Spirituality in the business is a movement that began in the early 1920’s and has emerged as a grassroots movement with individuals practicing spirituality in the workplace. Most recently, employees have started looking beyond the jaw-dropping salary packages, and for them money is not the only prominent motivator of good job performance, because they want mental satisfaction from their work as well. The feeling of fulfillment, in other words, is called as spiritual fulfillment, which is a major motivator for delivering a better job performance.
Spirituality involves the attempt to seek one’s ultimate purpose in life, and spirituality in business involves developing a strong connection with oneself and one’s co-workers, having ideal beliefs and spiritual values. The spiritual values include values of work ethics, a good cause to work for the company, empowerment, and expression of emotion, which plays an important role in the employee’s life. Sometimes, spirituality is confused with religious tradition, but it does not involve a connection to any specific religion, rather it is based on the individual’s own personal values and philosophy.
The present article elaborates how the business and spirituality work together for a successful professional and personal life.
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Daily morning spiritual practices
The spiritual practices balance the life. The practices such as meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises help people to connect with themselves. According to a book on spirituality written by Florence Scovel Shinn, the subconscious mind needs programming, and if it’s not done then someone else will program it. Nowadays, without spiritual practices, people let others do the programming through the social media, news, and other informative mediums filled with a mixed type of expressions, which disturbs the focused thought process of an individual. The morning practices make the mind more focused and program it in such a way that the employee can sustain the new work challenges and unexpected events throughout the day. The start of the day with these spiritual practices awakens the individual and makes him realize the happiness and peace within by detaching him from the deep dreams of other attractions. To make the mind feel great and alert throughout the day, starting the spiritual practices early in the morning after a complete 8 hours of sleep is beneficial as it is very peaceful and quiet in the morning. After starting to wake up early in the morning, it becomes a supplement for the healthy expansion of the entire life. Committing few spiritual rituals every day can absolutely change the life in a positive way. Sometimes, it’s difficult to meditate just after waking up, because many people go back to sleep while meditating. Taking a simple tea can change the entire ritual, because the caffeine in the tea is a perfect wakeup call so that one can work without dozing off. Those who don’t like tea can sit and write something to regenerate the energy. Writing opens the thoughts and ideas in the mind. If an employee is going through a tough time, writing is the best solution to find out the best solutions.
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Time to connect spiritual source during work
Most of the successful professional individuals schedule a break during the day to do walking, meditation and jog while concentrating on breathing, or they sit quietly away from everyone and everything to meditate. Sitting quietly with eyes closed, along with the focus on breathing will help to clean the mind which is continuously thinking and analyzing about something or the other. Even if these thoughts come and go, and one must not be taunted by them. With consistent practice, they will vanish keeping the mind a quiet place. These procedures generate the conscious power within and bring the inner bliss to come out and cherish. An alarm and a timer will be beneficial for doing such practices. This small time taken for connecting with oneself simplifies and makes the workday more successful. Organizations should promote these practices and create a calm and healthy atmosphere for them because employees desire to work in an organization that seeks to have a high sense of ethics or integrity and makes a good contribution to the welfare of employees, customers, and society than the typical company.
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Trashing out the negative thoughts
If the employee is filled up with negative thoughts and emotions, which are not serving him, then there won’t be enough space available for receiving the desired outcomes. Imagine a glass of dirty water filled to the brim. If one needs to add pure water in it, then it’s not possible to add pure water in an already full glass. The same is true for the mind. When the mind of an employee is full of worries, anger, grudges, judgments towards co-workers or himself, he won’t be able to utilize and think about pure thoughts of contentment, because the mind is already engaged in thoughts related to other negative feelings. It is essential to trash out such negative feelings to welcome positive things to happen. Finding a practice which releases negative emotions is the best way to deal with the negative thoughts because only a calm and happy mind can understand the inner intuition or the gut. A clear and happy mind helps employees understand how they feel about new tasks, projects, and organizational activities. There is a close relation between good thoughts and job satisfaction, because, in work, the positive organizational purpose is significantly associated with job satisfaction. With an increase in workplace spirituality, employees’ commitment increases towards the organization.
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Spirituality for leadership
For many years, spirituality and leadership were worlds apart. While spirituality concerns with intangible ideas and emotions, leadership is a practical area of scientific inquiry. However, a large number of evidences from studies show that these fields are much closer, and there is a transition between the two figures. A good leader needs to evaluate the situation and act accordingly. The key elements of modern leadership involve co-operation, consideration, agreement, and social quality. The new adaptability culture requires a leader to be autonomous, take initiatives for improvements and emerge with new objectives and strategies. There is growing interest in the issues related to the spirituality in the workplace. The spiritual values such as integrity, honesty, and humility have a great effect on leadership success. The practices which have been emphasized in many spiritual teachings, and found crucial for leadership development are: showing respect for others, demonstrating good treatment, expressing caring and concern, actively listening, recognizing and appreciating the contributions of others, and engaging in reflective practice. Leadership and spirituality play an essential role together in terms of ethics and values. Value-based leaders have the ability to utilize employee efforts and organizational goals more effectively by connecting them to the deeper values inside them. They motivate employees and improve their performance and commitment towards the organization by making them imagine a better tomorrow.
The spiritual rituals have an uncanny ability to set the human mind for the rest of the life. These spiritual practices also give a loud and clear message that the professionals in organizations should be versed with their core values through a positive vision and personal actions. People commonly believe that there is a conflict between the values and practices included in spirituality and those required for successful business, but the above article explains the huge similarity between elements of success in both fields. Therefore, by incorporating these spiritual practices in professional life, employees can align good values with the strategy and road map to achieve massive success in the business.
Also read,
- 6 Ways to deal with office environment factors to boost productivity.
- Effects of Excessive work on health.
By Mayur Shewale
(Assistant Writer)
