What if business was not just about profit, but a sacred act of service?
In a world driven by bottom lines and materialism, we’ve lost sight of the spiritual essence of doing business.
While I realize we live in a world where most companies care more about the bottom line than they do the actual people that work for them, I also recognize the missed opportunity in how we operate these businesses.
What we fail to realize is that business is actually a very spiritual act.
But what does ‘spiritual’ mean in the context of business?
It’s not about religious practices, or woo woo nonsense, or mystical experiences in the workplace. Rather, it’s about recognizing the deeper purpose and interconnectedness of our work.
It’s about having a cause, a compelling why, and a clear sense of mission, purpose, and vision. A spiritual approach to business means that we:
- Acknowledge that our work is bigger than ourselves and an extension of our core values and soul’s purpose.
- Recognize the inherent worth and potential of every individual involved in our business ecosystem, from employees to customers to vendors and suppliers, and to our communities.
- Strive to create sustainable value that goes beyond financial profit, contributing positively to society and the environment.
- Cultivate mindfulness and presence in our daily operations and decision-making processes; take responsibility and accountability.
- View our business as part of a larger whole, a part of the interconnected web of our own humanity, within our communities and on the planet.
In essence, a spiritual approach to business is about infusing our work with meaning, ethics, and a sense of higher purpose … and, with love.
It’s about creating cultures of compassion, integrity, and service to others, where profit is a result of doing good, not the sole driving force.
It’s the means by which we offer our greatest gifts to others and the world. Or, at least it could be and should be structured as that.
However, we have gotten distracted from how we were designed to operate and connect by the lure of money, power, and a host of other materialistic things that feed our need for instant gratification and dopamine hits.
What we fail to understand, or remember, is that we are spiritual beings first living out this human experience.
We are here to share our innate gifts through service with each other.
We are here to create, connections, synergies and communities built on love, compassion, and grace.
Business has become a scorecard. A measure of who can one up another. And, it does this at the expense of humanity and our own well-being.
We get lost in the rat race and find ourselves running on endless hamster wheel that goes nowhere. We just speed up the track, hoping that something will change or we will access more.
More, more, more …
The mantra of the top echelon of society. A badge of honor that we use as a metric for perceived success. More money, more stuff, more power … more of anything we can acquire, possess, own, or accumulate.
It has become a rally cry.
And, one that is costing us … a lot. This endless need for more, whereas we tell ourselves that what we have is not enough, or that somehow we are not measuring up, or that with more comes greater peace, joy, fulfillment, and love is killing us, literally and figuratively.
It’s robbing of us of being present to life, to the people we care most about, and to our own health and wellness.
It has us living in states of worry (rehashing the past) or anxiety (future projecting the unknown) with all our “could’ve, would’ve should’ve” beens and “what ifs” … it leaves us feeling lost, frustrated, depleted, and sick.
Mental health issues and suicide, especially for perceived high-performers are on the rise. Studies have shown direct correlations to our state of health and the ceaseless desire for more … well, everything.
We wind and grind, burn and churn, and hustle for the muscle, as a result.
We lose ourselves in the process, and create cycles of burnout in this crazy quest for more. And, we tie our own sense of worth and value to how much more we can actually accumulate.
Crazy, right? We’ve completely forgotten who we truly are and what we are here to do during our time on this earth.
I assure you it’s not to be in perpetual cycles of being busy for the sake of being busy, and killing ourselves and our spirits in the process.
Business is about something else, and truthfully, we’ve had it all wrong.
What we are here for …
Our journey is one of love. It’s to move through life experimenting, sampling, and experiencing the fullness of it. And, for most of us that comes from our interactions and connections with others.
We are here to be of service and in service.
It’s how we activate the fullness of our gifts, our voice, and our leadership. Yes, we all have an opportunity to lead from where we are and with what we brought into this world.
Because leadership is ultimately a choice.
It’s a function of three essential things: how you choose to show up, how you choose to serve others, and how you choose to take personal responsibility inside those two spaces.
And, it starts with you.
When we remember who we are, we remember that we are spiritual beings connected to a richer and deeper thread. We are all part of the same.
Business is an expression of your gifts …
Thereby, your business is a spiritual entity, an extension of your light and what you are here to offer in service.
