Well, in an exchange with Karin from www.thekissbusiness.co.uk in my last blog, I came out of the closet as a person “oriented toward Spirit”.

I am not out to convert anybody.  But I am out to promote listening to the personal gyroscope.  And this personal gyroscope is linked to the spirit I just wrote about in the last blog.

In that last blog I mentioned my agnostic father who had clearly arrived at his own formula of warmly respecting others and himself.  He found a lot of fulfillment in his business life.

In his own way I am sure he heard his personal inner gyroscope quite well.  We all have one.  Call it whatever we will, it is the inner guide, the quiet “voice” of deeper perception, the voice of intuition.  It is the voice that nudges us about right and wrong, that perhaps feeds us flashes of brilliance in our business lives, the voice that sometimes warns us and might keep us from danger or bad decisions.

It is the voice that really is behind all that I promote in Conscious Cooperation.  No, I can’t take any credit for creating it.  In fact, my wanting to take any credit would interfere with perceiving this voice.

To me this inner voice or inner urging is the gyroscope that helps set a course for us and keeps us on track, if we listen.  It feeds our connections with others.  It recognizes what rings true and what doesn’t.  Several weeks ago Karin said that customers know when we are being ourselves and when we aren’t.  She said basically that trust is built on our genuineness.

My point here is that our genuineness is tied to the personal gyroscope.  This gyroscope has ancient wisdom running it.  It can guide and inspire our thinking, but it is not born of rational thinking.  It is a voice of ethics, respect and humility.  And it is a voice of warm connection, because that is its foundation.

It can also be easy to lose the thread to the inner gyroscope if we aren’t careful.  I know!  It is subtle.  It takes nursing and feeding.  To have lost good touch with the gyroscope can lead to much disquiet, as Dave Schoof of www.thedisquiet.com works with.

What I am talking about here is very much in keeping with the work of Mark Silver of www.heartofbusiness.com, Dawud Miracle of www.dmiracle.com and Adam Kayce of www.monkatwork.com.

So, how do you live with your personal gyroscope?  How does it affect your life?

Would you like to be better in touch with it?

If you have followed this blog at all, you know that matters of the spirit are of core importance for me.  Call it spirituality, focusing on your deepest inner self, communing with your higher power- it doesn’t matter what you call it.

For me this energy, wisdom and mystery of spirit are what drive everything.  I have to do my best to pay close attention to my relationship with spirit, or, if I may, Spirit, multiple times a day.  When Karin of www.thekissbusiness.co.uk tagged me to list my personal factors for productivity, the first thing I noted is that every morning I have to make a connection with the Divine, as some good friends put it, and connect with my heart.

It is from that place of Spirit and heart that I know I get the “juice” to connect with others and to approach my business from a place of giving.  And this is the fundamental basis of what I do and what I want to do.

Mark Silver of www.heartofbusiness.com guides his class students through a deep look inside themselves at what unique gift they have to give to their clients, and through a deep look at what is the “pain” of their clients, what it is they truly need help with.  Mark guides his clients and students through their personal link with Spirit inside them.  He says that if you clearly answer these fundamental questions then you have started to open a door to both a more fulfilling and successful work experience for yourself, but also to providing unique gifts to your clients in a way that really answers what they need.  In truth, life-changing experiences can open up.

That is a serious win-win!

And it does not matter what religion you may follow, if you follow any at all.  My father didn’t even believe in God, but he connected with his business clients in a way that made them feel fully taken care of.  And he enjoyed his business life.  He valued his clients, and he knew what he could offer them.  I guess you could say that he loved his clients, and they loved him.

I was with him once when I was a little boy, and we ran into one of his clients.  I will never forget the joy and respect that this man spontaneously showed when he saw my father.  Fifty years later I can still picture the moment.  In his own way my father had found the truth of answering his clients’ “pain”, as Mark Silver says, and treating his clients with respect while he also respected himself.  A real good model for me that resonated inside me even at that early age.

Another key element of connecting with “Spirit” is that there is this endless source of guidance and inspiration!  It can be such a relief.  When I feel overwhelmed I know I am too much in my own mind and pictures of things.  Time to give it a rest and tap into the deeper well.  It is a fundamental truth for me that I simply have to repeatedly step away from my own looking glass to live a fuller life.  There is available at all times, if I tune in, an endless source of guidance, supply and surprise.

