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In the fire + pictures from Costa Rica (including my boyfriend!)

A quick love letter from Costa Rica to share with you some of my experience here in this beautiful place.

First and foremost, for those of you who are most focused on the Eyes Wide Open business teachings, and not so much in the Raw and Real parts of what I share, I’ll warn you now that this love letter is a mix of both.

There’s a little business and a little raw/real happening in this love letter. If you are all business, all the time, you may want to close this one down now and get on to the next. But if you like the raw/real, read on and you’ll get some business goodness as a bonus.

I came down to Costa Rica a week and a day ago with my family, so I could speak at Envision Festival. I haven’t gotten all the pictures uploaded yet, but you can see a few on my private Facebook profile.

And here’s a quickie of the whole family as we were sending Melina, Lotus and the boys back home after Envision. The boys (men really at this point), are my son, Noah, Kaia’s boyfriend, Max, and my boyfriend (yes, I did just say that), Rainbow. Yes, his name is Rainbow.

Kaia and I stayed on for a women’s retreat with Jess Magic and Elena Meta, and in it we are exploring the elements, dance, voice and writing.

Today, the element was Fire. Breath of fire, dance of fire, sweat lodge, fiery food, and a fire ceremony to burn up whatever is ready to be released.

For me, it was the control paradigm and the last vestiges of my need to prove myself.

So, what does all this have to do with building your life and income awake, aware and on your terms?A few things …

#1: Integration of the learnings

In the past, I’ve moved so quickly from one thing to the next that I have not had time to integrate the learnings. Just last month, I went immediately from a private event at Esalen (called Return) to lead my Money Map Masters in a retreat and then immediately after that into a month of intense focus to prepare for me to be out of the office for two weeks.

This time, I decided to stay on here in Costa Rica for an extra week to attend this retreat with Kaia and to integrate the teachings and learnings from my time at Envision.

Taking my whole family to Envision was a big deal. It’s really a working event for me, not just a vacation. I’m there to speak and network, not just to hang out and have fun. And having the kids (particularly my 12-year old who still really needs a lot of me) with me was an added challenge.

But having them with me was also really fun and I had a lot of support from friends, as you can see in the pictures. Plus, I always feel really great when the kids get to hear me speak because I’m teaching some radical money concepts that they aren’t going to get in school or from the media, so I’m glad they are getting it from me and not just by osmosis, but consciously and intentionally.

#2: How to free yourself in your business

I’ll be gone a total of two weeks. Most of it off my computer, other than time to write a couple of emails, do Facebook and chat about a few things with my team via Skype.

A month ago, I was working like crazy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage getting out of town, let alone being mostly offline for two weeks.

So I decided to make the investment in hiring someone who could really stand in for me in both businesses and bit the bullet. I brought in Brenda Mathisen (most recently Chief of Staff for one of the PayPal investor/founders), spent a month connecting deeply with her and providing training and then left town so she could take over with minimal interference from me.

This is the counter-intuitive way to free yourself in business. Get the right person or people on board and then leave town. In the past, I thought I needed to hold on and oversee things for way too long. What I realize now is that was disempowering and indicative of my lack of trust.

By leaving town, I showed my team (and Brenda) I trust them and while I know some mistakes will likely be made, I trust them to learn, grow and evolve from those mistakes, which includes figuring out how to fix them when they happen.

Repeatedly, I have seen this with women lawyers in my New Law Business Model coaching program — they get pregnant, and if they coach with me ahead of their maternity leave to hire the right person then hand off systems with trust at the foundation, they leave to have a baby and come back two months later with a practice that is thriving far more than it would have if they had been in the office micro-managing every day.

Try this one yourself, even if you aren’t having a baby. Just plan a vacation and then actually take it. But do remember to hire a great person first.

#3: Death

The last thing I want to mention in this week’s love letter is Death.

Confronting the reality of your mortality will result in you having a better life. It is coming up in my reality frequently and I want you to start to consider how that might be true in your life.

Have you confronted your mortality? If so, have you planned to make life better for your loved ones after you are gone or are you starting doing that now? How is your own life getting better by looking at the reality of your own death?

