Whole-Life Success Principles Podcast

Susan Howard
On this episode, the tables get turned and our co-host. Dori Etter is going to be sharing about her work in the world and how to conceptualize your work as a spiritual journey, leading to more fulfillment and satisfaction. So this time I'm going to be asking the questions of my co-host Dori Etter. I would like to say that I've known Dori for a number of years now, and Dori is a living, breathing testament to growth and inspiration. Like many people in the mastermind, she has a diverse background and skill set. She does a lot more than co-host these podcasts. She has a company, Inspired Income, and Inspired Income has been empowering entrepreneurs to live and work inspired. So what does that mean to you, Dori, and to your clients?

Dori Etter
Well first, thank you Susan for your kind words. Inspired Income has been been my consulting company now for about 14 years, since I left the corporate world. And really, I want to say that, as you said, that growth idea (What is inspiration, and what does it mean to live and work inspired?) has also been growing over those years. And the way I see it, inspiration is something that we connect to. It's something that's available to us. Most of us by now have heard that, you know, you have all of the answers inside of you, when we start asking questions. And what I call inspiration or source or spirit or whatever your word for it is, really is that inner source that has all of those answers. And it's my belief that when we are living and working inspired or connected to this inspiration, we are living our purpose. We're here doing what we are here for in this incarnation, and it actually supports us in not just our personal development, but it supports us in growing our businesses and doing what we're doing in the world.

Susan Howard
Yeah, I remember years ago, my friend, Gay Hendricks, we were talking about the word inspiration. And they said that inspire means to breathe life into. And so I think about like, what the work you're doing is really allowing people to really breathe life into their work and to have better work breathe life into them, as opposed to what work often does for people, which is suck the life out of them. Which is to expire.

Dori Etter
Absolutely, that's wonderful. That's such a perfect definition, because I really do believe that we are spiritual beings. We're having a human incarnation, and as a part of this human lifetime, our spiritual self really desires to be known to be realized and expressed in the world and that we also have a livelihood, or a work, or a vocation. We are going to spend many hours of our lives doing this work. And so wouldn't you rather, like you said, have it breathed life into you instead of having it suck the life out of you? And that's really that's really the intention here. And what I'm really doing is inviting each individual to connect to what is their drive, what is their desire? And how do we utilize those drives and those desires and those inspirations, your gifts, and your talents to thrive and have a thriving livelihood, a successful growing business, and by the way, have plenty of money. So I have a different take on the money conversation. And I believe that we are all intended to have every single thing that we truly desire. It's a part of what gets created inside and Inspired Income business.

Susan Howard
That's right. So as a business strategist, and business growth strategist, which I know is a big part of the work that you do with people and the work that you do with organizations, this way of bringing in your work in an inspired way, having it be an expression of who you are on a deeper level, that all gets built into the actual way that you help people come up with their strategies. How does that show up?

Dori Etter
Well, it's really about a different kind of context. So what I'm really doing is taking something that exists, a current existing framework, and putting a new wrapper around it in a way that changes your experience of it. I see it as being the fullest expression of who you really are, which I already said is beyond this body. It's beyond the personality self that we commonly express as, and most of the time in our business and in our work, we are expressing our personalities out into the world through what we do. And if instead of just expressing our personality, we can express this higher, fullest expression of who we are, I think it makes a big difference, not just in our own experience of life, because it absolutely leads to a lot more fulfillment. But I think that it also creates a different kind of experience out in the world for the people who actually touch your business. You know, in the mastermind, we do work to identify personas. And you know, Susan, that's one of my favorite pieces of work that we do. A persona, I might get this wrong, is basically like the different faces of ourselves that we have used, and frankly still use, to navigate life. And we all have them. We have more than one of them. So I like to think about that, you know, when you have the party or you get married, who are you going to invite? And then the question becomes what happens when all these different people from the aspects of your life come together. Because you definitely have a persona of who you are at work, who you are at home, who you are in at the party, right? All of these different things. And inside the mastermind, what we actually do is identify those personas so that we can choose when to use them, rather than to be used by them as a default. And what I'm saying is that at the core of your inner self, there is a "who you really are." It's beyond a persona. It's beyond a definition of the personality that you adopted. And Inspired Income is really about allowing this expression to come out through your work or your business. So we're using your work life as a ground for this expression, and particularly using this expression to empower your choices and the experiences in your life.

