Good Life Project - Loving-Kindness and Compassion in Business? Really?!

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

In Buddhism as well as in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, you'll find a conversation about four virtues known as the four immeasurables.These are qualities that we might seek to both cultivate and then embody in the name of service. But, they're also known to have a profound affect on the way we experience challenge, stress, relationships, work and pretty much all of life.Wondering what they are?Loving-kindnessCompassionAppreciative JoyEquanimityThese are four virtues that I try to explore and cultivate in life. But, I was also curious, what might happen if you worked to cultivate the four immeasurables specifically in the quest to craft a meaningful business or career?Exploring this question is what today's GLP Riff is all about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's Good Life Project riff is about something called the four immeasurables applied to the world of business and work. So there's something in Buddhism called the four immeasurables, and those things are loving kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. So I think about them a lot. In fact, they're engraved in Sanskrit in my wedding band. And each serves as a constant reminder of how I strive to live in the world. And it'd be nice if I didn't need to be reminded, but like you, I'm human. I have nice days and not so nice days. And that's really the point. The immeasurables are intended to be focusing ideas for meditation within the larger context of life.

They're the touchstones to bring you back to an understanding both of what matters and how truly interconnected we all are. So I've also spent a lot of time exploring what might happen if you leaned on these principles, not just as touchstones for life, but actually as guiding tenets for your career and for business. If you're building a private practice, what would happen if you leaned on it for that? So why don't we dive into this a little bit, starting with loving kindness. So in the context of life, loving kindness is often interpreted as the wish that all others experience joy and happiness. And this usually starts with a focus on those you know, or have some connection to, and then extends to a meditation for joy and fulfillment for everyone. In fact, it very often starts with you

as the focal point, then someone you care about deeply, someone you don't, you know, or sort of is in your life, but you really don't know or have feelings about, then very often somebody who you have negative feelings for, and then the greater world around you. So it sounds really lovely to extend in your mind, loving kindness to all of them. But, you know, I'm kind of thinking, come on, really?

Isn't this a bit woo-woo for serious business? And the truth is, well, yeah, it is a little bit woo-woo. But it doesn't mean it also won't make for an insanely effective and transformational business building experience. So how might you actually bring this into business? So maybe you're a benevolent mogul or astrap entrepreneur or surf lifestyle artist or hey, even a, quote, social media consultant or thought leader. Well, in each of these scenarios, traditional business teaching would have you in opposition to your competition and even at times your clients and your prospects. It might even have you in opposition to your colleagues in certain moments in time. So selling somebody would be about getting the best possible deal or outcome for you.

Winning in business is about dominating. And success is about winning under that definition as often as possible. And that approach may well give you perceived power and toys and wealth. But the question is really, to what end? Will it make you happy? Will it make you feel good about who you are, what you bring to the world and what you'll leave behind? Will it allow you to genuinely walk through life in a state of contentment? Will it build the culture and goodwill that'll drive the world to rally around you and your success? So what if you did it differently, leading not with the quest to dominate and take, but to raise as many ships as possible, even ones you don't know exist yet?

It's funny, years back, somebody used to rotate through our, funny enough, social media crew named John Unger, and he called this the zillion sum game. And it was basically, what if you worked with equal fervor to bring the experience of maximum joy to everyone you came in contact with, not by taking, but by helping and giving? What if your core metric wasn't earning, but elevation? How much do you think others would begin to rally to your support, to you, to your business, your quest, in a way that would just never happen if it were driven solely by a take-based metric? What would the secondary effect on earnings be? And even if there wasn't direct measurable reciprocation, how much more fun would it be to spend your days brainstorming cool new ways to inspire more joy and more

happiness in people? That brings us to the second immeasurable, and that is compassion. So the Dalai Lama was once asked if he feared anything. And his answer was that he feared losing the ability to have compassion for the Chinese. And if you know the history between the countries, that's a pretty mind blowing statement. But it's at the root of your ability to understand and then serve the driving needs of others, especially those perceived to be quote, in opposition to you. And to do so in a way that not only far better meets what they really need out of an interaction, but structures that interaction in a way that makes both of you feel like you've won.

