Business as a Spiritual Practice

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, and I'm here with Joe Hudson. So when I talk about this podcast to people, I often have a hard time telling people if it's a business podcast or if it's a spirituality podcast or if it's a relationships podcast because we We sort of COVID all the bases, but really one of the things that I love about what we're doing here is that it really just points to how they all come from the same place. Yeah, I'd love to have an episode that I could just refer somebody to, to be like, this is what I mean. Check this out.

Oh, wow. I don't— okay, how about, how about if we do one that is all about business as a spiritual practice. I'm not sure if we can do something that ties them all together. At least my brain can't comprehend that at the moment. But I could definitely say like, oh, how business and personal development can go hand in hand and what makes them go hand in hand so well. Yeah.

Great. Yeah. Let's stick with that seeming dual axis then of business and spirituality because I think often that feels like a dichotomy. For people. And in this episode, let's kind of weave those together.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the way that I'd want to— the way that I would want to start that is to just say, for those who are in business, you know, some, and who are as old as I am, somewhere in the '70s there was this concept that there was either a business— you were either a business person or you were an environmentalist, and you couldn't be both. Then the beginning, kind of like in the '90s, started showing up like, "Hey, we can do both of these two things." And then even companies like Walmart, by the early 2000s, they were doing some amazing things for the environment. They were doing things like telling Barbie that they needed to shrink their boxes so less containers would need to be shipped across the ocean. They were saying, "We're only going to sell renewable sustainable fish. They stopped selling certain kinds of light bulbs because they took too much energy. They did all this stuff. And I remember talking to the CEO who was in charge of that. I believe his name was Lee Scott. And he said it was like sweeping $1,000 bills off the floor. He said it was just so easy to make money being environmentally conscious. And so I want to start off by saying it's the same thing here that I think that if you really get this concept, if you really get the concept that business can be a self-discovery journey and that the more ways you find for your business to be in alignment with who you are, the more successful you can be. And when you see it, it is like sweeping $1,000 bills off the floor. It can be incredibly profitable and deeply aligned. So I want to start off that way just to kind of give that metaphor out there so that when you listen to it, you're listening to it that way, like, oh, this is something that can really help me be successful in business.

Yeah, beautiful. I imagine, I imagine listeners would love to be sweeping $1,000 bills off the floor. Do they really exist? I've never really seen one.

I don't know.

I think they're in circulation technically.

Okay, maybe he said higher and do that in a way that feels aligned. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

$100 bills.

It actually kind of goes the other way. It is finding what's not in alignment, putting it into alignment, which allows for the, for the, for the money to come is typically how it works, or in my experience is how it's worked.

Yeah. Okay, so I heard you just use the words alignment, and we originally kind of opened this speaking of spiritual practice, so I want to kind of dial in a little bit on what you mean by spiritual practice.

Yeah, so yeah, that's a great question. Geez, it— well, first of all, it's an incredibly loaded term. Typically anything that you say in this realm, like you can say like spiritual practice, loaded term. You can say like closer to God and there'd be like a loaded term. You could say self-awareness, it's a loaded term. So just depending on what your background is, somehow or another these are all loaded terms. So Yeah. Let me give it 3 different ways to, to describe it. The first one is, um, there's just this human development theory that says as we mature, assuming we don't get stunted with trauma, as we mature, our brain moves in certain ways. We move from seeing ourselves as very like individual into seeing ourselves as part of, say, an ecosystem or part of everything. We see time in a very short period of time like a little kid who's like, can't get excited about a birthday party that's a month away to an adult who is lucky if they can see 4 or 5 years out so that they don't sign that really crappy mortgage. And then maybe you start seeing time as far as generations or maybe you start to see the That infinity is in the depth of a moment, it's not in a length of time. And so that development, developmental path, and in, in spiritual traditions and religious traditions, that would be spiritual development. It would be how do we— and the other way to say it is how do we evolve through our nature? How do we become ourselves? How do we authentic? How do we— the path of development that is just our natural path of development that requires some attention but doesn't really require a tremendous amount of doing or rowing or that kind of stuff like effort. So that's what I mean by spiritual development.