I know this may not be an easy conversation or consideration for you, but it is an important one so you can make the very best decisions regarding the use of your resources that you possibly can.

If you want any support with that, please send me a message at [email protected] and let me know. It’s something I’m being asked to do more and more lately and I’m feeling called.

Love beyond,

Ali

PS — we have twenty new Eyes Wide Open members who are also B-Schoolers and I want to send a great big welcome to you all! If you have not already received your invite to our private member’s forum and requested to join, please check your email including the spam folder. Welcome! I’m excited to see you there.

Perfection Not Required

Recently I was in Esalen for 4 days (check out the pictures here) and then leading my Money Map Masters Founder’s Group retreat here in Boulder (here are some pictures from the retreat).

I didn’t open my computer for the whole week.It felt great. And then on Sunday, I got anxious. Probably because I hadn’t yet written this Love Letter, or the emails announcing the end of the discount code for our annual membership offer, or the emails announcing our payment plan options.

Rather than succumbing to it and getting back onto the computer before I was ready, I let it be. I felt the anxiety, tried not to create any story about it, and spent time with my family.

Then, the work week started and I was deep into re-entry with focus on the expansion of the New Law Business Model business model. I’m bringing in a COO so we can go to the next level of growth while I step more into creating content and away from running the company.

I’ve tried to break through this level three times and I haven’t made it yet, but I’m betting the 4th time’s a charm.

So, here I am, sending this out half a week late and remembering (and reminding you) that it’s okay. Perfection is not required here.  Sure, consistency is best in business. If you can send out your newsletter the same day every week, awesome. And, if that’s not a match with your life, don’t beat yourself up for it.

Just get it out when you can and trust that the people who need to get it will.

I am making a conscious decision to not push myself the way I have in the past, to really live my Money Map and put myself first, family second and work third, knowing I have enough.

Pre-Money Map, I would push myself way harder than was really sustainable to make sales, to be “successful” by someone else’s definition and to keep up with the launch whizzes who are part of my peer group.

When I updated my own Money Map last year, I realized that it was not reasonable to have two businesses that were doing regular high pressure launches of products/programs to different audiences. Not without burning myself out.

So, even though I had invested $24,000 in a mastermind designed to support me to take my business to the next level and $15,000 in a launch manager, I decided to take a different path. I chalked those investments up to learning what I didn’t want, and sunk more deeply into what I do.

While I want the work of Money Map and Eyes Wide Open out into the world, it can’t be at the expense of my well-being and my relationships.  Those are priority.

So, I did end up getting out emails about the end of our payment plan, but I didn’t announce the end of the discount, which means I’ll extend it a couple of days. And that’s okay.

When you are in business for yourself, you get to choose what gets done and what doesn’t.

And I hope you choose wisely, putting yourself first, relationships second and earning money only last, with a clear plan to know you have enough so you can.

To do so will require you to get beyond your Money Dysmorphia (the distorted view of our finances that causes us to make poor choices around our non-renewable assets, time, energy and attention) and start making life and work choices from clarity.

My friend Myka did this and she was able to carve out 6 weeks to write her book, trust that she doesn’t need to take on revenue generating work for 3 months and is freeing up the space to live the life she’s always wanted.

Why wait to have the life you really want?

This is the time, your time is now. My work is to guide you to see the resources available to you to live that life today and stop putting it off until you have enough. You have enough now. It’s time to mine it and truly live.

I love you so much. Keep showing up through all of it.  Perfection is not necessary.

Love beyond,

Ali

 

PS — We have 10 spots left in our annual membership using code BOGO500OFF to take $500 off your investment (only with pay in full option) or you can pay over 12 months and get started for as little as $199. It’s our wisdom and experience on your life and income for a full year. Many of our members have been with us for years because they know you can’t find business model building, pricing and packaging, launch strategy, sticky situation management and legal, insurance, financial and tax knowledge anywhere else for this low of an investment. Would love you to be one of the remaining 10 to join us!

SAVE $500 with code BOGO500OFF: eyeswideopenlife.com/membership

START FOR ONLY $199 with payment plan.

