Balanced Business 4: Energy Rhythm In Business & Creativity

For the conscious creators of businesses. The 4th episode of the Balanced Business series provides a universal tool for harnessing creative energy and understanding your flow. It is so important when we do business in a conscious way that we do not get absorbed into the linear paradigm of thinking that surrounds us in the world of commerce but instead that we stay mindful of the natural cycle of energy repeating in our creative and entrepreneurial work.

I offer you the two of the Wheel Model that have come to me as an inspiration to tackle the challenges of uniting circular living and making linear progress in your life's undertakings.

Transcript

Welcome to the fourth episode on Balanced Business.

Today we are finding harmony between circular living and linear progress.

It is the essential harmony between masculine and feminine,

Between action and inaction.

And to help you master these energies in your life and business,

I have designed a wheel model.

It's been an inspiration in my life and it has helped me and some of my clients in balancing the creativity,

Avoiding burnt-out states and planting more productive intentions in the business cycle.

So,

We in Western society tend to think of business as a linear thing that has to grow and grow and grow and never,

Never cease to grow.

But this mentality is quite toxic and I hope you don't have this unrealistic expectation that you are only ever going to expand.

Expansion and contraction,

Rises and falls,

These are natural patterns and we need to understand them.

Especially to avoid depression once you think that your business is going down a bit and your inspiration is disappearing because it is going to come,

This stage.

And you need to be prepared for it in order to overcome it and go to the next cycle,

To the next stage.

It's like the next curve of the spiral.

But why I'm using the wheel metaphor?

Because basically this is the very simple and industriously revolutionist object that combines the smooth shape of the circle with the forward motion.

It is like transport that is taking your intentions along the path of your purpose.

And to make it more practical and attainable,

The control of this movement,

I've assigned three attributes to each stage.

The weakness,

The virtue and the task.

And this has come to me as well in inspiration,

Just laying down and preparing to go to sleep and then receiving all this model in my head,

Then spending a year testing it out and then finally delivering it.

You can download it also in PDF at my free online resources.

So I hope it is an interesting adventure for you.

And of course you will recognize the pattern,

But maybe my interpretation will help you find something new in this story that is as old as time.

The first stage is the child.

This is the stage when you get your inspiration.

You have achieved the beneficial conditions for receiving and you have received the idea.

Or you're just playing maybe,

Playing with the pebbles of your purpose,

Designing,

Drafting,

Waiting for it to come.

In this stage,

Your virtue is hope.

Hope is the attribute of surrendering to the higher power,

Of letting your life flow and hoping that it is going in the right direction,

But not actually having any control over this motion.

So this is the ever-present light,

The softest,

Gentlest,

But eternal light of hope.

And in your business,

You can also have it through yourself,

Through your personality,

Through always keeping the beacon of hope even in the darkest times.

And when you go to the child stage,

Allowing yourself to relax with the knowledge that something greater than you has put you on this path of your purpose and is going to take care of you and bring forth all the needed ideas.

But there is also a weakness in this stage,

And this is fear.

Because when you are small and your business is only starting or you're just at the idea stage,

This is the really business archetype for the child stages,

The idea stage,

Then you can get fearful that maybe your offering is not good enough,

Maybe the world is too big and you're too small and you're not going to make it.

And hope is meant to help you overcome this fear and fulfill your task of getting inspired.

What does it mean to get inspired?

It's not only to receive the idea,

It's actually to get so fired up by this idea that the energy of it pushes you out of the child stage and into the next hero stage,

The stage of proactive doing.

And you will recognize it when your idea is so potent,

So present in your life that you wake up with it and you go to sleep with it.

And this is something concrete.

One thing that has come forth,

Accumulating all of your business interests at this point,

Some bright,

Clear energy that is maybe not shaped into a business vision yet,

But definitely has the attributes of your purpose.

It has a clear potential for a mission,

For values,

And is guiding you.

And you can visualize what the end result will be.

You can bring yourself to this space and you have enough energy to go through this visualization.

This is the time when you transition from just playing around with business concepts and possibilities to really setting a goal.