Such a refreshing dip into renewal and shifting may work on my own, or I may need to connect with a close friend or colleague to broaden my perspectives and link more closely to my heart again.

Then, there is also the remarkable phenomenon that in doing something for someone else, however small the gesture may be, your life and horizons expand.  Amen!  I get tired of too much of me.  And having the approach in business to be in service, while honoring yourself at the same time, feeds into this orientation of giving.  When I started to approach my business in this way it was like a steel band was loosened from around my chest.  I could breathe more deeply, enjoy what I was doing more.  The world actually got brighter, and I felt more present.  My relationships with my clients changed in a fundamental way.

Maybe you think of it as your personal inner guidance or “knowing”.  The terms don’t matter.  I believe we all have a deep inner voice that wants to help us to the extent that we can listen!

So, do you agree with my main messages here?  Disagree?  How do you relate to your inner spirit?  What do you do to feed your spirit and feed yourself with it?

I welcome any comments.

Karin from www.thekissbusiness.co.uk tagged me to list my keys for productivity, and to hopefully note my one main productivity factor. Ben Yoskovitz of www.theinstigatorblog.com began a meme to put together the “ultimate” guide to productivity.

Well, thanks, Karin, although sometimes these days I feel like I am doing an awful lot but it is sort of jumbled up. You see, my entire life has been in revamp mode for a little while now, so there is little that is a familiar anchor. New, exciting and daunting at the same time. The blog community has actually become an important anchor in a very short time. That is the honest where I am at.

Sometimes these days I feel like I could better help someone else in their productivity than help myself in mine. And yet I think there is a broad-daylight hidden point there- Have plenty of help from others!

So here is my list:

1. Greet the Divine first thing, make my first cup of tea and start in with some contemplation/prayer time. Make a conscious connection with my heart.

This really does set the tone of my day and open me to fullness and surprises that do not otherwise appear at the same depth.

2. Work from goals and to-do lists that stay flexible. My poor brain has definitely lost some memory capacity, although I love the person who said that this makes room for more wisdom. Whew! Thanks. Prioritize the goals and to-do’s. I do well with organization that has flexibility.

3. I am taking note of when in the day I seem to do some things better than others and what my natural rhythm seems to be.

4. Keep up regular contact with my “team”- close friends, buddies, collaborators, mentors, etc. I am still working on getting situated with a master-mind team, but the important people in my life are crucial to truing myself and keeping moving in good directions. I do a lot of bouncing off.

5. Make commitments! I learned years ago from the Context Trainings Corporation to be very careful about what you commit to. And I learned the enormous power of commitment. I may meander a bit on getting somewhere, but my commitment to get there is paramount. And whatever I commit to put all of myself into it.

6. Do this all with a ready grin up my sleeve. Be ready to have fun with anything and everything. Take myself with a large grain of sea salt.

7. Throw some fun and exercise into the mix. My beloved old dog frequently gets me to the woods, the beach, the school yard for serious stick-throwing. If I can grab a daytime walk or lunch with a friend it is great. We typically end up being a two person mutual support group. Use my workout machine. Do a little yard work. Enjoy a little personal conversation in the midst of the work day.

8. Learn from others!! Get help as needed!!

9. Acknowledge all I am doing, and do my best to be merciful with myself.

10. Look for divine guidance with everything.

Whew! That is a list and 7/8.

As for the key factor, I think that commitment with full participation on my part, coupled with the personal spiritual connection are my “must have” foundation factors.

A while back both Dawud Miracle of www.dmiracle.com and Dave Schoof of www.thedisquiet.com tagged me to post my core goals for life. I thank them both for the tagging.

For a couple of reasons, primarily that I had trouble mastering linking and various computer skills, I wrote the goals and did not post them. So here is a belated posting. My apologies to my taggers for the delay. And yet I also found I wanted to edit slightly now.

So here they are. As Dawud noted for himself, all my primary goals center around things close to my heart.

1. To be as supportive and fun as I can be to my daughter.

2. To be as loving as I can be every day. This is both a general statement and a personal statement to the lady in my life.

3. To turn to God in my heart more and more and live from that place.

4. To passionately participate in the unfolding of my business Conscious Cooperation as it expands and I am able to share with more and more people through it.