Susan Howard
So as part of the work that you do is to help business leaders or entrepreneurs access what that deeper self is and the way it wants to be expressed?

Dori Etter
Absolutely. In fact, I'm going to take us through one of the things I put together, which is a really simple guide: The Five Simple Ways To Access Your Inspiration. So I'm going to get into some of that specific detail. I guess what I want to say is that I start with accessing this inspiration. Then once we've understood what you're inspired by or where you're driven toward, we explore together how do we actually input that or implement that into a strategic plan that's going to drive your business objectives and what are the actions that are going to show up for you and your employees that are going to create more and more of those places for that full self-expression. Does that make sense?

Susan Howard
Yeah, I'm wondering, can you give an example perhaps of somebody you know, or some people you know, that that are really expressing who they are in the world through their work?

Dori Etter
Sure. There's a client of mine, but but she was doing this long before I stepped into help her access her inspiration. I helped her put some strict strategy in place. It's our own is our own Anese Cavanaugh, and we have a podcast episode with her. She has intentional energetic presence. And really, she is bringing the idea of this presence and the difference it makes in the energy of the workplace, in the culture, and in the ability of your employees to be successful. And I think that's the sort of the next evolution. We've started to talk about empowering EQ in the workplace. For a long time, you were just supposed to keep your emotions out of work, leave your problems at the door. We've all heard that. And I think that, at this point, most people who have some level of awareness understand that that's not actually what's going to empower the most successful sort of delivery and experience, both for your customers or your employees, and hence your bottom line. So we've started to move into this realm of empowering higher EQs. Again, Anese is a great example of moving in the next level of direction. And I really believe that this work as a spiritual practice is sort of the next level of that inspiration. It's the next level of that evolution so that people begin to recognize that the work that they're doing is not separate from their understanding of themselves. And I think that that's done through connecting to inspiration.

Susan Howard
Yeah, I think the distinction here is somebody who really has access to who they are and then is able to build a business or a strategy around that and move that forward in the world. And Anese is a good example. You're a good example. There are actually many people who show off in the world and who are doing things, doing things that really are an expression of who they are and their deeper self. However, even if somebody hasn't exactly tapped that (like they're sort of in the process of figuring that out, which can be a whole journey in and of itself, and they're just working in a job or they're running a company or running a division), how can those people have work be a spiritual practice for them?

Dori Etter
Yeah, that's really great. I did a program a few years back on how to access your inspiration, really guiding. And I always start with this, because I'm not saying that you have to quit what you're doing or that you have to make dramatic changes, but there's a place. So for example, I had one of the participants in the program, she was in IT. And there were a lot of things about that she really did like, but for the most part, she had a relationship with her boss that was just not effective. And out of this connection to her inspiration, she was able to define for herself the kind of relationship she wanted to have with her boss, like as a boss and as an employee. Then she could think through, and this was the next piece that we did, was talking about what kind of actions would show up in that kind of a relationship? And how can I, and we, empower you to have that level of conversation with that boss? Now, I want to say that this was about six or seven years ago, and she has completed her master's degree and is now a practicing psychologist-therapist. So that was where her real heart was, and she discovered that in the process of this program. But she took the various steps to bring more and more of her self-expression out in her work, even while she was still doing IT for those years before she got to the place where she was able to go to grad school and complete all of those pieces.

Susan Howard
That also makes me think of somebody in our mastermind group who was in a job that really did not allow her to do many of the things that she really wanted to do from that position; there were a lot of constraints and a very challenging relationship. And where she normally might have gone into opposition with that and really fought hard with that, she actually used it to find ways of shifting her own inner game (how she related to all of the things that were showing up from difficult people, difficult relationships, not being able to do what she wanted to do), and gained a whole new perspective on that, as well as how she dealt with her job and the people she worked with. She had an absolutely transformational experience that really elevated her entire experience of the job and everybody in it. And then when she left that job, she went into something that was the complete opposite of that, because of the way that she was now showing up in the world, having really used that challenging situation as a spiritual practice. And she went and found a job that really allowed her to shine, her capacities, her skills, and to be all of who she can be and have the impact she wanted.