It sounds like a fine-tuning of your experience. Cleaning up the, like, both the efficiency and the enjoyment and the alignment and, and the flow in your experience and in your relation to yourself into the world, and that, that might be the thing that we're talking about showing up in business synergistically.

Yeah, I don't— those are some of those are like more like symptoms The way I would just say it is that as we learn more about ourselves, there is a maturation that occurs. As we understand who we are more, there is an evolution that occurs. And that evolution is something that has been tracked and described by Tibetan Buddhism or Christianity in certain sects of Christianity, or modern psychology does it in human development. And it's very— it's a— it's pretty clearly— it's pretty clearly laid out in these different ways. None of them do it exact justice, but yeah, yeah. And the result is eventually more joy. The result eventually is more alignment. The result eventually is more peace, etc.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I kind of hear you describing the spiritual as evolution and the practice as the awareness. And the practice, the spiritual practice is like bringing the awareness to your evolution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's beautifully said. Better than I clearly, clearly better than I just said it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Okay. Then let's move on to what do you mean by, by business? Because this can also be, this can be a trigger word and also can be very broadly applied.

I mean it in that very broadly applied thing. I mean the getting crap done in life. It doesn't mean running a company. It might be being in a job. The Tibetans called it skillful means, or the translation is skillful means. And so they would talk about the spiritual practice of chopping wood. So I don't care if it's marketing something or if it's starting a business, or if it's being an artist. It's like, all that is what I mean by business. It's what I mean is just like when you're getting crap done in the world, when you're creating stuff or making stuff or, or producing stuff.

Yeah. Okay, so the merging of these two is sort of bringing awareness to our evolution in an applied way, applied to the crap we're getting done Yes. Applied to how we are showing up and where that actually impacts the world around us and the experience we have while doing it.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Beautiful. Yeah. Okay. So what's the, if we were to kind of lay out a basic formula for business as a spiritual practice, what would that look like?

Yeah. So the basic formula is, um, The same as everything that we talk about here, actually. Anything that we've said on this podcast can be applied here. But specifically, it's about embracing intensity. It's about going into the difficulty that presents itself rather than running away from the difficulty that presents itself. It is about learning to be more and more in connection with ourselves and others. It's about discerning internal alignment and moving towards the alignment instead of away from the alignment for the short-term gain or for the fear. So that's generally what it is. That's the formula. That works particularly well in business. So just like as an example, you're running a company to not ignore the thing that is The thing that's difficult, going and spending time in the thing that's difficult, creating connection with your customer, creating connection with yourself, creating the connection with your managers, the people who work for you, is gonna make the business more efficient. And really noticing everything that feels out of alignment and putting it into alignment just will increase that efficiency of the business. Similarly, same way internally is like, "Oh, the emotions that I run away from, can I embrace those in that intensity?" That's going to do a tremendous amount. "Can I learn to be more connected with myself or others?" Is going to teach me a tremendous amount about myself, as is the embracing intensity, as is the internal alignment. "Oh, that didn't feel right. I need to address it. Oh, that didn't feel right. I need to speak it." All those same things happen whether you're working in a business or whether you're working just with yourself. They apply in meditation, for instance. You're sitting in meditation, you have a difficult experience. Can you embrace the experience? Can you connect with the experience? Can you connect more deeply with yourself in that, with no effort, as it turns out? And then, and can you, can you notice the places that aren't in alignment, and can you allow them to to become in alignment. Same thing.

So we've got these kind of three prongs of this formula: embracing intensity, connection, internal alignment. What are, what are some examples, some other examples of what that could be applied to, or where in your life you might look to see symptoms that could be breadcrumb traced back to where, where this could be applied, where this formula could be applied? Yeah.

