Sometimes the smallest of events can make your day worthwhile. Here’s a real-life relatiionship story we just received from our friend Signe Dayhoff that we want to share with you.

Signe writes -

I had to take my mother to Petsmart yesterday. She wanted to get some bird and squirrel food and canned cat food. I retrieved the former for her but she didn’t want any help picking out the latter.

Consequently, I wandered over to where Watermelon Ranch, an animal rescue group, has cats and dogs for adoption within the store.

Anne, an official Watermelon Ranch adopter, and another women were trying to get a dog, that had recently had its hind legs amputated after being hit by a car, to use a doggie cart.

The pooch looked uncomfortable, anxious, and concerned. He wasn’t even trying to move in the contraption. They had been laboring for awhile coaxing the sad-eyed dog with treats … with no success.

I asked if they minded if I tried. They shrugged, said go ahead, but didn’t think he was likely to cooperate after just having been placed in the harness.

I talked intimately to the pooch, started scritching his head, then slowly showed excitement in my voice. Then I moved back a few feet, got down on my knees, slapped the floor, and used my best doggie encouragement voice. “Come on!” I said more excitedly.

The dog’s eyes shone. He started wagging his tail. Then he cautiously made two steps toward me. I hugged him and praised him. Walking 10 feet away, I repeated my playful beckoning routine.

The dog’s tail whipped the air. He raced toward me, like a newbie Indy driver, giving me a great big doggie smile as he scooted along.

I felt aglow, almost unbelieving, like a newly-announced MegaMillions lottery winner.

Later, just as Mother and I were about to leave the store, Anne put whipped cream and a cherry on top of the sundae. She signaled me from across the store front. Smiling, she nodded her head to the side, “And you were going to leave without saying ‘good-bye?’”

I looked down. Racing toward me was the pooch. He moved with the ease and confidence of one born with his new “legs.”

I felt a huge smile catch in my throat. “Come on, baby!” I called out, kneeling.

Like a kid experiencing pride in his first two-wheeler achievement, he rolled thirty feet across the tiled floor, past other customers, straight into my arms. The next minute we were a tangle of wiggly hugs, neck scritches, and doggie kisses – a moment you can’t manufacture but can joyously revel in.

*** To learn more about real love and real loving go to:

http://www.judithandjim.com/whatislove

Life is always much larger than we can imagine, when we let it be! Of course the “let it be” is the issue, isn’t it!?

When we decided to produce “Bridging Heart and Marketing” - the first and only Internet marketing conference for the Soft Sell community - for self-improvement, health and healing, and life-enhancement folks - we just thought we were organizing a special conference.

But this conference keeps taking us into larger connections, greater support than we could ever have imagined. So it’s actually a kind of graduate school in spiritual receiving and surrender - since we have little or no control over how it’s all playing out.

Mind you, we’ve done a lot of inner work on our resistance to greater success and overcoming our negative head talk in order to be here. (How do you think we created those popular programs of ours! LOL)

AND we want you to know it’s very real - the large life that awaits you on the other side of negative control.

Just look at this gift from one of our conference sponsors! Open the page and scroll down to page 2.

http://speakerfulfillmentservices.com/SFS_NewsVol10.pdf

This is just a taste of the magic surrounding “Bridging Heart and Marketing.” And if you have an interest, please go to:

http:/www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com/invitation

We have great news! And we ask for your support to make the news even better!

Without any advertising . . . due solely to word-of-mouth Our 4th book The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams is now on several Amazon Best Seller lists

At the time of this writing, it’s #10 on Amazon’s Best-Selling “Planning” List and #16 on Amazon’s Best Selling “Wedding” List

We are so pleased because this book - the only book dedicated to the wedding couple - deserves to be #1 on both those lists.

Sure we’re biased - but it truly is THE BEST book for the wedding couple there is! Period!

So that’s why we’re asking you to help - Please help everyone you know who’s engaged or getting engaged to have the best wedding ever . . . and help us move The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams up to the top of those lists!!

Direct Link to Amazon:

THANK YOU!!!

Because It’s in the Connection!
Judith & Jim

PS It’s only $10.17 at Amazon - so get a couple to have on hand for future gifts!

Thanks Again!

For most people the idea of “sales” comes with images of used car dealers pounding on a car hood during Saturday morning television, and even “getting robbed” and “taken to the cleaners.” Certainly not a pretty picture of one of life’s basic activities – selling.

We’ve talked with many of our colleagues and our Internet marketing students about the typical tone of online sales copy and they routinely say they feel put off, offended, and one woman even used the term “violated.”

They hate the ‘hype’ and the exaggerated claims, the sense of false urgency, and the in-your-face style. Some of them even feel they can’t really get out there and market their products and services without feeling like they’ve sold themselves to the devil.

But there is an alternative. We call it Soft Sell Internet marketing.

