Over the past months I’ve been prompted to look into a subject area I’ve been interested in for a long time and have actually done consulting work in. It’s an area in the business world that used to be assumed but over the decades of the twentieth century fell out of practice. I was surprised to find out that a small national movement has been underway since the nineteen eighties and is rapidly gaining traction in corporate America. I’m encouraged and intrigued.
I’m speaking about what’s called Conscious Business or Workplace Spirituality. It starts by affirming that “We Are One with humanity and all of life. Business and all institutions of the human community are integral parts of a single reality: interrelated, interconnected and interdependent.” It involves creating a new business model where employee passion and retention vastly increases because employees become partners; where people come first.
It continues where profits are measured in people satisfaction, product quality, innovative design/development, intrinsic belonging to something greater than self and in dollars and cents. There’s a recognition that everything belongs to an environmental community of global proportion. There’s also a recognition that we humans are co-creators of Mother Earth; stakeholders of our future and that of our children’s children into the seventh generation.
I wonder how many of us recognize that communication is the expression of relationship? When you smile at someone and they smile at you, how does it feel? When someone gives you a compliment do you want to do more of what you’re doing or less? How about when someone frowns or scowls at you or chews you out over something you’ve done? Does this make you want to do more for that person or less? Do you see how thoughts and feelings create things?
In this new paradigm of work/play, people are seen as being of great value. They/we are not treated as objects but as sacred vessels deserving affirmation, acceptance, attention and respect. Do you know the difference between motivation and inspiration? Simply put, motivation is fear based, manipulative and punitive. It’s the carrot and stick. The carrot is the reward and the stick is the punishment. Inspiration is love based, encouraging, light, playful, expansive.
Which environment would you rather work in? How would it be if you could work at something that actually inspired you and others; to create something with a team that was completely unique and beneficial? Some say this is impractical but the research proves otherwise. The kind of leadership that lacks trust, manipulates, punishes and objectifies employees and customers is highly dis-functional and needs to be replaced. Do you agree? Do you trust that it can be?
If so, Workplace Spirituality/Conscious Business is growing and you are invited in. It sees, honors and celebrates the essential interconnected nature of all sentient and non sentient beings. It maximizes human/divine potential and helps to create a world that works for all. It’s a revolution, a turning in the consciousness of humanity that the indigenous peoples have known from the beginning. It’s our opportunity to be inspired and to inspired; to follow our inner Being.
When we truly see the Divine in all people, places, situation, and things, we experience the sacredness of Life. In this we begin the co-creative process of building a global community of Oneness and Well-Being where we honor our Unity in Diversity. We’re in it together. Let’s play!
Well said. What an amazing opportunity we have in this place. Let’s celebrate our diversity
and learn how to join in appreciation of the
value of others to know that together we are so much more than the sum of the parts.Jean
So much value here, particularly in light of the tone of our current national political dialogue. How different political contests may someday be if votes depend on candidates’ ability to build agreement, reinforce connection and inspire people to be in respectful and encouraging connection with one another.