Now is Your Time If you picture fear and uncertainty like a huge tsunami wave, instead of fighting, running away, or freezing--what if you could surf the wave? What would that look like? What would be required of you to become to ride the wave? This requires FACING the fear and utilizing that energy to flow above the noise and ultimately turn this time into the biggest opportunity where you look back and think, "Wow, that was worth my time." Inquiring into and meditating on that question is a healthy way to channel all the energy arising from uncertainty, that can unlock your brain's creative potential. You have a choice. Crisis is merely accelerating the next 6 weeks as a hyper window of opportunity. What might normally take years to dismantle as far as old institutional models are suddenly broken overnight as new models for business, schools, home life are now emerging creating the next billion dollar industries of our time. While you cannot control your environment or what's outside of you, you can focus on creating certainty in yourself through facing your fear, choosing to flow, taking new actions, and embodiment by being present and grounded. This will create resiliency and trust in yourself to adapt to a life that was always uncertain and unknown. Every time you make that choice, you become the leader this world needs now more than ever. What makes this crisis an opportunity is how many chances you get to keep choosing to face the fear collectively and within--and instead, embody your values in co-creating a new future and a new decade on our planet earth. Immunity is a hot topic now! Whether it's because of the flu season, allergies, or global epidemics, the strength of your immune system has become the focus for many. Here are 4 ways to boost your immunity and enhance its power: 1. Smile. Did you know in one study, one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as receiving $25,000 in cash or eating 16,000 bars of chocolate? See the Hidden Power of Smiling TED talk here. 2. Supercharge: Do Sleeping Tiger or Intestinals exercise (start at 9:40 min). In preparation for allergies and during this global epidemic, I'm doing Sleeping Tiger 20 minutes every day to supercharge and accumulate core energy, which raises my body temperature by 1 degree boosting white blood cell counts, circulating blood and oxygen more effectively to clear toxins out as well as 1000 intestinals. I recommend you just start doing 100. 3. Embrace Stress. Stop trying to get to a state of low stress. Instead, find your rhythm when it comes to stress. Short-term stress can actually strengthen your immune system if you give yourself time to rest and relax! Then you can recharge your energy and get ready for tomorrow's challenges. 4. Be Selfish. Own your needs and desires, but don't let them rule you. By being a little selfish with what you need, you can develop ownership over your desires. Then, at critical moments, you won't be overwhelmed by them. Watch the video below to learn how to be selfish, and help boost your immunity by feeding your brain healthy news. I'd love to hear how focusing your energy and cultivating your energy management will help you stay happier, healthier, and stronger. Please feel free to comment below! As the purpose- and profit-driven business model becomes mainstream, your conscious business will need to focus on being more present as a measure for profitability. Why? In the last two years alone, sustainable, responsible and impact investing has become more mainstream where 26% or one out of every four dollars under professional management is now invested in SRI. The trend of SRI investing has also exponentially increased since 2012.
From a small business and conscious entrepreneur coach who once worked on Wall Street as an SRI advisor, here's another piece of data to consider: In 2016, Morningstar, a company measuring a mutual fund's risk-adjusted return, started integrating sustainability ratings based on a company's ESG (environmental, social and governance) measures, alongside the traditional, profit-only performance indicators. Considering performance indicators that go beyond the bottom line is not a passing trend; it's simply how business is now being done. CEOs of nearly 200 companies recently shared a business roundtable statement saying that shareholder value is no longer their main objective. While their public commitment is commendable, and potentially a game-changer, continuing to track and measure the quadruple bottom line of people, planet, profit and presence will be critical in determining the future of business performance and success. There have been several measures for the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit; however, in my experience, focusing just on those three bottom lines is unsustainable and can result in just a bunch of burned-out do-gooders. It's critical to integrate a fourth bottom line of business: presence. By integrating the fourth "P" of presence, your business has a shot at building an economy that lasts versus going bankrupt. How can you measure presence? First, ask yourself what presence means to you, both in your life and your business. Is it about well-being, being more self-aware, less toxicity and gossip or creating happier energy? Once you've answered that, you'll have an easier time measuring success. Three Ways You Can Measure Presence 1. Number of breaths per minute With my clients, we measure presence by the number of breaths per minute. Just the exercise itself allows people to slow down, be in their body and pay attention to their breath, like a mini-meditation break. If after the one minute, there are still too many breaths being taken, that indicates a level of stress that won't be as productive as energy that is more grounded. 2. Number of days offline, not working or on vacation Like the seasons, you cannot expect a business to always be in spring and summer mode. It needs time to transition like fall and hibernate and reflect like winter. Despite knowing this intellectually, too many businesses try to outsmart nature through systems that never sleep. What you miss in the time off, is the ability to gain perspective on whether what you are doing is working or even relevant anymore, the ability to synthesize everything so far and more. 3. Scoring your energy state You can take a free energy state quiz to get a baseline for how you are doing if you measure energy by health, happiness and peace of mind that corresponds to energy centers in your gut, heart and mind. This assessment will show you where you need to improve and what you are doing well at that you should maintain. Measuring your breath, time off and energy state are just a few ways to measure presence. Depending on your definition of presence, there are other measures to experiment with as well — especially in the domain of happiness. Happiness Resources Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index includes a wholistic measure beyond subjective happiness that includes many facets of general well-being such as health, education and living standards. Inspired by Bhutan, the Happiness Alliance is a nonprofit that has created a Happiness Index that incorporates western values on a basis of 13 domains from work, time balance and social support to the environment, government and education. The website shares an annual Happiness Impact Report, along with many free resources to utilize in creating measures for your business. No matter how you choose to measure presence in your business, the first step is to start with you. Pick a measure to practice over a set period of time, observe and note the differences, then continue with the same measure for deeper practice or choose a new measure. Committing to measuring presence will have far-reaching benefits beyond your profit, helping you connect with others and our planet and thereby creating a new normal, resilient global economy. This article was originally published on Forbes.com. As a mission-driven small business owner, one of the biggest investments you can make is in yourself and your business marketing strategy to make this year more profitable than before.
