3 Extraordinary Spiritual Lessons for Business Success
Dear Reader,
I got really busy in business. And yet, as I look back to the busy days of being a CEO at a consumer packaged goods company (Zhena’s Gypsy Tea), I see just how sacred all of the learnings were. And I also have perspective as I reread Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God book. Business and God usually don’t get written about in one place, but for me business is an act of sacred grace, and so here I will explore three of the biggest spiritual lessons of business and God.
Many of the great teachings I learned are in my upcoming book: Life by the Cup, and many are yet to come in the next book: Business by the Cup. Here, I will share three of the learnings with you that are not yet in the books.
1. Be the Gift.
In business, we often interview potential employees, make sales presentations to prospective clients, and view people’s time as resources that we must maximize to “win” at the game of business. We look at what we can take to “the bottom line.” Business at it’s best is about giving value and exchanging it for financial reward. All is well and good, but there’s a different way to see this aspect of business. It’s to shift from get to gift. What that means is this: Instead of looking at what others can give you, or less consciously what you can “get” from others, shift into gift thinking. As Neale Donald Walsh writes, “When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you.” Now, that’s a big idea and it came through to Neale as he was having a Conversation with God, but think about it. If you approached hiring, attracting clients, and maximizing others’ talents from what you can gift to them rather than what you can get from them, it would be a massive paradigm shift in the way we go about running and growing businesses. So, next time you are approaching a “get” in your business ask yourself this, “What is the gift this person is here to receive from me?” See what happens.
2. Nothing but Angels.
Neale received the following teaching also in his Conversations with God book: “I have sent you nothing but angels.” This is a doozy. Think about any and all negative interactions you have had with competitors, regulators, bankers, customers who wouldn’t pay–anyone or thing that perceptibly did you wrong. Now, imagine that God sent them to you as an angel, which is what Neale is writing, “I have sent you nothing but angels.” What you may have perceived as a bad person or negative experience was simply an angel helping you unveil something hidden or to change course.
Holding resentment or regrets is useless, a waste of your precious time and life force, because there was nothing that happened that shouldn’t have. Angels came, you clashed, things changed, and that was the point of the interaction or situation. Reframe any and all people who played the role of protagonist in your life as an angel and see what happens. (I REALLY would love to hear/read your comments on this one!)
Now, I confess, there were a lot of people who came into my life as angels. Early investors, supportive customers, loving and dedicated employees, suppliers who I cherish always and forever. And yet, there were those who pushed my back against a wall. Customers who never paid and put my company in peril. Vendors who raised prices during high season and devoured our profits. Buyers who promised big purchase orders who never actually ordered and left us with massive amounts of inventory and no where to go with it. So many things that happened at the hands of…angels?
I’ll tell you, this is a hard one for me, but now as I get further and further from the running of the company and more and more into the teaching of how to run one with love and integrity, I can see that the people and situations that perceptibly hurt me and my business were teaching me the lessons of self-preservation, discernment, and making meticulous agreements. For a woman who wanted more than anything to please others, these are lessons in survival. They are tough but real ways to see that the world isn’t black and white, and that the shades of gray can cost you a dream if you don’t know how to navigate them correctly. Being over-trusting is something many women face when starting or growing a business. And now, with all of those lessons under my belt, I can help women avoid the same mistakes. Angels came to me and taught me hard lessons, and those lessons are now a resource to save others time, money and heartache–it’s an almost shamanic experience. And now as an author, facilitator and women’s business coach/advisor, there is no way I couldn’t have learned these lessons and still be the resource for others in the way I am now. Hard lesson, big bad angels, all perfect.
I’d like you to think about a negative experience or person from your past that you are still pained about. See what this person/situation would look like if it was an angel. What is the lesson that angel came to bring you? What can you do with that lesson now and how can you use it as a gift to others? (I’d love to hear this in the comments below!!!)
3. “Belief creates behaviors,” -Neale Donald Walsh
In this new paradigm of business, where there is no separation between home and work, where we are digitally attached to all things at all times, and where business must go from taking from nature to healing nature, we need to deeply reflect on our beliefs about success, and what we identify as a business’s success. For many, the dollars in the bank are the only way to see if a business is successful, its the paradigm that “numbers don’t lie.” But, what if they did? What if beliefs about money and numbers were causing us to measure success in old, false ways?
Stay with me. The basic point of a business is to make a profit. We get that, but, what if those profits were measured by the positive impact it had on the world versus the amount of wealth the C-suite and investors acquire? What if the new bottom line was how a business ended poverty for tea workers (the way mine did) or, how many trees it planted (Guayaki yerba mate), or how many lives it touched by providing shoes and glasses (Tom’s). What if we changed the value system, the belief, that money is the only means to the success of a business. What if a business acted as an advocate to end the use of chemical pesticides and influenced millions of people to think about the peril of pesticides for the first time? Say they had a red bottom line–would that business deserve to go under, or would that business deserve more time to make it’s way to the black?
How are our beliefs making it possible for businesses to take and take from the earth and undermine the well-being of workers, to make a profit for a few shareholders? Why do we believe that those companies are successful? How are our collective and individual beliefs holding that old paradigm and its outdated, hurtful behaviors, above the law and on a pedestal of awe? Here’s how: we still believe that money, a human invention, is more powerful than what is good and right. We applaud high profits and quarterly earnings and until that belief is changed to how a company serves and heals the world, we won’t have sustainability and safety. We won’t have equal rights or pay. Our beliefs about the power money has over the sacred and natural world are shaping the behaviors of the companies who stay at the top.
We are in a very tenuous time in the business world where we have to look at more than the bottom line, we have to look at business as a means to heal and change the world, which might mean a lack of profits for awhile. It might mean that money and the means of accumulation for the few needs to be reconsidered. Values in business have to shift and a conversation has to be had in order for us to create a sustainable paradigm shift. If we are pushing our old beliefs that business is to make us wealthy rather than nurture and serve the world, then we may never make the leap into the new paradigm of business. Businesses must and are tasked with the job that individuals and governments cannot do–make a new paradigm of value, see profits in things other than dollars, and nurture and fix the world’s woes through selfless service to others. Business is the one thing that can make vast sweeping, visionary changes because it isn’t based on divisive things like religion and politics. But, our idea of business and the more dollar-profitable the better, needs to shift for our behaviors to shift.
I’d love to hear your beliefs about business. How do your beliefs about success and business shape your behaviors in how you run and grow yours?
I know this is a lot to swallow, and I thank Neale Donald Walsh for his service to us through his books. I am reading them again now and will reflect more on how spirituality and business can be combined to lead us to heal and change the world through business.
Many thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section below.
With Love,
Zhena
Zhena@Zhena.TV
