Introduction: People, and Their Offers, I Really Love
Before we dig into the healing aspect of business, I want to take a bit of space to express some gratitude.
One of the experiences I cherish most in running Heart of Business is a feeling of partnership. We carry this strong belief that business can be a healing force in the world if it’s done from the heart in a balanced way. And we aren’t the only ones out here with this sense, thank goodness.
There are other people, many other people, who are doing amazing work in the world. It’s in my heart to let you know about them, before we move into the article.
Molly Gordon of Shaboom, Inc. Molly is one of my mastermind buddies. But, before that, she was someone I looked up to and admired. When Heart of Business was a bud on the vine, I came across her Authentic Promotion materials, and they just spoke right to my heart. I count her as a close friend, as a colleague, and as one of the warriors of love holding a fierce sense of truth and heart in the world of self-employment.
She has an Undoing Money Worries offer going on right now. You know us here at Heart of Business, we use some very explicitly spiritual exercises in our own money course. Molly takes it on from a different angle, one that some might call less “woo-woo” than the stuff we do. And it works. Really powerful work.
It’s really accessible right now, too. She’s offering it for $29.
Undoing Money Worries
Disclosure: the above is NOT an affiliate link.
Pace and Kyeli of Freak Revolution. Pace and Kyeli are two wonderful people in love with each other and with the world, who observed something that perhaps is really obvious: “Normal people won’t change the world. We will.”
So many people feel like freaks, like they don’t fit in. I know that feeling defined much of my life. Pace and Kyeli really have it nailed, and I just love and admire both of them. Although I haven’t experienced their work directly, I have a deep intuitive feeling about what they are doing. And their Freak Revolution Manifesto [link: http://freakrevolution.com/manifesto/] is right there where you need to be.
A lot of the spiritual work we do in Heart of Business has to do with helping folks know their own strength and sovereignty without abandoning their humility and desire to serve. Nourishing that soft and tender space in the heart that can move mountains when it’s plugged in.
Pace and Kyeli are offering a course this next year entitled “52 Weeks to Awesome,” which appears to touch on that exact need. It’s an entire year of learning how to know yourself, trust yourself, understand and be understood by others, and us it all to create forward momentum in your life.
It just looks fantastic. If you feel freaky, if you want awesome, then check it out:
52 Weeks to Awesome
Disclose: The above is NOT an affiliate link.
Pam Slim and Charlie Gilkey and their “LIft Off! Retreat”
Pam Slim the amazing powerhouse heart person who wrote Escape From Cubicle Nation [link: http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/book/] is someone I’ve also gotten to know over the past year. She stayed in our home when she did her Portland workshop. I’ve spent time with her personally, been in a workshop setting with her, read her book, and read her blog.
She is a tender-hearted, compassionate, get-it-done visionary grounded amazingness.amazing. She is my sister-of-the-heart. I just can’t say enough good things about her.
Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing is another one. Charlie has a take on productivity and workflow that really lands for me. Again and again I’m inspired by his perspective and touched by his caring.
This past year I’ve stepped intro really and truly running a team and a company here at Heart of Business, which has added a level of complexity and overwhelm to work. Charlie is someone who I’ve spoken with to lean into his expertise of teams, leadership, and productivity.
Well, guess the heck what? Pam and Charlie are doing a retreat together focused on turning your creative ideas into a profitable and sustainable business. They are calling it the Lift Off! Retreat. Since I know both of them are calm, grounded, unhypey people, the lift off isn’t about some pie-in-the-sky huge dream of success. It’s about getting your business off the ground and working it. For real.
Pam and Charlie’s “Lift Off! Retreat” [link: http://www.liftoffretreat.com/]
(Disclosure: Guess what? Not an affiliate link either.]
There are so many other very cool people I love. I’ll introduce more of them to you later. Right now, I’ve got something else I want to tell you.
Article: Can Business Itself Truly Be Healing?
You already know that what you do as a business has effects people. Whether it’s jewelry, consulting, coaching, healing, medicine, accounting, cooking, whatever you do, you’ve seen enough moments when your client or patient or customer experiences what you do and something happens. They change. Their heart opens. It’s tremendous.
It’s healing.
So, sure, your business is a vehicle for delivering healing. But is it possible for the business itself to be a healing presence for you, for your clients, for everyone it touches?
Before we consider that question, let’s open the door, because I hear another question knocking first.
What Is Healing?
Our modern culture has a fix-it mentality. On the face of it, it’s not so bad. If something’s broken, you fix it. Unfortunately, when you’ve got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
The fix-it mentality that we are immersed in brings with it the assumption that everything that doesn’t meet our on-steroids sized expectations is missing something or broken and needs fixing. We then set about trying to fix it, usually through a lot of hard work, whether physical labor, or spiritual efforting.
Healing Is Not That
My Sufi sheikh talks about being drowned in Oneness. The teachings he refers to explain that there is nothing but Oneness–that any experience we have of individuality or independence is an incomplete witnessing of reality.
If you carry the fix-it mentality in your consciousness, then it’s easy to see an incomplete witnessing as a “brokenness” that needs to be fixed or healed. This, too, is an illusion.
In Sufi healing, the Divine quality of Salaam is often invoked. The Arabic word “salaam” is usually translated as “peace” but that’s not really its deeper meaning. Salaam, and shalom in Hebrew, carry the meaning of “wholeness.” Peace comes from wholeness.
