Take it Personal * CONNECTED newsletter issue #2

The bi-weekly newsletter, "Connected," discusses the importance of managing emotions and prioritizing happiness for business success. Negative emotions can have a physical and mental impact, while positive emotions lead to clearer thinking and better emotional regulation. The newsletter also emphasizes the importance of understanding and targeting a specific audience in marketing. Creating a customer avatar helps businesses resonate with their target audience and attract the right clients. The newsletter encourages readers to engage in this process and shares resources for further exploration. Hello, Narnia Dawn here, and you're listening to Connected, the bi-weekly newsletter for guidance on growing your business in coherence. This is issue number two, and it's called Take It Personal. You know how building your business can sometimes cause stress? It can shine a huge spotlight on our self-doubt, feelings of lack, feeling alone, separate, and fearful. No matter what stage you are at in building your business, you may feel the pressure to succeed in a way that stresses you out. You may feel that hustle, that pressure, that self-criticism is what is needed to keep you going all the way to the entrepreneurial finish line. But did you know that we can actually see the effect that these negative emotions have throughout our bodies, throwing us into dissonance? Have you seen what negative emotions look like on a heart rhythm monitor? In the early 1990s, HeartMath's research center found that negative or stressful emotions throw the nervous system out of sync. And when that happens, our heart rhythms become disordered and appear jagged on a heart rhythm monitor. This actually places even more stress on our physical system and negatively impacts our mental and emotional functions. Trying to generate positive emotions like appreciation, love, care, and compassion was found to increase order and balance in the nervous system and produce smooth, harmonious, coherent heart rhythms. The ability to manage your emotions, not suppress them, but enable them to transform into higher quality feelings releases neurochemicals that lift your entire emotional system. In their research found that these harmonious rhythms enhanced people's ability to think more clearly and self-regulate their emotional responses moving forward. That feels like a pretty good cycle to be in. The more we consciously choose positive, regenerative emotions, the easier it is to make clear, aligned decisions and responses. We are more effective and experience more synchronicities. Getting ourselves into a coherent state just takes the decision to do so. I used to have a meditation instructor who would always start with, okay, assume the position, but we don't need to assume any kind of meditative position. In fact, we can do it right now. So focus your attention on the area of your heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual. Activate and sustain a regenerative feeling such as appreciation, care, or compassion. You may find it helpful to anchor in first to a person or place that causes you to feel that appreciation, care, or compassion. And then once you've got it, allow the specific person or place to simply fade and focus in on the feeling itself. Breathing in and out of the heart, radiate that renewing feeling through yourself and feel it fill up your entire body. And how are you feeling now? Calmer, clearer, more aligned, happier, perhaps. Anchored in science. I am always amazed at the different studies that we humans do to prove to ourselves with numbers and graphs what we innately know. Researchers at Yale and Stanford have discovered that happiness is, without a doubt, the secret to success. If you prioritize your happiness, you will be more productive, more creative, more resilient, more energized, more charismatic, and influential. You will have more willpower and be more focused with less effort. Self-criticism is basically self-sabotage, whereas self-compassion, treating yourself with the understanding, mindfulness, and kindness with which you would treat a friend, leads to far greater resilience, productivity, and well-being, explained one Yale researcher. Check out the entire article at Inc.com and prioritize your happiness for business success today. Are you still feeling that happiness we generated a few minutes ago? Choose to bring it into even more focus, expanding it now. In the market, are you crystal clear on who you are serving? If you stay too general with your messaging, you run the risk of your clients swiping right by because they don't recognize themselves or their problems in your words. The more you can tune in to what's really going on in your clients' heads, the easier it will be to attract them because they'll feel like you really get them, your content will resonate with them, and you will be choosing the appropriate marketing channels to reach them in. So, who is your perfect customer or client? Let's get it fleshed out. A customer avatar is a written, detailed description of an ideal but fictional customer or client. There are several paths that you can take to collect this information. You could be looking at the demographics of the people who are already buying from you, listening to what your customers are saying on social media, interviewing or creating a poll for your existing clients, or getting into a coherent state and asking within. Now, narrow that all down to one ideal person for your business, and let's get crystal clear and creative. Fill out the following information. So, the avatar's name, location, age, gender, career, background, what they do for fun, what frustrates them, their biggest fears and what they're avoiding, their biggest desires, how do they want to feel, and who do they want to be? What is their biggest goal, the transformation that they are pursuing right now? What negative thing will happen if they do not work with you and receive your help? And what makes this client ideal for you? This is where I like to put in things like, they're fun to work with, they respect your time, great at making decisions, they follow through, pay on time, they laugh at your jokes, they think that you're magical for the service that you provide, they have more than enough money to pay you and secretly think that you should charge more for what you're worth. They're really talkative and tell all their friends about you. You can really have fun with this part. And then finally, what do you appreciate about them and what do they appreciate about you? You may find it helpful to add a photo of what you imagine your ideal client to look like. Have fun with this whole process. And I'd love to hear from you. Did you already have an avatar for your business? What was the biggest thing that surprised and delighted you when doing this work today? Click that link to comment and see what others are saying. We all want to make the largest impact with our transformational work. How do we continue to build trust and become that lovable go-to expert? Stay tuned for the next issue. I'm so grateful that I'm here with you connected. Thanks for listening.