Mastering Your Business Intuition by sradulesku

MASTERING YOUR

BUSINESS INTUITION How to Connect and Collaborate with Success 2

by Mary Anne Waldren (with assistance from Lucy Baker)

MASTERING YOUR BUSINESS INTUITION How to Connect and Collaborate with Success

by Mary Anne Waldren (with assistance from Lucy Baker) 3

MASTERING YOUR BUSINESS INTUITION

How to Connect and Collaborate with Success

by Mary Anne Waldren (with assistance from Lucy Baker)

MASTERING YOUR BUSINESS INTUITION How to Connect and Collaborate with Success by Mary Anne Waldren

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.

Foreword.

Why I Wrote This Book.

Introduction..

What is Intuition?. .

Workplace Woes & Challenges.

Do You Listen To Everyone Except Yourself?. .

Activating Your Inner Intuitive Coach.

7 Signs of Incoming Intuition. .

3 Keys to Business Intuitive Intelligence at Work. .

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7 9 11 15 19

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10. 5 Ways to Tune In and Switch off The Mind. . . . . . .

11. Follow the Intuitive Leader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12. Life Beyond Workplace Negativity. . . . . . . . . . . . .

13. 3 Ways to Integrate Your New Power. . . . . . . . . . . .

14. What Happens Now? .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15. Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

16. About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” (Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO)

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Foreword “Be interesting. Tell the truth. And if you can’t tell the truth, change what you’re doing so you can.” (John Powers)

It was a Tuesday morning, in the early days of my successful business in 1998, when I popped in for my usual morning coffee with my friend, John. He had been a business colleague for over six years, a fellow business colleague and a trusted ear for me. Life was good. My last project had created history and kudos, and I was in demand. John wanted to introduce me to a colleague of his, who was being ‘white-anted’ (an Australian term for leaking in formation and undermining someone) and the two of them wanted my advice. Of course, I wanted to help, and after a few hours’ of brain-storming, I left. A quiet inner voice kept niggling at me … ‘something is just not right.’ Still, I put the thought to one side and continued onwards. Two days later, the CEO of a dynamic company I had been helping, phoned me with these ominous words: “John is not your friend, don’t talk to him again!” He went on to explain that I had been betrayed. What John really wanted, he continued, was to wrestle a business development contract from me. I had been betrayed. I felt absolutely gutted. This was a man I had collaborated with for years. I thought we were business friends. When I confronted him, naturally he denied everything, but my 9

instinct told me the betrayal was true. It was a big lesson for me. Business is not always pleasant or friendly. I walked my talk, and I wasn’t prepared to be associated with that type of person. The thing is, I had a ‘hunch’ prior to this meeting that I neither listened to, nor acted upon. Instead, I left it to someone else to warn me. However, I’m a fast learner! These days, I have all potential associates sign a confidentiality agreement. I am wiser and strengthened by this episode. I am now a sought-after speaker, mentor and motivator. I rub shoulders with the rich and famous. I have become a self-styled savvy businesswoman, with a client list of successful companies and individual high flyers in society. Much of my success has been due to my intuition working in collaboration with my business brain, helping me to meet the right people and choose the right projects. Now I’m going to help you listen to yours.

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Why I Wrote This Book It’s hard to stand your ground - whether it’s employees, friends, work colleagues or family. What I have learnt, is that Life is designed to give you what you deserve. If you don’t show up for yourself in life, you cannot expect anything to change. I have found that sharing my authentic self - whether my truth is good, bad, scary or outrageous - has helped people in ways you wouldn’t expect. Recently, I was inspired to write another e-book – one on the subject of bullying - after an event manager came to me with a question about how she could deal with bullying in her workplace. Now this was a subject I knew a lot about! So, I began to write. After completing the first draft, I shared the idea with a trusted friend, who said, “Mary Anne, you have always stood up to bullies. Why don’t you write an e-book that shares your experiences on how you used your intuition to claim your power from these people?” Great advice! So I rewrote the book and here it is. Go forth, read my book, sit in a quiet space within you, allow your intuition to be heard and then follow it and live your best life.

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Introduction I was born into a very successful family in Australia who made a name for themselves in retail, enjoying immense power and wealth. It should have been a fairy tale, a comfortable platform from which I could have vaulted into even more success and happiness. However, unbeknownst to everyone, I had a secret and I kept it for years out of shame. I was being bullied by a domineering father and, no matter how hard I tried to get the support I needed within my family, my mother and my siblings turned a blind eye and told me to “get over it”. So, I did what many victims of bullying do - I put on a happy face and pretended that character assassination was ‘normal’, just a part of life and that all the jibes and demeaning put-downs were done out of love. For many years, I even imagined they were truth; my self-esteem was as much of a bully as the outsiders were. If you had to ask me about my intuition back then, I would have had a job finding it – I was mostly in ‘survival’ mode and living in reaction. After years of enduring my father’s narcissism, I moved out and started creating a life that I liked and worked at proving to him that I could be independent and achieve a wonderfully fulfilling career.

