Chapter 2

Is Your Corporate Life a Mistake or Your Mission?

Peace of mind and financial success are not mutually exclusive. You can have both. This book gives you a tried-and-true system that is simple to practice every day. The Soul Survival principles are not easy but they are simple. If practiced, you will find harmony with your soul and flourish in your career.

I am the President/CEO of a multi-million dollar health technology company. For a long time I thought my life was a mistake. When I began my corporate climb I was a twenty-five year-old single parent of two pre-school children living on welfare, food stamps, and the kindness of strangers. How I made that corporate climb with a full and joyous heart is the lesson of this book. If I can do it, anyone can--most certainly you, if that is your desire.

In this just-in-time society, it is easy to be seduced by the glitter of material and financial success. These rewards are shallow. The only true success is a singing heart. Financial success can't assure a happy life but internal confidence can. Money can't buy a full and joyous life but the simple principles in this book, if practiced, will assure you of all of these rewards.

With super-sonic speed, fortunes are made or lost by the movement of a decimal point in the stock market. Just-in-time manufacturing, just-in-time shipping, just-in-time printing, and just-in-time almost everything makes the business world move so fast our heads spin.

Today, I fly in corporate jets, drive my cherished BMW, and vacation in paradise. However, I need to know that with or without these material pleasures my heart will still be joyous and full. /Soul Survival/, just-in-time miracles, and practicing the simple principles outlined in this book promise that. So read this book, practice these principles, and, as I have done, you will find your life is not a mistake but a mission.

The spiritual principles outlined in this book are the basis of a simple belief system that will enable you to make bold and inspired decisions. Many people like myself, did not grow up in an environment that equipped us with the internal confidence to know absolutely, that our decisions and strategies were indeed worthy of business and financial success. Even individuals with solid business educations often find themselves unsure in a just-in-time world where if you falter or hesitate, you are sure to be left behind.

My passion to live a spiritually integrated life has been my blessing-or my burden-depending upon the moment. My mentors often have admonished me for being too much the crusader, yet I value my passionate nature because my intensity has guided me to my lessons and challenges for spiritual growth. My passion has shown the way to peaceful union of all of the sacred moments of my life. My passion has driven me to seek it all, to believe I could have a spiritually centered life in which my corporate vocation is as much my destiny as my motherhood and my marriage. I believe that the integration of these significant life compartments is nothing less than a sacred mission.

I was the woman dubbed "Least Likely to Succeed," and I surely had a knapsack of excuses blocking my pathway to fulfillment. Growing up in a broken home and an alcoholic family, I was the eldest of three. My father went to prison when I was eleven, I dropped out of high school at sixteen, married at seventeen, and found myself alone, uneducated, penniless, and on welfare with two babies at the age of twenty-five. The only self-image I had was that I was a loser. In my mind, I was clearly doomed. To succeed was to survive in those days. Survival was my primary goal. Success beyond survival felt so distant that I couldn't begin to consider it and awareness of my own spirituality had never even occurred to me.

Today, I am a mother, a corporate super-achiever, a several-times successful entrepreneur, an author, a seminar speaker, a marathon runner, a yoga student, and a happy human being. I am writing a fourth book and actively leading a rapidly growing business. My spiritual consciousness is intimately interwoven into each of these life roles.

I am also a grandmother, a trusted and reliable friend, a family member, a contributing member of society, and an active member of a spiritual community. I adore my children and grandchildren. My spiritual community feeds my soul on a regular basis.

Each of these roles can be a full-time, demanding challenge, but my experience has taught me about the bigger picture of integrating them into a prosperous, successful, and fulfilling life. That is what this book is about. I want no walls between the parts of my life. I want to feel as passionately about negotiating business deals in an honorable and honest way as I feel about holding my grandchild and sharing a celebration or a tragedy with one of my children. I want the flow from each part of my life to be unencumbered as I move through the day. I want to have a life that counts, every minute of it. I want a life of meaning. I have found such a life over the course of my journey as a businessperson within the corporate structure and as a citizen living in a corporate society. The challenges I've encountered and the soul lessons I've learned in business helped me to evolve and eventually to flourish in my life.

Many people today compartmentalize their lives into what they consider manageable segments: home, church, family, job, etc. A successful businessperson may be unhappy in the home compartment, a successful mother may find emptiness in the career compartment, a successful corporate achiever may lack a meaningful relationship with another person, and a gentle artistic soul may crumble under the weight of economic survival. Erecting these rigid compartments leaves people feeling isolated and confused.

This is not a book about finding balance in your life. I believe trying to attain balance between work, family, friends, relaxation, and spirituality is a futile exercise in effort and control. Trying to achieve balance is like the concept of dieting. Diets don't work because disciplines of control and effort are rigid, impossible to maintain, and confining to the growth of your soul. The soul is a fluid and expansive guide when you learn to trust the process of responding to your heart and following its lead.

