"I earn my living honestly" and "Devote yourself to your work" are two interpretations of the Reiki Principles gifted to us by Mikao Usui. I took them literally and lived as an energy practitioner since. So, how do you do it? How can you use your complementary or alternative health skills to live your authentic vocation dream?

One of the challenges that face many an alternative or complementary therapist and practitioner is that most work available out there is self-employed. There are of course opportunities for an employed job. If you are reading this for yourself, chances are that you have a part-time or full-time job or are a home-maker or some other source of income, and want to somehow start working for yourself.

The first piece of advice that I usually give is "Don't burn your bridges". Use what contacts, skills, and experience you have or had before you learned your alternative or complementary health skills. For example, if you used to work at a call centre, approaching the call centre managers that you used to get along with the best may be one route in. Call centres are totally dependent on outcome, the length of a call, the operator's performance and reducing down-time in-between calls. Ask yourself how your newly-learned skills can help with that.

If you are already in employment, maybe your boss would be OK with you having, say, one day a fortnight where you still get paid the same and still turn up for work but help your colleagues instead. For example, if you have learned EFT, you can help people get over fear of public speaking, give better presentations, or release back pain, neck pain, and tension headaches. You never know until you ask. It may be worth a try.

If you are in employment and do not have capital available to you sensibly, and things like business plans and marketing seem like scary monsters, it may be best to start part-time. Any start is a good start. Perhaps you can start on Saturdays, for example, if you work Monday till Friday. If you work shifts, maybe you can apply to work the night shift, and do your work say, two afternoons a week. There are many possibilities.

Whether you go into the life of a holistic entrepreneur full or part time, you still need to make it work. And to make it work, there are two main components: Business knowledge, and self-worth.

With business knowledge, it is good to get a mentor who has done it already, and learn from them. For a solo complementary practitioner to learn business and marketing skills from a marketing director of a big firm who has never worked with solo entrepreneurs or micro companies, well, that is not really suitable. It is best to learn from people in your field who have already done it themselves.

With self-worth, you may find that there are some issues there. Gold Standard, Classical, Energy, Or Faster EFT tapping is the fastest method I know of for turning a low self-worth around. EFT tapping in my experience is closely followed by Reiki or Optimal EFT with an experienced practitioner, who already has a good track record of shifting solo entrepreneurs' energy mindset to that of deserving and abundance.

To conclude in a nutshell, Business Learning From Experts In Your Chosen Field + Self-Worth Build-Up = Your Successful Business. Good luck with working from the heart. Enjoy the journey as well as the destination!