Spiritual well-being is an alien concept to most businesses, and sadly, alien to many people's daily lives. In this time of uncertainty, the call to holistic wellness has never been greater - be it individually or across corporations.
Whether you're an entrepreneur with a multidigit international workforce, or just a local one-man show, the progressive spiritual effect of the COVID-19 pandemic can't be ignored. After all, a company is only made up of the humans that give it life.
Despondency, despair, a loss of hope - the feeling that nothing matters - these subversive maladies weigh upon our psyche and corrode our spirit, especially as we continue to face the unknown. They're transported from homes to workplaces, bedrooms to boardrooms; they influence day trades, cross border communications, and parliamentary policies.
As the way we've experienced life shifts before our very eyes - as relationships change, institutions collapse, and our culture loses identity, there's a real danger of entrenching these heavy, corrosive, feelings as an ongoing reality.
Improving the state of your soul needn't happen in a church or ashram. Nor does it have to be a religious or spiritual undertaking. It can be as simple as an act of kindness, healthier self-esteem, and better thoughts - or more patience and tolerance. How about throwing in measures of forgiveness and mercy?
It can also be intentionally setting out to understand how it is that you're part of all you see around you.
All of it.
It's never been more apparent how everything in our world is connected; the truth that what's in one is in the Whole.
In general, modern society has a chronic need to escape from ourselves. But in the eye of the storm - and I believe we very much still are in the eye of the storm - we shouldn't run faster, but rather, go deeper.
Nurturing a deeper self awareness creates a ripple effect of responsibility and accountability, of care and compassion. It breeds sensitivity and esteemable acts.
And with that, businesses need to revisit how it is they operate; the ways in which their brand communicates. Do they leverage innate fears and insecurities for profit? Do they exploit sex to ramp up stock prices? Are there mind games at play to secure attention online - to get sales, and leads, and likes?
What is the state of the soul of your business?
As our youth gets evermore spellbound by the compulsive self-glorification of TikTok and Snapchat, brands and businesses across the board need to conduct themselves ethically more than ever before.
The digital revolution continues to teeter the planet on a knife edge.
All that said, this time of global upheaval, destruction, and information overload is also dovetailing with a season of extraordinary imagination.
Imagination is the beginning of creation.
Whatever's limited us to date, we now get to choose differently. We now get to create what's never been created before. This truly is the miracle of these times.
The grace we're being given is the ability to imagine ourselves into a new holistic paradigm.
We get to go beyond the fear that has fuelled us for too long, the greed and selfishness that has kept us small. Each of us has the power to initiate outbreaks and contagions of hope, love, and connection.
This is the truth of who we really are.
Businesses must similarly take new strides to show genuine care for their customers, appreciation for their workforce, and reverence for the planet. And, more powerfully than doing it different, businesses (governments included, please) have the unprecedented opportunity to be altogether different.
Just like human relationships need to be about love and connection, so do commercial dealings, corporate strategies, and industry agendas. From business cards to brochures, from website copy to billboard blurbs, what businesses are saying - and writing - during COVID matters in a way it never has before.
Is corporate spirituality the real 21st Century Renaissance?
Love writing,
Iwan
The Pen Haus
Copywriting is the art of expressing the spirit of your business
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