Elizabeth Stephens answers questions about starting a business as a ‘woman-entrepreneur-spiritseeker’ 

Because I would like to run my own project related to spirituality / counselling / inner growth, and I don’t know how to make it happen, and moreover, how to overcome my fear of doing it, I would like to hear from you what has been your personal experience as a ‘heart entrepreneur’ Natalia 

What was your inspiration to start the magazine?

In 1988 my husband and I had been running a ‘new age’ group in an artist’s studio in the corner of our property in suburban Melbourne. What had started out as a 13-week program ended up being once a week for the whole year as we were all having so much fun. It evolved into a support group. My husband and I thought that we’d like to do this full time for other groups but didn’t know where to go from there. So we kept asking Spirit what to do.

Image supplied by Orna Ben-Shoshan
To see her artwork, please visit: www.ben-shoshan.com

In our meditations, and in choosing cards from time to time (which can be a crutch if done too often but can also be a very useful tool, a way of bringing the waking dream to you instantly), we kept getting the message that we had to go overseas, and then the messages narrowed down to going to North America.

We were sure that we’d find over there a way to run the perfect centre and we’d come back and implement that. We packed up the three kids and we all went away. I won’t go into the hellish trip we had – it seemed that all sorts of karma was being released – but suffice it to say that, after I had crashed a brand new Buick hire car in California, we found ourselves at a retreat centre near San Diego and it was there that I saw a magazine. Bells went off in my head and I just knew it was why I had come over there. So amazingly Terry also knew or trusted that it was the right thing to do and we came home to Australia, sold up the house and moved into a rented house and started the magazine from the smallest bedroom.  

Once you found your inspiration and your purpose, how did you manage to maintain yourself in that energy to actually then materialise the magazine?

It was easy really, Natalia, as I was so excited by it that the energy just kept driving me for ages. My personality is such that I thrive on new projects. If you have a more measured personality where you enjoy routine and steadiness, then I’d suggest that being an entrepreneur doesn’t fit hand in glove and it would be a better fit to work for someone else within your chosen field. I think that we incarnate with the tools we need – be those natural abilities or those that arise out of obstacles we meet.

In my case, at the personality level, I am driven by exciting new projects and also by determination to succeed, by fear of failure and by almost never believing I am good enough – so I keep striving to be better. It’s a double-edged sword, as are all our life stories really, because it torments me and yet it keeps goading me to be better.

On a spiritual level, I somehow knew that I had been asked to do this job, and so that kept me going and, in my darkest moments, Spirit will give me a dream or a ‘waking dream’ that keeps me going.

A waking dream is a term used in my spiritual path to explain that phenomenon when you witness an event that you know is speaking to you. It leads to a realisation for you, an ‘aha’. You know how sometimes a book seems to fall out of the shelf at you; sometimes you witness a scene in the shops or on the road. It’s these sorts of things that have kept me going over years of overwork and struggle – brought on by my own personality foibles and not sufficiently trusting in Spirit, I might add. These waking dreams are given by Spirit, to guide you in case you should become too fearful of the unknown, to reassure you that you’re on the right path, or to gently nudge you if you are wandering off the path.

On a purely practical level, I was forced to stay on my path since my husband and I had sold our house and we had put all our money into the magazine. Within four months of the first issue coming out in July 1989, I had made every mistake in the book and had used ALL the money. We had nothing left and were actually in debt by then. I had two school-aged children, one pre-schooler, and my husband was an unhappy teacher who wanted out because he was not a disciplinarian.

So, you know the expression about burning your boats behind you (from Sun Tzu in The Art of War) – I had done just that, and it was the absolute bottom line. It ensured that I would stay and fight and make it work, even when it got too hard, which was often, because the alternative was worse. It would have taken me a lifetime of working in an admin job to repay the debts I had already racked up. As they say, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. 

Were you ever afraid? If yes, of what? And how did you manage the fear? When that fear attempts to paralyse, how do you push it away or accept it but not become enslaved to it?

Oh my God, yes. I still struggle with fear, so much so that at times I think I will be swallowed up by it. My heart beats faster, my breathing almost stops, my head throbs and my tinnitus creates a deafening chorus of whistles and whirrs like a thousand cicadas on a hot night – all squashed into my cranium.

I picture the fear as tentacles around my heart. I put out my left palm and then with my right hand I pull the tentacles off. I am picturing this in my mind but doing the actions with my hands. When I feel that the tentacles have all come off I hold my left palm up to Spirit and ask to have the tentacles burnt up. Luckily, being a clever fire from Spirit, it burns only the tentacles and not my hand ;-) Oh, I go to the loo to do this if it is in the middle of the day at work. They know I’m woo-woo, but this would look a bit too over the top.

Of late I have progressed so that, if I am very fearful, I often simply close my eyes and ask Spirit to take the fear away, although sometimes I still find the removing of the tentacles comforting.

At the bottom of the fear I have found that there is a distrust of Spirit and a belief I have to do this alone. So I am working on that one. When I find myself becoming fearful I say to Spirit, ‘OK – I know you can do this better than I can. I know I am doing work that you want me to do. I know you want me to succeed. So please take this problem and fix it.’ It works too. I wish I’d have been able to do this 20 years ago, but I had to find out the hard way.

My adoptive mother used to say that I always had to do things the hard way. She also often used an expression about me – ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. I wonder how much she intuited my real nature or to what extent I have played out those scenarios because she put them in my head. It doesn’t matter of course, because my stories are an integral part of my path, as yours are too. We just have to work out how to acknowledge them, take the impetus from them and leave the unwanted bits to sit in the corner like an antique chair that no-one sits on any longer but it’s quaint to look at. 

Next issue Elizabeth answers more of Natalia’s questions relating to resilience and rejection. 

If you have questions for future issues, please email them to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Elizabeth Stephens is the editor of LivingNow and the author of ‘Seven Angels Helped Me – They’ll Help You Too’, available for $30 inc. P&H by phoning 1300 730 326.