Nature creates everything, even businesses (Heart-Centered Tech Tip)

Meredith Curtin, the Project Nanny

I’d like to introduce you to my friend Meredith Curtin. She’s going to be joining me on this month’s free teleclass to talk about the relationship between Nature and Business.

Free teleclass details:

Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Time: 10am-11am Pacific (what’s that in your time zone?)

Meredith and I met at Jen Louden’s writer’s retreat in Taos, NM. We got to talking (in between bouts of writing, yoga, Dance of Shiva, enjoying the summer rain, and other good stuff). We discovered that we had each independently formulated this idea that businesses are alive, growing, and organic.

(not that we are the only two people on the planet to come up with that idea — far from it. It’s just that we resonated with each other in the way that we talked about it.)

So much so that when she said, over burgers and sangria (well, I was the only one drinking sangria, to be honest), “You know, we should do a project together,” I immediately replied, “Sounds great, count me in! And by the way, what exactly do you do?”

Flash forward to today. We’ve planned a six-week telecourse called The Gentle Art of Making Money with your WordPress Blog (it starts October 6, and the early-bird price is good until midnight on Thursday), Meredith is my guest on this month’s free teleclass, and most importantly, I’ve had a direct experience of how Meredith works and what she does.

Well, more than one, actually, but I’m going to tell you about one specific experience that made a big impression on me.

Moving, migraines and Meredith’s magic

I visited my sister over Labor Day weekend, to help her move into her new house. And I was such a good helper-mouse! I unpacked practically her whole kitchen (which meant cleaning and applying contact paper to all her shelves first), broke down moving boxes for recycling, moved furniture around, plugged stuff in, and generally tidied a lot.

It was a good trip, and I enjoyed helping, and she needed it. But I ran dangerously low on my self-care reserves. And after one day of traveling and two days of helping, I was felled by a full-blown migraine attack.

After sleeping it off (which took 14 hours), I was basically recovered, except that I was a little wobbly with the aftereffects (there really is such a thing as a migraine hangover. This had absolutely nothing to do with sangria consumption!).

And here’s where Meredith’s magic comes in.

I visited Meredith on the trip too (since she and my sister both conveniently live in the Denver metro area). In fact she cooked me an exquisite chicken curry soup lunch, which I couldn’t eat very much of due to the hangover. And I got to meet Georgia and Taylor, her dog and cat companions, who are both beautiful.

I was there in person, so she could do bodywork on me, but she can do the energy-clearing work remotely (and I’ve experienced that too, over the phone, so I know it works).

We talked about the migraine, about the hangover (or “echo” of the pain and nausea), about self-care. She helped me identify the physical and emotional sensations I was feeling, and together we cleared and processed them.

And by the time I needed to drive back to my sister’s place, I was much less wobbly and much more centered. And I had specific instructions to take care of myself (and make it through my airplane flight home without running out of reserves again).

That’s all well and good, you may say. It was probably the nourishing chicken soup. To be honest, I was half thinking along these lines myself.

My broadband body connection

But then I got back to my sister’s, and was doing the correct things to take care of myself and not exert myself. I was feeling pretty good (good enough to be hungry again, in fact). And I had a little time to kill. So I figured I’d unpack a box or two of DVDs. The shelf was sitting right there, so it would hardly count as exerting myself, right?

I put a couple of handfuls of DVDs on the shelf and immediately was struck by a sharp pain, right in my forehead. It was like being kicked in an already-bruised spot, if you know what I mean, because my brain was already bruised and barely recovered from the migraine attack.

I cursed imaginatively to myself, thinking I was in for a miserable trip home. And then I decided to hell with unpacking the DVDs, I was going to drink a glass of water and lie down. Which I did.

And the throbbing pain immediately vanished.

I don’t mean that it ebbed away over half an hour, or I fell asleep and didn’t notice. I mean that the instant I started consciously taking care of myself, instead of reflexively being a helper-mouse… the pain was gone.

And I didn’t do any more helper-mousing, and I stayed pain-free for my whole trip, and made it home safely and slept well in my own bed.

So it’s not correct to say that Meredith “healed me,” even if that was the net effect. I believe that the clearing work she did cleared and speeded up my connection with my regular feedback mechanisms. It was kind of like going from dial-up to broadband. I got instant feedback instead of having the migraine come up and pound me hours later — and, since I was (finally) smart enough to pay attention to the instant feedback, I also got the instant relief when I took care of myself.

So how is this related to business and technology?

Here are my takeaways:

Living systems require nurturing and maintenance, which means constantly measuring feedback and responding to it. This is as true for a website launch as it is for a migraine attack.
Nature always has a plan — even if we don’t know what it is. We don’t see the mighty tree in the seed, but the blueprints are there in its DNA. A headache might seem like a mere pain, but it can actually be a powerful self-protective mechanism. And those gut feelings, intuitive hunches, and mental alarms about your business might just be trying to tell you something.
“Letting nature take its course” doesn’t mean slacking off, it means paying attention as the plan is revealed. It means being willing to try new things, and being willing to be surprised.

If any of this resonates with you, I think you might have a really good time on this month’s free call. Join us, won’t you?

Until next week,
Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator

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