We characterize a soft sell marketer as anyone who cares about the integrity of the sales relationship equally with making the sale. It’s not ‘make the sale at any cost.’ It’s more about opening the relationship so that the commercial transaction, for both the seller ands the buyer, can be trusted, enjoyed, and continued.

Typically soft sell marketers are involved in self-improvement, health and healing, and lifestyle enhancement. While that’s a broad generalization, it’s true that the soft sell marketer is often motivated by their desire to help, heal, and even change the world. Hard sell marketers are inherently driven to make money, and too often that appears to be their only concern.

There’s nothing wrong with making money, but sales without soul are pretty empty transactions for both buyer and seller.

On a recent webcast interview we did with Janet Beckers in Australia, she noted the many times listeners wrote in to say “how refreshing” it was to hear about soft sell, heart-based marketing.

The voice of the hard sell Internet marketing is about to lose ground to the fast growing segment of Soft Sell Internet marketers who prefer building respectful and caring relationships with their prospects and customers.

Are you a soft sell marketer? Do you prefer a more inclusive, emotionally connected business relationship with your prospects and customers? Register for a Free series of 12 tele-calls with the top Internet marketers in the world. Just visit: http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com

If you feel held back, stuck in a rut, blocked from the love and success you want, and you don’t’ know why – you are under the spell of what we call The Love Grip.

When we’re too young to know the difference, we unwittingly give our innate love and loyalty to our parents and larger family, culture, eighborhood and church and thereby internalize their all too often
limited and negative judgments of who we are. Because we are largely unformed, we readily and without question believe what we are told about our lack of value, our incompetence, and our tiny place in the world.

Then, in order to keep that primary and primitive love in place, we call it The Love Grip, we have no choice but to stay true to that negation of our magnificence. And, what follows is an unconscious commitment to
The Fear of Being Fabulous(tm). Suffering under The Fear of Being Fabulous we cannot permit ourselves full and free expression of our talents, dreams, and imagination. We cannot pursue love relationships
or success in the world that would contradict where we came from. However, we are scarcely aware of what we are doing.

And the practical result is that what appears as a “failure” is actually a successful allegiance to the limitations that we took on as we accepted how we were treated. So now, what commonly passes as self-sabotage
is actually a success. The question is, at what? But when you Overcome the Fear of Being Fabulous, you’re then free to follow your intuition, your talent, your genius, to live the life of your dreams. It will require that you betray where you came from. And that’s not so easy. Yet you must if you are to forgive those who didn’t know better when they limited your idea of who you are. And you must if you are to forgive yourself for living in limitation all these years.

After all, true forgiveness can only occur when you’ve lived through the injury of The Love Grip into The Freedom To Be Fabulous waiting for you on the other side.
*******************
Ready to join us in Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous? Just go to:

http://www.judithandjim.com/fearofbeingfabulous

Much of what you learned about love and intimacy may no longer work.

Conventional ideas of relationship and marriage don‘t leave much room for who two people are as individuals. Centuries-old gender stereotypes have forced men and women to play out predetermined roles. They prejudice and limit what can happen. As a result, relationships often feel like exercises in futility, leaving people enraged or depressed wondering — “What’s the point?”

But the source of prejudice actually goes deeper. We all grew up learning, to some degree, that those who are different are somehow “wrong,” “bad,” “not to be trusted.” So we feel threatened by those who are not like us.

When your date or mate behaves in ways that are different from what you expect, don’t you feel the impulse to want things your way? Doesn’t that wipe out the other person? And it all happens so fast, it just seems like “the way things are.”

Well, it’s not! Any time we want things to go only our way we are immersed in prejudice, in a deep seated need to protect against anything different from ourselves. Then the world becomes a tiny place, only as large as we are. And we’re left to wonder why we feel so alone and lonely.

Yet, there’s so much more to life than just what we already know. And some of the best teachers are those people who are different from what we already know and expect. It’s because they are different that we can be awakened to new consciousness about all kinds of things, most importantly to new awareness about ourselves and those we love.

To be prejudiced means to pre-judge others (and often ourselves). When we drop the fear of differences then we give ourselves and others the benefit of our openness to discovery. Then we can be alive in the adventure of life each and every day.
*************
Avoid old patterns that threaten your love life. Get our no-cost, one-hour audio download to help you avoid “7 Common Relationship Mistakes”
Just go to:
http://www.judithandjim.com/your_gift.html

Whether you’ve followed our process in creating the first ever Internet marketing conference for the Soft Sell community, “Bridging Heart and Marketing” ( http:/www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com ) we want to share with a few FABULOUS fun events that support our dreaming bigger.

*** “Costco Connection” - the magazine for all Costco members
around the world - has contracted for a writer to do a feature article about soft sell marketing and “Bridging Heart and Marketing”

*** Gary Goldberg, host of syndicated radio show “Money Matters”
will be interviewing us about “Bridging Heart and Marketing” and
the value of soft sell marketing.

