Lived Truths & Paradoxes In Your Business

What is Your Truth?

What are the Paradoxes you have experienced?

How do you Live your Truth in your work?



My writing and workshops often include my personal Truths that I have experienced and which make me who I am as a human being and mindful marketer. This post is a record of my lived truths and how they influence my business and I invite people to share their lived Truths.

Here area a few to start with and which I share in my website as the guiding beliefs of iAM Business Consulting:

We each have a unique combination of passions, skills, and experiences that can be channeled in meaningful and profitable ways.

Self-awareness is the foundation of authentic leadership

In addition to passion, there has to be laser beam focus on the purpose and 100% commitment to be successful

Our inner beliefs influence our external reality

Marketing can be mindful, authentic, and profitable, only if innovative

The only constant is change; we stop growing when we stop learning.

I loved the Paradoxes of Creativity post by Roger von Oech in which he quotes creativity thinker Michael Michalko:

To create, a person must

• Have knowledge but forget the knowledge;
  
• See unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder;
  
• Work hard but spend time doing nothing;
  
• Create many ideas yet most of them are useless;
  
• Look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different;
  
• Desire success but learn how to fail;
  
• Be persistent but not stubborn; and,
  
• Listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

I liked the idea of sharing paradoxical truths - ideas that seem contradictory but in fact co-exist. Here are a few paradoxes that I have experienced in my life:

1) Be aware of thinking patterns shaped in the past to be creative in the present

(I did not realize that the assumptions and beliefs that shaped the way I perceive the world limited what I saw and how I made sense of the world. It was after a breakthrough I had in a Shamanic ritual and now my meditation practice that I can see how my past beliefs impact my judgment of any situation. By seeing the assumptions, and not being tied to them I can choose to see things differently and be more creative. Continuously examine assumptions that limit you.)

2) Being mindful in business is profitable. Yes, for many this is paradoxical.

(I have written about mindfulness in business and why it is beneficial to be mindful in business.)

3) You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it (Einstein quote)

(I have found that some of my most successful ideas were not an outcome of strategic thinking but inspired thoughts, when I was meditating or engaged in an activity that has nothing to do with the situation for which I found the solution. So loosen up, meditate, and silent the mind obsessing with the problem so you can hear the answers.)

4) In order to live a life of abundance, be free from desire for abundance

(You can replace the word abundance with anything and this principle applies. This principle is one of the trickiest because you cannot fake it till you make it. Either you Know this as your Truth or you don't. It doesn't work if you know it intellectually - you have to live it from every cell of your body. However, what we can do is have a self awareness practice, because as we realize the true nature of Self we move from desiring to Being. It is a journey...we may have found freedom from some desires and others we continue to gain more awareness about.)

5) To be more productive, practice doing nothing regularly.

(All of the above points lead to this one. When we are busy we don't take out time for our selves and which is when we most need to find time for silence. By silencing the mind I have found the ability to have more control over my mind and choose my actions more mindfully, instead of running on auto pilot.)

6) Work done with playfulness and joy brings better results than when done seriously, all else being equal.

7) I get more done because I don't worry about what doesn't get done
I often get asked how I get so much done (and I don't know what that means because we don't know and can't compare how much we all get done but lets stay with people's perceptions). And I was thinking about this the last time someone said that and realized what helps me is that I am not attached to getting everything done. I am only one and am doing the best that I can, so what does get done YAY and what doesn't I will get to it when I can. I also write about dealing with stress and moving with ease in my other Blog. In addition points 5 and 6 also help. (Added on 4-19-10)

So, the purpose of this post is to create a list of lived truths along with the many paradoxes that we have experienced personally and which have greatly impacted who we are and therefore also our business. The main criterion here is that you should have experienced it for yourself. It may be a popular belief or proven by science, but has it been your personal experience? And if so, I hope you will share your Truth, the absolute truth that you believe with every cell of your body here.