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.
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| 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
