Spirituality and Social Conscience

I have been networking on Facebook for a little while now and have acquired many new American Friends who are not afraid of talking about their spirtual beliefs in the same breath as their business promotion. This is much less likely to happen on this side of the pond, but something is changing. No longer is cash king and I often hear people refering to the 'tripple bottom line' (people, planet and profit) and in this country, we an influx of third sector organisations. I am interested in looking beyond the ppp model and exploring the s- spirituality in charities and social enterprises, and specifically in entrepreneurship.


What is spirituality? Well, there is no academic or theological consensus about what spirituality is, but what I am referring to is personal values and qualities like honesty, compassion, trust, integrity, responsibility, personal awareness, awareness of something higher beyond the self, and social awareness. There is some kind of communication with the higher power like prayer or meditation and this informs behaviour with self, others and the environment. To me it is generic and inclusive and nothing to do with a specific religion.

What does spirituality have to do with entrepreneurship? I guess for me, entrepreneurs are the movers and shakers, the shapers and the trend setters. They have direct and indirect effects on the global economy, buying patterns and even thinking patterns, especially in this instant information age.

We see this happen in big business, where people are inspired by entrepreneurial giants to make millions by following their spiritual success formula. Take The Secret for instance. This was a group of highly successful entrepreneurs who got together to tell the world about how their spiritual beliefs were directly responsible for their success. This created an exponential growth of mastermind groups, internet marketing of Secret products, Law of Attraction paraphanalia, coaching courses, new books, ebooks and it changed the way that lots of people approached business.

Then we see people like Jim Rohn, who is a popular American motivational and business coach who has been giving seminars to large companies and indivuals for more than 40 years. He is a many times published author of books about spirituality, success, leadership, business skills, self development, dealing with customers, and motivation. He works with people to help them improve self-confidence, determination to succeed, mental attitude and ambition. Louise Hay has also been connecting spirituality with business and success for many years and has never changed her bottom line, she teaches that if we love ourselves and give to others, everything else will fall into place. Her own success was built on these principles and she grew in wealth and popularity when she began her work with AIDS victims in the 80s, teaching them to love and accept themselves.

For the past few years, I have been actively seeking out creative and social entrepreneurs and have been meeting with them to find out exactly how they do success and what drives them to be successful. I have noticed that some entrepreneurs have made millions lost and regained, some come into it in later life and some people start at about age 5 or 6 and never stop. I am deeply curious about the links between spirituality, mindset and success and continue on my journey of exploration. I am watching the effects of the internet, corporate downsizing, the move towards working from home and the emergence of like-minded individuals forming remote companies. It is an extremely interesting time for business and it could be said that the recession was needed to break down the old structures and create a big enough discomfort zone for new structures to emerge.

I wonder if there are increasing numbers of people who are identifying as spiritual-social entrepreneurs and this is a growing movement or whether the internet is just allowing us to find each other? Maybe we are all just getting a little braver about talking about it, or maybe the effects of people like Jim Rohn and Louise Hay and Deepak Chopra have reached a critical mass? Are we getting wiser to the unethical entrepreneurs who would prey on vulnerable individuals and can we prevent the human race re-creating the old model of world economics? Are there enough 'conscious' entrepreneurs to make fundamental changes to the way that we think about wealth creation and distribution?

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, was one of my personal heroes for lots of reasons. She built a company based on strong ethical principles and she made a moral decision to employ the unemployable and put 25 per cent of the net profits back into charitable work. She was determined to keep the soul of the company alive. In today's economic climate people are having to dig deep, seriously reflect on and consider their current direction and values and assess whether their game plan is really working for them. It is a time of challenge and opportunity. In the words of Kahil Gibran, The Prophet, “Work is love made visible.”

How do you approach success?