5. To give freely and generously, both to causes and individuals.

6. To live in deep gratitude.

7. To live generously.

8. To be as much of a light on this earth as I can.

9. To have and be fun!

10. To be an excellent friend/companion to myself and to my friends and close companions.

11. To be a uniter.

12. To live in my integrity.

I would like to tag Mark Silver of www.heartofbusiness.com and Sean D’Souza of www.psychotactics.com

In mid April I attended graduation ceremonies for my 20 year old nephew Alex who just completed US Marine boot camp.

My sister and her husband, my brother-in-law’s brother, and my daughter and I were present.

Let’s just say that in thirteen weeks remarkable transformation was highly apparent. My nephew showed new stature and presence, new confidence and new appreciation of life that had not been revealed before. At the same time, as my sister said, he was still himself. He had not become a hard-butt. Rather, he had done significant maturing and blossoming in a very short period of time.

It was a wonderful thing to observe and be present for. Joining the Marines was not the first choice that his parents would have made for him, but Alex wanted the most thorough military training program he could get, and he recognized that he needed his butt booted a bit. So he chose the Marines.

Was it hard? Oh, yes. Did he get pushed to capacities he didn’t know he had? Definitely. And did he come out a fuller human being? Yes, he did. His whole family has new appreciation of the character-building aspect of this military training. I would not be saying that without having seen the marked changes in Alex, and without having gotten a taste of training life at the Marine base.

So, I ask myself, what are the components of his growth, and how was that growth stimulated?

He mastered tremendous physical and mental challenges. He had to LISTEN and not question. He had to follow orders. In one sense he had to give up his will, but his will to complete the training to the best of his ability actually strengthened while he learned to give up other will.

He was also trained to be a team member, at a deep level, and to be committed to being there for his fellow recruits. And, he did not lose his sense of himself. That actually became better defined. He clearly has new confidence.

I know there is a lot of reaction that says that the military wants mindless, obedient soldiers who will be obedient killing machines. Yet what I saw changed in Alex is that for the first time in his life he was able to really put aside his own desires and will in order to be the best contributor he could to the group he was training with, and to throw himself into something beyond his usual daily patterns.

Alex is a very intelligent young guy, very observant, highly verbal. He observed an awful lot. I think that part of the success of military training is that one is forced to step out of their usual mind and habits. You don’t get coffee just when you want it, or anything else just when you want it. Actually, for a few months you don’t get much of anything that you want. If you don’t like something you can’t just walk away. You have to deal with it and swallow your own reactions. You are taught to look out for your fellow human beings and work in cooperation, or else you all may fail.

In short, there is something very humbling about the training while there is also something that promotes tremendous confidence and ability to work with others.

The reason I have described all this is I wanted to deconstruct the connection I see between the changes in Alex and components that I believe are crucial to successfully running a business in integrity.

As I picture Alex now I observe some key qualities:

He has new confidence in his abilities to carry out difficult tasks.
He has new focus.
He has a new ability to listen carefully and translate that listening into appropriate action.
He appreciates life at a level that he previously took for granted.
He has experienced rewards of holding his own will at bay.

To me, being committed to working in cooperation involves certainly having your own way of seeing things while not being wedded to your way being the only way. You can be cooperative even if you don’t particularly like someone you are working with. And, you can also choose to look for the best in others and overlook a lot, which stretches your boundaries.

Such lovable, good-natured and influential characters as Art Buchwald have said that their Marine training was the most important developmental factor in their lives. For the first time, I think I can understand this.

I welcome any comments.

Do you feel like a juggler?

Do you feel like you have so much to do which calls for your attention that you have serious doubts you can do it all?

You have work schedules, which change all the time in spite of your best planning. You are somewhat at the mercy of the schedules and whims of others, no matter how well you try to orchestrate what you do.

You have family commitments, or significant other commitments, and/or friendship commitments that you would like to put the best of yourself into. Maybe you have community commitments and volunteer commitments of different sorts that also mean a lot to you.

If you are self employed you likely have the DOER genes that others value. People probably admire your abilities to get things done. People may well wonder how in the world you do all you do.

Maybe YOU wonder how in the world you do all you do.

Are you doing too much? Or are you geared toward what you are doing in a pushing kind of way that comes from much determination and a picture of things that sees no other way to do it?

Are you enjoying what you are doing and how you are doing it? If you feel pushed and stressed and on the edge, I doubt you are enjoying it too much. I have been there.

I have always loved the craft of construction. Often enough I have enjoyed the excitement of the work, of different people working together to create.

And, as you know from my blog, the relationships among everyone involved have been highly important to me and now form the basis of my focus.