So let's say, for instance, you and/or your company is having a hard time making decisions. There's a lot of second-guessing going on. A decision is made and then 10 people tell you, "Wait, let's re-question that decision," or you internally in your own head are constantly second-guessing all the decisions that you've made or taking a tremendous amount of time making a decision because you're constantly second-guessing it before you make it. That means that there is an emotional experience you're avoiding. So you can really use embracing intensity in that moment. You can ask in a business context, what are the really hard questions? What are we trying to avoid? What are we really trying to get to? What's got us scared? How are we not being courageous? Connecting is really internally connecting with what you're scared of, connecting with your fear, Learning how to love and embrace that will totally change your decision-making. Same thing with the company, like, how do you, whatever the decision is on, how do you connect with the people that it affects? How do you connect with the customers it affects? How do you get their input or recognize that connection and how to nurture it? And similarly with internal alignment, second-guessing usually means that there's not an internal alignment. To find out what that internal alignment is, or isn't and doing the work there. Similarly, if there's a lot of second-guessing inside of a company, usually the alignment looks like, "I think this is what we should do, but I don't want to get in trouble." It's typically how it works.

And there's often then a lot of second-guessing in the CEO or in leadership.

And there's a whole bunch of second-guessing. Exactly. So that's an example. The other examples would be conflict avoidance that we just talked about or obliteration of ego, all of those things. Being defensive in business is horrible for business because you're not listening to great ideas. You're not being open to other people's wisdom. You're making it so other people don't share their wisdom with you. You're making it so customers don't share with you. You stop asking customers. All of that is defensiveness. That is a protection of ego. If you allow your business to constantly shatter your ego, By being non-defensive and feeling all the things and letting yourself be wrong and letting yourself be right when you are, even when people disagree. All of that work is a disintegration of ego. So that's another example. It's just— it's all— it's every single thing that I see stops a client in their business or slows a client down in their business also slows them down in their, in their relationships and in their self-development. And so there's this really great way to use business as a tool to see yourself more clearly.

Yeah, yeah. And widening, widening that, uh, definition of business to, to something like a family. You've— I've heard you describe that, you know, the role of a kid, the role of a child is to obliterate the ego of the parents, right? And like one of the, one of the roles, uh, and so in the business of raising a family, not to say money-making business, but the, in the, in the sense of like the shit that you're doing.

Yes.

Then the obliteration of your ego is the thing that will unravel that second-guessing. It'll unravel that conflict avoidance, allow you to receive more information and see it more clearly with less bias.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing, just to be clear about that part. So let's say the second-guessing and the ego obliteration. A lot of people think ego means I'm super sure, and so I'm the greatest, and I know what decisions to make. And ego is really any way that you define yourself. And so if you define yourself as unclear and scared and that gets annihilated, then the second-guessing is going to stop. And, and you're going to be more free. There's going to be less ego and you're going to be more capable of getting things done. Yeah.

Yeah. So what are the benefits of, of this practice, of this form of path compared to, say, other, other practices? And what would you just describe as other practices that might be different than this?

Or how are they all related? Hundreds of practices, um, you know, whatever somatic practices or meditation or therapy or any of that stuff, they're all practices towards the same thing. So I would say one of the— some of the benefits of, of using business as an avenue for spiritual growth is that you don't get to fool yourself very easily in it. Like, you can fool yourself into a somatic experience, you can fool yourself into a state of meditation, and then A little kid comes up and bothers you and you're like, "Rawr! Get out of my way, kid." And then business, it's like the rubber hits the road every day. Every day, things are going to go wrong. How are you going to let your ego dissolve in the face of things going wrong? Every day is going to have some level of discomfort in it. And so there's something real about it. You can't fool yourself as easily. That's one of them. Another one is that oftentimes, there's this thing that happens in spiritual practices where someone's like, "If I could only just meditate all the time, then I could be happy." Especially people who are on the search, they have that thing. One of the things business, it just doesn't allow that sense of false separation. If you are like, "Oh, I'm going to completely separate." and hang out in a cave, then your business is going to fail. And so you don't get to have that fantasy and be consistent with your practice. Whereas you can meditate 2 hours a day and think to yourself, "Oh, if I could only just give up this life, give up my wife, give up everything and hang out in the cave, then I could be happy." That sense of false separation just doesn't get to be there. So that fantasy doesn't get to live there.

Yeah.

It's, it's very real every day.

