I love this video that our practitioner Jason Stein made on this topic. Take a look, take a breath, and share how you face this.
What came up for you watching the video? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
p.s. Need some hands-on help?
Jason is available to work with you one-on-one. Along with Yollana Shore, he’s one of our star practitioners here at Heart of Business, and has done amazing work with clients to help them double and triple their income while staying true to their spiritual core.
Check him, and Yollana, out here: Organic Business Development Program
p.p.s. What the heck is sovereignty and why do you need it?
What in the heck is sovereignty and what does it have to do with business?
Sovereignty comes from the word “sovereign,” meaning “ruler” or “monarch.” The trouble with business is that it can be very easy to feel blown about on the winds of countless forces. Clients, colleagues, the economy, even what your parents or best friends say to you. It bends, twists, and blows on your confidence.
Yet what your clients are really looking for is a strength, a certainty, a -presence- that says to them “I’m here. I can handle whatever comes. I can help you.” Your business needs this from you also.
How exhausting! How do you access that strength and certainty without burning yourself out, or blowing your ego up into arrogance? How do you combine this Divine strength in your heart with an attitude of service?
The Sufi’s have a profound teaching about this, and I’m going to help people walk into it in two live workshops this summer. Plus some real nitty-gritty heart-centered business coaching and teaching.
Every Act of Business Can Be An Act of Love will be in both Maryland and Ohio this July. Come get your nitty-gritty business heart on in a beautiful way.
Click here for info and to register: Silver Spring, Maryland July 14
Click here for info and to register: Dublin (North Columbus), Ohio, July 23
And ask any questions you may have. If you have friends, community, colleagues in either of those places, please spread the word!
7 Responses
Hi Jason –
Well first, that looks like a foxglove from here… but don’t know if that’s native in Portland. Still, that’s my bet. Secondly, you can send us some of your rain! Here in Ohio we’ve haven’t had any in ages! And it’s supposed to be 100 tomorrow. Feels like August.
Finally, what a beautiful vlog. Knock on wood I haven’t to deal with crisis on that level yet. However as a mom of two young daughters I do find it’s a challenge at times to balance non-work demands, activities and emergencies. Sometimes it means I drop the ball on something, or just don’t manage by business as I might like. I’ve found for me that transparency is really important. So far clients have been understanding, and you never know who you might impact with your honesty. And yes, the space and support to discern your needs – which can change day to day in that kind of situation. It’s the paradox of being in business for yourself – the ability to craft your work-life around your needs… and the ability to craft your work-life around your needs!
Looking forward to seeing Mark in Ohio!
Hey Jason,
Thanks for the information you provided. I really Liked IT
@Julie – Great to hear form you. It’s true that being a parent and a business owner is often filled with the unexpected. I think you’ve named it perfectly here — “…and the ability to craft your work-life around your needs!”
@Sanil – Thank You. I imagine a business world where individuals are honored for who they are and their experiences as much as for what they got done today.
Jason, it’s foxglove.
I always put my game face on when I walk into the my office (next to my bedroom). Always. I never let my employees see that there is anything wrong with me.
Hey Jason
(I just realised my original post on Vimeo does not show on the Heart of Business blog, so I’ve copied it here)
Excellent post and timely for me as my fiancee was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. The hospital gave her six months to live, four months ago. The emotional tsunami resulting from this has meant that it’s been extremely difficult to focus on business, which has suffered as a result. Often, it has been all I can do to get through each day and do the practical things that are necessary to keep life functioning.
All our dreams are on hold and will most likely not materialise, although while she is still breathing there is always hope. Even so, a core part of my life has been taken away and whatever the future brings nothing will be the same again.
The gift in this extremely challenging situation is that it has highlighted for both of us the reality that there is NO safety, security or surety to be found in the external world. None. Zero.
All can change in a second. I’m about to go for a power walk, run and yoga by a stream near where I live. I don’t know if I will return to read your response to this comment I’m offering. That’s the truth. That’s reality. None of us know a thing about what is going to happen or not happen.
The beautiful aspect of this situation, the gift, is that even more than before my attention goes to the Divine, to OneSelf, for the only true safety, security and surety there is. There’s nothing philosophical about this, it is simply that Divinity is unchanging. Being unchanging it can be relied upon to be here, now, whenever I choose to turn to it. It can be relied upon absolutely.
And each time I turn inward to the Divine there is such peace, such a feeling of benign simplicity in the silence of this Heart of all. And, gradually, each day there are signs of new growth budding forth, ideas for a new approach to my work, ideas for new ways of marketing, a feeling of coming back to life again.
I have a newfound understanding of the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, when he said: “Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may to make it happen. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. The best course then is to remain silent.”
I’ve known these words for many years but never fully got the truth he was pointing to. Now, through this intense challenge of cancer I do. The feeling is so peaceful and the paradox is that out of this silent peace such wonderful newness is being born.
So what is good and what is bad? Only thinking makes it so, as ye olde English gent, Bill Shakespeare once wrote.
Thank you Jason for sharing this. Maybe if more people in business talk openly like this, the business world will one day acknowledge the existence of emotions and the reality that vulnerable human beings make all levels of business work.
with kindness,
Leo
PS The plant you point to is called a Foxglove, or in Latin, Digitalis: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis
Hey Jason,
First, I agree with the others. Foxglove it is.
Second, I think a lot of this stuff applies not just to a personal crisis, but just to change as well. For example, my wife and I are expecting our first child in February. I know that will mean big changes for how I need to run my business which is exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.
But it will all work out in the end. I can’t wait to be a dad. 🙂