*** Judith’s recent interview about soft sell marketing for
WonderfulWebWomen.com was described as “a breath of fresh air”
and “the best interview ever” by members of this international group of
female webpreneurs.

There’s lots more going on as well - which we’ll share with you as it becomes “ink on paper” - and in the meantime, if you have any interest at all in Internet marketing be sure to sign up for our preview tele-calls at http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com

We want to share with you a recent “miracle” that resulted from bridging heart with marketing. We sent out an announcement about our upcoming conference, “Bridging Heart and Marketing” ( http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com/invitation ) and it turned out that one of our readers writes for “Costco Connection” - the magazine for all of Costco’s members. He submitted the idea of doing a feature on Soft Sell Marketing and our conference - and by the time we heard about it last week it had been been approved.

So we will have press coverage of our conference! Why? Because we’ve taken the leap of following our hearts and creating a conference specifically for the Soft Sell Internet Marketing Community.

If you market online - we invite you to take the leap with us! You can register for all the preview tele-interviews we’ll hold with our world class faculty by going to http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com

Long before we get to the table laden with turkey, cranberry sauce and
over-sweet yams, we are face-to-face with the challenge of gratitude all
month long. For most of the year we can duck and dodge the pressures of thankfulness, and most people do — openly admitting to having a terrible time accepting compliments, much less the larger implications of being truly loved.

So the questions must be asked: Why do we have such a difficult and
sometimes painful time receiving the blessings of other people’s affection,
admiration and sincere love? What is so powerful that it so often fiercely
defends against the uptake of that which would transform our insecurities, reduce our anxieties, and feed our comfort and creativity in the world? What makes us work so tenaciously to play ourselves down, fighting off the praise that knocks so loudly at our door? What is so powerful that often we don’t even hear the knocking as a joyous visitor — but rather as a rude intruder?

The fact is we live in prozac land, a world in which putting one another
down is considered funny, punishing children’s spirited relationship with
life is commonplace and the resulting wide spread depression is written off as biochemical. Or is it?

Maybe we are so blind to the forces that squash the life out of us –
the brilliant, the exuberant, the spiritually dazzling — that we can’t even
begin to question why we are so allergic to compliments, why our divorce
rate keeps exposing how difficult it is to be loved and loving. Maybe it’s
long overdue for each of us to embark on an individual campaign to be recognized and respected and valued for our unique gifts and talents. Not
as an exercise in narcissism, but as an exercise in receiving and then
experiencing and expressing sincere gratitude.

But then, notice, we will have to give up our “safe” invisibility, our false modesty and most of all our loggy depression that protects us from
being truly alive.

For when we allow someone’s praise and love to truly fertilize our soul,
we feel more and more of the life force awakening within. We become less and less able to stay remote, vaguely unhappy with life but unwilling to do anything about it. When we receive and feel gratitude, we want the whole world to feel the same way. We surrender our isolation. We come out of our shells. We reach back to embrace the one who graced us with their spiritual generosity. And in so doing, we are changed, transformed, made more (w)holy.

But all of this liveliness comes with a price. We must leave the outer
shell of false humility behind. When we do, we become exquisitely aware of anyone who speaks negatively about our value, placing ourselves in the situation of having to do something about it or not. And we must shed those who cannot accept the magnificence that each and every one of us is.

This Thanksgiving give yourself the gift of your own unique value and
vow to never again allow another to put you down, to mock you, to in any way block your light! And, at the same time, make a commitment to practice saying “Thank You!” from the bottom of your heart each and every time you are graced by another’s positive recognition of who you are.

We wish you a Happy Wish Bone and the very best Thanksgiving you’ve ever had.

Enjoy!

All too often childhood is described as “innocent” - ignoring all the life-destroying messages that pass for “good upbringing.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Don’t get a swelled head!”

“Remember where you came from.”

“Think you’re too good for us?”

“People like us don’t go to places like that.”

That list of hold-backs could go on and on.

And every one of us—including you— has
been subjected to some form of commandment
to NOT break out beyond where you came from,
to not leave your “station” in order to be truly fabulous.

Whether it came from a demanding and controlling
parent, a terrified and anxious teacher, an abusive
coach, or any number of relatives, romantic partners,
or so-called friends who didn’t know any better . . .
the damage happened anyway.

And what’s the damage . . .?

A smaller life than you know could be yours.

Perhaps you feel limited in what you can do
in your career, where or whether you can go to college
or get specialized professional training, even
who you can love.

The damage may have spread to your bank account,
your health and fitness, and even how you dress and
carry yourself in the world.

But here’s the good news . . .

No matter your age, no matter where you’re at, we
assure you it’s never too late to bust out of that
internal prison that’s been holding you back.

The fact is, now your life is yours to design.

Yes, it is.

And you are truly free to design it any way you want.

That’s an idea that may feel like a betrayal of where you
came from and what you’ve believed was true your whole
life.

And your freedom may come with some fearful challenges.

But, hey, why live in bondage to what others taught you?