Does Your Ezine Connect with Your Highest Purpose?
If you are just starting an ezine, or if you’re not
satisfied with the results you’ve been getting, you may need
to go back to the basics.
Examine why you are publishing
If you are writing and publishing an ezine to get more
clients, you may wish to reconsider your true reasons. It
may be true: you are in business and to get more clients,
you must reach more people and let them know who you are and
what you have to offer. Getting your ezine published and
growing your readership base is the means to do this.
(If your reasons for publishing an ezine go not much further
than, “Well, everyone else is doing it and I was told that
to be a successful coach I must write and publish a regular
ezine,” you are in trouble. But you know that.)
For coaches, there are really two purposes to writing and
publishing an ezine: a higher purpose reason, and a business
objective reason. A lot has been written already about how
important ezines are to growing your business and getting
more clients.
But that’s not enough.
What are the real reasons, those deep ones—the driving
motivations that put you here today, into the position of
being a coach, of wanting to coach people, of wanting to
tell people things that can make their lives better?
If you have been through coach training (please, if you
haven’t, do so NOW, or stop calling yourself a coach!), you
have already done a lot of course work on finding true
purpose, both for yourself and for your coaching clients.
Make no mistake, finding true purpose is one of the hardest
tasks humans can undertake. We are complex individuals
living with contradictions and competing commitments (see
Kegan for more discussion on this subject). We are at
different developmental stages (see Graves, Beck, Vaillant,
Hudson and others on adult life stages). Human beings have
differing behavior styles and thought processing preferences
(see Jung, Spranger, Marsten for example). We are a mix of
motivations and drives (see Maslow, McClelland, Reise, Herzberg,
Lawrence & Nohria and others).
What Drives YOU?
What driving force wakes you up with an idea for your ezine,
and causes you to get up with enthusiasm and energy that
cannot be satisfied until your article is written? What
contribution are you striving to make?
What do you feel you MUST do in your lifetime? How can you
further those desires through writing your ezine?
This is work you should be involved in now, everyday and
for the rest of your life. After some clarification on what
your true purpose and higher goal in life is, there is
continual checking back with alignment to your work.
Gotta Read This
One of the best books on this
essential process is Michael Ray’s The Highest Goal: the
Secret that Sustains You in Every Moment (2004) published by
Berrett-Koehler (ISBN 1-57675-286-0).
Michael Ray has been called “the most creative man in Silicon
Valley,” by Fast Company magazine. His Personal Creativity
in Business course has been one of the most popular at
Stanford University for 25 years.
To read this HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book, click on the graphic
link under my “Good Books” column on the right.
In summary
I believe that your writing and all that concerns your work
will take giant leaps whenever you connect to your higher
purpose, your highest goal. Until that time, you may be
good, but just going along.
Sailing to the heights involves digging deep into your real
reasons for doing this in the first place and continually
checking back for alignment.
Sure you can do this on your own. And, yes, this is work
best done with a trusted coach.
Here’s to your continued success with your ezines, with your
coaching, with your life.
Patsi
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