And once you have done it,

You are a hero.

This is the next stage of the cycle.

And the hero has also a virtue,

A weakness,

And a task.

The virtue of a hero is faith.

It is the evolution of hope,

A more material,

Strong,

Heart-centered hope that has grown into faith,

Into confidence.

But there is the weakness and temptation of pride,

Or on the flip side,

Lack of confidence.

So insecurity,

Let's say.

And these are both two sides of the same coin,

Because these are inadequate perceptions of your own worth,

Either blowing it out of proportion or just completely neglecting it.

These are both not what you need.

Weaknesses of each stage,

If you succumb to them,

They will take you back into the previous stage of the cycle and your wheel is not going to bring you forth,

But actually is going to just slide back and you are not going to make progress along your life path.

This is why it is important to find balance between the circular and the linear,

Because it's not necessary that the circle is a good thing if it's not going in the right direction.

So if you are having rhythm in your life,

It doesn't mean that it's a healthy rhythm and you need to understand the energies in order to make it constructive.

So how to use faith to overcome insecurity or pride?

Realizing the task of action is the key.

This is the task of the hero,

To act.

And when you act in your business,

You tap into the non-judgmental faith,

Confidence,

That you're doing what is right,

You're doing that what you are meant to do,

And you are doing it.

That's what matters.

It doesn't matter if you're doing it better than everyone or worse than everyone.

It is just irrelevant how good you're doing it in comparison to others.

You are doing it as well as you can,

Because you're doing it out of faith and service,

And this energy of service,

Creating this energy of selflessness,

Of helping others,

Even if you're doing business that is not a charity oriented,

Not a social thing,

But whatever you're doing,

Tapping into the true purpose of it and making steps towards helping this business bring something useful into the world,

Something of value.

This is the key here,

And you are the center now.

Even if you have a team,

The stage of a hero is a stage of personal action and leading by example and taking measurable steps towards concrete goals.

This is a very startup stage,

The stage of growth,

The stage of pushing through,

Making it on the market and channeling all that energy into this productive motion.

And once you have completed the task of acting,

If you are successful,

You arise and you become the creator.

This is the peak of the cycle,

The summer stage,

The stage when you get to shape your business and bring stability to it.

I've used the word success.

Success can be measured differently,

And it doesn't mean necessarily achieving all the set goals or even financial prosperity that you have hoped for,

Financial freedom and independence.

It is more so attaining a stable state of having organized processes that work.

This is important because this is how you don't slip back into the child stage.

When you make things work,

You have acted,

You have created something,

And it started to work independently from you.

And this is the stage when you are starting to separate yourself from your business,

And you are not the protagonist anymore.

You are the creator,

Like a parent to your business.

And it doesn't matter if you have a team or not,

But you need to act as a parent,

The mother or father archetype.

And the virtue of it is love,

Working with love every day in everything that you do,

The stage of appreciating and caring for your business like for a child.

But the weakness here is control because you tend to control your child and your child is not a part of you.

It is a separate being and you need to understand this and respect this and release this control.

Let the processes happen.

You have shaped them and now your role is to be the guardian of them to make sure that they are proceeding as needed,

To correct them,

To reshape them,

To care for them,

To nurture them,

To give them necessary inputs.

This is the stage when you learn delegation.

If you have a team around you,

This is the stage when you give responsibilities over to them in preparation for even the next stage.

But the weakness of control is something that most business leaders tend to experience and you need to be really mindful of it,

How much you control your business because you are a leader,

You need to shape it,

You need to lead and guide,

But you cannot suffocate it with your willpower.

You are not your business and your business is not you.

Your task at this point is to organize.

This is the task,

To organize.

That's the stage when a startup is transformed into a company,

An organization with clear regulaments,

Business processes,

With policies maybe,

Rules and routines.

This is all that you get to shape so that others can fill it with the daily content.

And if you are alone,

Then it means that you have some business processes set up that you can do automatically and it doesn't mean that you're not being present,

It means that you have stable routines that work and you don't need to input this creative energy into them so much because it is already the peak of the cycle and it will inevitably go down,

It starts decreasing and you need to set efficient processes that will be self-sustaining in order to make it in the long run in your business.