Yeah. Though it, it does seem like there are cases where a, a business, especially one with a large moat and a lot of momentum and like a lot of market share can survive for a long time without that. But eventually the rubber hits the road. Same thing for leaders of countries. Yes. A couple notable ones in our world right now where some rubber is hitting the road in a major way, and they also might not be seeing it at all.

Right, right. You can absolutely get away with being horrible at business for a decade if you have a really well-established product or whatever. However, if you're using business as a spiritual practice, if that is your consciousness, you are going to get signal constantly. That what you think is working isn't working. And you're going to get signal constantly that there is no separation between the two. You're going to see how you treat yourself affects your company. You're going to see how you treat other affects your company. You're going to see how you can let go of control affects your company. Same if you're an artist. If you're really using it as a spiritual practice, you're going to see how your relationship to yourself changes your art. You're going to get to see, and you're going to get to see what happens to your art when you're in constriction with yourself, and you're going to get to see what happens with your art when you're in flow with yourself. And so it's just constantly there. You don't get to pretend that they're separate. Yeah.

What other benefits have you seen?

Yeah, there's a little less navel-gazing. I've noticed that there's like these backwaters in traditional spiritual practice where You can kind of agree with the words and the terminology of a practice and you can get lost in the scripture, if you will, and instead of actually the felt sense of what's happening for you. And that can allow a lot of navel-gazing. It can be a lot of like a kind of a really beautiful form of narcissism of constantly thinking about yourself in the process. But in business, if you constantly think about yourself, you're going to fail. So there's something really beautiful about that the business keeps it really real and therefore, there's less time to be solipsistic. And if you are, you're going to see the effect very quickly if that's how you're looking at your business. And this is exactly why it's like sweeping $100, $1,000 bills off the floor is because if you're looking at your business as a spiritual practice, you're going to notice all this stuff really quickly. You're going to do something about it really quickly. If you are not, if you're doing it for power, if you're doing it to win, if you're doing it to make a name for yourself, all this stuff, all the stuff that— all the places you don't embrace intensity, it's a lot easier to fool yourself. It's a lot easier to say, "Oh, well, the business is going good, so everything's good." When you look at the folks that are constantly wrestling with their business and opening it up and you read what they're talking about, oftentimes they're seeing their business as a practice when you really look closely. And so it really allows you to continue sharpening your sword, so to speak, rather than to let it go dull because you've made it. Yeah. A great example of this is they did this study with a whole bunch of tax records. I think it was a European study. I think it was a Dutch person. And they basically looked at what tax events affected businesses. Death of children really affected the market cap of businesses and divorces and mother-in-law's deaths, even all these things affected businesses. But one of the things that affected businesses dramatically, like I think it was a 10% reduction in market cap, is if the CEO built a house that was over 5,000, 6,000 square feet, something like that. And it's the idea of like— Yeah, I know, right? And it's like, "Oh, I've made it," or my attunement is towards something else because the business wasn't wasn't the thing. The business was a means to an end. And so my focus can be pulled away from it. Whereas if the business is a spiritual practice, it is the ends. It is the means and the ends. And so that's what allows you to fully be engaged in a way that doesn't burn you out and engaged in a way that you don't want to run away from it. I remember I was recently at a a group of people doing online courses, and a lot of the people's, you know, fantasy was, oh, I could work 5 hours a week and then the rest of my time I can do what I want. And I was like, how is this not doing what you want, right? Like, like, there's no means to an end here. For me, this is very much about— it's the practice, and it keeps me engaged.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I love the— that pointer to when people have succeeded in business, when it was a means to an end and gotten what they wanted, then the business suffers and falls away. And the practice here is to like, is exploring what was that initial motivation? What was the power I was seeking? What was the money I was seeking? What's the safety or the love or the validation or the acceptance I was seeking? And it would be really bad business not to look at what's the most direct path to that.

Yeah, yeah, which is also the path, the spiritual practice that we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, there's this beautiful thing that happens, which is like, if your business is a spiritual practice, then you— it's a lot harder to do things like burn out. It's a lot harder to do things like not pay attention to yourself. It's a lot harder to do things like having cross-motivation or to suffer you know, an employee that doesn't feel great. And so all of those things create just better businesses.

