Work that Works
Sustaining your business is as easy as tapping into your own energy.
by James Wanless, Ph.D.

Work that works is not fundamentally about money, inventory, economy, or customers. The most important product in your store and in your work is you! When you are passionate, engaged, and knowledgeable, you are “it.” You are the business. It’s about your motivation and contagious enthusiasm to serve and succeed.

The real bottom line in business is your energy, and with enough energy, anything is possible. When you’re energized, you can stay the course and go the distance. With energy, you are naturally resourceful, creative, and resilient.
In these challenging times, the single most important thing you can do is re-energize, which is your ability to restore, renew, and restart yourself. Today’s Holy Grail is self-sustainability—the ability to keep moving, creating, adapting, and growing. This demands that you “re” yourself and your business. At no time in human history have we had to relearn so much on the job about how to work and rework. If you can’t “re,” you can’t go on. This means the skill to repeat, which results when you release, reduce, retreat, recover, recycle, refocus, repurpose, reignite, rekindle, reinvent, rebuild, rebirth, redo.

An important “re” is recharging yourself. Part of your business agenda must be dedicated to finding and doing the things that keep you turned on. Personal-business sustainability is not your high intelligence, your great reputation, or your vast experience. It’s how energized you are now.

Energize yourself
How do you energize? It’s not rocket science—and it’s not caffeine or pills. It’s the universal alchemy of synergy. This means to simultaneously conserve and spark your mind, heart, body, and spirit.

No thinking
Thinking is way overrated and counterproductive. In fact, according to neuroscience studies, most of our body’s metabolism is spent in the brain, on thinking. Thinking and thinking something through does not even begin to guarantee success in today’s rapidly changing world. Analyzing is slow, paralytic, and depleting. The mentally smart “ethos of strategic thinking” is artifice—tiring and even toxic because of the kind of doubt and negativity it produces. Trust the intuitive impulse, the little feeling that moves you. That’s your natural genius and best decision-maker, though we’ve been taught to not believe in it despite recent study after study. Intuitive impulse is your answer and way. When you go with the continuous flow of impulses, you are in the flow of energetic living—moving effortlessly, joyously, and correctly. Now, that is efficiency. Butterflies and bees don’t move in a straight line of logic, but from here to there, unpredictably, spontaneously, and effectively, again and again. Powered by impulse, you will have the energy to move on and on until you find the honey.

Naturally yours
Trust the way of nature and your own nature. As a natural being, you are an instinctive creature that pulses with the beat of one intuition after another. Lose your education about acting rationally. Nature is the model of success and sustainability. All we have to do is focus on what our heart wants—pay attention to the emotion, which puts us in motion and keeps us going. Following the “feel-good” energy is how nature operates.

Of course, mistakes will be made (not every flower has pollen for the bee), but the quicker you get to failure, the swifter you adapt and reach success. The mantra for now is “fire, ready, aim.” Cast your seeds and see which ones grow. Who knows?

Manifest success
To stay energized, keep surfing the waves of impulse and perform this magic ritual for success, which is an inner process to motivate and re-motivate yourself.
1. Close your eyes.
2. Imagine yourself being successful in your work.
3. Feel the success in your heart and body.
4. Affirm to yourself that you are creating success.
5. Invoke the great spirit for help.
6. Take action.

Do this simple meditation often. This mental/emotional/physical/ spiritual practice is synergistic, an alchemical transaction that begins within yourself. Success is an inside job. What about your body, the physical container of emotion, intuition, knowledge, and spirit? Just as a defective wire cannot carry and transmit energy, a worn-out body limits your effectiveness. To be metaphysical, you must be physical. What to do? Eat less, eat better, go outdoors into natural light, breathe real air, and move.

Go natural
When it comes to exercise, go natural—no gym, no stationary bike, no trainer, no drink powders. What has changed my life this past year and a half has been the extraordinary effect of going for a swift walk in nature several times a week while breathing strongly. No special breathing technique aside from that, no going by the watch, no mileage counting. What happens is that with the intake of oxygen, you grow new brain cells, your brain gets younger, your body is rejuvenated, and you prevent unhealthy aging. This is empirically and scientifically true, and I personally attest to its veracity. Going natural is cheap, easy, and simple: Just do it!

I add from my own experience that if you don’t enjoy this aerobic walk, you are not getting it. When you break out in a smile, you have discovered the fitness secret. Moreover, you tap the wellspring of creative inspiration. In your exhilarating walk of respiration, you get inspiration! Your best ideas come from spirit, and its swiftest introduction into you is through “prana,” the Hindu word for breath and spirit as one. To find out what to do for your business, walk and breathe in fresh ideas. Don’t think and judge. Act on the ideas you get.

Even at your desk, don’t just sit there. Do something—anything! As beings of nature, we thrive on doing, not thinking about doing. How can we tell if our actions will be successful until we try them? Making any kind of change is the flow of nature; change is the only constant we know in the universe. In the doing, change happens.

So do something new in your life or business that excites you. Ride that impulse to the next change. If you love your work enough, you will succeed. With a work ethic of passion, you can sacrifice, work hard, keep going, survive, and sustain.


James Wanless, Ph.D., is a futurist, consultant, speaker, and author of the best-selling Voyager Tarot, Intuition@Work, and the forthcoming Green Wisdom Cards and Greening You! book. Visit him at www.jameswanless.info, www.voyagertarot.com, and www.greenwisdomcards.com.