I may break one of the guidelines with this 4-minute video, but I did it strategically and with justification. As long as your video is less than 5 minutes long, you should be O.K.

I’ve always lived my life with a focus on being regret-free, always doing the right thing and being a generally good and nice person. Yes, I’ve made mistakes … I am human (much to my chagrin … couldn’t I be an elven princess?).

Anyway, it was an interesting month of gratitude work.

Immanual Kant, a philosopher who, according to Monty Python, was a real piss-ant, felt that “ingratitude is the refusal to acknowledge the good, and as a result is a profound moral failure of the human spirit.” In other words, many times our downfall is not recognizing the mercies and good things that are abundant in our lives.

I took the opportunity to really look at those moments in my life where I didn’t live up to my own standards, those times that I failed to do the right thing as I defined it. And I discovered that I had one big regret in my life that I’ve spent the last year beating myself over the head about.

You see, I was married for 12+ years to a less than ideal partner. This is not a recrimination of the man … I still believe that there is a good person in there somewhere, but I didn’t bring it out in him. We were not a good match. And I had plenty of opportunity to walk away.

But I didn’t.

I stayed and took the verbal and emotional abuse of being with the wrong person because I had rules set up in my head that no longer served me. Rules that said I would be a failure if I got a divorce. Rules that said I would be a failure if I didn’t make this marriage work. The problem was … there was no way to fix the marriage. It was unfixable and yet I kept applying bandaid after bandaid after bandaid.

And, as there often is with bad marriages, I had lost sight of myself. I … a normally strong willed, fiercely independent person, had handed over control of my life to someone else.

Thankfully, I attracted some people and situations into my life that helped me pull myself out of that situation. I left him in 2010. Our divorce was final Jan. 3 of this year.

I share this little snapshot into my life because this was what I focused on in April. And I think there is something you can take away for yourself in what I discovered.

One of the homework assignments was thinking about what self-forgiveness work was revealing itself to me. I was asked, “What is it that you are not yet willing to forgive? Can you forgive yourself for that?”

What I came up with was that I had yet to forgive myself for going down the dark rabbit hole and not staying true to my core. For, by giving over my personal power to a less-than-loving man, I ceased to live by my own rules. And I can be quite the stickler for rules!

You see, I kind of avoid conflict. And my marriage became all about doing anything to avoid conflict, including taking who I was and stuffing it inside a little box inside my soul. By the time I left my now ex-husband I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror. I had gained 109 pounds. My voice was higher from stress. I had premature grey hairs (and my hair was thinning). But worse, I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t Carma.

Now, the benefit of going through this experience is that now I can unpack all those parts of me I had hidden away to avoid an argument, take a loving look at them and decide to re-incorporate what I like and retire what no longer serves me. I’ve also learned that its OK to change, update and retire my self-imposed rules.

These are the lessons I discovered during my April “Mercy and Atonement” gratitude work. And I look forward to moving into May’s “The Gift of Grace” work. I hope it proves to be a whole lot easier!

Some Take Aways for You
Where are you giving up control to someone or something in your life or business? Where are you self-flagellating when you could be self-forgiving?

When you do this kind of work, you’ll be amazed at how weights are lifted from your shoulders and your life, your relationships and your business becomes easier, lighter and a whole lot better.

My last update on this year’s gratitude work covered January through March. You can read it here.

If you’d like to join me for a year of gratitude, you can learn more here.

Or, if you’d like to do this gratitude work on your own, you can grab the book at Amazon.com.

Going to networking events has several benefits:

• If you work from home, like I do, it gets you out of the house.
• You meet other business owners and entrepreneurs who can be prospective clients or joint venture partners (sometimes both)
• You can learn new ideas or techniques that can help your business
• You can get pics of yourself with industry leaders, which can be used in self-promotion on social media, your website and even PowerPoint slides!

What follows are three of the things I learned that will help me not only with my business, but with my clients, as well.

Content is king, but consistency is Queen
I know I sometimes falter on this … I get busy and don’t post to my blog or send out my ezine according to the schedule I had set. But at least I have a schedule and I do my best to stick to it. And I don’t stay in “falter” mode for too long.

Being consistent in the quality and regularity of your content helps your audience expect and grow to anticipate your information. It also fosters trust and can increase sharing of your content.

Don’t chase success
When you chase something, it runs away. You want to desire success and even work toward achieving it … but not chase it. Be relaxed and savor the journey.

Yes, I know … easier said than done.

But it can be done and you can do it.

Stop the suffering
I’ve always believed that everyone has a gift to give to the world and that it is, in some way, selfish to keep that gift to yourself. But people often get stuck in the not giving state because they lack the confidence in their own gifts. Well, Arvee said something that I found very enlightening: “There are people out there suffering and only you can end that suffering.”

