The Three B's: Business, Buddhism & Being

The last two years I've been reflecting on three big B's:

• Business
• Buddhism
• Being

Rather than devote your own years to this, take what has been coursing through my mind and make it yours in a 5-minute digestible read - sounds like a win to me.

Why write on this?

These are three topics meaningful to me and it just so happens I'm giving a talk on this later in the week. Consolidating my thoughts into an article seemed the most logical approach.

I'm splitting this into three sections but it's more of a spectrum with an overarching theme. Business and Buddhism may be perceived as opposites while Being is the combination of the two. See diagram below:

Let's start with my understanding of Business & Buddhism before we can move into Being.

Business

Selling something to someone. At scale.

This is Alex Hormozi's definition of business at it's most basic form. I like it.

I don't profess to be an expert at this, in fact I'm quite literally building the bridge as I cross it with DR Analytics Recruitment but after 18 months in the hot seat I've settled on some theories that resonate with me. Business is:

1. Value creation
2. Value management

That's quite ambiguous so let's run with The Personal MBA 's 5 Parts of Every Business:

1. Value creation = Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.
2. Marketing = Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created.
3. Sales = Turning prospective customers into paying customers.
4. Delivery = Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied.
5. Finance = Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

My business story starts with having two unique skillsets, recruitment knowledge and data analyst skills, and combining those into a unique value proposition. The value? Helping companies to identify and hire top data & analytics professionals.

This is all wonderful but the challenge is that every nice concise step of the Personal MBA's 5 Stages of Business is inherently hard and requires constant strategising, adaptation, iteration and work. You must consider past results and the future at the same time to deliver in the present.

Essentially, sometimes you're everywhere but the present. Enter Buddhism stage right.

Buddhism

There are many different types of Buddhism around the world.

There are three main schools: Mahayana, Theravada and Vajrayana.

They all follow the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, who livedaround 2500 years ago in India. The aim is to reach Englightenment.

"The path to enlightenment is attained by utilising morality, meditation and wisdom. Buddhists often meditate because they believe it helps awaken truth." [source ]

Some of the dogma around Buddhism include: Dharma, Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Actually one of the Eightfold Path's is "Right Speech" - funny that I'm giving a speech on this.

A large aspect of Buddhism is meditation. Meditation is many different things to many people. For me it's the practice of bringing my thoughts to a point of focus. Losing focus is a given, the meditation is the bringing back of focus, typically to the breath.

Mediation finds balance in the present, letting the future and past fall away. Identity is found in those.

My Buddhist practice is finding pockets of that present moment whether alone in the morning for 10 minutes in in a group.

On Friday nights there's a public Meditation at the Buddhist Temple in Nollamara . At 7.30pm about 100 people sit in silence for 30-minutes as a monk guides the meditation. This is the chance to drop all past and future and exist in that moment.

For me it's the detox at the end of the week needed to stay in the moment rather than have business, life and challenges bumping around my brain.

Being

Great, Buddhism and Business - wonderful to learn about both but from my perspective there is an inherently antithetical nature to both interacting.

Business is chaos where decision-making is based on past and future factors.

Buddhism encourages focusing on the present moment, setting aside concerns about the past and future.

So how do we tackle this?

"Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed...This does no impair your ability to use time - past or future - when you need to refer to it for practical matters." - Eckhart Tolle

Mr. Tolle gives us some insight indicating there is a silver lining. An Inner Join. A Venn Diagram intersect.

What I've come to see this looks like is:

1. Referencing the past and future to make strategic decisions and plans. Then be in the present as you execute those plans.
2. Being present is the greatest gift you can give anyone - from your employees to your clients, that is more meaningful than any vision.
3. The answer to problems will often arise as you meet them in the present rather than past and future.
4. Do not divorce yourself from the past and future, rather us it to your advantage when you need to.
5. Past and future holds your identify which leads to decisions led by your ego when the best decisions personally and in business should be impartial and made in the present.

This informal writing based on my own musings and more of a personal blog.

It's outside of the usual 'Data Analytics' content and I hope a refreshing read!

Feel free to direct message me with any questions.

And if you're lucky enough to be a part of City of Perth Toastmasters Club you will hear this live!

-- Doug