Which then I imagine the objection that might come up is, well, I can't do everything as a spiritual path, can I? Like, do I want to have a, a business that makes bombs as a spiritual path?

Like, what is—

what is— right, how does— how's that look? Or a business that just does not feel at all like it's doing something for me personally. It's just the way that I need to operate to make money for my family, or that's the story.

Yeah, to me there's two questions there. The first one is, what would I say to folks who are like, I can't do this and build a business? And the first answer, I'd be like, if you don't want to, don't. Goodness gracious, like, like, if you don't want to have a spiritual practice, don't do it because of some sense of should or have to or because it makes your business better. That won't work. Don't do it. Second thing I would say is that I work with a lot of CEOs who've created billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar companies and they have thousands of people working for them and they started those companies and they're like, "I can't do that." I'm like, "How is it that you got to, I can build a multi-billion-dollar company in 8 years and then the idea that it could be a spiritual path?" That's just like, no, that's not possible. Like, what the hell? It's like, how does your mind pull that one off? And they do usually what you do. They chuckle and they see, oh, right. Yeah, it was just this limiting perspective. So those are the two things I would say there. As far as like, what are the downsides of this path? I think the biggest one is it can be really— it's like it's a— It's like level up mode, right? There's a word that my daughters use for this, but it's like hard mode and— or extreme mode or whatever it is. But there's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of reasons not to focus on your spiritual practice and business, right? You get the 10 phone calls in a day about a customer being upset and this being done and that other thing and this emergency. It's like, it's Oh, how am I disconnected with myself right now is an advanced move. So that's one of the things. So I often see that business as a spiritual practice or as a developmental tool is really well served by having some time. For me, it's usually just time completely away from the business where I can focus on my own journey and my own internal state. Which is a second one. The second one is that there needs to be a certain amount of time to be able to focus on your internal state. If I just sit with myself for 20 minutes, it's a different thing than if I sit with myself for 3 days or 5 days or 10 days. And there's discoveries that happen with a length of time. Oftentimes, business seems to tell you that you can't have the time to do the work. But there's a necessity for time to do some of this work. So that's also a really important thing. It takes away the time and attention that some of the really most valuable practices are needed for. So that's the downside. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think perhaps an underlying fear that makes all of those the case, the way that it feels like it's hard mode and it's really intense. That there's always distractions you could go into and why there might always be reasons not to take the time is because ultimately on this path, your life as you know it may and/or will completely fall apart. And you'll find something else that is more in alignment. And sometimes it can be a really circuitous path. Sometimes it can be more direct. But ultimately, it brings you into falling flat on your face faster, making more mistakes sooner, feeling the uncomfortable feelings at a faster clip than you might have previously thought you wanted to.

Yeah. I think the thing about that is that can all happen and it can look like you're radical success while it's occurring, meaning that like, it's not so much that your world will fall apart, it's your idea of the world will fall apart or who you think you are in the world that will fall apart. So sometimes—

Your construction of the world.

Yeah, exactly. So sometimes everything looks exactly the same but everything is entirely different. And sometimes actually you pivot off of one business to a whole different business and the whole way that you do business has changed and you end up making less money, but you're 10 times as happy. And then that happiness is contagious, which allows you to make 20 times as much money. It's just— it is a circuitous path for sure. But what it is, is it creates deeper alignment, more joy, more happiness, more flow. It just doesn't look the way your mind might want it to look.

Yeah, so with that, I want to ask, what are the tools from the podcast and from this work that folks can use to get on or deepen into this, to deepen into business as a spiritual path?

