Get your copy of “Your Baby in Pictures” today locally or online. Just follow a link below!
Get your copy of “Your Baby in Pictures” today locally or online. Just follow a link below!
Happy Monday!
I’m so excited for Karen Buckley of Wisdom Connection to bring you our second SOAR! Business Coaching Exercise! Today’s assignment invites you to dive deep and uncover the confidence within. We may not have confidence for our current dreams and visions, and yet we do have confidence already within us to draw from. So how do we access it and bring it to use with our photography dreams? Keep reading!
xoxo,
m
__________________________
Greetings! This is Karen Buckley, one of the SOAR! Business Coaches from The Wisdom Connection! Since this week will evolve into the first week of March, we are going to start today off with our second Business Coaching exercise! And what better way to start the exercise than asking you provocative questions?! I love provocative questions!
Here’s a mini-assessment for you today:
On a scale of 1-5 (with 1 being low) how much do you:
Think of yourself as a businesswoman?
Question your “right” to be even more successful?
Dismiss your best ideas before you even get started on them?
Consider your self the “author” of your own life?
If you are 5’s all the way – you go! If, like most of us, you range from 1’s to 5’s, its time for some inside-out business development skills. This month we are excited to share with you three of our favorite tips and tricks for feeling more confident and ready for success every day.
#1 – Find out where you feel confident in your life and apply it to other areas.
One of our coaching clients felt stuck. An invitation to speak at a professional meeting terrified her. We discovered that she felt really sure of her self in the kitchen. No qualms, no self-questioning, no judgments. Preparing a meal she took risks, concocted creative combos of smells and tastes and served with a flourish.
We developed an exercise to start her workday: Sit for 1 minute, close your eyes, and remember how confident you feel in the kitchen. Feel how you move when you cook. Feel this in your arms, your legs, your trunk, and especially your throat.
Every day she set a timer for 1 full minute of this meditation. Before she went up on stage, she put on her apron in her mind and sashayed up the stairs to give a fantastic talk – it felt easy!
How about you? Where do you feel confident and how can you grow that good feeling every day until it blossoms.
#2 – Give your self an assignment the night before. We all get shaky some times! Think of one thing you can do in the morning that will give you a boost.
No kidding, when I started my coaching business (way too long ago to count) I sat in our little apartment completely miserable trying to figure out how to do get clients. The kitchen sure was clean though! ![]()
Rick and I were just married. When he came home in the evenings I’d act like everything was ok. Finally, I broke down in sobs, “I feel so inept!” He asked me, “When do you feel confident?” In shame, I cried, “sharpening my pencils.” (I was really low!)
He gave me an assignment – to sharpen 3 pencils every morning for 7 days. He’s so sweet he even brought me home a whole new box the next day. First thing, when I sat down at my “desk” (a table at the end of the kitchen) I sharpened 3 pencils. It made me laugh out loud! After 7 days I rocked making phone calls and reading books in my field to learn more. If I wobbled…I went back to pencil sharpening!
#3 – Spend more time recounting your successes than your wobbles. You are your own best cheerleader and wise loving guide. I’ve never told anyone this – but I look in the mirror and say “well done” a couple of times a day. (don’t tell! J) Some days it makes all the difference.
Let’s do it! There are a lot of business skills to learn – how to market, develop a brand, shoot in low light or hot sun, new computer programs. It’s maddening when these skills are in place but you still feel like you are limping along.
It’s an inside job. Confidence and self-trust are built, not given. You are worth it! Give yourself some confidence building homework and let me know how it goes on the SOARORITY Forum! What works for you? Share your tips too!!

Follow the SOAR! Blog this week to hear what results Rachel, Charisse and Ali find! And a BIG thank you for all the wonderful comments that you’ve been leaving on the SOAR! Blog Posts!!! Every comment you leave empowers our recipients to keep working and fighting for their dreams to SOAR!
C’mon out!
Karen
p.s. Here are a couple of ideas to jump start your Business Coaching and Development!
Business Boost 101: from Start-up to Real Momentum. Personal Coaching and solid business building. 5 Thursdays from 4:00-5:30 PT starting March 3rd. Re-find your momentum or get a boost! Powerful results guaranteed plus a lot of fun and confidence building.
The Wisdom Connection Personal Coaching – a free 20-minute coaching session with Karen or Fay! Send us an email today to info@thewisdomconnection.com. Let’s get scheduled! Get a small group together and we’ll do a series just for you!
