Fun with Caterpillars

This morning on the way back from a walk, my son spotted a fat green caterpillar slowly making its way across the sidewalk.

I rarely see caterpillars and this one was really cool looking with a little horn.

So I scooped it up and brought it home with us. I then created a little habitat for it using mulch, a stick and some leaves (a quick search on Bing showed our caterpillar is a Lettered Sphinx moth which likes to eat grape and Virginia Creeper leaves).

I’ve put it on my desk to watch it do its thing.

Be cool if it spins a cacoon.

Happy St. Patty’s Day

Connecting with the Hearts of My Customers

One issue that has recently come up for me is around being a member of the “No One Responds to My Offers Club.” I don’t think any of the members really want to be in this club, but there are quite a few of us.

I’m a good writer and writing a decent offer isn’t particularly hard for me. Still, it kind of sucks when I create a class, send an offer and get hardly any responses.

I wondered to myself, “hmm, how am I seeing my customers, and how would I want to be seen if I were a customer?”

I’ve typically seen prospects subscribing to my ezine as:

• Critical, looking for results “right now”
• Judging me as not being “enough” to really be buying anything from me
• Inscrutable – there’s a secret word or code that, if I can figure it out, they’ll click through, otherwise, they’ll keep me guessing.

Hmm. Not exactly ingrediants for a very successful relationship.

So I’ve been considering shifting gears.

One shift in perspective is around, “how can I support and service my customers?”

This shift has been helpful because it takes the focus off of me (How can I get them to do this) and puts the focus back on them and on value.

Talking with my colleague, Hiro Boga, made me aware of another shift that needs to happen: connecting with the hearts of my customers.

This shift goes deeper because until people feel safe enough, they won’t come close enough to allow you to offer value.

So, how to go about enabling this shift?

Much of it is simply being aware of my own fears and vulnerabilities and making space for them. Doing this enables my customers to feel safer to bring their own vulnerabilities to me so they can get the support they need.

Stepping in too quickly as an expert intimidates prospective clients.

The question I have at this point is simply, how can I get myself back into this space. How can I get reconnected with the hearts of my customers?

I guess desire is the first step.

You are Everything and You are Nothing

Passage read today in Music of the Soul. Took a little processing for this to make sense to me. It seems impossible to be both.Yet from an intuitive place it makes a lot of sense. My heart understands this to mean with God, we are everything. Without God we are nothing.

I was reading an article, later watching a short newscast about Bernie Madoff, the guy who created hundreds of cascading Ponzi schemes that thousands of people including large national banks invested into. It was fascinating to read about it because it brings up so many questions:

• Why did Madoff do it to begin with? He had genuine talent and intelligence and had already made millions through legal activities.
• Why did investors fall for his schemes. The majority were not stupid people. Many were supposedly sophisticated investors.
• What does this say about human beings in general?

I think so much of this has to do with our fundamental state of neediness. We live in a time that allows us to be more self-sufficient than anytime in human history. We have jobs that allow us to get all of our necessities, if we need to do something we can’t do ourselves, we can hire someone else, we can stay in our house and be entertained, have companionship, etc.

But it means we rarely need to reach out and say “Help, I can’t do this myself.” But one need that can’t get met no matter how much power and money we have is the need for connection with God. Or at least with something that is clearly larger than ourselves.

When I (really anyone) tries to get this need met through money, through power, through human connection, they fail. And our egos tells us we just need to try harder and get more. But you can never get enough. It’s futile.

The Sufis say we get this need met by coming to God with complete humility. To say “only You Beloved can reach my heart and give it what it yearns for.”

In the world, it plays out over and over: wanting to feel like we matter through everything except by doing the one thing that will take care of that need.

The last thing I want to do is to make it sound like I have this down pat. I’m human and I think by nature I have to constantly make the decision to bring myself to the Divine rather than to do it on my own, to even think another person can do it for me.

Fun Inventory for week of 6/11/07

Some things I did that were fun last week:

• Bought the book, Hannibal Rising on impulse when I was getting groceries. Not as good as Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal but still pretty good. The parts I’m enjoying most are the descriptions of Hannibal’s Japanese stepmother. I don’t know much about Japanese culture and I’m fascinated by how intentional she is about bringing moments of simple beauty into her everyday world. When she sends notes she adds a flower blossom or a sprig of pussy willow. What would my life be like if I and the people I know do things like that?
• My husband and son are back from their week in Chicago. As I requested, my husband bought me a box of Fannie May chocolates. I love Fannie May chocolate. When I lived in Chicago, there were a lot of Fannie May stores and I could buy their chocolates any time I wanted to. They’ve had the same recipes for decades and although they don’t create chocolates that are in fashion now: super high percentages of cocoa and exotic European shaped chocolates, Fannie May chocolates are very good and remain a simple pleasure.
• For Father’s Day I bought brownies, vanilla ice cream, and fresh raspberries. We had this for dessert. Another simple but very enjoyable pleasure.