Many people have heard of the concept of a spirit guide—a being in non-physical reality who is here
to support you unconditionally, who's here to help you on your life path of growth. A spirit
guide is often assigned to us to help us stay on our blueprint, to stay in the possibilities
that we have for our lives, and keep opening these new doors or these new avenues to actually
manifest our soul's purpose here on earth. A lot of people see or visualize these spirit
guides in human form, but what they don't know is that there's a lot of different kinds of spirit
guides out there and your business can be one of them. I'm Asia Suler of One Willow Apothecaries,
and this video is about how your business is your spirit guide.
I was really reluctant to start a business when the idea first came to me.
I thought it would be too much work and it would take me away from what really mattered to me.
I wanted to have a life that felt really devoted and in service to the earth
and also a life that really helped me connect to people and my spiritual path. What I didn't
realize at the time is that starting a business wasn't going to take me away from those things,
it was actually the thing that was gonna help me define and walk deeper down my spiritual path.
Because here's the truth: your business has its own consciousness. Now I knew this innately
when I first started my business. I remember every morning I would do my morning prayers,
my morning gratitudes, and I would give gratitude for my business, One Willow Apothecaries. And I'm
going to tell you, some mornings it was hard. For years I poured so much into my business,
and I wasn't getting that much out. I still worked other jobs to support myself,
and some days i really wondered—is this whole business thing even going to work out?
But when i gave gratitude for my business every morning I could feel how my business, though a
part of me, also had its own sentience, its own consciousness, and I was here to actually help
not only birth this consciousness here onto this planet, but learn from this consciousness. When i
stopped resisting my business as my teacher and my guide, I was actually able to see how the things
that felt like blocks, the things that felt like they were preventing me from being successful,
were actually here to show me my gifts and here to teach me. My business has taught me so much over
this past decade. So here are just a few of the lessons that i learned from the spirit guide that
is my business: the first lesson was that I am most successful when I hold good enough boundaries
that I can know what is me and what is not me. As someone who identifies as an empath, my whole life
has been about discovering where my boundaries are and how I don't innately have the same boundaries
as other people. I tend to take on other people's feelings and emotions, including other people's
wants, desires, and dreams. My business first started by creating apothecary products.
I had a line of tinctures, a line of teas. I thought that this was what I should make because
this is what people wanted. But when I stepped out of making what I thought people wanted and stepped
into making what my business wanted me to create, what my soul wanted to express in the world,
my business actually took off. I went from making an okay living to actually being able
to support myself full time—and eventually creating a business that not only supports me
but a whole team of people. My business was teaching me firsthand about boundaries,
and sometimes these lessons didn't come in in the easiest ways. It came in through saying
yes to things that I didn't actually want to say yes to, and then noticing that my energy tanked.
Or it came in through putting all of my energy into a product because it was something I felt
someone else wanted, and then noticing that that product really didn't do that well. But the secret
is your business as your spirit guide is going to teach you the one essential skill you need
for business, and that is how to be yourself. Because your self, your channel, is the thing
that brings your business alive. So the spirit guide of your business is here to show you how.
The next lesson that my business taught me was actually to understand why it is that I tend
towards overwork, and the fact that my tendency to be busy was actually a trauma response.
So many of us don't realize that when we are constantly pushing ourselves, when we
have everything on our schedule every day, when we give ourselves very little time to relax,
this is often in response to trauma—it's often in response to feeling like we're
out of control of something in our life, or noticing that when we're busy we can feel
more numb to the things that hurt. For me I know that I developed this practice of
overachieving and doing too much in response to situations in my life when i was younger when
I felt out of control, and I felt like the only thing I could do was just work really
hard. Now everyone has different responses to trauma, so your response might be different,
but my business really showed me that me pushing hard 24-7 and always making myself take that
next step even when I didn't feel like I had the resources to, actually didn't do me a service—it
was detrimental to me, it was detrimental to my health, and to my business. I have now found that
when I do things not because I'm numbing out with busyness or overwork, but because I actually feel
creatively and passionately moved to do it, that the things I create are so much more successful.
And, amazingly, I can do more with less time. Don't ask me how it works, it just does. When
i follow my body's lead on when I need to rest and when I need to create, it's like I need less
time to actually create the things that I want to make, and then the things that i make are
more impactful—they reach more people, they're more successful, and they support me more fully.
Lastly, a big thing that my business helped me on, was feeling like it was okay for me to be
woo. If anyone's ever seen my video Stone Medicine Grounded, then you might know that at one point in
time I looked into the etymology of this word "woo," a word that's often used in our culture
these days to denote someone or something that is out-of-touch, airy fairy, in the clouds, silly,
and sometimes even irresponsible. If we look at the etymology of this word, it actually can take
us all the way back to 1 AD in China, when this word meant female healer, shaman, and herbalist.
So I learned over time to embrace my woo, but it wasn't there right from the start. When I
first started my business, I thought "okay, I'll do my flower essences like quietly on the side,
but in the forefront I'll have my tinctures, my serious formulas, I'll do my serious consultations
around whole health and health issues." But what happened was those things weren't as successful.
It was the subtler energetics, it was the flower essences, the stone medicine,
it was the consultations I did with people where I was checking in with them about their emotional
life, their spiritual journey, that were really well received and that ended up being
deeply successful. My business showed me that the side of me that I thought was too woo, too
out there, was exactly what the world was asking me to bring. So if you have a business or you're
thinking about starting a business, I've created a course that will help you actually communicate
with the spirit guide that is your business. The program is called Business as a Spiritual Journey,
and it walks you through everything i've learned from the past 10 years of being an entrepreneur
and helping to guide hundreds of other business owners to really create the businesses of their
dreams. The course goes over how to communicate with your business, how to work through the
blocks that come up, and it's specifically geared towards people who consider themselves
to be empaths, highly sensitives, or simply spiritually minded. Because when we look at
business as a spiritual endeavor and when we acknowledge our business as our spirit guide,
not only will we grow exponentially, our business will become a channel for light and
healing on this planet. Because the truth is when we look at entrepreneurship as a sacred endeavor,
business itself becomes a healing force for the world. So you can find out more about
this class on my website. Also on the website is a totally free quiz to help you understand what your
earth healing archetype is—how it is that you're meant to be here on this earth and bring healing
to this planet, because just like all the different plants and stones on this planet,
you have a niche to fulfill. So this quiz will help you to see and understand this niche,
and once you take it you can gain access to a free class to understand this archetype
even deeper. So for all my other lovely business owners out there, I'd love to hear from you—what
have you learned from your business? What are the hard knock lessons that the spirit guide of your
business has led you through? Leave a comment in the comment section here below, and let's see all
the different learnings and lessons our beautiful business guides have brought to us over time.
So no matter where you're at with building your business or growing your business,
please know that what you're creating is precious, it's deeply special, and all you need to do is
keep following that inner guide of your heart, and that outer guide of the spirit that you are meant
to channel here on this planet, and your business will be a force of healing for this world.