 

I’m in love…

This is a long love letter, grab a cup of tea and settle in for a few minutes.

Yes, it’s true, I am experiencing the beauty of new love. It’s tender, and a wee bit frightening. I’m not quite ready to share the details, and it feels way too soon after my last relationship but, I’m a lover. It’s my nature.

The truth is, now that my heart is open, I walk around feeling in love most of the time. Not just with humans, but with all of Life.

And, I’ve fallen in love with each and every one of you who has written to share the truth of your current reality and your vision for the future.

My guess is that if you haven’t written in, that I’d fall in love with you too, if you did. (And, please do — I read everything and I become evermore inspired to keep sharing, even when it feels like a stretch for me to do so.)

Your stories of where you are now and what you want to create in your life are inspiring me to serve more widely than I ever have before.

Thank you for sharing them with me.

If you desire to work with me in the future, it’s a good idea to write in, whether you are ready to get started now or you know it will be some time in the future because it allows me to begin to get to know you, which allows us to dive in deeper more quickly and support you with more precision right away when we do work together.

I have three things for you today:

1. You are likely investing your resources in ways that will not lead you to more of what you want in life — now, there’s help.

I’m writing this on my way to San Francisco (now Oakland due to flight delays into SFO this am) for a 24-hour trip to support the launch of what I am calling the most rational book I’ve ever read on how we can invest our resources in the new economy for true safety.

I’m investing the time, money and energy to be in San Francisco for the launch because I know that the investment in tribe-building that comes along with my trip will be worth it — and that’s part of what you’ll come to understand creates real security, once you read the book.

I recorded an interview with the authors, Bryan Franklin and Michael Ellsberg. Here’s where you can hear it.

Read the book and change the way you think about how you are investing your resources, forever.

Check out my personal Facebook profile for some pictures from the day and the event itself.

2. How to become free to be all of yourself.

One of the questions I get asked the most by people who write in is — how did you go from being an uptight legal expert on TV to becoming free to be all of you?

Check out the live Facebook video I recorded this past weekend — on the process of becoming free to be all of yourself — here.

All I want to do lately is share what I’ve learned so you can build your life and income with your eyes and heart way more open than mine were.

3. The support for creating the life and income you really, really, really, REALLY want – not the one “they” want for you.

It’s SO easy to get sucked into creating a life and income you don’t actually want.

The pull toward safety, security and fitting in is strong for most of us, so we find ourselves making choices and decisions that lead to more of what we don’t actually want.

We follow the “leader” (monkey see, monkey do style) only to discover we’ve created a life that doesn’t feel right, dependent on an income that keeps us trapped in that life.

And the pressure to save, save, save so we can retire comfortably later.

Fahgeddabout that. It’s time to wake up.

Please stop waiting for later, and take a step toward getting the support you need to step into the life that’s waiting for you.

Watch the recording of my New Year’s Eve Clarity Call and you’ll hear about and from other people just like you who have done it, stepped into a life of freedom, liberated.

And you’ll learn how you can have my support in doing just that.

I’ve revamped my own income model for 2016 and I’m done with big launches of my products, don’t want this business to be a million dollar business, and I’m narrowing in on who and how I serve until I’ve freed up more time in my other business.

I promised myself last year that I was not going to go down the road of big launches, competition-based models, and enrolling as many people as possible in a short period of time.

It’s a “successful” model that leaves me wanting to quit the business every time. Not sustainable for me and my life. And while I’m fairly good at it, I’ve been committed to discovering a new way.

Yet, this fall I hired a “launch manager” to help me build out my systems so that anyone can sign up for our programs at any time, so I can just focus on creating great new content, and I could feel myself getting pulled into the old model that I had sworn to myself I was not going to get caught up in again.

It’s so alluring.

Blindly, again and again, I built my income model based on what others were doing “successfully” — but each time, I would get to the finish line and find I had created something I didn’t want, based on conditioning I couldn’t see.

This time, fortunately, I was awake enough to understand the road I was heading down wasn’t going to lead me to where I really wanted to go, and if I didn’t make a hard right, I’d be right back in the same place I had ended up in time and again.

