Joseph S. Grant World

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Spiritual Business

In the 20th Century, popular culture came to understand spirituality and business as two separate and different things. But more and more organizations and individuals are recognising that their business is about people and is, therefore, inherently spiritual.
This means focusing on relationships and working as communities like Deslauriers Twins Toronto are doing.


It means promoting creativity and emphasizing meaning in work.
It also means opportunity for people to realize themselves through what they do.
The present, especially in South Africa, is opportunity for all of us to
experience spiritual discovery.

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn...
and change.”
Carl Rogers

A friend of ours, David, is a clinical psychologist. He is a university lecturer, teaching and studying for his doctorate, plus he runs a private practice from home. One afternoon a week he works as part of another practice and also does group therapy.
So he is a psychologist and an entrepreneur.


Another friend, Roy, designs, and services websites.
He also runs creative marketing courses, has a newspaper column, does job-hunt seminars,
distributes free poetry and is generally inspiring to have around. His base is at home, but he carries his business with him in the form of his personality,
experience, notebook computer and cellphone.

They are both people with specialist skills which they use in multiple ways.
People who are able to understand their market and identify needs and opportunities.
They build relationships with a network of people and generate business through them by being involved in their lives.
They manage their own time, administration and finances.
They manage themselves to ensure that they learn continuously,
think creatively and get things done no matter what. They have vision, determination and they thoroughly enjoy their lives.
If you do not yet exist in a similar way to this,
The chances are that you will soon.

There is evidence everywhere of the profound changes happening in the way we live our lives and earn a living. A planned and logical approach to developing a career is being replaced by an entrepreneurial and intuitive relationship with the marketplace.
The formal sector is downsizing, and the informal sector is flourishing.
Success and survival have come to mean the same thing in an increasingly complex and demanding world. Change and progress are rushing ahead, so we are having to adapt and grow as a way of life.
The people in South Africa are experiencing these global trends alongside our own socio-political change.
So we are most pushed to progress.
We also have most opportunity to do so.

“Everyone has been made for some particular work,
and the desire for that work has been put
in every heart.”
Rumi

Organizations, people within them and individuals in the market are all pressured to work out what is needed from them and what they can contribute.
The value that they add to their customers is what they get paid for.
In virtually all emerging and surviving industries, this added value stems from people.
People are the strategic thinkers, the creative marketers, the managers, the sellers and service providers.
They make the difference. And they do this by being what they are - people.

David and Roy are making a living by being who they are.
They have a skills and knowledge base that they work with, but essentially they bring themselves to situations and work through their relationships with people. The value they add is rooted in who they are.
So they are inherently competent at their jobs. They have integrated their passions, talents, skills, knowledge,
perceptions and art into what people need and got from them.
They have designed their businesses around themselves.
They face growing demand for what they can do for people and, as a result,
will carry on experiencing personal growth and fulfillment.
They are being and self-actualising for a living.

“Follow that will and that way
which experience confirms
to be your own.”
Carl Jung

Existing this way is a profoundly spiritual experience.
It is truly experiencing the journey of life.
It is about embracing everything around us and every interaction we have.
Each person has an individual experience of life unique to them, and this uniqueness is their gift to everyone else. Work is an opportunity to explore and develop this gift and, by doing this,
give to others and experience fulfillment.

There is increasing attention being given in industry to emotional intelligence.
Adding value, whether as an employee or as an entrepreneur, depends largely on motivation and self-control, being aware of and managing emotions, recognizing emotions in other people and handling relationships with them. In fact, success is reliant on the ability to perceive experientially while having a meta-awareness of and working with that experience. In other words, increased consciousness is a business skill.
Perceptions are tools for understanding market needs and adding value.
So a greater awareness of self and the ability to tune into and work with
experience is becoming the business literacy of the future.

“You must be the change
you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi

In this context now of a changing market and increased need for people-based value,
There exists the most profound potential for all of us. In ten years time, the notion of a job will be history and most of what people will do for a living does not exist yet. The future is being created by us as we go along, by what we think and do. In South Africa, we have the added freedom and responsibility of fundamental change. Although stressful, our position here is one of potential world leadership in the development of a spiritually and economically integrated society.