Building Capacity Through Spiritual Practice

It's been my experience that one of the gating factors for how many clients I have is how many I am capable of seeing: time-wise, energetically, emotionally, physically. My capacity is reflected in my results. If I am energetically drained, I get cancellations, and my phone doesn't ring. When I am filled and replenished, my people all show, and the phone rings.

I have been taught, and experienced more and more, that a way to increase my capacity to see clients is through spiritual practice. While there are many, let me focus on just two for the moment.

Opening to Wisdom - remember that Wisdom comes from Spirit. Open to a greater wisdom than your mind. That you don't need to know everything, and in fact cannot know everything. But in being open to Spirit, things will come out of your mouth that you could not have planned or known. This will usually only come out if you trust it, though. I find more and more that I follow the intuitive flow, and Wisdom comes with greater and greater ease. I remember the opposite - planning sessions, planning interventions & homeworks, self-censoring, thinking a lot in session.

Releasing Clients to Spirit - while we all have to do our due diligence when a client is in crisis, I know sometimes I hold on to responsibility once a client has left the session. I think about them, worry about them, wish I could do more. That can drain me. When I notice this (and I would say this would be good to do every day) I say a prayer recognizing the infinite Love of Spirit, and then releasing my clients into that Love. Knowing that they are held by something bigger than me allows me to let go, and replenish myself. I have my own life to live after all :-)

That's it for this Sunday. Namaste! Your Grateful Guy

New Year - Reviewing the Year

It's almost New Year's Eve! I'm in NY enjoying time away from being a therapist (in fact I am watching the Giants-Patriots game).

I've pulled together a bundle of things to do at the change of year that I'd like to share with you.

First of all is the Year End Review. Whether you had set goals or intentions for the past year or not, you can still do this. For this, I want you to create two lists. The first is Celebration List - this is the goals you've set and achieved (or surpassed); the intentions that were manifested; and the unplanned successes. Take a long minute and drink this list in. Look at what you've done! Toast yourself! Do a victory dance. Plan a nice reward (I always think self-care like a massage, or a nice meal out is a good reward). But definitely feed this back into your mind - YOU DID THESE THINGS. You achieved them.

Now for the next list. What goals didn't you achieve? What intentions didn't manifest? What unplanned issues or problems cropped up over the last year? Write these down. Reflect for a minute. Don't hang your head down, but take an honest assessment. There are probably good reasons for the items on this list. Learn from them. Feed that back into your mind - you can improve so much by learning from where you underperformed.

For the next step, you'll need to be someplace where you can burn something. Yes, you are going to burn both lists. You are going to release them, quite vividly, and leave them where they belong. For they are now in the past. The year is done. Both the good and the bad. It's a clean slate ahead of you. And that clean slate allows you freedom in visioning for 2008. But let's wait for tomorrow for that....

Until then, Your Grateful Guy