So, at the 11th hour, I changed up the plan. I said no to the big launch, the affiliates, the million dollar business, and remembered what’s most important to me.

Rather than strategizing my webinar to maximize sales, I read everything you wrote the night before and stayed up until 3:30a (it’s when I often do my best work) and created a presentation that spoke directly to what you actually need.

If you haven’t watched yet, you can still do so here.

I made the decision not to enroll as many people as possible, but to limit the offer to a container of just 50 people right now. A container me and my team can handle and serve well and deeply. And we are already half full.

It’s enough. There’s no need to go bigger right now.

What matters isn’t how many people I can enroll, it’s how many people I can love. And right now, I’ve got  room for 50 in my inner circle attention field.

For so many years, my eyes were blind and my heart was closed.

Awakening these parts of myself has been both painful and ever so rewarding.

Coming into true alignment with the life I am here to live, and creating the space to live in my heart and share from the overflow could have been faster, if my own clarity had come sooner.

Of course, it couldn’t come any sooner than it did. We are each in the evolution process of discovering what’s true and that means someone has to take the long, circuitous route there.

I sense that I am in your life to ease the process for you. You are ready to see with clear eyes and to feel with an open heart.

You long for guidance as you step onto the road less traveled and I offer an outstretched hand with the other on my heart, welcoming you.

Welcome.  And thank you for being on the journey with me.

With so much love today and everyday.

Ali

PS — for you skimmers, here’s the three things:

1. Buy the book the Last Safe Investment and  start re-allocating your resources today. Here’s my FB message about it and an interview I recorded with the authors.

2. Check out the live video I made on Facebook: how you can become free to be all of yourself.

3. Watch the recording of the New Year’s Clarity Call before it comes down for good.

How You Gonna Handle It When…

Today, I was going to send you a long love letter full of details and pictures and videos from Burning Man, a discussion of what it means that we are “going dark” and why it may be important to understand for the next level of your business and even a video that takes you really behind the scenes into my heart, my love life, and a “play party” I attended at Burning Man.

I’m about 2/3 of the way done and before I could finish, this came through and it felt important and ready, so I’m listening and sending this letter now and I’ll take my time finishing the longer next letter.

Watch it for next week … for now, I’d love for you to read this with an open heart. Let it impact you.

As you read it, add in your own mishaps, misadventures, challenges, stressful moments, heart breaks and upsets. Feel the feelings that arise as you remember the past mishaps or imagine the future tragedies that will surely occur.

So, how you gonna handle it?

How you gonna handle it when you love so much it hurts, and he simply does not love you back?

How you gonna handle it when your kid falls off a bike and breaks his tooth, while in the care of your ex, who you know wasn’t paying attention?

How you gonna handle it when she steals the last $5,000 you have?

How you gonna handle it when he gets a DUI, with the kids in the car, while you’re out of town?

How you gonna handle it when your bike falls off the back of the RV, going 70MPH down the highway, and you don’t know when or where?

How you gonna handle it when you can’t make payroll?

How are you going to handle it when the TV show producer calls and wants you to be in NY for filming during the exact time you’re scheduled to be at Burning Man?

How are you going to handle it when he is making eyes at (or even just secretly admits) he thinks she’s cute?

How you gonna handle it?

How you gonna handle it when your good friend talks shit about you, behind your back, and then lies straight to your face?

How are you going to handle it when anonymous people write the worst possible things about you on the internet?

How are you going to handle it when your business partners quit with zero notice and go work for someone else using everything they learned on your dime?

How are you going to handle it when he moves out?

How. Are. You. Going. To. Handle It?

At the end of the day, it’s really all that matters.

Because the shit is going to hit the fan, repeatedly.

 

Loves will be unrequited.

Kids will fall off bikes.

People will misunderstand you.

Accidents will happen.

Employees will make mistakes.

Bosses will suck ass.

Partners will desire others.

 

So, how are you gonna handle it?

Are you going to defend? Protect? Threaten? Fight? Sue? Open? Soften? Relax? Receive? Trust? Surrender? Feel?

The choice is yours. It’s the only choice we truly have.