The concept of balance supposes that as human beings, we have remarkable powers to segregate our lives into compartments and then adjust our personalities to fit the compartment we're in at a given moment. Both career success and personal peace have come into my life not through control and discipline, but through surrender, humility, and open-mindedness; a gentler approach to intense living and rigid compartmentalized roles.

This book is a flexible formula for living a life in which every minute of each day is precious and meaningful to your innermost being, your soul self. Every part of your life is precious, whether it is witnessing your five-year-old child's newfound ability to spell or negotiating a loan for your business with your banker or slogging through a bone-crushing personal depression or being challenged at the office by an insecure co-worker.

The Soul Survival principles offer tools to help you unite all aspects of your life into a full and meaningful adventure. The stories share simple spiritual ideas that can transform your life in ways that feel miraculous. These five principles will bring about amazing events and clear a peaceful path through the insanity of cutthroat, competitive 21st Century corporate life.

All of life is a spiritual experience. When we try to separate our work-related interactions from our spiritual experiences, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to see our co-workers as spiritual partners in our lives.

When we view business experiences as spiritual experiences, no less precious to our hearts and essential to our spiritual growth than our experiences with loved ones, we can begin to treat ourselves, our co-workers, and the workplace with the compassion, respect, and depth each deserves.

When we stop separating our spiritual selves from the rest of our lives, we begin to see that our workplace is simply another environment for learning to love and honor our journey. Co-workers and business associates are fellow travelers on our spiritual path. They have something to teach us and we have something to teach them--and not just about the bottom line. Our lessons are about love, power, control, compassion, anger, and courage. Co-workers take on new significance when we view them in the light of spiritual teachers. Knowing that all of life is a spiritual journey elevates the workplace into yet another classroom for the soul.

Working from the heart (the communication to soul) makes me a better businesswoman. I get better financial results, I make clear and powerful decisions, and I establish lasting relationships with clients and fellow workers. And my family has respect for my career life, not just as a means to put a roof over our heads, but as an important part of my spiritual development.

When I work from my heart, my core strengths shine through and success is a natural outcome. While corporate polish may snag an apple or two, working from the heart lands the entire tree. Great success and immense satisfaction come from being completely honest and loving with business associates. Clients and business associates whose relationships have been forged in love and trust are also the most enduring relationships of all.

The Value of Business Relationships Forged in Trust

In 1981, I was at the peak in my career with a particular Fortune 500 company. I had succeeded in a niche of the technology industry where no woman had succeeded before. I had surpassed everyone in the company in sales and new business. I was respected and had established many strong business relationships with executives from major banks and corporations.

Being a woman and a visible achiever was not easy. Some co-workers were jealous and vindictive. I worked in a company where the Peter Principle[1] was practiced.[2] Insecure and incompetent people were often promoted into management. My success felt threatening to some of these managers, and as a result, I was being pressured by people who had essentially failed at the job I was doing so well.

*Year-end 1981*--Management came to me offering to make some concessions on payment schedules if I could persuade one of my major accounts (an international bank) to accept shipment on a large order that would be designated for branch use in the upcoming year. I knew I would be getting the business, either now or next year. I didn't have a big stake in getting the early order. My management was using a common corporate tactic to inflate year-end numbers and thereby increase their bonuses. I always tried to be a team player, so I went along with the program.

I went to the client, an Executive Vice President of the bank, and proposed the plan. He respected and trusted me. We had been doing business for several years and I had never let him down. I also liked and respected him. We had a solid business relationship. He agreed to the plan. I entered his order with the understanding that the bank wouldn't have to pay for the equipment until later in the year when they actually put it to use in their branch operations.

As it turned out, my management never cleared their little pump up the year-end numbers scheme with the accounting department. When the invoices came due in 30 days, I got a call from the accounting department asking me why my client hadn't paid the bill. I explained about my management's agreement for the client to pay later. This caused a horn-locking, ego battle between the executives in sales and the executives in accounting. I was caught in the middle, with my reputation and my client's loyalty at stake.

Trying to be a good corporate politician without damaging my reputation or the company's relationship with the client, I endeavored to find a solution. Finally in a last-ditch move to protect my client relationship, I went to the Division President with my appeal. He had the clout and the ability to solve the problem. This was one of my hardest lessons about the good old boys network. He caved in and hid his head rather than enter into the fray and stand up for what was right. I was left alone dealing with a situation that threatened to compromise my integrity and jeopardize my career.

Then, one day when every company executive was coincidentally on an airplane, and conveniently out of touch, I received a phone call informing me that if my client did not pay his bill immediately, a truck would be sent to the bank's warehouse the next morning to reclaim our merchandise. I was stunned. This bank was doing well over $1 million a year in business with my company. At the time, 1981, $1 million certainly qualified the bank as a high value client.

