Use in opt-in publications, or on Web sites, but please include resource box. If you could send a copy to me at email address: mailto:ab@digital-e.biz , I appreciate it. Many thanks. **

Summary: Price takers and price makers. Are you charging what you're worth, or does pricing your small business services and products make you nervous?

Total words: 700

Category: Small Business

It's About More Than Money: are you charging what you're worth?

Copyright (c) 2002 by Angela Booth

Last April I had a surreal experience with a popular women's magazine I used to write for.

An editorial assistant emailed me: "Sorry about not getting back to you sooner about article X. We'd like to publish it. What are your rates?"

My eyes lit up. "Money. You beauty," I thought. I may have chortled aloud. Possibly I danced a jig around my crowded office.

Unseemly glee, you think. You're right. I remembered that check hadn't cleared bank and focused on task at hand. Negotiation.

I hit Reply button.

Then my fingertips stilled on keyboard. Eh? What did she mean, what are my rates? They know what my rates are. My rates are exactly same as they've been since 1995. Or 1992. They're what this publishing conglomerate pays. They're standard across all magazines they own. They're going up, editors promise. Next month. Next year. When hell freezes over.

What heck. I typed happily, already deciding what I could buy with money. Printer cartridges. Dog worming tablets. Maybe a new pair of jeans, even. "Your usual rates are fine. You paid me $X for 800 word Christmas article."

So a week later assistant emails me to say they're not publishing piece. They can't afford my rates.

Well praise lord and pass ammunition. The rates aren't going up. They're going down.

That day I decided that I was out of magazine writing business.

In magazine writing business, I was a price taker. I decided to saddle up for happy hunting ground of copywriting, where I was a price maker.

=> Charging what you're worth

Use in opt-in publications, or on Web sites, but please include resource box. If you could send a copy to me at email address: mailto:ab@digital-e.biz , I appreciate it. Many thanks. **

Summary: Eliminate destructive habit of negative thinking with a simple tool --- a deck of Tarot cards.

Total words: 750

Category: Motivation

Are You Too Negative? Positive thinking with Tarot cards

Copyright (c) 2002 by Angela Booth

Note: this article assumes that you own a deck of Tarot cards, and have some elementary knowledge of how they're used as a self- help tool. If you don't own a Tarot deck, this article may inspire you to discover yourself in cards. You can buy a deck at any large book store, or from Amazon.com.

The problem with negative thinking is that we accept our negative thoughts as reality. We don't realize that thoughts are distortions. I was a classic negative thinker: to me glass was not merely half empty, it was also chipped. I called my negativity "being realistic".

Tarot helps me to see positive. Because, no matter how black things look, there is always a positive.

If you've seen Tom Hanks movie, "Cast Away", you remember that Tom Hanks is Chuck, only survivor of a plane crash who gets marooned on a deserted tropical island. After years of solitary hardship, Chuck almost gives in to despair and commits suicide, but he tells himself to "keep breathing".

Finally a piece of wreckage washes onto island. Chuck creatively fashions it into sail of a raft. Later in movie, Chuck says you should keep breathing because "you never know what will wash in on tide". "Keep breathing" is cure for negative thinking. You truly don't know what will happen next.

A thought is just a thought

We negative thinkers tend to worship our thoughts. It takes us a long time to realize we're not our thoughts. Our thoughts come and go. If we don't cling to them, or follow them, they fade away and are replaced by new thoughts, pleasanter ones. Meditation helps with this.

Over time, when we can watch our thoughts come and go without becoming enmeshed in them, we can (occasionally) recognize a negative thought. For me, being able to label a thought 'negative' was a major achievement.