Call for Poetry

I am putting out a call for poetry to be posted to this blog.

PLEASE SHARE YOUR STUFF WITH ME

If you (or someone you know) is interested, just send your poem (and a related photo if you like),

to this email: ruby@rubyrenshaw.com

along with any links to more of your work and/or the credits you want me to use.

You can do this as often as you like!!

My goal is to post a poem (preferably with a photo) once a week.

The idea is for me to post a “heart-centered-business-related” post once a week and then follow it up with a poem.

The poem does not have to specifically relate to the current business post, but if ANY thread can be seen, that would be good. Otherwise, in general, anything related to current events, breaking thru illusion, creativity, freedom, manifesting, possibility are great themes (“most used tags” towards the bottom of the sidebar are good themes as well).

Let me know if you have any questions and/or suggestions!

Sincerely, Ruby

Sample

7 Basic Social Media Steps

Here is a practical approach to developing a Social Media Strategy for your business:

#1 Understand the Water you are Putting your Toes Into Set up and start working the basics: Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. Get comfortable, play with your style and core message. Understand and resist the embedded bias in the technologies you are utilizing. Don’t let the water overwhelm you.

#2 Create a Digital Rolodex of Connections When social media is done correctly, relationships will build naturally. Make sure you have an email gathering function working immediately. These are your future customers. Your opportunity to create intimacy begins immediately. When you are ready to offer something to your connections, your rolodex will be flush. Begin by inviting people you know, then follow people who interest you. Follow conversations, subscribe to blogs that interest you. Make a list of influencers relevant to your business and connect with them on FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

#3 Occasionally Educate about your Products and/or Services Yes, occasionally. You don’t want to come across like you are all about promoting yourself. Do start to establish yourself as the go-to in relation to your particular product and/or service by educating. Exhibit that you deserve respect –a necessary ingredient for crossing the boundary between being just a commodity to a valued relationship. Be willing to be educated and share what you learn and who you learned it from. Make sure that links to your website or blog have good information on them so people who want to know more can easily get info.

#4 Create a Game to Play Efficiently systematize how much time and energy you will put into your SM and then have fun with it! Be entertaining AND establish mystery –tell great stories, tap into peoples dreams. Do status updates and tweets based on the image you are holding. This is where you are starting to create leverage with your Social Media.

#5 Hone your Image What is your platform? Now that you have had a little time to play, seriously review your image –what exactly do you want to project about you and your business? Make sure there is CONSISTENCY regarding your formats — begin to establish your brand. Review your basics: Do you need to add any portals? Delete some? Figure out distinctions between personal and biz for both Twitter and Facebook – do you need both? Does it make sense for you to start a group?

#6 Analyze, Adapt, and Improve Metrics You should be able to measure your success. Measures will tie into the goals and objectives of your strategy (more on this at Social Media Examiner).

#7 Focus on Community Radiate love in every Social Media action. Move your brand into the zone of inspiration. Create profound connections between others.

Inspired by Social Media Examiner & Mashable & Seven Key Components

Here is an entertaining video on the Social Media Revolution~ the facts may astound you:

Related Posts: Infatuate Your Customers, Shaman Media Revolution

Poet Post: Joan of Arc by Carol Denson

When I read Ruby’s Eye of the Beholder post, it reminded me of Joan of Arc who acted in accordance with her spiritual vision and led the French to many victories against the occupying English.  If she had only reacted to the material world, she would have known that a 16 year old girl could not influence the course of history.  Instead she acted upon the Divine Guidance of her spiritual vision and created a monumental change in the physical world ~ Carol Denson

Joan of Arc stands in the garden hearing voices call,

but stares away from them, the three angels –

a red-bearded, golden-armored knight,

a flower-wreathed and gauzy-veiled maiden

whose hands are clasped and head canted, gazing

at Joan, and an indistinguishable baby.

Our heroine has risen from a loom,

her stool overturned, her eyes wide

but seeing nothing as she listens into

the space behind her, its unspoken call.