My reputation and my company's relationship with this client were suddenly on the block. I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was standing in a phone booth about five blocks from the client's office. I felt I had no choice. I was forced to a position of personal and professional vulnerability that I would have done anything to avoid.

I surrendered. I walked down the street and into the bank. On the long trip up the elevator, I wondered why this had happened. I second-guessed myself, trying to see where I had made the mistake. There was no answer. I felt certain that I would lose this client.

The client was in his office and he welcomed my unannounced visit. I sat down in his office and told him the whole tale. I hid nothing. I tried to hold back the tears of embarrassment and disappointment. But I could not. I cried (an unprofessional, but human thing to do). He was dismayed by the turn of events, but said he knew that I had been honorable and he would certainly be needing the products, so he would write me a check. While I waited, he wrote a check for about $400,000.00. He signed it and handed it across the desk, not because of the tears--because of the power of honesty and truth.

In succumbing to the truth and my own vulnerability, the problem was solved. The bigger part of this lesson was in the years to come, my business relationship with this man flourished as never before. When he moved on to another bank, he called me as soon as he needed my company's products and services. He referred other clients to me. He introduced me to some of his employees and I became a mentor to them. Until the day he retired, he trusted me and never left me for the competition. He helped me when I started a new venture, and because of relationships like this, I never doubted the value of being honest again.

Corporate culture would have us believe that there is a different standard for honesty in business life. A lesser or more manipulative standard that involves professional polish and corporate ethics, which are somehow different from personal ethics. This is not true and this very idea is why companies and the people working in them can remain disheartened and dysfunctional.

The leadership in that Fortune 500 Corporation demonstrated greed, egotism, and dishonesty to employees with these pressure driven tactics. As leaders they had a responsibility far greater than getting big padded bonuses, a responsibility of principles. They failed and eventually the company failed.

Living with Principles

In order to work with integrity, we must be honest--honest with others and honest with ourselves about who we are and what it takes to satisfy our individual soul's needs. We can then examine how the corporate path we've chosen for our soul's journey either fulfills or undermines those needs. Creating a written list can help. This list, which is different for each of us, contains our basic requirements for peaceful and healthy survival.

*My personal list of soul-nurturing human needs includes:*

• The need to be challenged.
• The need to be around positive people.
• The need to be loved unconditionally.
• The need to know myself honestly.
• The need to be introduced to and use my creative side.
• The need to learn to love others unconditionally.

My life, including my existence in the business world, must fulfill these basic needs for me to feel healthy and at peace. Before you go on reading this book, I encourage you to take the time to write down your own basic needs.

We each must identify our unique personal needs for ourselves and cultivate them in our business journey. If your needs are unclear to you, you can develop your list as you begin to apply some of the broader principles in this book.

To survive and grow as whole, happy human beings we must each go into our soul-center to search for the powerful eternal values and use them in our corporate life, whether we work in the boardroom or the mailroom.

Harmonizing with a Corporate Culture

As we seek to live lives of integrity, we also must come to terms with the reality that we live in a material world. We are all corporate co-dependents. Materialistic consumption, cutthroat competition, and financial profit fuel this powerful corporate force.

Profit-driven principles, material status symbols, and corporate culture dominate the world today. Corporate influence is now greater than the influence of any government, more powerful than any church or religion, and more pervasive than any other social influence.

As corporate influence increases and expands, it washes over every area of our existence. In the United States, we are affected by corporate culture in most everything we do. An HMO (Blue Shield, Blue Cross, Kaiser, Aetna, Medicare) dictates how our medical care is dispensed, our children's first jobs are at chain restaurants (Taco Bell, McDonald's, KFC), our psychiatrists are informed by corporate insurers (managed health care) about how they may treat our emotional problems, a priest carries the Word of God managed by the (corporate) church, professional sports teams entertain us, and we have cappuccino at the corner coffee shop (Starbucks) that we drive to in our Ford or Lexus SUV. The list goes on.

As human beings living in this corporately-created environment, we have two choices: we can rigidly resist its negative influences, wailing about the sin and injustices of the brutal, materialistic, cutthroat competition or we can find a peaceful, harmonious way to integrate our spiritual goals and principles with this culture.

Beyond the basic needs list you create for yourself, the five spiritual principles outlined in this text will help you find inner peace and serenity while achieving rewarding personal and professional goals. They will also be the hallmark for your career success. Applying these spiritual principles to your life will be the most important work you will ever undertake. It will help you clarify your personal values and goals, thereby guiding you to define all your future actions.

The Five Soul Survival Principles

1. Honesty: Opening the Door to Your Soul
2. Gratitude: Count Your Blessings
3. Courage: Owning Your Power to Choose
4. Perseverance: Hanging On in the Dark Times
5. Trust: Living in the Light of Divine Destiny

These principles run counter to the tools for success offered by many motivational gurus, but they are based on the abiding and ancient truth of all human existence. As such, they will bring not only peace, but also soaring success to your chosen vocation. Seek the peace these principles promise and success will be a natural outcome.