This is Kari from MamaBloo chiming in today for Me Ra!
A few days ago a friend and neighbor posted something on Facebook that got my attention. He had been out raking the yard and also listening to Carrie Newcomber’s song where the question is posed: Do leaves fall or do they just let go? Since I am caught in that crazy space of only listening to the Backyardigans soundtrack or Taylor Swift, I am pretty much out of any music that might appeal to an adult. So, admittedly I hadn’t heard this song before. But the notion of the question of whether or not leaves fall or let go has stuck with me.
I am viscerally drawn to this idea that the leaves might actually have some control over their own fate. Not the practical aspect of it, of course. I mean they are going to wind up on the ground. That is inevitable, right? But the control comes in how they perceive their journey. If they FALL, then well, the changing season takes its toll on the leaf — sending it on its way, making it depart from tree. It speaks more of what the leaf has lost. Plus, falling is just plain scary! When we are kids “Falling Down” is cause for skinned knees, and band-aids, and running to mom while holding back the tears until we are safely wrapped in her arms.
But “letting go” is fun. Letting go is about holding onto the monkey bars and letting go to feel the wind in our hair, to breathe deeply, to feel our hearts beat a bit faster, to reach out and grab the next bar and, if we miss, to revel in how our bodies absorb the shock of the landing with more ease than we predicted. I love the idea that the leaves are letting go. That although they “know” they are destined for the ground, that their journey to the soil is supposed to happen, that it MUST happen for life to go on…that even though they know this, they take part in the journey. They release their hold on what has always sustained them and float to the ground in a swirl of yellow, red, and brown. Then the leaf waits for the kindergartner that will come by and pick it up, running to his mom, exclaiming, “This is the coolest leaf in the world!”

May we feel freedom to release our holds,
Kari
For more stories from MamaBloo, click here.
Last week one of our blog readers commented how she really wanted to come to a CONFIDENCE Workshop. But her husband had concerns about the cost, especially since she doesn’t have a photography business.
“It is just an hour away…but I can’t seem to convince hubby to pony up the money…he is the greatest husband, father, and provider for our family and I understand his concern, it’s big bucks-especially when you don’t have a photography business in place to theoretically “recoup” the costs-but I feel like it is too big of an opportunity to pass up. I mean…hello, Me Ra and Brian, in our neck of the woods?! Heck yeah! Does anyone have any tips for convincing a reluctant (Husband) to take the plunge??? (Or rather, to let his wife take the plunge)”
Soon after a number of other women chimed in with the same request-”Tell us how to convince our hubbies!”
Never fear ladies, Brian and Jeramy are HERE!
Here are the TOP 12 Reasons for a Husband to send his wife to a Me Ra Koh CONFIDENCE Workshop. Yes, I’m taking this seriously ladies. I recruited the big gun, our famous male token blog commenter, Jeramy. Let me say his reasons are all authentic, drawing from his own experience of sending his wife TWICE! Feel free to print and share with your hubbies.
AND NUMBER 12! The VERY BEST REASON FOR SENDING YOUR WIFE TO THE CONFIDENCE WORKSHOP!
12. You will have a winning answer for her TRICK question “Honey, what do you think about my photography?” Instead of being the deer in the headlights (because there is no right answer) You can say with CONFIDENCE
“Uhh? Well? Uh? What do those 19 other women from your workshop say? I think you’re AWESOME!” (Brian)
Today’s Contest!
If you’re a husband, and you have a reason why your wife should attend Me Ra’s CONFIDENCE Workshop, Jeramy and I are asking for you to post your reason in the comments below.
The funniest TWO will get a $20 gift certificate to iTunes or Starbucks, your choice. Jeramy and Brian will be the honorable judges. Make sure you include an email or someway to send you the prize. Winners will be announced this week!
(Women with ideas for their husbands are also elligible.)
So please, help us make our list complete.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Early Bird Registration for the SEATTLE CONFIDENCE Workshop begins TOMORROW! Check back tomorrow for details!
We still have a few spots left in the Minneapolis CONFIDENCE Workshop! To grab one of the last spots, CLICK HERE!
Want to learn more about Framing, Composition, Blurry Backgrounds and Lighting? Check out our Award Winning DVDs, Refuse to Say Cheese and Beyond the Green Box (They are BACK IN STOCK!! Yeah!!), or discover our popular 101 Kits for starting or expanding a business in photography, click on the titles of your choice!