Most projects and businesses start out as a one man show. To grow a company they must expand to include a team of leaders. Adding more people to the leadership equation increases its complexity. Interpersonal complications are the number one killer of dreams. Plenty of entrepreneurs return to a sole proprietorship because they didn’t want to deal with people problems. So, unless you learn to understand people and to organize them into healthy teams your dream will never materialize. The challenge is to build an organization that works for you—not one for which you work.
Balance is the essence of life for business leaders. A visionary who dominates will run the marketer and manager ragged with wild schemes that never come to fruition. A marketer in control will work everyone to death on projects that carry the business in the wrong direction. A manager who seizes control bogs the entire organization down in bureaucracy. Success comes to team players who know their function and give proper respect to the other roles in their business.
CHARTING YOUR OWN COURSE
Prosperity is an essential aspect of success. True wealth is more than financial freedom. It’s a sense of something deeper. Wealth is the fulfillment of your authentic desires. Happiness is a sense of calm well-being, a kind of fulfillment that comes from deep within your being. How you achieve that kind of fulfillment may be very different than you think.
Most of life is dedicated to pursuing more, better and different. But there is another aspect of living that is not so easily grasped. The thing we seek—the elusive obvious—comes from a rare balance of time and money that frees up our attention. When the need for money no longer determines how we spend our time, we can be spontaneous and free to do what we love.
We spend time, and we spend money. And eventually we spend our lives. What’s important is how much you enjoy the passing of time, and whether your efforts earn you a prosperous life and a secure future. Your career and lifestyle should provide prosperity at mid-career and wealth in later years. And it should bring you pleasure along the way.
Play is the magical ingredient in happiness. Playfulness lifts our spirits and keeps us young. Playful people automatically achieve all the benefits that accompany such serious disciplines as yoga, meditation, aerobics, etc. Fitness, ease, naturalness and breath release occur spontaneously through play, even without any conscious striving for those effects.
A father goes to the gym with his young son. While Dad pumps iron, junior runs around and plays with his friends. The father certainly achieves a benefit, but his task is one of many, and he builds up resistance along with his muscles. At the end of the day the boy has achieved a more integrated fitness simply through the release of tensions that goes with fun and laughter. Who do you suppose most looks forward to returning to the gym?
Tragically, modern culture has a strict taboo against play for responsible adults. We are allowed to play, so long as it has a useful purpose—which, of course, defeats the real essence of play. Sports are okay because they make us fit. Music is okay as long as it enhances our real goals. But play as an end in itself is considered a waste of time and a threat to more useful activities, such as those that make us tighten up our muscles and scrunch our brows. In this human race it seems we must strive always to arrive at the end of life with the most resources.
Figure 1 depicts the arrow of time that encompasses your life. The vertical line represents the financial value you produce. The horizontal line represents the quality of your life and how you enjoy the passing of time. Balancing value (measured by money) with quality (measured over time) establishes the most direct route to fulfilling your desires. Value and quality are like two stars that you navigate your craft between to keep it on target.
Putting too much emphasis on money will enslave you to the almighty dollar. Too much focus on pleasure will leave you jaded and banish you to poverty. Both are side roads that may absorb you in the short run but prove disastrous over the long haul. A dynamic balance of time and money frees you up to play and to discover what you should do with the rest of your life.
THE FIRE OF DESIRE
When doing things you don’t really want to do, your efforts are lackluster. On the other hand, when you want to do something with all of your heart and soul, you are unstoppable.
Great athletes and performers don’t succeed on talent alone. They also possess a delightful desire that urges them toward wanting to reach their goals more than anything else. You too have that kind of desire in a specific arena, and your unique talent lies hidden within that deep desire.
Whomever and whatever you are, you do something supremely well. Each of us is a heroic figure, born with a particular purpose and designed to make a specific contribution to the world. The quality of our existence depends on whether or not we discover the activity that unleashes our talent. Every child is born with a gift. Each of us is a Picasso or Einstein, awaiting the recognition that awakens our innate genius.
Recognizing your gift begins the process of transforming that gift into an activity that enlivens you. That one particular activity will arouse great forces and treasures buried deep in our subconscious mind. Like Aladdin, you must find your way through the false treasures and find the lamp—the inner light— that awakens your genie (genius). You release this brilliant self by discovering the activities that light you up.
When doing the thing you are designed to do, you feel natural joy. Pleasure reinforces your efforts. You are more sensitive to your surroundings. The activity that piques your curiosity provides a clue to what you should be doing with your life. If you love Nature, for instance, you can learn how to earn a living protecting her. If you love people, you can create a lucrative career by serving them.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
There are two tests for determining how to spend your time and to earn money. First, does it light you up? And second, is it feasible? First let’s consider what lights you up.
Only your own vitality can guide you toward doing what is right for you. When people speak about their true passion, they display visible changes in their faces and bodies. They physically glow when they work within their calling.
Test the degree of your passion by asking an objective friend to listen as you describe your dream. As you become “warmer” or more excited, your eyes light up and your skin begins to glow. You feel more alive, more connected to your surroundings. When you grow “colder” or less enthusiastic, your expression falls and you disconnect from the people around you. An observant friend will notice the difference.
Already, you know some of the activities that turn you on and increase your vitality. Those activities are pieces of your life’s puzzle. Write each activity down on separate Post-it notes as they occur to you until you have collected a stack of notes representing the activities that form the mosaic of your ideal life.
Then lay the notes out and examine them. Sort them by similarities. In one corner you may place music or entertainment interests. In another corner you might begin with academic pursuits. Still another part of the puzzle might organize around sports or recreation. As you try to fit these activities together, you will begin to see that there are elements missing from your life. This awareness will put your biocomputer in a search mode, ferreting out connective activities that fill in the missing pieces.
Someone may light up on fishing and accounting. But how do these disparate activities fit together? Might there be connecting pieces that you have never before considered? Should you become a bookkeeper at a fishing lodge, or perhaps work for wealthy clients who go fishing with you?
As more pieces of your puzzle accumulate, the possibilities increase. The idea isn’t to get the “right answer.” Rather, you are learning to keep your options open and recognize the overall pattern in your needs. As you become comfortable with not knowing the answer, more intricate patterns will emerge. Look for the unexpected. After days or even weeks of contemplation, some event will