As I tell my clients, sales is your love letter for those who need and want to find you and are seeking what you have to offer them. Marketing is nothing more than the way that love letter travels.
Imagine for a moment if we really viewed business from this perspective. Think about how the energy of money, exchange, and business deals would change. We would shift away from transactions and seek to develop deeper connections and relationships.
We would be more focused on the long game and stop making decisions based in entitlement, greed, fear, and instant gratification. We would remember that power only lives within us not over us.
In this remembering, we come back home to ourselves and our own sovereignty. We access the real power in our collective energies versus buying into a bill of goods that somehow has us believing that we are not enough and that anyone else can have power over us.
We learn to govern ourselves, thus making governance obsolete.
Before you say this approach is costly …
For those who think being spiritual costs money or compromises profitability, let’s challenge this assumption with a real-world example.
Patagonia, a company renowned for its human-centric approach to both business and marketing, offers a compelling case study in spiritual entrepreneurship. This outdoor clothing giant demonstrates how aligning with higher values can lead to both financial success and positive impact.
First and foremost, when you take an inside look at what makes Patagonia stand out is as a business who walks the talk, and is deeply connected spiritual to who they are, they emulate the third principle I discussed above when offering the functions of leadership: leaders take responsibility.
Second, they put the well-being of the environment before profit. They don’t just claim to be an environmentally conscientious company; they put this belief into practice, every single day.
Third, as such, they aim to make highly sustainable gear so that people don’t need to make unnecessary purchases and waste doesn’t create excess landfill. They even directly and boldly urge people to not buy what they don’t need in their marketing and messaging.
Their core values reflect: quality, integrity, environmentalism, justice, and not being bound by convention (taken directly from their website).
When you witness how Patagonia chooses to show up and serve, and take great responsibility in what they make and offer the world, you can easily see how they live by a principle grounded in something more substantial and operates higher than that of the almighty dollar.
The irony is that as Patagonia stands firm in its spiritual and sustainable approach to business, it also has grown significantly year-over-year.
According to the University of Michigan, in a case study created in 2023, the company is estimated to be worth more than $3 Billion.
As the world becomes increasingly more concerned about social justice, inequality, and sustainability issues, many…sites.lsa.umich.edu
I’d say that blows the narrative that you can’t be both a spiritually, value-driven company and still be profitable and sustainable out of the water.
The potential in front of us …
When we acknowledge the sacred and spiritual energy of business, we lead differently. One could argue that it’s the only path to real leadership.
For what we see currently around us is a far cry from the truest meaning of leadership; it’s selfish, cunning, entitled, distorted, and doesn’t come from a place of reverence, compassion, or service.
It’s not meant to be a game where we keep score, but rather an open exchange of ideas, talents, skills, and meaningful, sustainable work. The kind that raises our consciousness and shifts evolution.
A lead-it-forward mentality. One that through our collaborations, synergies, and working towards a common goal, we all succeed and thrive. One where we eliminate a scarcity or lacking mentality and realize that abundance breeds more abundance. There is no diminishing of a pie.
Instead, there is more of the pie to go around.
The great poet Hafiz once said:
Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.
I remember the first time I heard that quote in Wayne Dyer’s film The Shift, and how it affected me. My breath caught and my heart swelled. He offered that sentiment after discussing Lao Tzu’s the four virtues to live by:
- Reverence, or respect, for all of life
- Sincerity, which is just nothing more than honesty
- Gentleness, which manifests as kindness in our lives
- Supportiveness, which manifests as service (being in service to others)
As Dr. Dyer closes out this film and brings us full circle in the meaning phase (or afternoon) of our lives, he uses Hafiz’s quote as a metaphor for how we are here to be and the potential that is before us.
Imagine if we thought of our businesses in the same manner. Imagine if through offering our gifts in service that we, too, could light up the world.
I believe that is the true nature of our purpose … to shine our light. To be a conduit and beacon of love, and to stop asking “what’s in it for me” and instead offer, “how may I be of service to others?”
As we move forward in our business endeavors, let us remember the spiritual nature of our work.
Let’s strive to create businesses that serve as beacons of light, offering our unique gifts to the world without expectation of return. In doing so, we can transform not only our own lives but the very nature of business itself.
What one step will you choose to take today to infuse more spirituality into how you operate your business and lead your teams?