The Soul of Success Vol. 2 • September 9, 2005

The Soul of Success On-Line Community for Women Welcomes You!

Thank you for joining us for this second issue of The Soul of Success e-newsletter. If you missed the first, you can find it on our web site at:

http://thesoulofsuccess.com/newsletter/2005_08_18.html

Also on our web site:

• Win a free copy of The Soul of Success: A Woman’s Guide to Authentic Power, the book that started this site.
• Take a Self-Assessment Quiz to help you evaluate your own soul of success
• Share your thoughts with others
• Find valuable resources from women helping women.

Please visit us at http://www.thesoulofsuccess.com.

In this Newsletter:

• A Message from Founder Jennifer Read Hawthorne
• Feature Article: The Power of Intention
• Today’s Tip
• Q&A
• Next Issue: The Power of Self-Love
• Contact Us

For more information, please visit us on-line at thesoulofsuccess.com and jenniferhawthorne.com

Message from Founder Jennifer Read Hawthorne

Anyone who studies success has been schooled in the power and necessity of goal-setting to achieve just about anything. And goal-setting can be great! But we sell ourselves short when we rely only on this mental, masculine (in its nature), outer-directed approach to success.

To add the feminine nature of success, we must look at intention. In fact, the difference between a goal and an intention can be summarized in one word: Heart.

A goal is something we make up, something our minds produce to measure achievement. But intention is subtler than a goal.

While goals are important and useful in helping us getting from point A to point B, intention comes from the heart and is truer to who we are. In fact, when a goal is based on intention, it is more likely to come to fruition.

The following Feature Article shows the power of clearly knowing what motivates us. Thank you so much for joining me this week!

Feature Article: The Power of Intention
by Jennifer Read Hawthorne

I was fried. I had once loved my job leading business-writing seminars. But after too many days standing in front of corporate managers from 8:00 to 5:00, entertaining them, educating them and practically willing them to write better—well, it had gotten old. And the luxury of room-service had long been overshadowed by an aching desire to sleep in my own bed. It was definitely time for a change.

I had learned through study and personal experience that if you want to do something great, you have to start with a clear intention. So I sat down one day with paper and pen at hand, closed my eyes, and asked myself what I really wanted to do with my life. The answer came easily and quickly: I wanted to speak—not about how to write a better business letter, but how to live a better life. I wrote down my intention: to start speaking to audiences about how to create the life we want. I then began designing the flyer that would describe my first presentation, “Women, Power and Happiness.”

When my friend and colleague Marci Shimoff saw the flyer on my desk a couple of weeks later, she practically shouted, “I’ve been wanting to start a speaking business for the past four years!” And our speaking partnership, which we called The Esteem Group, was born.

The first thing we did was to write down our intention: “to help women understand and experience their inner power and self-worth, so they can create and live their own vision.”

We began building our speaking business, specializing in women’s self-esteem programs. When our friend Jack Canfield’s book Chicken Soup for the Soul became a national best seller that year, we immediately got his permission to share stories from it with our audiences.

It turned out to be a powerful combination: women and Chicken Soup. We approached Jack with the idea of co-editing a volume for women. He thought it sounded like a good idea—and then we all got busy and let it drop.

But Marci and I kept getting clearer about our intention. With our vision clearly in mind and heart, we flew to Los Anbgeles to meet with Jack and told him we wanted to touch the hearts of women around the world through a Chicken Soup for the Soul book just for them. When Jack asked us why he should let us do the project, we looked at each other, speechless. We hadn’t prepared a thing to say!

Then, all of a sudden, the words started pouring out: We both taught business writing and understood the principles of good writing; I had majored in journalism; we understood the “Chicken Soup” genre because we’d been using stories in our public presentations; we were connected with women through our business and felt we understood what women were hungry for; the women’s market was huge; and finally, Jack and his co-author, Mark Victor Hansen. couldn’t co-author a book for women without women co-authors!

Jack said yes, and sixteen months later, Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul became a reality. Within two months, it hit Number 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. A million copies had been sold.

We were deluged with letters from women around the globe telling us how our book had affected their lives. Estranged mothers and daughters were reconciled; abused women found the courage to get help, women changed careers, adopted babies, confronted their boss, their illness, their fears, their mother-in-law. We toured all over the country, speaking and signing books, and everywhere women shared their stories with us. Marci and I wept with them, cheered with them, and most days felt we were the luckiest women alive.

I still feel that way! I have learned that when intention comes from the heart and is coupled with the willingness to work, miracles can happen. We may not know how it’s going to happen, but we don’t need to. We just need to be awake to opportunities and willing to show up and do what’s needed.

Adapted from The Soul of Success: A Woman’s Guide to Authentic Power, Health Communications, Inc., copyright 2005 Jennifer Read Hawthorne.

Today’s Tip

If you’re having trouble achieving one of your goals, it may be because your goal doesn’t line up with what your heart wants in life. Look at your goal, then reflect for a moment on the deeper, underlying desire that led you to set that goal. An example might be a realtor who has set a goal to sell $200,000 worth of real estate in the next quarter. The deeper intention behind the goal might be to serve others by helping them find the perfect home.

Remember: When what you do on the outside lines up with who you are on the inside, you are bound to experience true success. If you’re not experiencing the level or the kind of success you’re looking for, take a few moments to sit and ask yourself (you may want to close your eyes): What do I really want?

The answer may surprise you! But the only surprise you’ll have if you listen to your heart and follow its whispers is the beauty of life well lived.

Q&A

Last issue’s question: What does balance look like to you?

In response to this question, some readers wrote about the struggle of finding balance when you’re a single mother working and raising children. My heart goes out to all the women—and men—whose efforts center around putting food on the table while trying to instill values in their children and keeping their own heads above water. Personal growth and the search for happiness don’t really come into play when you’re in survival mode.

If you are in such a situation, I’d like to share one thing that saved my life in a particularly dark time. Each night as you are falling asleep, see if you can come up with five things that happened during the day that you are grateful for. This will become your light in the dark, and the more you focus on what you already have to be grateful for, the more you will have to be grateful for. The law is: Light attracts light. Blessings on you all.

Next issue: Give an example of goal-setting that worked for you. What was the underlying intention?

Send your 100-word answer to: jennifer@jenniferhawthorne.com. I’ll share and discuss your answers in the next e-newsletter.

Next Issue: The Power of Self-Love

Self-esteem is the single most critical factor in human performance, affecting every single area of our lives. But we are only just beginning to understand the power of our attitude towards ourselves. In the next newsletter, we’ll talk about what self-love really means—and how two women used self-love to cure cancer.

Contact Us

Your feedback is always greatly appreciated. Please e-mail us at info@jenniferhawthorne.com

The Soul of Success is a free bi-weekly e-newsletter published by Jennifer Read Hawthorne, copyright 2005.

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