This post is part of a series outlining the 11 principles detailed in David’s book, Heed Your Call, which helps modern-day heroes (entrepreneurs) integrate their business and spiritual lives.
In business as in life, there should be equal parts passion and equal parts profit or productivity. You have to consciously measure both. The magic happens when you find the balance between the two. When you attain that balance, you enable the conditions to find your state of flow.
In business as in life, there should be equal parts passion and equal parts profit or productivity. Tweet This Quote
One of the most important lessons I stress to entrepreneurs is the practice of being in this state. When you’re in flow, time ceases to be linear. We’ve all been there. It’s that situation where you look at your watch and say, “Oh my gosh, where did the day go? I felt like it was 11 a.m., and it’s already 5 p.m.”
Flow happens when you say, “This is incredible, I sat down to work on this new product design or this new sales opportunity, and it just kind of happened.” When you’re in it, it’s as if someone else is driving the bus.
One of the most challenging prospects for many entrepreneurs, though, is getting here. How do you find a way to make this flow state happen? It occurs naturally when your business is in alignment with your mission. When what your consumer wants aligns with what your business offers, you feel a wind at your back.
Flow occurs naturally when your business is in alignment with your mission. Tweet This Quote
Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, said the “doors will open, apples will fall from the trees, the right people will show up,” and ultimately the consumer will vote ‘yes’ with their dollars, all because you are in alignment.
This alignment is as much a feeling and intuition as it is a business analysis process. It is important to have left-brain analytics, but it’s also critical to have right-brain artistry. You can be in the boardroom and the ashram. We are meant to integrate like this.
Above all, founders and executives must understand their responsibility in creating organizational flow. They do this by embodying that which they seek to bring forth in their teammates. They must embody concepts of trust, surrender, manifestation, and co-creation.
In business it’s important to have left-brain analytics, but also critical to have right-brain artistry. Tweet This Quote
In fact, the single most powerful thing a CEO can do is embody the principles of flow in the way they live their lives and how they carry themselves at work.
For example, I was once at a 10-day silent retreat at The Chopra Center with a structured routine of meditation, yoga, and an intense cleansing process of nutrition and other treatments. We literally didn’t speak for 10 days, including no writing or reading. At the end of it, Deepak Chopra said to us, “When you go back into your lives, your jobs, your offices and your families, resist the need to go tell everyone about this experience. Ego is going to be grabbing you and saying, “Let me tell you about this retreat, I did this, I did that, and I feel so good.” Instead, he encouraged us to just try and be that experience instead of talk about it—and see what happens.
After I returned home and jumped back into my day-to-day life, people began to come up to me and say, “Did you lose weight? Get a haircut? You look ten years younger! Has something changed with you?” I hadn’t said a word—I simply tried to embody the principles I had just silently experienced.
There is an ancient parable, stated and restated across many different religions with many different versions, but regardless of the version, it always bears the same message: our minds are our wish-fulfilling trees, and whatever we think, believe in, and direct our attention to, the universe will deliver sooner or later—and sometimes even instantly.
The most powerful thing a CEO can do is embody the principles of flow in the way they live their lives. Tweet This Quote
Understanding this notion provides an incredible opportunity to shift our success in business for the better. Then, financial abundance, rich relationships, and longevity are all within arm’s reach.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” As a CEO, leader or founder, embody these principles in the way in which you interact with your team, the way you carry yourself, and the way you interact with key clients, consumers or vendors.
Utilize these tools in a way in which people can watch and be inspired, and from that inspiration seek to follow suit.