I cry in the Metropolitan Museum

when I come upon this unsuspecting Joan

by Bastien-Lepage.  I’d seen it once

in Paris or Madrid and the circumstance

of finding it again is startling.

Those years ago, heartsick, and now in playful,

happy love, but neither matters, what matters

is the listening and the house behind –

her parents praying for another fate,

their prayers useless against the call.

Follow Carol on Twitter

Why Poetry?

Related Posts

Eye of the Beholder

Always Look for Fresh Rivers

Find the Real World ~ Bexar Update

March of this year I posted the following with a favorite Rumi poem:

Find the real world, give it endlessly away
Grow rich, fling gold to all who ask
Live at the empty heart of Paradox
I’ll dance there with you, cheek to cheek
Your Dawn in me I’m drunk, stammering
A thousand thousand words go dark
Lightnings are dark to us to this:
Identity’s boundless worlds-wide blaze. Why Rumi?

The pic is a photograph of a sculpture made from circuit boards, glue, and paint titled “Lofty” by Bexar Oliver.  My husband and I have commissioned Bexar to do a small sculpture for us –we choose what old electronics to give him and he creates an integrated piece  –cool!

!! UPDATE !!

Bexar’s work, “Lofty” pictured here, has been selected as one of three Houston Arts Month Finalists!! The winner of the Houston Arts Month contest will be featured on the cover of the Official Houston Visitors Guide and a regional newspaper insert distributed to 1 million households.

You can vote for Bexar to win by clicking the link below. Be sure and hit the submit button!!

<http://www.visithoustontexas.com/houston_arts_month_contest_voting>

(You can see the sculpture Bexar did for my husband and I in my Facebook page notes –it really is amazing)

Related Posts:

Infatuate Your Customers

Collective Seeds

 

Jung

Originally uploaded by Mercedes & Greg

I have been interested in Carl Jung’s work for a long time. Like many of us, I was introduced to his work in college, but not at any particular depth (given that my major was accounting; no surprise). Over the years, his work has crossed my radar-screen here and there (given my interest in business & spirituality; no surprise).

Soon I am going to start working with a Jungian Therapist, so I decided it was time to learn more about Jung. I picked up a biography (by Claire Dunne with a forward by Jean Houston) and read in the prelude:

Jung’s work teaches:

- Man needs to become his complete self to live whole.

- God needs man to mirror his creation and help it evolve.

- The whole human being is open to God as co-creator.

I was astounded….these are the seeds of the foundation of the Strategy Stream Program.  I could not, of course, put it so elegantly or succiently, and it is way to lofty to say that the program delivers anything but an aspiration of seeds.  I rarely use the word God, yet….these are the seeds:

- In order to have your business be whole, you must be whole.

- Your business is a gift (from God), caring for and evolving it is your gift back.

- From the whole and complete foundation of your business, you easily access “God” as your co-creative partner.

Maybe Jung was right….there is a collective unconscious that we tap into.

My faith has deepened.

Jung Center Houston

Related Posts:

Deliver Transformative Products & Services

We are all Shamans Sharing Sacred Space

Deliver Transformative Services

Originally uploaded by mpodolak

When you deliver a product or service, you are participating in a shared reality that exists between you and your customers. There is an intimate agreement about the shared reality. There is trust and communication about the mutual benefits of your interchange. This is communion; a sharing of spirit.

Within the space of communion, there is a natural evolution that is set in motion. It is a given that this evolution is a growth process for both you and your customers. Consider approaching the development and delivery of your products and services with a conscious commitment to evoke evolution and transformation.

Any evolution is a process; a growth pattern. You set the evolution in motion by fulfilling a specific need or desire for your customer. From that point forward, you are in a unique position to evoke evolution. When you evoke, you go beyond simply participating in the reality between you and your customer, to deeply influencing (impressing) upon the reality.