All I had was myself and an instinctive sense that I deserved more, I was worthwhile and I could become the person that I knew I could be. Stress became my friend, in a way. In life, most people react to stress in one of two different ways. Some people become paralysed and give up, while others use it as fuel to propel themselves forward, as if energised by it. You can guess which one of the two I was! I just tried harder and refocused. I decided to adopt my intuition as my very own team member, much more valued than it was before. I threw myself into my career, steadily and stubbornly climbing the ladder of self-made success, and started a business creating events, raising profiles and connecting famous and talented people with projects and partners. It seemed that the right people came my way. I had taken an inventory to research who I attracted into my life in business and relationships. What I put out, I had learned, I would get back. I looked at five people I was spending a lot of time with. Their energy showed me how things were changing. I was the one who was changing! To my surprise, something miraculous began to occur. I began to notice that, in the business world, I was receiving rave reviews for my skills. Suddenly, people wanted to work with me and learn from me. I had hit gold, and I was beginning to realise that the gold was coming from my own inner power and passion. Take a moment right now to find out where your energy is. 14

Who are the five primary function people you hang out with? Are they ambitious, entrepreneurial? Do these people ‘get’ you, encourage you, empower you and challenge you to be better? If so, you are on the right track! For me, I understood that my definition of ‘normal’ has transformed overnight. I had stark evidence that who I was and what I could do was possible, credible and that I could be my own success story, rather than a fairy tale of what could have been. I began to tap into my potential even more, and started on a road of personal evolution that saw me distance myself from the toxicity I had grown up with. Along the way, I felt guided by an unseen power. I knew it was connected to me. All I needed to do, I realised, was to find a place of quiet, a space of stillness within and simply follow the signs and clues that led me forward, into a happier, fulfilling life. Such is the power of Intuition.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” (Albert Einstein)

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What is Intuition? “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.” (Albert Einstein)

Intuition could be defined as ‘the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.’ It’s like a friend of mine, who recently met what he considers to be his soulmate. ‘How did you know?’ I asked him. He smiled at me and said these words: “When you know, you know.” That’s Intuition. Forget everything you think it is, especially if you were raised by people who don’t believe in anything unless they can ‘see’ it. Intuition is also not some random, new-agey, whimsical thing. Instead, intuition has been described as ‘a complex feeling that arises from pattern recognition’. Even for someone as mathematical as Apple founder, the late Steve Jobs who, to all extents and purposes, looked and acted like a man who entrenched in his mental processes. However, he revealed that intuition was a very powerful thing, more power17

ful than intellect, in his opinion – and that it had impacted on his work greatly. Jobs also noticed how people in India used their intuition far more than the westerners did, and that their level of ‘knowing’ was more advanced than in the rest of the world. This is because the Indians put energy into toning it, and had done so within a society that has a strong spiritual component. In other words, intuition is more highly valued beyond the western world! In the West, the mind reigns supreme. Intuition comes in, almost as a last resort. How about you? What importance does your intuition hold at the start of a working day, at the beginning of your week? You may consider yourself fairly intuitive in your personal life. However, a strange thing happens when you walk through those office doors on a Monday morning. It’s as if our intuition stays at home, curled up on the sofa watching Netflix, and the rational mind takes over. In a sense, we shut down and opt to utilise just five of our six senses. Women all know that, when it comes to work, we are quietly instructed to leave our emotions at home. There’s no room for any of that soft stuff, no! The fact is, however, it is very difficult to be intuitive unless you are able to express the emotional self - and both of these require balance and grounding. No doubt you have experienced a workplace in which intuition is the missing component of many business decisions and projects. The expectation is that everyone stays in the mind, rationally dis18

secting everything about a project, basing opinions on statistics, ratings, graphs and pie charts. Not an Intuit-O-Meter in sight! In this type of environment, intuitive ‘hunches’ do not factor into any decision-making process, unless you are at the top of the corporate tree and can afford to tune in and act on your instincts, and have enough capital to sometimes get it wrong. Warren Buffett, the American business magnate, investor and philanthropist is also the most successful investor in the world, and when he speaks, people listen. This is a man who is uses his emotions a first step, before mental effort, when he makes many decisions. The emotions are a bridge to the intuition. He doesn’t depend on quantitative screening tools – they come later. First, he notices where his attention is drawn. Then, he will start to analyse what’s on paper. If you follow the energy of your attention, there’s usually something interesting going on. Bill Gates is another business leader who believes in relying on his intuition. So, we know that despite its hippie tag, many astute leaders and visionaries use their gut instincts as part of their focus on success. Even Forbes magazine described intuition ‘as an essential business tool’. But, know this: it took them a while to learn how to clear the obstacles on your paths, how to listen and discern when to act. All successful people ahead of you on the ladder of ambition have been where you are. 19

“Many of the world’s most successful leaders value intuition. Why not join them?” Mary Anne Waldren

Are you tapping into your intuition? If you are only use five of your six senses in business, now’s the time to discover how one of Australia’s most successful businesswomen learned how to not only use her intuition – but tone it up to extraordinary proportions. Mary Anne Waldren is the dynamo behind the Australian Science Festival and National Science Week and the founder of the Master series of business training programs. She has earned global respect for her skills in developing networks, fine-tuning leaders, creating and managing events, fast-tracking business and research entrepreneurs, helping to produce radio programs for millions of listeners and raising millions of dollars in sponsorship dollars. A gifted communicator, she has been recognised by the Ernst & Young and Telstra entrepreneur award programs and has advised governments and business people in Korea, New Zealand, Austria and the United States on innovation. Mary Anne is a facilitator and rolls up her sleeves to helps people move forward in their business and personal lives to increase their success and intuition.

JOIN THE MASTER IN BUSINESS INTUITION COURSE

www.maryannewaldren.com.au/training/master-certificate-in-business-intuition.aspx

“Mary Anne is an inspiration and a legend.” Robyn Williams, ABC “She knows her way around the corridors of power.” The Australian “Mary Anne Waldren is, by all accounts, a superwoman. A powerhouse of drive and enthusiasm. She is becoming recognised as one of the nation’s marketing whiz kids.” Fairfax Media