Introduction to the Five Soul Survival Principles

All of life is a spiritual process. Nothing you experience is wasted when you seek the lessons in it. Practicing the five Soul Survival principles will help you begin operating in the world from a spiritual perspective. Using these principles won't guarantee you a painless existence, but it will deliver a life with a purpose that is deeply meaningful to you.

Principle One--Honesty: Opening the Door to Your Soul

Being honest means seeing yourself in the world as clearly as possible. Once you examine and dispel the illusions you hold about yourself, you free yourself to live a more genuine life. Being honest about everything opens the door to the soul. Honesty means rediscovering your authentic self, thereby clearing your vision about what is true for you.

Honesty in dealing with others flows naturally from self-honesty. When you are clear about what is true for you, and you have a clear connection with your personal truth, you have easy access to what is right or wrong for you, making it simpler to act with integrity. Acting from your authentic self, you will know your personal bottom line, you will be aware of actions that are unacceptable to you.

Becoming authentic by staying open and vulnerable is the single most powerful tool for clearing the path toward spiritual growth and awareness. It took the devastation of personal crisis to get my attention and create an opening for the consciousness of this spiritual connection. It was only after I had exhausted all the possibilities I could think of--after I had essentially given up the battle--that I was truly willing to become authentic and hence accept divine guidance. Before my crisis, what I call my /abyss experience,/ I thought I had to be strong to survive. I thought being strong meant I had to make it on my own, keep my troubles to myself, and keep up a good front. A crushing defeat taught me about the interior strength of my soul, humility, and the power of surrender.

Principle Two--Gratitude: Count Your Blessings

When you look at the events in your life as lessons, you can use them to guide you along your spiritual path. When you honestly scrutinize your life, you will see the patterns you have been living. The types of jobs you accept, the people you encounter, and the struggles you seem to face repeatedly, all offer guidance if you seek it. When you can see even your struggles for the lessons they've offered, the strengths they've honed in you, those struggles become blessings that can broaden your overall sense of purpose. Gratitude smoothes the rough edges of difficult experiences and transforms pain into healing awareness.

Principle Three--Courage: Owning Your Power to Choose

When you embrace your own power, you allow no one else to define you. You also learn to understand the difference between who you really are and what is happening around you. When you operate from your own power, you know that neither your boss nor your paycheck is your source of power. Your true power source comes from within and from trusting in the wisdom of divine destiny.

The courage to acknowledge your vulnerability to yourself and others is really what creates internal confidence and strength because doing so breaks down your self-made prison of fearful isolation and bonds you to others in honesty and compassion. Living your life with open acknowledgment of your vulnerabilities is an act of great courage. In the vast majority of situations, being open and vulnerable will bring you closer to colleagues and clients as it urges you along your divine path.

Principle Four--Perseverance: Hanging On in the Dark Times

Perseverance is simply faith by doing. You can begin the practice of perseverance by being there for yourself every single day. Drawing on your willingness to see the lessons in life, you can learn to trust in long-term positive outcomes. When I was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a therapist, it was hard to see how that might benefit my career, but when the pain of this event erupted and I persevered in the belief that there is good in everything, I was blessed with a new inner strength that was a direct result of the abuse itself. When you persevere, you move yourself into the flow of miracles in action. When you are taking action in your own behalf, you are open to the opportunities and the 'chance meetings' that flow along your divine path. Persevering and trusting divine destiny gets you to where you are meant to go.

Principle Five--Trust: Living the Light of Divine Destiny

Divine destiny is what you make of it. Life offers you choices. You can choose to stumble blindly along your paths, feeling battered by life's unpredictable ways, or you can open your eyes and hearts, choosing to see more clearly. As you incorporate the five principles into your way of approaching life, your spiritual vision sharpens, and you will be able to see further along your divine path. As you learn your life lessons and act from internally-guided integrity, you will avoid many of the wrong turns along the spiritual path so lovingly prepared for you. And, as you travel toward your divine destiny you will discover that the journey toward the destiny is the destiny itself.

When you have an understanding of these principles and put them to work in your life, they become magically enmeshed into a single guiding force for success, and most importantly, spiritual peace. Divine destiny is not a place, it is a path.

These ancient principles, tried-and-true, will not guarantee a painless, joy-filled life. That is not a real life. There will be pain-a-plenty in your life journey but practicing these five principles is the soothing balm for all human pain.

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[1] Peter Principle: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. --Laurence J. Peter

[2] That company, a Fortune 500 in the 1970s, is now a mere skeleton of it's former self with only a couple of hundred employees and less than $10 million in annual revenues. Did these absurd, dishonest corporate policies have something to do with this corporation's demise?