The TOP 5 Lessons of 2014 that have transformed VeruDesigns

There are two reasons today’s newsletter is extra special:

• a) It’s the last one of the year, and
• b) It’s the holidays and VeruDesigns is about to turn 2 years old as a business.

As exciting as our first year was, so was our second year. But 2014 came with much more than just excitement and profits. It included challenges, some painful losses, many exciting wins, growth (in unexpected ways) and new perspectives about how to run a business and how to live my life in an even more empowering way.

I don’t think you’d be particularly interested in what went on behind the scenes, all the challenges and all the accomplishments (plus this post would be super looong!). But I do believe that you may identify with some of the (transformational) lessons and growth that came from those challenges and resulted eventually in our biggest wins, and that I have worked so well for my business that I have since started to apply them in my personal life as well.

What lessons you may ask? Here are my very humble top 5!

1) Dreams make the best Goals.

Too many times we follow a pragmatic approach to goal-setting. Especially in business. We set “goals” that will bring probabilistically the most benefits in the long term or that logically are a metric of success, instead of asking ourselves, what do we really want, what our dreams are, no matter how silly or unlikely they may seem, what would excite us the most?

I learned the hard way that there is a gigantic difference between pragmatic goals and inspired goals .  A goal inspired by our true dreams is one where the journey itself fills us with excitement and a strong desire to take action right away, every day. In other words, the journey is equally or more important than the outcome itself. A purely pragmatic goal on the other hand, is one where the end result is the only aspect of the Goal that we are wanting, but the journey, the daily actions we think we have to take, not only feel uninspiring, but become a struggle and necessary evil.

“Results” are only a representation of the journey, and if the journey isn’t filled with joy, growth, excitement, laughs, ideas, expansion, the results won’t reflect those qualities either.

The moment I scraped my purely pragmatic goals and gave my inspired goals a chance, everything began to happen in amazing ways!

2) Attachments to specific outcomes are the main killers of our dreams.

Thinking and brainstorming how to create our dreams is an exciting and necessary step towards transforming our dreams into reality. But beware of attachments! As perfect as we may think that our action plan is, life is full of surprises. The magic happens only if our “perfect plan” has room for change, for the unexpected, for the gift of unplanned new ideas, for unexpected help, for new opportunities, incredible coincidences, that may take us beyond the outcomes we conceived within the limits of our minds.

Having a plan is critical. But only one that includes an open mind ready to be shifted any moment for the right reasons.

3) Everything can be a GIFT.

No matter how much planning goes into our business or personal life and the illusion of “control” a plan gives us, the truth is that we have very little control over “how” things will unfold.

In fact, the only thing we have complete control over is ourselves. And that includes how we perceive the things that come to us and happen to us. The meaning of the things that happen to us is not  absolute at all. Nothing is definitely good or bad until we decide it is good or bad. However most times we react to these wanted or unwanted things/events/situations/people as if the “good” or “bad” qualities that we perceive were an absolute!

This is what I’ve come to know for sure: Everything, yes, EVERYTHING, every result, every situation, every outcome has two qualities: a)It’s Temporary and b)It is a paradox.

Everything is temporary. It will change. And it’s particularly important to remember that when the “thing” seems to be “bad”. Just hold on, because it will change. But more importantly, everything contains in its seeds both, a GIFT and … the obvious “bad” effect you initially may perceive. The sooner we choose and decide to focus in seeing the GIFT that a not-so-desired situation or outcome contains, the less poisonous it will be for our mind and Soul and the sooner we will experience and benefit from it. However to be able to choose our focus in a positive way, we need to TRUST. Which takes me to lesson #4.

4) Trust in something larger than yourself.

To question the meaning of a seemingly “bad” outcome, requires TRUST. Some of us call it faith. Trusting, believing in the good before we see any evidence of it.

This is not always an easy feat. And it may require to hold a view of the world where the overwhelming goodness of life and people feels like the larger reality of our planet. It’s betting on kindness rather than mean-ness, it’s betting on love rather than hate. It’s betting on an underlying energy stream of wellbeing (some of you may call it God) that is more powerful than the darkness of our thoughts and any difficult experience we may have endured in the past.

5) Fear, is your friend.

This is by far the biggest and most transformational lesson of the year for me personally. I didn’t even know I was afraid of some things, until I finally recognized that I was forcing a positive attitude, rather than enjoying a positive attitude naturally (notice the subtle but BIG difference between forcing and allowing!).

Choosing a positive focus is the first step towards uncovering the GIFT in any situation. However, when our automatic response towards the same situation continues to be fear over time, then the “positive focus” is not a SHIFT towards the GIFT it has for us, but instead it’s a fearful escape from it !

Fear, I’ve come to know, is a friend. Fear is a messenger trying to let us know that we hold a belief about the situation/outcome that does not serve us. And this messenger (fear) will not stop showing up until we pay attention. Facing the fear does NOT mean believing it and taking (fearful) actions! Instead, it means brining to the surface the belief we hold that is making us feel this way. And by articulating the absurdity of it, we’re set free.

I’m eternally grateful to you and this powerful 2014, and VERY excited for the many gifts to come in 2015 for us all. There are many new expansions coming up for VeruDesigns that emerged from this year that I look forward to manifesting and sharing with you in 2015.

I may not know what specific challenges showed up on your path this year, but I know I’m not the only one who would appreciate you sharing with us all what you’ve learned about yourself.  I’m excited to learn from you and will be looking into the “comments” section below for your stories and thoughts.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah to us all, from my beautiful hometown of Cochabamba, Bolivia!

VeruDesigns will be away for a few weeks, but we’ll return on January 20th, 2015! with our first new collection of the year!