3 Spiritual Lessons from a Business Crisis

Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash

When I opened his email, my blood pressure spiked.

The salesperson we’d recruited wasn’t working out. We were burning through thousands of dollars a month in advertising — money that we didn’t have if we weren’t making sales.

Just as our business was on the brink of success, it looked like we were careening towards failure, like a car zooming off a cliff and bursting into flames on the rocks below.

I’d put my family into debt to invest in my business. We had some savings, but if I didn’t make an income soon, I wondered if we would be able to pay our mortgage. My wife was pregnant with our third child, and my skin felt clammy as I imagined what would happen if the business went bust.

Ordinarily, I might have stewed about it, pacing frantically or shooting off an ill-considered email that would only make things worse.

But I’d opened the email just before the start of my workday, when I do my morning meditation. So instead, I sat in front of my altar, and practiced. I received three important insights.

1. Just as sound waves have peaks and troughs, a human life has cycles of joy and sorrow. The two go together. This is part of the human experience.
2. I can get caught up in the drama of this, or I can be the observer: existing in the space that holds it all. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel joy or sorrow, just that I don’t fool myself about the true nature of these feelings. It’s something like looking at a painting, whether it depicts something happy or sad, and appreciating its beauty. The alternative is believing I’m the painting itself, and nothing more — a misconception I fall into more often than I’d care to admit.
3. By the time I really get to observing, the rest seems small and silly. Because I no longer believe I’m the person who has the problem. I see that am the space that contains that person, and the situation, and so much more. I don’t need to fix it, or force it. I’ll take the appropriate actions when it’s time. But I feel something of the stars burning in my body. I remember who I am.

Of course, barely an hour later, I got another email: one of the best salespeople I’ve ever met wants to join us. I celebrate, because how can I not? But I know this is just part of the game I’ve signed onto. A peak in the sound wave that makes the music of my life.

I can fight against it, say that this is the wrong chord, this note should go over here, this part should go on longer. Or I can dance.