So before you begin any conversation or sale or a negotiation or transaction, what if you stepped back and to the extent that you could, tried to place yourself in the role of your counterpart? What if you created a detailed avatar of them, their lives, struggles, history, desires, pains, elations, personal pressures, pleasures, you know, everything that you could. And then what if you closed your eyes and visualized yourself as them? Take yourself through a day. How do you experience their fears, desires, and aspirations? Are you even capable of feeling or seeing or hearing them? And if so, well, how does that feel to you? How does the sensation fuel you? Because the more capable you are of feeling these things, of understanding and then cultivating a sense of compassion for those in the business

world that you view as your opponents, the better position you'll be in to actually just cut past all the BS and have a real conversation about how to create something together that not only gives you what you need, but creates enough new expanded value to uplift those who weren't even in the room. So that leaves us with the third immeasurable, appreciative joy. So appreciative joy has this wonderful tie-in with a Yiddish word, and that word is nachis, which like most Yiddish words really has no great translation, but it's probably easiest described as the feeling you get when you see good things happen to someone for whom your wish for success is so pure that you feel their success as your own. There's no jealousy or contempt, no sense of you being on the losing end

of a zero sum game. You genuinely feel like their win is yours. It's funny, I sometimes feel this for friends who are authors. So when my friend Gretchen Rubin's first big book, The Happiness Project hit number one in the New York Times bestseller list, it was like, I felt like I was there with her. I felt like her win was just, it was amazing. I felt this immense sense of just appreciative joy for her success. And of course, I feel it every time my daughter or any other member of my family succeeds at anything meaningful. So in business or in your career, the quest is to cultivate enough of the first two immeasurables to be able to experience that sense of appreciative joy or naches when those around you succeed, even when they accomplish what you've been desperately trying to accomplish yourself without success. Because in accepting that sense of interdependence, of oneness, you come to this place where you understand and you

feel their success is yours. You replace envy with ecstasy. And that's a tough thing to imagine, especially when you see the world around you as competition, which is why you get to make the choice. Are they really your competition or are they just another part of you? Are you better off racking your brain to figure out ways to beat them? Or would your potential for growth and success and elevation be greater if you spent that same energy figuring out how best to collaborate? And that brings us to the final immeasurable. Number four is equanimity. So in the context of the four immeasurables and in business and career and work, this is really about looking at everyone as being your equal without attachment to relative position or worth. It also means inviting the possibility that every person at

every position is your teacher. And that can be tough, especially for those who perceive themselves as experts or thought leaders and success stories. You know, what could a janitor teach a Nobel physicist? What could a short order cook teach a global CEO? What could a child in the playground teach a world-class athlete? What value could these people be to each other? The answer is everything. If you're willing to open your mind to the notion that everyone is not only your equal, but your teacher. Leveling your sense of status and attachment or non-attachment across all people. Well, that's a brutally hard concept for most people. And I'm raising my hand here also, me included.

I'm imbued with as much ego as the next person. As much as I like to really, you know, I do my practice every day. I'm human practice every day. I'm human, just like you. And it's not about the need to be or feel superior as it is about the fact that our brains are kind of biologically wired to experience elevations in status and, quote, right relationships as deeply desirable. These things trigger dopamine hits that make us feel better and want more. The challenge, I think, is to acknowledge and work with our history and with our biology to cultivate this sense of oneness through all the above three states that allows that same biochemical or spiritual sense of uplift to be triggered not only by increases in, quote, relative status and connectedness, but also by increases in

the status and connectedness of others relative not to us, but to themselves, starting with those you know, and then extending to those you've never met. So what do you think about this? Is this just some ridiculous utopian fantasy, or is applying the four immeasurables to your working life, to the way you contribute to the world, a viable approach to maybe elevate it? What might happen if you started with just one of these and give it a try for a month? Think about it. Maybe try it on for size. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet

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