Your gift, your message is unique to you. And there are people out there who can only learn what they need to learn from you. So why are you keeping your brilliance to yourself?

The way this book works is that you are given a selection of Reflections and Practices for the month and you choose to focus on two or three of each. At the end of the month, you review how you did around that month’s theme in the four quadrants of spiritual growth and character development.

January – Begin anew
The theme for January was new beginnings in all areas of life: work/creative service, relationships, finances/right livelihood and health/well being. For the reflections, I chose to focus on what I was learning in these four areas and how I was approaching these areas with child-like curiosity and wonder.

January turned out to be an amazing month for me. My love life blossomed (after a year of focusing on divorce, it was nice to focus on dating for a change). I began in earnest the process of letting go of things that no longer served me and held me back. I learned about the power of vulnerability and how to better trust my own inner voice. Along with my love life, my prosperity blossomed, as well. In January, I had a lot to be grateful for.

For the practices, I jotted down something that made me happy every day, so by the end of the month I had a list of at least 31 things that made me happy. They ranged from getting a new camera (which I am still enjoying!) to having a lovely lunch with friends to being able to refer business to a friend of mine.

In review, January was a good month, a fun month and a month of growth and realizations about myself.

February – Attend to the Heart
It is no surprise that February’s theme was matters of the heart … from romantic love to approaching life with a full heart. My reflections for the month focused on who my teachers of the heart were and what I was learning about love. It gave me the opportunity to begin some forgiveness work and bless the lessons I learned while going through the less than opportune times of my life.

My love life slowed down a bit as my business life picked up the slack. My practices focused on paying attention to where I could be grateful and be more tender and affectionate. I also chose to notice how people around me express love and affection. It was eye opening. The subtle body language of people I saw on the street was pretty darn interesting … things I never really noticed before became obvious.

In review, February became more about appreciating the people who support and encourage me than it was about romance. And that was a revelation in itself.

March – Compassionate service
For some reason, I found March’s theme the most challenging. Its not that I don’t like being of service … quite the opposite. I love being of service and so more for free than I probably should. My challenge this month was thinking of my service to others in a bigger and larger context. The book focuses on service to people when it comes to charitable work, and my charitable work has usually focused more on environmental and animal rights activities. That said, I did help with the Unstoppable Gala which helps educate children in Africa … so I did do some human-based service.

One of the practices I challenged myself to was contemplating the following invocation from Gandhi:

“Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him ….

Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? Will it lead to self-rule for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?

Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”

I found myself rebelling against this. Not against that one should aspire to accomplish those things … but knowing that not every choice you make has anything to do with those things. Sometimes I’m focused on a smaller picture. Sometimes I’m focused on an even bigger one. I never did figure out how to deal with that, so I just forgave my self for the cognitive dissonance and moved on.

In review, March was a month of rest, as things slowed down from the frenzy of work I did in January and February. In retrospect, maybe sitting back and taking care of myself is a form of compassionate service to others. It’s like they say on airplanes … in the case of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. I guess I needed to regroup and recharge so I can head out full charge in April.

Would you like to experience this process of exploring gratitude in a variety of ways? You can still join me … I will probably be doing this work on into 2013.

“How?” you ask. Follow this three-step process:

Step One: Get focused and create a strategic plan

Take some time to assess where you are and who you want to find you. Then create a strategic plan that leverages what you have and what you can develop so that it moves you toward your goal. This includes:

• Evaluating and possibly revamping your website
• Managing, integrating and automating your social media activities
• Developing a content development plan that actively attracts ideal prospects

Step Two: Implement you strategic plan

You don’t need to do this all on your own. You can automate some tasks and hire out others. But that strategic plan needs to be in place first so that you make the right choices of what to do with your time, as well as who to hire to help you move forward.

Step Three: Revenue development

There are several ways you can develop the revenue streams for your business, and they should be mentioned in your strategic plan. When considering the available options, such as

• Free gifts with opt-in
• Digital products
• Live, virtual products and services
• Live, in-person products and services

you need to consider your strengths (as well as the strengths of your business), the desires of your ideal market, your budget, and the technology you have available to deliver your products and services.

I can help you move through these steps. Check out my coaching options and contact me for a free initial consultation.

I recently read an amazing book that has inspired me to take my every day practice of gratitude up a notch, and I invite you to join me.

I initially read the book to review for The New York Journal of Books. You can read my review of it here.

The book is organized so that you can take each month and focus on a particular aspect of gratitude. The author, Angeles Arrien, encourages the reader to engage with the book alone or as part of a group.

This inspired me.

