What does awareness have to do with new ways of doing business?

In this article Kate Griffiths explores another aspect of new ways of doing business which only comes when you take time to be and are guided intuitively into what actions to take.  A very different space is created from that which comes from conventional thoughts on how to do business. 

Last week I had an amazing few days down in Somerset in which I started to get some great messages and insights into the way I am doing business.  I feel compelled to share them with you at a meta level because there seems to be so much misinformation out there.  Only this week I was reading someone else’s views on how to increase your profit in a month, which by and large was very old school although it was wrapped up in energy stuff in that it included the words magic and manifestation.

So let’s be clear how do I define the old ways of doing business?  What do they look like?  And why do people keep slipping back into them?  At the heart of the old paradigm way of doing business is goal setting.  This is when you name a target figure to make in the month and then go hell for leather to achieve it.  What happens though when you don’t make that target?  How do you feel about yourself?  Often what happens when you do this is that you put a huge amount of pressure on yourself and start to focus your attention on the wrong things.

Of course this approach works for people otherwise they would not do it.  It is why organisations give sales targets to their teams or business units.  I just have to look at the strain that it puts on those close to me in corporate roles when they know the numbers are unrealistic and then spend much of their time writing recovery plans when they fail to meet the interim targets through the year.

So why do individuals and organisations do it?  Mistakenly folk think that it is motivational and in the case of big business it is probably to keep shareholders happy because it is a way to ensure a certain level of dividend.  It is also a quick way of seeing whether something is profitable or not.

New ways of doing business often can seem counter intuitive in terms of making a profit.  The focus is on making connections with others once you are connected to yourself.  It means following your heart rather than your head.  It is about setting intentions rather than goals.  Opportunities come up that you might never have dreamt of especially if you have not specified how your intention will be manifested.  Let me give you an example.  I was with a good friend recently who has started using colour therapy in her coaching practice.  She put out an intention to run a workshop at a venue near to her home before Christmas for six people.  It was not happening – her dates and the venue’s dates did not line up.  She kept the faith and shortly afterwards a neighbour contacted her offering her a days work in London in December.

It is about keeping faith, hearing the messages that you are given and taking them in.  If you expect the worst or are filled with self-doubt then that is what will manifest for you.  This is not a call to spend all day every day meditating.  And it does mean having the self discipline to set up a regular practice be that walking or something more spiritual ideally at the start of your day so that the actions you take are from a place of awareness rather than fuelled by fear and panic.

So having read this post, what are you going to stop doing?  What are you going to start doing?