When competitors cooperate

When I attended business school, the concept of competition was re-enforced. A competitor was to be studied, their weaknesses analyzed, and a strategy developed to highlight their negatives while ameliorating our positives. I learned that cooperation was important, but only when used to gain competitive advantage.

That was twenty five years ago. And ten years of working in the corporate world only entrenched those views.

When I started our business a few years ago, authoring and publishing books, I had no other skills to draw upon. I used traditional metrics to measure my success, and by those standards, the business was a failure.

Yet, I knew I was doing the work that my heart was calling me to do. My pilgrimages had shifted my world view and my values, and I had used them to fashion the life I live. I decided to use them to examine every business principle I was taught.

Competition topped that list. It is based on a belief that we live in a world of scarcity, of limited resources (be they material, financial or otherwise),so, we must compete to get our share.

When I walked the Camino, and then from Rome to Jerusalem, in 2001, there were few pilgrims and even fewer resources or books.

The Camino has since become ubiquitous, and with that has come the explosion of books and materials. Every time I  read about the launch of yet another Camino book or website,  I would only see one more bit of competition in what I believed to be a limited resource. I mean, how many ways can you speak about the same path?!

It took a while to silence the voices that insisted that any attention those authors received took away from mine; that their successes meant my failure; that I had to compromise what I believed to sell books and build my platform.

I began the difficult task of shifting my inner dialogue, and writing an entirely new story about what I am offering to the world.

My "business" is, first and foremost, a reflection of who I am, not some entity separate from me.

I am here to bring forth a perspective that elevates and awakens. I am not unique or remarkable in that task. I believe each and every one of us is born to do this.

What is unique is how I bring it forth. My words, my presence, my way of being and seeing the world...those are unique. As they are for each and every one of us.

My perspective of the world will resonate with many, but not necessarily all.

But the EXPANDED perspective must be birthed. And it is the role of the "competition" to take on that task.

Source: http://lightworkers.org/blog/181018/lavender-skies

Each of us, even though we appear to have had the same experience, must share it in their unique way, so that the WHOLE is lifted.

It is when we LIFT our so-called competitor that we accomplish the GREATER GOAL, which is to lift the whole.

I didn't have to go to Spain to support my friend Sue Kenney's launch of her Spanish book. Our collaboration could have easily ended when Alberto delivered the Spanish translation. By my previous definitions, and traditional business wisdom, she is my competition. We are both pilgrims. We are both women who walked alone. We both speak to the spiritual journey.

I had only ever promoted our book and our journey. It was a little awkward at first. I couldn't find the right flow without sounding forced. Yet, as I began to promote HER story, HER achievements, HER successes, I began to feel a shift within me, a feeling of genuine pride and happiness for her successes.

It was a milestone moment in my inner journey.

Then, without effort or even the need to ask, Sue began to do the same for me, even though this was HER MOMENT.

Without the need for words, we understood that each, in her own remarkable way, was filling a piece of the Divine Puzzle. The higher goal we were both realizing had nothing to do with the book. We were participating in the birth of a higher consciousness, and THAT goal invited us to cooperate.

This experience forced me to, once again, redefine my measure of success.

The shift is a radical one, challenging so much of what we believe about ourselves and the world. Befriending a "competitor". Unbelievably still, promoting them. Lifting them.

If we could do this, how would that change our business? How would that change us? And the world?

It is a path I continue to explore.
~Mony

VIDEO - "What does it mean to be wealthy?" on Ottawa Experts

In this segment with wealth managers Daniel Roy and Daniel Sonkodi, they speak to the topic of what it means to be wealthy.

VIDEO "Consciousness and Wealth" on Ottawa Experts

Enjoy, and please feel free to share.

Ottawa Experts - Consciousness and Wealth, how to be a socially responsible investor

With Daniel Roy (PRAXIS Wealth Management) and Daniel Sonkodi (ONELIFE Wealth Management).

Ottawa Experts - Social Enterprises, embracing money and meaning

With my guests:

- Jan Ditchfield (The Tandem Project http://www.thetandemproject.org/), and

- Simin Foster (EngageWorks http://engageworks.ca/)

speaking about integrating social value into business mission.

Please check rogerstv.com for schedule.

Just because you're good at doing something, does that mean you always do it?

A Mony moment :-)

Just because you’re good at doing something, does that mean you always have to do it?

That question came up in a conversation Alberto and I were having about the many to-dos of running our business. The more he kept telling me it was easier for me to do the planning or marketing, the angrier I felt. It brought back memories from my seven years at Microsoft that saw me moving from one role to another: seminar presenter, product manager, marketing manager, account manager, business manager…

The management roles were all similar, in the sense that I was usually responsible for planning and executing whatever was needed to reach a new market segment or launch a new product. I didn’t have a team, and although I really wanted to grow into that leadership role, it never happened. I often wondered if there was something wrong with me until a manager confided: “We see you as a doer, and know that you’ll do a great job no matter where we put you.”

I’m sure this manager meant it as a compliment, but it deflated me.

How was I going to grow and develop new skills if I was using the same ones over and again? How would I ever grow professionally and personally?

As you all know, Alberto and I write, translate and publish our own books (with the exception of our Chinese book!). We do all the marketing, public relations, distribution and all aspects of running a business. It is our full-time work, and I am applying the same skills to our business as the ones I honed at Microsoft. Most days, I love it.

But there are days I want to give that job to someone else, and go off exploring the uncharted waters of those waiting-to-be-discovered talents.

How can I do both, and well? Is it even possible to do each path justice?

I’m navigating my way through this, and this is what I’ve discovered so far.

I’m not ready to hand off the running and growing of our business to someone else (yet), but I can ask myself:

WHY I am doing this work?
WHO am I BEING in the process?
WHAT is the HIGHEST PURPOSE that I am serving?

I can remind myself that my work is, above all else, an expression of who I am. That, in updating our website, I am sharing a part of who I am with others. That, in doing the accounting, I am appreciating our prosperity. That, in contacting agents and distributors, I am moving the engines of creation and expanding the reach of what we offer.

I’m not always in this place, btw. It is spiritual practice finding the love and the extraordinary in the routine and familiar. It’s much easier to embark on the next adventure! But when I am in that place, I am alight, let me tell you!

I also practice being present, and opening myself to the next steps in my journey as a soul in continual transformation. I especially do this in the moments when all is flowing beautifully because it’s so much easier to do than when I’m disgruntled.

I especially practice patience :-). For I have seen that when I am able to practice pouring love into what I do, and placing myself in the direction of my soul’s expansion, then all seems to work out almost effortlessly. What I have outgrown resolves itself and what I am growing into pulls me along.

In our life’s journey, this is a fork in the road we will all face, with our hearts the only beacons guiding the path we will choose.

May love and courage always guide those steps.
Blessings,
Mony

Ho'oponopono and Money

Alberto and I have made a bet on this work that we are doing, this sharing of ourselves with the world and pouring as much love and light into every expression that may take (books, paintings, blogs, etc.).  We can’t imagine ourselves being or doing anything else.

But every once in a while, when I see the bills of our publishing endeavor or look at the many little things we’d like to fix up around our house, I become anxious and worry about whether this path we have chosen will sustain us. It sustains us emotionally, spiritually, mentally… but my impatience demands that I see it sustain us economically! Despite all that I know and have lived and practiced, these fears still pop up…

That consciousness of lack has manifested in some interesting experiences. The details don’t matter as much as what they have inspired in reflections. The first thing I immediately do is accept responsibility for this consciousness within me. I certainly don’t condemn it or push it away because it’s coming from me. And, if it is in my experience, I have put it there to show me something within me, be it a fear or energy or misunderstood thought pattern…something of a lower vibration within me which is revealing itself to me to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be wrapped in love, to be brought back to the light that it is. This is the teaching of Ho’oponopono that I love so much.

And so I begin my personal meditation, allowing whatever words to pour through:

“Mony, I love you. I’m not sure how this energy lodged itself within your fields, what you thought, did or felt that put that energy there but it’s OK. Mony I love.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me, Mony.

Thank you, this energy of fear of not-having-enough, of having-your-work/livelihood-taken-from you, of being-left-with-nothing… all of this fear, I see you. Thank you for revealing yourself to me in my experiences lately. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to bring you back to your natural state, to the light of abundance that you are, to the eternal energy of plentitude that rules the earth and the Universe. Master, envelop this energy in your love, in your golden aura. Violet flame of transmutation, add your flame, your energy to bring back to light all what has temporarily forgotten its nature.

Light fills my physical body, reminding every cell of its Divine nature, of its Divine plan and purpose.

Light fills my energy field, my emotional body, my astral body, my mental body, my temple… Light dominates my vibration. I vibrate in the Light. I am Light. I am Love pouring through every crevice of the creation that I am. I am the Christ consciousness, incarnate. The Christ, the I AM, dwells within every aspect of me and rules my every movement, conscious and unconscious, my every thought, my every deed and word. I know no lack.

I only know infinitude. I only know plentitude. In this plentitude, the gates burst open and the waves of light long trapped by fear deluge forth. The dams have burst open leaving in their wake the spreading expanse of ever-more light, ever-more grace, ever-more beauty through this beloved creation called Mony.

Rest in our arms, beloved, for you are well tended and held.”

I don’t know where these words come from, but they sustain me and leave me weeping with gratitude.