A group of people decides to watch a sunset. The scientist only sees the formation of the clouds; the astronomer sees the position of the stars; the biologist sees the atmospheric pollution; the fashion designer sees the colors of the sky. If you ask a child what he sees, he will say: ‘I see God smile.’ The message of this is: try to look outside of your own mental framework and discover what other people might ‘see’. This is a prerequisite for being able to do business.
‘Do you work here? But I thought you were such a good learner!’ This is a famous joke which is suffused with the Western preoccupation with the IQ. But, as Peter Ouspensky (1878-1947) once established: ‘The subconscious functions at as much as 30,000 times the speed of your conscious mind. Then why do people only focus on the mind in their actions?’
Have you ever wondered why many companies try very hard each year to make more profit than the year before? The only reasonable explanation for this is greed. Of course, any healthy company will strive for profit, but it will not necessarily strive for profit maximization. Health and greed do not go well together.
A healthy spirit in a healthy body – yes, part of us ‘knows’ that already. Then why is it so hard to exercise for 30 minutes every morning, something which benefits you throughout the entire day, instead of immediately checking your e-mail whilst downing an espresso? Why wait until you are 65 to realize what all older people already know: that your health is more important than anything else.
Timing is everything; every self-respecting manager knows that. But the underlying spiritual principle is worth considering. Apparently, for some things, it is better that they take place at a specific time. But who or what determines this? Perhaps there is a Greater Plan? And if so, how far does this Plan reach? The more important timing is for you, the more spiritual you are.
Giving someone attention in the form of consciously thinking about someone is a very powerful, condensed form of energy transfer. It ‘feeds’ (your relationship with) this person. Therefore, do not be surprised if a consciously sent Linked-In request quickly results in meeting this person ‘in real life’. Conscious attention is essential for successful business.
One of the most famous CEOs of Netherlands, Leen Zevenbergen, rightly said, ‘An entrepreneur should have (almost) gone bankrupt at least once in his life.’ After all, letting go is purifying and ultimately teaches us many of life’s lessons – lessons which cannot be compared to any MBA program. I wish you a beautiful bankruptcy soon.
The famous ‘Rule Number 6’ is one of the classics from the spiritual management literature and comprises advice for business people regarding the ultimate basic attitude: ‘Don’t take yourself so damn? seriously!’ Lesson: Create balance between passion and lightheartedness. (Free adaptation from Wayne Dryer.)
In this dimension, we have made several agreements regarding ‘time’ – but time is not absolute. We have all had the experience that time sometimes seems to fly by or stand still. The solution for a sense of lack of time is therefore not to work 80 hours a week, but rather to make ‘time’ your friend and to try to give yourself the experience of an abundance of time.
As you start realizing more and more that you create your own reality with your thoughts, this starts opening up new perspectives. For example, you can consciously influence the result of important conversations by clearly visualizing your desired result. If you are already inclined to take charge of your life, then give this a try.
You have probably already heard this classic before, ‘Follow your bliss and you will never have to work again.’ But to what extent does this also apply for you? Which of your current activities would you still continue if you would suddenly inherit $500,000? Which daily activities would you no longer do or do differently if you found out that you only had one year to live? Is this last question an unrealistic scenario? How do you know?
Of course, in principle, the customer is always King. However, there is a significant chance that, if you are too afraid to lose a customer or an order, you will break your own boundaries. Perhaps then you will lose something entirely different – yourself and your credibility.
The spiritual principle behind abundance cannot be repeated enough. By thinking, ‘I want abundance’, you are basically saying that (at that moment) there is not enough abundance for you (yet). This is then what becomes reality. It is confronting but true: when abundance remains out of your reach, reconsider your focus. The affirmation which does work like a charm is: ‘I am rich, happy, etc.’
‘When you die, you cannot take any of your achievements with you. The only thing that matters then is how you achieved them’ – a famous quote from the founder of Taoism (6th century BC), Lao Tse. ‘Garbage in is garbage out’ – a famous 20th Century ICT saying. So the message has been the same for 2,500 years: it’s not what you do, but how you do it.
Bookkeepers often seem to work according to the ‘What You See Is What You Get’ principle, a famous term stemming from the software development world. One-dimensional exercises in which profit prognoses are only based on what you can ‘see’ in numbers. You don’t have to be a ‘seer’ to be able to ‘see’ that you can never ‘see’ everything based on numbers alone. Be realistic, but never forget to continue to dream.
This is a famous quote from Gandhi: ‘He who goes beyond his limits and overestimates his own possibilities in his work and even in his thoughts, will probably become ill and irritable. Such agitation is a waste.’ So the heart of the matter here is: where do healthy ambitions change into megalomaniac ego-tripping? You can only get an answer to this if you have the courage to ask yourself this question on a regular basis.
As a manager, you prefer that employees don’t look at each other’s incomes and then start demanding a little more than their current income. Then don’t do that yourself either. Follow the example set by Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of 50 billion dollars. However, his salary has been $100k max for many years.
Bustling your employees with many overtime hours is not exactly a textbook example of spiritual entrepreneurship, but investing a little too warm-heartedly in employees, trusting that you will reap the results of that automatically later on, will also cost you. You can achieve a balance between giving and taking and making sure that one does not invest more than the other.
