Business As A Vehicle For Personal Growth
Here at Transformation Agency, we’ve been working on a business model that rewards individuals for growing.
In my past article entitled “What does it mean to fully participate?,” I said “By using participation as a metric for success, we’re linking our own personal growth journeys to the success of the company.”
But how does this work?
How exactly does this make sense in a business context?
How does an individual’s growth affect the company as a whole?
These are the questions that I’m going to answer in this article.
How the Business Structure Affects An Individual’s Level of Growth
First, it’s important to understand the mechanisms by which business models can either facilitate or clamp an individual’s ability to expand their level of consciousness.
It’s common in today’s society to link a person’s results, both as an individual and on a business level, to their effort; however, among the more spiritually-inclined circles it is generally understood that someone’s ability to manifest and get results comes from their level of consciousness.
For the purposes of this article, I’ll define “level of consciousness” as someone’s reliance on safety mechanisms that give a false sense of security. A higher level of consciousness would then mean someone who operates from a more surrendered state, releasing control, and keeping an open heart. A lower level of consciousness, then, would mean someone who is fearful, controlling, and lives with their heart closed.
We all have parts of us that are open and non-controlling, and we all have parts that are fearful and controlling.
We, as humans, grow when we are able to let go of control and fear, and start to live in a more surrendered and open state. By letting go of our fears, and letting go of control, we open our hearts and our external reality becomes a more beautiful reflection of that openness. That’s how we expand.
The challenge within traditional business models is that, structurally, they don’t allow someone’s deep-seated fears to come to the surface — the business’ safety mechanisms prevent it. These safety mechanisms offer a temporary easing of fear but, in the long run, that is a false sense of security. These mechanisms keep fears underneath the surface, causing the individual to hold onto a high level of stress, tension, and anxiety in order to keep those fears afloat.
For example, think about ideas of job security and a persistent paycheck.
In a traditional organization, people buy into the idea that their paycheck and job are secure because of their contract. But because they could get fired at any time by someone who is at a higher position on the hierarchy, it validates their fear of making mistakes.
It reinforces the idea that there is no space to disagree with their boss, stand up for themselves, or express some kind of emotion as a result of being treated poorly.
There are clauses about workplace safety and proper communication that cause people to tip-toe around what they really feel or want, because of the fear of getting fired or sued.
In other words, the individual’s level of growth and ability to increase their level of consciousness becomes halted because of the agreements and structure of the business. They are not able to let go of the fears of getting fired, or sued, because those mechanisms of “safety” are built into the business.
Thus, in order to maintain a state of performance under such a structure, the person must control their own behavior to “do the right thing” and “not get fired.” This type of avoidance will absolutely crumble the business over time or, at best, bottle-neck its growth because of the amount of control needed to get anything done.
In a paradigm of control, creativity is destroyed and people will continue to find excuses to avoid work and do less.
In terms of getting/manifesting results, on a consciousness level, results will be harder to achieve, as under a paradigm of control you need to put forth more and more effort in order to get the result. This eventually leads to burnout and the necessity for vacations and off-time, as one can only hold that pressure for so long without it needing to be released somehow.
The role of pressure and how it helps us grow
Like a diamond, pressure is the force that causes people to grow. It’s what turns raw material into something beautiful, pristine, and strong. It’s what allows light to shine through to a more magnified degree.
The challenge with traditional business models is that there is no release valve for the pressure — there’s no way for it to go through the individual so that they can learn from it, but rather it goes out sideways in the form of “needing” a vacation and even resignation. There is no space for that pressure to exist without it causing more control and more stress within the system.
And so in our business model, we made sure to include mechanisms that allow for the pressure to help us grow into diamonds rather than cause us to collapse and destroy the business as a whole.
The best way for me to explain how pressure works is in a metaphor.
Think about a rock, in the middle of a river, with a crack in it. Over time, as the water runs down the river and into the crack, it will put pressure in that crack and make it bigger. Ultimately that crack will turn into a large hole, and completely destroy the structure of the rock until it completely dissolves.
On an individual level, we have “cracks” in our consciousness — the fears of safety, lack of trust, methods of control, etc — that if not addressed, will cause us to collapse in the face of pressure, much like that rock.
In business, that pressure comes when it’s time to grow the business — more clients, more production, more output, better results. Under a business model based on control (forced, top-down hierarchies), that pressure destroys an individual’s ability to perform as they’d have to carry more and more stress in order to achieve the result.
Under a paradigm of freedom, that pressure would be used to illuminate the cracks in one’s consciousness and give them space to open their heart and mend the crack. On a practical level, this may look like an emotional expression (anger, sadness, grief, frustration, etc), a challenging conversation with someone on the team where emotions are fully expressed, or taking a nap in the middle of the day to recover and take care of themselves. This is healing and allows a person to grow under the pressure of business and everyday life.
But there needs to be space to do that, without the underlying premise that the individual could get fired if they say something that hurts someone else, they get triggered, or they make a mistake. There needs to be space for the messiness of an individual, the “shadow” of that individual. Without room for it, the shadow hides within each individual and puts undue stress on the business.
As individuals mend the cracks in their consciousness and heal from the fears that have been held onto for so long, the signal that they send out into the world has a higher vibrational frequency. The results for the individual and the business may seem to come from nowhere which, under a paradigm of control, could be received with skepticism because little was done externally to “make it happen.” But it happened as a result of the individual’s growth on a vibrational level. And it affects not only the person, but their group and the world, in a tangible, felt-sensation way.
By eradicating any level of control from the business model itself, we’re allowing the everyday pressures of business and life to enhance our life experience, not diminish it.
