Thanks The Ruminant and Matt

Hi Lurker

Thanks for an interesting question. You are definitely an evolved soul to be asking such questions at a young age. Good on yah mate.

I cant speak for anyone else but for myself here. See if my thoughts resonate with you. I am not a Buddhist nor do I follow all of its teachings. I understand and respect the values of this religion but they don’t define me at work or outside.

I have worked in both big and small organisations at various levels and now I work for myself with a small but flourishing team. We do follow the modern day business rules but with a twist. Everything that you talk about is correct in a sense. The focus in most big or small enterprises is outwards towards money building or expansion. However, if you look around there are many organisations, which are using spiritual values to provide a very good service and are also making loads of money.

Money is a sweet and necessary outcome of having a good business.

There are 2 ways to look at the modern business values. I will share my view.

1. Be competitive – not with the outside world but with yourself. When you are trying to better yourself each day, you wont need to compete with others as you realise that we all have something unique to offer. No one is going to be good at everything and no one is going to offer you nothing.

2. Offer something others don’t – absolutely. This is called product differentiation. If you are always trying to better yourself, you will be able to produce a product, which is a unique concept for your company. For example, a better service, a better computer system, better communication system. You bring your own midas touch.

3. Turn a profit / reinvest – in business you have to. Without money, you cant fulfil survival needs of individuals or nations. Who will pay for your education, clothes, medicals, etc ? I am not sure why so many people try to make money the evil master. It is not the money, which causes issues in our lives. Money only accentuates our qualities. If you are a dick head and if you get more money, you will become a bigger dick head. If you are a generous person with human values, more money will bring that out even more. Do you get the drift ?

4. Fight for your job – this is a personal value, which often becomes enmeshed with the organisational values. Depending on what sort of leader you have and what values a company follows, you will have to fight for a job (favouritism, politics etc) or you can work your way through different positions in a fair and equitable way.

Many good people fail to progress in their careers due to their own personal values and because they are not able to go past the politics, which exists (and will continue as long as there are 2 humans in a room). This is a very deep concept and you need to speak to a few people about it.

5. Aim to grow in the company – Absolutely. We have not been put on this Earth to be satisfied with just food, shelter and sex. If we were, we would be similar to our 4 legged friends or other legged animal friends. A person who is constantly evolving and expanding is a person who will be adaptable to any situation. This planet is all about change. Look around for proof.

You can change in two ways – you can either grow upwards or you can shrink (or become stagnant). When we are growing, we are in sync with the nature and its natural flow. The question arises – how do you grow professionally with spiritual values ? By working on self rather than others. A person who is able to focus on themselves and the tasks at hand 100 %, has to have maximum creativity. It cannot be any other way. If you are maximally creative, what will you produce ? Absolute gems.

6. Be better than the competition – Yes. Be better than YOU from yesterday. Each day, you should ask a question – Am I better than yesterday ? If your answer is yes, no one can stop your success and money flow. If you say no on a regular basis, you know your answer.

7. Failures and sometimes you have to fail thousands of times – Again, it all depends on your mind-set. Some people fail one time and it breaks their confidence and they feel worthless. Nothing happens of these people unfortunately.

Someone who takes the positive out of a failure succeeds in both personal and professional life. Why ? Because this person is constantly trying to find ways to be better than yesterday. Some very successful people have failed 1000s of times to produce a gem of a product, which has revolutionised the world and brought people like us together to be able to talk like this. Can you imagine, if they had given up, would we be flying today or talking to each other or would our babies have survived past their first year ?

8. I think a lot of confusion arises for new-beeies like yourself in the professional world as you do not have the relevant experience to understand the meaning of acceptance, letting go, striving to have no desires, forgiveness, love, understanding, mindfulness in a true sense. You may be taking the meaning of these words literally. A person who is working on self rather than others is following the values above in every way but is also progressing in life to greater heights. Look at Dalai Lama. Look at Pope. Look at Tolle. Look at Oprah. Look at Obama. Look at some of the CEOs of major companies in the world today.

9. You ARE INDEED awesome right now. You need to come to this realisation to progress spiritually, personally or professionally in life. You indeed do not lack anything. Now is indeed all that we have. Again, you may be confusing the interpretation of these sentences.

To say one thing (or read something in scriptures) and to feel something in the core of our hearts are 2 different things. By telling you that you are awesome as you are, you do not lack anything and live in the now – are you able to do that and live your life that way ? Can the other 6 billion people do it ? NO. Why not ? Because we have a MIND. A very logical mind and Logic has no end. This is where the interpretation differs for us and all the confusion arises.

To reach that state of knowingness, you need to go through the normal steps of evolving. This requires – be better, work smarter, improve, create your destiny, become in control of your mind etc.

To reach that state whereby your mind looses its logic is the day when you will be able to live in a true Dalai Lama style – the sweet spot, the balanced state.

Until then, stop getting confused with all the questions and get back to reality of self 🙂 There is an excellent book by the name: Your soul at work by Nicholas Weiler and Stephen Schoonover if you need more answers.

Hope this helps,

Jasmine