You cannot come up with new ideas every day,

You need to stabilize it and this is the stage of the creator.

And it is very tricky to feel when you are in which stage.

You can orientate yourself by the weaknesses and virtues.

So if you feel that you're really fearful,

You're too small,

Then you're in the child stage,

You're not near the creator,

Right?

Because when being the creator,

You rather feel that you need to control things so that they don't fall apart.

There is this subtle difference between fearing,

Just like self-preservation instinct and fearing that things will fall apart out of the urge for control.

These are almost two opposite energies,

Being smaller than everything or being bigger than everything.

Being a hero is,

On the other hand,

Completely different.

It is either prideful or insecure and insecurity is not fear and you need to learn to understand these energies if you want to have an energy-aware and spiritually present business.

Because otherwise you're just going to follow some methodologies for making profit without actually tapping into the beauty of inspiration and creation that has been granted to you.

And finally,

The stage of the wizard.

The stage when you have separated yourself from business,

You have created processes and now you can step back and let go.

This is the task of the wizard,

To let go.

And the virtue here is freedom.

Understanding that you are free and you are your own personality,

You're an individual and there are things to you that are of intrinsic value and you will always be you,

No matter how your business turns out.

And this is why you can separate yourself from it,

Even risking some setback,

Because investing into yourself is the best thing that you can do and giving yourself space and freedom to just be,

Is that what will recreate you.

And the weakness here is sadness.

This is the stage when you feel that all these routines,

All these processes that you have set up and organized,

They're kind of starting to be the same thing every day and you're not so much inspired to get to this work that is your life purpose.

And to overcome it,

You can tap into that freedom and say,

So what?

Yes.

It feels a bit sad that things are not really as pumped up as they used to be,

But I am not my work and I will go and find new inspiration and I will just let go of everything that doesn't serve me.

The purification,

Retreats,

Just taking a vacation in this stage is very important and it should be,

Of course,

Whatever you can afford,

But even if it is one full day of absence from your business,

It is healthy.

But in order to really make a sustainable business,

You need to take vacations at these points.

You need to plan one or two,

Or sometimes three weeks absence.

You need to allow yourself the time to see the world,

To get into the new flow.

And every time when I do that,

I come back with new ideas,

But the condition here is to really disconnect.

And this is where you rely on the processes that you have created.

If you have completed the task of the creator to the sufficient level of quality,

It means that you have business processes that will survive without you for some couple of weeks.

And then you can afford to be this wizard.

And when this transition doesn't work,

That's when the burnout happens,

That's when everything can crash.

And another thing is that we are taught that the downfall is the sign of the end because we are taught things in a linear way.

We think that it is born,

It develops,

It thrives,

And then it dies.

And when you are nearing this downfall,

You fear that it will die,

That your creation will die because inspiration,

The life force is taken out of it.

But think of it as awesome as the trees that lose their leaves.

They are not dying.

They are just going into the winter stage to be reposing,

To get the elements that they need back from the earth,

To be coddled in the bed of snow.

And then when next spring arises to suck in all this life and start to act and grow intensely,

But in order to come the full circle,

You need to transcend this death.

And this is why the stage is called the wizard because it is the magic that you need to perform,

The wonder.

And you need to use all your wisdom and knowledge and trust in order to let go,

To really,

Truly let part of you die for another part of you to be born as the child,

As the next stage.

When again you will be so reposed,

So disconnected,

And you have let go so much and you've cleared your head that you find yourself in this kind of empty space and you are intrigued by new possibilities,

You're playing around again,

You're seeing the twinkling lights under the Christmas tree,

In the darkness,

In the cool winter air.

But then,

Of course,

You have been disconnected from your thing,

So you will probably be a bit scared to go back.

And this is where the weakness of the child comes in.

And now you also need to discern fear from sadness,

Which is the weakness of the wizard stage,

Because fear is,

Again,

When you are really small and the world is really big,

That's essentially what it is,

You want to hide under the blanket.

