How to Cultivate Inner Ecology in Your Business

By Susan Urquhart-Brown

Have you ever walked into a store and instantly felt a pleasing warmth and friendliness that made your shopping experience wonderful? Did you notice that something special was going on, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it? I call this "something special feeling" the inner ecology of the business environment.

Just like it is very important to have balance and harmony in nature for a healthy, thriving physical ecology, it is equally important to have balance and harmony in the inner ecology, or interior landscape, governing a business owner and employees. When this balance and harmony is present, it breeds teamwork, appreciation, and respect and promotes positive and long-lasting relationships in the workplace and with customers, which is the basis of a successful business. It is this synergy of body, mind, and soul in both the owner and employees that creates positive energy in the business.

This balanced inner ecology is often what's missing in a business. When you love your work, you pour your heart energy into the office environment, and anyone entering feels it. This pouring of heart energy, just from the sheer joy of sharing, creates the kind of environment that is palpable to customers, and they feel it and respond to it.

Inner ecology is actually the relationship between your actions and your understanding of what makes you tick. Ask yourself how well you truly know yourself. What motivates you? Do you follow your dreams? Do you find peace and joy in what you do? The more you understand what makes you tick, the more present and available you become to life in general. This presence and availability energizes those around you and produces a harmonious work environment. It also stimulates your inner resources of energy, creativity, cooperation, integrity, and confidence.

Business is built on relationships. Have you noticed that when the boss is open and happy, the employees tend to be happy, and the customers are happy? Happy customers spend money and come back again and again, and they send their friends. Unhappy customers go elsewhere.

It's not enough to only do good work in your business. Inner ecology is a new paradigm—one that is value-based and comes from the intention of how you're being in your business rather than having total focus on what you're doing. It puts human connection and service on an equal footing with business results and profits—and the business thrives. Who are you being in business? How is your inner ecology being expressed? Are you out to get all the business you can, with no regard to whose toes you may be stepping on? Do you create extra problems in your attempt to make budget or hit sales targets? Are you able to see the bigger, long-term picture for your business?

I have found that most successful businesses are about building relationships one to one, season after season. When I connect with a client, they connect with me, and the relationship begins. I have found in my business that when my intention is to serve others, I not only help my clients solve problems, but I learn and feel served in the process— and clients keep showing up!

In today's economy, businesses sell similar products and services. What distinguishes a business today is the quality of the service, and service is expressed through individuals.

Instead of using attack-defense strategies that raise your blood pressure and increase your lawyer's fees while trying to increase your bottom line, try the following to cultivate and nurture the inner ecology within you.

1. Accept the challenge and move forward by being open to a variety of possibilities; choose one, and try it. If it doesn't work, try the next possibility. Be like water, which effortlessly changes course to move around obstacles. Stay open.
2. Cultivate your own natural wisdom to solve problems. Have faith in yourself and in your team's good ideas, set a plan, and implement it, trusting that you and your team will be able to handle any and all results. Be sure to start!
3. Let go of past resentments, beliefs, values, judgments, and opinions about products, clients, and especially about yourself that no longer serve you or promote your business. This often is the hardest step to take consistently because we are trained to look at the past to predict the future. Handle what is happening now, and know that the right next step will become clear. Be sure to take it.
4. Approach all business dealings with the attitude of the glass being half full rather than half empty. This is like the difference between greeting a client with a smile rather than a frown!
5. Spend more time asking questions and listening to your clients with the intention of building a relationship, not just selling your service or products. Be present and available to listen to the customers with spaciousness and respect. You will stand out among your competitors by actually delivering what your clients asked for while exceeding their expectations in some special way.