If your personal circus is one that you enjoy, great! If it is one that leaves you stressed and worn down, that is trouble.

Here are some links to sites that I have a lot of respect for, that might be of help. These are some great people:

www.jasonstein.com Jason Stein is a personal coach, trainer and presenter who helps with personal efficiency, personal meaning and personal success. He helps you do your business well while being more in tune with yourself.

www.monkatwork.com Adam Kayce of monkatwork addresses similar issues in a somewhat different fashion.

www.thedisquiet.com Dave Schoof of thedisquiet, mentioned previously in my blogging, addresses the dis-ease that many men experience to one degree or another. He is a wonderful resource. Dave also is a coach and trainer.

All these men provide some wonderful resources to help with personal focus, fulfillment and success. All are worth looking into.

In the near future I will provide links to more resources.

And by the way, as some of my readers here will know, any of what I have written about today can apply to women, too. So, welcome women!

Here is to an enjoyable circus…

In my life as a builder I became more and more aware of the importance of clear, open communication.

I looked at where and how disputes seemed to arise.

One of the BIG light bulbs going off for me was realizing that much dispute seems to arise over assumptions and interpretations. It is often very innocent, but people do interpret things differently and make differing assumptions. It may be totally unconscious, but it happens, and it can lead to conflict.

So how do I clarify these things, I asked myself. Well, ask more questions, the answer came back. In my early years as a builder when I had a partner, I assumed that customers pretty much said what they wanted and said what was on their minds.

Well, sometimes what they meant and how I heard it were not quite in synch. Or they might not state enough information. Oooh, potential breeding ground for trouble. Sound familiar at all?

Did I learn this all at once? Did I have it down pat in a few weeks? Uhhh, no. I had to keep learning at a deeper level. I had to dip my toe in the water and keep asking more questions. Sometimes I would say something like, “I may be a little dense, but can you tell me more about what you mean here?”

A little humble pie example here: I spent weeks and weeks planning a job with a couple who were leaving for the whole winter. The night before they were leaving I went to their house to sign our contract. They were bombed and trying to get me to drink with them. Then it went down hill. My little inner voice said “Run for your life!” But I didn’t. We took on the job. One detail of it was to build some “storage” in one corner on one wall. My interpretation was shelves. His was a whole built-in with cabinetry underneath. I never asked more questions. Ouch.

So, as I gracefully learned more about asking questions (!*^), I even started to ask some customers about how they would be using their home when we were done. Did they entertain a lot? Did they value their privacy a lot? Did they like a lot of sunlight? And so on…Based on their answers I might then ask more questions or make suggestions regarding features they may like, even if there was a full architect plan. I would also say that I had no intention of stepping on the architect’s toes and asked if they minded me bringing up these things. I just wanted them to be happy with the product.

And you know what? No customer ever said to me, “Hey, stop asking us all these questions!” Instead, they often said things like “Wow. We never expected to have conversations like this. It makes us feel safe with you. We trust you.”

Whoa. I had stumbled into something far more important than I had anticipated. They value feeling SAFE with me. They value TRUSTING me. When I really took a look at that I was honestly humbled by what they were telling me and what it meant. I have this one semi-crusty, lovable, old, wealthy customer who actually says to me, “Well, I’m still getting that warm, fuzzy feeling with you.” This is from a seriously high-powered retired industrialist. And I tell him I am happy he is, and he keeps having me back. I am grateful for that.

This is a big subject, and much more can be said, but I find that the need to ask questions and clarify really applies to all of life. It can apply to any relationship.

Any thoughts??

I have a mediation partner, Jeff Oppenheim. He is a busy family and business-focused attorney, and the person who urged me into mediation years ago. Wonderful guy, as honest and forthright as they come.

Jeff has called on me at different times to wear a few hats: construction expert, mediator, negotiator. We have taken to mediating together in the volunteer mediation program in our local court system on Cape Cod, and we recently had our first serious professional co-mediation experience together. It was a construction dispute. To complicate things, the builder and the couple involved were old friends. We learned a BIG thing the hard way, but we learned it.

We were trying to stay as neutral as we could, per most mediation training, although the deepest, heart-level mediation training urges one to stretch the neutral envelope. Anyway, one of the clients did their best to control the whole process, which ended up lasting for weeks. This person was the elephant in the living room who was demanding everyone’s attention while basically claiming innocence for any of the problems they were currently embroiled in. Oy, this was a tough cookie!

