Spirituality in the Work Place – Integrating Spirit into Your Work Environment
Article by Sharon Hooper
Something has to give in our workplaces! The ordinary person has proclaimed “enough!” Corporations have folded, swallowing retirement funds and savings. More and more jobs are being sent off-shore. Many so-called “leaders” have lied and cheated their way to the top at the expense of employees. Look at all the retiring executives who are leaving companies with two hundred million dollars in severance or retirement pay, while their company has declined 7% or more in value!
What is missing here?!? Have American leaders lost their souls on the way to creating profit? How can lagging non-spiritually related companies redeem themselves—and quickly? Why are 3.2 million readers buying Fast Company magazines? Could it be that they are seeking purposeful and visionary work (i.e. sacred or divine) that will transform their lives and business as we know it? And what can ordinary people do to find their purpose through right livelihood? Would a personal motivation coach be helpful in the search?
Apple, Google, Yahoo! and Hughes Aircraft are among large corporations that sponsor meditation courses for their employees.
3M produces solvent-free sandpaper, adhesives and tapes—at a cost of two billion dollars in research and experimentation!
Hewlett Packard has co-founded an initiative to bring technology and infrastructure to the world’s poorest countries.
Former World Disc Productions (a small company owned by yours truly and husband, Richard) donated more than $80,000 to The Rainforest Action Network to buy land in the Amazon, contributing to a program teaching indigenous tribes sustainable living.
Fast Company magazine’s mission states, “…work isn’t simply a paycheck; it is the ultimate expression of a fully realized self…” and they have over three million readers to show that people are seeking more meaning in their work.
Spirituality in business has been thriving for a long time… It’s just that we may not have seen the enterprises mentioned above as “spiritual.”
Spirituality in business has been thriving for a long time… It’s just that we may not have seen the enterprises mentioned above as “spiritual.”
The book Megatrends 2010 by Patricia Aburdene states, “From a spiritual perspective, corporate social responsibility is love, justice and truth in action…When a corporate activist…increases transparency or exposes a company’s poor environmental record, he or she is expanding consciousness as surely as if he or she had built a meditation center.”
Conscious companies activate their brand of divinity or social responsibility through alternative methods that we might not recognize as spirit in action, like Wild Oats, a natural grocery chain, whose employees get profit sharing if they work there more than 25 hours a week. People like Timberland’s CEO, Jeffrey Swartz, are changing patterns of a self-centered philosophy by involving himself in community service that gives all his employees paid time off to volunteer at their favorite charity. Several of my friends in Sedona donate 20% or more of their professional time to local organizations in need of help. Even the University of New Haven has introduced the Center for Spirituality at Work.
As a personal spiritual life coach, many people talk with me about entering into a more divine working situation, to bring more meaning to the work they embrace. Perhaps you simply wish to be more at peace while you earn your salary, or maybe there is a desire to start a grassroots effort to effect huge change at the company where you work. Possibly you already work in the perfect environment with a conscious company. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a power of one, or megalithic corporation of 23,000!
If you do need a starting point to integrate soulful yearnings with realistic work assignments or are seeking more meaning in business, the following uncomplicated suggestions might help:
- Place pictures in your workspace that bring you serenity.
- Use break time for meditation. There may be other staffers who would like to join you.
- Place a small water feature in a corner of your workplace. Water = tranquility.
- Practice being mindful about the work in front of you. Close your eyes and vision the perfect outcome.
- Be aware of how much your spirit has, and will, create this piece of business.
- When you think the time is ready, ask your manager to be part of your meditation group, or some other spiritually-oriented gathering.
- Create a mantra that brings you a sense of fulfillment—about anything! If you are sitting with your fingers poised over your keyboard with eyes closed for a couple of minutes, no one will know that you are giving yourself positive feedback.
In other words, when you fully realize that you are spirit contained in a physical body, having a humanly physical experience, you will shift how you view life inside and outside of work. It is possible to live a seamless existence when we cultivate our authenticity and incorporate it into the spiritual mode that works for us 24/7, and I am convinced that the sublime actions we take—no matter how simple—will eventually ripple outward, touching countless hearts.
We have been given opportunities to re-create heightened awareness to bring contentment into all part of our lives. Spirituality in business has hit critical mass and has been presented to us as a gift, teaching us to seek even more meaning in our life as we sometimes grapple with the dissonance between money and personal soulful worth. Our contemporary lives are complex and often challenged.
Sometimes it helps to remember the simple words of a man who became one of the world’s greatest teachers:
“Among these transitory things which are not yours, seek for the things of your own—those things that will not pass away.” (Agrapha—An isolated saying of Jesus)
“Among these transitory things which are not yours, seek for the things of your own—those things that will not pass away.” (Agrapha—An isolated saying of Jesus)
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