Donnalou Stevens shared Nisandeh Netas video: MAKING THIS WORLD A LITTLE HAPPIER PLACE. 13 hrs · The Voice of the Heart is Never Wrong - The Story of Nisandeh Neta It took a long time to notice how many voices speak to me at any given moment. It took slowing down to observe how most of what is being said is something that someone else taught me and I took as true when it was anything but. Lastly, I saw that when I heeded those things, I felt miserable. With that, I started questioning everything. In the questioning, I found another voice, a voice that lives not in my head, but in my heart. And if I listen to the voice of my heart, wonderful outcomes are inevitable. And if I don’t, well… It was early July and my music video, ‘Older Ladies’ was getting an amazing 50,000 - 100,000 views a day on Youtube. I was visiting Oakland’s ‘Shine On’ recording studio and interviewing David Hughes, the young engineer that I will be working with before too long. He told me his wife and mother-in-law had shared ‘Older Ladies’ from the trend page on Facebook. “REALLY?” I had no idea there even was such a thing, much less that my video was featured on it! David showed me the page and indeed, there was ‘Older Ladies’ as one of the top viewed videos in all of Facebook! The video however, was not linked to my Youtube channel. Someone had downloaded the video, posted it directly onto his page and it had been shared 148 THOUSAND times! I was quite taken aback being new to the world of social media. I was worried all those numbers weren’t being accounted for on Youtube. The engineer and his friend told me sometimes people use the content of others for their own gain and I felt my chest tighten. I remember saying, “You know, it’s probably just someone trying to support me.” That was the voice of my heart speaking. Instead of listening to it though, letting everything be, and trusting that the world is for and not against me, I put the word out to a few social media ‘gurus’ I didn’t know very well, but I had worked with a little, figuring their voices were more valid than the one of my heart. “That’s copyright infringement!” they told me. “He’s just trying to make money off you; people do it all the time! There’s so many crooks out there. You gotta watch it now that you’re getting famous!” I listened and became worried and scared, fearing that I would lose something terribly important. The voice of my heart is a gentle, quiet one and it receded into the background as the voice of fear screamed and raged with such fury, it felt like doom was imminent and oh so real. I did not do what I normally do. I did not take space to go within and return to a place of equanimity before taking action. I heeded that desperate state and I tracked the man down. Had I bothered to spend some time on his websites or Facebook page right then, I would have discovered that my fear was totally unwarranted. But in the haste that fear so often produces, I ignored the obvious and contacted him through a Facebook message. My written words were polite and ‘nice’ but the subtext of those words came from a place of distress and therefore was bound for failure. The man greeted me enthusiastically and kindly and was very surprised at my defensive reaction. He told me he was only doing his best to support me and that FB and Google work very differently from each other. He also told me he was a backer of my Kickstarter. I could feel my heart want to trust this man, but the fearful voices of the internet gurus drowned out that possibility. Scarcity won. I pressed too hard and the man took the post down. In an instant, all traces of that magical explosion of my video was gone. 148,000 shares vanished into thin air. The moment he said he took it down, all the voices stopped. I felt sad. I knew I had listened to the wrong ones. I knew I had bitten a hand that fed me well. I scrambled awkwardly to save what little semblance there was left of the interaction, but it was too late. The man assured me again that he meant no harm and was going off line for a month on a family vacation. In the time that followed, the Youtube numbers dropped significantly. I cannot help but think there was a direct correlation and that I was watching the consequence of ignoring the voice of my own heart. Who knows what would have happened had I walked my talk, faced the feelings of fear and waited until equanimity had returned to interact with this man? Not this, I would imagine. I dare say however that it will not happen again in that way. It was a big lesson that I value immensely. As a result, I let go of the people who gave me fear-based advice and hired a wonderful woman named Brenda Brown to help me. I told her the story of the man and the 148,000 shares and she asked me why I had done such a thing. “I would have been so grateful to him!” “Yeah,” I sighed, “I listened to something other than my own heart.” And then the thought came that it was time to contact the man and tell him how sorry I was to have misinterpreted his actions and to thank him for his support and kindness. I knew deep down after taking the time to visit and actually read his posts and websites that we were up to the same things in the world; I knew we had similar hearts. I thought all along that had I not acted out of a place of distress, we probably would become friends. I had no attachment to an outcome of any kind when I reached out to Nisandeh Neta except to apologize. He wrote back with a lovely response, saying he appreciated and was touched by my message and that even though we had had that bump, he had still supported me. Come to find out, he published an article (in Dutch) on his top ten favorite crowd funding campaigns and I was listed 4th. Gulp. We chatted a bit more with hearts wide open. I was so very glad I followed my instincts to write to him and offer my sincerest apology. In the end, he shared with me a video of something so touching that he did for his 46th birthday. When I watched, I knew we were kindred spirits. I was touched so deeply that as he said about Older Ladies STOP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING AND WATCH THIS! https://facebook/photo.php?v=10202628908176822 p.s. Nisandeh Neta launched his own crowdfunding campaign last Monday. He created the Crowdfunding Mastery course - teaching any entrepreneur, start-up, charity or creative person to become successful using crowdfunding - NOT only as a way to finance a project or product but as a powerful marketing and business growth strategy... all done with heart, respect and collaboration. After watching the video, please check his crowdfunding campaign at: cfm4u/ Crowdfunding is how I was able to share Older Ladies and my future music with the world, so Im a big believer. And when you learn from Nisandeh hell show you how to avoid so many of the painful mistakes I made. I love you all so much and am so grateful for the beautiful lessons that are sometimes wrapped in pain colored paper.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 11:35:57 +0000
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