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By Michael Angier |
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Spirituality in
Business:
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Your history: many of our values come directly from our childhood and upbringing. What are the most important values you feel you still carry today from your parents and other family members, friends, teachers, etc.? I grew up on a Vermont farm in a large family (five boys). My parents were and still are devout Catholics who instilled in me a strong sense of right and wrong. Although I didn't ultimately choose to follow my parent's religious faith, I believe that my upbringing in a home filled with love, devotion and integrity helped me to develop and enlarge my personal spiritual beliefs. Doing the right thing. Being fair, kind and considerate were not only talked about but demonstrated on a daily basis in my family experience. Did these come from your socio-economic status, your home life, spiritual and/or religious experiences? If so, please describe. At only 20 years old, my father was a World War II bomber pilot. He flew B-17s out of England over France and Germany. He was shot down, captured and tortured by the Nazis. He was liberated after nine months when the war ended. I believe these experiences had a profound effect on him and on his children as well. We grew up with a deep respect for our country, for freedom and for justice. To this day, I have a great appreciation for the simple pleasures of life. I don't take ANYTHING for granted. We all worked hard on our family farm and I think this work ethic has helped me through some very difficult times—both personally and in my career. Exactly how did you get started in your business or career? What prompted or pushed you to be attracted to your field? I've had several careers, really, but I've always been an entrepreneur. Except for a few brief jobs, I've been self employed most of my life. From the time I was a freshman in high school, I paid my own way. I bought my own clothes and paid for my own cars. My first career was as a farmer. I became a writer/speaker by way of my interest and passion for personal growth. I've studied the masters for over 30 years and now make my living sharing what I've learned with others. I would do what I do now for nothing if I could afford to. And as it turns out, I'm also able to make a good living at it. What do you feel is your major accomplishment in business? Did you have setbacks that were an influence on where you are today? My magnum opus (to date) is Success Networks. I've built an organization of over 25,000 people from more than 59 countries in just a few years. For a farm boy from Vermont working out of his home, that's pretty cool. Every day, I hear from some of our members as to how we're making a difference. There can be no greater reward than that. Most of my setbacks occurred in other businesses. I've had some pretty painful and expensive learning experiences. I'm a bit more cautious today and certainly more experienced. I'd say it's true that good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment. In 1991, the cash flow for my magazine business took on the glide angle of a brick. We went from receiving five or six checks a day to five or six days between checks. It was a very painful crash and burn. Things have been much different with my current business. My biggest challenge with SuccessNet has been to develop a revenue model that worked. I went very slowly because I knew I didn't have a proven model and I had no money to invest. I tried a number of things and it wasn't until almost two years ago—after four years in business—that things started to click. If I'd HAD a lot of money, I might have blown most of it on strategies that didn't work. Your influences: Who has been the most influential person in your life—and why? It's a long list to be sure. But my wife, Dawn, has been and will always be, the greatest inspiration in my life. She's my partner, my best friend, my teacher, my student, my critic and my supporter. My father and mother were certainly role models and always encouraged me. I can't ever remember when they ever told me I couldn't do something—other than stay out late, use drugs, etc. At an early age, I started reading biographies of great men and women. This was of great influence upon me. I have always been inspired by ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. What books or resources have been especially influential in your life? "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill was probably the first book I ever read that caused me to see that success was not about luck but about principles. It remains one of my top ten books. Jim Rohn, Stephen Covey and Wayne Dyer also stand out. What is your favorite quote? I'm a collector of inspirational quotes. We have thousands of them on our web site. But my favorite is one of Henry David Thoreau's: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." The second part of Thoreau's writing—and I think more spiritual part—is not quoted as often and I feel it's even more profound than the first: "He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with a license of a higher order of beings." A "license of a higher order of beings." Now that's exciting! Courage and fear: How much courage has it taken to pursue your goals? That's a tough question. In many respects, it doesn't seem like it's taken all that much courage. And