Business

The power behind the throne

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The world we live in consists of the visible and the invisible. The form and the formless. The finite and the infinite.

The business world focuses almost exclusively on the form and what is visible.

If you want to improve results in any area – marketing, sales, leadership, management, communications or the game of life – there is a huge amount of help on offer.

How to think. How to behave. What to say. Strategy. Tactics. The 10 steps to… . The 7 habits of… .

A lot of fascinating material but how much does all this information help people?

Are we like robots who can simply follow the instructions of other people and get similar results?

Or does the invisible have far more to do with it than we may ever imagine?

What about…

Presence? Charisma? Timing? State of mind? Inspiration? Grace? Momentum? Creativity? Confidence? Resilience?

These and many other things are in the realm of the formless and yet are they any less real? Are they not the real power behind the throne?

People talk about the invisible dimension but the words can only point.

The business world likes what is concrete because the intellectual, conceptual mind loves form. It likes content, processes, steps and formulas.

To the intellect (and boy do we live from our intellects!) it is highly attractive to discover that to get what we want there is a process, a formula or some steps to follow.

Even though life does not lend itself to this approach.

The business world tends to struggle with the invisible, formless dimension.

I often hear people talk about mind-set, for example, but the talk is almost always about form.

People offer prescriptions – change your words, choose the mind-set you need, surround yourself with the right people, create a new set of habits, take a small step each day – the list must be endless!

Back in 2004, when I began coaching people, I focused on the form too. I thought that people just needed to know what to do. They needed a technique, strategy or instruction.

But I began to see inconsistencies.

For instance, with exactly the same information or technique, why did some people get great results whilst some got dismal results?

Why did people’s performance seem to randomly fluctuate (my own included)?

Why did some people change but others not?

I did not know the answer but when you sit with enquiry things show up. Often in unexpected ways.

A series of seemingly chance conversations lead me to the inside-out understanding and I had a huge ‘Ah-ha!, so this is what is going on!’

For the past seven years I have been pointing people towards this understanding and how it creates our moment to moment experience of life.

Has it all been plain sailing?

No.

I stumbled around in the beginning. When sharing it with people you must be patient and stay present because the formless is difficult to grasp; the intellect is of no use whatsoever.

And some people do not hear beyond the words because the illusion they live in is precious to them.

But this is all fine with me.

Everything comes back to the understanding in the end because our experience of life is thought created – every problem or challenge we can ever face exists only in our thinking.

This is not to say there are not things in life we need to deal with or get through because, of course, there are. But if we see ourselves as victims of circumstance, being bullied or pushed around by our circumstances, then we lose our spark.

The world of form is limited whilst the world of the formless is limitless.

The clearer and deeper you see the mechanics behind how we perceive life the more you live with presence, intelligence and free from struggle.

The problem with boundaries…

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Imagine you have a piece of plain white paper and on it, you draw a small circle. Suddenly, you have a boundary – you have inside the circle and outside the circle.

And with every boundary, there is the potential for conflict.

In life, we have all created a great many boundaries. Universally recognised ones, like time for example, and personal ones like our ego, which is the sum of all our self-created boundaries (I am this, I am that, etc.).

Boundaries can be a good idea and the concept of time is clearly useful! It allows us to show up when we are supposed to. Or remember our loved one’s birthdays. Or as a guide to accomplishing something.

But there is still that latent potential for conflict in every boundary.

A client recently shared with me that he felt under pressure because his business had a ‘poor’ month. Revenue was not quite what he wanted.

So, in crossing the boundary from the end of one month to the beginning of next he began to experience a lot of insecure thinking that was not there before.

Instead of being present, calm and open – the very place where we keep perspective and have the most access to intelligent, creative thinking – he got negatively preoccupied and felt bad.

I know that many people will say goals (like monthly targets) are important.

But this is just a made-up idea too. I have seen many people under-perform because they feel under pressure in trying to meet their target. I used to fall into that trap too.

This is not to say targets are a bad thing. They are neutral. But when people get attached to them it does the opposite of what the initial intention was.

It is understanding where our experience is really coming from that sets us free.

Beyond the limitation of the boundaries we make up is the infinite potential of pure consciousness.

Nothing is smarter than this.

I remember Dr. Dicken Bettinger saying (and I am paraphrasing) – ‘We all have the intelligence of the entire universe at our disposal’.

When we appreciate this fact then it stops making sense to put up so many boundaries and it becomes easy to let them go.