Dori Etter
Absolutely. And that is, that is the key. I think that again, inside the mastermind, what we're really up to is waking up and we are here to wake ourselves up. And by being a part of this group, we commit to being open to empowering others to help us wake up. So i.e., waking up others in the process. And to me, the foundation of that waking up is cultivating this connection to inspiration.

Susan Howard
Can you talk a little bit about some of the guidelines that you use with your clients?

Dori Etter
Sure, I have this thing: Five Simple Ways. I'm going to go out of order a little bit, because I'm going start with the one, it's just meditate. I don't think it's possible to say too many good things about taking on a meditation practice. Now science is proving the value and the benefit of meditation, both on our physical and emotional health. But I also want to say that that is also that access point to a higher spiritual realization of who we really are. Now, the great news is that it also can be done in like five minutes. It's really very simple. And I encourage you, if you think you don't know how to meditate or think that you can't meditate, to simply release that thought from your mind and acknowledge that in one, two, or three minutes, you can actually begin to cultivate a meditation practice. Susan I know you are meditator, and we do silent meditations a lot. I'm a big fan of a silent meditation, but I also encourage you to start with a guided meditation. Sometimes that's helpful. And there's so many apps out now for your smartphone that can move you into this kind of a practice.

Susan Howard
Yeah, that's great. I found meditation to be useful in my work and really every part of my life. One of the things that I like to teach people is what I call the one-minute meditation. Once you've been doing a little bit of meditation practice on your own for a while, you can actually stop at any point during the day (and just stop for about 60 seconds), get still and shift out of your normal way of thinking, allow things to settle, and then continue on with what you're doing at work. I have clients who often call for 60-second vacation. In the middle of their day, they'll take a few 60-second vacations from their thinking and everything that's going on around them to ground, get centered, get still, and then move forward from there.

Dori Etter
That is very similar to what I do with all my clients and I encourage all my clients to take on, which I call a gratitude minute. So the vibration of gratitude is on the same level as the vibration of this inspiration or higher knowledge. So by getting yourself into the vibration of gratitude, you really create this sort of immediate ability to access this knowledge on demand. Now, the point of a gratitude minute is to just recall a moment of gratitude you've already experienced. So you don't really have to create anything, you just recall an experience and you let that raise your experience in the present moment. So it's very similar to that 60-second meditation, when you're intentionally pulling in the experience of gratitude in your body.

Susan Howard
Yeah, that's great. You know, the HeartMath Institute has done some very interesting work on that; they call it Heart Coherence. So that when people access gratitude in that way, it actually opens another vibrational center of the heart and creates a connection between heart and mind. And they found that people, when they're operating on a couple of cylinders like that, rather than one cylinder, mind, which is mostly what we operate on, are far more effective and in their work and in their interactions with other people, as well as just their own experience of themselves and what it is that they're doing. So I love that as a very simple guide, simple practice, that anybody can take on at any moment during the day.

Dori Etter
Yeah, it's excellent. Another one that I like to cultivate with my clients, I call it notice the miraculous. I believe that there are so many miracles all around us, and yet, for the most part, we don't recognize them as miracles. You know, I share the story that I grew up really dirt poor. We literally had an outhouse until I was nine years old. Obviously, I'm beyond that at this point. But the other thing was I grew up in Indiana and we didn't have fruit, we didn't have produce. I ate my first plum and at 15, and we used to get an orange at Christmas every year. It was like an orange that we could eat. So I walk into the produce section at a grocery store here in California, and I just experience what an incredible miracle. We just have a variety of nutritious, healthy, delicious food. We do almost nothing for it, right? I mean, I just walk into a store and hand over some cash. That is a miracle--nature, babies, the way our body beats our heart, airplanes, cars, there are so many things that you can just see and experience as a miracle if you choose to. And again, that raises our experience outside of that mundane and moves us into a place of being inspired or being, as you said, breathing life into our experience.

Susan Howard
That's great. I remember there's a great Einstein quote where he says he decided nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle. And I love that perspective.