But sadness is that you want things to be as they were,

This kind of depression,

Regret,

And you're not really comparing yourself,

You're just mourning,

You're feeling that this life situation is lesser than what you used to experience.

It's not so much about your personality,

But about all the circumstance around you,

That it is not good enough,

This is sadness,

Yeah,

That's not what it used to be,

You know,

Like an old person,

Always looking back to the past,

This is the weakness of the wizard.

And when you let go of it,

When you're really purified,

When you do your practices,

Do your healing,

And you find yourself one day just free of it,

Then you are okay,

You are not in regrets,

But you're just not sure that whatever you are now spending your time with is of value and worth,

And that you haven't completely lost it,

But that's just because you're in a child stage,

And if you allow yourself to get inspired again,

Then inevitably,

With hope,

With just letting this come naturally,

Making space for it,

It will come,

And then when this energy does come,

You will get struck by lightning,

You will get the inspiration,

And the energy will just carry you up,

The upward flow of energy,

This powerful current will carry you to the hero stage,

And then you will do all that you're used to doing,

Acting,

Organizing,

Creating everything,

You will repeat the cycle,

And this is how the wheel is turning,

And it is carrying you forth and forth and forth,

And each stage does not have to have the same length,

You can be in the wizard stage for a weekend,

And maybe take a longer weekend for a couple more days to be in the child stage,

If you really have the time constraints,

And you can use practices to shape each stage,

And I'm sharing these practices in my PDF material that is free on this wheel model,

You can reach out and search it on my resources,

And when you do these practices,

You can really channel the energy of each phase of the cycle to make it as fast as possible,

But you cannot really make it,

You can just create the favorable conditions for it,

And when the task is fulfilled,

Then you can go to the next stage,

And the thing is that when you don't allow yourself this downfall,

These darker stages of the wizard and the child,

Then your hero and your creator will never be healthy,

You will eventually either turn into a control freak,

Or burnout,

Or be always angry,

And just leave in these weaknesses,

In these shadow tendencies of each stage,

And you can even fall into downward spiral,

And this is really dangerous,

It is when you're emotionally jumping from fear back into sadness,

And then from sadness trying to control things,

And stop them from falling apart,

But then giving up and being insecure,

Trying to punish yourself,

Maybe being prideful that no one is listening to you,

And then eventually find yourself so miserable that you're fearing again,

And this is downward spiral,

It is like moving through the weaknesses in the opposite direction,

And if you find yourself in this downward spiral,

You need to stop yourself in the energy that is most prominent for you,

And you need to tap back into the virtue of this stage,

So if you are fearful,

Tap back into hope,

If you are insecure,

Then tap back into faith,

If you are too controlling,

Tap back into love,

Love,

True love,

That gives the creation the space that it needs,

And if you are sad,

Tap back into freedom,

Allow yourself to separate,

Allow yourself to let go,

This is the wizard stage,

And when you make the full cycle,

Just carry on,

And eventually the energies will balance out in your life,

And your business will continue as it is,

And your business will be interacting with other energies,

So you may be in the creator stage of your business,

But in the wizard stage,

Or in the hero stage of your personal relationship,

For example,

And it is always a different thing,

And interaction,

Interesting combinations can arise,

And if you know how to discern these energies,

You can understand what to do,

And for example,

The action of,

The action,

The rule of just get out there and do it,

Can apply to your business,

And not apply to your relationship,

And on the other hand,

Letting go of what doesn't serve you,

Can be the motto for clearing yourself from some toxic connections,

But if you are at the same time in the hero stage of your business,

Then letting go of what doesn't serve you,

Can really mess up your discipline,

That you really need in this stage,

And you need to push through things that you like or don't like,

Just act,

Act,

Act,

And this is a lot to take in,

But once you get the hang of these energies,

Then you can be the navigator of your current,

Of your flow of the river and the road,

And you can keep turning this wheel,

And travel in an inspired,

And free,

And loving,

And safe way,

Along the path of your purpose.

Thank you for joining,

And giving me space for this talk.

I wish you prosperity in your business,

And we will continue next time.