When You Mean Business
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Industry
“The last thing the consumer index wants men and women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The $1.5 trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and is fueled by sexual dissatisfaction. Ads do not sell sex--that would be counterproductive, if it meant that heterosexual women and men turned to one another and were gratified. What they sell is sexual discontent.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Beautiful
“She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Yes
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. Joseph Campbell
Yes
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. Joseph Campbell
The Wise Woman's Stone
A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman."I've been thinking," he said, "I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone." —Author Unknown, "The Wise Woman's Stone"
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Right Before Him
“Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Right Before Him
“Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
A Beautiful Thing to Behold
“You could see the signs of female aging as diseased, especially if you had a vested interest in making women too see them your way. Or you could see that a woman is healthy if she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of 'serious lesions' or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. The skin loosens on her face and throat, giving her features a setting of sensual dignity; her features grow stronger as she does. She has looked around in her life and it shows. When gray and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret or you could call it silver or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.” Naomi Wolf
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Nature's Job
In accordance with the various levels of how we experience our reality: Connection, Influence, Service, Resource, Creations, Currency and your Story, nature’s job is to mirror the same patterns as reflected in all levels of the cosmos – the macrocosm to the microcosm so we see ourselves in the one and the many.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Changing A Man
The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby. Natalie Wood
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Aim of Art
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The Mirror - from the Secret of the Rose Garden
Your eye has not strength enough to gaze at the burning sun, but you can see its burning light by watching its reflection mirrored in the water.
So the reflection of Absolute Being can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being, for nonexistence, being opposite Reality, instantly catches its reflection.
Know the world from end to end is a mirror; in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water, from it will flow a hundred clear oceans; if you look intently at each speck of dust, in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant; in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests. Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small, yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.
Mahmud Shabistari
Changing A Man
The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby. Natalie Wood
Infinite
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. Albert Einstein
Nature's Job
In accordance with the various levels of how we experience our reality: Connection, Influence, Service, Resource, Creations, Currency and your Story, nature’s job is to mirror the same patterns as reflected in all levels of the cosmos – the macrocosm to the microcosm so we see ourselves in the one and the many.
Aim of Art
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
Dignity and Grace
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. Aristotle
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Your Next Step
As published in Inner Self Magazine Issue 26 page 15.
I went into a shopping centre on the same day that the share market crashed and the London riots hit their peak. I had my pick of the best car parks and probably encountered no more than three people and a dog. Where was everyone? The few harried people I saw in the fruit market gingerly selected a few items and looked exhausted and beaten. It felt like the whole world had gone mad. The relentless Print, Radio, TV, Online and Social Media feeding of shock, fear and horror took its toll locally.
"As humans have moved into totally artificial environments, our direct contact with knowledge of the planet has been snapped. Disconnected, like astronauts floating in space, we cannot know up from down or truth from fiction. Conditions are appropriate for the implantation of arbitrary realities. Television is one recent example of this, a serious one, since it greatly accelerates the problem.." Jerry Mander.
Watching renditions of life on a screen whether television, movie, laptop or IPhone is one way to mediate an experience we haven’t actually experienced. The experience may be true or may be one that has been created and portrayed by actors to pretend that the experience is true. The bottom line is that for the majority of us, we ourselves did NOT experience it whether real or not. We merely witnessed a version of it on a screen - packaged up by a third party whose business it is to inspire us enough with elements in this experience to consume or declare a need for a product or service. This medium is very clever and highly effective in its mission.
In business, this medium is one of the most important tools available. In a variety of mediums, we craft advertisements for our target market and offer renditions of life that would stimulate interest in what we are selling. In our daily lives, we humans also each utilise this same method when we tap into our imagination or memory and retell a story to elicit a particular emotion or response. So it is easy to acknowledge the wealth of this methodology and its many benefits.
In this tsunami of change we call 2011; we have been flooded at every turn with news of disaster, chaos, violence and loss. A type of mob madness, initiated by perceptions of fear, was responsible for both the August global market crash and UK riots. What we see presented to us via the media is not OUR truth but one version of someone’s story. Yet millions of people across the globe sustained direct or indirect losses as a result of these perceptions of fear.
At times it certainly feels like we have no control of our lives and of our businesses. We have two options however. We can either expend our energy protesting and blaming OR we can capitalise on these events as an opportunity to leverage change inside of our lives and businesses. We can create our OWN experience by how we measure these stories, the benefits and drawbacks, how we take stock of all perspectives and create our own opportunity for transformation.
Let’s review the present business environment. Retail sales are down, people are saving instead of spending, and funding and lending is limited. So if you have a small business you may now be experiencing a lack lustre financial return at the moment. You may be feeling concerned and looking for ways to attract new business.
So while it’s quiet, start taking stock. You’ve got time to get your Rs into gear – Review, Retrain, Redevelop, Recycle, Reuse, Reduce, Repair and Renew. An appreciation of the incredible resource that is our earth will remind you how money is actually worthless without an appreciation of the wealth in your life. Acknowledge that your story, your belief structure, your body, your mind and your soul are part of the earth, part of the tides, the natural rhythms, the planets and the elements. Align the values of the earth with family, community, work and your own. Appreciate what you have as it is right now. To appreciate is to effectively apply structures and strategies to manage your Resource, Time, Energy, Enterprise and Finances.
Review yourself. Why are you in business and not employed by someone else? Why this industry? Why this product or service? If you had the opportunity would you do something else? What does that look like? Could you utilise the skills you have developed up until this point in a new enterprise? What is it that you do right now that would serve a need in this present time of uncertainty, global chaos and fear? There is a story behind all your answers that is unique to you and can be used as an asset in your business.
We have no control over global share markets, finance and consumer sectors and mob madness. However we can achieve liberty from the madness and create our own perception of wealth in business by appreciating nature in all its forms – the structure of the earth, the behaviour of humans in share market crashes and rioting on the streets as well as the abundance of survival strategies that we have collected with the nature of how we all tell our little stories colouring perception like painting by numbers.
| Column Name | What’s Your Story? |
| Article Name | Your Next Step |
| Author | Nichola Burton |
| Date | 11 August 2011 |
| Words | 885 |
| Topic | Business |
Monday, October 3, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Quietly working in the background
A series of coordinated physiological processes maintain most of the steady states in the organism that is our body. This complex condition sees the brain and nerves, the heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen, all working cooperatively where required. This same process happens in Nature, the Global Financial Markets, our relationships, Business – indeed in every structure in this holographic co existence. When we judge a problem, or label a crisis, we simply do not appreciate or value the Homeostatic process quietly working in the background.
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