Are you open for business?  For wealth, good health, or quality relationships?  “Of course I am”, you will answer to the question.  But are you really open?

What is ‘open’? How can I be more open to receive more of what I want?  This article is about being open for all types of business: the business of being a good employee,  employer or successful entrepreneur ; or the business of life, love, joy and enthusiasm.

“Am I open?” is a question I’ve been asking myself often.  “Fully, completely open?” What I’ve learned is that this is an inner energy, not an outer action.  To be open means not to be closed.  When we’re open, energy can freely flow in and out of us.  We feel expanded, enthusiastic, clear, prosperous, energetic, valuable, and worthy—and the emotions that these high-vibration adjectives create.  To be closed means to be blocked someplace deep inside; to feel constricted, tight, negative, stuck or depressed; to close your mind and your heart to something that is stirring up bad feelings.

We close ourselves off for protection.  Our fear and insecurities from past experiences makes us want to curl up in some restrictive place inside, rather than to stay open.  The problem is that we can’t be open to receiving an inflow of energy, and yet closed at the same time.  There is a great collision going on within us when our mind wants to be open, and our heart is working to keep old emotions and feelings pushed down inside.

Imagine you are an entrepreneur, and you’re asked to give a presentation about your area of expertise during a conference.  You remember your primary school public speaking assignment and feel your past fear of standing in front of the class, trying to deliver a memorized talk, but forgetting the words and feeling humiliated.  So being presented with this new opportunity many years later, you begin to close up, thinking that you hate public speaking. Instead of remaining open to the potential you have to share your expertise, and putting in the preparation and practice time that you need to build your confidence, you’re letting the stored energy of what happened 20 years ago block your prosperity today. You’re closed for business.

Now imagine that you are an employee, and you’ve been yelled at or treated poorly by a customer in your past, so a part of you is closed off to protect yourself from ever experiencing that pain and embarrassment again.  So you choose not to work in the ‘line of fire’ dealing directly with customers, even though so many of them are awesome and they need your service.  Perhaps you stay somewhat closed by wanting to privately listen to music as you work, or by finding some mind-numbing way to cope with the tasks of your day. Perhaps you hide in a ‘behind-the-scenes’ department because you feel you are better suited to work under those conditions. You’re closing yourself off to giving and receiving your full potential.  These days, your employer needs your full potential, and you deserve fullness too.

Finally, imagine yourself as a recently promoted manager who now has authority over their previous colleagues. Somewhere inside, you feel a sense of not being completely worthy of the position.  When a difficult situation triggers those feelings of self-doubt, you act out with defensive behaviour.  Although you want to feel worthy of the position, you are snagged on feelings of inadequacy from somewhere in your past, so you close yourself off to the opportunity to notice that there is a disturbance or a block in your energy.

This idea of ‘staying open for business’ will show up in many places of your life if you simply become aware of where you are open, flowing, floating and moving along, versus where you are closed, stuck, restricted, hurting and frustrated.

Hopefully you had an opportunity to read my previous article earlier this summer about fishing—the high risk of getting snagged, and the importance of going back and freeing yourself from the snag in order to move forward efficiently.  Staying open for business is a metaphor, then, for realizing what is getting you ‘caught up’ or tangled in your process of flowing, and then detaching from your own inner issues and past experiences.

You stay open by noticing patterns in times when you typically close.  By noticing, you become aware of your behaviour.  With this awareness, you can make a different choice.  You can feel the feelings, relax, breathe, and release them.  In your state of being and with these feelings, you are allowing the situation to take place.  You can honour it, respect it, and just let it be exactly what it is.  For the entrepreneur, it’s to relax into the idea of preparing for and delivering an effective presentation. For the previously abused employee, it may be to go back in time to revisit the pain and humility felt, and to just let that experience go.  It is not you; it’s only what happened once, so long ago.  For the new manager, it’s noticing what disturbs their confidence, and letting that thing go so they can be more supportive in their role.

It takes more energy to be closed than it does to stay open. Stay open to allow an unlimited inward energy flow, one that fills you until it begins to overflow outward.   Don’t ever close. You will attract everything you’ve ever wanted when you stay open.  Stay open to change, growth, opportunity, feedback, initiative, learning, feeling, being … just stay open.  I’m here for you if you ever need help.

Read more about Opening the Soul for Business, and the inspiration for this article.

Yours in service, and always intending to be open for business,