Conscious Business

What feels good is not always good; what is good does not always feel good. That’s why you need a rational discipline to guide your actions.

Conscious business is such a discipline. It integrates heart and mind in the practice of business as an expression of human values.

The bottom line is clear: You don’t need to sell out to be successful. You don’t need to drop out to be happy. When you do business consciously you manifest your true self and inspire everyone else to realize his or her own true nature.

Here is an artistic presentation on conscious business Brett Wallace illustrated in Slideshare, followed by a panel I led with several colleagues about it in Wisdom 2.0:

There are 12 transformations along the path from unconscious to conscious business. Each one is based on a traditional virtue.

1. From blaming to owning: stop acting like a mere victim of circumstances out of your control and take charge of your life.  (Responsibility)
2. From winning to meaning: stop pursuing only competitive goals and realize that happiness comes from pursuing a noble purpose through ethical means. (Wisdom)
3. From knowing to learning: stop trying to prove that you’re always right and open up to new possibilities. (Humility)
4. From judging to understanding: stop seeing people through your mental filters and put yourself in their shoes. (Compassion)
5. From avoiding to confronting: stop suppressing uncomfortable information and face reality. (Courage)
6. From pleasing to truth telling: stop altering your story to be liked by others and start telling the truth to be liked by yourself. (Honesty)
7. From controlling to considering: stop telling people what to do and take into account what they want to do. (Respect)
8. From taking to trading: stop negotiating win-lose and look for ways in which everybody can be better off through an exchange. (Creativity)
9. From defaulting to delivering: stop defrauding your creditors and honor your promises unconditionally. (Integrity)
10. From indulging to investing: stop seeking immediate gratification and postpone pleasure for the sake of happiness. (Discipline)
11. From complying to committing: stop obeying as if you had no choice and choose to do what you do fully. (Commitment)
12. From bossing to leading: stop managing people through external rewards and punishments and inspire them with a dignifying purpose. (Vision)

Readers: Have you experienced any of these transformations in yourself or others around you? Leave us a comment and let us know how it affected you.

Thanks to Prakash Venkataraman and Brett Wallace for their partnership in this post and the accompanying presentations.

Fred Kofman is Vice President Of Leadership and Organizational Development at Linkedin. Follow Fred Kofman on LinkedIn here. To learn more about our Certification and view more content please visit Conscious Business Academy. To stay connected and get updates please join our Conscious Business Friends group.