yet, I suppose it did. The greatest courage I needed to muster was to start another business after having already failed in a business. It was a very public endeavor (a magazine) and the fear of failure was high. What I came to was that I feared living with myself having NOT gone for it more than I feared actually failing. What role do you feel fear might play as an obstacle to personal and financial success, if any? Fear is a powerful emotion. I'm continually surprised at how much it holds people back. And most fear is unacknowledged fear—fear we aren't really conscious of having. Has fear ever been responsible for something great "not happening" in your life? I've usually "gone for it" but my fears have sometimes caused me to fall short of my goal. I overcame my fears and took the risk, but was not always able to overcome my fears enough to keep me from doing my best work. There may have been some self-sabotage in there. Your present and future: What are your current projects and what do you hope to accomplish with them? My biggest project is myself. Developing myself and actualizing my unique potential. Beyond that, I'm continuing to grow SuccessNet into a much larger and more influential organization. I want it to be a no-brainer to not only become a fsubscriber but to become a Gold Member and go for the best that's within you. My vision is for it to become a well-known and highly-respected force for good in the world. What specific plans do you have for the future? I'm creating several new self-development products and eCourses. I'm also starting another book about the laws of success with sailing and sailing principles as a metaphor for how and why they work. I love to sail and I've come up with a sailing concept to explain every success principle I know of. It should publish late this year or early in 2003. Spirituality in your business: in your opinion, is there a difference between religion and spirituality? I think there is. I view religion as being a certain culture—a dogma—for people to follow. I personally find it too restrictive and I'm not part of any organized religion. Spirituality, on the other hand, is an understanding of a higher consciousness. And for me, it means a recognition that we're all part of that higher consciousness—that we are ourselves divine. It doesn't mean that we are all that God is, but we are PART of all that God is. Like a teacup of seawater is not the ocean but it nonetheless contains the ESSENCE of the ocean. Do you bring spiritual principles to your day-to-day business? If so, specifically how do you do this? I don't make a big distinction between my business life and my spiritual life. I'm not sure that there really is a difference. There's just LIFE. Just as I don't make much of a distinction between my personal life and my work life. I look at it all as life. I try to live my life each day with integrity. I do my best to be fair and honest. I try to be kind and considerate. I desire to live my life with no shame or regrets. It's not always, easy but I think it's gotten easier over time. For instance, there's nothing in my life that anyone could blackmail me for. Not that I would want everyone to know everything. There are a few things I'm not proud of. Shortcuts I've taken. Bad judgments. Selfish acts. But nothing that I'd pay money to someone to keep hidden. I sleep well at night. We must forgive ourselves for our shortcomings and move on. To me, it's only bad if you continue doing something you know to be wrong. I like to review my day and my week and look at what worked and what didn't. I ask myself if I made my choices based upon my values and my conscience. And I try not to be too hard on myself for not completely living up to my standards. I believe that our integrity can only be increased by the constant observation of our LACK of integrity. The challenge is to do it without invalidating yourself. Someone once referred to sin as Self-Inflicted Nonsense. That might just be so. Has there ever been a time when you felt that spiritual principles had no place in business? If so, what changed your mind? Business is a great playing field. It's one upon which we can test our theories and our beliefs. In the long run, they will prove themselves to be true or not. To me, spiritual principles always have a place in business. Spiritual principles are practical. The fact is, they WORK—at least in the long run. It's that way in other parts of our life as well. If spiritual principle isn't practical, what good is it? I think it was Eric Butterworth who said, "Some people are so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good". Has there ever been a time when you felt that your own failure to use spiritual principles may have caused you unnecessary challenges? There have been several. Mostly it's been around not having enough faith in myself and in what I was doing—not following my intuition. For example: When I was publishing Creating Excellence, we started to promote some well-known speakers at live events. It was a nice complement to our business and provided not only excellent exposure for us, it was profitable as well. It was also high-risk in that we committed to the speakers before we sold the program. One of my sales people convinced me to promote a speaker who I didn't have a good feeling about. It just wasn't a good fit for us. But I allowed myself to be seduced by the chance to make a substantial profit. We committed critical resources to the project only