We finally got a settlement, but it was not pretty. And here is the big lesson we learned: We did not stake our own claim firmly enough at the very beginning regarding the process of how we work best. The “shoulda” is that we now know to tell prospective clients from the outset that in order to work best we need to be able to tell them if we think they are hurting their own case. We need to be able to tell them what we see. Traditional mediation training warns against this, but you need to make the process your own, too.

We may feel it necessary to say things they may not like. They can choose to accept what we say, stop the whole thing, walk away in a huff; it is up to them, but we need to establish this playing field. We did not do this with the above-mentioned clients, with some painful results. Sometimes you can accomplish this “reality testing” with respectful questions and reflection, but sometimes I think the message needs to be a little more blunt. We can soften the possible blow and stay respectful by asking their permission to be blunt.

So this difficult client was, in fact, a huge gift to us, even though in hindsight we can see how better to serve them.

What is the most difficult aspect of your business for you?

I would wager that it is likely people-related. Is it dealing with employees? Dealing with customers? Dealing with suppliers? Subcontractors? Someone else? All of the above?

In this technologically advanced age it is easy to forget just how important the “people factor” is. We have cars and trucks that have computers in them that are more sophisticated than the consumer computers of not too long ago. We are wired in, linked in, electronically connected and consumed to a degree that most of us probably could not have dreamt of just a few years back.

We text message, email, voicemail, interface, etc. etc. Our physical world is more complex than ever. The construction industry is constantly changing in terms of products and equipment. There are now endless computer programs to help manage the business. And the usual pace of everything seems to keep cranking up.

When you get down to it, though, it still all runs on people. The fanciest computer program in the world can’t do a darned thing for human relations. The best tools and craftsmen in the world can’t repair broken relationships.

With the pressures and complexity of running a construction business or related business today, it is easy to lose track of the importance of the people factor. And yet, the effects of not addressing the people issues can be bothersome at the least and perhaps totally destructive.

When people are noticed, listened to and valued there are powerful responses. When there is an atmosphere of honesty, respect and camaraderie, work life flows much better.

People are happier, they work better together, they are more effective, and the fact is, the bottom line is positively influcenced.

Let’s say you are a business owner in the construction industry or in a related field. There is some old “wisdom” that says not to give anything away. This “wisdom” says you should not reveal your hand. You should not let customers know your expenses. And you should get as much money as you can.

I am a small construction business owner myself. I certainly do believe in profit and in being paid fairly. We should be paid fairly for quality work. We should be able to retire some day and take vacations along the way and reap benefit from our hard work.

I also believe we should approach our businesses with a generosity of spirit. When we make it very important to serve our customers, when we are grateful for them and we want to give them the best of yourself, we actually attract more generosity and appreciation from them.

When I started treating customers in this fashion they started treating me with value that actually surprised me. One friend from years ago who worked for me at times when he was not working on his own said he had never seen customers chase the builder to hand him money, as some of mine did. “How do you do it?” he asked incredulously.

Mainly, I was there to serve my customers to the best of my abilities while doing my best to be true to myself at the same time. In fact, treating them well WAS and IS part of being true to myself. And they perceived and appreciated this.

To be honest, I have overworked and obsessed over my business more than I should have, and I know I have not been alone in these imbalances! And I have also had numerous customers who have clearly valued me. Customers who have given me and sometimes my key people bonuses. Customers who have insisted on taking me to dinner. Customers who became friends and who I want to keep in my life.

How did I achieve this level of relationship? I made taking care of my customers thoroughly and honestly my priority. When I did this, and they were totally convinced I was working hard for them, they did not begrudge me my money. It was a win-win flow. And boy, it felt good. It felt good to take good care of them. It felt good to be appreciated. It felt good to make a decent living after having shortchanged myself for too long.

When my generosity towards my customers increased, my own bank account grew. This may sound paradoxical, but it really is not. There is a natural law which governs this experience. And I went to bed feeling that I had served my customers well and honestly.

I took note of their priorities and generally asked about them outright. I looked for little clues. Did they seem disturbed about something? Did they seem extra pleased? Was there something else going on in their life that was especially difficult or disturbing? Was there anything not being covered?

When I took more genuine interest in them and stopped seeing them as people around whom I had to maneuver and who I had to watch out for, my work life became very different.

And I knew that the people who said to run my business like I was in a win-lose poker game were wrong. What a relief!