The first steps to building the KFC emporium were very hard for Colonel Harland Sanders; he couldn’t sell his chicken recipe to anyone. But he went on; he continued; he persisted. Going on is an important quality of any entrepreneur. However, even more important than this is knowing when your conviction to go on changes into pushing on against better judgement. Having faith in your own abilities can be both a source of strength as well as a trap.
When people give each other gifts, they often secretly expect something back. Giving gifts without (secretly) wanting something back in return can be very liberating. Would it hurt your business if you really started giving gifts to your customers in true freedom?
Respect and trust are important values to building (business) relationships. Everybody finds it important to receive them first, but they cannot be commanded. People are quick to pass judgment on those by whom they do not feel properly respected or trusted, which can (permanently) damage relationships. The solution? Be the first to give respect and trust without the condition of immediately wanting any in return.
Sun Szu* has said: ‘War is sometimes inevitable. The art is to wage the war in such a way that there are as little victims as possible.’ If your business is in a crisis, it requires a lot of guts to fire one half of the employees in order to preserve the other half with families to maintain. Spirituality is knowing when to use an ‘iron fist’. Spirituality is not ‘soft’.
* ca. 400 BC in The Art of War
Passion and emotion are often confused with each other. The first is an enthusiastic, inspired state of consciousness; the latter (e.g. anger, disappointment, jealousy, etc.) only manifests in interactions with peopl
e and the situations in your environment, and also exposes your less-desired traits. For an entrepreneur, there is no such thing as too much passion; however, this does not apply for emotions.
The spiritual meaning of the word ‘discrimination’ is: being able to distinguish between what really matters and what does not. For example: it is not essential on an absolute level if the returns are lower than the previous year. However, not being able to say goodbye to an employee who is leaving the company because you have too many things to do is a serious signal! Are you able to discriminate properly?
Measuring success according to the degree to which positive things happened, makes you a prisoner of your own limited views. ‘Negative’ experiences could turn out to be very valuable, even if you are not able to see the meaning of them directly. ‘Failures’ only come into existence after you label experiences as such yourself, and should you be unable to learn from them.
In 2010, Steve Jobs saw ‘his’ Apple surpass the most significant competitor for the first time. He then forgot for a while that his customers were the one who had given him the success he had earned, and instead snubbed people who had started complaining about a defect in the iPhone4. The media were all over him and made him eat humble pie. This is a real management classic: no matter how big your success, do not forget to remain humble even then.
We have all experienced doubts and negative thoughts, especially in challenging situations. The spiritual principle that can be applied in such cases is: the less you feed it with attention, the more it loses its power. This is perhaps the only positive function of hard work: it is an excellent tool to distract us from our basic feeling of unworthiness.
People with a managerial position somehow do not receive many compliments from other employees. As if you just toss everything off without any effort. Do you recognize this? Getting compliments is essential and crucial for your well-being and your success. Compliment yourself or somehow arrange that you get them from someone else. As long as you get them!
You have probably heard the countless stories of millionaires who say that their wealth has not made them any happier; after all, you quickly get used to having an Aston Martin in your garage. Do you secretly connect wealth with happiness? And how far were you planning to stretch the boundaries? Till the moment you make $100k a month? Or $1 million? Happiness can only be found within yourself. You know that in your heart.
You suddenly noticed that your garage charged you a lot for aligning your tires the last five times you went in during the past 1.5 years. Will you still be a customer? Stealing comes in many forms – however small it may be. But as the saying goes: ‘Ill-gotten gains never prosper.’
Working 80 hours a week for a long time can completely wear someone out. But the annoying thing is that, even then, work is usually never finished. The reason for this is spiritual in nature: working hard is often unconsciously connected to the conviction that the work cannot be completed ‘normally’ in 40 hours. You create your own reality with this conviction: the work never finishes, which then confirms your own conviction, etc.
If an artist says, ‘I love my audience’, this can then be easily accepted. But it somehow becomes harder to accept when entrepreneurs shamelessly – and for no apparent reason – say they love their customers. Is your feeling of ‘love’ limited to just a few people from your private surroundings? In such a case, you significantly limit yourself as a human being and as an entrepreneur, thus cutting yourself off from natural success.
It can be considered a fact that networking is important for business. But not everybody enjoys networking. Check if you also have this feeling. Perhaps it stems from the idea that you have to ‘do’ something: talking with people in the hopes of having some business results from it. Tip: networking is like attending a baseball match. You don’t have to do anything and entertainment is provided for you.
Buses and trams driving outside of the regular schedule often featured the rather rude ‘No Service’ sign for a long time – until one empathic person cared about the disappointment many people would feel when seeing this type of bus or tram slowly approaching. Subsequently, the text changed into the much more considerate ‘Sorry, no service’. Empathy is probably one of the best qualities a good entrepreneur or manager can have.
At the market you may see someone bargain and buy something for half the price. But the seller may not do the same for the next customer. The secret? The realization that, when you start bargaining about a price but still really want to have it deep inside, the other party will always notice this. You can only really negotiate in business when you truly let go of the end result.
The authors, Timo ten Cate and Janneke Kromkamp, are running a medium-sized Dutch consultancy together (www.digital.nl). At the same time, they developed their vision to a more spiritual, socially responsible way of doing business, which has become the foundation of the approach in their management consultancy. For further business information: www.janaka.nl.
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