So I decided to start a virtual group. So that members will have at least some vested interest in doing the “homework,” I’ve decided to charge a nominal $7/month fee to join the group. We’ll “meet” over the phone once a month to check in and to state our intentions for the coming month.

This is a 12-month program only. We can decide as a group if we want to continue for a second year.

If you join the group between now and December 16, you will receive as a bonus the PDF version of my annotated Character Building Thought Power for no cost. I usually sell this ebook for $14.99. Additional support material and handouts may be available through out the year, as appropriate.

How To Participate

• Purchase a copy of Angeles Arrien’s book Living in Gratitude. You can purchase it at Amazon in hardcover or for the Kindle using the links above, or get a copy at your favorite local bookstore.
• Register for the study group that I’ll be leading. I will invite you to a private Facebook group where we can interact throughout the year, as well as keep you posted on when the once-monthly calls will be scheduled. This is a 12-month program only. We can decide as a group if we want to continue for a second year.
• Commit to being grateful for all the things in your life, for the more you appreciate, the more you have to appreciate!

The first call will be scheduled for sometime the first full week of January. Date and time is to be determined.
 

Would you be interested in an in-person group that met in Long Beach, Calif.? If there are enough people, I will make arrangements for in-person group to meet once a month in Long Beach. If you are interested, please contact me.
 

NOTE: I am creating this group completely on my own and am not affiliated in any way with Angeles Arrien.
 

Monthly Topics from Living in Gratitude

Benefits of Gratitude

Sprinkled through out the book, Arrien shares research that illustrates the benefits of gratitude. Here are a few of them pulled from the book:

For Health
The studies of Dr. Michael McCollough (University of Miami) and Dr. Robert Emmons (U.C. Davis) “have shown that regularly and deliberately expressing appreciation and genuine thankfulness improves health and well-being. Study participants who kept gratitude journals and practiced self-guided exercises slept better, exercised more, experienced increased positive emotions, progressed toward personal goals more quickly, and helped others more often.”

John Demartini, developer of the Demartini Method, “discovered that the more people count their blessings and give gratitude, the more their health and sense of well-being increase.”

“Studies of the physiological effects of positive emotions related to gratitude — namely appreciation and compassion — suggest that changes for the better reliably occur in cardiovascular and immune functioning. In other words, the more we extend gratitude, appreciation and compassion, the healthier our heart and immune system become.”

For Relationships
Couples who express more gratitude and appreciation for each other stay together longer. “John Gottman’s two decades of research … reveals that couples who expres at least a five-to-one ratio of appreciations to complaints stay married and increase their longevity together. Those who have more complaints than appreciation are more apt to divorce or separate.”

For Happiness
“Researcher Robert Emmons … confirms that grateful people are less lonely, bitter, isolated, unforgiving or indifferent…. Everett Worthington … notices that people who forgive find greater peace and acceptance, and the return of hope fosters more well-being.”

Food Professionals
Post images of your creations with recipes. You can either post recipes for your more basic dishes … ones that can be found elsewhere … or your more difficult recipes … ones readers would rather have you do that try out themselves. Either way, you build rapport with your readers and get them thinking of your food offerings.

Artists, Crafters and Other Artisans
Take pictures of your work and post them on your blog. Use the alt tag, as I discussed in my last post, to help people find your work. In addition to the image, explain a bit about it: what inspired it? how was it created? etc.

Writers, Authors and Poets
A blog is a great way to give out sample snippets and chapters of your work. You can also use it to serialize it, as well. If you use a membership program to turn your blog into a membership site, you can even post entire pieces of your work, but only make a small portion of it visible to those who haven’t paid to see the whole thing.

Singers, Dancers and Other Entertainers
Post video clips of your performances. Include along with the video some information about what they are viewing. When did it happen? Who was the audience? What was the purpose? Did you have any special inspiration in choosing that particular clip?

Thinking of self-publishing your book?

Want to make sure it gets on Amazon and the Kindle?
Then check out “How to Leverage Amazon.com to Attract New Clients.” In this audio course I show you how to create a lead-generating book and publish it using either Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com for physical books and Amazon Digital for the Kindle. You receive step-by-step guides that walk you through the process with ease!
 

Not sure if self-publishing is right for you?
Check out this free replay of a webinar I did with Daniel Hall: 19 Innovative Ways to Build Your Business With a Self Published Book

Make Your Fictional World More Real
I recently interviewed Shawn Lamb, the author of a series of fantasy novels. In preparation for the interview, I visited her website and was treated to a website that really helped readers engage with her fictional world. When you visit allonbooks.com, you can learn more about the characters, complete with realistic sketches and bios, and explore an interactive map of Allon. This is a great way to make your fictional world more real and get readers to interact with it so they’ll want to continue reading. (My interview with her will post on The Genre Traveler on June 6.)