Dori Etter
I'm in the everything is a miracle category, for sure. I'll just say a couple of other final things to do: journal. And again, that's very simple. I like to ask a question, and then just let my inner guidance answer it for me. If you are just beginning, sometimes it helps to imagine that you're answering the question for a friend. So then it just becomes like some thoughts or some words. It's not something that you have to act on, right? It's just something that you can choose if you want, just like any friend of yours could choose advice that you give them or not. And that's really how I think about all of this inner guidance and inspiration, they are suggestions. A lot of times they're suggestions that bring us so much joy and love, but the act of connecting certainly doesn't mean that you have to follow through. But you can get a lot of information if you just make a request.

Susan Howard
So, do you have people do this? I mean, kind of kind of coming back to this theme of work of spiritual practice, do people do this? Would you have people do this with business decisions that they need to make?

Dori Etter
Absolutely. I am working with a chef who is actually a very popular chef doing a lot of really wonderful things, but her income is very sporadic. That often happens when you're in that kind of an environment. And I've been working with her to use this very process to ask questions: What are the ways that I can have a steady income? What do people want from me? How are my gifts expressed when I'm not cooking food? Because you can't cook food all the time, but there's a way to express gifts. So she's been doing this journaling process, and last week was a really great breakthrough week where she said, "I have like 11 pages of things documented that have been coming through typed up." All of these ideas and opportunities, and now we're working together to do what I do best, which is take those things and actually craft them into a strategic business concept.

Susan Howard
That's great, fantastic. Any anything else you want to share with the audience?

Dori Etter
The last thing that I want to bring up is just creative visualization. And I have a little bit of a different take on creative visualization than I think other people do. Because I call this partnering with your imagination. I believe that when you go into what I call creative visualization, you start with this sort of gratitude experience. You're connecting into something higher, and then you're just inviting your imagination to share pictures with you in which your inspiration is in action in the world. Either the desires that you want are operating, your gifts and talents are being fully expressed, you're experiencing life as fulfilled, just allowing your imagination to create those photos and create those images in your mind. I find a lot of people are fighting what's already coming into their minds, because they think it's supposed to be coming from somewhere else. So they're waiting for that external input, when in reality it really is your imagination. Your imagination at its core is the out-picturing of that spiritual connection.

Susan Howard
Oh, that's great. So how can our listeners access these different examples that you've given of your guidelines for how to begin to access your spirituality at work?

Dori Etter
You can find me and my work at inspiredincome.com. And if you go to inspiredincome.com/gift, you will find a little guide there on these five ways. And I just want to invite you to take on one thing, even if you just did the 60-second gratitude minute or a 5-minute quieting of your mind just one time a day for the next five days. Just experience a little bit of what this is, because this regular practice is as much a spiritual realization as it is self-realization. So what I believe you will experience, and over time it just gets stronger, is this boundary or this invisible wall that is between your work and your higher self, your work and your true self, your work and your desires. And that wall is going to start to fall away, and you can begin to experience that all of your activities are related to that spiritual growth. And that then includes work; it includes the actions that you're taking there; it includes the conversations. And suddenly you step away from that in order to access or in order to engage in a spiritual practice.

Susan Howard
That's great. And I can absolutely guarantee our listeners that there are no harmful side effects here. So feel free to try these experiments at home. What I like about most of these is that they're not like big time-consuming commitments. But you know, meditate for a few minutes; practice a gratitude minute. These are all things that people can do with a really low commitment of time for just the experiment and seeing what happens when they do it. Journal questions. Sit with it and see what kind of an answer comes to you. I like the simplicity of it, and I like the ease of access.

Dori Etter
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Susan Howard
Thank you, Dori. I mean, this is great. I really encourage everyone to try some of these things at home. And thank you so much for bringing us your inspiration and how you inspire people to create inspired income in their life.

Dori Etter
Thank you for joining us today. We conceived this series to share, more broadly, some of the powerful people and processes we use to create what we call whole life success in our mastermind circle. If you are executive, entrepreneur, thought leader, or innovator in your field who would benefit from this kind of community and support, we would love to hear from you. Now Core Leadership Circle is a curated community, so you can find the application and contact information at corelc.org. From there you can schedule a personalized call to see how and if this mastermind group may be beneficial to you. You can also find and follow all of our episodes on iTunes, Stitcher, and other places you enjoy your podcasts.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai