Arousing our love and lust for life and business
I was awake all night last night. I found it hard to define love and was troubled
by the fact that I could not isolate it – the definitions in the dictionary did not
satisfy me – nor did the quotes and research online.
Then like all insights, it came to me like something familiar – that I already knew.
An ‘Ah-Duh’ not an ‘Ah-Ha’.
Love expresses possibilities – what we know, what we don’t know, what we don’t know that we know and what we don’t know that we don’t know. Like the word love itself – love expresses possibilities.
Then it occurred to me as a possibility, that maybe people who get stuck in business from time to time (like me and others) lost sight of love (possibilities) in business.
What brings back that sense of possibility in business and in life?
- Love as Courage
I inventoried all the people I coached since 1991 – the majority of them – began their path to a breakthrough by determining a compelling choice.
The compelling choice was between two options : 1. Continuing to live life as it was (familiarity) OR 2. To do something different (the world of the unfamiliar). Both options were risky and involved fear – but option 2 required courage to move through to the other side. Every single one of them felt the fear of the unfamiliar and chose to move through it, to the other side.
Practical questions: In what pending decisions, do you know that you need to show courage?
Are you withholding or delaying a decision because courage is missing?
Where are you clearly showing courage in your business?
- Love as Integrity
The word integrity comes from the Latin word for digit or finger – expressing the concept of ‘one’ or wholeness.
When you are ‘out of integrity’, it does not have to be about being wrong or being right – it may be just that something is missing. Putting in what is missing restores wholeness and restores integrity.
Practical questions: What are the areas of business that are working for you? If you are wishing to improve performance in an area of your business, what do you think is missing in that area that could provide higher performance?
- Love as the Creative Impulse
When you see that you interpret (create) life and that how you interpret life determines experience and outcomes, life becomes different – and free. Not free like you are completely free of worry and fear – but free in the sense that you are actually in charge of how life occurs to you even when you feel fear and worry.
Practical questions: What interpretations are you holding on to that are holding you back or restricting you from moving forward?
What interpretations are helping you move forward?
- Love as Charisma
Charismatic people do not care about being charismatic. They have little concern about how they occur to others – they have attention on their vision or something more expansive or nothing at all (the playful charismatic). Being charismatic opens possibilities but gives the option to focus on something bigger than our ego based wants and needs.
Practical questions: Where are you attached to an agenda or unwilling to give up a position in your business? What is this behavior costing you in your business? Where are you being charismatic in your business?
- Love as Being in Communication
There is a big difference between hearing the words of others and listening for what people are intending to communicate to you.
I am skeptical that anybody can listen perfectly all the time – the nature of a good listener is to doubt and check – doubt that he has listened well and be willing to check in to see what he may have missed.
Practical questions: What do you think is working about your communications? What do you think you are missing in your communications with your team, customers, vendors or partners?
- Love as a Choice
Giving clear choices to yourself and others expands possibilities and enables the creation of new possibilities. It does not mean that you cannot ‘lay the law down’ at times – it just means that you have facility in your ability to demand things and to invite dialogue.
That flexibility to do both determines great and loved leaders.
Practical question: Where are you providing choice and where are you not providing choice in your business dealings?
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite”excerpt from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Treating love as possibilities expressed, gives access to more expansive thinking and greater breakthroughs.
Are you ready for more love, expansive thinking and greater breakthroughs?