Once holidays hit, for many conscious entrepreneurs, it’s a time to be grateful and reflect on the past year, providing a space to create the new year through business planning. While this sounds good in theory, more often than not, many small business owners and conscious entrepreneurs I’ve worked with don’t have or make the time to plan. They are too busy reacting, or randomly marketing by “shooting arrows everywhere” with a scattered approach. The other half who do make a “plan” either limit it to simply setting annual goals and call that a plan, or they don’t regularly or consistently track progress on their plan. Many don’t even look at the plan until the following year! The question is: How can you create a plan you will actually use? Here’s how you can create a simple framework to plan out this year. First, create a picture in your mind’s eye of exactly what life and business you want to create. Close your eyes, and visualize the questions. Then jot down answers or a representative picture of what you saw in your journal afterward. You could also find a guided meditation or collage a vision board to gain clarity on what you really want to create that’s outside the box. Otherwise, you risk creating from the same place you were last year. From there, create SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) goals that reflect the picture you felt, saw or heard in your one-year visualization. Once you have your goals, you’re ready. Three Simple Steps To Plan This Year 1. Map out your year in boxes. On a piece of paper, make a box, and divide it into four rows and three columns, creating an annual monthly calendar divided by quarter. 2. Block out your time off first. This includes your vacations, trips and other time off. Schedule that time off into the month you’ll be gone. I recommend taking a minimum of one week off per quarter to recharge. Side note: Unlike America, many other countries enjoy thirty days off or more each year for holidays and statutory minimum paid leave (which means you have to take time off). Rest helps you synthesize ideas, create new ones and get perspective, whether or not what you're doing is working. Ignoring rest is like trying to have constant spring and summer with no fall or winter. All of life goes through cycles. You are no different, even if you try to be superhuman in your business. 3. Schedule in the rest of your commitments. In order of high to low priority, block out the following in your calendar: • Existing commitments you have already made, both personal and professional, such as speaking engagements, business conferences, networking events, children's school events, graduations, weddings and so on • Planned marketing campaigns or offerings for your business, such as holiday cards, client appreciation gifts, marketing webinars, learning programs you plan to offer and so on. This schedule needs to become your rhythm for the year. It will establish a baseline for retaining your customers and attracting a steady flow of new leads. • New quarterly promotions you'll focus on per quarter to drive new revenue growth. These are your sprints amid the marathon that is business. Set Yourself Up For Success After your first draft, make sure to inspect the plan to see if there are any unrealistic timelines. Be sure to add buffer times for the unexpected. Make sure that all your personal life important events, such as birthdays, kids' soccer games and anniversary celebrations are included as well to gauge your bandwidth or capacity to actually fulfill on this. Once you let your brain analyze feasibility, listen and feel with your heart and intuition if you’re inspired or excited by the plan. If not, go back to the drawing board. Take out what drains you energetically, and add in what would light you up and fuel your energy. This is not a one-hour activity. Carve out a half day to a whole day to do this, aside from distractions and disruptions, preferably off-site from where you normally work. It takes your brain at least thirty minutes to settle into deeper thinking. Get feedback from trusted peers, colleagues and coaches who have done this kind of planning and can point out any red flags, missed opportunities or unclear milestones. It’s critical to get outside perspectives that go beyond your individual, siloed thinking. If you have a team, also run the plan, milestones and goals by your team, and get their perspective of what needs to be added, deleted or edited. Their perspectives are invaluable. Now What? Knowing how to plan your year won't make any difference unless you implement your plan. You know this may be critical for your business success, so if you suspect you won't make time for it, you can find or organize a group of at least three to four like-minded conscious business owners around your same revenue level to get feedback from. You can also attend a workshop or hire a business coach. By taking a few hours to map this out, you'll save yourself a ton of time and gain clarity, focus and more energy flowing into your new year. Invest in yourself and your business. You’re worth it. This article was originally published on Forbes.com. |
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