In order to evoke vs. participate, add an element to each and every one of your products & services that meets not only the immediate desire of your customer, but a “higher desire” as well. Always reflect back to your customer a vision of their highest self. For example, if you are selling “A” laptops, delivering it with the clear message that your customer has everything to do with why this laptop is so fantastic, meets a higher-desire recognition that “A” laptop users are smart and savvy. When your “A” laptop customer configures their laptop, invite them to join an on-line community of smart and savvy “A” laptop users. These higher desire attributes impress upon the growth pattern of evolution –deepening the relationship with your customer, as well as evoking qualities of co-creation, self-esteem and community.

Think of your products & services as an invitation to an intimate interchange with your customer vs. an exchange –this is the access to communion. An interchange is spirit-to-spirit vs. an ego-to-ego exchange. If you choose to hold and maintain the interchange of communion with sacred gloves, you impress upon the evolution implicit in communion. Impressing with loving consciousness is the opportunity to influence the highest evolution for business, the planet, and humanity.

Read more about how to deliver transformative services in the eBook Becoming a Source of Good

Related Posts:

Make Love to the World with Your Strategy

Infatuate Your Customers

Face Your Brilliant Creation

We are all Shamans Sharing Sacred Space

Originally posted 8/2009 ~In order to heal, Shamans routinely permeate boundaries; boundaries of mind and body, boundaries between consciousness and sub-consciousness, space and time, people and circumstances, humans and nature, and between matter and spirit.

Shamans show us that what we experience as our separate self is illusionary – they teach us to give birth to a truer sense of who we are and to recognize our connection to all things.  When we recognize our interconnectedness, we make business decisions from a holistic vs a compartmentalized view.

On the world stage, we are going through a collective shamanic healing process, a genuine death/rebirth experience. As Paul Levy, writes “our species and its civilization are currently in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown. If what we as a species, are doing to ourselves (destroying the biosphere, the very life-support system of the planet, to use one example) isn’t collective madness, then what in the world is? Our underlying institutionalized and incorporated structures that are helping to keep us asleep are breaking down and coming apart. The false, illusory separate self, which experiences ourselves as alien from one another is dying as is the fundamental framework by which we relate to each other and the world. As we recreate ourselves we awaken to our deep interconnection and interdependence with each other and all living beings.”

Interconnection and interdependence awakening are transcendent boundary breakers. Recreating ourselves and redesigning business frameworks from this expanded space is exciting…..and challenging. Relying on our innate Shamanic abilities such as going within, deep listening and relying on intuition will assist us in meeting the challenge. As awakening evolves, we come to recognize that we are all Shamans sharing sacred space. (Edited post from August 2009)

Pic originally uploaded by escher…

List of Services

Related Posts:

Ten Principles for Shifting Business as Usual

Back to the Core

Secret to Biz Success is On-Line Community

Originally uploaded by NaPix — Hmong Soul

Fundamentally, community to me means hanging out with people who like me and I like them. Naturally, you know what one another does for a living and, if appropriate, refer and suggest and help out each other.

Thanks to the internet we have offline, as well as access to online global community. I agree with Glen Stansberry, cofounder of LifeRemix blog network, that the secret to being a successful entrepreneur is: understanding you need community – yes, and I would take it a step further and say that these days we NEED on-line community. Following is a summary of his recent post on awake@thewheel.

You need help from other people. People who will challenge you and lend you a hand when needed. People who will expand your horizons with their expertise or particular walks of life. Thanks to this thing called The Internet, you can find people and groups to help you in almost any field and variety.

Forums, Google groups, open source projects… there are literally limitless options for finding a community.

Community helps us fill in those little cracks in our life that we can’t fill ourselves.

I dare you to find a successful person that did it “all on their own”. Everyone (yes, even Steve Jobs) has had people in their lives that bring the best out of them, both professionally and personally. Finding and surrounding yourself with these people is going to be critical to your success.

Community also gives us a chance to give

There’s nothing better than receiving and giving. It’s important to note that asking for help is just as important as giving. Oftentimes people feel like they’re being a burden by asking for help. But other people need a way to give back their talents and resources too.

So if you really want to skyrocket your career, find a community to be a part of.

If you can’t find one, then start one within your niche. (All you have to do is ask.) There’s always something you can provide. If anything, you can be encouraging and supportive. (Sometimes the thing a community needs most is more cheerleaders.) The important thing is to just get involved. No man (or woman) is an island.