Robert Liparulo, author of the Dreamhouse Kings series of books, does a good job of this with dreamhousekings.com, as well. The website is build with flash, which reduces its search engine optimization, but once people find it, they can spend a great deal of time tooling around the website and learning about the author and the books. He even has a page with games and contests. You can listen to my interview with him here.

Get readers engaged in your process
Many fiction writers keep up a blog that shares their journey of writing. The entries talk about the stories they’ve published and tease about the stories they’re working on. Doing this helps build and nurture your fan base … reading fans like to know all about their favorite authors. Your blog can also help get people to live events such as book signings, readings, seminars and more. An example of this type of blog is angela-spencer.com. You can listen in to my interview with the man behind Angela here.

Give your work away for free
This may sound counter intuitive, but giving away a digital version of your novel (or at least the first few chapters) is an excellent way to build your audience for this and future books, as well as sell more of your current books. Many people who have read a book in digital format and enjoyed it, will buy the physical version of book later.

In 2005, Kealan Patrick Burke, a horror author, did an experiment where he wrote and distributed a novel in real time through a special Yahoo! group. Every week he’d post another chapter of the book. He built quite a list with that story … I know I was hooked and have been following him every since. The book, Master of the Moors, was published in 2008 by Necessary Evil Press. People who read the online version of the book did buy the book when it came out, in part to see what he had changed as he polished the story for publication.

Of course, you don’t want to give the whole kit and kaboodle away for free — only enough to get your future fans engaged and hooked!
 

Thinking of self-publishing your book?

Want to make sure it gets on Amazon and the Kindle? Then check out “How to Leverage Amazon.com to Attract New Clients.” In this audio course I show you how to create a lead-generating book and publish it using either Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com for physical books and Amazon Digital for the Kindle. You receive step-by-step guides that walk you through the process with ease!

www.dragonwyze.com/ebookclass
 

Not sure if self-publishing is right for you?

Check out this free replay of a webinar I did with Daniel Hall: 19 Innovative Ways to Build Your Business With a Self Published Book

Learn the five-step process for selling more books

Free 20-minute video shows you how! Watch this video presentation and download the slides and handout to learn:

• How to identify your ideal readers
• Ways you can get those ideal readers to notice you and your book
• How to communicate your book’s value to potential readers
• Ideas on how to diversify your content so you can reach more people and make more sales
• How to build a connection and keep them coming back for more

1. Get Help

Doing an effective blog tour takes a lot of time, effort and coordination. You can’t do one that will help you increase your visibility and sell more books if you’re trying to do it by yourself, while juggling everything else in your life and business, too. Hire help.

2. Develop a process and plan of action.

This was my saving grace. I decided what the process I was going to follow before I started. I developed plan of action that included template emails to send out to recruit, follow up, thank and confirm; a list of blogs that I wanted to approach; and a timeline. The more you plan and layout your actions in advance, the more time you’ll save along the way. It also makes it much easier for you to delegate these activities to your support team.

3. Make it easy for your hosts

Develop a range of content options for your blog hosts before you approach them. This should include questions they can ask you, articles they can post as a guest blogger, a short bio/introduction, a head shot of you, a picture of your book, and, if you can swing it, a picture you with your book. The more options you give them to make their stop on your blog tour unique, the more likely you are to have them accept. And, it is in your best interests SEO-wise to have each blog stop be unique.

4. Think outside the bookcase

Go ahead and approach blogs that you think are tangential to your topic. Some of them may delight in offering something new and different to their audience.

5. Be prepared to give out review copies.

Have a special download page ready to go for your blog hosts to download a copy of your book. But also understand that some will not read a downloadable book and will request a hardcopy. Be willing to do this … but strategically. Will their audience be worth the expense of sending a book?
 

Thinking of self-publishing your book?

Want to make sure it gets on Amazon and the Kindle? Then check out “How to Leverage Amazon.com to Attract New Clients.” In this audio course I show you how to create a lead-generating book and publish it using either Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com for physical books and Amazon Digital for the Kindle. You receive step-by-step guides that walk you through the process with ease!

www.dragonwyze.com/ebookclass
 

Not sure if self-publishing is right for you?

Check out this free replay of a webinar I did with Daniel Hall: 19 Innovative Ways to Build Your Business With a Self Published Book

Learn the five-step process for selling more books

Free 20-minute video shows you how! Watch this video presentation and download the slides and handout to learn:

• How to identify your ideal readers
• Ways you can get those ideal readers to notice you and your book
• How to communicate your book’s value to potential readers
• Ideas on how to diversify your content so you can reach more people and make more sales
• How to build a connection and keep them coming back for more