Attracting prosperity is part art, part science, and part grace. A prosperous business must not only accommodate but support life in all its complexity. A thriving business requires and provides resilience and continuity.

How do you go about building a thriving career or prosperous business? Here are some of the things I've learned and that I credit with supporting my own process of attracting prosperity.

1. Recognize that life happens. There will be ups and downs in your personal life and ups and downs in business. When you can accept these ebbs and flows of attention, energy, and focus, you will better be able to adjust to changing conditions both in your heart and in your environment.

2. Cultivate systems, practices, and networks that provide continuity. For example, my newsletter, blog and websites are ongoing and reliable means of staying in touch with a meaningful network in good times and in bad.

3. Pay attention to transitions. When change is happening, it can be easy to get caught up in reactionary thoughts and feelings that can muddy your thinking and make complex situations chaotic. Learning to detach and observe your reactions, thoughts, and fears will help you keep a steadier course without being rigid.

4. Learn to notice when things are expanding and when they are contracting, and choose your strategies accordingly.

5. Learn to regard mistakes as stepping stones to mastery. Avoid wasting time in needless guilt and defensiveness. Seize the opportunity to correct your error and move on.

6. Listen to your clients and customers. Identify those who get the most benefit from working with you with the least effort on your part. This is not laziness. This is learning to operate from the sweet spot that place in which you add the most value by working from your strengths.

7. Rigorously address personal issues that inhibit success. This could mean seeing a therapist, paying off old debts, or starting an exercise program.

8. Learn to listen. Listen for guidance from Spirit, from your heart, from your environment, from colleagues, from clients.

9. Raise your standards regularly both for your own performance and for the caliber of client or customer that you attract.

10. Periodically update and refocus your business plan, including income, expense, and investment plans. Keep it simple. Distill your plans into a sentence or two that summarizes your goals and strategies so that you always know where you are going.

In our own lives, we are in many respects both flower and gardener. If we are to attract prosperity, we must make wise choices, keeping the source of our well being in clear view. While we cannot control all of the conditions and challenges in and around our lives, we can keep our own brightness aligned with its source. When we do so, we attract prosperity, knowing our purpose and thriving in its pursuit.

Molly Gordon

Molly Gordon is an internationally recognized Master Certified Coach, workshop leader, and writer. Her practice is devoted to men and women who are ready to build lives full of meaning and prosperity. Since 1996, she has coached hundreds of clients from around the world through personal and professional transformation. Her unique coaching style is informed by her experience as a business owner and artist. She is the creator of Authentic Promotion®, an approach to business and marketing that reconciles conflicts between doing good business and doing good work. She is a graduate of the Academy of Coach Training and of the Newfield Network Graduate Coach Training Program, past President of the Puget Sound Coaches Association, and a presenter at both the 1999 and 2000 International Coach Federation Conferences as well as at other virtual and live coaching events. Her websites include hundreds of small business marketing resources for feeding your soul and growing your business.