Every single one of them, every tool, every podcast has an application to how you would use it for business, whether it's obvious or not. Um, let me give a couple of examples just as a way to to think about it. One of them is gratitude is a big part. And so I think we talk about this somewhere along the line, but we used to start all of our business meetings with gratitude. And because it allowed us to solve problems not just from a what's wrong, how do we fix it point of view, but from what's right and how do we grow it point of view, which created a lot more solution sets than we had when we were not doing gratitude. As an example, also gratitude creates more connection, more feeling of team cohesion. All of those things have a use because if you notice, almost all of our work has to do some part with ourselves and some part relationally. And all business is, is people's ideas and people's relationships. That's what business is at the end of the day. There's some capital, but that came from people's ideas and people's relationships. Maybe you could also say people's decision-making. So anything that affects that's going to affect your business. So that's one example. Another example is— this recently comes to mind— is Empower Over Power. I was talking to a whole bunch of leaders and I was getting them through this visualization to sit into their meetings that they're normally sitting in. And I was naming the reality in the meeting that they might not want to pay attention to, things like people were more concerned with them, that people wanted to please them, that people were rebelling against them, that people wanted to make sure that they were happy, that people were passive-aggressive to them but not to other teammates. I was giving them the whole reality of what it is to be a leader, that more conversations happen about you than any other person on the team. What does that feel like? And I was asking them to visualize it and to feel it and really allow that into their system. So that they could move away from power and into empowerment. And there was one person in the group had this radical realization. She was like, "Oh, I was doing all this stuff to make people happy and now, I actually see that they need me to tell them what makes me happy for it to work." And her whole business changed. It was crazy how quickly her business changed. Like, it literally went like, you know, she got rid of 2 people and then changed the way that she was leading and told an investor that they needed to like, you know, settle down a little bit and started being more directive but still listening to everybody's feedback and just changed everything really quickly. And that's just one example of like moving from empowerment to power and how it can affect your business. So. Yeah, every one of the tools has some relationship to how you can run your business.

Yeah. We'll link to the episodes you just mentioned in the show notes on gratitude, love over defense, and empower over power.

Yeah.

And so given, of course, that we call this work The Art of Accomplishment, how does the art piece of that relate to this?

Yeah. So Luckily, I used art as an expression at the beginning, which is even if you're doing art, that's doing something. But I would like to think about it the other way, which is for me, business is very much an art form, meaning that just as a painter paints, they need pigment. A businessman creates a business and they need revenue. That's generally the thing that they need to make their— art form. And the only other art form that's kind of like it is like a symphony and the fact that every conductor is going to do it differently. Over time, your business is going to change and move and it's going to have a life of its own, unlike something like in the plastic arts where it's just solidified and that's it, which makes it a really cool art form. And you can have a business that puts light in the world, or you can have a business that that creates darkness in the world. You can have a business that cuts trees down or plants trees. So that business can be this really amazing expression of you. Whether you like it or not, it is an art form. It is a creation that is being made, and that creation that is being made is affecting people who interact with it. And that's the same thing art is. And so for me, the art form that I want to do is the art form of self-discovery, of self-realization. I want to create a piece of art that allows people who interact with it to see themselves more clearly and to see how joyful their existence is if they allow it to be. But your art form might be different. And it might not— again, it might not be about self-discovery or spirituality or any of that stuff. It might be about winning. And that's great. If that's what your art form is, I say, "Go for it." And when you're 40 years old and miserable as hell, You know, it might be that that was a strategy all along for self-discovery, and eventually— exactly, right, right. Or maybe it is fully in alignment and you're happy as, as all get out. So whatever it is, it's, it's great. I, I just follow that. I trust that a lot more than, you know, some prescription that I would give.

Yeah, ultimately following, following what comes to you is going to be a much faster path than domming yourself into being a different way because that's supposed to be what you are.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.

Thank you, Joe.

What a pleasure. Pleasure to be with you as always. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. All right.

Oh, hey.

And these days we're on Twitter and not just Art of Accomplishment, but @fujoe. And I think we're on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, or we will be on LinkedIn soon.

So yeah, check out the show notes for all those links. Uh, we're on Twitter at Art of a Comp, and Joe is at @fu_joehudson, and I am at @airkistler, A-I-R-K-I-S-T-L-E-R. And you can find us at artofaccomplishment.com to check out our courses and our community and send us questions. And check out how you can deepen into this work and get more involved.

All right, cool.

Thanks, everybody.

All right. Thank you.