You may already have gotten a sense about this, but I love animals. Appreciating animals reminds me of my own animal essence – the part of me that just IS.
You know who swims better than me? Sharks. You know who climbs better than me? Monkeys. Dogs cuddle better than me… coyotes howl better than me… koalas nap better than me… so what is it that I’M designed to do? What is it that imagination and emotion and intellect gives me, that makes me differently capable than other creatures?
Human beings have cognition (awareness) of who we are in the grand scheme. We can perceive who we are in the context of the past, the present, the future, and the whole. We can sense – in an acute way – our transcendent qualities and oneness, or even the opposite – emptiness, nothingness, and separation. The typical business mentality is to assume separation. Then, the work we do is uphill.
If, however, we are capable of standing outside our own shoes and sensing humanity as a condition of oneness, we can go FAST. It’s like we have wings instead of feet. This is because our perception of individuation makes us small and limited; when we sense our connectedness, on the other hand, we become expansive.
Who can create like we can? We, more than any other creature, BUILD the world.
We CAN actually fly…
in airplanes.
We dreamed it first, and now we do it.
To me, the very fact that we are the builders of the animal world tells me we are pre-disposed to entrepreneurial urges. Business building and creative pursuits are expressions of what it is to be human. If we avoid the typical business sentiment-to assume separation-we can use the feeling of oneness to enter into the flow of greater human potential and possibility.
Humans transcend by being both IN the world, within our very own individual experience, AND by retrieving a love beyond ourselves. I have never worked with a business owner who, upon achieving a certain degree of success and satisfaction, didn’t recognize within them, a strong urge to give back.
It’s like the signature move of anyone with a heart and soul; at some point, we yearn to give what we have (and sometimes, even from a young age, that’s all that matters to us).
That’s an expression of transcendence. It conforms more to the urges of love than to the urges of self-interest.
A business shifts dramatically once its visionary allows love to do the thinking. These businesses start to express a symbiotic relationship between itself and those it serves. All parties involved benefit and experience high value. The bridges we build frequently within a business that’s led by love are synonymous to the interplay of all humanity, and even to the entire dynamic of the living world. At this point, we’re not just about profits; we’re actively inventing harmony.
Sometimes, when we want to do good business, we strive to be givers, and we resent anyone that appear to be takers. Givers are those who are generous, who contribute, who you can expect to provide value. Takers are those who are stingy, who strive to gain advantages, who you can expect to cheat you of value. We assume that the good in the world stems primarily from those people we call givers. But this is a limited view; we can’t transcend business if we maintain this sort of thinking.
The idea of oneness means there’s no separation; and if there’s no separation, it’s impossible for Lou to be a giver and Stan to be a taker. We must all be one and the same, and if the notions of giving and taking make us distinct from one another, we must find an attribute that is more universal and core to who we are. Perhaps what makes us the same is the quality we call love. We can express that attribute outwardly or not, but if we do, we become “lovers”.
Lovers don’t need anyone else to be takers in order to provide value, and they also don’t need to undermine their own desires. It’s by loving what they love that value is created – whether it’s to love selling guitars, or designing t-shirts, or raising horses. They uplift the very notion of business and what it means to be in transaction. That’s how we transcend business. We do this by disallowing the views that stem from separation (i.e. competition, comparison, unhappy effort) and by maintaining open hearts-by simply loving ourselves, and others, and our work, as much as we possibly can.