to find that we couldn't sell the seminar. We ended up backing out of the event at a huge loss of money and credibility. I wasn't true to myself and didn't have the courage to follow my gut and say, "No deal." If you could give other business owners one key piece of advice on the subject of bringing spirituality into their business, exactly what would it be? My advice would be to be who you are. Your business is an extension of who you are and you must be congruent with your values in order to have any degree of comfort in your business. Clarity leads to power and the clearer you are on who you are, what your company is and what you want to accomplish, the more successful you will become. The "why" of your business and your success is much more important than any "how". Knowing what you want and why you want it will overcome any challenge. It sounds simple and it is. It's also a very powerful and often overlooked principle. What are three things you know now that you most wish you had known earlier? 1. I know now that people don't think about us as much as we might believe they do. Being afraid of what people will think of us keeps us from doing many of the things we know in our hearts we should do. And we suffer for not having done them. 2. I used to be driven by guilt. Somehow I had it wired up that to feel guilty was virtuous. I thought you weren't a good person unless you felt guilty about your transgressions. Today, I see that guilt is a very destructive emotion and serves no purpose except to keep oneself in bondage. It took several years and some painful mistakes to get this for myself, but today I don't waste any time feeling guilty. If I can fix what I did wrong, I do. If I can't, I don't think about it any more. 3. I know now that people who do extraordinary things are not really special people. By that I mean that they aren't really any more talented, smarter or privileged. I used to think they were. As I've interviewed and studied successful people—people who have achieved something exceptional—I've found that they had the same doubts, the same fears, the same ordinariness that the rest of us experience. It's just that they wanted something and believed in something more than the rest of people. What is the single most important thing you'd like to share with our readers that we haven't yet discussed? I think one of the most profound things I've learned—and continue to learn at new levels—is that it's our resistance to what is that causes our pain. We expend far too much energy and experience way too much discomfort because we don't like something. What is, is. Once we acknowledge what is, we can make choices as to how we're going to respond to it, but we shouldn't waste time lamenting about how terrible something is and questioning why we have to endure it. One could spend a lifetime exploring the intricacies of this concept. Even though the tragic events of September 11 are still very recent, do you feel they have (or should) change the way we conduct both our personal and business lives? I think we're more aware of things. We have a greater understanding of problems in the world and how they might affect us. Certainly many are more afraid or at least feel more vulnerable. But as to changing the way we conduct ourselves, I don't feel much different. I'm more aware of what's going on around me. I'm more observant when I fly. The truth is, we've always lived in a dangerous world. I believe that we're actually safer now than at any time in history. It's just that tragedy is more visible due to our modern communication. I am gladdened by how well the free world has pulled together. And I’m heartened by the renewed patriotic feelings. I think freedom is much more appreciated than before. And that's a good thing. I think, too, that we've been reminded in a profound way of how precious and fragile life really is. Most of us knew someone killed or injured on September 11th or the war on terror that it started. Even if we DIDN'T know anyone, we were all touched by it—personally, economically, emotionally, and yes, spiritually. Please feel free to elaborate on your thoughts here. I believe that we live in the most challenging and exciting time that anyone has had an opportunity to experience. Not long ago, you either believed in science or you believed in religion or spirituality. Today, we are finding that they are not two worlds, but rather one. As they begin to understand the building blocks of the universe, scientists are becoming more spiritual. High touch is meeting high tech. I'm an optimist—always have been. And I believe there are no problems that cannot be solved. In spite of the horror we might see on TV, I think we stand at the dawn of a new age—one where love overcomes fear and our humanity transcends our human limitations. .......................
This interview is one of thirteen included in the eBook now
available
What 13 successful people have to say about simple and practical spiritual practices that can create the success you've always desired. Find out how you can get your copy of this exciting book.
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What 13 successful people have to say about simple and practical spiritual practices that can create the success you've always desired. Find out how you can get your copy of this exciting book.
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Copyright Success Networks International.
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