I realise the focus of many business building campaigns is on the marketing you/we put out into the world.

While that’s important, it’s also possible that there is no real separation between what comes into our inbox and what we deliver to our list/s. The trick is understanding what’s really going on.

Let me explain.

Q. When you open your mail, what do you see?

Do you see a list of things you need to get through so you can tick them off for the day?
Do you see an opportunity to be inspired? Or a doorway into what the world is talking about?

It’s not that you’re meant to feel good or bad either way. It’s just that an awareness of what happens for you when you look at your emails is going to give you more than a way to consciously do business. It’s going to give you control over where you’re sense of responsibility is leading you.

Control is Not an Outcome

When I say control, you might wonder what I mean. After all, my whole surrender thing is built around the idea that we have no control. So how is it that I’m talking about control over anything?

Well, first of all having control is not going to grant you any particular outcomes. It won’t make you richer or make the trains run on time. It will, however, allow you to see (and direct) where your attention is leading you. Think about it this way.

A person stands on a bridge and screams out over the water. They say all kinds of things about their wife/husband/child/parent/boss/friend/neighbour and then take a deep breath before continuing their morning stroll. It wasn’t planned. They did not set out that morning to “release” anything via sound. They did not organise their feelings into thoughts and set out to express the amalgamation as “catharsis”.

In fact, when the impulse came upon them it was quite unexpected. They had not harboured any ill will toward anyone and had not felt the need-to-yell building within them to the point of explosion. So as they stood upon the bridge and allowed the words-emotion-sentiment to flow, it was all just as spectacular as the view.

Flow is Not an Achievement

Of course they had a choice to not yell, and to instead keep walking. And if this option was available to them, what made them do what they did? What inspired them to flow in this way instead of in another? For just as there are infinitely unknowable ways for Spirit to show up as the world, there are infinite ways to recognise that we are in a constant state of flow.

That there are infinite options for us to experience this flow of interconnection and loving grace in each and every moment, if only that is our purpose here and now. Which it was not for the person standing on the bridge, yelling about their woes. Except the person on the bridge didn’t have any woes, they had flow.

Flow turned up as an expression of woes, and the person made a choice to allow that. This is the control we have to direct our attention.

Control is Another Word for Choice

While we may not get to choose the conditions of our situation, like how many emails we get in our inbox, we do get to control the way we flow when we encounter those emails.

Which is not the same as saying, you can feel better about your inbox if only you take a positive attitude to what’s in front of you and all the privileges that entails. I’m not talking about positive thinking or gratitude for being in a situation where emails are your biggest issue versus whether you have access to clean water for your family. I’m talking about flow.

I’m talking about the allowing of feelings and experience in the moment as a spectacle where the witness is you! I’m talking about control over the allowing of things rather than seeking to control what is.

You stand on the bridge and make a choice.
That choice is tied to the oneness of All That Is.
Everything is in a state of inherent balance no matter what you choose.
The choice simply allows you to have an experience of this moment within a configuration of awareness where some things are closer-louder than others. That is, some people (and their needs or demands) seem more important, some sensations feel more pressing than others, and some obligations look more personal than others.

What About the Email in My Inbox!?

Okay. Back to the Design Delight idea : )

If the inbox is a test of your competence as an administrator or better yet, a reflection of organisational skills put into action, then you may never experience the delight of design. And that’s okay. Whomever you are, and however you do what you do is on purpose. The question is, is it alright with you?

Are you happy with how you do what you do?
Are you satisfied being competent and organised?
Do you see the wholeness and unquestionable uniquely sacred I Am in how you show up?

Only you know. And only you can accept that’s okay whether the answer is “yes”, or “no”. Only you can look at your wholeness and say, I appreciate the fact that I am unsatisfied with who I am and how I show up because (for example) my dissatisfaction drives me forward into more of what I enjoy about the world as I know it.

If the inbox is a monster out-of-control that you have no real strategy to deal with, and it feels time to do something about that, then this next paragraph is for you.

Design Delight 101

Every email has something offer. That doesn’t mean you pore over each with equal relish and make a file of screenshots to ponder for hours on end. It simply means you can open your emails and trust that whatever you find, it’s just as intuitive as a tarot card.

Some emails are written well. The message seems to flow from one paragraph to the next and before you know it you’ve reached the call-to-action – generally a buy button, click through to our website for more, or sign-up to our thing and get this present. Well written emails remind me of what I like. Not just the stuff being offered (which I’m usually not that interested in) but the conversation style itself. In some ways it feels like a reminder to relax into who I am and to write-design-offer what I do without too much introduction.

After all, people are either going to read it or not, enjoy it or not, buy it or not. I realise there are a whole lot of clever tricks to employ around timing and branding and storytelling and I appreciate the art of marketing but I can’t shake the fact that the universe works in stranger ways than I can predict (or control) so all I can do is do what I’m told and be with what is.

Some emails are packed full of valuable information. Tech guides, research papers, how-to videos, and so on. These little beauties remind me that content is king! As much as I love to play with design and software, it’s the “stuff” people can access that really matters. I can only spend so much time updating plugins and solving php conflicts before I need to get back to what it is I do!

So even though I don’t always click through to use the information being offered, I’m certainly taking their advice and getting back to the business of what I do. Which is not as straight forward as the marketing model (since what I do is pay attention to this moment and do what I’m told, versus a concrete business with a plan to do x for y so they can get z). But I digress.

Some emails are beautiful! Temple & Webster is a great example. It’s true I keep them in my inbox for viewing pleasure. I love their layout – the space and shapes and font collection, (sigh) and so much more. I love some of the stuff they sell but that’s not the point. I open their emails for the experience I have when I gaze upon their beauty.

This too is important. Not just in my emails or in my business but in my day full stop! We must have beauty in our lives whether it’s a vase of flowers or well sculpted flesh. Viewing pleasure is not an aesthetic, it’s a Dopamine rush and it’s part of acknowledging what it is we enjoy about being who we are, doing what we do, at this point, in this moment. There’s no shame in loving your design for it’s delight.

Some emails slap you upside the head. Every now and then I sign-up to someone’s product launch simply to view the process I can’t use (since I don’t solve people’s problems, or promise to fix, change or heal). This might sound strange but I find much more than an example of what I’m not when I put myself in the sales funnel. I find solace and a little bit of inspiration.

To me inspiration is the choice we make to yell on the bridge or do something else. It’s the part of this moment that speaks loudest and arranges what is into a particular perspective. When I read the sales funnel emails (throughout the entire process) I remember the conversation I’m having with the world is not about the problems we need to solve but rather about what’s true for us and where to go from there.

How we have a choice to accept the problem-solution model of existence or to have another story. A story about trust and oneness and the inherent nature of what is. And that either way, no matter what conversation you choose to have or where that truth takes you – into trauma or treasure or trust – you are, by my standards, divine.

Melanie Kim Brockwell

I offer readings of life's raw experience by way of symbolic interpretation. My passion is caring for (and adding to) our animal rescue family.

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