To read Glen’s original post in entirety

Join Strategy Stream on Facebook !! we are just getting started and would love to see you there !!

Related Posts:

Deliver Transformative Products & Services

Shaman Media Revolution

Deliver Transformative Products & Services

Originally uploaded by ~Mina~

When you deliver a product or service, you are participating in a shared reality that exists between you and your customers. There is an intimate agreement about the shared reality.  There is trust and communication about the mutual benefits of your interchange.  This is communion; a sharing of spirit.

Within the space of communion, there is a natural evolution that is set in motion. It is a given that this evolution is a growth process for both you and your customers. Consider approaching the development and delivery of your products and services with a conscious commitment to evoke evolution and transformation.

Any evolution is a process; a growth pattern. You set the evolution in motion by fulfilling a specific need or desire for your customer. From that point forward, you are in a unique position to evoke evolution. When you evoke, you go beyond simply participating in the reality between you and your customer, to deeply influencing (impressing) upon the reality.

In order to evoke vs. participate, add an element to each and every one of your products & services that meets not only the immediate desire of your customer, but a “higher desire” as well.  Always reflect back to your customer a vision of their highest self.  For example, if you are selling “A” laptops, delivering it with the clear message that your customer has everything to do with why this laptop is so fantastic, meets a higher-desire recognition that “A” laptop users are smart and savvy. When your “A” laptop customer configures their laptop, invite them to join an on-line community of smart and savvy “A” laptop users. These higher desire attributes impress upon the growth pattern of evolution –deepening the relationship with your customer, as well as evoking qualities of co-creation, self-esteem and community.

Think of your products & services as an invitation to an intimate interchange with your customer vs. an exchange –this is the access to communion. An interchange is spirit-to-spirit vs. an ego-to-ego exchange.  If you choose to hold and maintain the interchange of communion with sacred gloves, you impress upon the evolution implicit in communion. Impressing with loving consciousness is the opportunity to influence the highest evolution for business, the planet, and humanity.

Read more about how to deliver transformative products and services in the eBook Becoming a Source of Good

Related Posts:

Make Love to the World with Your Strategy

Infatuate Your Customers

Face Your Brilliant Creation

Shaman Media Revolution

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” ~Rumi

A great blog post by Rick DiBiaso (formally the Affluent Artist) on the book Socialnomics, by Eric Qualman inspired me to consider social media as a strong thread that is weaving Business & Spirituality together.

 

Did you know that the Social Media Revolution is the largest revolution since the Industrial Revolution?  The democratization of media led by blogs, Facebook, and Twitter has leveled and expanded the marketplace playing field.  Big advertising budgets no longer rule the world.  Real people, connected across the globe as never before, control the conversation in real time.

From a Shaman’s point of view, being real (authentic, unveiled) and connected are fundamental spiritual practices. Shamans show us that what we experience as our separate self is illusionary – they teach us to give birth to a truer sense of who we are and to recognize our connection to all things.  The current media revolution is all about experiencing connectivity and demonstrating authenticity.

Referring back to Rick DiBiasio‘s post, the main message I got is that if you are trying to build a business, any business – forget Email blasts, forget web sites, forget banner ads – you don’t need an ad campaign.  You not only can, but must, use social media to find your customers and give them what they want  ——- AFTER they get to know you through social media — THEN pay really close attention to how you treat them.

Being real and authentically connected matters – social media forces us to practice being in the NOW and to profoundly pay attention.  Being cognizant of the power of social media to make or break you in real time should be an ongoing practice – a dissatisfied customer can negatively saturate your market fast —–on the flip-side well-networked “fans” can exponentially increase sales. The more we understand our connection to all things (our authentic selves, to each other, to nature) and how our actions immediately generate impact, the truer and brighter we will shine in the marketplace.

Here is an entertaining video on the Social Media Revolution~ the facts may astound you:

Related Posts: Infatuate Your Customers, Secret to Biz Success is On-Line Community