Healing is experiencing the wholeness of how all is One. It’s being reminded of that Oneness, not mentally, not intellectually, but in our bones, in our kishkes, in our hearts. That love is available no matter who you are, where you are, or what situation you are in.
Even in business. Crazy, eh?
When you experience wholeness, that is healing. Sometimes that experience changes the external reality and illnesses leave, businesses do better. Sometimes the external reality doesn’t change. But wholeness, peace and love infuse the entire experience. Nothing is broken. Nothing is wrong. Everything is perfect just as it is.
That sense of wholeness and perfection is a very strong ground to stand on and provides a really stable foundation for forward movement, growth and development.
Healing is the wholeness. The movement forward isn’t the healing, it’s a byproduct of the healing.
As I mentioned above, you’ve experienced this sense of wholeness in your work. But what about in your business?
Toxicity in Business
To experience wholeness in various aspects of your business, you need to get intimate with it. Many people run into this problem when they’ve had previous experiences with business that have left a bad taste in their mouth, or worse. Who wants to get intimate with something toxic?
It’s important to acknowledge this. You weren’t wrong. People really do use deception, manipulation, fear, and other experiences of brokenness and separation from Oneness to try and accumulate more in the physical world. This is really painful, and anyone whose heart has awakened even a little bit instinctually recoils from it.
If you let those past experiences keep you from getting intimate with the basic structures and functions of your business, you are missing out on a whole lot of love, wholeness and healing.
By intimate, I mean letting the stuff of business into your heart. What if you let the essence of sales, marketing, or finance into your heart? What if you asked in your heart “Is there love available here?” Because if there is love, then wouldn’t you want to find it?
Sounds kind of woo-woo, but let’s take a look at how it functions in the real world.
An Example
One of the big uglies in business is marketing. Is there love available?
There are many parts to marketing, so let’s just get intimate and look at one part right now. Many marketing teachers advocate talking about the problem. This can be manipulative and painful. So many heart-centered people want to avoid marketing that talks about pain.
However, at the heart of it, what if you could talk about someone’s pain in a nonjudgmental way? In a way that transmits acceptance and love. That just because the pain is there, it doesn’t mean they are bad or wrong?
Just typing that paragraph I experience a deep sense of relief. I took a deep breath and was able to relax. The sense of safety and acceptance that comes into my heart when my pain or struggle is acknowledged is really profound.
When someone reads your marketing and experiences this acceptance and love in your message, they touch wholeness. Their heart heals at least a little bit. Without manipulation, someone can read it, feel wholeness, and then make a decision from that place about whether or not to work with you, rather than from panic and manipulation.
We had quite a few people who applied for the Opening the Moneyflow (http://heartofbusiness.com/moneyflow) course who ultimately decided they didn’t need it. They came to that decision with a sense of wholeness. The course still sold out, and it felt so good because each person who decided to sign up or not sign up made that choice from a place of wholeness.
That, to me, is healing.
A Second Example
How about that other bugaboo, money? Financial accounting is a necessary part of business. When you don’t seem to have enough of it, it can be scary. And even if you do, the detail involved in tracking pennies and making sure money is there for taxes, expenses, and all the other things that come up can drive a person crazy.
Is love and wholeness available here?
What if you took the time in your heart to feel, to experience, to really taste what’s happening with that money. Your clients and customers paid you. Every penny they gave you represents the trust and care they have in you and for you. To receive each penny in gratitude is an amazingly fulfilling experience.
Then giving attention to accounting for it, to tending to all the pieces of the business that need care and trust. Paying your taxes, which support the societal infrastructure that makes your business possible, as imperfect as it is. Paying for services like the heat in your office, or the roof over your head, even if you work at home. Or your autoresponder, or web host.
Think of the people who work to maintain and deliver those products and services that maintain your business and your life. Each of those people have family and loved ones around them. Each of them is investing some part of their life energy into supporting you with what you need.
When you pay your bills and deal with your accounting while aware in your heart of your interdependence, you begin to taste the fabric of wholeness. When your heart witnesses the love present in supporting each person in your business’ circle, it’s healing.
Yes, our economic system is imperfect. Yes, there is a lot of pain and suffering there. Yet, the more people become aware of the love, the wholeness, the interdependence, the more each of us will make choices that will help our economic systems and societies give and care for all who touch it.
That’s your business being a healing presence. That’s tasting wholeness.
Every Detail In Your Business Contains the Universe
There is love and wholeness in every nook and cranny in your business. As you let yourself become intimate with what is truly there, then your actions and choices become expressions of that experience of wholeness.
Then your business becomes an expression of that wholeness. It becomes a healing presence in the world, just by doing what it’s doing.
Seven More Days in 2009
As the year winds down, I want to ask you to set aside a little bit of this season for contemplation and devotion to your business. And I’m not talking about your to-do list.
I want to encourage you to pick one or two places in your business where you feel some pain, revulsion or rejection in your heart. And open your heart, face the pain, and get intimate with them.
Begin to ask the question, where is the love here? What is the true nature of this aspect of my business? How can I taste and express the wholeness that touches even this part of my business?
I wish you a quiet, peaceful, loving end to your 2009.
peace,
Mark
p.s. Just love.
We’ll have some end-of-the-year special offers next week before New Year’s. For now, you have everything you need. Let yourself rest into peace and love and wholeness.
