As I was beginning the challenging task of building a business around my values and priorities, I couldn’t help but notice the striking correlations between running a business entity and running the business of my own life.
A business entity is built upon many different strengths in many different dimensions.
Some of these include technical, operational, mechanical, sales and marketing, capital, resource management, customer relationship, ownership type, etc. We consider a successful business as one that is able to manage all of these individual parts in a smooth, streamlined, and efficient manner with the goals of generating value and profitability.
I began to see a connection between a business entity and the entity we call our “Self”. We also work within a framework of different dimensions. Broadly, there is a personal dimension and a social dimension.
The personal dimension encompasses ownership type; a physical body; mental, emotional, and spiritual faculties; five senses; spiritual senses; a sense of value which is the equivalent of business capital; capabilities to make things happen which are our resources; methods and operational processes.
Within the social dimension, the relationships we have at various levels can be considered as customer relationships. The manner in which we present ourselves in the social arena is our own personal sales and marketing.
Running a business entity is not easy and requires careful planning and skill. A must for every business is acquiring the best talent for different positions and working out the best processes for maximum profitability.
As someone who is undertaking this task from scratch, I realize the amount of effort and skill that is needed to build something for myself that is going to sustain me for a long time.
As human beings, we run our business of life with little knowledge about how we operate, process, and utilize ourselves in the most efficient manner.
So, what does it mean to run our lives in the most efficient manner?
It is not just the living, but the effective manner that is important.
Do we know why we exist and how we can live empowered lives?
Can we rid ourselves of our insecurities, fears, and limitations?
What would that involve?
The questioning is easy, the hard part is being able to piece together the answers.
It means stepping into the internal arena of our own life in a real, tangible, loving, and intentional way. It involves being able to look at ourselves without making excuses while working on ourselves. This is similar to the way we put effort and grit into building a business entity. At this stage, I must greatly emphasize, the value of self-knowledge and self-understanding.
It is necessary to take the time and effort to learn to become productive, aware, and valuable as a person.
This is the inner work of getting to know our strengths, our weaknesses, our confusion, our clarity, our unfulfilled dreams, our unrealistic expectations, our false optimism, our underlying pessimism, our unhealthy needs, and wants, our hidden motivations, our self-serving agendas, and so on.
The question to ask is:
Who has ownership of our lives?
Are we the CEO of our one and only life or is someone else running the show?
By getting to know ourselves at a human level and at the same time tapping into the divinity of who we are, we put into motion the wheels of change that will lead to us to our individual success.
Success need not be defined in the way that the world recognizes and applauds, but rather in the way we recognize, feel, and know from the depth of who we are. This will be the success of running the business of our life in the best manner possible without excuses, without blame, without shame.
This brief article contains many deep concepts. We can all benefit from taking the time to ponder the idea of running our lives as a business entity with each one of our individual aspects working together to achieve our desired outcome.
Are we willing to challenge ourselves to make this business called “ME” the most successful and profitable possible?
Yes, choose to start NOW.