Often small business owners are sole proprietors, operating their business in a one person office spending the majority of their week alone. Others run their business with a few people on board, but the end result is similar to the “only one” scenario. The viability of your business depends on it’s expansion. That seems obvious, but few people recognise the importance and the meaning of expansion. It starts with a core principle; if your business is going to expand, you have to reach out. Expansion is spreading out, going beyond, including more, building, assuming more responsibility. Your business doesn’t operate independently from you, it’s comprised of what you’ve put into it. So for your business to be growing, or maybe even just staying afloat in a very competitive market, you have to be reaching out, expanding. This is based on the principle of Be – Do – Have. Before you can have a thriving business, you have to do the actions to make it thrive; before you effectively do those actions, you have to be those qualities inherent in the actions.
Frequently, people feel isolated when they’re running their own business. What they are having (the end result of their actions) is isolation. So what are they doing to create that? Most often, it’s the opposite of reaching out. They are literally withdrawing. This may not be apparent or even within the person’s consciousness. However, withdrawing or pulling inward is the process that creates isolation, getting smaller, having less and experiencing lower moods and energy. Unintentionally, withdrawing, or withdrawing out of fear or lack of knowledge, can be a very detrimental process. Essentially, what the person is doing is excluding people, places and things. The end result of all that exclusion is scarcity. Scarcity of time, space, money, objects, energy and the things that the person really does want in life. When withdrawing or pulling in or pulling away is done continually and automatically without the reverse flow of reaching out and connecting, the person ends up with less of everything in life and becoming alone and isolated. The things they do have they hold onto tenaciously.
Outside of the box they’ve created for themselves are all the opportunities and potential for growth and expansion! The problem is that they are not letting themselves have them, they are withdrawing from them. Your own life force and energy naturally emanates outward. When you reach out, you include other people, locations and things into your space. Operating on the reaching out type process in life creates the opposite of scarcity – you are doing the actions to create abundance! Being aware and mindful of the things that are important to you and what you want more of is very important in the course of manifesting your dreams and goals. Your dreams, goals and wants are what you want to have, this is the result of your actions, what you’re doing or going to do. The action to creating abundance is reaching out. You are expanding beyond what you have right now, what you are doing right now and who you are being right now. To change what you have, or to modify it or have more of it, you have to change the doing-ness and the being-ness.
Below is an exercise that you can use to help you with the reaching out process.
This can be a very powerful process depending on how you use it, you can do a light approach or you can fully engage yourself in the process, there’s no right or wrong.
- Go to a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed. Give yourself a minimum of 20 minutes.
- Write down all the things that you’d like more of. This is your Abundance List. You’ll find that more and more comes to mind as you allow yourself to free-flow with this. Keep your Abundance List handy so you can add to it later that day or the next day or the next week.
- Choose one item on your list. Say, for example, it’s having a larger office space with one or two more people working with you.
- Envision yourself in that space, where would it be, what would it look like, who are the people working with you.
- Detail the vision as much as possible. How do you feel when you’re in that space, when would you like to occupy it, what do you want to pay for it, and so on.
The above 5 steps are the spiritual/mental part of the reaching out process. They are to be continued through the next phase.
- Go to the area that matches or nearly matches your vision.
- Find an office space that closely resembles what you envisioned. Make contact with it, go inside if you can and allow yourself to be very present in that space.
- Repeat this process several times with different locations; you want an abundance of choices!
The above example can be modified for anything on your list. Amazing results can occur after running these processes. You should find yourself expanding on many levels. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or run into any difficulty or want to share your wins!
